For Your Consideration (FYC) Grammy® Awards

Best “WORLD MUSIC” Album

Album: MAroon Futures

Artist: Afro Yaqui Music Collective

Maroon Futures is a six-track album that celebrates the struggle and lessons of maroons -- enslaved peoples who the escape the evils of the built world being erected on genocide and slavery, to the protective bosom of the natural world. The tracks lift up love, camaraderie, women’s empowerment (what we call revolutionary matriarchy), and the indomitability of the Maroon fighting spirit. We reject all forms of social exclusion, and we unite the sounds of Afro-Cuban culture, Chinese Opera, Indigenous languages, jazz, and hip-hop to say: our struggle is one. 

This album is dedicated to Russell Maroon Shoatz, known to his friends and family as “Maroon,” a political prisoner who has been incarcerated in the state of Pennsylvania for fifty years, with thirty years in solitary confinement. He was released into general population in 2014. Bandmembers contribute to the campaign to free Maroon through compassionate release through the office of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. Each of the tracks relate to causes that Maroon cares deeply about and writes on often: social justice, antiracism, women’s empowerment, and the struggle for a livable planet.

UPDATE: ON OCTOBER 25, 2021, RUSSELL MAROON SHOATZ WAS GRANTED COMPASSIONATE RELEASE!

“We Refuse to To Be Used and Abused” Music Video

“La Cigarra” Music Video

We support the freedom of all political prisoners. In this video we highlight the struggles of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Fidencio Aldama Pérez, and Abdullah Öcalan.

Press

Buy the CD

Visit our friends at Neuma Recordings!