MCF Cinco De Mayo 2025 Event Page

Join us for The Miguel Contreras Cinco de Mayo Awards 2025 on Friday, May 2, 2025, as we come together in resilience and celebration. In a time when Los Angeles and our nation are facing new challenges—from devastating fires to shifts in leadership—this event will serve as a powerful reminder of our strength, unity, and the vital role of workers in shaping our city.

Inspired by the legacy of Miguel Contreras, we will honor local Labor Leaders who continue his fight for justice and equity. This evening will be a fiesta—a moment to uplift our community, recognize those carrying the torch, and reinforce that labor is the heart of Los Angeles.

As the main fundraiser for the Miguel Contreras Foundation, in partnership with the LA Fed, your support helps sustain programs that empower workers and their families. Please review the sponsorship levels below and follow the instructions to register.

We look forward to celebrating with you!

GRAMMY-winning bandleader, conguero, and percussionist Poncho Sanchez is among the most influential percussionists in jazz. For more than four decades, he’s stirred up a fiery stew of straightahead jazz, gritty soul music, and infectious melodies and rhythms from a variety of Latin American and South American sources. Throughout his career, Sanchez has held aloft the torch lit by such innovators as Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente and Cal Tjader, embraced by each of those icons and entrusted to carry forward the traditions of Latin Jazz.

Sanchez was born in Laredo, Texas, in 1951 to a large Mexican-American family, but grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles, where he was raised on an unusual cross section of sounds that included straightahead jazz, Latin jazz and American soul. By his teen years, his musical consciousness had been solidified by the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaria, Wilson Pickett, and James Brown. Along the way, he taught himself to play guitar, flute, drums and timbales, but eventually settled on the congas.

After more than two decades in music, Sanchez's efforts paid off when his album ‘Latin Soul’ received a GRAMMY award as Best Latin Album of 1999. Throughout the next decade, Sanchez continued to record, and with his most recent album ‘Trane’s Delight’, he continues to honor the giants whose music has helped shape his own, while building upon the rich legacy they’ve left behind. As this celebratory and heartfelt album exemplifies, he’s long since joined the ranks of the luminaries to whom he pays such profound tribute. Sanchez’s deeply personal reimagining of the jazz canon, as well as his own spirited original compositions, affirm his place at the forefront of Latin Jazz’s trailblazers.

Poncho has recently completed his 31st recording, “Live at The Belly Up Tavern” in Solana Beach, California out March 28, 2025.

Check out a sneak peek of his talents below: