MARCO PAVÉ

​Marco Pavé is a Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist, dramatist, and writer born of a Memphis and Mississippi blues legacy. His work centers on Southern Black life, epistemologies, and spirituality to usher in new Black realities and radical possibilities. His practice is deeply rooted in the power of Black spirit, using his lens and worldview as a Black Muslim millennial from the American South to explore power, oppression, ancestral connections, generational trauma, and collective healing.

Pavé was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and his work combines many elements of the music and sounds that originate from the city. From blues, to gospel, to soul, to hip-hop, you will hear the many influences in his music, with the hopes of reaching the hearts and minds of his listeners. Not one to be pigeonholed into a single discipline or genre, Pavé has charted an unprecedented career, bending genres to tell powerful stories.

In 2017, Pavé released his critically acclaimed debut album Welcome to Grc Lnd, an innovative concept album inspired by the political climate of Memphis and the resilience of Black Memphians in the face of oppression. The following year, he was commissioned by Opera Memphis to adapt the album into Memphis’ first hip-hop opera, Grc Lnd 2030, a dystopian-epidemic agitprop theater piece condemning oppression and police violence in Memphis.

In 2018, Pavé was commissioned to write an anti-gun violence anthem for Memphis titled Gunshots, produced by Grammy-winner Carlos Broady. The song went on to win two American Advertising Awards (Addys) for Best Public Service Radio Commercial and Best Sound, Music with Lyrics.

From 2019 to 2024, Pavé served as Georgetown University’s first Hip-Hop Artist-in-Residence, where he collaborated with composer Carlos Simon on Requiem for The Enslaved, which premiered virtually on November 21, 2021, with the Library of Congress. Pavé brings his loving ancestral veneration practices to the requiem to honor the lives of the GU 272 as well as his own direct ancestors from the once cotton capital of the world, Greenwood, Mississippi. Requiem for The Enslaved features Hub New Music, Marco Pavé, trumpeter MK Zulu, and Carlos Simon at the piano. In 2022, the album was nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition at the 65th Grammys. After a successful run of performances, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, UC San Diego, and Georgetown University, the group had a culminating performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.