Aquilla Sadalla is a Chicago-based vocalist, multiinstrumentalist, composer, and educator whose creative career spans more than four decades. Emerging from Chicago’s African-centered creative-music tradition, she performed with Kelan Phil Cohran’s Circle of Sound in the late 1970s and appeared at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1988. She went on to become a defining voice of Samana, recognized as the first all-woman ensemble within the AACM, and has recorded and performed alongside Nicole Mitchell, National Trust, and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble — including the internationally released track “Fly” and the feature documentary Brothers Hypnotic. Her solo catalog includes Cosmos Watching (2008), We Can Change Things (2017), and Inner City Bluze, Vol. 1 (2025). Alongside her music career, she is a career educator and maternal-health advocate developing culturally grounded doula, birth-justice, and workforce-development curricula across Illinois.

Please support Aquilla Sadalla’s Album Release Fundraiser: http://spot.fund/kj5ngsc