Chicago Reader print issue of September 12, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 32)

THIS WEEK

Letters Brady and accountability

04 Street View A nun and the Chicago Marathon

06 Cover story | Policing More than one hundred cops who lied are missing from the state’s attorney’s Brady list.

09 Rule 14 Chicago police’s “you lie, you die” rule FOOD &

DRINK

12 Photo essay The Chicago Urban Ag Crawl promotes south-side food solidarity.

14 Reader Bites Kö e and potato tostini at Tostini

ARTS & CULTURE

16 Books The debut book from the creator of the hashtag #exvangelical

18 Exhibitions of Note Patient Info, Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, ACRE Projects, and more

THEATER & DANCE

19 Preview Spoon River Anthology returns to its author’s south-side home in a new series of performances.

20 Dance Phaedra Darwish talks about reclaiming Middle Eastern stories and dance for Night Out in the Parks.

FILM

22 Feature Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Films by Women/Chicago ’74 with special programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Block Cinema, and Doc Films.

23 Moviegoer The window and the incident

24 Movies of Note The Becomers is a bizarre body-swapping film, I’ll Be Right There explores prioritizing oneself, and Mickey Hardaway feels imperfect but striking.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

25 Galil | World Music Festival An oral history of Ragamala, the festival’s overnight marathon of Indian classical music

28 The Secret History of Chicago Music George E. Lewis embodies a unique strain of musical Afrofuturism.

30 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Zelienople, Tommy Richman, Forest Claudette, and the Lavender Prairie Queer Country Festival 34 Gossip Wolf Idiosyncratic postpunks Beastii celebrate a new record, punk label Red Scare Industries throws itself a 20th birthday party, and more.

Top: Imagine Englewood if (IEi) staff in green— Heavy Crownz, Verna Swan, Michelle Rashad, and Brittani Emmons—with attendees of the third annual Chicago Urban Ag Crawl on Sunday, September 8, in Englewood.

L: Sistas in the Village co-owners Bweza Itaagi and Mecca Bey were participating farmers at the event. R: Chef Jeannine Wise and the team from Good Food is Good Medicine made a panzanella salad with tomatoes from the farms at Growing Home and Cedillo’s Fresh Produce for Growing Home’s Backyard BBQ portion of the ag crawl. MICHELLE KANAAR FOR

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES

EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN

MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY

ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING

PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF

GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND PHOTO RESEARCHER

SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

THEATER & DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID

MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO

CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN

CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA

NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY

ASSOCIATE EDITOR & BRANDED

CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG

DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE

SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA

FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT

SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DMB (D-M BROWN) STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE

MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY

SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER

CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER JIM STRUTHERS

VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER BRIAN BOYER

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER

MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK

MARKETING ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON

GRANTS MANAGER JOEY MANDEVILLE

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY

SENIOR SALES REPRESENTATIVE LINDSAY FIGURSKI

SALES REPRESENTATIVE WILL ROGERS

DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER

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2024 Schedule

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 TO SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

Ragamala:

A Celebration of Indian Classical Music

Chicago Cultural Center

78 E Washington St - 3rd Floor 6pm-8am/All Ages

Saturday, September 21

La Sonora Mazuren (Colombia)

DJ Lápiz & Valanze (Cuba)

Martyrs’

3855 N Lincoln Ave

8pm doors/9pm show/21+

Sunday, September 22

Ustad Noor Bakhsh (Pakistan)

Bia Ferreira (Brazil)

Chicago Cultural Center

78 E Washington St - 3rd Floor 1pm/All Ages

Global Carnival from Old Town School of Folk Music

featuring Ilê Aiyê (Brazil), Flagboy Giz & The Wild Tchoupitoulas (New Orleans)

Millennium Park

5-9pm/All Ages

Monday, September 23

La Muchacha (Colombia)

Vivian Garcia (Chicago)

Empty Bottle

1035 N Western Ave

8pm doors/9pm show/21+

Tuesday, September 24

Canzoniere Grecanico

Salentino (Italy)

Ana Everling and Taraf de Chicago (Chicago)

Constellation

3111 N Western Ave

6pm doors/7pm show/18+

Wednesday, September 25

Fränder (Sweden)

Maryna Krut (Ukraine)

Old Town School of Folk Music Maurer Hall

4544 N Lincoln Ave

6:30pm doors/7pm show/ All Ages

Thursday, September 26

Sara Curruchich (Guatemala)

Menjunje (Chicago)

The Promontory

5311 S Lake Park Ave W 6pm doors/7pm show/All Ages

Friday, September 27

Ana Crisman (Spain)

Maracatu Atômico (Chicago)

The Rhapsody Theater

1328 W Morse Ave 6pm doors, 7pm show/21+

Saturday, September 28

Kavita Shah/Cape Verdean Blues

Project (Cape Verde)

Hamilton park

Cultural Center

513 W 72nd St 3pm/All Ages

Yallah Yallah (New York)

La Tosca (Chicago) Chop Shop

2033 W North Ave 9pm doors, 9:30pm show/21+

Sunday, September 29

Global Peace Party at Navy Pier

La Dame Blanche (Cuba)

Megitza (Poland)

Johnny Blas and the Afro Libre

Orchestra (Chicago)

Cloud Farmers (Chicago)

Hosted by Sonal Aggarwal

Navy Pier Beer Garden

600 E Grand Ave 2-8pm/All Ages

MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON

EDITOR’S NOTE

Brady or Giglio lists are databases of law enforcement officers who have past incidents of criminal convictions, issues of candor, or untruthfulness that would place their credibility in question. These lists or databases are usually compiled by a prosecutor’s o ce or a police department. It’s a legal obligation for prosecutors and police departments involved in court cases (as outlined in the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that the lists’ names

Reader Letters m

Re: “It takes a village to sell a raised bed of produce,” written by DMB (D-M Brown) and published in the August 22 issue (volume 53, number 29)

Really great piece on the Community Food Navigator from DMB . . . it’s a great look at the support structure critical to supporting the growing ecosystem of Chicago farmers. —Joe Engleman, via X

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader threads.net/@chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader

The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

originate from, 1963’s Brady v. Maryland and 1972’s Giglio v. United States) to provide this information to defendants.

Such lists are integral to ensure due process but also shield prosecutors from potentially building a case around public employees and others with credibility issues, which could result in not only injustice but costly exonerations down the line. In a city that accounted for more than half of all exonerations recorded nationwide in 2022 (according to the National Registry of Exonerations), keeping our public o cials accountable is paramount.

With this in mind, reporters Max Blaisdell and Sam Stecklow have been researching Brady lists, the CPD, the office of the Cook County State’s Attorney, and elsewhere for nearly a year, resulting in a series published by us in cooperation with Invisible Institute. Read their latest in this issue (starting on page six) and check out their past reports online at chicagoreader.com. v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

CORRECTIONS

The Reader has updated the online version of the August 22 print article “Will CPD’s response to the DNC bring more of the same violence?” written by Sam Stecklow, Isra Rahman, Andrew Fan, and Layla June West. Additional information from a statement provided by the Art Institute of Chicago after the May 4 action was added to the second paragraph to provide further context.

The addition to the paragraph reads, “The Art Institute of Chicago, in a statement issued after the events, stated that ‘protesters were offered an alternative location to continue their protest on campus that would be safer for all involved, and they did not accept that relocation o er.’ The museum said that after approximately five hours of negotiation between SAIC and a student group, an agreement could not be reached, and ‘arrests were made after protesters were given many opportunities to leave.’”

The Reader has also corrected the online version of “Communal viewing,” written by Zachary Lee and published in the August 29 issue. The first published version of the story suggested that DJ Les Talusan was employed by the Smithsonian. The story has been updated to clarify that Talusan has been a contractor for the Smithsonian but is not an employee of the institution. v

CITY LIFE

NEIGHBORHOODS

Running with the nuns

Sister Stephanie Baliga, a former competitive runner, raises funds and awareness for a mission in West Humboldt Park.

By ISA GIALLORENZO

Yes, there was once a flying nun in a TV series, but here’s what’s happening in real life: we have a running nun in Chicago who raises money for charity using the Bank of America Chicago Marathon as a vehicle. She established the Guinness World Record for fastest amateur female treadmill marathon runner in 2020 and has been endorsed by none other than Mr. T! Truth is really stranger than fiction.

Sister Stephanie Baliga is a 36-year-old nun who serves with a Catholic religious community. Baliga (and her fellow religious community members) contradict nun stereotypes.

She was a cross-country and track star at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and still radiates a contagious, vibrant energy. Always on the go, speaking fast, and smiling generously, Baliga leads multiple efforts to benefit those in need, especially on the west side. Baliga and her community reside at Mission of Our Lady of the Angels (OLA), a church and Catholic mission in the West Humboldt Park area which has a six-building campus on the site of the former Parish of Our Lady of the Angels (which su ered a tragic fire in its school’s basement in 1958 that claimed 95 lives). Today’s OLA does not function as a church within the Archdiocese of Chicago but was instead reorganized in the 2000s specifically to provide outreach to the poor.

To help support OLA, Baliga is in charge of fundraising connected to the marathon, which happens this year on Sunday, October 13. “Team OLA” participants either claim one of the team’s hard-to-get guaranteed marathon entries and run, walk, or roll or support one of the runners on the team through fundraising. Marathon entries for the team are long gone for 2024 (all were claimed by the end of January) but Baliga is already taking wait-list requests for 2025. Team OLA has raised over $166,000 so far this year and has a goal of $300,000, which will go directly to OLA programs that serve West Humboldt Park and to the renovation of a convent building in Avondale. For those interested in running in the 2025 marathon, OLA will have 160 guaranteed entries. Team OLA requires a donation for participants, who often go above and beyond to continue to fundraise for the cause.

OLA was founded in 2005 by Bishop Bob Lombardo. At that time, the main buildings still belonged to the Parish of Our Lady of the Angels, which had been closed by the Archdiocese in 1990 due to an insu cient number of parishioners. In 1999, the school closed, and a previous order in residence, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also left the parish. The neighborhood itself had been in decay, in part due to predatory and discriminatory real estate practices. “When Father Bob arrived in 2005 it was one of the most desperate, needy neighborhoods in Chicago, known for

Sr. Baliga on an early Sunday run ISA GIALLORENZO

tremendous poverty, gang violence, and drug tra cking. The Cardinal [Francis George] in his wisdom wanted Father Bob to establish a Mission at the former Our Lady of the Angels parish not only because of the history and the need, but also to let the neighborhood know that the [Catholic] Church had not forgotten the poor,” explains the website of the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago, the order Bishop Lombardo established to serve OLA. The run-down buildings of the shuttered parish were revitalized with much dedication and generosity from OLA members and supporters. Currently, the campus comprises a church, a convent, a rectory, Kelly Hall (which hosts after-school, evening, and summer programming for youth and families in partnership with Greater Chicago Food Depository and the YMCA), an outreach and retreat center that houses OLA’s food pantry, and a home for outof-town visitors.

In this complex, OLA offers all kinds of services to the “materially poor,” including family programming, workshops for local seniors, community dinners, block parties, dis-

tribution of free clothing and household goods, and a massive food pantry that feeds over 4,000 families per month. Their food pantry is so impressive that it drew attention nationally last year when it was featured on Good Morning America , who dubbed the group “Millennial Nuns” and highlighted the order’s work as well as Baliga and some of her fellow nuns and their surprising activities. Sister Alicia Torres won the Food Network’s competition cooking show Chopped in 2015, and Sister Jaime Mitchell is a motorcycle enthusiast. Whatever skills and interests the nuns might have, they find a way of incorporating them into their work at the mission. Baliga’s story illustrates that: an avid runner since she was nine years old, Baliga won 18 conference championships in high school and was three times all-state. In college, she qualified as the sixth-fastest freshman in the nation.

