A little relief

It's been something of a grim spring and summer in Chicago. People are being shot and killed at an alarming rate. Monday morning headlines have taken on the regularity of box scores or opening weekend movie grosses. They are just that dependable.

Much of this carnage has been taking place in a concentration of poverty stricken neighborhoods where historical patterns of segregation going back over half a century have all but assured that those neighborhoods stay poor and violent. Rogers Park, where I live, has suffered a bit too, though nothing on the grand scale of parts of the south and west sides. I live in a "mixed" neighborhood in every sense of the word. There is a vast diversity of incomes, races and cultures. There is also a pronounced strain of progressive politics and community engagement that dates back to the 1970s. We've been gentrified, suffered setbacks, and re-gentrified. That progressive streak keeps the gentrification from getting out of control and, at the same time, keeps the violence mostly in check. It's a delicate balance, but one that we are generally pretty good at. This year, though, it began to feel that the violence, even here, was making a comeback.

People are on edge.

Devon & Glenwood, July 12

Hell, I'm on edge. Just a little over a week ago, on a Saturday afternoon, a man was shot and killed on Devon Avenue, just kitty-corner from a hip farm-to-table restaurant that I often eat at. I have no doubt that at least a few diners were still finishing up their brunch on the patio. I heard about it before the media reports broke because my girlfriend was on her way to my place in her car, and a bevy of police vehicles blocked her way. When she asked an officer what happened, the reply was (and I'm paraphrasing here), "One gang banger killed another."

Not quite. The gang member might have been gunning for a rival, but his indiscriminate hail of bullets found someone else. Later on, I learned that our alderman, who was doing some political canvassing right around the corner, heard the shots and saw the killer running away. My girlfriend, because she's chronically late to most engagements, was not in the middle of this. But she could have been.

A couple days later, I was walking up to a cafe that I often go to for both the quality of their coffee and the community engagement that they practice. It's a very cool place and is located on Howard Street, which is still trying to shake a decades old reputation for shadiness and danger. Someone was shot on Howard just a few months ago.

That's when the edge got me. There's no dramatic punctuation to this part of the story, just the realization of the creeping unease that I was feeling walking this same street I have walked a hundred times.

Celebrate Clark Street

This isn't what I was thinking about last night, though. Because last night was the conclusion of an annual party that we throw called Celebrate Clark Street. Here is a festival that indeed celebrates everything that is good about Rogers Park, namely, its stunning diversity. It's about music and food and culture and dancing. It's a profoundly family affair. I've gone for so many years I almost take it for granted, but this year it felt especially powerful. My girlfriend remarked that attendance seemed higher than previous years. Another friend, a Mexican-American who lives in Lincoln Square and was visiting my 'hood for the first time, was most impressed by the family atmosphere.

Thousands of people gathered along a three block stretch of Clark Street, and the availability of cheaply priced Modelo Especial and Dos XX assured that many of them, including myself, were fairly well inebriated. There were definitely a lot of people acting the fool. But there wasn't a single fight. And nobody got shot. By the time Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca played their final notes for an impromptu conga line that featured, improbably, a life size cutout of the World's Most Interesting Man, I was exhausted, sweaty, elated and, I realized, relieved.

Ricardo Lemvo, sweaty dancers, the World's Most Interesting Man

Collectively, it was what we needed. Rogers Park residents have been holding their breath and treading cautiously for months. And I'm certainly not implying that being alert to possible danger is not an essential component to urban life. It is, every single damn day. But another essential component is community, and still another, hope.

Rogers Park has plenty of those, too. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Sound Culture Celebrates its 5th Anniversary

This article was originally published at Agúzate, the website of an organization in Chicago that is dedicated to Afro-Latin music and culture. But, because it fits so well with the overall purpose of this blog, I'm reproducing it in full here. At one point in this interview, we talk about the Celebrate Clark Street Festival and my neighborhood, which I've written about before. Click here and here if you want to check that out.

On to the article... 

This Saturday, May 3, Sound Culture Center for Global Arts will mark 5 years of presenting global music in Chicago with a party at Subterranean in Wicker Park. We at Agúzate know Sound Culture well, having partnered with them to bring Novalima, Orquesta Macabeo, Henry Cole & the Afrobeat Collective and several others to Chicago. I sat down with Sound Culture founder and Artistic Director David Chavez to talk about Sound Culture and the Chicago world music scene.

