Commentary
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1968: In Wake of King’s Slaying, Black Chicago was Cloaked In Grief, In Song
In April of 1968, an uprising lit up the West Side of Chicago in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Black Chicago had a special connection to the civil rights leader: Dr. King lived on the West Side in 1966, fighting along with the Chicago Freedom Movement for open housing. Reclaimed Soul…
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Reclaimed Soul: Cuba / Chicago Connections
Okra made the Trans-Atlantic journey on slave ships alongside human cargo. The fact that the fuzzy green seed-laden vegetable is eaten by black folk in the United States is a miracle. A vegetable umbilical cord. But to see okra in Cuba was a metaphor for a very particular shared narrative. One of survival. One of…
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Dance Chicago Dance.
Back in 1980, Chicago was still a national hub for music (like LA, Nashville, and New York are today). During that time, Producer/Promoter/Entrepreneur Eddie Thomas ran the influential Dogs of War DJ record association. Based out of Chicago, they were a record pool famous for breaking a number of seminal disco recordings. Essentially, a record pool…
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Michael Abramson: Pulse of the Night.
What goes on at small clubs is ephemeral by nature: society created and dismantled night after night. A delicate hierarchy composed of drifters, dreamers, and those simply longing to escape. In the mid 1970s, a young white student, Michael Abramson, worked his way into the world of largely black South Side Chicago clubs. He brought…
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The Parishioner: St. Laurence’s Last Days.
This Summer, on the South Side of Chicago, St. Laurence’s is finally coming down. The grounds, which included a rectory and a school, already suffered through a devastating fire and neglect. the Archdiocese of Chicago closed the church in 2002. The former parishioner in the above photo came to pay his respects, fittingly, on…
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Dreaming of Summer with Phil Cohran.
Swooooon. Phil Cohran. Chicago. Those credits (including session all-star Master Henry Gibson) are as lovely as the cover (shot at 63rd Street Beach). I’d love to have been among the crush of lovely brown flesh, on the cusp of the Lake, trying to catch strains of the Artistic Heritage Ensemble back around 1968. He has…
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Terry Callier: You Goin’ Miss Your Candyman.
We lost Terry Callier on Sunday. He was an artist who melded Soul, Folk, and Jazz seamlessly. My first experience with his music is detailed below. This portion of the post was originally posted on Darkjive on October 17th, 2009: I remember where I was when I first heard [“Dancing Girl” by Terry Callier]: the…
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Chicago Poet Avery R. Young’s photo-commentary on the Trayvon Martin tragedy.
Avery R. Young is a local poet, activist, and educator (and I am lucky enough to count him as a friend, too). He champions unconventional showcases for his work, including facebook and taped up on doors (see below). Jive on. more on avery. more on trayvon.
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Don Cornelius: made Soul a household name.
One of the most amazing things about the life of Don Cornelius (and to be clear, this post is about his life… not his death) is the trajectory of his rise to prominence as an ambassador of Soul. Starting out as a radio journalist here on Chicago’s WVON in the early 1960s, he built important…
darkjive.com 