For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Ng takes us below the waves to experience her near-hallucinatory ocean dwellers. “The inspiration for this series of cartilaginous animal illustrations stems from the intricate textures, fluid forms, and delicate details of creatures like snails, octopuses, and jellyfish,” she tells Zócalo. “Their graceful yet powerful presence in the underwater world presents a captivating blend of mystery and beauty, ideal for exploring in a minimalist, illustrative style. “

Ng’s illustrations combine stylized line art with gently surreal color choices to create an illusion of detail and specificity in our minds—by showing us less, Ng makes us see more.

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For her Sketchbook pieces, Holländer explores the subject of balance, a theme that she tells Zócalo has become increasingly important in her life. Her playful collages reflect on the space between work and play, routine and spontaneity, hard and soft. “It is not an either/or,” she explains, “it is a balance between poles, sometimes a wobbly act on a thin rope.”

Consider how each composition takes what could be a strict juxtaposition and rearranges competing symbols into precarious Jenga towers of philosophy. It’s an everyday balancing act that aptly captures life in the year 2024.

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Kuo’s Sketchbook visualizes the beauty of the dishes prepared for a Pān-toh, the traditional Taiwanese roadside banquet. “I put the chef’s art into illustrations in the hope I can connect hundreds and thousands of people with art as the chef does with food,” Kuo tells Zócalo.

To achieve the organic look of her illustrations, Kuo takes her digital drawings, prints them out on a Risograph printer, a high-volume color copier that uses ink instead of toner, and then rescans the prints. Risograph printers, which originated in the 1980s, produce prints that are recognizable by their grainy, but vibrant colors that are often slightly out of register, giving the work a rougher look than modern offset printing. In recent years, many old units have been modified into networked printers and have become popular with artists and designers.

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“We are the hub of a community,” asserted Crenshaw High School principal Donald Moorer, who opened Thursday’s Zócalo event. It was the first in a series partnering with Destination Crenshaw, the organization behind the 1.3-mile-long public art and infrastructure project being erected along Crenshaw Boulevard.

The event was an invitation for panelists and audience members to consider the community stakes of the ambitious project—which includes pocket parks and original artworks by Alison Saar, Maren Hassinger, and Kehinde Wiley—and what it means for Black history, Black art, and Black success.

The event’s title, “How Do You Grow a Rose From Concrete?,” was inspired by the famous Tupac Shakur poem, “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.” And as the project’s concrete is still being laid, some of the visionaries behind it took the stage at Crenshaw High: architect Gabrielle Bullock, Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Destination Crenshaw senior art advisor V. Joy Simmons.

They took turns asking one another questions, co-moderating the event—a format that held true to the sense of co-creation, collaboration, community, and contribution that all of them hope Destination Crenshaw will instill in each person who finds themselves in its midst.

Simmons asked the councilmember, a “son of South Los Angeles” whose mother was one the first people to graduate from Crenshaw High, what the Crenshaw Corridor was like when he was growing up. “The thing I remember most,” he said, “was that there was always motion.” Whether it was cars bouncing on hydraulics, young people doing the latest dance moves, entrepreneurs sweeping in front of their storefronts, or churchgoers coming and going, Crenshaw is “where life happens, where we witness what others are doing.”

When Crenshaw got wind that L.A. Metro was expanding a new train line and potentially cutting through their neighborhood—without stopping—Harris-Dawson was part of early efforts to win a Leimert Park station.

“This train could be a knockout punch” for the neighborhood, he said, transforming real estate, safety, and its connection to the rest of the city. For Harris-Dawson and others, one aim was undeniable: “We set out to do a project that would make us permanent in the City of Los Angeles. So no matter what happens going forward, there’s not going to be a situation where you get to say we were never here.”

That spirit of visibility—to be seen for what Crenshaw is—is one of the main reasons the train will be overground. In those earlier days, at the same time that Crenshaw community members were fighting for the train to be underground, Beverly Hills was fighting for it to stay above. Harris-Dawson asked why, and learned that they wanted to display what they had to offer: their shops, businesses, restaurants, museums, landscapes. Crenshaw could do that, too.