“My life shattered when my foot spontaneously fractured during a training

CITY LIFE

run in 2008. My body decided it was done with running 65 miles a week,” Baliga wrote in her vocation testimonial. She then decided to go on a Catholic religious retreat on campus, and that changed the course of her life: “From my depressed, injured state, I realized Jesus wanted me, not my achievements,” she wrote. Baliga now uses her running prowess to raise funds for those in need, including a large influx of migrant families. She is so busy with the Mission she can’t really exercise as much right now. When training, Baliga swaps her habit for a running skirt, a T-shirt, and a bandanna, and favors the Lakefront Trail. With a personal Chicago Marathon record of two hours and 53 minutes, she is excited to enjoy the event with her teammates, who focus on prayer as an essential aspect of their marathon experience. Baliga advises her teammates of her beliefs, “Jesus is here to meet you where you are . . . give him some silent time so he can speak to you.” She adds, “I love how running helps me pray.” v

OLA’s Tuesday Pantry serves about 500 families weekly. ISA GIALLORENZO

NEWS & POLITICS

THIN BLUE LIES

The state’s attorney’s Brady list is missing more than 100 cops who made false or misleading statements.

By MAX BLAISDELL AND SAM STECKLOW

On an early summer evening in August 2020, Jonathan Ridgner, a Black cop in his second year on the force, and his white partner, Nicholas Abramson, were driving through Humboldt Park in their squad car when they spotted 26-yearold Leroy Kennedy IV, who is Black, sitting against the wall near a corner store with some acquaintances. Upon seeing the cops pass, Kennedy’s body stiffened and his eyes “enlarged,” according to the arrest report Ridgner authored that day.

Ridgner said that was enough for them to suspect Kennedy was concealing a weapon. Ridgner jumped out of the vehicle and chased after Kennedy on foot. As he approached, he claims Kennedy flailed his arms

and yelled, “Don’t touch me,” before slapping the cop’s hands multiple times. That amounted to battering a police officer, a criminal o ense, Ridgner wrote in the original police report. For this reason, he used an “emergency takedown,” grabbing Kennedy “by the collar” and throwing him to the ground.

After leaving the scene because a “hostile” crowd had started to form around them, he searched Kennedy and found nothing on the young man aside from a few credit cards and a cell phone.

Two of their superiors, Lieutenant Kevin Keefe and Sergeant Nicholas Urban, later signed o on their use-of-force reports. After watching the body camera footage and listening to audio of Kennedy’s arrest, they claimed

to have observed nothing untoward.

But an investigation of the incident by the Civilian O ce of Police Accountability (COPA), released in August 2022, identified glaring holes and “willfully misleading” statements in the o cers’ narratives. Investigators found that Ridgner and Abramson unjustly stopped Kennedy, whose actions they deemed innocuous. They said Ridgner used excessive force by grabbing Kennedy around the throat—not by the collar—before slamming him face down on the sidewalk pavement, which left him dizzy and with multiple welts and bruises on the right side of his face. COPA also found the two o cers crafted a story to justify the attack while laughing about it in their car afterward. COPA ultimately sustained findings of vio-

lations of the CPD’s Rule 14—which prohibits officers from making false statements—and recommended all four be fired.

Interim police superintendent Fred Waller did not challenge COPA’s recommendations to fire Ridgner and Abramson, but he disagreed that supervisors Urban and Keefe violated Rule 14. In August 2023, Ghian Foreman, a member of the Chicago Police Board (CPB) who hears cases when COPA and the police superintendent split on discipline, sided with COPA chief administrator Andrea Kersten and agreed that all four o cers had violated Rule 14 and should be discharged from the CPD. (As of the time of publication, Abramson, Keefe, and Urban are still active-duty CPD employees. Neither Keefe nor Urban has been demoted.)

A CATALOG OF INFAMY

NEWS & POLITICS

Tim Grace, an attorney for local police union Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, who represented Ridgner during COPA’s investigation, defended the cop’s handling of the incident in a statement. “Officer Ridgner was faced with a very hostile and volatile situation and it is clearly our belief that his use of force was within policy,” Grace wrote.

In January, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) placed Abramson on its “do not call” list, one of two compiled and maintained by the SAO that are meant to help prosecutors fulfill their constitutional obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to people accused of crimes. As of the date of this reporting, however, neither Ridgner, Keefe, nor Urban appear on either of the SAO’s lists, even though their Rule 14 violations stem from the same event as Abramson’s.

The trio are among nearly 120 current and former Chicago police o cers with sustained misconduct complaints for lying or making false or misleading statements missing from State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s Brady lists, according to an investigation by the Invisible Institute and the Reader. Although more than 75 are no longer active duty—some retired or resigned while under

investigation for misconduct or when facing dismissal from the department after an unsuccessful appeal to the police board—at least 15 were on the force as of May, based on separation data obtained by reporters from the CPD via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

To conduct this analysis, reporters compared data from the CPD’s Bureau of Internal A airs (BIA) and COPA documenting all of the o cers with sustained Rule 14 violations from 2011 to 2024 against the SAO’s most up-todate lists. Reporters read through hundreds of pages of investigative reports, police board rulings, and arbitration decisions related to these sustained rule violations to verify the data was accurate.

Although tasked with investigating separate categories of police misconduct (COPA handles police shootings, excessive force, and domestic violence complaints, while BIA deals with operational violations, theft, and other forms of criminal misconduct), both agencies can and have sustained Rule 14 violations when there is significant evidence showing officers made “false, misleading, inaccurate, and/or incomplete statements.”

Reporters found that police officers are

The CPD and the SAO did not respond to multiple requests for comment by press time.

Kim Foxx decided to publicly release her “do not call” list, as well as her office’s “Brady/Giglio” policy, for the first time in July 2023. It followed decades of investigations by reporters, lawyers, and oversight agencies that documented repeated failures by the prosecutor’s office to meet its disclosure obligations, resulting in numerous exonerations that have contributed to Cook County being listed as the wrongful conviction capital of the U.S. in recent years.

Foxx’s policy is named after two U.S. Supreme Court rulings: Brady v. Maryland (1963) and Giglio v. United States (1972). Those rulings—buttressed by the Illinois Code of Criminal Procedure and an Illinois Supreme Court rule—require prosecutors statewide to turn over any and all “exculpatory evidence” and “impeachment information” to defense lawyers that could undermine the government’s case or call into question the credibility of its witnesses. Often, but not always, those witnesses are law enforcement o cers.

rarely investigated for making false reports alone. A review of more than two dozen COPA summary reports with sustained Rule 14 violations showed an overwhelming majority included disciplinary findings related to other rule violations. Many came in the context of serious misconduct allegations, such as excessive use of force, unlawful search or arrest, or wrongful discharge of a firearm.

At the end of May, Ridgner ultimately resigned from the department. But, because the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board has yet to begin discretionary decertification hearings—they are scheduled to begin later this year—nothing prevents him from working as a police o cer elsewhere in Cook County and continuing to testify on the state’s behalf.

In fact, in the course of our investigation, reporters found that Nicosia Mathews, another o cer who resigned from the CPD after a sustained Rule 14 violation yet is missing from the SAO’s lists, is now working as a Riverdale police o cer in the southern suburbs. Mathews did not respond to a request for comment. Willie Darkried, Riverdale’s police chief, also did not respond to a request for comment on the department’s behalf.

The first, more stringent list kept by the SAO, known as the “do not call” list, contains 291 names, including 246 current and former members of the CPD. These are officers the SAO has decided prosecutors should never call to testify because their misconduct—alleged or otherwise confirmed by internal affairs investigators, police oversight agencies, or criminal courts—is so egregious that the ocer’s credibility is completely shot through.

The SAO maintains a separate, internal “disclosure” list for o cers who may still be called to testify, but for whom there exists some evidence of past perfidy or wrongdoing that should be given to defense attorneys. (In July, reporters obtained a recent copy of this list via a FOIA request.)

In a summer 2023 interview, Foxx confirmed she views any sustained rule violation or criminal charge against a police o cer—even those that don’t necessarily result in criminal convictions—as warranting disclosure based on her reading of the law. “We’re trying to be as expansive in terms of our disclosure as possible,” she said. “Being less expansive runs the risk of, ‘Hey, was this, in fact, exculpatory?’ and we want to eliminate that.”

Rachel Moran, a University of St. Thomas law professor who has written about the lack of clear rules around the creation and maintenance of Brady lists, said sustained complaints and criminal charges should be disclosed at

Nearly as many Chicago cops with sustained Rule 14 violations are missing from Cook County’s “disclosure” list as are included. JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO READER

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 7

the very least. In a 2016 law review article, she argued that the processes for reviewing complaints are woefully deficient and obscure the true extent of police misconduct. Moran contends that limiting a Brady list to just sustained cases misses many potential instances of misconduct that should be disclosed. She previously told the Reader and the Invisible Institute, “If a Brady list is as thorough as it should be, it will include types of misconduct that both do and don’t impact the reliability of an arrest.”

For Moran, a former Illinois appellate defender, that means both serious o enders, such as o cers who violated someone’s constitutional rights or engaged in “deception” in the past, as well as ones with decidedly more minor o enses, such as tra c violations, should be included. Brady lists should be “expansive enough to track o cers who may have retired long ago or even been fired, but whose misconduct could still be implicating people,” she says.

More than half of the 288 officers on the “disclosure” list appear there for making false statements, many of whom are no longer active duty officers. And yet, based on our investigation, almost as many officers with sustained Rule 14 violations—nearly 120—are missing from the “disclosure” list as are included on it.

For Flint Taylor, a civil rights attorney with decades of experience litigating police misconduct cases, the SAO’s issues in identifying, obtaining, and handing over information that might constitute Brady or Giglio material to defense lawyers are nothing new. In fact, he was one of the attorneys directly involved in the 1981 homicide case that led to the discovery of a vast trove of “street files” used by detectives to solve crimes. These were withheld from defense attorneys for decades, as prosecutors claimed to know nothing about them. Often, those files contained information or evidence pointing to other potential suspects, Taylor says.

By withholding such information from defense attorneys, people can end up wrongfully convicted. This was nearly the case for one of Taylor’s clients, George Jones, until information gleaned from the street files revealed his innocence.

Taylor wagers that sustained Rule 14 violations likely represent a vast undercount of the wider phenomenon of police lying, which he says is part and parcel of the pervasive “code

of silence” in the CPD. This issue was acknowledged by former mayor Rahm Emanuel and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. “You could throw a party every time that they actually sustain a Rule 14,” he says. “What is Rule 14 but the supposed antidote to the code of silence?”

Taylor isn’t surprised that the SAO’s lists fail to include many officers with sustained Rule 14 violations, but he says it’s embarrassing nonetheless. “They’re not even putting those men and women on the list?” he asks incredulously.

It’s likely the SAO is aware that o cers with Rule 14 violations might be slipping through the cracks. Last May, an audit by the Chicago O ce of Inspector General (OIG) documented serious issues with the CPD’s recordkeeping and data-sharing practices specifically around Rule 14 violations. It also noted the serious consequences of the failure to correct these issues: “If a CPD member’s Rule 14 history is not disclosed, the Department risks violating the law which may compromise criminal convictions, undermine criminal litigation, create financial liability in civil suits, and erode public trust.”

