Brief Bio
Luci Murphy is a native of D.C. where she is a vocalist who often leads group singing, and has worked as a medical interpreter of Spanish and English. Currently she facilitates a music therapy workshop with D.C. parolees. She has a long history of community activism, especially working with children at risk. She has visited Lebanon to observe Palestinian Refugee Camps, China just before the normalization of relations with the U.S., Brazil for a grass-roots organizing conference, and Cuba to oppose U.S. travel restrictions.
A past president of the D.C. League of Women Voters, she has also served on the Steering Committees of the People’s Music Network, "Health Care Now!,” and Washington Inner-city Self Help. She has also been the convener of the Gray Panthers of Metro D.C., an associate producer of Sophie’s Parlor Women’s Radio Collective at WPFW 89.3 FM, the Pacifica Station in D.C. and member the D.C. Afro Latino Caucus. To facilitate greater understanding between African Americans and Latinos, she tutors anti-racist activists in Spanish. Currently she sings with the SGI New Century Chorus and the D.C. Labor Chorus. In 2007, she received the Paul Robeson Award for Peace and Justice from the Friends of the People's Weekly World. In 2012 the Emergence Community Arts Collective gave her its IN HER HONOR Award. In 2016 she received the JOE HILL AWARD from the Labor Heritage Foundation.
Luci has been performing since her childhood in the 1950s. To reach the members of our diverse human family, she sings in ten languages: English, Spanish, French, Creole, Portuguese, Zulu, Arabic, Hebrew, Cherokee, and ki-Swahili. She draws on the folkloric traditions and musical idioms of all these cultures, as well as her own roots in Spirituals, Blues and Jazz.