“I had done programming for different institutions, HotHouse, Uncommon Ground, and Morse Theater” says Chavez, a Chicago native of Salvadoran immigrants who makes his home in Albany Park. “I felt like I was always starting over at each of them…  I saw a chance to build my own community and institution around what I am most passionate about, multiculturalism and music.​  Sound Culture was a vehicle to realize my own vision and mission to expand the audience for international music.”

Sound Culture Director David Chavez

The organization began when Chavez and Amor Montes de Oca (of Arte y Vida Chicago) started programming global music by local and international artists for HotHouse after they vacated their South Loop venue, producing shows at various donated spaces throughout the city. They celebrated their first anniversary with the Nomadic World Music Festival, presenting 10 shows at 5 venues in April of 2010.

When Mayne Stage in Rogers Park opened in 2011, it became Sound Culture’s primary (though not only) venue. “Mayne Stage provides the perfect setting for the majority of my shows” Chavez states. “It's classic but not pretentious, it's open to all ages and accessible, the sound and AV are the best in the city, it's suitable for either a dancing show like Sierra Leone's Refugee All S​tars, or sit down show like the Eddie Palmieri Quartet.” He continues, “They've also been genuinely interested in Sound Culture's programming and as a brand, not just the  ​dollars and cents.”

Chavez had been involved in the Rogers Park community prior to starting Sound Culture. “I'd been programming Celebrate Clark Street (an annual summer festival in Rogers Park) for many years before Morse Theater turned into Mayne Stage. That festival is very special because it has defied the cookie cutter festival landscape that currently exists in Chicago.  It's not about selling beer and listening to cover bands.  It's about celebrating the cultural diversity of the neighborhood both on and off stage.”

As a Rogers Park resident, I can attest to Chavez’ assessment of the festival’s vibe as well as his description of the neighborhood’s diversity. In recent years the modest street party has evolved into a de facto second Chicago World Music Festival.  It’s one of the things I love about living here.

When I ask Chavez about some of his most memorable shows, it’s a pretty long list. “I really try to produce shows that are culturally significant.  And so when you start with that, you set the bar high for yourself from the get go.  Susana Baca, Eddie Palmieri, Gregory Porter, Sargent Garcia, Idan Raichel, Orquesta Aragón, Brownout, Wake Up Madagascar with Jaojoby, Bomba Estereo, O​rchestre P​oly Rythmo de C​otonou, Novalima, Juana Molina, DakhaBrakha… ​I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot.”

Chavez has also been a DJ since he was 18, and he changed his nom de disc to DJ Sound Culture after starting the organization. “The musical aesthetic and message in the artists that I presented on stage was the same as what I was spinning anyway.  So to me, they go hand in hand and provide two different vehicles to carry the same sound culture message, albeit to two different audiences in most cases.“ 

About those different audiences: “I feel like the world music scene is in transition, a good portion is graying but there's also an emerging generation coming into the fold.” Chavez continues, “Apart from wanting to expand the audience for world music across the city I also wanted to expand it to a new generation of globally minded music audience. I've been a key player in helping to develop a global bass scene in Chicago, a predominantly dance music oriented audience that tends ​to erase national borders and cross cultural lines both musically and on the dance floor.”

And that brings us to this Saturday’s anniversary party. The lineup is a slice of everything that makes Sound Culture unique and important.  For one thing, the event is timed to coincide with International Workers Day. For another, it features music from out of town as well as local artists. Finally, DJs will keep the groove going when the bands aren’t playing.  All of the artists fit it well with Chavez’ mission. I can hear the passion as he describes the lineup.

Boogat

“Boogat, from Montreal, is one of those artists that straddle the live and the electronic; his message is often one from an immigrant experience or one of self identity as a minority in an Anglo Francophone culture. Very in tune with the International Workers Day theme. Los Vicios de Papa is a hometown hero also championing human, worker and immigrant rights. They were probably the first real Latin band in Chicago that wasn't conforming to traditional salsa or Mexican regional music and resonating with young 1st and 2nd generation urban Latinos. DJ's Chief Boima and Geko Jones, from New York City, have a new Africa Latina project that celebrates the African diaspora in Latin America.”

