What the day is
The best free afternoon in DC this fall.
Monday, October 12, 2026 · Noon to 6 PM · Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, 16th & W Street NW · Free, all ages
WPFW 89.3 FM turns the hill into the sound of Jazz and Justice Radio for six hours. Edwin Ortiz y La Mafia Del Guaguanco, Brandon Woody, Proverbs Reggae Band and Be’la Dona. Live, outdoors, and free.
Salsa that pulls the whole lawn to its feet. A Blue Note trumpeter who never left Baltimore. Roots reggae under a message. And go-go to close it out. Between the sets, WPFW programmers and District organizers take the mic. Across 15th Street at the Josephine Butler Parks Center, community discussions run from noon until six and documentary screenings from one o’clock, alongside an art gallery on the second floor, yoga and meditation.
Bring a blanket. Bring your people. Bring somebody who has never heard 89.3.
Two milestones, one day. This is the park’s 90th anniversary year, and WPFW turns 50 on February 28, 2027.
Music you can’t hear anywhere else that day
Salsa dura, modern jazz, roots reggae and go-go. Four bands who don’t usually share a bill.
Organizing you can actually join
Free DC and other local groups on the field with tents, sign-ups and people to talk to.
Film, art and conversation, indoors
Six hours of community discussions and documentary screenings at the Josephine Butler Parks Center, and a gallery upstairs.
It costs nothing
No ticket, no minimum, no catch. Listener support has covered it for 49 years.
The lineup
Hear them before you come.
Four bands, in the order they play. Press play on any of them.
Edwin Ortiz & La Mafia Del Guaguancó
Salsa orchestra · Germantown, MD
This is when the lawn turns into a dance floor.
Thirty years and a full orchestra: complete horn section, complete percussion section, classic 1970s salsa dura running straight into contemporary material, sung in Spanish and English with Vivian Mojica out front. Widely called the best salsa band in the Washington region.
They’ve backed Jerry Rivera and Lalo Rodríguez, and shared stages with El Gran Combo and Oscar D’León. The guaguancó in the name is a promise. Wear shoes you can move in.
Follow the band More live videoBrandon Woody
Trumpet · Baltimore, MD
A Blue Note trumpeter, in a public park, for nothing.
Blue Note Records signed Woody in November 2024 and put out his first album, For The Love Of It All, in May 2025. He built the whole career without leaving Baltimore, and you can hear that decision in the music.
His band Upendo is Troy Long on keys, Quincy Phillips on drums and Michael Saunders on bass. Jazz, gospel and improvisation played as one thing, with a tone that goes from gentle to swaggering inside a phrase. Between tours he teaches young players, which tells you what he thinks the music is for.
Blue Note profile More musicProverbs Reggae Band
Roots reggae · Bowie, MD
One drop, under a message.
Roots reggae and lover’s rock since 2000, independent the entire time, with calypso and soca folded in. If you’ve been to Joe’s Movement Emporium, the Carter Barron or the National Cannabis Festival, you’ve already heard them.
They call what they do uplifting Rasta livity, and they’ll tell you they’re the DC area’s one true roots reggae band. Nobody around here argues.
Official site More musicBe’la Dona
Go-go · Washington, DC
The last hour belongs to go-go, and to DC.
Go-go is Washington’s own music, and Be’la Dona is the all-woman band that carries it. They call what they play sensual crank, and they move through rock, R&B, gospel, pop and jazz without ever losing the pocket.
The Smithsonian has filmed them. The Kennedy Center books them. They get the last hour on the hill, which is the correct decision. Save something for it, because at a go-go the crowd is part of the band and they will call you into it.
Kennedy Center profileVoices on the mic
The people you hear all week, out from behind the glass.
Between every set, WPFW programmers take the stage. These are the hosts whose shows carry the justice half of Jazz and Justice the other six days of the week. Most of them are running a session at the Butler Center as well.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux
MALVEAUX!Mondays, 9 AM
Economist, author and college president. Economics, race and public policy, plainly put.
Main stage, 12:25 PM · Butler Center, 1:00 PM
Ambrose Lane Jr.
To The EastMondays, 5 PM
Black politics, culture and community power, in conversation.
Main stage, 1:45 PM · Butler Center, 12:00 PM
Esther Iverem
On The GroundFridays, 10 AM
Voices of resistance from the ground up, carried nationally.
