On July 20, 2026, an intimate group of artists, ecologists, policymakers, organizers, and culture bearers congregated along a stretch of the Los Angeles River in South East LA for LA Phil Insight’s Braided River. There were many reasons for them to connect but Yo-Yo Ma and Angélica Negrón provided the specific occasion for this gathering. The cellist and the composer were in town to debut Mundillo, a cello concerto that Negrón had written for Ma, and the two wanted to connect with nature in Los Angeles and make a positive impact beyond the concert hall walls. What better place to think about LA’s relationship to the natural world than our beloved, infamously mistreated, often filmed, yet largely invisible waterway, the Los Angeles River?

Movements to restore the LA River have gathered steam in recent years but the road is long and solutions still require more focus and dedication—in particular when considering the southern stretch of the river. Focusing our energy in SELA (Southeast LA), we invited representatives of the local arts community, river advocates, ecologists, designers who seek to depave LA, environmental lawyers, artists, Chicanx poets, and memory workers to convene along the banks of the river at Maywood Riverfront Park. At this meaningful place we were able to investigate deeply intertwined histories: water as a gathering space, water as a vessel for mistreatment and neglect, and also water as a healer and a life-giving relative.

The park is the future site of a long-planned memorial honoring the significance of Sleepy Lagoon, where communities of color were able to enjoy recreation activities and rare access to nature in an area where these resources were scarce. The memorial will also commemorate 1942’s Sleepy Lagoon murder, a dark incident that served as a flash point for the Zoot Suit Riots (or more fairly named the Sailor Riots since it was this faction that incited the violence) and its long-term impact on Pachucx youth. The Sleepy Lagoon Memorial will also honor the original peoples and caretakers of this land and river, the Tongva, as well as those who have inhabited the area more recently.

The location of a chemical mixing facility that burned to the ground in the 1990s, Maywood Riverfront Park was a former superfund site that both holds records of environmental racism and harm and also hope, as community organizations like Communities for a Better Environment and East Yards have come together to secure remediation, park improvements, the memorial project, and an already completed mural produced by the local arts initiative East Side of the River that illuminates the deeply rooted histories of the place. 

Shortly before our event, a crude oil pipeline ruptured in East LA, releasing more than 25,000 gallons of crude oil into the ground and storm drains, which lead directly to the river and all flow downstream through SELA. This forced us to reconfigure some elements of the event while reminding us of the need to right our relationship with water.

While talking about our work and dreams for the river we processed natural, local yucca fibers and wove the threads together into rope guided by Tongva artists Tina Calderon, Christina Salazar, and Helen Salazar. The braiding reflected the coming together of diverse perspectives and underscored our shared commitments and connections. Each segment of rope was tied together to form a circle which, placed atop Mercedes Dorame’s artwork Return to the Place of Mud - Guashna Shyeenaxre, became the centerpiece for a musical performance. The river itself served as a backdrop with Arturo Gonzalez and artists from East Side of the River painting a new mural to mark the intentions of the convening.

Yo-Yo Ma opened the performance with a Catalan folk song played on solo cello, which became a duet with the birds and traffic before he was joined by Angélica Negrón and her frequent collaborator Darian Donovan Thomas in an improvisation based on themes from Negrón’s concerto that would soon after premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The California Flute Duo (Summer Wilson and Lázaro Arvizu Jr.), two of a only a handful of living practitioners of the Indigenous elderberry flute, merged into the current of music and Roberto Carlos and Janet Castañeda of Los Rebeldes Romanticos, who earlier in the day performed in front of East Side of the River’s Agua por Vida mural, completed the soundscape complimented by the ambience of the place itself, water, birds, traffic police sirens, and wind building together into a collective transformation.

To quote Tina Calderon, Gabrielino Tongva, Chumash, Yoeme & Chicana Culture Bearer: “It was a hopeful day in Southeast LA.”