For more than three decades, Detroit has been home to a familiar sound, a beautiful, chaotic blend of global rhythms that doesn’t belong to just one neighborhood, one culture, or one language, but to us all. And for every one of those years, that sound had a singular architect: Ismael “Ish” Ahmed.
When the neighborhood celebration of Concert of Colors fills the air for the third year in a row in at the Mexicantown Community Development Corporation’s Mercado Plaza, it will do so without its north star. Ismael “Ish” Ahmed, the legendary broadcaster, co-founder of ACCESS, and the visionary who founded the festival, passed away in January at the age of 78. He left behind a vastly different city from the one he had started organizing, a city made better, kinder, and infinitely more connected by his presence.
For his wife, Margaret Ahmed, navigating the monumental task of organizing the first festival without him has been a journey of finding strength in what he left behind. When asked where she pulls the energy to keep pushing forward through the grief, “He’s this light,” Margaret says.
“He’s this beautiful light that radiates in all of us. And I think he really exemplified that everywhere he went, everything he did, every person he talked to. He was a very humble, gentle, beautiful light reflecting back to people the best of them.”
To understand why this specific Saturday afternoon in June matters so much, you have to go back to 1993. Detroit in the early ’90s was a place where communities often lived parallel lives, close in proximity, but divided by invisible, stubborn walls of race, culture, and history.
Ish looked at those walls and decided to build a stage instead.
He started the Concert of Colors on a premise that was as simple as it was radical: If you put a whole city’s worth of diverse cultures into one space and gave them incredible music, they wouldn’t just tolerate each other, they would truly listen. Over the decades, he proved himself right year after year, turning a small gathering into one of the Midwest’s most vital cultural institutions.
Stepping into those massive shoes is daunting, but Margaret and the dedicated “family” of organizers are meeting the moment by leaning on each other.
“I felt like, okay, nobody’s gonna do it like Ismael, but all of us together are bringing our energy and light together,” Margaret shares. “It happened because it’s all of us together, providing that strength and the energy and the resources.”
Ish was a founder and organizer, but he was also Detroit’s ultimate bridge-builder, all while fighting for Arab-American rights through ACCESS or spinning global tracks on WDET. He lived to connect people.
“He was our glue,” Margaret reflects.
“Now, he’s our glue spiritually… the light within all of us.”
The centerpiece of the day is a special program titled, “We Tell These Truths: All Humans Are Created Equal.”
The afternoon will kick off with an onstage conversation led by NPR’s brilliant Betto Arcos, featuring members of La Santa Cecilia, to dig into the themes of migration, identity, and the artist’s role in advocating for equality. It will be the necessary dialogue that Ish always championed, as a catalyst for social justice.
And then, of course, comes the music.
“La Santa Cecilia isn’t just playing a set; they are embodying the very spirit of what Ish spent 30 years building.”
Fronted by the powerhouse vocals of Marisol “La Marisoul” Hernandez, La Santa Cecilia effortlessly blends cumbia, bossa nova, rumba, and rock.
Walking through Mexicantown on Saturday, June 27, you’re going to feel his absence. You’ll look for his warm smile, his sharp eyes, and the way he seemed to know every single person in the crowd by name.
But if you listen closely to the accordions, the driving percussion, and the voices singing along in multiple languages, you’ll realize he hasn’t really left. He’s right there in the fabric of the crowd. He’s in the laughter shared between strangers buying street tacos, and the kids dancing on the pavement. This festival was Ish’s love letter to Detroit. This year, Southwest is writing him back.
