515 Alive again cancels plans for electronic dance music and hip-hop festival in Des Moines

Electronic music fans will have to wait another year for 515 Alive to return. 

The electronic dance and hip-hop music festival will not take place this year. Organizers posted on Instagram: "After much consideration, it was felt that to best meet our goal, the festival needed to take a pause in 2022."

Organizers said they will use this time to rebuild. "Our energy is focused on creating a space in which the art and community that we all love can thrive."

The electronic music and hip-hop festival also was canceled in 2021 and 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, organizers said that "organizing events of this size and nature takes months of proper planning and with the uncertainty surrounding covid regulations we felt that it was simply too turbulent to bring to fruition."

The festival started in 2003 with DJs and electronic dance music. Dan Green and his business partner Raj Devan bought 515 Alive in 2013 when it was a single-day event for 3,000 people in a parking lot in the East Village.

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The next year, the festival moved to Western Gateway Park, adding a second day in 2015 along with crossover hip-hop artist Waka Flocka Flame to headline. By 2016, 8,000 people came to the festival to see Excision, Griz, Gucci Mane, Tech N9ne, Hopsin, Mijia, Nghtmre and more.

The last festival in 2019 drew acts such as Wiz Khalifa and Lil Nas X to Water Works Park over two days.

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Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.