Cuatro Mujeres: A Diasporic Exploration of Nina Simone’s Four Women
August 20 & 25 · September 3 & 8
Presented by Old Town School's Community Ventures initiative Music Moves, Cuatro Mujeres: A Diasporic Exploration of Nina Simone's Four Women is a Night Out in the Parks series presented in partnership with the Chicago Park District. The series activates parks across the city with robust cultural programming that brings neighbors together to laugh, dance, sing, and engage. Based on Nina Simone's 1966 classic jazz composition Four Women, the project explores Simone's four women, Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches, in dialogue with four feminine Orisha figures from the Afro Cuban Lucumí tradition: Yemayá, Ochún, Oya, and Obba. Each 60 minute performance features musicians and dance artists collaborating to develop new work around each archetype, expanding Chicagoans' understanding of Nina Simone while uplifting the connections between African diasporic and Latinx musical and dance practices across the Black, Caribbean, Latinx, and Indigenous diasporas.
Click here for more info about Chicago Park District's Night Out in the Parks
Cuatro Mujeres Events:
Thursday, August 20 from 6:30-8:00pm
Hamilton Park
513 W 72nd St, Chicago, IL 60621
Aunt Sarah
featuring Azania Drum and Soul Resonance with choreography by Zenzile Fatou
Azania Drum
Azania Drum, a local youth djembe orchestra with a focus on leadership, discipline, and teamwork. Started in 2000 by the late Baba Meshach Silas and Mama Ann Ward, and housed at Betty Shabazz International Charter School, Azania added an entirely new element of culture, creativity, and history to Chicago catering to children wanting to learn to play djembe orchestra music.
Soul Resonance
Chicago musicians Anaiet Soul (Keys), Kai Blu (Bass), Dakarai Barclay (Trumpet), and Jaden Esi (saxophone) come together as Soul Resonance, a dynamic supergroup created especially for Cuatro Mujeres. Drawing from jazz, soul, gospel, hip hop, classical, and contemporary music, these accomplished composers, multi instrumentalists, vocalists, producers, and educators bring a deep understanding of the musical lineages that inform Nina Simone’s work and beyond. Together, they create a space where powerful musicianship, personal expression, and the traditions of the African diaspora meet, making them a natural fit for a series that explores the complex women and stories at the heart of Simone’s iconic composition in conversation with the Orisha.
Anaiet Soul (they/them) is a composer, pianist, guitarist, and vocalist from the south side of Chicago. Anaiet is influenced by a myriad of musical backgrounds (including jazz, soul, gospel, and classical). Their music exists as an amalgamation of their life's experiences in love, grief, and gratitude.They seek to turn the stage into an intimate place where they can unravel, and in turn allow space for their audience to do so as well.
Dakarai Barclay is a trumpeter and educator currently based in Chicago, Illinois. Dakarai is a recent graduate of William Paterson University, where he studied under Jeremy Pelt while receiving his Master of Music. Prior to his tenure at William Paterson, Dakarai was a student at Morehouse College where he studied under Melvin Jones and Gordon Vernick (Georgia State University).
Dakarai has had the privilege of performing with mentors and elder musicians such as Willerm Delisfort, Winard Harper, Jarrard Harris, Ernest Dawkins, Marlene Rosenburg, and many more. Dakarai can be seen playing in venues throughout Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.
Born and raised in Chicago, Jaden Esi is an accomplished multi instrumentalist, showcasing mastery of the saxophone, guitar, bass, flute, piano, and drums. He is also a skilled music producer and vinyl DJ. A graduate of the prestigious Chicago High School for the Arts, Jaden has honed his skills across jazz, hip hop, and various other genres, performing at renowned events including Pitchfork Music Festival and internationally with Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood Ensemble in Paris, Germany, Barcelona, and the Newport Jazz Festival. As a composer and DJ, Jaden works with artists in Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. He is deeply committed to education in the community through Music Moves Chicago and curates and promotes live shows and events that create vibrant and energetic spaces for Chicago's eclectic music scene.
Zenzile Fatou
Zenzile Fatou is a teacher, performer, choreographer and scholar from the southside of Chicago. She has studied, for over 20 years, under the tutelage of masters like Nahgeree Sutton-Silas, Abdoulaye "Papa" Camara, and Moustapha Bangoura. As a lifelong student of African culture and folklore, she has made it her mission to combine her scholarship, artistic expertise and public health background to research and promote health and well-being within African-American Communities.