Drawing on an understanding that people will oppose what you do to them and embrace what you do with them, Harris-Dawson got community buy-in from businesses, neighbors, and leaders along the way. In fact, the construction site was able to get over 70% of its workforce from local hires, Destination Crenshaw president and COO Jason Foster noted later.

“I want the people of South Los Angeles to feel like it’s theirs,” Harris-Dawson said, just as other Los Angeles areas like Boyle Heights and Chinatown feel a sense of ownership over their neighborhoods. He also hoped that because consumers of Black culture would have to come to Crenshaw to experience this cultural project, the neighborhood could prosper.

“This project for me is a gift,” said Bullock, who co-led the design for Destination Crenshaw. Like Harris-Dawson’s efforts, the architecture firm Perkins&Will gave the people of Crenshaw power in design voice, she said. “In the end, we are merely interpreters.”

Bullock has been involved with other large-scale projects that highlight Black America: the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the National Center of Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; and Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas.

How does Destination Crenshaw compare? Simmons asked.

Because the project’s origin is in the community and will represent them, Bullock said, it is unique.

At one of the first “visioning workshops,” where community members were encouraged to bring an artifact or object that meant something to them related to Crenshaw, LA Commons founder and community leader Karen Mack brought in an image of the Sankofa bird, whose turning head is meant to symbolize the need to look to the past in order to move forward.

Hence, Sankofa Park will be the largest gathering area at Destination Crenshaw. The park itself has elements shaped like the bird, and on its highest viewing deck, you are able to look back and see where you’ve come from. “It’s about storytelling,” Bullock said.

The story Destination Crenshaw tells was important to Simmons, too. As the art and exhibition advisor, she selected artists who told a generational story of Crenshaw—ranging from in their 20s to 96 years old. There will be a sculpture on car culture by Charles Dickson (who will join the second event in this series, on May 31). And the RTN Crew will once again adorn the Crenshaw Wall with a new incarnation of mural art. Simmons noted that since at least the 1970s, the retaining wall has captured traces of the community through art, serving as a sort of public canvas. “I wanted us to understand that we are not a monolith,” she said of her selections.

All the panelists shared what they hope people will feel and take away from this project: that people feel seen, feel the intentional work put into it, and go away with a sense of the excellence of Black Los Angeles.

Many members of the in-person audience had deep roots in Crenshaw, which was made clear during the Q&A period that followed the talk. One questioner was the daughter of a former principal of Crenshaw High, another was a community historian.

One audience member asked where the late Crenshaw rapper Nipsey Hussle was in all of this. The name Destination Crenshaw, in fact, was inspired by Hussle, who thought it should be called that to mark the historic Los Angeles community as such: a destination, in bloom.

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Affixed on jewelry, tattoos, fabric, and home decor, and even in the pattern of wrought-iron fences in places like Washington, D.C., and Savannah, Georgia, is a heart-shaped symbol with curly circles at the top and bottom, almost like the mirroring of two S’s to make a heart.

It is one version of the popular Adinkra symbol Sankofa.

Sankofa literally means “return to your past” or “go back and fetch it.” It can also mean “it is not taboo to go back and fetch it,” which is useful as an apology (e.g., “I invoke Sankofa and wish to go back and correct what I did at yesterday’s meeting when I incorrectly accused you of wrongdoing”).

Also commonly symbolized by the outline of a bird whose head and beak are pointed backward, toward its tail, often with an egg either in the beak or nestled in the tail, Sankofa has become a cultural phenomenon. It gives a name to the African diaspora’s concerns for heritage, legacy, authenticity, and dignity—in the U.S. and beyond.

Sankofa belongs to a communication system called the Adinkera, or Adinkra, which comes from present-day Ghana and Ivory Coast—key West African regions from which African Americans’ ancestors came.

After Ghana’s independence from Britain in 1957, the country’s first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, instituted a national policy to revive and celebrate the Adinkra system, particularly the concept of Sankofa. Nkrumah also welcomed the descendants of enslaved Africans to repatriate, or at least visit, the nation. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, and many other artists, activists, and culturally curious African Americans began making trips to Ghana in the late 1950s, where they would have likely encountered Adinkra symbols and philosophies. Scholarship around the Adinkra started to become more visible stateside, too, beginning in 1983 with the publication of Ivory Coast anthropologist Georges Niangoran-Bouah’s The Akan World of Gold Weights.

