Joseph B Darensbourg

Joseph B Darensbourg is a native of Bulbancha (Choctaw for “place of many tongues,” aka New Orleans) from the Faubourg Treme, the oldest free people of color neighborhood in the country (predating the United States itself). This neighborhood of Gens de Couleur Libres is a tri- ethnic blend comprised of Native Americans, Europeans, and African ethnic Creoles who speak a lingua franca known as Kouri Vini as well as Colonial Louisiana French. A performer of ethnic folk musics, Joseph is a singer, violinist, and percussionist member of Les Cenelles ensemble, which specializes in music inspired by resistance and protest poetry and Les Cenelles Gens de Couleur Libres, civil rights activists opposing the Code Noir during US Reconstruction. Joseph focuses on the Bayou Ballads plantation songs (1840s–80s). A bookbinder by trade—trained at the oldest bookbindery in the United States (Harcourt, Boston)—Joseph is also a visual art alum of NOCCA, as well as a member of the oldest early music ensemble in the America, New Orleans Musica da Camera (founded in 1965, as was Joseph).

Denise Tatum Frazier

Denise Frazier is an educator, musician, and interdisciplinary artist from Houston, who has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2002. She is a 2023-2024 MLK Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, she was the assistant director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, a place-based research Center that grants fellowships and organizes public programming, immersive experiences, and collective contemplation about the bio-region stretching from Texas to Florida and its connections with other regions around the world. Her research interests currently include the Gulf South and the Anthropocene, sound studies and the political, social, digital, natural, and built environments of the Gulf South and Circum-Caribbean. She is also the manager, co-founder and violinist/vocalist/percussionist of Les Cenelles, a string and technological interfacing ensemble that performs African Diasporic music through a prismatic lens that honors African and Indigenous ancestors and chronicles ecological realities. She completed an M.A. (2004) and PhD (2009) in the Latin American Studies Department at Tulane University, studying the political and social dimensions of hip hop music and performance in early 21st century Cuba and Brazil. She is the proud parent of one son.

Peter Johnson Bowling

Peter Johnson Bowling is a multi-instrumentalist improviser, composer, technologist & collaborator based in Bulbancha (New Orleans).

Demi Ward

Demi Ward is a West Indian-American performer, sound artist, researcher, and educator based in New Orleans. Demi is currently a Masters candidate in Musicology student and Mellon Foundation Fellow where they focus on ideas of Black insurgency and reverence through sound, Marronage, and community-engaged organizing/education.