Founded by Kahlil Cummings in 2017, Extra Ancestral is a cultural movement dedicated to educating and entertaining audiences through the fusion of different cultural manifestations of the African Diaspora. In their performances, audiences are likely to experience genres such as Afrobeat, Reggae, Jazz, Salsa, and many traditional African musical forms of the Diaspora. Narrated through powerful ancestral dancing, Extra Ancestral provides an in-depth education of temporal and geographic borders from Africa to the Americas and back, providing lessons from the past to hone tools for the future. Music and dance are the ensemble’s healing tools, and led by some of LA’s most dynamic artists, their revolutionary performances of black survival invoke while poignantly resisting 500 years of forced transatlantic passages between West Africa and the Americas.

Extra Ancestral unifies music, dance, visual arts, and community engagement as forms of empowerment to reduce the trans generational trauma that exists in communities of color. Historically, music and dance have been considered the oldest form of medicine and Extra Ancestral seeks to combine the tradition of healing through their performances to elevate and empower communities of color. Their vision manifests into performance productions, dance classes, workshops and music education with artists from across the African Diaspora.

In response to the COVID pandemic we retained and solidified certain of our class offerings with the debut of EA ONLINE. EA ONLINE has allowed us to not only teach to community members who are distant geographically, but to also offer classes from an array of guest instructors from the U.S. and abroad. EA ONLINE is currently on hiatus, and we hope to revive the platform in late summer/fall of 2022.