The concept of Sankofa resonates with core aspects of African American culture and life. The ideas of “return” and “back-to-Africa” anchor African American nationalist thought. Even more pervasive in Black people’s consciousness is the endearment of Africa as a homeland. By reflecting folk narratives presenting flight as self-emancipation and escape from enslavement and oppression, Sankofa embodies a sense of love, affection, respect, and sacred remembrance that affirms African American cultural uniqueness and celebrated difference. The principle of Sankofa is a reminder that “flight” and “return” go hand in hand. Just as peace can only come from knowing one’s legacy as well as the healing power of cultural memory.

Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima’s 1993 resistance-themed feature film Sankofa helped introduce the proverb to a wider audience. The multi-award-winning independent film begins in contemporary times, with a culturally unaware African American model doing a photoshoot on the same Ghana beach where the historic Elmina enslavement fort still stands. The model then travels through time to the enslavement past and discovers the sacredness of how her ancestors survived through revolts and sacrifice. Rich in themes of communalism, revolt, Pan-Africanism, and intellectual agency, Sankofa is a revolutionary vision of enslavement courage. In the years since its release, it has attracted a cult and cultural following.

The Sankofa cultural explosion continues in high schools and colleges today. In Black Studies classes, teachers introduce Sankofa to newer generations through the film and as an example of African philosophy. For many, it is a new and inspirational experience that reinforces the educational goals of historical recovery and presents the rich intellectual tradition of the African world. In practices of Black psychology, Sankofa grounds wellness and renewal in ancient wisdom. And in literary analysis, Sankofa is a paradigm that asks readers to map the ways characters of African descent travel and explore heritage homelands. This travel is often multidirectional and involves not just Africa, but also the Americas, the Caribbean, and even Europe.

But Sankofa is most visible outside of academia, in the explosion of businesses, schools, and community engagement projects that have embraced the name “Sankofa.” Represented by familiar icons (a heart, a bird) rather than some of the less familiar geometric shapes in the Adinkra, Sankofa holds immediate, recognizable visual appeal. While community institutions may not necessarily have a deep understanding of Sankofa’s precise Adinkra meaning, Sankofa has also been embraced by some as a general African/Black legacy concept that communicates that they are proud agents of a global heritage.

Consider just a sampling: Sankofa Kitchen (Dallas); Sankofa Arts Lounge (Dallas); Sankofa Research Institute (Houston); Sankofa Village for the Arts (Pittsburgh); Sankofa African and World Bazaar (Baltimore); Sankofa Church (Atlanta); Sankofa Community Discount Card (Atlanta); Sankofa Initiative (Jacksonville); Sankofa Creations Spalon (Jacksonville); Sankofa Jazz Festival (Miami); and Sankofa Soul, the sponsor of music festivals in St. Lucia, Curacao, Brooklyn, and Coney Island.

For hundreds of years, African Americans have used everything from storytelling to art to religion to keep their heritage alive in a hostile U.S. In 1991, African American archaeologists even discovered Sankofa symbols in a colonial-era African burial ground during a high-rise construction project in lower Manhattan; that site is now a national monument. Such relics from the past, like the Akan gold weights that fueled commerce for 500 years, show the depth and longevity of the ancient traditional West African roots of African Americans.

The knowledge imparted by African ancestors—an inheritance forcibly taken away, though never completely lost—has endured, yet African Americans revel in the more recent awareness of the vast Adinkra system because it is specific amidst a cultural history that largely has been a generic remembrance.

Imagine the possibilities for cultural reclamation and enrichment if the African American and diasporic communities continue to utilize not just Sankofa but the wealth of philosophies shared within the entire Adinkra system. Because among its symbols lie universal wisdom around the human capacity to heal, to repair, to renew, and to return.