Cast of Dancers: Zenzile Fatou, Subira Zinhle Johnson, Yara Zen Johnson, Zaahirah O’Neal, Indigo Moon Owusu, Jessica Nichols, India Hatfield, Omojolade Oladipupo, Ayanna Johnson, Maila Sylla, Kim Gadin, Susan Ward
Tuesday, August 25 from 6:30-8:00pm
Humboldt Park
1440 N Humboldt Blvd, Chicago, IL 60622
Saffronia
featuring D-Composed and Frog Belly Society with choreography by Edson Cabrera
D-Composed
Historians of art and culture may not currently take into full account that Black culture and creativity are a part of every musical institution's foundation that we currently see today. D-Composed, a Black chamber music collective, exists to ensure that we never forget it.
Led by their mission to uplift and empower society through the music of Black composers, this Chicago-based creative incubator acts as a bridge between the past and present to the future of representation, music-centered experiences, and the communal power of Black composers and their impact.
Music is not just solely entertainment, for this collective music is a storytelling tool that educates and inspires. Unapologetically, Blackness is at the core of their experience, with protecting, nurturing, and sustaining on the other side. In the middle lies their impact — the people who make up these experiences, whether as musicians, creatives, or community members.
As a Black ensemble that focuses exclusively on the works of Black composers, D-Composed ensures to partner with institutions that have a proven commitment to communities of color. They have collaborated with Apple, Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Kennedy Center, Kaufman Music Center, and TEDx. While merging the worlds of contemporary music and classical, they have also collaborated with Jamila Woods during her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper.
The walls that exist to keep Black people out of America’s most beloved cultural institutions are meant to be scaled and then dismantled by the creative architects who are bold enough to build against the status quo.
The meaning of the collective’s name embodies that boldness in action. D–COMPOSED /DEE-KUHM-POHZD/ – ADVERB: Our creative process that involves the breaking down of preconceived notions, barriers, and opinions of what people think classical music should be, to rewriting our own narrative to reflect what the classical world could be.
Frog Belly Society
Frog Belly Society, a local ensemble that embodies the various ways diasporic citizenship and spiritual technology collaborate to bring forth a politics of resistance. FBS is steeped in sonic geographies from the Heartland South, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and explores marronage and healing through the sensorial.
Ensemble: Arif Smith, Quincy Raggs, Uche Omoniyi, Darshaya Oden, Jeremiah Cobb, Nkosi Ingram, Margaret Rainey
Edson Cabrera
Edson Cabrera, a highly trained and experienced dancer and choreographer from Cuba. He graduated from the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Arte in Dance in 2005, where he was introduced under the guidance of top instructors. While at the National School of Art in Havana, he participated in the ITs Festival in the Netherlands under the direction of Feri de Geus and Noortje Bijvoets. After graduation, he joined the Cuban dance company Ballet Rakatan as a soloist before becoming a member of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba in 2007.
Cast of Dancers: Naima Nguvu, India Hatfield, Omojolade Oladipupo, Nikki Noland, Tiffany Mondy
Thursday, September 3 from 6:30-8:00pm
South Shore Cultural Center
7059 S South Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60649
Sweet Thing
featuring Damon Locks and Ben LaMar Gay with choreography by Keyierra Collins
Damon Locks
Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts. In 2025 he stepped down from being the Board President on Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project which allowed him to teach art at Stateville Correctional Center for 11 years. He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Evolving Democracy Fellowship through Project&. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent 4 years as an artist in residence as a part of the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He taught Improvisation for three years in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As well as being a solo musician, Damon leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of New Future City Radio, Exploding Star Orchestra and co-founded the band The Eternals.
Ben LaMar Gay
Ben LaMar Gay is a genuine original. An imbued composer, conjurer, channeler of cosmopolitan Blues and patently eclectic artist who Jeff Parker calls "hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today." Gay is a Southside Chicago native who was raised in the tutelage of the legendary AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians).
With his first instrument, the cornet, and an intuitive sense of self-production, in youth he traversed the diversity of the city's music scenes (jazz, hip hop, house, electronic, rock, avant garde, salsa, latin jazz, et al) before embarking on a several-year residential relocation to Brazil. Beloved by listeners and collaborators alike for his ability to absorb and poetically refract the sound of any context he's immersed in, Gay's return home to Chicago in the early 2010s marked the beginning of a compositional output that has since been referred to by WIRE Magazine as "Pan-Americana."
As elusive as he is prolific, across seven under-the-radar years of work Gay diligently composed, produced and recorded seven collections of original music before compiling and issuing his unreleased 'greatest hits' as a debut album – Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun – for International Anthem in 2018. Also in 2018 Gay composed an original score for the Tribeca award-winning short doc The Good Fight. In 2019, he composed an original score for the Brazilian underground carnival profile This Is Bate Bola, and debuted new music commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Also in 2019, he composed and performed a duet with the DuSable Bridge while it was raised over the Chicago River. For Time:Spans Festival 2021, at DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City, Gay debuted a new composition – "Known Better. Still Lit" – that was commissioned and performed by Wet Ink Ensemble. Later in 2021, Gay released the critically-acclaimed album Open Arms to Open Us via International Anthem & Nonesuch Records. In 2022 he released Certain Reveries, an album of duo compositions on International Anthem, and an accompanying film – “Balogun,” in tribute to the late Eddie Harris - which he staged, directed, filmed, and scored entirely himself.
