Afro Yaqui Music Collective Presents:
Maroon Futures
Sunday, August 29
6:00 pm
Join us for an evening of global freedom music with the award-winning revolutionary jazz ensemble The Afro Yaqui Music Collective performing from their 2021 album, Maroon Futures.
The Afro Yaqui Music Collective (named after the indigenous music of the Yaqui people of northern Mexico) fuses the music of first nations in the Americas with funk, jazz, and hip hop to create a new rhythm that liberates spirit and soul. They are a postcolonial big band who imagines a world where many worlds fit. And boy are they fun!
Afro Yaqui performs at City of Asylum several times a year and are consistently one of our most popular concerts. Fusing education of rarely heard musical styles, with activism, with toe-tappin, head bobbing rhythms, an Afro Yaqui concert never disappoints.
Co-led by Gizelxanath Rodriguez, a Mexican operatic vocalist and cellist of Yaqui indigenous descent, and Ben Barson, a composer and baritone saxophinst, the collective is a site of several intercultural collaborations, working with musicians, poets and dramaturgs from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Chicago, Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh.
There are two ways to join us for this evening of live music and dance—virtually from home or under the tent on Sampsonia Way. Tent capacity is limited and fills up quickly, so act fast to join us in person.