by Jared Misner

Morathi Howie was adrift.

It was 2006, and Time Warner had just fired him from his job as a cable contractor after his license had been revoked. With no income or way to support himself, what was he to do now?

Howie shared his situation with a friend, Ramzu Yunus, who had been traveling back and forth between Charlotte and Zimbabwe for entrepreneurial work. Yunus invited Howie to join him; he’d even pay for the plane ticket.

The only catch: Howie had to decide right then and there whether or not to uproot his life and spend time in his ancestral home of Africa Howie jumped at the chance, planning to spend a month in Africa.

“Thirty days turned into 11 years,” Howie says.

Howie adapted a vegan lifestyle during college at North Carolina Central University. After returning from Africa — where he facilitated getting vegan foods to grocery stores — in 2017, he felt compelled to continue his work helping expand vegan lifestyles. He started small, pot-luck style in a Kannapolis cafe. About 45 people came, casserole dishes in hand, for the first event. Then 20 came to the next, then only 10.

“I could have been discouraged,” Howie says now on a sweltering July afternoon on the patio of Oh My Soul, Charlotte’s South African vegan restaurant.

Instead, he persisted. He began an online video series called Vegan Love Culture, showcasing local plant-based businesses and spreading the vegan gospel through the internet.

“I wanted it to be like Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” Howie says, referring to the popular Food Network show, “but for vegans.”

However, Howie could only share 2-D images of food with people through the internet — and that’s not how food from the soul is supposed to be enjoyed. He needed to bring more people together, and it needed to be big. Potlucks wouldn’t cut it anymore. So he reached out to Tabitha Brown, a successful vegan influencer and speaker who now has a line of vegan foods at Target, and shared his story. They were both Black vegans from North Carolina (Brown is from Eden). Would she come and emcee this vegan food event with Howie? Brown said yes

The event was a runaway success, and Howie began to think how he could replicate it.

Four weeks later, on a Sunday in June 2019, Howie – along with sister Latise Howie and cousin Kristi Williams – launched the first Vegan Vibes Music Series at Heist Brewery Barrel Arts. It was to be focused as much on music and community as it was on the food.

“Music and food brings us together,” Latisse says. “We knew we didn’t want to create something where we were just beating people over the head all the time. We wanted veganism to be fun.”

There was one more hurdle: In a culture that has typically associated veganism with affluence, whiteness and privilege, could a trio of Black people curate an ongoing festival largely for people of color? Seven hundred people came that first Sunday and promptly answered that question.

“We know we absolutely love music as a people; it’s entrenched (in) who we are,” Latisse says. “If you talk about beats and movements, you’re talking about African-American culture.”

Moreover, the trio says, veganism is African-American culture. “We were vegan first,” Williamson says. “We just didn’t call it that.”

Now, it seems, Black communities across the country and, indeed, in Charlotte, are reclaiming the idea of veganism only being for the privileged.

“The health problems that were hereditary did not start until we became a bit more affluent,” Williamson says. (According to one study, Black people are now 40 percent more likely than white people to have high blood pressure and, in 2018, another study found Black people were twice as likely to die from diabetes as white people.) “We’re taking it back to the basics. The terminology is new to the community. It did have that stereotype that it wasn’t for our community. Now, we’re taking ownership back of it and recreating it.”

Soon after the group launched their music and food festival series, a pandemic swept the globe, disrupting their plans and upending the livelihoods – particularly of restaurants – everywhere. Vegan Vibes Music Series had one advantage: It was designed to be outdoors. In 2020, Vegan Vibes Music Series began in July rather than in June but otherwise went on as planned – albeit with attendees wearing masks when not eating vendor foods like vegan fried chicken, vegan macaroni and cheese, and vegan cheesecake. It was a lifeline for many small businesses.

“Those families knew they would have sustainable incomes,” Williamson says. “It made a lot of our small businesses able to sustain their families.”

Nourish Juice and Fruity Lines are two of those businesses.

“Vegan Vibes jump started the business in a lot of ways,” LoMare McPherson, Nourish Juice’s CEO, says.

What was originally a pandemic hobby turned into a company for McPherson. Her brother, Isaiah Jackson, who was only 11 when he first started selling his ginger limeade at Vegan Vibes Music Series under the company name Fruity Line, soon followed in her footsteps.

“Vegan Vibes definitely helped me and LoMare build connections with other business owners. It helped seeing their experiences,” Jackson, who is now 14, says. “They helped build our business and gave us advice on how we should move forward in the future.”

They aren’t the only ones who have Vegan Vibes to thank.

“There are so many tabletop vendors, who would just pitch a tent and come out that now have food trucks,” Latisse says. “Vegan Vibes Music Series is responsible for vegan restaurants to have the courage to open up.”

The vegan food scene in Charlotte, particularly the Black-owned, vegan soul food scene, has blossomed in recent years. What was once a limited club of restaurants largely limited to Bean and Fern now include newcomers like Dee’s Vegan To Go, Romeo’s Vegan Burgers, Love in Action Cafe, Exposed Vegan, Dawg’On Vegans, and more.

“Now, if you go to a place that doesn’t have vegan options, you look at them like, ‘What?’” Latisse says. “The audience has grown; the demographic has changed.”

In its fifth season, Vegan Vibes Music Series continues to grow, shocking even its founders. It has outgrown its two former homes, Heist Brewery Barrel Arts and Cabarrus Brewing Co. NoDa Brewing now houses the summer series. On the first event of the 2023 season, it poured. Yet 2,500 people came out.

“When you give vegans these types of options that they don’t have, they will come out with their umbrellas,” Morathi says.

As Morathi and his family prepare to host the final event in the 2023 season, an old-school R&B-themed event on Aug. 20, he is long and away from the person he was, fired from Time Warner, adrift and without purpose. He knows what he is here to do now.

“My mother taught us to be givers and never be takers. People will always remember how you made them feel,” Morathi says. Then, leaving his table at Oh My Soul, he quietly approached another table of diners and handed them Vegan Vibes Music Series flyers, encouraging them to come say hi to him at the next event.

They said they’d be there.