At a Persona non grata show, viewers can expect the unexpected.

Persona non grata is a musical group started in 2022 by second-year ethnomusicology student Finn Cragen. Rather than functioning as a traditional band with a fixed lineup, Persona non grata operates as a rotating collective of musicians, bringing in new players to perform and record with him. Cragen previously described the genre of his music as dub-fusion, melding jazz rhythms with Jamaican sounds and other international influences and said he finds trouble categorizing his music as it evolves.

“Calling myself a fusion artist puts jazz on the pedestal, and the primary music style at work here is not always jazz,” Cragen said. “I just feel like genres are kind of not keeping up with what’s going on today.”

That willingness to break convention extends to the stage.

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At concerts, Cragen and Paolo McLeod Pesce, who plays drums and freestyle raps for Persona non Grata, often surprise the audience by spontaneously kissing each other in front of the crowd, Pesce said. At other concerts, Persona non grata has covered people with ketchup and mustard and duct-taped audience members to one another before they jumped at the same time.

“Nobody’s there to see an instrumental jazz guitar group,” Cragen said. “If they wanted that, they could go see Pat Metheny do it a million times better than me.”

Since starting Persona non grata, Cragen has released two EPs – “Driftwood” in 2023 and “SUPERBIRD: IN STERILLO” in 2024 – under the collective’s name as he’s continued to experiment with his sound.

This summer, Cragen said he studied drumming in Ghana under the guidance of UCLA ethnomusicology lecturer Francis Kofi Akotuah. There, he was exposed to different musical styles, adding that these experiences inspired much of his current project, “Cowabunga,” which he is still working on.

Cragen said “Cowabunga” aims to treat these different music styles with integrity as he learns the social and political contexts behind the sounds inspiring his own work.

After initially deciding to quit music in January after experiencing a period of depression, Cragen said he began recording songs in his bathroom for a project in one of his ethnomusicology classes, at times loading his entire drum kit into his bathroom to record songs. The project eventually turned into his latest in-progress album, “Cowabunga.”

“If you put a condenser microphone in the shower? Unlimited reverb,” Cragen said. “It’s insane.”

Pesce said the absurdity of Cragen’s methods has always been part of who he is.

“You don’t really know whether the whole thing is the most genius, meticulously planned-out plan to take over the entire music business and world, or whether it is pure intuition and pure whim,” Pesce said.

Cragen, who can readily recall the exact date of many of his shows going back to 2022, said he believes that it’s his crowd work that motivates people to watch his shows in the first place.

Ficus Boell, a bass guitar player, who performed alongside his cousin at the Corazon Cultural Arts Center in Topanga, said he was also amazed the first time he saw Cragen interact with a crowd on stage. At a later concert they played together, he said he was in awe watching Cragen make good on a plan to fill a squirt bottle with Gatorade and spray people, “so the crowd stays hydrated.”

“The way he can captivate a crowd and keep them there – you can’t be taught that,” Boell said. “I feel so honored to be able to be on that stage with him.”

Boell said when Cragen first asked him to play music together, he was nervous because he was not a classically trained musician. However, he said Cragen was a talented teacher who quickly helped improve his playing and ease his nerves.

Cragen said Persona non grata is closer to a network than a band because he constantly plays alongside different artists.

“He has a whole arsenal of different musicians that come in and learn the songs,” Boell said. “He throws impromptu stuff at them, and he makes it easy enough to where it’s a little spicy, but it’s tolerable.”

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As he brings in new people to perform with Persona non grata, Cragen said it is gratifying to see the artists influence each other. He added that he finds himself learning as he seeks to collaborate with as many musicians as he can.

Boell said rehearsals for concerts often happen the day of the show, bringing people who have never played with each other together only hours before the set begins. He added that Persona non grata’s music is meant to be malleable so performers do not need to worry about perfection when going on stage.

As he works toward releasing his latest project, Cragen said he creates his music as inspiration strikes.

“When I made the stuff that people really resonated with, I never felt like it was all that amazing because it just came out of me,” Cragen said.