Afro Yaqui Music Collective: Maroon Futures

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 is a postcolonial big band which imagines a world where many worlds fit. Their music draws from mainstream jazz, the avant-garde, and traditional forms from Africa, East Asia, and American Indigenous nations. At times aggressive and caustic, it is deeply engaged in ongoing struggles for social justice and revolution. Co-led by Gizelxanath Rodriguez, a Mexican operatic vocalist and cellist of Yaqui indigenous descent, and Ben Barson, a composer and baritone saxophonist, the collective is a site of several intercultural collaborations, working with musicians, poets, and dramaturgs from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Chicago, Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh.