Cabin in the Sky

Ifé Franklin is a Black, Queer, interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates several modalities, including photography, adire textiles, written and spoken word, drawing, collage, movement, sculpture, large scale installations, ring shouts, and hush harbors. Ifé has worked as a professional artist and community activist in Roxbury, MA for over 30 years. Ifé’s artistic process is informed by her spiritual practice, with deep links to African/African American Diasporic folk cultures. Through her participatory art practice, Ifé Franklin’s Indigo Project, she works with communities to build dialogue about our shared history of slavery that is both ubiquitous and pervasively invisible. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ifé completed her studies at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work has been exhibited at UMass Boston, Medicine Wheel Productions/SPOKE, Franklin Park, the North Charleston Arts Fest, The Slave Dwelling Project Conference, The Eliot School of Applied Arts, The Royal House and Slave Quarters, Bentley University, The Fitchburg Museum, The Lot Lab/Via The Boston Public Art Triennial and the Somerville Museum.

Miss Franklin’s book The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae (TSNWM), edited by Letta Neely, was printed by Red Sun Press of Jamaica Plain, MA. TSNWM is the fictional account of Willie Mae Lenox, a 20-year-old Black woman enslaved in Virginia in the early 1800s, who sets upon her journey to freedom. This narrative, now a short film, can be viewed on YouTube.

Composer-Performer | Artivist | Practitioner

Charles, who also uses the creative monikers Esuyah X. & Simba Touré (Samba Samb Fall), is a composer-performer, educator, and advocate for justice and healing. His work challenges the line between art and activism. He shares an equal passion and love for themes of resilience, resistance, and determination.

While growing up, Charles was in earshot of spirituals, blues, field hollers, resistance anthems, marching and line bands, soca-chant wells, and New Orleans Second Line Music. Later, an upbringing in both “Western classical” idioms and historically Black marching bands and choral traditions gave him the unique ability to use both his art and passion for activism throughout his college and adult life. He helped organize concerts, marches, musical protests, and various community service projects, all while serving on leadership boards for bands, choirs and other organizations. Recently, Charles lived with a host family in Dakar, Senegal. While there, he was studying history, culture, dancing, drumming and attending various activist workshops and clinics.

Over the last decade in Boston, Charles has studied with various masters of Afri-diasporic dance & music practices spanning Bomba, Afro-Brazilian Folkloric (Orisha and Candomblé), Haitian Folkloric, and West African Ballet. These master teachers included Joh Camara, Sory Diabate, Seydou Calloulaboly, Moussa Trouré, Pape N’daiye, Astou Samb, Isaura Oliviera, Jean Appolon, Jean Sebastian Devoulé, Jeffery Paige and Jose Santiago Arce. He has studied with Kenneth Radnofsky (Saxophone, New England Conservatory of Music) and debuts work with students and ensembles under his direction.

Charles’ Afri-Classical compositions, experimentations, and improvisations explore both non-Western and Western traditional and classical traditions. He is a single-reed expert (flutes, clarinets, and saxophones) playing in different ensembles and as a soloist, ensemble conductor, ensemble coach and teaching at clinics and workshops. He strives to specialize in the playing of J.S. Bach’s music and to deepen his understanding of playing djembe and dun dun. Other interests include African philosophy and practice, restorative justice and circle based community practices of grounded normativity, storytelling and Dalcroze Eurythmics movement. Charles stays grounded with his hobbies of reading, practicing Capoeira Angola, and challenging himself with Horton technique classes. He is also the founder of Ma’at Music P.S. and has self published his music compositions. He is a BMI artist.

