Event Courses and Workshops Live! At The Library: Acoustic Jam Session with Christylez Bacon

Join us for a special acoustic jam featuring Hip-Hop, Go-Go, and other urban African American styles, with Grammy nominee Christylez Bacon. This is the latest entry in the American Folklife Center’s Summer Music Jams series, which began in 2018 with Christylez’s mentors Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Although these genres are usually amplified, our jams are acoustic.

Visitors are encouraged to bring instruments to the Library of Congress to participate in the jam session.  

Christylez Bacon is a Grammy Nominated Progressive Hip-Hop artist and multi-instrumentalist from Southeast, Washington, D.C. As a performer, Christylez plays several instruments including the acoustic guitar and the West African djembe drum, but he’s best known for his excellence at human beat-box (oral percussion). He’s also a fine freestyle rhymer and continues the oral tradition of storytelling through his lyrics. Christylez considers his mission to be cultural acceptance and unification through music. He has transcended many boundaries, including performing at the National Cathedral and being the first Hip-Hop artist to be featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He has composed and performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and created an intentional culture exchange project between Washington, D.C. and Brasília, Brazil, which also resulted in a documentary.  He currently spends much of his time on a series of collaborations with artists from diverse traditions.