Genre Curator: Hip-Hop, Soul & R&B 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.
Few rooms anywhere carry punk and hardcore history the way this one does. This role isn't about nostalgia bookings — it's about finding the living lineage: the current bands, DIY collectives, and hardcore promoters carrying that same energy forward, and giving them a stage with real weight behind it.
## The puzzle
There's a real question worth chasing here: what actually separates a scene that treats history as a living conversation from one that just borrows its aesthetic — and that distinction is more interesting, and harder to see, than it first appears. Legacy without living programming becomes a museum. The puzzle is finding the current punk and hardcore acts, DIY promoters, and zine-adjacent collectives who deserve to play a room with this history — and who would treat that history as a living conversation, not a photo backdrop.
## What you'll do
You'll tend a defined slice of punk and hardcore curation — enough to bring real, credible options to the producing team in your first month, without carrying the whole venture.
- **Scene mapping** — Track current punk, hardcore, and DIY acts, labels, zines, and promoter collectives, paying attention to who's touring, who's building a following, and who carries real credibility in the scene.
- **Curatorial judgment** — Build shortlists of acts and collectives whose sound and ethos fit the room's history, distinguishing bands with real scene standing from acts riding aesthetic alone.
- **Social listening for collaboration moments** — Watch the social media accounts, newsletters, and public communications of DIY collectives, zines, and adjacent venues to spot upcoming shows 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 label profiles (release history, tour routing, past venues) and draft warm, informed introductory messages to artists, labels, or collectives.
- **Relationship nurture** — Maintain light, ongoing contact with promising artists and scene organizers so that when timing aligns, the conversation is already warm.
- **Lineage framing** — Help articulate, in show concepts and copy, how a given booking connects to the venue's punk and hardcore history — without leaning on nostalgia as the selling point.
- **Relationship tracking** — Keep a simple tracker of artists, collectives, and labels 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, current knowledge of punk, hardcore, or adjacent DIY scenes and their touring circuits
- Curatorial or booking experience in any independent music context
- Research instincts — tracking a fast-moving, decentralized scene accurately
- Warm, well-researched relationship writing that respects artists' time
- 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 how punk and hardcore scenes carry their own history forward, rather than a goal-driven interest in booking a full calendar
- Comfort watching social media, community feeds, and newsletters with a listening ear rather than a promotional one
You'll thrive here if you live in this scene already, care about its history without being precious about it, and want to help keep the lineage alive rather than embalmed.
## Why do this
- **The problem matters.** Legacy venues too often either ignore their own history or freeze it into nostalgia. Neither honors the scene. This role does something harder and better.
- **The stakes are real.** The bands and collectives you surface could play actual shows, for actual audiences, in a room that shaped the genre.
- **The craft is subtle, and it will test your ear.** You'll have to develop a real feel for the difference between a band that's in genuine conversation with this history and one that's just wearing its jacket — a distinction that takes real listening and real time inside the scene to build, and that you can't fake your way into.
- **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 disaster risk reduction, deep green compute, and community resilience — 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 band or collective you've tracked closely, a booking or zine project you've worked on, a scene you know deeply)
2. One current punk or hardcore act, label, or collective you'd want to bring into the conversation in your first month, and why
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.*