In response to the OIG’s audit, the CPD committed to creating a process for notifying prosecutors when a cop receives a sustained

Rule 14 violation, but there is little evidence to suggest they ever did so.

Reporters obtained emails between the SAO and CPD via a FOIA request that appear to show police dragging their feet months after the OIG’s audit. In an email thread between Sonia Brodie, the SAO’s Brady/Giglio officer, and Scott Spears, the CPD’s chief legal counsel, Brodie asks him to confirm that her o ce has an accurate list of cops whom the BIA determined to have violated Rule 14.

“Per our telephone conversation last week, I have compiled a list of CPD o cers with sustained Rule 14 violations from BIA,” Brodie wrote to Spears in October. “As we discussed, our office is requesting a copy of the BIA findings/discipline for each o cer so that our o ce can accurately comply with our Brady/ Giglio disclosure obligations.” What follows are eight pages of redactions: presumably the list attached to her email as an Excel spreadsheet.

More than three months later, in February, Spears still had not responded to confirm that the SAO’s list was accurate or to provide the requested copies of the disciplinary records, prompting Brodie to send a follow-up email.

According to the SAO, there are no other messages indicating the CPD ever responded, at least not by the time reporters submitted

the FOIA request this June.

COPA, which maintains its own records of Rule 14 violations as well as those previously held by the now defunct Independent Police Review Authority, says it has given records of Rule 14 violations to the SAO in the past and would readily do so again.

“We provide the CCSAO with this information upon request and have provided them with a list that includes all CPD members with sustained Rule 14 violations since COPA’s inception,” says Jennifer Rottner, COPA’s spokesperson.

Reporters reviewed correspondence dating back to January 2023 and found no emails between the SAO and COPA in that time period. Come early December, Foxx will turn over the keys to the nation’s second-largest prosecutor’s o ce after eight years at the helm. The tough-talking Eileen O’Neill Burke, a former Cook County prosecutor and circuit court judge, is in the pole position to fill Foxx’s seat after she narrowly defeated the progressive candidate, Clayton Harris III, in March’s Democratic primary. Although former Second Ward alderperson Bob Fioretti, running as a Republican, and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski are still in the race, Democrats have won every Cook County state’s attorney race since 1996, when Richard “Dick” Devine edged

NEWS & POLITICS

Police are rarely investigated solely for making false reports.

out the incumbent, Republican Jack O’Malley.

Asked about Brady violations, O’Neill Burke said in a statement that “mistakes will happen” when prosecutors are overworked and suggested the o ce is understa ed. (Foxx’s office has denied that the SAO is short on prosecutors or that those they employ are swamped with overwhelming caseloads.) If elected to o ce on November 5, O’Neill Burke said she would require every attorney to go through regularly scheduled training in courtroom procedures and the handling of evidence. “By emphasizing the importance of the systems in place, we can guarantee all evidence is tendered to the defense in a timely fashion,” she said.

But when specifically asked what she would do to ensure better record-sharing between the SAO and law enforcement agencies in the county, O’Neill Burke o ered no response. It is unclear if she will leave in place Foxx’s Brady/ Giglio policy, modify certain provisions, or scrap it entirely.

For now, Foxx’s lists remain in use, albeit with glaring gaps and even overlooking ocers who, perhaps, should not be included. More than 30 cops have asked to have their names removed, based on a review of records reporters obtained via a FOIA request. (Foxx detailed the appeals process in the policy document released last July, giving o cers 90

MISCONDUCT

The CPD’s

‘you lie, you die’ rule, explained

The department’s Rule 14 prohibits cops from making false statements.

By MAX BLAISDELL

What if a cop violates Rule 14?

What is Rule 14?

Rule 14 is one of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) 55 Rules of Conduct that all employees are required to follow. In 2019, before she was elected mayor, Lori Lightfoot called Rule 14 the “you lie, you die” rule. It expressly prohibits department staff—both sworn police o cers and civilians—from “making a false report, written or oral.”

In the past, the CPD, COPA, and BIA have all agreed that there should be zero tolerance for o cers who violate Rule 14 because such violations severely undermine o cers’ credibility, a critical aspect of their ability to testify in court. Nevertheless, in May 2023, the city’s O ce of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit showing that more than 100 CPD o cers who lied on the job were not fired.

Can cops appeal Rule 14 violations?

days to contest their inclusion on the lists.)

Robert Regal, a 29-year-old CPD officer who committed a decidedly more minor DUI o ense than Ridgner’s excessive use of force complaint, is still on the “disclosure” list despite paying a fine and completing probation months ago, while Ridgner’s name is missing. Only eight other o cers besides Regal made the list for traffic offenses or DUIs. (Regal has not formally requested that his name be removed. He did not respond to a request for comment.)

No longer on street duty, today, Regal is assigned to train new recruits for the more than 11,780-person police force, the second largest in the country.

Ridgner, on the other hand, joined the Broadview police department in Chicago’s western suburbs in early June, just days after leaving the CPD. He is not on either of the SAO’s lists. v

This story is part of “A Catalog of Infamy,” a series on Brady cops and practices at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ce, Chicago Police Department, and suburban police departments between the Invisible Institute and the Reader. This reporting was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Violations of Rule 14 can stem from false statements or material omissions made in written police reports, court testimony, or interviews with investigators looking into allegations of police misconduct.

For example, in the case of officer Chavez Siler, accused in 2017 of pistol-whipping an unarmed Black man, two other o cers on the scene made false statements in interviews with investigators, denying that they had witnessed Siler pistol-whip the man when they did, in fact, witness the violation.

In another instance, COPA found officer Jonathan Ridgner made a material omission in a 2019 case when he failed to note in a report that he grabbed an unarmed Black man by the throat and slammed him face-first into the sidewalk while making an arrest.

Who decides if a cop violates Rule 14?

Potential Rule 14 violations are investigated by the CPD’s Bureau of Internal A airs (BIA) or the Civilian O ce of Police Accountability (COPA). To sustain a violation, the agencies must find, based on a preponderance of the evidence, that an o cer’s statement is: false, made willfully, and concerns a material issue, meaning the veracity of the statement is likely to a ect the outcome of the investigation.

Allegations of Rule 14 violations may be the initial focus of investigations by COPA or BIA, or they may arise during the course of probes into other potential rule violations.

If an o cer violates Rule 14 and faces termination, they can appeal that decision to an independent arbitrator or to the Chicago Police Board (CPB), an independent, civilianappointed, nine-member board made up mostly of lawyers and policy experts. (More than a dozen CPB hearings are currently on hold amid a legal dispute between the police union and the city over whether arbitration proceedings should be public and whether accused o cers can be suspended without pay while those proceedings are ongoing.)

Either the arbitrator or the CPB can uphold or overturn sustained Rule 14 violations. They can also impose reduced discipline while still maintaining that an o cer did violate department rules.

If the CPB decides to fire an o cer, however, the o cer then has the opportunity to appeal that decision to the Cook County Circuit Court. The entire appeals process typically takes years to play out.

Why do Rule 14 violations matter?

As stated in the CPD’s own Rules and Regulations, “The public demands that the integrity of its law enforcement officers be above reproach, and the dishonesty of a single o cer may impair public confidence and cast suspicion and disrespect upon the entire Department.” v

Sam Stecklow contributed reporting. m letters@chicagoreader.com

JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO READER

POETRY CORNER

Sentimental Journey

A holiday drive to a place that was once ours I tell nobody; just running to the store; it’s too sentimental

By Casey Cereceda

A townhouse with 13 identical twins; ours came with pink tile and laminate countertops Carpeted stairs and a room for each of us; I was the man of the house, sentimental

Garage turned TV room; dry-walled shut; tiled over; a thin layer of grime coats the floor

Spending our afternoons taking turns over who gets to pick the channel, sentimental

A CD player resembling a 50’s jukebox; Any Given Thursday on a Saturday morning Over the roar of a vacuum; cleaning products permeating the bathroom, sentimental

A U-shaped road that wound the block; rough and cracked; an ecosystem of potholes Black rock that baked you on a hot day in July; sentimental

Dribbling against the terrain; sprinting to save the ball from crushing Mom’s flowers

Re-enacting Game 6 in Dallas; South Florida on the map; it was all so sentimental

Two trees that shaded the whole backyard

Both removed after one was uprooted by a hurricane, sentimental

We came home to a hefty trunk on its side, “It just missed the house,” Mom said. So close to losing all that was sentimental

Shielding the block from the commercial eyesore of a shopping plaza, A brick wall you couldn’t see over, kept things sentimental

Abuela walks me across the street to Walmart; looking for a button down shirt with blue flames On a mission to dress me like Dylan Sprouse in Zack & Cody, sentimental

The Dolphins game plays at the bookstore on a TV in the magazine section Two teenage Publix baggers watch with me, sentimental

Back when the mall had stores; we lived in retail heaven Back when the CD’s scanned and played you thirty second samples, sentimental

Did it happen in this life? It couldn’t have. Tomorrow 7-Eleven will introduce their matcha latte Tomorrow I’ll be wandering off; I will get very lost searching for something sentimental

They don’t make places like that anymore; houses for normal people They painted it blue; they named the block Lost Villas, sentimental

I found pictures of the remodel on Zillow, there is little left that’s sentimental December 26th, passing the old house, stopping at Walmart for work pants, sentimental

Casey Cereceda is an educator and musician living in Chicago, IL. Originally from South Florida, he finds inspiration from his childhood. A recurring theme in his work is identity, and how his has been shaped by places of origin and formative experiences related to ethnicity, masculinity, and spirituality.

A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

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Exhibition Closing: A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center

Join us for the screening of A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center and a panel with filmmaker Moyo Abiona, CPC Director of Programs Helene Achanzar, and CPC Poet in Residence Joy Young. September 14, 2024 at 11 AM

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

FOOD & DRINK

PHOTO ESSAY

The Chicago Urban Ag Crawl promotes south-side food solidarity

The third annual community festival is rooted in Englewood and aims to support Black and Brown farmers across the city.

By MICHELLE K ANAAR

The urban agriculture ecosystem in Chicago has grown fivefold in the last 23 years, according to Grow Greater Englewood lead steward Anton Seals Jr. In the past, Englewood has seen the closure of several grocery stores—notably Whole Foods in 2022. However, a growing national spotlight on food insecurity and access to city land has led to the building of a new food system that connects local farmers to land, local consumers, and food-based businesses on the south side, forming a solidarity economy in which stakeholders work together. But, Seals says, there is more work to be done.

To celebrate and grow this agriculture

system, Grow Greater Englewood partnered with Growing Home and the Urban Growers

Collective to host the third annual Chicago Urban Ag Crawl on Sunday, September 8.

About 200 people attended the south-side event, which featured 17 farms and gardens across Englewood, Auburn Gresham, and Back of the Yards, as well as 15 south-side chefs and caterers. This is the first year the crawl has grown beyond Englewood, and Seals says the goal is to expand the event citywide to support Black and Brown farmers all across Chicago.

“Urban agriculture aims to heal the land, make the best use of land vacancies, and connect communities to locally grown food,”

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.

