Page 43 - Chicago Reader News Today

May Day Moscow by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, 1928. MoMA, fair use. CHICAGO—Celebrate International Workers Day with a HotHouse special online cultural program featuring Jon Langford & Sally Timms, Marvin Tate, and Bill MacKay, plus shout-outs from activists in the labor movement. Jon Langford and Sally Timms have been performing together in and around U.K. Punk Rock band the Mekons since the early 1980s. This acoustic duo situation is most likely born of pandemic necessity because they priz...

Dagara: Gyil Music of Ghana’s Upper West Region Sublime Frequencies First things first. The gyil is a traditional West African xylophone with dried gourd resonators hung below most or all of its hardwood keys. (A similar instrument is called a “balafon” in Francophone Africa.) It’s usually tuned pentatonically, and its full, luminous tone is haloed with a cicada-like buzz, created by vibrating membranes made from spiders’ egg cases and pasted over small holes cut in each res...

This year’s Black Creativity is a testament to the artists and program leaders who didn’t give up on shining a spotlight on Black art.

Three years of careful incubation have turned her debut album, Spirit Tamer, into a place of solace that welcomes anyone who listens.

John Ingram Brandenburg Jr. of Chicago had previously been identified as a Brad Doe  Four human bodies were discovered buried in a shallow grave on an abandoned farm in rural Lake Village in Newton County, Indiana on October 18, 1983  Brandenburg, called Johnny by his mother, had been drugged and killed by Eyler, who confessed to at least 20 killings before dying in an Illinois prison of AIDS in 1994  Eyler was on death row for the 1984 murder of Danny Bridges, a 15-year-old 

There's no question Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big man. He escaped a painful childhood by immersing himself in the world of bodybuilding.

Amas Musical Theatre today announced the recipients of the third Eric H. Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists, a juried cash and production grant given annually to support the early work and career of a deserving musical theatre librettist, commemorating the life and work of playwright/librettist Eric H. Weinberger (1950-2017), who was a Drama Desk Award nominee for Best Book of a Musical (Wandas World), and the playwright/librettist of Class Mothers 68, which earned Pricilla Lopez a Drama...

click to enlarge "Ngui-Ngon" appears on Tiers Monde Cooperations debut LP. If you follow me on Twitter, you know Im a fan of avant-garde Ugandan labels Nyege Nyege Tapes and Hakuna Kalala. And now and then Ive written in the Reader about current African artists, among them Nihiloxica, Kirani Ayat, and Muthoni Drummer Queen. But Ive long listened to older sounds from the continent—souko...

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times Sitting in her home and sifting through thousands of negatives and photos of prominent LGBTQ activists like Daniel Sotomayor and Dr. Ron Sable, Tracy Baim had a searing memory of taking some of the last pictures of key figures in the queer rights movement while they were still alive and fighting. Although Windy City Times “probably should have shut down a decade ago,” co-founder and co-owner Baim said the media outlet has persevered in spite of financial difficulties, m...

Cities Barack Obama has exploited his youthful stint as a Chicago community organizer at every stage of his political career. As someone who had worked for grassroots “change,” he said, he was a different kind of politician, one who could translate people’s hopes into reality. The media lapped up this conceit, presenting Obama’s organizing experience as a meaningful qualification for the Oval Office. This past September, a cell-phone video of Chicago students beating a fellow teen to de...