Ruth Naomi Floyd – “Are we yet somehow alive?”

Philadelphia sacred jazz vocalist/composer and photographer Ruth Naomi Floyd, makes her Penn Live Arts debut in Are We Yet Somehow Alive?, a moving world premiere that pairs jazz, blues and gospel with fine art projections to share compelling first-person accounts from enslaved Africans in America.

At the intersection of despair, endurance and resistance, these narratives explore what it means to be human amidst the struggle for liberation and dehumanization. Praised for her distinctive sound and progressive jazz ensembles, Floyd uses her soaring mezzo-soprano voice to shine light and find defiant joy in our experience.