Seals says. Black communities are the hardest hit when it comes to poor access and education around nutrient-dense foods. Sistas in the Village co-owners Mecca Bey and Nyabweza “Bweza” Itaagi teach community members how to grow and eat nutrient-dense foods on their Englewood farm. “Food can either heal you or harm you,” says Bey, who is also a holistic nutrition practitioner. Bey and Itaagi grow fruits, vegetables, and culinary and medicinal herbs. Ninety-five percent of their produce is sold for a low cost at the Englewood Village Farmers’ Market. They also lead seed-totable monthly workshops with local Girl Scout troop number 25694.

Their work is informed by being members of the African diaspora. Itaagi’s love of corn connects her current home and indigenous practices with her Ugandan heritage. There are a lot of growers and gardeners on Chicago’s south side who have the ancient knowledge of caring for plants that can help e ect real change today.

“That’s the history of African Americans in this country,” Seals says. “The enslavement of African Americans was not just about the labor but also the technology that they brought in terms of taking care of the land as stewardship practices.”  v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

L: Sistas in the Village co-owners Bweza Itaagi and Mecca Bey are farmers in the Chicago Urban Ag Crawl. The two met through an apprenticeship at the Urban Growers Collective during the pandemic. “We saw the food crises fi rsthand [during that time],” Itaagi says. R: Javon Cooper and his mother, Sheryl Elder, along with Growing Home workforce development specialist Janice Ellis (center), try different foods at Growing Home’s Backyard BBQ portion of the ag crawl. Cooper is in the current cohort at Growing Home learning to plant and grow produce. “I’m learning sustainability for myself and for my family and the future,” Cooper says.

MICHELLE KANAAR

Clockwise from top le : 1. There’s a trolley stop at Hammond’s Promise Land, 6832 S.

in the Chicago Urban Ag Crawl. The space has two raised garden beds that provide produce for nearby neighbors. 2. A trolley stops at Imagine Englewood If’s (IEI) Peace Garden, 6407

of operations and development at

a

a community

the

out fried

Paulina,

S. Honore. 3. Brittani Emmons, director

IEI, picks out

ripe tomato for

neighbor at IEI’s Peace Garden. 4. Basil seedlings at Growing Home 5. Taesha Goode from

Evolved Network hands

eggplant with Mediterranean pesto, tomato confit, and pomegranate molasses at Growing Home’s Backyard BBQ portion of the ag crawl. The majority of the ingredients were grown at Growing Home. MICHELLE KANAAR

Sometimes, a restaurant is secretly beloved: you never hear about it, but once you mention it, it turns out everyone has loved it all along. Tostini is one of those places. The small Turkish street food spot nestled in East Rogers Park serves Turkish coffee and tea, baklava, a sucuk and egg breakfast plate, homemade soups, spicy chicken sote, and much more. Their namesake and most varied menu item is the tostini—their twist on tost, a classic Turkish panini-like sandwich. Their tostini is a long, crispy wrap stu ed with everything from cheese, spinach, and tomatoes to spiced chicken thighs to gyro-style fillings.

The first time I tried one, a friend and I were rushing to a PO Box Collective class and desperately needed a quick bite. Tostini looked like a cozy respite from a rainy summer day. The chef greeted us at the front counter and, without hesitation, we ordered two co ees. Thinking we weren’t that hungry, we also decided to split a köfte and potato tostini.

As we sipped our coffees, he brought

us our tostini, wrapped in red-and-white checkered paper on a gray cafeteria tray. My friend had the honor of the first bite, and the minute he took it, he looked up at me wide-eyed, then silently walked up to the counter to order a second tostini. And I immediately understood why: it’s rich and satisfying in a way I didn’t know a sandwich could be. The juicy, herb-speckled beef köfte, thinly sliced roasted potato, and tons of melty cheese are all balanced by the crunchy red onion and cabbage salad. Rounding it out is their rich and zesty housemade “T-sauce” that resembles a sort of special sauce you’d find on burgers. All of the ingredients are cradled and held in the flatbread, thin and crisp as if it’s been lightly fried rather than toasted dry. I’ve gone back for it time and again, and each time it’s simply perfect. On warm days, it’s the ideal graband-go on the way to Tobey Prinz beach or meal enjoyed with mint lemonade on the Tostini porch along Morse Avenue. But as the weather cools down, you’ll still find me there sipping tea with my tostini. —SAVANNAH HUGUELEY TOSTINI 1622 W. Morse, $13.94, 773-344-8903, facebook.com/tostini v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

L: There’s a trolley stop at Sistas in the Village, 5800 S. Ada, in the Chicago Urban Ag Crawl. R: Farmer Mecca Bey points out crowder peas to ag crawl attendees. MICHELLE KANAAR

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We-Vibe Couples Vibrators inspire connection, conversation, and pleasure

When it comes to sexuality, intimacy can play a crucial role in enhancing physical and emotional satisfaction. So why not embark on a journey to deepen those feelings of closeness, support, and trust? Whether you’re exploring with a new or casual playmate, or a longtime significant other, WeVibe’s couples vibrators can help you tap into your sexiest, most sensual, and most connected selves together.

“Intimacy goes far beyond the sex act and the physical pleasure in your groin, and far beyond the orgasm itself to ‘How do I want to feel?’” says sex and relationship expert Dr. Jessica O’Reilly. “So you start with the simplest thing—the act itself and the physical connection. And that leads into the more important and more nuanced conversations around feelings, fantasies, fears, boundaries, curiosities, insecurities, and all of these pieces

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that make for more intimate relationships in and out of the bedroom.”

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Chorus: This feature-rich couples vibrator is fully adjustable and comes with a touch-responsive squeeze remote y to offer three times the sensation of an ordinary vibrator and bring both partners to orgasm. Squeeze the remote control to change the intensities—the harder you squeeze, the more intense the vibrations.

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That said, the sky’s the limit when it comes to using We-Vibe’s pleasure products, so don’t be afraid to explore and have fun. When it comes to couples vibrators, she suggests variations like wrapping them around the base of the penis, holding them against the cheek during oral sex, and using them as a finger vibrator for manual stimulation. And because they can be controlled by remote or app, they’re perfect for long-distance play.

To learn more about couples’ vibrators, visit we-vibe.com, and use the c-shape comparison chart to find the right toy for you.

ARTS & CULTURE

Blake Chastain on #exvangelicals

Exvangelical and Beyond charts the rise of right-wing American Christianity.

By EMILY MCCLANATHAN

In 2016, Chicagoan Blake Chastain started the hashtag #exvangelical, a pithy descriptor that quickly took off as an umbrella term for anyone who has left evangelical Christianity. Faith changes are not a new phenomenon, but over the past decade, exvangelicals have found new ways to form community through social media. Their journeys take divergent paths, with some finding homes in different forms of Christianity or religious practice, while others identify as humanist, agnostic, or atheist. Regardless of where they land, the chance to connect with others who understand their experience can be a lifeline. Chastain, who now lives in the Chicago suburbs, continues to contribute to this discourse as a writer and host of the Exvangelical podcast. In his debut book, Exvangelical and Beyond, he charts the rise of right-wing American Christianity, historical e orts to reform evangelicalism, and the modern exvangelical movement. Drawing on history, religious studies, sociology, philosophy, media studies, firsthand interviews, and his own story, he crafts an accessible introduction for newcomers to the topic and provides thoughtful analysis for longtime participants in exvangelical conversations. What follows is an edited version of my interview with Chastain about his new book.

Emily McClanathan: You spend the first half of the book walking through the history of evangelicalism over the past 200 years. You focus on “how the evangelical church went radical” and how it became inextricable “from power, capitalism, and whiteness.” What do you think will be surprising about this history to those who aren’t familiar with it?

Blake Chastain: One of the things that remains surprising for me—especially within my age cohort of being an elder millennial—

REXVANGELICAL AND BEYOND: HOW AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY WENT RADICAL AND THE MOVEMENT THAT’S FIGHTING BACK by Blake Chastain TarcherPerigee, hardcover, 288 pp., $28, penguinrandomhouse.com

to specific efforts to reform evangelicalism from within over the years. Why do you think these reform movements have largely been unsuccessful?

It really comes down to the fact that there are these unspoken norms—whether it’s political or racial or having to do with being more a rming of queer identity. Whenever you deviate from the standard accepted orthodoxy, then you see people being ostracized or their influence diminished. Then [evangelicalism] sort of retracts, and the people that maintain influence dampen what could have been a moderating response. That recalcitrance means that, over time, it has gotten more conservative.

hear about that is if someone had the opportunity to publish a book. But now, with social media, someone can just go on to whichever platform they prefer and find a number of people talking about what it means to leave your faith of origin. I think that that is extremely comforting, because community is such a focus of evangelicalism, and that’s why a lot of people who leave it have a lot of bittersweet recollection of it.

was learning in my late 20s, early 30s, that it actually wasn’t abortion that catalyzed the religious right, that really shaped so much of modern politics. And learning that actually the motivation to become more politically involved was segregation and the desire to maintain, for instance, the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University. That’s what led a number of these leaders to start to work together and rally all of white evangelicalism into a formidable voting bloc.

One thing I appreciate about your telling of this history is how you emphasize that it didn’t have to turn out this way. You point

You also tell the story of the exvangelical movement that has grown so much in recent years, including through the hashtag you coined and your podcast of the same name. Could you talk about the role of social media in helping people find community when they leave a high-demand religion?

People have been leaving evangelicalism for decades, but that type of leaving was often much quieter before. The only time you might

Since 2016, journalists, pundits, and the wider nonevangelical public have often struggled to understand why evangelicals have overwhelmingly supported Trump. You’ve interviewed many exvangelicals over the years, and you also weave your own story into the book. What unique contribution do you think former insiders can bring to cultural conversations about evangelicalism?

I think one of the undervalued skills of ex-evangelicals, exvangelicals, whatever term people use, is really almost a role as an interpreter. I think that that skill is quite valuable in realms like politics, because someone who is evangelical may hear certain words said and receive that information in a different way than a broader audience. So whenever someone has that background, then they are able to surface what the underlying goals might be—especially in an election year when there are sound bites that start to circulate, being able to say, “No, this is what they mean by ‘school choice,’ or this is what they mean by ‘pro-family.’”

You end the book on a hopeful note, writing, “I still choose hope because I believe that the hard-fought lessons exvangelicals have learned can benefit society. As individuals and as a loose cohort, we demonstrate that

Blake Chastain L: EMILY CHASTAIN; R: COURTESY PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

R

it is possible to change your mind, and in doing so, change your life. In our current polarized state, this is no small feat.” As we’re in another tumultuous election season, where are you personally finding hope these days?

It does feel like in the last month or so, there has been a shift from this sense of nihilism, or at least some fatalism about our politics—especially at the national level—being almost a foregone conclusion to there seeming to be possibility. There are still so many aspects, even just within the American context, where there’s a lot of things that need to continue

ARTS & CULTURE

to progress for the greater welfare of us as a people. But I am encouraged that that shift has begun to happen.

I’m less online now than I used to be, but it seems like in some areas our rhetoric is finding a di erent pace or sometimes, even if it’s fractured, it seems more considered. It’s very much a recency bias that I’m thinking about the election, but that is definitely somewhere where it feels like things are possible again. And just the willingness to try something different, I think, is the thing that we all need to cling to. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ARTS & CULTURE

EXHIBITIONS

ROn Remy

Charlip Artists respond to the work of the late dancer and artist.

On view at Patient Info, “Recognize That Your Name Is Already on Every Place You Place Your Feet,” curated by Chris Reeves, is a small, densely encyclopedic look at the work of the late “queer dancer, poet, artist, children’s book author, [and] champion of ASL,” Remy Charlip.