The Black Experimental Arts Theatre (The BEAT) is a commitment to building a movement that uplifts communities through art, culture, and connection. Charles is the founder and director of The BEAT. This has been a long passion of his that he officially launched in 2024 after a 10+ year project called “@theblackcomposerspeaks”. He also teaches and performs regularly with Trend N Motion, Troupe Fall, Amaya Drum & Dance, and Benkadi Drum & Dance. He is an active ensemble member of Le Prestige, The Black Cotton Club, Jimmy Treez & Bosstown Heavy, and Boubacar Diabate & Sambalolo, and maintains independent projects with various recording artists. His latest music, film, and mixed media projects include The Underground Railroad Project (Seasons 1 to 3), From the Rooter to the Tooter, The African Hymn, Shades of Blue: A Wedding Medley, follow the drinking gourd, sundi, and sankofa visions. You can listen and view works on various platforms.

Letta Neely is a Black lesbian poet, playwright, performer, educator, and activist whose work lives at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, recovery, memory, and liberation. A longtime cultural worker and community builder, she uses poetry and performance as practices of witness, resistance, ancestral remembering, and collective possibility. Neely is the author of Juba and Here, and her plays and performance works have been presented on stages in Boston and beyond. Her solo work, Pulling It All Into the Current, received the United Solo Theatre Festival’s Best Drama Award.

Neely is also the Executive Director of Apprentice Learning, a Boston-based nonprofit that provides middle-grade young people with real-world work experiences, connecting them with workplaces and caring adults to build skills, ignite purpose, and expand their sense of what is possible.

Rooted in a womanist tradition and an abiding belief in the transformative power of story, Neely creates work that asks what we inherit, what we survive, and what we might build together when we dare to remember ourselves whole.

Kera M. Washington is an African American, female, queer, musician, artist, educator, applied ethnomusicologist, and mom, who has focused over the past three decades, artistically and academically, on connected/sibling folkloric arts throughout the African diaspora. As a percussionist and a multi-instrumentalist, her artistic practice includes teaching and performing, often through her multi-racial African-diasporic all-female ensemble, Zili Misik, and her collaborative, Project Misik. She is driven to create with artists who co-create as a form of spiritual and healing practice.

A’dahi Baira (Medicine Arrow), They/Them/We, identifies as an Afro-Indigenous-Taino, Two-Spirit, queer, neuro-spicy, parent and human whose soul purpose is creating healing justice and ceremonial spaces for the empowerment of those experiencing stress and systemic oppression. Whether in the workplace, community or individual setting. Through hands on healing, Afro-Taino spirituality, songs, drums, herbs, tobacco, and earth-based, ancestral practices. A’dahi Baira is a Behike (Taino Medicine Person), Curandera, Circle Keeper, Ceremonialist, Reiki Master Teacher, Spiritual Abolitionist, Activist and Land Steward. With 25 years experience in the healing arts, A’dahi Baira has worked with thousands of clients, friends, family and community members on the path towards healing & liberation. Hahom.

Chalaun is an Oracle, Kundalini Reiki Master, and Multidisciplinary Artist. She creates spaces that support healing, reflection, rediscovering and reclamation of ancestral and one’s innate wisdom and power. This remembrance illuminates who you truly are, enabling you to harness health, joy and create the life you desire.

Ritual Leader, Wisdom Keeper & Healer

Elder Lula Christopher is an initiated Elder in the tradition of the Dagara People of Burkina Faso, West Africa, and a certified Ritual Leader, healer, educator, spiritual activist, and storyteller. She has studied and practiced Indigenous African Spiritual Technology and the Healing Wisdom of Africa under the guidance of the late Elder Dr. Malidoma Somé, completing a three-year ritual apprenticeship and two-year advanced course of study.

For nearly two decades, Lula has devoted herself to the practice and facilitation of ancestral and community-based ritual. From 2013 to 2016, she co-facilitated the Ritual Healing Village and Certification for Ritual Leaders programs at East Coast Village in Cherry Plain, New York. In 2023, she guided the relaunch of the Ritual Healing Village as its principal Facilitator and Ritual Leader. Lula is especially recognized for her work facilitating Community Grief Rituals, Ancestral Rites of Passage, and healing ceremonies that help individuals and communities honor loss, release burdens, reconnect with ancestral wisdom, and restore a sense of belonging and wholeness.

