Thursday December 11, 2025
At Dodge Alley (Turk & Larkin St.)
Free to attend | No registration required
$15 vouchers for food/drink at nearby businesses first come first serve
TLM teams up with Movement, a local “musical discovery platform” highlighting immigrant musicians, to present a special musical encounter between master musicians for 2nd Thursdays at Dodge Alley. Fresh off the release of her latest album Volver a la Luz, singer songwriter Diana Gameros will share original songs and Mexican classics with her longtime collaborator multi-intstrumentalist Patrick Wolff. Sudanese vocalist Salma Al Assal shares a set of aghaani banaat mixed with reggae and soul (rescheduled from November). The TL’s La Voz Latina organizes early Posada festivities for the holiday season!
Tenderloin Museum continues the 2025-2026 season of “Sounds of the Tenderloin” programs with another “2nd Thursdays at Dodge Alley in collaboration with the TLCBD. This month, TLM highlights the contributions of immigrant musicians and the connections forged by musical collaborations with a concert organized with Movement. The local “musical discovery platform” founded by Ethiopian-American artist Meklit Hadero includes both live concerts and a podcast–nationally syndicated on radio via PRX–featuring interviews with immigrant musicians.
This month’s featured artist is the singer-songwriter and mutli-instrumentalist Diana Gameros. Originally from Ciudad Juarez, Gameros has spent nearly two decades in the Bay Area crafting original songs and gaining a reputation as a compendium of Mexican classics, folksongs, and lullabies. She’s coming off the independent release of a new album of original songs, Volver a la Luz, with a big celebration at the Brava Theater on November 23. She’s also a deft collaborator across sonic styles—TLM first met Diana as a special guest for the Carnatic-fusion trio Alaya Project’s Sounds of the TL program in May of 2025. Shortly after, she dropped in to perform for local Tenderloin org La Voz Latina’s Mother’s Day luncheon at TLM, captivating audiences with her powerful yet intimate arrangements of a dazzling range of Mexicana as a duo with saxophonist/clarinetist Patrick Wolff. La Voz will be present for this December Dodge Alley event, reprising a Posada pot luck that warmed up the alley last year with holiday cheer and delicious food.
Also this month, we’re lucky to include November’s musical guest, rescheduled after a rain-out! Salma Al Assal, a renowned Sudanese vocalist who specializes in aghaani banaat–a repertoire of party music performed by women for weddings and other celebrations. Al Assal–whose name translates to “Sweet Honey Salma”--fuses traditional Sudanese sounds with reggae and American soul. From her hometown of El-Obeid, Sudan to Cairo to the Bay, Al Assal has forged a rousing, original style sure to bring joy to the streets of the TL! The Tenderloin has been home to a large and multitudinous diaspora from the Arab world going back to the 1960s, and at present sports the only explicitly Sudanese restaurant in the Bay Area (Z Zoul). TLM is thrilled to bring a star of the Arab music scene for a free, outdoor concert for the Tenderloin community.
Free, outdoor, music-centric happenings at a once notorious Tenderloin alley began in 2022 through a collaboration between TLM, the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, and longtime residents of the alley. These events were some of the first “Sounds of the Tenderloin” programs, a series of events “animating the TL’s under-sung cultural history through live music” that began with a grant from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, continued with more support from the State of CA’s Museum Grant Program, and now exists as a monthly block party at Dodge Place. Since those initial shows, the alley has benefited from substantial community investment, including a Community Challenge Grant project that brought two stunning murals to the alley and an ongoing grant through the TLCBD to bring monthly music to the Alley along with free food/drink vouchers to spend at adjacent businesses. TLM is thrilled to return to programming Dodge Alley and to grow the vibrancy of this amazing community space and truly urban venue.
Programmed in collaboration with the TLCBD & SF Office of Economic and Workforce Development. A limited number of vouchers for free food and drink at local businesses will be available!