Festival update
Postponed for rain.
The Jazz and Justice Festival set for Sunday, September 27 has been postponed because of rain. There is nothing to cancel and nothing to refund. The day was always free.
We are working on a new date with the bands and the park. As soon as it is set, it goes up on this page and on the air at 89.3 FM. Check back here.
Thank you for planning to come. We would rather move it than hand you a wet hill and half a lineup. The music, the films, the discussions and the vendors are all coming with us to the new date.
Check back for the new date Support WPFWEverything below is the original September 27 schedule, kept here for reference. None of these times are happening on that date.
What the day is
The best free afternoon in DC this fall.
Sunday, September 27, 2026 · Noon to 7 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 seven hours. Edwin Ortiz y La Mafia Del Guaguanco, Brandon Woody, MuMu Fresh, 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. A Grammy-nominated voice. 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 seven and documentary films 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 Sunday. This is the park’s 90th anniversary weekend, 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. Five 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
Seven 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.
Five bands, in the order they play. Press play on any of them.
Edwin Ortiz & La Mafia Del Guaguanco
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 musicMuMu Fresh
Maimouna Youssef · Baltimore, MD
Half an hour, and she will use every minute of it.
She sings and she rhymes and she refuses to pick one. A MuMu Fresh set travels from a whisper to a full-throated demand and back inside a single verse, and the crowd goes with her every time. Her Afro-Native heritage runs straight through the work, and so does the organizing.
Grammy-nominated. Stages shared with Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, Nas and Common. Carnegie Hall and the Montreux Jazz Festival. Black Thought of The Roots calls her a quadruple threat. Free, on a Sunday, in a public park.
Official site Listen: Peace Will ComeProverbs 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, 12:30 PM · Butler Center, 1:00 PM
Rev. Mark Thompson
Make It PlainMondays, 11 AM
Straight-talk politics and movement news, carried nationally beyond 89.3.
Main stage, 1:50 PM · Butler Center, 12:30 PM
Ambrose Lane Jr.
To The EastMondays, 5 PM
Black politics, culture and community power, in conversation.
Main stage, 3:40 PM · Butler Center, 12:00 PM
Esther Iverem
On The GroundFridays, 10 AM
Voices of resistance from the ground up, carried nationally.
Main stage, 1:50 PM · Butler Center, 2:00 PM
Jacqueline Luqman
Darker Than BlueFridays, 5 PM
Left analysis of politics, media and empire.
Main stage, 4:30 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, 5:40 PM · Butler Center, 6:00 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.
Main stage, 4:30 PM · Butler Center, 3:00 PM
Dr. Theodore Watkins
To Your Health
Health and wellness in our community.
Main stage, 12:30 PM · Butler Center, 4:00 PM
On the decks
DJ Underdog
Black Star RadioMondays, 10 PM
Africa, the Caribbean and the wider Black diaspora on the decks.
Opens the day, 11:30 AM
Noodles & DJ Kandy Krush
Spinning between the sets.
On the grounds
Candy Shannon
Morning Brew: Jazz EditionFridays, 5 AM
Friday morning jazz from a DC radio pioneer, on the air here since 1998.
On the grounds
Tony Carr
This Is Reggae MusicSundays, 10 PM
Roots reggae, dub and the deep sounds of Jamaica.
On the grounds
DJ Rita Burns
Meeting in the Ladies RoomFridays, 10 PM
With DJ Abby and DJ Housecat. The station’s first women’s DJ collective.
On the grounds
Kim Bey
Kulcha ShakSaturdays, 4 PM
With DJ Zee-Lion. Reggae and Caribbean culture from an award-winning musician.
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. The festival opens with an Indigenous land recognition at 12:10, and it is not a formality. It 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 it opens this festival at 12:30. 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.
Sunday, September 27, 2026
Noon to seven. Two venues. One block.
Main stage, Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park
Gates open
DJ Underdog opens the day while the hill fills up.
Broadcast begins
WPFW goes live from the park with Shayna Lonoaea and Miyuki Williams. Welcome from Steve Coleman of Washington Parks & People.
Libation and wisdom from the ancestors
Tony Browder.
Indigenous land recognition
Drummers
Poem
A. B. Spellman.
On the mic
Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Theodore Watkins and Free DC.
