The dynamic San Francisco percussionist Ahkeel Mestayer creates music steeped in The City’s history as a hotbed of musical innovation and political ferment. Inspired by Latin jazz and Latin rock visionaries like Jerry González, Andy González, John Santos and Malo, he’s founded a series of sonically expansive bands that creatively combine various Afro-Caribbean rhythmic idioms. On a recent collaboration with San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, Live From the Third World, he created musical settings based on interviews with San Francisco State activists who spearheaded the late 1960s strike for ethnic studies. The band he brings to the Gardens features some of the finest Latin jazz artists on the West Coast, including John Calloway on flute and percussion, bassist Saul Sierra and pianist Marco Diaz. 

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