Septober Energy presents WILDFLOWERS 8/9

Septober Energy presents WILDFLOWERS 8 + 9

March 27–28, 2026

Afrikan Freedom Station

In 1976, Black artists across the world were building their own spaces. In Soweto, students rose with a clarity that reshaped South Africa forever. In New York City, Sam Rivers and Beatrice Rivers opened Studio Rivbea, documenting a movement that became the landmark album series Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions. It was music without permission. Community without gatekeepers. A living argument for artistic self-determination.

Wildflowers 8+9 continues that conversation.

Across two nights at Afrikan Freedom Station, Septober Energy brings together selectors, collectors, archivists, and improvisers to sit inside the spirit of 1976, not as nostalgia, but as method. The loft era showed what happens when artists build their own infrastructure. Black Consciousness showed what happens when a people reclaim their psychological ground. Both insisted on autonomy. Both were genre-less in their urgency.

As part of an ongoing experimentation with anti disciplinary artists, formats and space, we have curated a special live solo performance with an incredible multi instrumentalist hailing from KZN.

This edition deepens the thread. Selections and live responses move between seventies Azanian folk impulses, African American improvised music, and contemporary experimental sound rooted in Black radical traditions. The space will echo the loft principle, intimate, fluid, without hierarchy between performer and listener.

Wildflowers 8+9 is an ode to elders, but it is also a rehearsal for what comes next.