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Acrobatic troops across Kenya’s coast continue to perform at star-studded venues while struggling to support themselves financially. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

The majority of acrobats working on Kenya’s coast today come from impoverished backgrounds. They chose this work because it allows them to celebrate their cultural identity and heritage. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Though formal training centers don’t exist across the coast, acrobats form brotherhoods of performers to fine-tune their choreography and support one another. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Kenyan acrobatics nods to both the long history of circus artistry in the African continent and its modern evolution. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Kenya’s acrobats have toured the world, appearing in venues from Mexico to Israel. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Over the last two decades, the salaries for performers have remained largely stagnant in Kenya. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

To ensure this profession has a sustainable future, acrobats are advocating for fair pay and for Kenya to recognize the circus arts as an integral part of its national heritage. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

It’s showtime at one of Kenya’s five-star resort hotels.

Tourists from around the world move in small groups to the performance area next to the pool to see the evening’s headliner: Burning Spear Acrobats.*

The five members showcase the art and skill of Kenyan acrobatics. They adjust themselves into elaborate human pyramids. They fly through the air in perfect synchronicity as the ropes turn in opposite directions during the double rope skipping act. And they create an impressive tower of stacking chairs and hand balance from one to another to great heights.

Their performance is both a glimpse into the centuries-old performance traditions from Kenya and other African countries, with accounts dating back to at least the 14th century, and the evolution of its modern form, which developed in Kenya alongside its tourism industry in the 1960s.

But the future of this art form is in jeopardy. While resorts across Kenya’s coast sell tourists on these shows, they do not pay their performers a living wage. Because of that, Kenyan acrobats don’t know how much longer their show can go on.

The majority of acrobats working on Kenya’s coast today come from impoverished backgrounds and have only basic schooling. Though the path to becoming an acrobat is less financially stable than working in construction, as gardeners, or as drivers of motorcycles or tuk-tuks, those who seek it out do so because it enables them to be creative and steel their bodies, while taking pride in their cultural identity and heritage.

To break into the industry, young Kenyans will approach relatives and friends who already perform to mentor them. The troupes’ training is self-driven. They meet on the soft sand beaches before the heat of the day to practice and then again in the afternoons to fine-tune choreography. They have no facilities, no safety equipment, and no health insurance. The Burning Spear Acrobats were fortunate in that they started in a north coast village that had a training location with a pole and a rudimentary stage. But though formal training centers do not exist on the Kenyan coast, acrobats form brotherhoods of performers who support each other in their quest to live their lives with dignity.

Troupes tend to have a fixed day of the week performing in the various hotels, for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly engagements. Successful troupes will work five to six days a week. Others are not so fortunate and have to make do with one to three performances. The frequency of performing is also dependent on the tourism seasons; the low season provides only scant opportunities and is a tough time for performing artists.

The unpredictability makes international contracts more prized. Over the years, many Kenyan acrobats have performed in tourism venues from Mexico to Israel, on cruise ships, and at international festivals. Despite being a fixture on the cruise circuit around the world, Kenyan—and African acrobatics more broadly—have yet to receive the mainstream recognition they deserve. Still even the base-level international contracts they take provides them with some financial stability. Most acrobats who have worked internationally for a year or more are able to save and acquire a small plot or build a small dwelling on ancestral land.

But in Kenya, the profession is struggling to survive. Part of this is because of the state of the tourism industry. Over the past two decades, the country has been hit hard by terrorist attacks, notably the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing, the 2013 attack on the Nairobi Westgate shopping mall, and a series of al-Shabaab strikes. More recently, the COVID-19 crisis handed a significant setback to the sector. As hotels have tried to maximize their profits amid this uncertainty, they’ve done so by not adjusting their performance budgets to the rising costs of living.

Over the past 20 years, salaries for performers have remained largely stagnant. As reported by senior artists, salaries in 2003 ranged from 1,500 to 3,000 KES (Kenyan Shillings) per show for a group of five (the equivalent of roughly $20 to $39, though that represented a higher purchasing power back then). Salaries have increased only marginally since; today they range between 1,500 and 5,000 KES for most shows (roughly $10 to $32 per group per show), which amounts to a de facto decrease.

Meanwhile, the cost of living has skyrocketed in Kenya. Food inflation has been especially dramatic, averaging 9.74% per year from 2010 until 2023. This has left performers living hand-to-mouth, with hunger knocking on the door, especially during the off-season. The fact that the situation is especially bad in hotels catering to audiences of predominantly white tourists from the global north is reminiscent of colonialist practices of showcasing “exotic” people and animals. While complaints about low wages have increased across the working-class population in Kenya, acrobats and other performing artists are particularly vulnerable.

