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 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. 

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.

(photo by Renee Rosensteel and courtesy of the New Hazlett Theater)

Afro Yaqui Music Collective: Maroon Futures