As Founder of the Boston Black Women’s Health Institute and a longtime facilitator of Sister Circles, Lula weaves ritual, storytelling, ancestral wisdom, nature, movement, and community into transformative spaces for healing and collective liberation. Her life’s calling is to help women remember who they are, reclaim their ancestral gifts, and step fully into their wisdom, leadership, and healing power.

Boston born Misha’s heritage is deeply braided with the lands of Turtle Island, her children, those born to her and those adopted, as well as a few wanderers. Some who moved with spirit and some who lost their ways. The meeting of two great blood lines converge, Misha sits at the intersection of the human and non human working with traditional ways to bring harmony when possible.

Carlos Alonzo is a Boston-native Afro-Dominican practitioner of Black & Indigenous spirituality and housing professional to the Greater Boston area, deeply rooted in ancestral reverence and community connection.

Angel Brooks is a Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous healer, herbalist and low-country Hoodoo from Hyde Park, MA in recognized Native land of the Massachusett Tribe.

Cassandra Cato-Louis, a.k.a. “Queen MaMa Cato,” Writer/Performer/Producer, has been an Artivist (arts activist) and Artrepreneur (arts entrepreneur) for over 30 years. Founding Artistic Director of African Repertory Troupe, she’s now also Creative Director of the Mattapan Cultural Arts Development. MCAD is sourcing a Senior LGBTQ+ friendly, artist live/work space (Inspired by SiStar Ifé), as well as a performing and visual arts center. Cato is Co-Author of two books, How to Marry a Black Man: The Real Deal (Doubleday/Penguin/Random House), and the soon to be published Mommy’s Girlz.

Cato is deeply honored to be chosen to work with IfeArts’ Cabin in the Sky. An initiated High Priestess in Ifa, a Yoruba tradition, she believes in the power & strength of the Ancestors, known as the Egun gun in Ifa. She currently hosts the ongoing Frank Wilkins Vocalists’ Showcase & Jazz Jam session on alternate Tuesday nights at the historic Slade’s Bar & Grill in Boston.

Myrlaine “Milly” Henry is a Boston native, healer, community builder, and practitioner dedicated to land stewardship, herbal wisdom, and ancestral memory. Her connection to this sacred work dates back to 1985 at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House, where, at nine years old, she first met and learned under Ifé Franklin, who introduced her to adire (literally “tie and dye”), the ancient West African/Yoruba ancestral art form (stolen and repackaged as American tie-dye).

Over the years, Milly has had the honor of standing alongside her lifelong mentor as a Bacer across numerous sacred activations, including Black in the Cradle of Liberty at Faneuil Hall in 2023, the 2024 Copp’s Hill Ancestor Activation, A Hush Harbor as part of the Black History in Action program at St. Augustine’s Church in Cambridge, and the MassQ Ball at the Arnold Arboretum last fall. Serving today as one of four Bacers for this ring shout ritual, she brings foundational cadence, voice, and rhythmic grounding to invoke ancestral strength and hold space for collective reverence, memory, and transformation.

Dzidzor Azaglo is a Ga-Ewe folklorist, sound collage performing artist, and mystic whose work lives at the intersection of collective/community memory, womanist theology and somatic healing. Through call and response, she crafts sonic experiences that honor traditional storytelling while making space for contemporary voices. At the heart of her practice is a commitment to awakening the power and abundance present in communal bodies and to building cultures of care and freedom through creativity.

Dzidzor is the founder of Black Cotton Club and co-founder of the Department of Public Imagination alongside Crystal Bi. She holds a Master of Divinity and currently serves as Community Liaison for the Reckonings Project at Northeastern University.

Tejane Artist | Altar Builder | Environmental Portrait Photographer

Nohemi is a Tejane artist that utilizes environmental portraiture, altar building and relational infrastructure to explore human connectivity. With a background in education and a focus on collective design, her work is rooted in collaboration and ritual. Nohemi captures intimate moments within people’s homes, public gatherings, and beyond, documenting the sanctity of rituals in public and personal spaces.