darkjive

It’s about to go down.  Old Soul 45’s spun with love at the Morseland.  Selections by me (DJ Ayana) and Gaucho.  Join us this Thursday November 12 starting at 9:30pm.  No Cover.  The Morseland is located at  1218 West Morse in Chicago (just blocks from Sheridan). Here’s a sample of some of the proudly local grooves we’ll feature….

In class recently, I played a piece of audio by Damali Ayo called “Living Flag” in which Ms. Ayo attempts to Panhandle for Reparations: collecting from whites, distributing her change to fellow Blacks.  You can listen to the piece here.

 At the culmination of the piece, I tried to convince my teenage students that the idea of Reparations for the Descendants of Slaves is not boring and really does effect them (as does the Lingering Scars of Slavery).  All but one are Black, all but two descendants of slaves.  Maybe I should take them on a fieldtrip…. 

In the world of Shepsu Aakhu’s play entitled “Ten Square” (showing now at Truman College), a grassroots Reparations Movement was ultimately successful, resulting in checks written to the descendants of slaves and the seeds for a new America were sown. Ten Square is one of the cities (the land located South of Roosevelt Road in present-day Chicago, walled off from greener North Chicago) that emerged in “New America”.  In the play, what develops is a Berlin Wall-style scenario, from which more than a few African-Americans have plotted their escape.  What follows is an oft-violent tale of one man trying to balance a boatload of obligations in a new gritty world.

“Ten Square” will be performed as a coproduction of the Pegasus Players and MPAACT Theatre Companies.  The show will go on at Truman College on Wilson Ave. (in view of the Wilson Stop on the CTA Red Line).

Truman College- O’Rourke Theatre
1145 West Wilson Avenue Chicago

Now Thru – Nov 22, 2009

Thurs-Saturday, showtime at 8pm, Sunday showtime is 3pm. Ticket Price ranges from $20–$25 

Tickets are available at: www.pegasusplayers.org or www.mpaact.org

more about Damali Ayo’s Living Flag

A woman sits cross-legged, panhandling on a busy city sidewalk. She takes money only from white folks, and gives it to blacks who pass by. Her sign reads: “200 Years of Slavery in the United States. Reparation payments accepted here.” damali ayo is a street performance artist. “I offer people a convenient opportunity to pay for the unpaid labor of African Americans,” she quips. The piece is part of her “living flag.”

Chicago has a vast musical heritage.  It is known for electrifying Delta Blues, known for creating House Music, renowned for it’s particular brands of Chicago Soul and Gospel, and also known as contributing its own twang to 60’s garage proto-punk, jazz, and just about every other genre out there.  Why not loungy folk-pop goodness?

Spanky and Our Gang formed in Chicago in 1966 when Elaine McFarlane was working as a singing waitress at a local club called Mother Blues.  Club owner Curly Tait offered her a chance to form a group to open for his featured acts. She quickly recruited Nigel Pickering and Oz Bach.

With McFarlane playing washboard and kazoo, Pickering on guitar and Bach on bass, the trio jokingly began calling themselves Spanky and Our Gang, playing on their singer’s nickname. Eventually guitarist Malcolm Hale was added to the roster.  A club favorite, the group caught the ear of Chicago’s Mercury Records, and their first single, “Sunday Will Never Be The Same” was a Top 10 Pop hit.  Four more successful singles followed.  The Windy City begat something breezier.

Sadly, the group hit an insurmountable loss when on October 31st, 1968, forty years ago (almost to the day), 37 year old Malcolm Hale died suddenly of pneumonia (the cause of death is sometimes listed as Carbon Monoxide poisoning).  The group broke up shortly after, but they left us with some Breezy City goodness.

In the mid-’70s, photographer Michael Abramson set his viewfinder on the South Side of Chicago, specifically the many clubs and lounges that served as Hothouses of street fashion (among them, the legendary High Chaparral and the Showcase Lounge). They reflected where blues, soul and disco collided:  a dream of grit and gold lamé.  The resulting photos have been compiled into the book A Light on the South Side.

The Numero Group presents:
A Light On The South Side
Release party, Discussion, and Social
Sunday, November 1st 2pm – 6pm
Chicago Cultural Center
Discussion with Michael Abramson and Rick Kogan in the Claudia Cassidy Theater
Reception in the G.A.R. Rotunda

Following the talk there will be a book signing and reception where Intelligentsia Coffee will be serving a special Numero-inspired creation, the 24-Carat Blend, and the Numero staff will be playing South Side classics in the G.A.R. Rotunda.

(above, Pigasus [the pig candidate for President from the Yippie party] at a rally, Chicago 1968.  classic Windy City protest)

AREA/Chicago announces a publication release / art happening….

(AREA Chicago Art/Research/Education/Activism is a publication and event series dedicated to researching, supporting and networking local social, political and cultural movements.)

AREA #9 Release Party marks the release of AREA #9 Peripheral Vision: A Local Reader Inside and Outside Chicago…November 1, 2009 from 2:00pm till 5:00 pm.

