Darius Jones

Rockit is less a venue than a one day festival that takes over a venue, and in this case that venue is De Oosterpoort at Trompsingel 27 in Groningen, now branded SPOT De Oosterpoort. The festival launched in 2017 as a joint project between Mojo Concerts' North Sea Jazz Festival and the in house promoters at De Oosterpoort. Its name comes from "Rockit," the 1983 Herbie Hancock composition, a mix of funk, jazz, hip hop, dance and a touch of rock. Hancock himself headlined the first edition, held in November 2017. The festival's stated aim is experimental programming, built around acts described as open to the unknown. That first lineup gave a good sense of the territory: BadBadNotGood, Donny McCaslin, Shabaka and the Ancestors, Ben van Gelder and Reinier Baas, and Jeff Parker and Rob Mazurek. Rockit leans toward jazz fusion and progressive jazz, with contemporary hip hop in the mix, and the organisers present it as a way to show how those scenes cross over and feed each other. Later editions have kept to a November slot, with the sixth taking place on 9 November 2024 across five stages, and further dates listed for 8 November 2025 and 14 November 2026. The host building matters to the character of the event. De Oosterpoort is a music and performing arts hall whose main room holds 1,850 people, and it has long been the home of the Eurosonic Noorderslag conference, one of the key showcase events in European music. Spreading Rockit over several stages inside a building used to handling that kind of multi room programming lets festival visitors move between sets in a single day, with a mix of established names and newer acts.