Celebrate Community with L.A. Taco

LA TACO

L.A. TACO is Los Angeles’ independent, member-supported newsroom and cultural platform dedicated to celebrating and protecting the real Los Angeles: its people, food, art, and neighborhoods. Founded on the belief that Angelenos deserve media made by and for the people who actually live here, L.A. TACO works to document the city’s creativity and complexity with honesty, humor, and deep respect. As part of its ongoing “Free L.A.” membership campaign, L.A. TACO is growing a human-centered media movement that seeks to free Los Angeles from corporate control of its own story. The goal: to build a truly sustainable, independent local newsroom that covers every block and every taco spot and uplifts the communities that make this city thrive.

Image courtesy of L.A. TACO 

SprayDay

SprayDay provides fun hands-on graffiti workshops in Los Angeles where attendees can learn how to tag and create with spray paint. A lively celebration of art, music, and culture, at the heart of the event is a massive graffiti wall where guests can be creative with non-toxic spray paint we provide. What begins as a blank wall transforms throughout the event, as attendees add their own tags, resulting in an evolving, collaborative masterpiece created right in the middle of the party. 

Image courtesy of SprayDay
 

SABER

Born in 1976 in Glendale, California, SABER grew up in a home where art was part of the daily fabric—his mother was a gifted painter, and creativity seeped into his life early. Los Angeles, with its sprawling walls and charged visual culture, became his real classroom.

In 1997, SABER produced what would become a landmark of graffiti history: the LA River piece. The mural, stretching an immense 250 feet by 55 feet across the concrete riverbed, took more than a year of grueling effort to complete. SABER’s work has long carried a thread of social and political critique, tackling themes like poverty, inequality and individual agency. Many of his pieces evoke the darker side of Los Angeles’ urban landscape—dangerous streets, hovering police helicopters, fires, and naturally, graffiti. Throughout his career, SABER has remained both an artist and an advocate—pushing boundaries, challenging assumptions and insisting on the cultural value of work created outside traditional institutions

Photo courtesy of the artist
 

Passionfruit

Passionfruit aka Tana Yonas is KCRW’s newest DJ and a long-time contributor to In Sheep’s Clothing HiFi. Known for her vast vinyl collection that spans eras and the globe, listen as she guilds together a collection of classics and rarities one track at a time.

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Radha

Radha is a multi-disciplinary artist and first-generation Indian-American based in Los Angeles. Her creative inspiration stems from her cultural roots, spiritual background, love for nature, and deep passion for music. You can catch her monthly on the airwaves of NTS with her show “Sacred Space” featuring a mixed bag of genres, from downtempo, spiritual jazz, and ambient music from all over the world.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Jasmine Salvino

Jasmine Salvino is a Los Angeles native with Sicilian roots. She mainly works in music supervision & licensing but also hosts the monthly show “Night Bloom” on dublab radio. 

Photo courtesy of the artist

Sonrisita

Coming up as a vinyl collector in her hometown of San Diego, Sonrisita pursued DJing as a means to create space for underground sounds and communities. Now based in Los Angeles, Sonrisita uses her foundation as a record digger to build eclectic sets that weave together both the new and nostalgic. Sonrisita’s played in various cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada and has opened up for artists like Quantic, Durand Jones and the Indications, and Dam-Funk.

Mr B Baby

Michelle Guerrero aka Mr B Baby’s work is a fusion of Mexican folk art and children’s books. Her artwork is a whimsical twist on universal themes, giving them a playful, colorful touch. She was raised in a predominantly Spanish-speaking home in Chula Vista with a single mother and her older sister. Her hardworking Puerto Rican mother taught her that the sky was the limit, and she hopes to portray the same message through her art. Mr B Baby’s art is heavily influenced by her culture and her experiences in life. As someone who battled with depression and anxiety starting from a young age, she advocates for positive mental health and hopes to inspire other people to believe they can overcome adversities and pursue art. Her artwork has an alchemy, transforming emotions like sadness or anxiety into scenes of empowerment. Mr B Baby’s goal is to create art for everyone and in the process connect with people and spread happiness through her creations. She creates a wide range of characters who all tell their own unique story.

Photo courtesy of the artist

ZZK Records

ZZK Records has spent nearly two decades at the forefront of Latin music, carving out space for artists who put a futuristic (and often electronic) spin on classic rhythms and folklore traditions. Along the way, the label spread across the globe and helped launch a few stars—Nicola Cruz, Chancha Vía Circuito, La Yegros, Son Rompe Pera and Karen y Los Remedios among them—but while the name ZZK is now likely familiar to just about anyone with a taste for forward-thinking Latin sounds, the crew’s origins were rooted in something much more humble: the desire to throw a great party.

Image courtesy of ZZK Records

El G

As a DJ Grant C. Dull has performed as El G in more than 100 cities around the world including stops at Coachella, Roskilde, Berghain in Berlin and the Modern Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Russia. In his ever expanding search for culture, music and adventure, Grant has founded 3 more projects of the ZZK Records label including the imprint AYA Records, documentary production house ZZK Films and educational / interactive branch, ZZK Culture with the debut launch of LatAmTronica in partnership with MUTEK Montreal and Reina de Cumbia in partnership with the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Grant has been a panelist at LAMC, Oslo World Music Festival, Sonar, Midem LatAm, Amsterdam Dance Event, M for Montreal, Bogota Music Market, Medellin Music Week and has given workshops at various universities and conferences, including a presentation at Simon Reynolds’ music DIY class at Cal Arts University. 

Image courtesy Farah Sosa

El Marchante

Osmar Romero is a cultural curator, DJ and producer based between Caracas and Los Angeles and the driving force behind El Marchante. He co-founded the project in 2015 as a response to distance, migration and the need to preserve sound as living memory. What began in Caracas has grown into an international platform dedicated to researching, curating and sharing Latin American and Caribbean music through vinyl, live events and cross-border collaborations.

Photo credit: Vero Lechuga

Marlon Fuentes

Marlon Fuentes is a music curator and ethnomusicologist from Mexico DF, by way of LA, now based in New York City, whose work explores music as communal ritual. His immersive documentary film made in Trinidad and Tobago was exhibited at the Museum of Design Atlanta’s The Future Happened exhibition, and his practice has been recognized by Monocle and Billboard Magazine. As genre manager at the Recording Academy, he architected the Best Global Music Performance GRAMMY category in 2020 — bringing together a wide range of artists to the institution for the first time, including Burna Boy, Laraaji, Yemi Alade, Diamond Platnumz, Altin Gün, and Seun Kuti. Under the mentorship of Sergio Mielniczenko, he co-founded Brazil Arts Connection in partnership with the Brazilian Consulate in Los Angeles. As a DJ, he has shared the stage with Shakira before tens of thousands and holds residencies at celebrated listening rooms throughout New York City. Raised on global music, his experience as a curator has led him to understand music not just as sound, but as a force for community, identity, and representation.

Image courtesy of the artist