The release party will be coinciding with the closing party for the exhibit/event series titled Demise of the South Side Community Art Center at the South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. (CTA: Indiana stop on the Green Line)

So there will be lots of great things to see alongside two events which are scheduled:

3:00 Peripheral Feminism: Readings by contributors
and 4:00 Performance by Sebastian Alvarez

This issue’s contributions are by/about:

Notes for a People’s Atlas of Calumet, Claire Pentecost, disability activism, Paul Durica, deindustrialization, Stephanie Farmer, Sean Noonan, Compass Group, Hobofest, Jayne Hileman, Ishpeming, Anthony Rayson, Forgotten Chicago, Dinah Ramirez, James Lane, Crandon mine campaign, Sarah Kanouse, Nick Brown, suburban segregation, The Brownlands, Mairead Case, rural pilgrimage, Beth Gutelius, feminism, Dale Asis, Southeast Environmental Task Force, Sarah Kavage, the Burnham plan, Lorenza Perelli, Chicago Otra, Donna Kiser, Erin Moore, immigration detention, Mara Naselli, used bookstores, Sue Simensky Bietila, Mary Patten, donation diasporas, Joann Podkul, MAS, Brian Schultz, ecology, Joey Pizzolato, regional energy, Alex Yablon, Native American sites, Carrie Breitbach, HIV in minority communities, Quincy Saul, Gary, Bert Stabler, Great Lakes waterways, Charlie Vinz, teaching urban studies in the suburbs, teaching art on the south side, Larry Shure, Southworks, Laurie Jo Reynolds, Dan Wang, Nazis in Skokie, No Se Vende, Mike Wolf, Human Action Campaign Organization, Ashley Weger, demolition, Ryan Hollon, Andrew Greenlee, Gloria Ortiz, Steel Shavings, Paul Sargent, slumming, Laurie Palmer, neoliberal poetry, Michelle Lugalia, world systems, Steve Macek, distribution, Rebecca Zorach, Nicolas Lampert, sprawl, Daniel Tucker, Tamms, Carol Ng-He, STAND, Wade Tillett, Nicole Marroquin, CTA, anarchists in the suburbs, Sam Barnett, Chase Bracamontes, Sergei Chrucky, Generations for Peace, Matthias Regan, Just Farming Small Farmers Confederation, parking meter protests, radical memory.

RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=150798202534&ref=ts 

For more info, email areachicagointern@gmail.com

(below, the South Side Community Art Center. The Art Center, which was established as part of the Works Progress Administration’s [WPA] Federal Art Project, has been influential in the development of the city’s African-American artists. It is the only continuous survivor of the more than 100 centers established nationwide by the WPA during the 1930s and ’40s.)

From the Tofu Chitlin Circuit: a Theater Conservatory based in Bronzeville:  A Panel Discussion featuring you…

Our October A La Carte features J. Nicole Brooks, playwright of “Fedra” at Lookingglass Theater and African-American Illusionist Walter King Jr. We’re talking about SPECTACLE. What is it? How does it work? Is it low-brow theater? Is it a cop-out to creating dramatic narratives?
We’ve asked Walter King Jr. to share his experience as an illusionist and how his “magic ” of theater creates a form of SPECTACLE. J. Nicole Brooks, company member and playwright of the highly anticipated “Fedra” at Lookingglass Theater will share in her experience with the company and their approach to creating SPECTACLE.
Join us:
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Digital Youth Network
1050 E 47th Street
Chicago, IL 60653
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Donation: $3

Here’s a tasty slice of funk from the Duke of Earl himself, Gene Chandler.  Masterfully dapper, ever-so-smooth, Chandler gets funky on this Checker side from 1969.  An early version of the Curtis Mayfield-penned track titled “Hard Times”, the record manifests a ’creature feature’ vibe that’s fits this time of year like a rubber mask.

An alumnus of Englewood High School, Chandler is one of the founding fathers of Chicago Soul, having begun recording around 1960.  Click here for my interview with him.  You can’t see it, but that day he wore an O.G. diamond encrusted pinky ring that read “Gene”.  Smooth.

Portoluz, the music and culture organization borne out the ashes of Hothouse, presents a  community wide celebration and art-making event honoring those who’ve left us.

Help create a community ofrenda (see below), and make a calavera (or skull) to take home with you.

Music will be supplied by Jarochicanos, son jaracho youth group.

This event is family-friendly.

Saturday October 31st 3pm-5pm

at S.P.A.C.E. in Evanston

1245 Chicago Avenue

847-492-8860

admission is $5

I remember where I was when I first heard this: the local round-the-way record store.  The carpet was checkered with the maytag logo in bittersweet on brown (harkening back to the store’s past life).  There we stood in a communal experience that began with the shop owner saying, “You’ve got to hear this record”. We stood waiting.  Waiting melted away to awe.  Nine minutes later we knew life was a bit different…just wait for the progression of the track.  It blossoms and eventually bursts.

“Dancing Girl” is from the album, “What Color is Love” (Cadet, 1973).  A great record for a chilled autumn day.

Terry Callier was a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield and co-wrote numerous Chicago Records for artists as diverse as the Soulful Strings, The Dells, and Garland Green.  He spent much of the eighties and nineties as a single father, raising his daughter, Sundiata, and working at the University of Chicago.

He returned to recording in the late nineties to critical acclaim, and released “Hidden Conversations” (his fifth album in 10 years) this year.  It features Massive Attack.

Jive on…. Jive on.