Celebrate City Sisterhood: Salvador meets South LA

LA Commons will host its eighth annual Day of the Ancestors: Festival of Masks in Leimert Park, the African American cultural hub of Los Angeles. The Festival features a procession and live musical performances at which traditional artists, youth groups, and diverse community members engage in a celebrating the global African village, venerating ancestors, and paying homage to their shared heritage through mask-making and dance. To view the festival’s media kit visit https://spark.adobe.com/page/i5wOLLbojEvab/.

This year’s festival is highlighting Brazil and its diasporic, artistic connections to Leimert Park. Brazil itself is a key node in African culture and is home to one of the world’s largest populations of Black people, second only to Nigeria. The vibrant spirit of this country will be on full display at the Day of the Ancestors: Festival of Masks, including dynamic drumming and Samba.

In addition, this year’s theme is “Asuwada,” a Yoruba principle describing an energetic phenomenon that arises when a community unites with a collective positive intention in pursuit of a common goal for the greater good.  The cultural tenet Asuwada highlights the importance of compassion and solidarity in a time of unprecedented divisiveness.