Marco Pavé has been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition Category for Requiem for the Enslaved which tells the story of 272 slaves sold to pay the debts of Georgetown University. Featuring hip-hop artist Marco Pavé, trumpeter Jared Bailey, and Simon on piano, Requiem for the Enslaved explores the sacred and historical, and honors the lives of those bought and sold.

Marco Pavé is a Grammy Nominated, Hip-hop artist and Memphis-raised Muslim writer who uses hip hop culture as a means of personal expression and social empowerment. With a decade's worth of experience in the music industry under the name Marco Pavé, he’s released several EPs, an album, and wrote and staged an opera, Grc Lnd 2030. His writing and music has been featured on MTV News, NPR, and in the Oxford American. In 2015, Marco delivered an inspiring TEDx Talk on how the arts saved his life. During this talk he discussed how "cradle-to-career" arts policy that focuses on infrastructure to support artists can boost the local economy, address poverty by creating pathways to entrepreneurship, and consequently deter crime. As of today, Marco is currently hip-hop artist-in-residence at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.