An unfiltered invocation by Saul Williams opens this sound ceremony with Carlos Niño & Friends, held beneath oak and black walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024. Organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth and hosted by the conservation group TreePeople, it marked a first live collaboration of this kind between longtime friends Williams and Niño, whose creative relationship dates back to 1997.
For the occasion, Niño assembled a trusted ensemble: Nate Mercereau (guitar synth, live sampling), Aaron Shaw and Kamasi Washington (winds), Andres Renteria (percussion), Maia (vibraphone, voice), and Francesca Heart (digital sound design). Together, they wove an electro-acoustic tapestry, with Williams’ prophetic poetics guiding and dissolving into the group’s meditative improvisation.
Their interplay unfolds in dynamic layers—Shaw and Washington’s woodwinds converse across generations, while Mercereau and Heart shape sonic architecture in real time. The energy builds to a powerful moment as Williams reflects on colonialism, the Lenape of Manahatta, and the machinery of empire, invoking the phrase “I’ve seen enough” in a swelling crescendo. Poet Aja Monet follows with a quiet reckoning of her own, before Williams returns with a final parable—closing the ceremony with a meditation on resistance, belief, and the fragile possibility of redemption.
