Gina Loring Of African American, Eastern European Jewish and Muscogee Creek Native American descent, Dr. Gina Loring is a poet, vocalist, scholar, activist, and teaching artist. She has served as the Poet-in-Residence at UC Berkeley Law School and is the current Poet Laureate of the African American Policy Forum. Through…
David G Smith Internationally acclaimed Artist-Songwriter David G Smith is an acoustic roots solo performer with a lyric intensive style featuring guitars, a resonator, music and a voice that range from dirt-funk to intimate. His music is a blend of Folk, Americana, Country & Blues and speaks to the issues…
Dayvin Hallmon Before he could speak, Dayvin M.A. Hallmon showed an awareness and love of music. At the age of five years old he began taking piano lessons. Later he learned the clarinet and saxophone. A few years later, Dayvin began studying the violin and viola. Perfectly at home in…
Treya Lam treya lam is a multi-instrumentalist and composer whose expansive and intersecting identities inform but do not define their work, whether solo or when collaborating with ensembles across a variety of disciplines. their atmospheric voice, liberation oriented songwriting and fluency on guitar, piano and looped viola recalls Nina Simone…
Eric Dozier Eric is a cultural activist, anti-racism educator, and itinerant blues preacher leveraging the power of music to promote healing, justice and racial reconciliation. Through his role as co-founder and National Director of Arts and Education for One Human Family Workshops, Inc., Eric set out to devote his musical,…
Ruben 'Beny' Esguerra Ruben “Beny” Esguerra arrived as a child to Tkaronto from Bacatá (Bogotá, Colombia) as a political refugee with his parents, who were receiving threats for their human rights activism. Today, he is a JUNO nominated multi-instrumentalist/producer, spoken-word poet, arts educator and community worker. in 2021, he was…
Tanaya Winder Tanaya Winder is an author, singer / songwriter, poet, and motivational speaker who comes from an intertribal lineage of Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, and Duckwater Shoshone Nations where she is an enrolled citizen. She received a BA in English from Stanford University and a MFA in creative…
Vanessa Lively Vanessa Lively is an eclectic, bilingual songwriter and nonprofit founder who brings passion and fire to her heart-centric writing style and way of living. Margaret Moser of The Austin Chronicle describes Vanessa’s music as “folk music on fire with worldly rhythms and a Latin pulse.” In 2017, Vanessa…
Enrique Chi Enrique Chi is the guitarist and songwriter of psychedelic Panamanian band Making Movies, whose critically acclaimed album - XOPA - has lifted the group into international acclaim. XOPA reached #1 album on the NACC Latin Music chart and was praised by NPR, Afropunk, and Remezcla for its unique…
Jasiri X Jasiri X is the first independent Hip-Hop artist to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate, which he received from Chicago Theological Seminary in 2016. This recognition grew out of the spiritual/political urgency and artistic vision he shared on songs like “Justice For Trayvon” and “Strange Fruit”, which documented the…