While a presentation of ephemera from Reeves’s personal collection is included in a single vitrine, the show’s format relies primarily on engaging contemporary artists to respond both to Charlip’s historical proposals and one another’s executions of them. The result is spare and well-articulated, if at times a bit flat. This is partially circumstantial, as encountering the instructional pamphlet for A Dance in a Chair in the gallery’s operating room is an appropriately uncomfortable experience, but as one might imagine, does not hold a candle to seeing Camille Casemier’s performances of the work firsthand.

Maggie Wong’s sentimental little interventions of cast daisy chains tucked alongside koan-like texts would tug at the same heartstrings, Charlip or no Charlip. Meanwhile, the methodical yet flailing interpretations of Shir Ende and kindergarten cra -time paper bag puppetry of Max Guy fail to hold up on their own when peeled apart from the prompts.

Give yourself 20 minutes to see the show, but consider blocking out the entire a ernoon to hang around the waiting room looking over the literature. It’s where the heart of the exhibition lies, to Reeves’s credit. Exhibition catalogs, children’s books, and archival texts related to Charlip and his estate fill a magazine rack and have a worthy companion in the modest saddle-stitched catalog produced for the occasion. Ultimately, “Recognize That Your Name Is Already on Every Place You Place Your Feet” is a smart, thoughtful show at home in odd environs. —BIANCA BOVA “RECOGNIZE THAT YOUR NAME IS ALREADY ON EVERY PLACE YOU PLACE YOUR FEET” Through 9/29: Sat noon-4 PM, Patient Info, 902 N. Western, patientinfo.club

R Against domestication

D Rosen exposes the false binary of violence and care.

D Rosen’s primary artistic mediums are their own time and labor, expended in service of “cultivating interspecies friendships.” Rosen’s “day jobs” as an animal caretaker (farmworker, pet sitter, etc.) allow them to both observe and bond with nonhuman animals, who then act as source material, collaborators, and activators of the artist’s practice. This significant investment of the artist’s most precious resource (hours in the day) explains how they are able to mount two solo shows in three months (a new body of work on vampire bats will debut at Comfort Station in November).

In “Elemental Impressions of Interspecies Care, of Violence” at ACRE Projects’s new Lakeview location, the specters of horses, goats, sheep, and domesticated dogs loom. Earthy scents linger in the air—wa ing off

of a muzzle-shaped candle infused with musky, calming valerian oil; a faux fur stole imbued with the smoky perfume Rosen wore for a season (Black Afgano by Nasomatto); and a syringe filled with oil disbursing notes of apricot and peppermint (used as dietary supplements and soothing topical treatments). Sculptures reference the mediating materials utilized in animal care work, including tools ranging from banal (goat scratchers) to brutal (castration equipment). Transformed, preserved, and presented out of pastoral context, these neutralized objects poetically traverse the spectrum of care and violence, concepts that the artist sees as a false binary. They write: “Care can be gross and vicious . . . violence can be so and slow. . . . We live in a universe where both are occuring at the same time and I think it’s important to pay attention.”

These works reference intimate acts: grooming, feeding, breeding, slaughtering (an inevitable end for most livestock). A horse hood embroidered with the words “abolish domestication” reveals how the artist feels about these interventions. The violence we humans inflict upon each other is also mourned; Rosen casts sculptures using reclaimed pewter, taking out of circulation used metal alloys marketed on eBay for bulletmaking. Although no figures (human or otherwise) appear in the exhibition, personal implications are palpable. You will leave feeling complicit in the violence endemic in our culture, especially as visited on our nonhuman companions. —ERIN TOALE “ELEMENTAL IMPRESSIONS OF INTERSPECIES CARE, OF VIOLENCE” Through 10/6: Mon–Wed noon–4 PM and by appointment. ACRE Projects Lakeview, 2921 N. Clark, acreresidency.org/exhibition/elemental-impressions-interspecies-care-violence

RDouble consciousness

“Persistence/Persistencia” charts the evolution of Puerto Rican artists.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has a long history of educating artists of Puerto Rican origin, many of whom moved to study fine arts. “Persistence/ Persistencia” at the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance (PRAA) charts the evolution of this connection from the 1920s

to our contemporary moment.

During the early-to-mid 20th century, the Puerto Rican SAIC alumni featured here largely partook in contemporary trends in painting, adopting existing movements without significant variation—in fact, it wasn’t until the 80s that the artists in PRAA’s showcase began to pay direct homage to their homeland. Yolanda Velázquez Velez’s VOCALES plainly displays the influence of a prominent 20th-century movement which strived to deconstruct aesthetic preconceptions, Institutional Critique, using a chalkboard to display an introductory language exercise—five words, each starting with a different vowel. In a remarkably personal use of an impersonal medium, each word communicates a distinct complication of Puerto Rican identity: aislada, embuste, ignorar; isolated, lie, ignore.

Contemporary Puerto Rican artists reprise this theme, most o en evoking W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness”—the sense of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” The most hopeful incarnation of this duality is Mara Ayala’s Lo Parí, where a ceramic plate depicting a tropical landscape represents exotic, commodity-oriented views of Puerto Rico. Above it, a crisp self-portrait (made using human hair) stubbornly affirms the manifold nature of individual experience in the face of procrustean stereotypes. This tale of two cultures was never simple, but contemporary Puerto Rican artists are navigating more fluidly than ever the complexities that come with being displaced from one’s homeland. —CHARLES VENKATESH YOUNG “PERSISTANCE/PERSISTANCIA” Through 11/16: TueFri 1-7 PM, Sat 10:30 AM-2:30 PM, Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, 3000 N. Elbridge, praachicago.org/ persistence

RVirginia Jaramillo remains indisputably herself

The artist’s first major retrospective Virginia Jaramillo’s “Principle of Equivalence” vivifies the chalk-pale contours of the MCA’s Bergman Family Gallery with a series of luminescent large-scale works that are at turns crisp, curvy, aqueous, and billowing,

while works on and of paper appear barren, dry, curious, and craggy. Beginning with the sparest of geometric abstractions and ending with the scientific stimulus of subatomic particles, this retrospective survey reveals a dedicated artist who labors comfortably and easily within the stylistic idioms of her time, being in fierce and intense dialogue with her contemporaries and yet remaining indisputably herself.

The exhibition is organized chronologically so that one might, with little effort, enjoy the various twists and turns that comprise Jaramillo’s career; one is struck almost instantly by the degree to which Jaramillo’s earliest works seem to have arrived fully formed—as though her aesthetic acorn passed directly into the visage of a venerable oak without ever having been a sapling. In her early, beguiling curvilinear paintings, monochromatic surfaces dissected by razor-thin wisps of candied color display the assuredness of a veteran. The influences of Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still are present, but not persistent.

By the mid-1970s and beyond, the hard-edged rigor of Jaramillo’s geometry gave way to something altogether more mysterious. The acutely taut surfaces that once seemed to embrace the picture plane with such bated breath finally exhale. The glorious deep scorched red earth of the eponymous Principle of Equivalence respires eerily, suggesting heretofore unseen spatial and psychological depths. This numinous breeze ripples through the diaphanous emerald layers of Green Space and the port wine stained Birth of Venus. Jaramillo’s most recent work, epitomized by the theoretical physics of 2021’s Quanta, is an unflinching assimilation of six decades of practice. Like the artist’s life, this show is innovative on its own terms, and not to be missed.

—ALAN POCARO

“VIRGINIA JARAMILLO: PRINCIPLE OF EQUIVALENCE” Through 1/5/25: Tue 10 AM-9 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/virginia-jaramillo-principle-of-equivalence, suggested admission $19 Chicago residents, $10 Chicago students, teachers, 65+, $22 non-Chicago residents, $14 non-Chicago students, teachers, 65+, free on Tuesdays for Illinois residents v

L: Max Guy and Jesse Malmed at Patient Info; R: “Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence” at MCA L: BRIAN JUCAS; R: SHELBY RAGSDALE © MCA CHICAGO

SPOON

9/ 13 –9/22 : Fri–Sun 7 PM; see workinginconcert.org/events/srhf for schedule and tickets; directions provided after purchase, $ 35 general admission via check or Zelle, $ 37 credit card; premium couch seats $ 55 check or Zelle, $ 57 credit card; students with ID $15 check or Zelle, $17 credit card.

HOME THEATER

Spoon River Anthology finds new life in Kenwood

Performances inspired by Edgar Lee Masters take over his former home.

By S. NICOLE LANE

The voices of Spoon River Anthology sound a lot like mine from childhood.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the 1800s or the 2000s—small-towners often fantasize about lives they’d rather live. They hold a thousand memories, carry a broken fiddle, become apple thieves, and dream of the grace that awaits them in heaven.

Edgar Lee Masters published more than 200 poems in Spoon River Anthology in 1915. The di erence between my hometown and Masters’s is that I don’t know what my neighbors said once they reached the pearly gates. All 212 characters in Spoon River recite 244 accounts from beyond the grave. In them, they detail their lives and their woes with postmortem epitaphs located in a fictional town called Spoon River.

In reality, Spoon River, Illinois, was based on real characters from Masters’s hometown of Lewistown, Illinois, 204 miles away from Chicago, which in 2022 had a population of 1,996. Now, 109 years after Spoon River Anthology was published, the characters and their voices will be resurrected within the walls of the Kenwood house where Masters wrote his most famous work.

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and

Working In Concert have collaborated with Jim Block and Ruth Fuerst to create a two-weekend event with three di erent shows celebrating Spoon River’s voices.

Block and Fuerst first moved into their home on the corner of Kenwood Avenue and 49th Street in 1986. Before that, it belonged to a postman, was a co-op for University of Chicago students, and was also the home of Masters, where he wrote the bestselling anthology in the o ce that Fuerst now uses for her psychotherapy practice.

The couple has been brewing this idea for some time now, and they’ve finally given themselves the chance to activate the space and create a once-in-a-lifetime experience for viewers.

When I arrive at the historic home, I’m greeted by seven people involved in the production and direction of the performances, which will be held in the living room.

Block says, “I live here, sort of part of the furniture. But I think I will speak as part of the furniture.”

In 1920, after divorcing his wife, Masters ran away to New York, leaving the house behind. The one thing he took was a Persian rug that he rolled up and threw out of the back window of the house from the second floor. “They had no money, totally hardscrabble,” says Block. The Persian rug was something he could take to a trade fair to earn extra money.

Block tells me that Masters wrote plenty about the home, which is mentioned in poetry and autobiographies. The house as it is now is exactly how it was when Masters lived there, explains the couple.

“What we tried to do was to bring things back as much as we could to the way it was so that it was the house that Masters would recognize,” says Block.

After Masters wrote the anthology, the Lewistown library banned it until 1974. The stories are based on real people and some of the names are even real, which angered folks within the town. But now, Spoon River is celebrated in Lewistown, with cemetery tours, performances, and poetry readings honoring the masterpiece.

The Spoon River House Festival celebrations are split into three themed programs: Spoon River Characters, Spoon River Classical, and Spoon River Cabaret Spoon River Characters (September 13 and 20) is directed by Iris Lieberman, who works with characters ranging from corrupt bankers to sexual deviants.

Spoon River Classical (September 14 and 21) is curated by Carl Ratner and includes song settings by Lita Grier and art songs of the early 1900s. Spoon River Cabaret (September 15 and 22) is curated by Jonathan Lewis, who brought together songs with music director Howard Pfeifer.

their husbands.