Add in other local favorites like SOULPHONETICS, Esso! Afrojam Funkbeat, Las Selectas, the FEx DJ collective (collaborators for this event) and a set from DJ Sound Culture himself, and it’ll be quite a night.

I’ll see you on the dance floor!

Colombia Three Ways

Nope, it's not the lastest chef creation from Las Tablas Colombian Steakhouse.

It's three bands back to back at the Celebrate Clark Street Festival on Saturday. One stuck to tradition, while another applied psych-rock riffs and traced cumbia's migrations to other parts of Latin America. A third incorporated ska and delivered power to the people anthems worthy of the Clash. All three made for an exhilarating (and exhausting) two and a half hours of dancing in the streets.

Dos Santos Antibeat Orquesta - Cumbia may have originated in Colombia, but like reggae it has spread throughout Latin America. As things do when they arrive in new regions, the original chemistry is altered in accordance with local customs. When cumbia arrived in Peru in the 1960s, it was adapted by local musicians and renamed chicha, after the mind-altering corn liquor favored by indigenous locals. At once traditional and modern, it became a psychedelic sound when surf guitars, wah-wah pedals, farfisa organ and other western rock elements were added (not to mention that corn liquor). Dos Santos specializes in this with both original songs and vintage covers. They also explore what happened to cumbia in Panama and other destinations, and I love that their full name is a sly tip of the sombrero to Fela Kuti's African rebel music.  I'm told that the band has only been together a couple of months, but they were remarkably tight, and I'm very eager to hear what they do as they write more songs.

Los Vicios de Papá - These guys are local favorites of mine. Their brand of cumbia is heavily flavored by Jamaican ska filtered through 1970's England and the greatest punk band of all time, the Clash. At least that's the way I hear it. Ska was introduced to England by Caribbean immigrants, and it's sound was adopted by what were known as 'two-tone' bands because they very deliberately included both blacks and whites in their membership when racism and nationalism were flourishing under Margaret Thatcher. No band better represented this anti-racist, anti-colonialist stance than the Clash, who soon turned their insightful gaze on the rest of the world, including the U.S. interventions in Southeast Asia and Latin America, adding a world of rhythms to the original rock and ska. Los Vicios is the sound of Latin America reflected back, and between the irresistible dance rhythms and shouted choruses of "lucha y libertad!" and "pueblo resiste!", it's party music of the highest order. 

Beto Jamaica Rey Vallenato - And finally, the traditionalist, albeit one with an extremely funky electric bass. Beto is an absolute master of button accordion. I think he's right up there with Tex-Mex wizards like Flaco Jimenez and Esteban Jordan. The stuff he was doing, cranking out two or three melodies at once like an accomplished jazz pianist, was mind boggling. Vallenato, for lack of a better term, is country music from Colombia's interior ranching area, and Beto calling himself "Rey", or King of this sound, isn't much of a stretch. In addition to that funky bass player, his band is mostly made up of traditional percussion that churns along at almost superhuman speed. Hearing them after bands with their modern take on tradition was revelatory, and the number of dancers per square foot (and the waving of Colombian flags) certainly attested to the deep appreciation the crowd felt for this taste of home.

And, hey, that's only day one of the festival.

Celebrate Clark Street: The Music

I recently wrote about where I live and why I like it.  I concluded the post by mentioning that a festival called Celebrate Clark Street will take place in my neighborhood this weekend and that I was looking forward to attending it.  I was also asked by arteyvidachicago.com and chicagomusic.org to write a preview of the festival itself, focusing mostly on the music.

Here's the beginning of the preview. To read the rest, click on the link at the end.  Enjoy!
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Fans of world music would be wise to take the Red Line north to Rogers Park this weekend. That’s where the 8th Annual Celebrate Clark Street Festival takes place on Clark between Morse and Estes. The neighborhood is as diverse and eclectic as they come, and the fest embraces this with food, art and music.

About that music: For the past three years, it’s been programmed by David Chavez of the Chicago based global arts organization Sound Culture, which has brought world music artists to Mayne Stage and other venues around the city. Thus, what was already a fun street party has recently turned into a de facto world music festival that ranks among the best of the city’s musical offerings.

Some highlights include:

Click here to read the rest.