Main stage, 4:55 PM · Butler Center, 2:00 PM
Jacqueline Luqman
Darker Than BlueFridays, 5 PM
Left analysis of politics, media and empire.
Main stage, 3:35 PM · Butler Center, 5:00 PM
Netfa Freeman
Voices With VisionTuesdays, 9 AM
With Craig Hall. To enlighten minds, uplift spirits and strengthen souls.
Main stage, 4:55 PM · Butler Center, 3:00 PM
New World Order
New World OrderWednesdays, 6 PM
Mahjai, Ama’d, Liv Grace and Trélogy. Younger voices on culture, politics and what comes next.
Dr. Theodore Watkins
To Your Health
Health and wellness in our community.
Main stage, 12:25 PM · Butler Center, 4:00 PM
On the decks
DJ Lance
Opens the grounds and introduces the closing band.
11:30 AM · Band intro, 5:10 PM
DJ Funk
On stage to bring in Be’la Dona.
Band intro, 5:10 PM
DJ Abby & Cody Valentine
Music and stage accompaniment for the elders circle.
Main stage, 2:00 PM
Candy Shannon
Morning Brew: Jazz EditionFridays, 5 AM
Friday morning jazz from a DC radio pioneer, on the air here since 1998.
Broadcast table, 12:00 PM · Band intro, 2:30 PM
DJ Rita Burns
Meeting in the Ladies RoomFridays, 10 PM
With DJ Abby and DJ Housecat. The station’s first women’s DJ collective.
Broadcast table, 4:00 PM
Kim Bey
Kulcha ShakSaturdays, 4 PM
With DJ Zee-Lion. Reggae and Caribbean culture from an award-winning musician.
Broadcast table, 2:00 PM
Also on the deck
Kamau Harris
WPFW music programmer and chair of the Local Station Board. On the main stage on Malcolm X and the power of community.
Main stage, 4:55 PM · Broadcast table, 3:00 PM
Bill Wax
WPFW programmer, on color commentary.
Broadcast table, 1:00 PM
Miles Willis
WPFW programmer and on-stage host.
Band intro, 2:30 PM
Robyn Holden
WPFW voice on the deck for the day.
On the grounds
Mwiza Munthali
WPFW voice on the deck for the day.
On the grounds
Craig Williams
WPFW voice on the deck for the day.
On the grounds
The hill itself
Whose hill this is.
Before any of it was a park, this was the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank — whose village on the river gave Anacostia its name — and of the Piscataway and Pamunkey peoples, who have stewarded this region for generations. More than four thousand Native people live in Washington today. That is the first accurate thing anyone can say about where we are standing.
A school for the newly free
In 1865, the year the Civil War ended, the American Baptist Home Mission Society founded Wayland Seminary to educate people who had just been freed from slavery. Its building opened in 1875 on this hill and stood until around 1900. Booker T. Washington studied there. So did Adam Clayton Powell Sr.
The park was built over that ground. Twenty-one years of construction, thirteen acres of terraces and a long cascading fountain, finished in 1936. It opened to the public on September 26, 1936, which makes this weekend its ninetieth anniversary, almost to the day.
Why we call it Malcolm X Park
Malcolm X was assassinated in February 1965. Not long after, drummers began gathering on this hill to mark it. That circle never stopped. It still meets every Sunday afternoon, and its drummers open this festival at noon. Sixty years of drums, unbroken, for one man.
Through the 1960s the hill was ground zero for Black organizing in the District, partly because the Pitts Motor Hotel stood nearby and was where Black activists passing through town could actually get a room. In 1969, scholar and activist Angela Davis is widely credited as the first to call publicly for the park to carry Malcolm X’s name. In 1970, Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — son of the Wayland Seminary graduate — introduced a bill in Congress to make it official.
The bill failed. A technicality has blocked it ever since: a presidential memorial sits inside the park, and federal rules do not allow a park holding one to be named for anyone else. On paper it is still Meridian Hill Park.
So it never happened officially, and it happened anyway. The name people use is the name the community chose. We use both, together, the way the neighborhood does.
What this hill has held
The city’s grief in April 1968. Anti-war rallies through Vietnam. Anti-apartheid demonstrations. Black nationalist gatherings into the 1980s. By 1990 the park had largely been written off, until neighbors organized volunteer patrols and programming and cut crime here by 82 percent in two years. That group became Washington Parks & People, whose Steve Coleman opens our broadcast at noon.
A festival called Jazz and Justice belongs on this particular grass. That is the whole reason we are here and not somewhere easier.