Ethnic discrimination also plays a role in these worsening conditions. Performers are overwhelmingly members of the Mijikenda, an ethnic group consisting of nine distinctive peoples who live along the coast. Since independence, the ruling parties of Kenya have invested heavily in their own ethnic constituencies, while coastal Kenyans—without sufficient political power in the capital city of Nairobi—have had to put up with pot-holed roads, poor healthcare, underfunded education, and a general lack of investment. The overall situation has also led to the performers and other members of the Mijikenda to be treated poorly by some of the hotel management staff and entertainment managers, who are responsible for determining performers’ salaries. Several of these managers have even taken small cuts from the salaries of acrobats. Most hotels do not allow tipping after the show, and where it is allowed, the result varies and are not enough to supplement incomes.

Combined, these factors have led to a precarious financial situation that if it continues, will push the culture of acrobatics in the country to disintegrate. That would be a loss for Kenya and the world.

One step to rectifying the situation is for Kenya to recognize the circus arts as an integral part of its national heritage. Neighboring Tanzania, for example, is already investing in training institutes for its acrobats, who also tour internationally. South Africa houses the renowned Zip Zap Circus, the Zip Zap Circus School, a permanent venue for circus arts in Johannesburg, and an Acrobatics Federation of South Africa that specializes in acrobatic dance, among others.

Currently in Kenya, the nonprofit Sarakasi Trust Foundation is the only major development organization investing in the circus arts. Located in Nairobi, its Sarakasi Dome—which has dance studios, an auditorium, and various multi-purpose spaces—offers training that empowers artists creatively and economically, including education on social entrepreneurship and life skills. More such support is needed for acrobats on the coast. For now, the performers are left to continue to push to find solutions to their dire situation, despite the many obstacles in their way. For example, a well-established advocacy association they created was shut down in 2015 as part of a larger government crackdown on community-based and other non-governmental organizations that were suspected to have ties to terrorist organizations. Performers continue to attempt to organize and negotiate with hotels, but such campaigns come with a risk because artists fear retaliation and that they will lose their jobs if they become associated with such movements.

The result is that Burning Spear Acrobats, along with other troupes on the coast, continue to perform at star-studded venues while juggling other jobs to get by. They continue in the hopes that Kenyan acrobatics, and African acrobatics more broadly, are given their rightful place in the pantheon of awe-inspiring circus arts of the world, and receive fair compensation for such work. As one of the members of Burning Spear Acrobats said recently, “People need to understand that acrobatics is a serious career, that it requires commitment and discipline. We deserve respect for our work.”

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It’s Zócalo’s 20th birthday, and we hit the two decade milestone running—we hosted 21 events in 2023 to fulfill our mission of connecting people to ideas and to each other.

At our homebase at the ASU California Center in downtown Los Angeles, we discussed some of the biggest issues of the day—from artificial intelligence to surveillance. We enjoyed a special homecoming, hosting our first-ever event steps away from our namesake: Mexico City’s Plaza de la Constitución, otherwise known as the Zócalo, one of the largest public squares in the world. We traversed California, from Sacramento to Riverside, to discuss the needs of workers in low-wage sectors of the state’s economy. We traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, and to Memphis, Tennessee, to consider how sins of the past shape the present, and what might move us forward. We even threw a dance party—shout out to all 700 of you who boogied with us at the Port of L.A. on a Sunday afternoon!

Picking our favorite public programs each year is never easy, but these seven events reflect the variety of our work—and most importantly, kept us talking long after the discussions wrapped. Whether you came in person or watched virtually, you’re what makes our public square so robust. Thanks for being part of Zócalo, and we look forward to continuing the conversation next year.

Do We Need More Food Fights?

This emotional conversation and cooking demonstration brought together photographer Zahara Gómez Lucini, who compiled a cookbook that collects recipes from the families of desaparecidos—the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing in Mexico—and Maite Gomez-Rejón, a culinary historian and co-host of the “Hungry for History” podcast. Livestreamed and in person from LA Cocina de Gloria Molina’s demonstration kitchen in downtown L.A., the women prepared special guest Blanca Soto’s pozole from the cookbook and spoke about the power of a meal. Cooking does not just satisfy our hunger, they noted, but can also unite us, and in this case reunite us, with those who are no longer here. The special event, presented in partnership with LA Cocina de Gloria Molina and California Humanities, was part of our birthday series “What Connects Us?”

