AMERICA(!) THE BEAUTIFUL(?): A Night of Jazz, Blues, Hip-Hop, and Poetry
 

For Freedoms is thrilled to present AMERICA(!) THE BEAUTIFUL(?), an immersive evening of music, poetry, and civic imagination. Happening on Saturday, October 3 at 8:00PM at The Ford Theater in Los Angeles, this gathering brings together a constellation of artists working at the intersection of artistic expression and collective action. We invite you to gather with us in a shared exploration of freedom and belonging through live music, rhythm, poetry, and beats.

The experience begins with a live DJ set by artist-storyteller Kai the Universe, setting the tone for the evening with fresh beats. Next up is Xochimilca recording artist and activist Xiuhtezcatl who treats ancestral knowledge as a catalyst for solidarity, resistance, and hope. His music pulses with urgency and possibility, grounding in rhythm and purpose while calling listeners into deeper connection.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s (2006 Creative Capital Awardee) sermon-like performance will take time to reflect on the force of gathering and togetherness in America today. The night culminates with surrealist blues poet aja monet, joined by a live band blending jazz and soul with poems that move between tenderness and power, fragility and insurgency. Alongside projected photography by Kwame Brathwaite and Kali Spitzer illuminating the stage, these artists will transform the stage into a space of reckoning, asking: for whom America the beautiful?