“And so that became a challenge putting together the program for the cabaret because I wanted this to be life-affirming. Death is merely a consequence of life. So what is the life that they led? What were the feelings they felt in life?” says Lewis.

Claudia Hommel, a Sunday cast member, notes that if the characters had lived at the time of featured composers like Kurt Weill or Stephen Foster, they would have sung their songs.

The shows (limited to 35 audience members) are intended to be immersive. People will be walking around and circling the audience.

Lewis picked the songs for the performances, honing in on lesser-known so-called B-sides, such as those from Harold Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s 1944 Bloomer Girl , set just before the Civil War. (Arlen and Harburg wrote the songs for 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.)

“We’re not singing ‘Hello, Dolly,’” Lewis says. He chose to avoid songs that were too contemporary—no mention of cars or planes.

“So the challenge was to find things that were melodic and didn’t feel period-specific but could work in the time period because, essentially, Spoon River Anthology takes place from 1860 to 1910, that 50-year period,” explains Lewis.

Moreover, Lewis says that when he read and then reread Spoon River , he found that the men outnumbered the female characters 40 to one. The men in the book had careers and jobs, and the women were described in relation to

Each night has a di erent tone. “There’s a fiddler song, there’s the drunk song,” says Lieberman. “But one of the first things I wanted was to make sure none of the songs were somber or depressing. Yes, they’re all dead. But there’s a lot of humor in these stories. There’s a lot of anger in these stories, and there’s a lot of just life in these stories. What I tell my actors is, ‘You might be dead, but you’ve got one last thing to say.’”

This isn’t a haunted house tour by any means. Lieberman says, “You came back, and you got an ax to grind, and you need to tell these people what’s really going on.”

Characters won’t be dressed in period costumes, either. “They’re working class, rural folk,” Lewis says. The dynamics of illustrating people’s lives through poems and songs will transform their melancholy and give it all of the glitter and glam that the show needs.

“It’s interesting that the Characters , the Classical, and the Cabaret are taking all these disparate performers and ideas, and even styles, and merging them into a cohesive show,” says Lewis. “And then, the different shows and the di erent nights are all connected by the thread of the anthology. The stories shared beyond the grave that Masters so heartbreakingly and honestly illustrated in his collection of poems are finally coming home. I think that’s really exciting.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Props from Spoon River House Festival WORKING IN CONCERT

DANCE PREVIEW

Arab folktales dance across Chicago parks in Raqsah wa Qissah

Phaedra Darwish on reclaiming Middle Eastern dance and stories

By YASMIN ZACARIA MIKHAIEL

“Unlock the mystery of the Middle East . . . try Belly Dancing!”

Posted outside of a Chicago community center, this black-and-white xeroxed flyer, centering a veiled figure, caught dancer and musician Phaedra Darwish’s attention. She notes we may give pause to such an advertisement today, but as a Lebanese American artist, she was pressed to find opportunities to partake in cultural learning outside of her small hometown in Illinois.

Although late to begin dance training in high school, Darwish fell in love with movement and music. In college, she studied music and theater, her talents spanning woodwinds and musicals, and then a company manage-

ment internship soon landed her in New York. Feeling a little lost in the big city, Darwish turned to dance and found the Broadway Dance Center, a studio wherein she could clean the studios to earn classes. From tap to hip-hop, Darwish embraced the fundamentals of a slew of genres. Years later, Chicago became home to her own dance troupes, thanks to a fateful, albeit suspect, flyer.

Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel: I can’t get over the flyer you stumbled upon. What a relic of another era.

Phaedra Darwish: As an Arab American of Lebanese descent, I never felt that mysteri-

RAQSAH WA QISSAH: AN ARAB DANCE FOLK TALE

Sat 9/ 14 1 PM, Brainerd Park, 1246 W. 92nd St. and Sat 9/21 1 PM, Fuller (Melville) Park auditorium, 331 W. 45th St., www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/events/night-out-in-the-parks, free and all ages.

ous and I thought I would like to know what these mysteries are that everyone’s talking about. I would like to explore my own mystery. [Laughs] I’m saying that in jest, but I grew up in a very small town, one of the oldest and smallest Arab Christian communities in the United States. It was never odd or different or even special to be Arab where I was from. I realized then, when I was looking at the sign in Chicago, that my identity was unique, and in Chicago, we might be viewed as the other or exotic.

Can you tell me more about how you fell into the Arab dance community in Chicago?

Absolutely, at that time, things were di erent. Generally, as a dancer, what you will often do is you will pick a master instructor from Egypt or someone that everyone knows is seen as a master. A host will bring them in for what we call a dance intensive. So you’re learning with them for like three or four days; from like 10 AM to 6 PM, you’re dancing with them. At that time, it was not easy to find hosts in Chicago. I studied with my teacher in a folkloric troupe. That troupe didn’t necessarily specialize in just belly dance but forms across the Middle East. I couldn’t find that perfect teacher who would give me kind of what I was looking for. So I scoured the Internet. Now I

will say that’s a very unorthodox method of your dance journey because typically you have like a base teacher who is your foundation. But I bounced around. I kept my eyes on New York City and would fly for a weekend to learn with the masters. I was extremely curious, doing my research, my practice, and here we are.

In a fashion similar to your dance training, you’ve curated a bunch of dance forms together in Raqsah wa Qissah . Although most folks are probably familiar with belly

dance, you’ve curated something more expansive that takes into account diversity in dance across the region, and paired it with folktales also across the region. How did you approach this process?

This whole thing takes a village. It is not just me, that’s for sure. My overall vision for it was to have one grand story that had danceable moments within it, which would cover di erent places in the Middle East. Now, I probably read over 150 folktales, and I realized quickly that I was not going to find this magical folktale which might take us all over the Arab world. Because I was learning at the same time I was researching. I do not doubt that that tale exists, and maybe in a different iteration of the show, I will find it. But in this time, in my research, I did not find that perfect tale.

The regions y’all dance through include places like

SCRATCH

Morocco, Egypt, the Levant, and the Arabian Gulf. I imagine some of the folktales featured commonalities?

I would see a story, read it, and that book said it was from Syria. And then later, I would read the same story in another book and it said it was from Palestine, or this is from Morocco. A lot of the tales, just like any other folktale, cross borders, they cross nationalities, they get a little twinge of this culture put in and that culture put in. I then gave dance-style assignments rooted in specific regions. We have three dance troupes, six dances, and five stories, with live music in the transitions.

This is one of the first times Middle Eastern dance takes space in the Chicago Night Out in the Parks series.

Yes, we get to share art with people who’ve maybe never seen Middle Eastern dance before, expose the public to this beautiful dance form, and educate them in these brilliant traditions. I’m hoping people will make the trip, even if it’s not in their neighborhood. The community is also the audience. It’s not just the performers. I’m hoping that they will be curious to see what we have to show them and to join our little community. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Ro-He Dance Troupe KENYA KENTON

FILMFILMFILM

From ’74 to ’24

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Films by Women/Chicago ’74 with special programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Block Cinema, and Doc Films.

By KAT SACHS

If you’re reading this the week before September 17, then exactly 50 years ago, Films by Women/Chicago ’74 (which started on September 3 that year) was underway at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute. Sponsored by the Chicago Tribune, the festival came to fruition when film critic Gene Siskel, who’d attended a women’s film festival in Washington, D.C., boldly suggested in the paper upon returning that the Film Center should host such a festival of their own.

Siskel reached out to two friends: Patricia Erens, a doctoral candidate in film at Northwestern, and B. Ruby Rich, who was then the associate director of the Film Center, which had been founded two years prior and was located at the Art Institute. (Rich also contributed to the Reader and would later become a distinguished scholar, having first written about what she dubbed the New Queer Cinema). Siskel asked them to invite their friends to a preliminary meeting, held at the Chicago Tribune o ces, and the rest, as they say, is herstory.

Beginning Monday, September 23, the Gene Siskel Film Center, Northwestern’s Block Cinema, and Doc Films at the University of Chicago will host several weeks of screenings and events in celebration of the landmark cultural moment’s 50th anniversary. While pared down from the original programming—which featured more than 70 short and feature films by women, as well as discussions and workshops—what’s on offer at the three venues honors the festival’s revolutionary vision and women filmmakers’ contributions to the form since its beginnings.

Agnès Varda’s Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969) screens on Monday, September 23, at 6 PM. For many, this will likely be a Varda film they either hadn’t seen or even heard of, as it’s a deep cut in the auteur’s long career. Having screened at the original festival with Varda’s much better-known film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), it feels like the appropriate choice, as it’s “all about Hollywood and the old hierarchical way of making films,” as Barbara Bernstein writes in the original festival’s impressive

program book (more like a monograph filled with illuminating insight). Also screening at the Film Center is a 35-millimeter restoration of groundbreaking American independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke’s 1963 film The Cool World , set to an iconic jazz soundtrack and following a Harlem teenager who aspires to become the leader of his gang, on Friday, September 27, at 6:15 PM.

Politics are an inherent part of the programming by virtue of these films’ very existence, but didacticism does not necessarily overwhelm the filmmakers’ creative ambitions. For example, Sarah Maldoror’s 1972 film Sambizanga, which screens after Lions Love at 8:30 PM, centers on a liberation movement in Angola but still foregrounds narrative to convey the political message. “ Sambizanga is not, however, just another political tract,” Sharon Russell asserts in the program. “Maldoror does believe that it is the duty of African filmmakers to place themselves at the service of those parts of Africa that are still colonized, but she also believes that the best way to interest people is to tell them a story.” Indeed, Sambizanga is not to be missed.

Two of the lesser-known titles among the six playing at the Film Center are Mireille Dansereau’s 1972 Canadian film Dream Life, screening on Tuesday, September 24, at 6:15 PM, and Swedish director Mai Zetterling’s 1968 film The Girls , screening on Thursday, September 26, at 8:30 PM. The former is one of the films that inspired Siskel to suggest the idea of a women’s film festival in Chicago. After describing what is e ectively the male gaze— Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking concept then only a year old—Siskel wrote for the program that, “Seeing Dream Life gave me an appetite for more films conceived and shot from the female point of view. Not because they necessarily would be better, but because they would be di erent.” It’s unreal to think that just 50 years ago, this was a novel concept.

As part of Conversations at the Edge series at the Film Center, Michelle Citron’s 1980 experimental documentary Daughter Rite

RTHE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF FILMS BY WOMEN/CHICAGO ’74

Mon 9/23 –Fri 11/29, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, Doc Films, 1212 E. 59 th, and Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston siskelfilmcenter.org/filmsbywomen, docfilms.org, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/cinema

screens on Thursday, September 26, at 6 PM. About the film, which explores the relationship between Citron and her mother, Rich wrote, “Daughter Rite is a classic, the missing link between the ‘direct Cinema’ documentaries and the later hybrids that acknowledged truth couldn’t always be found in front of a camera lens.” After the film, Rich and Citron will appear for a discussion.

Doc’s five-week series Echoes of Women/ Chicago 74 runs Tuesdays at 7 PM beginning October 1. It focuses less on films originally screened at the festival and more on those that embody a similar spirit. (Though it does include one of the original films from the festival, Swedish filmmaker Mai Zetterling’s 1964 film Loving Couples, which screens at Doc on Tuesday, October 15.)

