LaFrae Sci is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, educator, composer and electro-acoustic adventurer. Bedrock to her artistry are the roots and the fruits of the blues, from spirituals to Afro Diasporic futuristic soundscapes that explore time travel, prayer, meditation, and the African American ecstatic tradition. As a composer, she writes for film, theater, and large and extended jazz and classical orchestras. She writes for all instruments, and her creative range spans immersive and ambisonic music, blues, various ethnomusicological traditions, rock, pop, hip-hop, and her own brand of subaquatic deconstructed techno soul. To date, LaFrae has shared her intentional creativity in 40 countries. LaFrae is also the Executive Director/Director of Artistic Programming at Willie Mae Future Sounds, named after Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. W.M.F.S. is a STEAM based, year-round empowerment through music program that includes social justice, Afro Diasporic futurism, critical thinking, and leadership through the lens of the blues tradition for girls and gender non-conforming youth in New York City.

Ytasha L. Womack is an award-winning author, director, independent scholar, and dance therapist. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi & Fantasy Culture is a leading primer on the subject and is a 2014 Locus Awards Nonfiction Finalist. Her follow up, The Afrofuturist Evolution: Creative Paths to Self Discovery, debuted in March 2025. She wrote and produced the award winning Afrofuturist and science animation and immersive experience Niyah and the Multiverse currently running at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Her graphic novella Black Moon Ritual, an ode to sustainable energy, debuted March 2026. Ytasha lectures on Afrofuturism and the imagination for audiences around the world and was a cocurator of Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival, a nationwide arts festival, in 2022. She’s also featured in the documentary Afrofuturism: An Origin Story produced in partnership with the National Museum of History and Culture (Smithsonian). She contributed essays to the Smithsonian’s book Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures and is featured in the museum’s first of its kind exhibit of the same name which debuted in March 2023.

Be Steadwell is a composer, filmmaker and author from DC. Be's goal as an artist is to write love stories centering Black girlies, introverts and weirdos. Be earned a BA in Black Studies from Oberlin College and an MFA in film from Howard University. Be's short films featured in festivals around the world, including Black Star, HBO OutFest, The Schomburg Center, Inside Out Toronto and The Maryland Film Festival. In 2019, Be wrote and directed Dear Ex, the musical. Dear Ex imagines a queer Black woman's experience of healing after a breakup. In 2023, Be joined the cast of Parable of the Sower the Opera by Toshi Reagon and Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon. Be released their debut romance novel, Chocolate Chip City in 2025. Be currently lives in Baltimore, tours their music internationally and works as a professor at Howard University.

Nona Hendryx In the spirit of two fisted political singer songwriters such as, Nina Simone, and Joni Mitchell, Nona Hendryx tackles social issues, love and politics with a smoky vocal tessitura somewhere between funk and the end of the stratosphere. Hendryx’s legendary career spans six decades of sound and style evolution. Fans know her as a founding member of the girl group, Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles (with Sarah Dash, Cindy Birdsong and Patti LaBelle) known as “the Sweethearts of the Apollo Theatre” and inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame in 1999. In the 70s, the group morphed into the Rock & Funk Glam Diva's 'Labelle' with the #1 record, Lady Marmalade. Nona Hendryx emerged as the chief songwriter of the group’s socially conscious and illuminating message songs. Hendryx writes music across genres with politically and socially relevant lyrics wrapped in neo-funk grooves, other worldly and soulful vocals, and art-rock charged rhythms. Performing in and writing a song ‘Grace’ (Trust and Believe) for Carrie Mae Weems' Grace Notes marks the beginning of another artistic collaboration. Not slowing down, 2018 will be an even busier year for Nona with the honor of being Joe’s Pub’s first Vanguard Residency Artist for and curating a series of shows over the twelve months being January 2018 along with a commission to create new multimedia work inspired by Carrie Mae Weems ‘Kitchen Table and Ulysses Dove’s ‘Urban Folk Dance’, Exploring another form of communication Nona has created a SiriusXM Radio show ‘The Nexus with Nona Hendryx’ discussing Music, Art and Technology, Nona’s three passions.