Afro Yaqui Music Collective - Maroon Futures (2021)

Afro Yaqui Music Collective came together in response to the rapidly changing political climate, in which working immigrant communities have become under attack, and climate change has threatened peoples across the world. As part of the band’s mission, their work develops dialogue with activists across the world. They have performed and worked with social movement leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mayan and Yaqui communities in Mexico, and Tanzania. They also performed at ASCAP’s 2018 Jazz Awards, at the Kennedy Center, and universities across the country. They constantly volunteer at fundraisers for immigrant rights and have also performed at the US-Mexican border in protest of human rights abuses in 2017. They put “their music with their mouth is,” and believe in the power of the arts to unite communities to build a movement that moves.

“The Afro Yaqui Music Collective is nothing short of pure, uncut sonic radical love. These extraordinary artists have returned this thing called ‘jazz’ back to its real roots—to the earth, to the sky, to the women who produced and protected a people’s culture. Ben Barson, Gizelxanath Rodriguez, and the crew have committed to making liberation music—which is to say, music without borders or boundaries; future music from the well of the past that’s always on time; joyful music that swings and sings and sometimes stings but always keeps us dancing toward freedom. Follow them. Don’t miss them. An encounter with the Afro Yaqui Music Collective may be the most inspiring musical experience of your life.”
-Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk

Maroon Futures is a six-track album that celebrates the struggle and lessons of maroons — enslaved peoples who the escape the evils of the built world being erected on genocide and slavery, to the protective bosom of the natural world. The tracks lift up love, camaraderie, women’s empowerment (aka, revolutionary matriarchy), and the indomitability of the Maroon fighting spirit. “We reject all forms of social exclusion, and we unite the sounds of Afro-Cuban culture, Chinese Opera, Indigenous languages, jazz, and hip-hop to say: our struggle is one.”

This album is dedicated to Russell Maroon Shoatz, known to his friends and family as “Maroon,” a political prisoner who has been incarcerated in the state of Pennsylvania for fifty years, with thirty years in solitary confinement. He was released into general population in 2014 and bandmembers contribute to the campaign to free Maroon through compassionate release. Each of the tracks relate to causes that Maroon cares deeply about and writes on often: social justice, antiracism, women’s empowerment, and the struggle for a livable planet.

Afro Yaqui Music Collective is a multilingual jazz band. Since 2016, they have been creating music ranging from soothing, introspective, cello-infused tango, to grooving, hard-hitting, virtuosic jazz-funk. Influenced by frontwoman Gizelxanath Rodriguez’s experience growing up in two cultures (Mexican and American) and her ancestry as an Indigenous Yaqui woman, Afro Yaqui creates music in which culture and language fuse with catchy melodies and mind-bending harmony to create a space where social movements, activists, and different cultures can unite within a shared commitment to liberation. Their band is global and includes musicians from all over the world. Some of their core members include co-leader Ben Barson (winner of ASCAP’s top award in jazz composers under 30, the Johnny Mandel prize), Charlotte Hill O’Neal (a former Black Panther and community organizer now living in Tanzania), Nejma Nefertiti (a New York-based revolutionary hip-hop artist), Hugo Cruz (one of Havana’s leading drummers and percussionists), Julian Powell (Pittsburgh’s renowned hip-hop drummer), Yang Jin (a pipa player who has toured with Yo-Yo Ma and countless others), Beni Rossman, Roger Romero, Randraiz Wharton, Samuel Okoh-Boateng, Alec Redd, and Mimi Jong.
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