1865
Wayland Seminary founded to educate the newly freed. Its building stood on this hill from 1875.
1936
The park opens to the public on September 26, after twenty-one years of construction.
1965
Drummers gather to mourn Malcolm X. The circle has met on Sundays ever since.
1969
Angela Davis calls for the park to carry his name. The community has called it that ever since.
Monday, October 12, 2026
Noon to six. Two venues. One block.
Main stage, Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park
DJ music
DJ Lance opens the grounds before the live broadcast, and returns later to help introduce Be’la Dona.
Opening drummers
Station ID with Miyuki Williams.
Libation and wisdom of the ancestors
Anthony Browder.
WPFW welcome
Shayna Lonoaea, general manager, and Miyuki Williams, producer and festival organizer.
Washington Parks & People welcome
Steve Coleman, executive director and president.
Poem
A. B. Spellman.
Programmers and community voices on stage
Dr. Julianne Malveaux on voting rights, Dr. Theodore Watkins, and Abi O. of Free DC, a Ward 1 team co-chair.
Band introduction
TBD.
Edwin Ortiz & La Mafia Del Guaguancó
Bandleader and bongo player Edwin Ortiz with a full, dance-driven Afro-Caribbean sound. (ED-win or-TEEZ and lah MAH-fee-ah del gwah-gwahn-KOH)
Programmers on stage
Verna Avery-Brown, executive producer of What’s At Stake, on Nolan Wells and the history and resurgence of racial terror and lynching. With Ambrose Lane Jr. and Tom Porter.
Poem
Zeina Azzam, Palestinian poet.
Elders circle
Baba Senghor Baye, Kathy English Holt, Esther Yarborough and Davey Yarborough lead a reflective, intergenerational moment. Coordinated by DJ Abby and Cody Valentine. (Baba sen-GOR BYE)
Band introduction
Miles Willis and Candy Shannon.
Brandon Woody
Baltimore-born trumpeter, composer and bandleader signed to Blue Note Records.
Programmers and community voices on stage
Joni Eisenberg introduces historian C. R. Gibbs, on the city, the park and Josephine Butler. Jacqueline Luqman follows.
Band introduction
TBD.
Proverbs Reggae Band
DC-area roots reggae, socially conscious lyrics, shaped by reggae, ska, soul, jazz and Caribbean influences.
Programmers on stage
Netfa Freeman on grassroots organizing and internationalism, Kamau Harris on Malcolm X and the power of community, Esther Iverem on global citizenship, and Penny Gamble-Williams.
Band introduction
DJ Funk and DJ Lance.
Be’la Dona
DC’s all-woman go-go band closes the festival. (BEE-lah DOH-nah)
Closing
Shayna Lonoaea and Steve Coleman.
Community discussions, Butler Center 1st floor gallery
Ambrose Lane Jr.
Longtime WPFW public-affairs voice and community advocate. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux · MALVEAUX!
Economist, author and public commentator. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Esther Iverem · On The Ground
Author, artist and independent journalist. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Netfa Freeman · Voices With Vision
Organizer and WPFW public-affairs voice, internationalist and grassroots-organizing perspective. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Dr. Theodore Watkins · To Your Health
Health and wellness in our community. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Jacqueline Luqman · Darker Than Blue
Journalist, broadcaster and WPFW public-affairs voice. One hour, with questions from the floor.
Documentary screenings and discussions, Butler Center 1st floor studio
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible
The visionary composer, bandleader and Afrofuturist who expanded the boundaries of jazz, Black imagination and performance.
One Drum: The Heartbeat on the Meridian
Working title. Teaser screening, then discussion with producer Hailey Hartigan and members of the filmmaking team: the story behind the project, where production stands, and what comes next.
Residue
Rooted in Washington, DC. Memory, displacement, community and the effects of gentrification through a personal dramatic lens.
About One Drum. On Sunday afternoons in Malcolm X Park, drummers gather and a circle forms, as it has since the mid-1960s. One Drum: The Heartbeat on the Meridian is a documentary in its third year of filming, built from interviews with the circle’s community, archival imagery, footage from a 2025 collaboration with the National Park Service, and oral histories collected with the DC Oral History Collaborative. The teaser features the voices of Kristen Arant, Roberto Dominich, Malik DOPE, Joseph Kennedy Jr., Kevin Lambert, Frank Lloyd and Tony Miller. Led by Hailey Hartigan, Taylor Kampia and Max Rykov, with a production team of Liang Cai, Cadell Cook, Heather Hutt, Tai Maples, Lisa Olabanji, Elizabeth Cerwonka Parent, Bradley Sandiford and Rami Stucky.
