Summer Concerts: Past + Future = Present, Pt. 2
Overview
Experience the special exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me after hours and groove to the beat between two performance stages on two levels of the museum. With musicians selected to complement Gibson’s vibrant artworks and converse with his powerful themes, PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT, Pt. 2 features M’lynn, a Dallas-born Cherokee Nation soul singer whose smooth and sultry vibes make even a summer night seem cool on the Lobby Stage.
Upstairs on the Oculus Hall Stage, Red Lake Ojibwe Joe Rainey combines traditional pow wow singing with techno, industrial, hip hop, dub, and noise, after which a high-energy DJ set by Teme-Augama Anishnabai club maven and Native music afficionado deesco closes out the night. Beverages and snacks are available for purchase in our outdoor olive grove bar and concessions area.
The thoughtfully selected line-up of musicians for PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, most of whom have hit the club, concert, and tour circuit within the past decade, optimistically points audiences to a future of freedom and liberation by bringing respect for culture and ancestry into the present through song and sheer presence of will. Over the course of the two-part festival-style series, hip hop, experimental, pow wow, indie, electronic, and soul music coexist like the vibrant and inspirational words and colors in Jeffrey Gibson’s PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT (2024) and seven other flag artworks on view in the exhibition.
From L to R (Clockwise starting at top right): Joe Rainey, photo by Graham Tolbert; deesco, photo courtesy of the artist; M'lynn, photo courtesy of the artist
Artwork credit: Jeffrey Gibson, PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT, 2024. Polyester duck flag with metal grommets, installed on wooden tipi pole. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com
This event is standing room only. Designated accessible seating and seating for Native Elders are available.
Tickets to this event include access to The Broad, including Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me and our rotating third floor collection galleries.
Tickets to this event do not include access to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), and must be booked separately.
To learn more and plan your trip, visit Know Before You Go & FAQ. Visitor policies are subject to change.
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Biographies
M’lynn
Fast-emerging Dallas-born indie neo-soul singer/songwriter M’lynn’s hit “Fade Away” created a viral moment in 2023 with 2 million views on Instagram and nearly 1 million Spotify streams, reaching #3 on the iTunes R&B chart and winning Best Love Song and Best Easy Listening Song, and was declared grand prize winner at the Dallas Songwriters Association awards. From the beginning, she has been collaborating on her songs and overall vibe with Josh Goode, a two-time Emmy award-winning Dallas music producer, songwriter, composer, and DJ. “My vision as an artist is just to know myself and be transparent and truthful to my own life and messaging, which includes tapping into the struggles I had growing up with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Music saved me as a guiding light and a way to get everything out that I was feeling.” Proud member of the Cherokee Nation, M’lynn had music in her DNA from the start. Her parents were in rock “hobby” bands that performed in the Dallas area and they exposed her to everything from classic rock and Motown to Carole King and Aretha Franklin. Attending Booker T. Washington Performing Arts High School, whose alumni include Erykah Badu and Norah Jones, M’lynn studied opera vocal tech and sang in choir and a jazz vocal group. She continued her education at the Frost School of Music in Miami, where she enrolled in the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music songwriter program and earned a BA in Music Artistry Development and Entrepreneurship, with a minor in Music Business and songwriting.
Photo courtesy of the artist
deesco
deesco is a Tongva Land-based, high-energy, multicultural, queer DJ/artist dedicated to supporting shameless dance floors and lush~sensual experiences for intersectional beings. Genre-blending sounds from all corners of Turtle Island, deesco aims to make bodies move in connection through human-affirming vocals and new takes on classic rhythms. Growing up in the Bay Area, CA, with First Nation roots (Teme-Augama Anishnabai), while constantly traveling to visit family all over, gave deesco a masterclass in the soundscapes that thread the tapestries of communal celebration. Other notable work includes DJing for the LA LGBT Center/The Broad Collab Float for LA Pride (2025), WeHo Pride’s Street Fair (2025), Sound Producing and DJing for Indigenous Pride LA’s STI/HIV 2Spirit+ Powwow (2025), collaborating with The Chapter House on numerous events, opening Hood Rave’s 2024 Winter Club in collaboration with Baile World & Black Bass Collective, debuting as the first resident DJ of Honey’s LA, opening for Tove Lo & SG Lewis’ LA “Club Heat”, OutLoud’s 2024 Weho Pride, Summertramp Festival 2024 and many more.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Joe Rainey
The New York Times said of Joe Rainey’s debut album, "Niineta pins layers of powwow songs to industrial-strength drums and blizzards of static, suggesting a radical musical representation of what Rainey often called the 'urban Indian,'" while Pitchfork described it as “deeply idiosyncratic, fusing pow wow melodies with the timbres and rhythms of the 21st-century city: techno, industrial, hip-hop, dub, noise... Rainey’s remarkably flexible voice sits at Niineta’s center, alternately consoling and foreboding, sometimes deep and gravelly and others high and androgynous." Joe Rainey demonstrates his command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing that’s been heard across the waters of what is now called Minnesota for centuries. Depending on the song or the pattern, his voice can celebrate or console, welcome or intimidate, wake you up with a start or lull your babies to sleep. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We’re still here. We were here before you were, and we never left. Rainey grew up a Red Lake Ojibwe in Minneapolis, a city with one of the largest and proudest Native American populations in the country and the birthplace of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the pioneering grassroots civil rights organization founded to combat the colonizing forces of police brutality.
Photo by Graham Tolbert
