Songs of Resistance presents
Reckoning with Rupture: An Adoptee Benefit Show for OMIJA / Brave Futures
Songs of Resistance, in partnership with Keepsake House, is thrilled to present a benefit show for OMIJA. Featuring artists Blue Jay, Jae.ci, and Sunia Won Gibbs with D. Lamar, who will share their songs of resistance against the international adoption industry.
Doors: 7:00pm ET
Tickets: $15-20 donation with $10 drink minimum at the venue
Songs of Resistance, in partnership with Keepsake House, is thrilled to present a benefit show for the Omija. Featuring artists Blue Jay, Jae.ci, and Sunia Won, who will share their songs of resistance against the international adoption industry.
OMIJA is a peer-led formation network for Asian adoptees focused on identity, narrative, and collective support.
Songs of Resistance is a semi-monthly concert series led by Jae Carelli that organizes artists to ignite real change.
ARTISTS
Blue Jay
Justin Gerstle (who performs under the Blue Jay moniker) is a songwriter, poet, and transracial adoptee based in New York City. His folk-style tunes often explore themes of identity and belonging, using song to process loss and celebrate the ways in which lives intersect.
Justin serves on Keepsake House's 2026 Artist Advisory Board, and Blue Jay has previously performed in the Keepsake House show, The Writers Room at Meadowlark Festival (2025) as well as the Songs of Resistance show, Building Belonging.
Jae.ci
Jae Carelli is a vocalist, musician, songwriter, and voice pedagogue whose work examines duality and identity through voice and sound. Jae navigates the space across binaries to explore the capabilities of voice as a key marker of identity, which guides their artistic expression as a transracial adoptee and their research with trans/gender-nonconforming singers in their Master’s program at the Voice Study Centre. They released a concept album, American Doll, and premiered their solo show, Homeward Bound, about the 7 core issues of adoption in 2025. Jae is the Founder and Director of Songs of Resistance, and also serves on Keepsake House's 2026 Artist Advisory Board.
Sunia Won Gibbs
Sunia Won is a Korean adoptee, artist, and formation coach whose creative work is inseparable from the work she was made for — the emergence of what is true, and the becoming that follows. Through original songs and stories, she mines what lives beneath the surface: the grief, the beauty, the complexity of identity, and the courage it takes to trust what you already know. Sunia believes that everything we need is already within us — in our stories, our bodies, our lived experience. Raising our voices is resistance. Trusting our experience is resistance. And when we say what is true aloud, in a room full of people, individuals become communities and communities become movements. Her performances are not just concerts. They are invitations to excavate, to trust, and to move. She is the co-founder of The Future Change Makers and the founder of OMIJA, a formation network for Asian adoptees.