Edwin Ortiz & La Mafia Del Guaguanco
Full salsa orchestra, introduced by Oscar Fernandez. The dance floor is the whole lawn.
On the mic
Verna Avery Brown, Rev. Mark Thompson and Esther Iverem.
Elders circle
Baba Senghor Baye, Kathy English Holt, Esther Yarborough and Davey Yarborough.
Brandon Woody
Blue Note’s Baltimore trumpeter with his band Upendo, introduced by Miles Willis and Candy Shannon.
On the mic
Joni Eisenberg, Washington historian CR Gibbs and Ambrose Lane.
MuMu Fresh
Grammy-nominated vocals and emcee work, introduced by DJ Lance Reynolds.
On the mic
New World Order, Jacqueline Luqman and James Early.
Proverbs Reggae Band
Roots reggae and lover’s rock, introduced by Tony Carr and DJ Underdog.
On the mic
Netfa Freeman and Kamau Harris.
Poem
Zenia Azzam, Palestinian poet.
Be’la Dona
Go-go closes the festival, introduced by DJ Funk. DC’s all-woman band takes the last hour.
End of event
Community discussions, Josephine Butler Parks Center
Ambrose Lane · To The East
Black politics, culture and community power, in conversation. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Rev. Mark Thompson · Make It Plain
Straight-talk politics and movement news, carried nationally beyond 89.3. One hour, 1st floor library. Questions from the floor.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux · MALVEAUX!
Economics, race and public policy, plainly put. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Esther Iverem · On The Ground
Voices of resistance from the ground up. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
New World Order
Mahjai, Ama’d, Liv Grace and Trélogy. Younger voices on culture, politics and what comes next. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Dr. Watkins · To Your Health
Health and wellness in our community. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Jacqueline Luqman · Darker Than Blue
Left analysis of politics, media and empire. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Netfa Freeman · Voices With Vision
With Craig Hall. To enlighten minds, uplift spirits and strengthen souls. One hour, Room 1. Questions from the floor.
Documentary films and discussions, Josephine Butler Parks Center, 1st floor North Gallery
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible
Two hours, 1st floor.
One Drum: Heartbeat on the Meridian
Working title. The hill you are standing on, on film. Discussion with producer Hailey Hartigan.
Residue
Discussion with director Merawi Gerima.
Yoga and meditation with Mama Paulette, Josephine Butler Parks Center
Yoga
Outside, in front of the Butler Center.
Meditation
1st floor, in the library.
Yoga
Outside, in front of the Butler Center.
Meditation
1st floor, in the library.
Yoga
Outside, in front of the Butler Center.
Meditation
1st floor, in the library.
Art gallery, Josephine Butler Parks Center
Art of Noize presents Ralston Cyrus
Second floor, open the whole festival. Portrait and figure work, hosted by the Petworth gallery. More about the artist
Elders circle
Main stage at 2:05 with Baba Senghor Baye, Kathy English Holt, Esther Yarborough and Davey Yarborough.
Yoga and meditation
Six half-hour sessions with Mama Paulette. Yoga out front of the Butler Center, meditation in the 1st floor library.
Art gallery
Art of Noize on the Butler Center’s second floor, noon to seven, with work by Ralston Cyrus.
Poets on the mic
A. B. Spellman at 12:28 and Zenia Azzam at 5:50, with Brian Gilmore and Roscoe Burnems.
WPFW programmers
DJ Rita Burns, Noodles & DJ Kandy Krush, Candy Shannon, Tony Carr and DJ Underdog.
Vendors and makers
Jewelry, clothing, bodywork and books at the Butler Center. See the vendor village below.
Organizing tents
Free DC, Sitar Arts Center and CapitalBop on the field.
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 seven, 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 1:50 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
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 seven.
Art of Noize takes the second floor of the Josephine Butler Parks Center for the length of the festival. Free, indoors, open the whole seven hours, 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
Five bands. Seven hours. Zero dollars.
September 27, 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.
CapitalBop
DC’s jazz journal and presenter, and a partner in the music.
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 is limited on Sundays, so transit or rideshare is the easier call.
- Listen live
- 89.3 FM in Washington, DC, streaming at wpfwdc.org