South Korean experimental filmmaker Han Ok-hee’s 1977 short Untitled 77-A and Ukrainian filmmaker Kira Muratova’s 1971 feature The Long Farewell screen October 1 at 7 PM; French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras’s Nathalie Granger (1972) screens on Tuesday, October 8, at 7 PM; Robin Laurie and Margot Nash’s 1976 experimental short film We Aim to Please and Swedish filmmaker Marleen Gorris’s 1982 A Question of Silence (which readers of my Moviegoer column might recognize from a recent entry) screen on Tuesday, October 22; and a screening of short videos by French filmmakers working within feminist collectives takes place on Tuesday, October 29, with an introduction by London-based scholar and curator Erika Balsom.

Balsom will also present three short films, by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley, Sara Gómez, and Grupo Chaski, from her influential “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image” exhibition, cocurated with Hila Peleg, at Block on Wednesday, October 30, at 7 PM. On September 25 at 6:30 PM, for Revisiting Films By Women/Chicago ’74, festival organizers Rich and Erens will present a program of short films—some of which screened in the original event—and appear in person for a discussion around the films and the festival in general.

A double feature of films by Dorothy Arzner, who for many years was the only woman filmmaker working in Hollywood, will screen at Block on Saturday, September 28: Craig’s Wife (1936) at 12:30 PM and Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) at 3 PM, which screened in the original series as part of the first-ever retrospective of Arzner’s work.

Madeline Anderson was the first African American woman to direct a documentary. Her

1970 short documentary about Black hospital workers in South Carolina on strike, I Am Somebody, will precede Cinda Firestone’s 1974 documentary Attica on Friday, October 4, at Block, starting at 7 PM. Attica details the 1971 prison uprising, during which 33 inmates and ten workers were killed. “Attica is not only an intelligent film but also an impassioned one,” writes Linda Greene for the festival program. “Its devotion to the prisoners’ cause gives the film its vitality and its justice: Attica unflinchingly places the blame exactly where it belongs, on the authorities and the system they violently enforce, rather than posing as ‘objective,’ and really condoning the o cials’ crimes by evading or obscuring the crucial events and issues.”

Anderson was also among the first Black women to join the New York’s editors union, Local 771; she did so while working on Clarke’s The Cool World. Another such echo abounds with the screening of a news restoration of Jessie Maple’s 1981 film Will on Thursday, October 17, at 7 PM. Maple was the first Black woman admitted to the New York camera operators union in 1973. Most importantly, however, she became what many believe to be the first Black woman to produce, write, and direct an independent feature with Will, which follows a heroin addict who mentors a kid that he and his wife adopt o the streets. Also appearing in person is Bev Grant, an activist and filmmaker who was an early member of New York City’s Newsreel Collective, founded in 1967. Grant’s short 1971 documentaries Janie’s Janie and El Pueblo Se Levanta screen on Thursday, October 10, at 7 PM. This program is presented in conjunction with the Block Museum’s “Dissident Sisters: Bev Grant and Feminist Activism, 1968–72” exhibition, on view starting September 18 through December 1.

There will be two showcases of women-run distributors. The first, of collectively-made films from Cinenova, a volunteer-run organization dedicated to preserving and distributing feminist film and video works, on Friday, October 11, at 7 PM, with archivist and curator Charlotte Procter, a member of the organization’s working group, in person. The second, Animated Films by Women from Serious Business Company, started by Bay Area experimental filmmaker Freude Bartlett in 1972, screens Friday, November 15, at 7 PM. There’s truly something for everyone—because films made by women aren’t just for women. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Just as football fans are excited for their season to have started, so, too, are local moviegoers overjoyed with the abundance of screenings in this and coming weeks. Case in point: Noir City at the Music Box Theatre (September 6–12) and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, now in its 31st year and running through Sunday.

Being a film critic during these peaks is both exhilarating and exhausting. Case in point, again: Last week I wrote about four films and one shorts program for Cine-File, two of them screened at Noir City and the rest at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. If there’s one thing I love more than going to the movies, it’s writing about them, and last week that passion took precedence. As a result, I didn’t see anything in theaters (I know, ugh), but what I watched at home to write about was satisfying in its own right.

For example, Ted Tetzlaff’s 1949 noir The Window kept me on the edge of my seat (couch). Based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich and a play on Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” fable, its premise is straightforward but nevertheless incredibly anxiety inducing—less is more when the stakes are this high. The boy (played by Disney star Bobby Driscoll) witnesses a murder in his apartment building; as he’s a known storyteller, no one believes him, though the neighbors-cum-murderers are alerted to his seemingly outlandish claims. The idea is unnerving, that you know something to be true and are put in harm’s way as a result, but no one will believe you.

But what’s more definitive than security footage? Bodycam footage? I finally caught up with a New Yorker documentary by Bill Morrison called Incident, streaming for free on the magazine’s website. Morrison’s experimental work with

FILM

A still from The Window (1949)

archival imagery, in films such as Decasia (2002), The Great Flood (2012), and Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016), accounts for some of my favorite films ever. I was both heartbroken and astonished by Incident. What Morrison does with archival ephemera to experimental e ect he does just as well with publicly accessible footage (security and bodycam) of a Black man, Harith “Snoop” Augustus, being fatally shot by Chicago police in 2018, presenting, as straightforward and unbiased as possible, the perversion of a system. I felt watching it like I did during The Window, that something can be so terrible and so obvious but still be denied even as it’s happening. In 2023, the city reached a new collective bargaining agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police, which included a provision allowing o cers to turn o body cameras during conversations following an incident and to delete conversations that are recorded.

I’ve also made an e ort these past few weeks, in advance of this prime moviegoing season, to catch up on stu I’ve missed. So I finally watched Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and, unexpectedly, given my feelings about Guadagnino’s oeuvre to date, quite liked it. There’s something interesting happening at almost every turn, and not just with plot. Even when I haven’t liked one of Guadagnino’s films in the past, I’ve always appreciated his very personal style, and to me this feels like the zenith, thus far, of his potential to be a truly great filmmaker.

Back to my regularly scheduled butt-inseat lifestyle this week. Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.

NOW PLAYING

R The Becomers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in its various incarnations, is famously a Cold War metaphor for Communist infiltration and hivemind conformity. Zach Clark’s The Becomers takes the basic plot and turns it inside out so it becomes a bizarre parable about the hideous/ marvelous transformations and marvelous/ hideous consistencies of love in a time of crisis.

To the extent that The Becomers provides explication, the plot appears to involve a race of aliens who come to Earth from a planet wracked by authoritarianism and resource collapse. The aliens take over human bodies, discarding their former shells via copious icky acid vomit. The visitors hope to assimilate and go unnoticed, but two aliens—our ambiguously gendered, nameless protagonists—are in love and try to reconnect. Their happily ever a er, however, is complicated when they stumble into a quasi-Christian, QAnon-like cult bent on destroying the Illinois governor.

Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at

though she is vastly underappreciated, Wanda will drop anything for those she loves, but she finds that her ready availability is holding her back from showing up for herself.

That narrative description only hints at the joyful strangeness of the film. Because the aliens swap bodies, they are played by multiple actors. Background information—and for that matter, any information about what’s happening moment to moment—is limited and abstract; the low-budget effects and stiff acting add to the sense that the whole world is about to fall into oddly shaped plastic pieces at any moment.

The setting is loosely 2020 to 2021, based on the ubiquitous masks, and without ever saying “COVID,” the movie brilliantly evokes the pandemic feeling of unreality and insecurity. Nothing—not politics, not relationships, not identity—is stable; everything is dissolving in that ugly green vomit. And yet kindness somehow still matters, and so does love, even when humans change into something utterly other. Clark has created an apocalypse that is as clunky as it is hopeful. The Becomers is a misshapen, disgusting, genre-morphing gem. —NOAH BERLATSKY 86 min. Music Box Theatre, wide release on VOD

RI’ll Be Right There

A er it became clear that women in the workforce were here to stay, the false ideal of “a woman who has it all” was born. The narrative was pushed that women could simultaneously have careers and families and pursue their passions, and they wouldn’t have to sacrifice a thing. But what if women don’t want “it all”—what if they just want a break?

In Brendan Walsh’s heartfelt indie comedy I’ll Be Right There, Wanda (Edie Falco) is a woman spread too thin. She is pulled in every direction by her family, whether it be her aging mother, her very pregnant and anxiety-ridden daughter, or her troubled and combative son. She is bored of her long-term boyfriend, yet her affair with a woman is equally unsatisfying. Even

Falco brings warmth and wit to Wanda’s character. Her exhaustion with the banality of life coexists with her unrelenting love in a way that’s sincere and entertaining. Wanda is not a woman asking too much from life—she just wants her family to be happy. But she soon realizes that having it all means prioritizing what’s truly important. I’ll Be Right There de ly captures Wanda’s journey to seek happiness for herself, which may be her greatest challenge yet. —KYLIE BOLTER 97 min. Limited release in theaters

Mickey Hardaway

A character study about generational trauma and the weight of expectations, Mickey Hardaway follows the critical decisions of the titular young Black man (Rashad Hunter) struggling to become a successful cartoonist in Los Angeles. Navigating an abusive home life, career struggles, and addiction, Mickey’s story is told through a series of flashbacks during sessions with his newly found therapist, leading to a present-day event with enormous consequences.

It’s certainly not a subtle film, wearing its emotional and psychological trauma on its sleeve. For a debut feature, writer-director Marcellus Cox shows a knack for tackling complex subjects and, with some refinement in technique, could truly have a fully compelling work. At times the performances feel a bit stilted, almost stagelike, with characters presenting their ideas as if they’re speaking directly to the audience instead of having genuine conversations.

The weight of the ideas o en overwhelms the execution, but credit is due for presenting the story without sugarcoating the outcomes and for naming root causes for the myriad ways in which people suffering from devastating conditions fail to reach their potential. This isn’t a miraculous tale of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, but a glimpse of how life’s circumstances can drive us to take the most desperate and destructive of actions. —ADAM MULLINS-KHATIB 106 min. Pluto TV, Tubi, wide release on VOD v

The Becomers MUSIC BOX

RAGAMALA: A CELEBRATION OF INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC

Presented by DCASE in collaboration with the South Asia Institute and South Asian Classical Music Society–Chicago. Emceed by Brian Keigher from People of Rhythm Productions. Fri 9/20–Sat 9/21, 6 PM–8 AM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, third floor, all ages

In fall 2013, Chicago’s Department of Cultural A airs and Special Events kicked off its annual World Music Festival with an ambitious new program: an overnight celebration of Indian classical music called Ragamala. According to Ragamala cofounder and DCASE performing arts programmer CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO, the event drew enthusiastic crowds from the jump. In the years since, it’s become a beloved institution.

Ragamala’s usual home, the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, holds around 600 people when it’s filled with chairs for a concert, and Ragamala can fit maybe 800 at a time because listeners also like to sit on the floor or lie on mats, blankets, and sleeping bags. Total attendance averages 2,500 to 3,000 due to turnover as people come and go throughout the 14 hours of the event. Even the 24hour Ragas Live Festival in Brooklyn, a ticketed concert, only draws around 1,500 people—Ragamala is one of the most popular marathons of Indian classical music in the States in part because it’s completely free. The artists at Ragamala practice both of the major traditions in contemporary Indian classical music, Hindustani (from the north of the country) and Carnatic (from the south), honoring the long history of cultural plurality that continues to shape the art form. Ragamala has presented some of the most renowned artists in both traditions, so that the event can be just as exciting for the performers as it is for the audience—especially the performers in a position to feel legitimized by such exalted company. “For me, it was kind of like, ‘Wow,

Onstage at Ragamala 2018, from le : Ganapathi

An oral history of Ragamala

How Chicago’s all-night marathon of Indian classical music became an extraordinary focus of artistry and community, in the words of the people who’ve made it happen

By LEOR GALIL

I’m being seen as someone who can share a bill with these artists,’” says bicoastal Carnatic vocalist ROOPA MAHADEVAN . “That was a boost for me. It was also nice to be seen as an ambassador of this movement.”

