A man with short curly hair is wearing a pale green jacket and a black shirt. He has a neutral expression and is looking directly at the camera. The background is a soft, light-colored gray.
Jay Phillips Center Events

Meet You at the Crossroads: A Salon Concert

April 27, 2025
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Stephen B. Humphrey Theater, Saint John’s University
A salon concert blending gospel-style inspirational music and Somali blues with J.D. Steele (vocalist and conductor), the MacPhail Community Youth Choir, and writer-singer Ahmed Ismail Yusuf (writer-musician)
Curated by David Jordan Harris

Public Concert – All are welcome!

Co-Curricular Designations: AR and Race/Ethnicity

ACCLAIMED CROSS-CULTURAL CONCERT BLENDS BLACK GOSPEL-STYLE MUSIC AND SOMALI BLUES FEATURING JD STEELE LEADING THE YOUTH CHOIR AND AHMED YUSUF PRESENTING PRE-CIVIL WAR SOMALI MUSIC AND POETRY

Two older men smile warmly indoors by a piano, with large windows behind them revealing a city street and trees outside. One wears a tan sweater, the other a maroon sweater over a collared shirt.

This free concert, which is designed to create vital synergies between people of different backgrounds, is sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John’s University and co-produced by the Cultural Fluency Initiative.
Covering “Meet You at the Crossroads,” MPR News said the concert combines “two powerful musical traditions that meet on stage (…) bringing together Twin Cities artists to explore what happens when cultures connect through song.”

Three people sit on stage performing; one man sings into a microphone, a woman sits in the center, and another man plays an oud while singing, all dressed in formal or traditional attire. Microphones and cables are visible.

With music direction by celebrated vocalist and conductor JD Steele, (a member of the legendary Steele Family), “Meet You at the Crossroads” is performed in a unique context of encounter and collaboration that includes a guided conversation, audience interaction, and a musical climax in which the performers improvise together.
Leading an a-list band (which includes Fred Steele on keyboards), JD Steele introduces us to the high-energy MacPhail Community Youth Choir, ages 10 to 15, which dazzled audiences in the show’s first night on April 6. Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, a writer and singer, leads Ardaa, a group of Somali musicians and singers who play unique repertoire popular in the café culture of Mogadishu, from the 1960s to the late ‘80s, before being eclipsed by the Somali Civil War. 

A group of children, dressed in colorful shirts, sing enthusiastically on stage with their arms raised, led by a conductor in a patterned shirt. Microphones and musical instruments are visible in the background.

“Some of these rarely heard songs are still fondly remembered by many Somalis in Minnesota,” Yusuf, the author of “Somalis in Minnesota,” and “The Lion’s Binding Oath,” points out. “We hope many of our community members in the Collegeville area will join us to celebrate our heritage, to keep it alive.”
Steele, for his part, has traveled and worked extensively in East Africa, especially in Kenya, where he founded and leads a youth choir at an orphanage in Shangilia, Nairobi. This group, which has toured in other parts of East Africa, Greece, and the US, is one of his most cherished projects.
The show is staged by curator and performer David Jordan Harris, who has worked extensively with the Jay Phillips Centers, at both the University of St. Thomas and Saint John’s University.
“This is really about the life of the city. There are more cultural groups in the Twin Cities than ever,” Harris pointed out on MPR News. “Yet, do we know each other? How do we learn about each other? And you know, no better method than our musical traditions.”