KCRW Summer Nights

For our second KCRW Summer Nights collaboration this season, KCRW and Grand Performances are proud to co-present Allison Russell, ÌFÉ and opening DJ sets from KCRW’s Raul Campos! These talented artists performed a breathtaking performance leaving the audience in awe.

Allison Russell — poet, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, and co-founder of Our Native Daughters (with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah) and Birds of Chicago (with JT Nero) — unpacks her youth in searing detail on her tour de force debut Outside Child (Fantasy Records / Concord). She sings about deliverance and redemption, about the places and people and realizations that helped her survive and claim her freedom.

ÌFÉ (pronounced Eeeh-FAY), a Bàbálawo, or high priest, initiated into Ifá in Cuba, sees his musical project as an extension of his spiritual life, the Ifá and Orisha religious practices being the lens through which the music is conceptualized. The creative work is also an extension of ÌFÉ’s lifelong study of African diasporic percussion, a pursuit that has taken him from collegiate drumlines through the same Dallas jazz and soul scene that birthed Erykah Badu to Puerto Rico, where, for 20 years, ÌFÉ studied under master drummers tied to the island’s rich Afro-Latin musical traditions.

For his performance, ÌFÉ delivers a memorable moment for his fans as everyone takes out their phones and flashes their lights along to his rich Afro-Latin music. Some were singing along while others were waving their arms, but at this moment the tight-knit of Los Angeles was united by music.

During a short break in between ÌFÉ and Allison Russell’s performance, Grand Performances takes the chance to surprise their loving Production Manager, Jack Monforte, for his birthday!

DJ Raul Campos kicks off and ends off the magical night at Grand Performances as his sets made the audience want to stay back and dance the night away.