Genre Curator: Global & Diasporic Music Programming Mabuhay Gardens (CrowdDoing)

## About the initiative
Mabuhay Gardens is a storied cultural venue with a legendary history. The building has hosted performances by legends including Louis Armstrong, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dead Kennedys, Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Specials, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Herbie Hancock, R.E.M., Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Soundgarden, Bad Religion, Dave Chappelle, and many others. Via CrowdDoing, we are regenerating the Mab as a hybrid cultural ecosystem: live music, dance, comedy, rentals, popup culinary lab, off-peak wellness partnerships, art-walk activations, and solarpunk / regenerative-culture programming.
Some of the most vital live music circuits in the world move through diasporic networks — cumbia, afrobeats, funk carioca, gqom, música popular brasileira, dabke, and dozens of other traditions carried and reinvented by musicians and DJs connecting communities across borders. This role is about building programming that treats those circuits with real cultural respect, not as a genre category to check off.
## The puzzle
There's a genuinely rich thread to follow here: global and diasporic music traditions carry histories and networks that rarely surface in mainstream booking channels, and tracing them honestly is fascinating work in its own right. Global and diasporic music circuits are rich, specific, and often invisible to booking channels built around Anglophone mainstream music. The puzzle is finding the right artists, DJs, and community organizers within each tradition, and doing it in a way that earns genuine consent and trust from the communities those traditions belong to — not just extracting a booking.
## What you'll do
You'll tend a defined slice of global and diasporic programming — enough to bring real, credible, community-respected options to the producing team in your first month, without carrying the whole venture.
- **Circuit mapping** — Track artists, DJs, and community organizers across global and diasporic music traditions — cumbia, afrobeats, funk carioca, gqom, música popular brasileira, dabke, and others — paying attention to who carries real standing within their community.
- **Curatorial judgment with cultural respect** — Build shortlists grounded in genuine community regard and artistic strength, and flag anything that would require deeper community consultation before moving forward.
- **Social listening for collaboration moments** — Watch the social media accounts, newsletters, and public communications of cultural associations and community organizers to spot upcoming events and moments where the Mab could naturally weave in as a collaborator rather than a stranger.
- **AI-assisted research and relationship writing** — Use AI tools to enrich artist and organizer profiles (touring history, community ties, past shows) and draft warm, respectful introductory messages appropriate to each cultural context.
- **Community relationship-building** — Build ongoing relationships with community organizers, cultural associations, and DJs who can advise on how a given tradition wants to be represented on stage.
- **Consent-first program design** — Help shape night concepts in direct conversation with artists and community contacts, making sure representation choices are led by the community itself.
- **Relationship tracking** — Keep a simple tracker of artists, organizers, and traditions you've connected with, with status and next steps. A short weekly written update keeps the team oriented.
## Who this role is for
We're looking for someone who can contribute meaningfully from week one — not a senior label executive, not an assistant. Somebody with real, demonstrable skill in **at least two** of the following, and curiosity about the rest:
- Deep knowledge of one or more global or diasporic music traditions and their touring circuits
- Curatorial or booking experience in any independent or international music context
- Genuine relationships within community organizations or diasporic cultural networks
- Warm, well-researched, culturally attentive relationship writing
- Lightweight relationship-tracking or CRM discipline (spreadsheets, Notion, Airtable, or similar)
- Comfort with AI-assisted research and relationship-writing workflows (any current LLM tool)
- Genuine curiosity about the specific histories and networks behind global and diasporic music traditions, rather than a generic interest in world music
- Comfort watching social media, community feeds, and newsletters with a listening ear rather than a promotional one
You'll thrive here if you move comfortably across cultural contexts, lead with respect and curiosity rather than assumption, and want programming decisions to be shaped with communities, not just about them.
## Why do this
- **The problem matters.** Global and diasporic music traditions are too often flattened into a single "world music" booking slot. Real curatorial respect changes what's possible on a stage.
- **The stakes are real.** The artists and communities you engage could shape actual nights, for actual audiences, built around traditions that matter deeply to the people who carry them.
- **The craft is careful, and it will test your humility.** You'll be stretched to tell the difference between genuine cultural respect and well-intentioned extraction — a line that's easy to cross without noticing. Building the self-awareness to catch yourself, and the patience to earn real consent rather than assume it, is a developmental edge worth taking on directly.
- **The room is legendary.** You're helping regenerate a venue where legends across music, comedy, poetry, and cultural experimentation performed.
- **You'll work alongside people who care, across a much wider map than this room.** You'll collaborate asynchronously with CrowdDoing's global network of volunteers — people working on deep green compute, herbal medicine, and disaster risk reduction — through shared written updates, shared docs, and async check-ins. You will likely never meet most of them in person, and you'll still learn from how they think. That cross-pollination between wildly different fields is not a side benefit of this role. It's the point.
## Time commitment & structure
- Flexible, part-time, mostly asynchronous
- Ongoing commitment, renewable
- Onboarding via CrowdDoing's standard volunteer orientation
## How to apply
Send a short note (5–8 sentences is plenty) covering:
1. Which 2–3 areas above you can contribute in immediately, with one specific example (a tradition or artist community you know deeply, a program or event you've helped shape with community input)
2. One artist, DJ, or community tradition you'd want to bring into the conversation in your first month, and why, and how you'd approach it with cultural respect
3. Your available hours per week and time zone
No cover letter theater. Show us how you think and who you know.
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*CrowdDoing is an equal-opportunity volunteer organization. We welcome contributors of every background, geography, and career stage. This is an unpaid volunteer role and service-learning opportunity.*