Cleo Reed: 'Is This How Empires Die?' Listening & Dialogue

Cleo Reed is previewing a brand new body of work entitled "Is This How Empires Die?" on election day, November 3rd, 2026 at Silence Please. Reed is inviting their community to experience the soon-to-be-released project together for the first time. In addition, Reed will be in dialogue with community leaders, speaking to the intention behind the work, what it means to document & questions the American experience in its 250th year, and how we, as community, can take action. Is This How Empires Die? is the new EP from multi-disciplinary musician, songwriter, and composer Cleo Reed, an epilogue to their expansive folk-electronic sophomore album CUNTRY. Across four new songs and one live recordings, Reed turns inward to explore survival, inheritance, mutual aid, and the contradictions of the American Dream, drawing from folk, rock, punk, and experimental sound. Raised between New York and Washington, D.C., Reed’s genre-fluid practice is rooted in self-documentation and shaped by musical training at the Harlem School of the Arts and Berklee College of Music as well as years spent in New York’s punk and underground scenes. The EP features “american dream,” “bottom dollar,” “rubber,” and “there will be,” and includes a poem by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Reed has collaborated with Jon Batiste on American Symphony, which earned the 2025 GRAMMY for Best Music Film, and is a 2024 MAP Fund recipient and Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.