4 Places to Capture Chicago Music


I've been writing for a slew of new publications this year, including a few international sites. I was excited to be contacted by Brilliant Noise Media to craft a story about the best places to hear classic Chicago music for London's Heathrow site, Good to Go. You know I was pumped about sharing Windy City sounds! I supplied details about where to hear signature Chicago blues and jazz. Check out my post here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puerto Rico's Taino Culture

Image
The original inhabitants of the Caribbean region of North America were the Arawak, Taino and Carib  native peoples.  The Tainos are a subgroup of the Arawaks and are recognized as the founders of the island of Boriken or Puerto Rico.  These were the people who offered a peaceful welcome to Columbus in 1493.  They didn't know the cruelty and violence that would follow his so-called "discovery" of the land that they had cultivated for centuries. Despite official government pronouncements that the Taino have been killed off by the massacres and slavery that followed in Columbus' wake, they live on.  As demonstrated in the photo above by  members of  the Puerto Rico Folklorico Dance & Culture Cultural Cente r, Taino traditions, food and names remain strong. Throughout Puerto Rico, town names like Mayaquez, Utuado and Caquas echo the Taino language as do the musical instrument maracas and hamaca or hammock. Legends of Taino warriors, like Hatuey, who ...
Read more

Buju Banton, Dancehall and Homophobia

Image
I've been delving into a lot of frustrating discussions over the last week. On August 28, Live Nation and AEG cancelled a series of shows for dancehall icon Buju Banton, according to the LA Times . The cancellations were a result of pressure from The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center . The organization labels Banton a "rabidly anti-gay reggae singer" and a "murder music singer." I find both descriptions inaccurate and insultingly simplistic. Banton brilliantly creates heartfelt, socially aware music that reflects the struggles and concerns of Jamaican culture. The majority of his 21-year career has been spent uplifting and encouraging his listeners. He is being attacked for one song that he wrote when he was 15-years-old. Banton is now 36. My frustration is with the many Americans, some very good friends, who don't understand that this is a much deeper concern than one anti-gay song. This involves understanding Jamaican culture and a strongly entrenched iss...
Read more

Traveling Through A Liberian Childhood

Image
I like to explore the world with books as much as I like to actually travel. A well-written narrative can transport you to places that you'd never experience with just superficial details like photos and descriptions. I've been interviewing writers about the criteria they use to select books for Summer reading and it made me think about my own general reading criteria. As a journalist, I'm really drawn to biographies, autobiographies and memoirs more than fiction. There's something about using the facts to entice readers into your world that gets me. It's no coincidence that some of my favorite writers--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zora Neale Hurston, Hemingway, started out as journalists. So when I glimpsed The House at Sugar Beach , at my local bookstore and saw it was a memoir written by a journalist, it was pretty much a done deal that I would buy it. Now it wasn't only that the author Helene Cooper was a journalist, it was that she was a Liberian journalist chro...
Read more