A very special re-broadcasted performance featuring global freedom music with the award-winning revolutionary jazz ensemble The Afro Yaqui Music Collective. The Collective performed at Alphabet City in October of 2019 to a full house where the high energy and activism was palpable. This program will open with new commentary from AYMC co-founders Gizelxanath Rodriguez and Ben Barson.

The Afro Yaqui Music Collective is a postcolonial big band which imagines a world where many worlds fit. The band is part of the legacy of the Asian-American composer-activist Fred Ho, and their music draws from mainstream jazz, the avant-garde, and traditional forms from both Africa, East Asia, and American Indigenous nations. At times aggressive and caustic, it is deeply engaged in ongoing struggles for social justice and revolution. The collective is a site of several intercultural and transnational collaborations, working with musicians, poets and dramaturgs from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Chicago, Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh.

This performance featured special guest poet Magdalena Gómez from Springfield, MA.

The Show Must Go On(line) is made possible thanks to generous support from the Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation, UPMC, and an Anonymous Foundation.

Afro Yaqui Music Collective Presented by City of Asylum