In 2023, Gay was a Mellon Foundation Archives Innovation Fellow with Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation in Chicago. As composer in residence with The National Theater of France in 2024, Gay wrote original music for Dorothee Munyaneza’s “Inconditionelles.” In June 2025, Gay released Yowzers via International Anthem.
Keyierra Collins
Keyierra Collins is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist with a focus on dance and performance. She is a 2025 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and a 2020 3Arts Awardee. Internationally recognized, Collins’ work spans performance, choreography, creative writing, installation art, and floral design.
Collins graduated with a BA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago, where she trained under esteemed artists and scholars such as Onye Ozuzu, Dr. Raquel Monroe, and Darrell Jones. Her practice has been shaped by collaborations with numerous Chicago-based artists, including her formal work with Ayodele Drum & Dance, a West African Drum and Dance company under the artistic direction of Ayo T. Alston, with whom she also apprentice-taught.
Her artistic journey has taken her to parts of the world—such as France, Greece, Haiti, Nigeria, and Barbados—where she has trained, created work, and studied Afro-diasporic dance techniques, culture, and history. This exploration informs her evolving work as an installation artist, where she creates immersive, performative worlds she refers to as *DreamSpaces*—a concept inspired by author and activist Tricia Hersey. These dream worlds serve as sacred spaces to unpack personal and collective histories, give thanks, commune with ancestors, and honor the lived experiences of Black women.
In 2019, Collins co-founded the performance collective Take Some Leave Some (TSLS) with Atlanta-based artist and performance scholar Brianna Alexis Heath. TSLS creates interactive performances that reimagine "home" as a communal safe space and celebrate Black women’s stories as sources of resilience and experiential wisdom.
In addition to her performative practice, she is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University with extensive experience teaching and choreographing on a collegiate level. Looking ahead, Collins is committed to developing an experimental therapeutic movement practice rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions, creating interdisciplinary installation performances, and continuing to collaborate with artists who share her vision of art as healing for Black people and as a form of resistance against oppressive systems.
Cast of Dancers: Keyierra Collins, Aaliyah Christina, Dej, Samus Starbody
Tuesday, September 8 from 6:30-8:00pm
Austin Town Hall
5610 W Lake St, Chicago, IL 60644
Peaches
featuring Angel Bat Dawid and Fred Jackson Jr. with choreography by Ayesha Jaco
Angel Bat Dawid
A Black American composer, clarinetist, pianist, bandleader, educator, DJ, recording artist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Known for her dynamic performances, she has composed significant works including Requiem for Jazz and Peace: A Suite for Yoko Ono’s Sky Landing Installation.
Fred Jackson Jr.
Fred Jackson Jr., a Chicago-based saxophonist since 2001. Originally from Fort Worth, Tx. He became a member of Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 2010. Jackson has also ventured into theatre working as music director at Free Street with Jerrell Henderson and Marvin Tate’s Theater Y. Currently, he performs with Magic Carpet, Sitarsis (Shanta Nurullah of AACM), Adam Zanolini’s Heliacal Rising Of Sothis, Mai Sugimoto Quartet, AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble, and the Erudition Project.
Ayesha Jaco
Ayesha Jaco is a Chicago based Change-maker, CEO and Choreographer. Ayesha’s disciplinary focus is a fusion of contemporary Modern, Jazz, West African and Hip Hop dance.
Ayesha’s commitment to Arts in Youth & Community Development has led her to curate artist residencies with the Stony Island Arts Bank, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Park District, Jacob Carruthers for Inner City Studies and the American Rhythm Center & more. Ayesha is a 2018 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist. She has also received fellowships from Rebuild Foundation & multiple awards honoring her artistic & community endeavors: including the 2020 Helen Coburn Meier & Tim Meier Achievement Award, the Association of Fundraising Professionals Outstanding Community Leader Award & the Crain’s Chicago Notable Black Leader Award.
Cast: Fred Jackson Jr.(Composition, Sax, multi-instruments) Naydja Burton (Percussion), Ugochi Nwaogwugwu (Vocals), Reese Carr (Percussion), Dr. Adam Zanolini (Bass)
Ayesha Jaco (Movement, Poetry), Move Me Soul Dance Ensemble including Diana Muhammad, Djuwanna Frazier, Contessa Green, Jessica Morrissette, Jeneba Koroma, Serenity Mahon, Raven Lewis, Brassel Jackson
Angel Bat Dawid (Composition, Clarinet, Piano, Vocals, Electronics), Camila Isabel (Vocals), Ivory Stephenson (Viola)