The 2023 Zócalo Book Prize: How Does a Community Save Itself? With Michelle Wilde Anderson

For 13 years, Zócalo has honored the author of the best nonfiction book that explores community and social connection, inviting them to visit us to collect their prize—$10,000 and a nifty Zócalo Rubik’s Cube—and deliver a lecture. In June, this year’s honoree Michelle Wilde Anderson arrived at a packed house at the ASU California Center and shared stories of hope from The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America, her book looking at the communities of Stockton, California; Josephine County, Oregon; Detroit, Michigan; and Lawrence, Massachusetts. “We have to invest in people where they live,” she told the evening’s moderator, Alberto Retana, president and CEO of South L.A.’s Community Coalition. The program also featured poet Paige Buffington, who joined us virtually to read her 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize-winning submission, “From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque.” And, because this kicked off Zócalo’s 20th birthday celebration, the night ended with cake.

What Does Boxing Owe Its Champions?

The gloves were off at the ring (okay, the ASU California Center) as panelists—professional boxer and actress Kali “KO” Mequinonoag Reis, former middleweight champ Sergio “the Latin Snake” Mora, California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster, and sport and ethnic studies scholar Rudy Mondragón—shared candid perspectives on the state of their sport. The discussion, presented in partnership with UCLA College, Division of Social Sciences and ASU Global Sport Institute, called for more protections for athletes and left the audience with a major question: What will be left of professional boxing if it does not do more to protect its athletes’ physical and financial well-being?

What Is a Good Job Now? For Fairness in the Workplace

What better way to get the attention of California politicians than by convening a conversation right on the Capitol steps in Sacramento? As part of the Zócalo Public Square series supported by The James Irvine Foundation, “What Is a Good Job Now?,” we brought together California State Senator Maria Elena Durazo, founding member of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United Sara Fee, and California Labor Commissioner assistant chief Daniel Yu for a memorable conversation on wage theft, unpaid overtime, dangerous working conditions, discrimination, and rising employer retaliation, moderated by our own Joe Mathews.

What Is the Value of Art?

Nobody called the fire department on us, but so many people showed up for this powerhouse night of arts and culture that we had to open a separate screening room. In anticipation of the international art fair Frieze Los Angeles, we curated a conversation on the state of the art world, inviting LAXART director Hamza Walker, artist and activist Andrea Bowers, writer and curator Helen Molesworth, and artist, cultural organizer, and co-founder of Meztli Projects Joel Garcia to break down some of artists’ greatest aesthetic, moral, and financial challenges, as well as their biggest opportunities for social change and community building.

How Does a Community Move With Music? A Diaspora Dance Party

We came. We shared our songs and stories of L.A. And we danced. We danced a lot. Zócalo’s first-ever dance party (another birthday series event), held at the Wilmington Waterfront Park at the Port of Los Angeles, was a smashing success. Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, the inaugural contributor to our ongoing “Diaspora Jukebox” playlist series, emceed. KCRW DJ Raul Campos and local Wilmington DJ Mario “Dred” Lopez kept the music flowing. Curation from Levitt Pavilion and performances by Pacifico Dance Company and Korean Classical Music and Dance Company wowed the crowd. If you needed a break from the dancing, we had food vendors, an art activation by LA Commons, and a pop-up Wilmington Art Walk at the ready. And glow sticks. So many glow sticks.

How Do We Hear America? A Special Evening of Music by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer Raven Chacon

We thought our final program of 2023 was pretty special, and you did, too: Zócalo’s audience voted “How Do We Hear America?” as the fan favorite event of the year. This night of music, co-presented with L.A.-based music collective wasteLAnd, ASU Gammage, and GRoW Annenberg, brought us together at the ASU California Center to watch and listen as the ensemble brought a selection of composer and musician Raven Chacon’s works to life. With our senses activated by the music and our bellies warm with tamales from Mama’s Tamales, and Tacos, Too, we think we ended the year on a high note.

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