Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the Black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. The event came 11 years after the First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar, and 8 years after the First Pan-African Cultural Festival was held in Tangiers. Devised by Chimurenga magazine, this is the first publication to consider FESTAC in all its cultural-historic complexity, addressing the planetary scale of the event alongside the personal and artistic encounters it made possible.