Yoga and meditation with Mama Paulette
Yoga
Outdoors in the park.
Meditation
Butler Center, 1st floor library.
Yoga
Outdoors in the park.
Meditation
Butler Center, 1st floor library.
Yoga
Outdoors in the park.
Meditation
Butler Center, 1st floor library.
Art gallery, Josephine Butler Parks Center
Art of Noize presents Ralston Cyrus
Second floor, open all day. Portrait and figure work, hosted by the Petworth gallery. More about the artist
WPFW live broadcast and color commentary
A WPFW broadcast-operations table next to the main stage carries live coverage all day.
Candy Shannon
Bill Wax
Kim Bey
Kamau Harris
Rita Burns
Joshua Myers
Elders circle
Main stage at 2:00 with Baba Senghor Baye, Kathy English Holt, Esther Yarborough and Davey Yarborough, coordinated by DJ Abby and Cody Valentine.
Yoga and meditation
Six half-hour sessions with Mama Paulette. Yoga outdoors in the park, meditation in the Butler Center’s 1st floor library.
Art gallery
Art of Noize on the Butler Center’s second floor, noon to six, with work by Ralston Cyrus.
Poets on the mic
A. B. Spellman at 12:20 and Palestinian poet Zeina Azzam at 1:55.
On the broadcast table
Candy Shannon, Bill Wax, Kim Bey, Kamau Harris, Rita Burns and Joshua Myers, hour by hour.
Vendors and makers
Jewelry, clothing, bodywork and books at the Butler Center. See the vendor village below.
Organizations on the field
Free DC, Washington Parks & People, the drum circle and National Nurses United.
Live broadcast booth
Watch us put the festival on the air, and say something into the mic yourself.
This schedule is a draft. Final times are posted here and announced on 89.3 FM the week of the festival.
Coming, and helping
Admission is free. Somebody still paid for it.
There is no ticket, no RSVP and no list. Show up on the hill and find a patch of grass. This is a public park and a listener-supported station, and the day is free because 49 years of listener support already made it free.
If it turns out to be worth something to you, this is how it keeps happening.
See you there
Nothing to book and nothing to bring but a blanket. Gates at 11:30, music until 6:15, all ages, rain or shine.
Add it to your calendarBecome a member
Twenty-five dollars is the threshold for WPFW membership, and it runs a full year. It is the most common way people start supporting the station.
Give $25Salute the signal
89.3 on your dial. People give this amount because it is easy to remember and it says what it means.
Give $89.30Carry an hour
For listeners who want to take on a larger share of what a day like this costs to put on.
Give $250 or moreAlready a sustainer?
You are already carrying this. Come by the members’ tent and say hello.
Bringing a group?
No headcount needed. If you want a tent on the field, email us and we will make room.
What to bring
A blanket or a low chair, water, sunscreen, and cash for the vendors.
Can’t make the hill?
The whole festival airs live on 89.3 FM and streams at wpfwdc.org.
Vendor village
Bring cash. These are the people you’ll want it for.
Every vendor is set up inside the Josephine Butler Parks Center at 2437 15th Street NW, across from the hill, open alongside the films, the gallery upstairs and the discussions. Jewelry, clothing, bodywork and books, from makers and shops rooted in the District and beyond. Every available space at the Butler Center is spoken for.
Sacred Touch
Thai massageCandace Mickens
Bodywork on site, for anyone who has been standing on a hill since eleven thirty.
Butler Center
Unitees
Clothing
Reverse tie dye pieces and cultural tees, each one dyed by hand and no two the same.
Butler Center
Mihret Ethnic Jewelry
Jewelry
Eritrean and Ethiopian jewelry, in a city with one of the largest Habesha communities in the country.
Butler Center
Kwanzaa Associates
Cultural tees and accessoriesBaBa Yao
Cultural tees, accessories and more from a longtime presence at community gatherings across the District.
Butler Center
Artivism
Apparel and creative studioIsaac Alicea
Social activism through creative expression, run out of a studio at 10 Florida Avenue NW. Recording, custom apparel and merchandise, and a room the neighborhood uses for its own events.
