The Black Monument Ensemble is a project created by visual artist, composer, musician, sound artist, deejay, and educator Damon Locks. In 2015, Locks composed Where Future Unfolds using samples from Civil Rights-era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational palette to perform on drum machine. The project evolved into a 15-piece group featuring some of Chicago's most notable vanguard musicians. As Locks' work evolved, it intersected jazz, improv, gospel, hip-hop, and electronica. BME's first full performance of Where Future Unfolds was recorded at Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory during the Red Bull Music Festival in 2018. In the spring of 2019, an album documenting the concert was released by International Anthem. 2021's Now responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and the killings of unarmed Black citizens by police and an internationally consequential U.S. presidential campaign with a coherent narrative expressing anger, grief, and relentless hope.