Meet The Ski Group For Black And African Professionals

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Early next month, over 300 Black skiers will take over Hemsedal, Norway, for a weekend of community, music, and plenty of skiing.

The organization making it happen, Soft Life Ski, has a unique mission built on a combination of unlikely passions: skiing and Afrobeat music. The UK-based group hopes to increase inclusion and diversity in the winter sports space by organizing music-themed trips to ski resorts. “Soft life,” a term for an easygoing and relaxing lifestyle, is the feeling the group hopes to bring to the slopes. In short, SLS is a traveling music and ski festival aiming to introduce the joys of winter to its Black and African audience.

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Even just a few years ago, events like this didn’t exist for this demographic. SLS founder Emmanuel Ojo got the idea while working at the intersection of tech and fashion. He was employed for a bit as a creative director working with Afrobeat megastars, which introduced him to the music scene and individual performers in the space. “It’s a great background to have for this sort of thing,” he said, adding that the music is played throughout SLS and trips, giving guests a soundtrack to their skiing.

While he didn’t grow up on the slopes, Ojo and a few friends decided to try skiing after seeing colleagues take a ski trip after ski trip. Even though it wasn’t the type of vacation he and his buddies usually took, he thought it sounded interesting and wanted to see what the hype was about.

“We had no idea what kind of stuff we needed to bring,” Ojo recalled, “and we spent the first day cold and shivering. After the first day, we gathered all the stuff we needed from nearby shops and spoke to a lot of locals who were very kind and welcoming, and then we headed to our first lesson to learn what all of the skiing stuff was about,” Ojo explained. That’s when he fell in love with the sport.

“One thing we’ve learned is that our community yearns for these shared experiences where we can go and learn to ski, but then in the evening, we can listen to Afrobeats,” Ojo explained. “In Europe especially, and more recently in the U.S., a lot of these Afrocentric festivals are just completely selling out.”

Ojo realized they could combine the two and give this community another reason to visit the mountains.

SLS’s first, albeit unofficial, ski trip to the Alps took place during the winter of 2022, where 40 people, mostly friends and acquaintances of Ojo’s, learned to ski and snowboard.

“Even then, we didn’t know what we had on our hands,” he said. “We didn’t know how to work with tour operators or anyone on the scene. We ended up pooling our money together, negotiating with various hotels and resorts all over Europe, and essentially creating a deposit process where people could pay us monthly. Still, we’d already sent all the money to the hotel. So just fingers crossed that nobody would back out.”

This year, the SLS team is a lot more prepared. They have a partnership with a local hotel in Hemsedal and are offering packages that bundle lift tickets, lessons (around 80 percent of the group are first-timers), meals, equipment, lodging, and access to the different events on and off the mountain, most notably the DJ sets and Afrobeats concerts.

“This is the year that we’re just opening the gates and saying, you know, whoever wants to ski, if you’re young, if you’re into this culture and background, then you’re more than invited to come and experience this,” Ojo said.

Once the hotel sold out, SLS offered a Vibe Pass, which includes access to the slopes, rentals, and events but without the hotel room or the hotel-provided meals.

SLS has also invited music and ski legend Benjamin Alexander as an advisor. As a former DJ from the UK and the first skier to represent Jamaica in the Olympics, Alexander is a perfect fit for the group. “When I reached out to him about it, he instantly loved the idea,” Ojo said.

While this year’s trip is sold out (and has a staggering 1,000-person waitlist), SLS is already planning next year’s event, most likely in the French Alps. The group also hopes to expand to North America in the coming years. Intrigued? The best way to stay informed is to follow them on Instagram.