Butler Center
Esther Iverem
Handmade workHost, On The Ground, Fridays 10 AM
The host of On The Ground brings her own handwork to the table. She is also on the main stage at 4:55 and leading a discussion at the Butler Center at 2:00.
Butler Center
Information tables
WPFW 89.3 FM
Station table
Become a member, renew, pick up a program guide, or tell us what you want to hear more of. Staff and Local Station Board members are there all day.
Butler Center
Festival t-shirt
“Just get people to talkin together.” — Josephine Butler
This year’s shirt puts the park on your chest: the cascading fountain and the Meridian Hill terraces in full color, with Jazz & Justice Festival and WPFW 89.3 above it, and the Washington Parks & People logo on the sleeve.
White cotton, sold at the WPFW station table inside the Butler Center. Price is announced closer to the day, here and on the air. They go fast, and when they are gone they are gone.
Vendors are indoors. The Butler Center is at 2437 15th Street NW, a short walk from the main stage, and the tables run alongside the films, the yoga sessions and the gallery on the second floor.
Art gallery
Second floor. Noon to six.
Art of Noize takes the second floor of the Josephine Butler Parks Center for the length of the festival. Free, indoors, open all day, one flight up from the films and the vendors. If the sun on the hill gets to be too much, this is where you go.
Ralston Cyrus
Portraits and figure work · @ralicyrus
Still, quiet pictures, in the middle of a loud day.
For more than twenty years Cyrus has made his living as a user experience and software product designer, in agencies and IT shops that move fast — what the author Steven Pressfield calls a shadow profession, the work you do next to the work you were made for. The other pull started in childhood and never let up.
What he makes is introspective portrait and figure work: drawings and paintings after simplicity, honesty and some inner clarity, reaching for the subtle truth inside a subject. Still, contemplative moments, and he will tell you they mirror his own search for peace. His work has been exhibited across the DMV and up the East Coast over the past decade.
He describes the whole thing as the hero’s journey everybody is on — the work of getting back to your true self, and honoring the creative spark that survives every detour.
See his work
Hosting the gallery
Art of Noize
Gallery and event space · Petworth, Washington, DC
A hidden gem, up a flight of stairs for the day.
Adrian Ferguson founded Art of Noize in 2017 as a Petworth gallery built around minority and women artists — emerging and established people whose work reads our cultural, political, historical and social landscape and who have earned more recognition than they have gotten. The gallery shows and sells the work, and doubles as a venue the neighborhood uses for its own events.
Ferguson curated last year’s pop-up exhibit at the festival. This year he gets a floor.
artofnoizedmv.com @artofnoizedmv Facebook
Four bands. Six hours. Zero dollars.
Monday, October 12, on the hill at 16th and W. Nothing to book. Put it in your calendar, then send this to the one person you already know would love it.
See the schedule Support WPFWPartners
Built with the people already doing the work.
Free DC
District-wide organizing for self-determination and local democracy. On the field with a tent and a slot on the main stage.
National Park Service
Steward of Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park since 1933 and partner in marking its 90th year.
Josephine Butler Parks Center
Host venue for the films, the discussions, the yoga sessions and the gallery.
Washington Parks & People
Steve Coleman opens the broadcast at noon. Longtime stewards of the District’s public green space.
Art of Noize
Petworth gallery for minority and women artists, hosting the art gallery on the Butler Center’s second floor.
Sitar Arts Center
Arts education in Adams Morgan, on the field with a tent.
The drum circle
The Sunday circle that has met on this hill since 1965, opening the festival at noon.
National Nurses United
On the field with a tent, on health care and the people who provide it.
WPFW Local Station Board
Outreach and Development committees, staffing the welcome and membership tents.
Contact and getting there
Questions? Call the station.
- Festival questions
- Charvis Campbell — charvis@wpfw.org
- Vendors, tents and partner organizations
- Charvis Campbell — charvis@wpfw.org — subject line: Festival tent
- Studio line
- 202-588-0893
- Pledge line
- 202-588-9739
- Station
- WPFW 89.3 FM · 1500 Eckington Place NE, Washington, DC 20002
- Festival site
- Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park
16th & W Street NW, Washington, DC - Getting there
- Metro to U Street / African-American Civil War Memorial / Cardozo on the Green and Yellow lines, then a short walk. Street parking around the park is tight on a weekday evening, so transit or rideshare is the easier call.
- Listen live
- 89.3 FM in Washington, DC, streaming at wpfwdc.org