The original dream for Tulsa rapper Stephon “Steph” Simon was simply to perform his music on a big stage.
“I would be watching my favorite artists on TV or on YouTube, performing at these big festivals,” Simon said. “But there wasn’t any sort of festival or platform for the type of rap music I was making here in Tulsa, or that my friends and fellow rappers and musicians were doing. So I figured if that was what we wanted to do, then we would have to create that opportunity for ourselves.”
That was almost a decade ago, when Simon organized what was then called the World Culture Music Festival, which debuted in 2016. What was originally conceived as a way to give local musicians a chance to share their work with a larger audience has evolved over the years into the region’s largest hip-hop festival, featuring national and local musical talent, guest speakers and panel conversations, film screenings and other activities.
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Steph Simon is a Tulsa rapper, Dreamland Festival organizer and teacher at McLain High School.
It also, in 2022, underwent a name change, to the Dreamland Festival, named for a popular venue in the Greenwood neighborhood that was destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The 2024 festival, which took place over three days in early November, drew thousands of visitors to the intersection of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street, the epicenter of this year’s event.
“While the festival has always had a local emphasis, from the first year we had artists from all over the nation coming to perform,” Simon said. “Next year will be the 10th anniversary, and the festival continues to evolve. A new generation is getting involved, which is pretty cool to see.”
The Dreamland Festival is just one way Simon has worked to bring Tulsa’s hip-hop community to national attention. His five albums, including the recently released “The Tulsa King: Everything the Light Touches,” often deal with his hometown’s dark past but also celebrate a spirit of hope and resilience.
He was one of the performers as well as an executive producer of the landmark “Fire in Little Africa” project, which brought together members of the Tulsa rap community to create a multimedia statement about the legacy of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre. The album was recorded in part at the Skyline Mansion — the one-time home of Tate Brady, an early-day Tulsa businessman and former member of the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Tulsa King: Everything The Light Touches’’ is the fifth album by Tulsa artist Steph Simon. The album artwork is by Jake Beeson and Ryan Cass.
And he is encouraging and promoting the next generation of artists through his work at McLain High School, where he helped create a recording studio where young performers can get hands-on experience in making music.
“I graduated from Union High School, but I’m from the (McLain) neighborhood — I have a lot of family members who are alumni of McLain,” Simon said. “I had a feeling that there was a real pool of talent here, and I wanted to try this program out.”
Students who sign up for the extracurricular program, known as TMC Records, work to create an album of original music, while also learning the basics of the business side of the music industry, such as how to present concerts. The product of the 2023-2024 school year debuted with a concert at the school in April.
“What I’d love to see,” Simon said, “is fellow students and friends, parents and people from the neighborhood, supporting these kids the same way they would come out to support the high school’s football or basketball teams.
“It’s similar to my goals for the Dreamland Festival,” he said. “I want the world to come to Tulsa and experience this festival, to see what I see when I look at the talent we have here, to feel what I feel, and to love it the way I love it. What we’ve accomplished over the past nine years proves that we have the talent and the infrastructure to really make this festival and Tulsa a national destination.”
Music artist Steph Simon is a 2024 Tulsan of the Year.
