BotangRecords Takes the Cosgrove Stage at the Minnesota State Fair — Our Biggest Stage Yet

The Minnesota State Fair is often called the largest music festival in the state, with more than 900 free shows across a dozen days and roughly two million people passing through the gates before Labor Day. In 2025, for the first time, BotangRecords had a place on that stage — 45 minutes on the Cosgrove Stage, one of the fair's dedicated platforms for local community organizations and dance groups, in front of a crowd that had no idea Kom rhythms and African heritage performance were about to become part of their fair day.

This moment didn't happen by accident. It happened because of a partnership two years in the making with Minnesota Africans United (MAU), a fellow 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to empowering African immigrant communities across Minnesota. MAU had already stood alongside BotangRecords on entrepreneurship education and digital-literacy programming reaching African families across the state. In 2025, MAU extended an invitation that changed BotangRecords' visibility overnight: a featured slot on the Cosgrove Stage, at the largest and most public gathering in Minnesota.

For 45 minutes, BotangRecords artists and drummers — in full Kom regalia, guitars and traditional drums in hand — turned a fairground stage into a cultural showcase. Families who came for cheese curds and livestock barns stayed to watch djembe rhythms, call-and-response vocals, and dance steps carried straight from the valleys of Kom to the heart of the Twin Cities.

This was, by a wide margin, the highest public exposure BotangRecords has ever had in Minnesota — and in the United States. It reached a bigger, broader, more unfamiliar audience in one afternoon than months of digital content could reach on its own. And it put a simple, powerful idea in front of thousands of Minnesotans at once: African culture isn't a guest at Minnesota's biggest tradition — it's already part of it.

BotangRecords members connect with fairgoers on the grounds, filming the day for the community back home and abroad.

A partnership worth celebrating

In its own words to the Minnesota Humanities Center, MAU described the Cosgrove Stage performance as a showcase that entertained and educated fairgoers about African heritage, music, and performance traditions — one that represented not just BotangRecords and the Kom community, but MAU's broader mission of showing Minnesota that African culture is a living, vibrant part of the state's identity.

That kind of trust doesn't come from a single event — it comes from two years of showing up. BotangRecords and MAU have worked side by side on entrepreneurship workshops and digital-skills training for African families across the Twin Cities, long before either organization stood on the Cosgrove Stage together.

Where to see it

Highlights from the performance live across BotangRecords' Facebook and Instagram pages, and footage from the Cosgrove Stage was woven into the visuals for “Tchiroma,” BotangRecords' YouTube release.

Why this matters for what comes next

A performance like this doesn't just entertain — it opens doors. Every fairgoer who stopped to watch, every family who asked “who are they?”, every video shared afterward is someone newly aware that BotangRecords exists, and that its mission is happening in their own state.