Although this event is free and open to the public, you can become a SF Parks Alliance member to secure reserved seating here, and RSVP for a chance to win prizes and reserved seating here!

If you’re a current SF Parks Alliance member and don’t have a member code, please email membership@sanfranciscoparksalliance.org for discounted reserved seating.

About Due South

Due South is a free concert series made possible by the City of San Francisco, District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safai, and SF Parks Alliance. The concerts will be held at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in San Francisco’s McLaren Park on July 29th, August 26th, September 16th and October 7th from 2-6pm each day. The series will feature a diverse lineup of contemporary talent that reflects the local neighborhoods and populations of the City’s Southern districts neighboring the park.

Accessibility Information

Accommodation Requests:

Please email events@sanfranciscoparksalliance.org (415-906-6234) to reserve accessible seating at the show. Please note that submitting your request at least 72 hours before the event will help ensure availability.

Shuttle Information:

There will be a shuttle service from 1:30pm – 6:30pm that will pick up riders on John F Shelley Dr. in between Cambridge St. and Mansell St. (see map linked here) to shuttle attendees to the amphitheater.

Parking Information:

Limited parking spots for people with disabilities will be available on John F Shelley Dr as well as in the main amphitheater parking lot.

Seating Information:

Accessible seating will be available upon reservations made through events@sanfranciscoparksalliance.org. Accessible seating will be on the ground level of the amphitheater with appropriate signage indicating they are reserved for accessible seating. On-site staff will be monitoring the passenger loading zone, accessible seating area, as well as check-in.

Public Transportation Information:

MUNI Bus 29 stops on Mansell St & John F Shelley Drive inside McLaren Park.

MUNI Bus 52 stops on Dublin St. and La Grande Ave just outside McLaren Park.

Y La Bamba

To declare one thematic narrative from Lucha, Y La Bamba’s seventh album, would be to chisel away a story within a story within a story into the illusion of something singular.

“Lucha is a symbol of how hard it is for me to tackle healing, live life, and be present,” Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos, lead vocalist and producer of Y La Bamba, says of the title behind the album which translates from Spanish to English as ‘fight’ and is also a nickname for Luz, which means light. The album explores multiplicity—love, queerness, Mexican American and Chicanx identity, family, intimacy, yearning, loneliness—and chronicles a period of struggle and growth for Mendoza Ramos as a person and artist.

Lucha was born out of isolation at the advent of COVID-19 lockdowns, beginning with a cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and following Mendoza Ramos as she moved from Portland, Oregon to Mexico City, returning to her parents’ home country while revisiting a lineage marred by violence and silence, and simultaneously reaching towards deeper relationships with loved ones and herself. The album reflects “another tier of facing vulnerability,” as Mendoza Ramos explains, and is a battle cry to fight in order to be seen and to be accepted, if not celebrated, in every form—anger and compassion, externally and internally, individually and societally. As much as la lucha is about inner work, fighting is borne from survival stemming from social structures designed to uplift dominant groups at the hands of suffering amongst the marginalized.

While peeling back layers of the past to better understand the present has been integral to this period of growth for Mendoza Ramos, time, trauma, and history can feel like interconnected, abysmal loops and music has remained a trusted space for Mendoza Ramos to process, experiment, and channel her learnings into a creative practice. In this way, Lucha has become cyclical, documenting the parallel trust Mendoza Ramos has built with herself to allow the songs to guide how they should be sung, or even sound.

“I’ve been wanting to let whatever feels natural—with rhythm and musical instruments like congas and singing—to just let it be, in the way that I’m trying to invoke in myself.” Lucha reflects on, “the continuing process of learning how to exercise my producing skills,” explains Mendoza Ramos. “I have so many words, ideas to work with all the time, and the hardest part for me has been learning to trust my gut. And figuring out how I work best, and with who.”

The result is a collection as sonically sprawling and bold as its subject matter. On “La Lluvia de Guadalajara,” Y La Bamba leans into a minimal, avant-garde soundscape as Mendoza Ramos recites a spoken word poem. Later, rhythms veer into bossa nova territory on “Hues ft. Devendra Banhart,” a full-circle collaboration for Mendoza Ramos as she reminisces on the significance of finding Banhart’s work nearly two decades earlier: “He was the first young Spanish-speaking musician that wasn’t playing traditional Mexican music I heard when I was 21. There was nothing like it around that time.”

“Nunca” is a warm, wind-rich track dedicated to her mother, Maria Elena Ramos whose poetry is published alongside the Lucha lyrics booklet. “I decided to put my mom’s poem, which is a poem that she wrote to me, letting me know how she felt, exploring her heart in new ways she’s never imagined. Sharing it on the record is me paying attention that she’s expressing herself.

While each song holds personal significance to Mendoza Ramos, part of growing into her identity as an artist has been allowing space for protection and boundaries, and choosing to withhold some of that meaning from the public. Lucha is her own story of the complexity of trauma and nonlinear healing and growth processes, but she imagines it is also the continuation of her ancestors’ stories and might also be a mirror to the story of others. “Even though I’m trying to fight, I never want to demonize suffering, because that’s part of growing. And it’s hard, because we’re living in times where that [stigma] is what’s happening. So if this—me talking about my mental health and finding healing in my queerness—is a risk, I hope that I find a community that protects it and protects me, because they know I have their back. I am also trying to be my mom’s community.”

Marinero

Hella Love, the Hardly Art debut from Marinero, is an album about closing a chapter. It’s Jess Sylvester’s grand farewell, and love letter to his hometown and the place he grew up, The San Francisco Bay Area, before relocating to Los Angeles after finishing his debut release. Using the moniker Marinero (which means “sailor” in Spanish), Jess Sylvester was drawn to this name as a means to honor his parent’s stories — his father, a sailor, and mother, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Francisco. This record blends many worlds from beginning to end, and as you go deeper it hits harder. It’s his goodbye to The Bay.

Pulling sonic influences from classic Latin American groups and international composers from the 60’s & 70’s: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King and, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love finds Sylvester fusing classical arrangements with a variety of different genres, evoking a sonic nostalgia blended with other contemporary artists like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, and Chris Cohen. The album was written, played, and produced by Jess Sylvester with help from Bay Area engineer Jason Kick (Mild High Club’s Skiptracing) at Tunnel Vision and Santo Recording in Oakland, California.

It’s difficult to classify or generalize about Marinero’s music or identity. To him, it’s important to let his music do the talking. “I’m Chicanx, a bay native, biracial, and I’ve luckily gotten to travel and spend time in Mexico and I feel like my personality and specific musical tastes come through on this album. More than these generalizations we often make, I’m just a human who can both fear and love, and I’m just hoping to connect with others to share optimism and experience joy and laughter, even if for a moment.” Lean your ear to the ground because Jess Sylvester has been many things and will continue to share his journey. It is clear this gifted creator has more to say.

Loco Bloco

Loco Bloco is a inter generational arts organization that has existed for 30 years in the Mission district. Loco Bloco believes that Afro Latinx art forms bring together communities of color and politicize and empower the next generations using ancestral arts.