For this brief oral history of Ragamala, I talked to ten people—performers, fans, organizers, and other sta —who’ve had a hand in making it a cornerstone of the World Music Festival. According to Ragamala cofounder BRIAN KEIGHER (also executive director of the South Asia Institute and a programmer with People of Rhythm Productions), over the years the event has presented a grand total of 141 musicians and dancers, solo or in

combination. And when you consider that it’s booked 25 artists for 2024 alone, you’ll get some idea how many have made repeat visits—another factor that helps Ragamala feel like a community.

Within the parameters I’d set for myself, I tried to cast a wide net. I spoke to Hindustani slide-guitar maestro DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA, who performs at this year’s Ragamala on a tour for his new album, Legacy, with his daughter Anandi and his younger brother, Subhasis. Chicago-based vocalist ASHWIN RODE will make his Ragamala debut next week, after faithfully attending the event for years; he and longtime fan LAURIE

NELSON , who sketches the musicians as they play, talked to me about their time in the audience. Carnatic violinist GANESH RAJAGOPALAN (who shared a Grammy for Best Global Music Album earlier this year) is the third and final 2024 Ragamala performer among my interviewees. I also talked to Carnatic violinist SRUTI SARATHY, who performed with Roopa Mahadevan in 2022 and debuted her trio Unfretted last year; veteran Chicago veena player SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN , who’s appeared at almost every Ragamala; and Radio Outernational bassist WAYNE MONTANA, who’s worked the event as a sound tech for nearly a decade.

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO I remember coming into this role as a programmer of the World Music Festival and thinking, “How could we elevate the festival and create something different and exciting?” Brian Keigher has been a very good friend and colleague of mine over the years, and it’s with Brian where I started doing Indian classical music programming. We have a long track record of doing it within the festival. We were trying to navigate ways to continue to highlight that genre.

BRIAN KEIGHER Years ago [in 2007 and 2008], there was a program called Looptopia, based on a program in Paris; a lot of the institutions were supposed to stay open all night. That was part of the inspiration, like, “Oh, there’s places that will actually stay open all night.”

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO I was at his house, at his apartment, and we’re brain-

Ranganathan on kanjira, Patri Satish Kumar on mridangam, and Saraswathi Ranganathan on veena COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO

MUSIC

continued from p. 25

storming and listening to music. We started talking about how it’s tradition in India—or it’s popular tradition—to have multiday, allnight Indian classical music presentations. I thought that format was really appealing.

BRIAN KEIGHER In India, there’s a handful of festivals that go on all night, similar to this—and with Hindustani classical more so than Carnatic classical, those ragas are meant for a specific time of the day or night. So it’s rare that some of these ragas that were meant for a specific time of the day get performed, because concerts are usually at seven or eight at night. So it was a rare opportunity to showcase some of these rare ragas and get artists to perform music that they rarely get to play onstage.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN I was telling Brian, “Oh my god, you’re helping put together Carnatic music here?” ’Cause it’s always Hindustani music. Wherever I take this instrument, people are like, “Is that a sitar? I know Ravi Shankar.” It’s always going in that direction. So I’m like, “OK, now here’s an opportunity to showcase the ancestor of the sitar, which is the veena.”

classical music overseas—especially in America, where all-night concerts were not much before around that time. This was the first thing I played for that big venue—the open theater [Pritzker Pavilion]. Beautiful.

BRIAN KEIGHER We had Amjad Ali Khan, who’s a major sarod artist, and we had Debashish Bhattacharya, who is a major, Grammy-nominated slide guitarist. They were probably the third-ever South Asian classical music concert to happen at Millennium Park, which was exciting. We had about 8,000 or 9,000 people over at Millennium Park for the concert. We could actually invite—or remind folks—to just go across the street afterwards, [where] the music continued.

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO After that initial experience in 2013, we achieved our goal of convincing leadership that this was something we should do annually and that we should commit to doing. It’s a well-anticipated event; it’s one of the bigger showcases that we produce at World Music Fest.

BRIAN KEIGHER It’s free and open to the public, thanks to DCASE, and it’s an amazing opportunity for folks to get interested in this music without having to spend a ton of money on going to see maybe Zakir [Hussain] or Anoushka [Shankar] at the Symphony Center or going to another concert in the south suburbs.

“It’s one of the very important performing spaces for Indian classical music overseas—especially in America.” —Slide guitarist and Ragamala performer Debashish Bhattacharya

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO Getting approval to have the Cultural Center open after hours took some convincing. I was very appreciative to the then commissioner, Michelle Boone, for being receptive to the idea, because it was a bit out-there in terms of city presentation and how we normally have done things.

BRIAN KEIGHER I partnered with Carlos to do Ragamala as part of the World Music Festival, so we were able to pull it off. We put a bigname artist onstage at Millennium Park and then continued on with the all-night program at the Chicago Cultural Center.

DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA It’s one of the very important performing spaces for Indian

homeland but also developing community. I think it’s an important role that it plays for those communities, but it’s rarer to see it presented in an urban atmosphere.

BRIAN KEIGHER As far as getting all the artists booked, it’s always a puzzle: looking internationally, who’s coming from abroad, who’s here nationally, and then who’s here locally to showcase.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN There was talk about how we nurture Chicago artists too, every year, in addition to the others that we’re inviting; we want to see homegrown artists featured in Ragamala, aside from the other global artists. I think that’s a welcome change, to have our own artists being nurtured on a global platform. That’s actually wonderful.

ASHWIN RODE I moved here from California. I moved in late summer [of 2014], and this thing was happening within a few weeks of my arrival. It seemed really amazing that Chicago supported such an event as part of its World Music Festival. So that was the first time I attended.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN Initially the Carnatic musicians were very few. The Carnatic segments were few—like, one or two—and then the rest of them were the Hindustani artists. But then over the years we have had more presentations of Carnatic music. And then we have had instrumental presentations.

LAURIE NELSON The first time I came, I saw that people brought sleeping bags and pillows, ’cause some people come and sleep for part of it, then wake up and listen to more. So I brought a pillow and stuff, but it turns out I didn’t want to go to sleep—I didn’t want to miss anything, so I just stayed up all night. Afterwards you get, like, a second wind. One time, after staying up all night, I went to walk on the lakefront.

GANESH RAJAGOPALAN The South Indian community, they have quite a big festival called Chicago Tyagaraja Utsavam [in Lemont], which is done in May every year. I’ve performed quite a lot, and otherwise there are other temples and organizations that I’ve performed for near Naperville—more like that, not in downtown Chicago.

ROOPA MAHADEVAN So much of Indian classical music [in the U.S.] is still restricted to the cultural communities that the music comes from—where they live and how they socialize. It’s rare to hear Indian music in a city atmosphere. A lot of it happens in the suburbs, where South Asians generally tend to live, in rented high school auditoriums or smaller theaters—and usually those are attended only by people of that culture. It’s an important function, in terms of helping immigrants feel connected in the States and rooted to their

BRIAN KEIGHER Sometimes we’d hire dancers and have a dance ensemble and music ensemble, ’cause sometimes dance will go with Indian classical music.

SRUTI SARATHY You can play your set, and then you have time to listen to not just one or two [sets], but you can spend the whole night there and experience a lot of di erent music.

ASHWIN RODE I didn’t make it through the whole night, but I stayed quite late. I actually came back for the last set, I remember, because the closing performer that year was Tapan Bhattacharya, who is a resident of Chicago, and who I had actually studied with earlier.

WAYNE MONTANA As the evening goes on, people are lying down and spreading out, and some people are falling asleep. It’s not like any kind of concert that I had ever witnessed before.

ASHWIN RODE An increasing core of people really do stay through the night or stay through those really early morning concerts. For this to work, it requires not just the artists and the organizers but the audience [to have] that same level of dedication and commitment to the event. That’s been, if anything, growing over the years as the event establishes itself.

ROOPA MAHADEVAN [My] first one, I think my slot was 3 AM. It was a unique experience, in the sense that I had never done a public show at that odd of an hour. It’s probably the worst time of day to do anything. You kind of become a little nocturnal and sleep during the day and prep. But there was something electric about that: seeing the crowd and how committed people were to be there for 3 AM. I really appreciated that. Surprisingly, my mind cooperated for the most part. I think I was probably a little groggy and maybe not at peak performance, but I think it’s sometimes fun to do things you’ve never done before.

SRUTI SARATHY I definitely remember one of the years—a friend and I, I think we [performed] relatively early on in the night, and then we stayed up through the whole thing.

There’s the dome in that space, where it gets lighter—I remember very clearly from that night, as the sun rises, it gets lighter, and you can see the light filter in.

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO We have the largest Tiffany dome ceiling in the world. When we turn o all the lights and it’s completely dark, and you have that dome naturally illuminated by the sunlight, it’s just one of those moments that really just makes you smile and appreciate life and all that it has. To have music accompany that experience—and music that is intentionally composed for that hour—it’s just an organic pairing that’s hard to describe.

DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA [Performing] in this beautiful dome, with my sister and my brother, that was awesome. I performed in many India festivals in midnight concerts.

“I didn’t want to miss anything, so I just stayed up all night. Afterwards you get, lie, a second wind. One time, after staying up all night, I went to wal on the laefront.” —Longtime Ragamala fan Laurie Nelson

Getting the opportunity to play in a midnight concert anywhere else than in India, that was an American festival—that was the first festival I think I performed. It was an awesome feeling, and I still feel it; it’s a golden memory.

WAYNE MONTANA The whole audience is sitting, literally, three feet away from the stage. That’s another aspect of it that’s cool; it’s really, like, close. The stage is very low—I think it’s a 16-inch-high stage. People are sitting in chairs that are normal chairs, so they’re often above the musicians, ’cause no one’s sitting up on chairs on the stage. Everyone’s sitting kinda lower than the audience. It’s the only music fest I’ve ever done that is that style.

LAURIE NELSON They’re fully robed, and they sit on the floor instead of standing or sitting on chairs, so it’s nice, flowing lines. So when I draw, I’m listening to the music and absorbing the music, and it comes out through my pencil when I draw it. It’s a nice combination.

ROOPA MAHADEVAN It’s kind of a round audience; people are sitting on the left, right, and the center, as opposed to just straight ahead, so even spatially it’s a unique setup. So all these things contribute to you kind of just taking more stock of how you perform and what you perform.

WAYNE MONTANA I did learn quite a bit from the musicians. Tabla players often are very particular with mike placement; I learned to just let them place the mikes on their drums. Some of them are very attuned to frequency numbers. Being a live sound person and a studio guy who mixes and a bass player and guitar player, I know frequencies. I was kind of freaked out when I was bringing them up in the monitors, and they’d be, like, “Bump 2 dB of 2k in the monitor.” And then, “Cut 500 3 dB.” I’d walk up before the show and I’d hear them playing, and it sounded wicked in the monitor. They knew what they wanted—they got exactly what they wanted.

GANESH RAJAGOPALAN South Indian instruments like the veena, the mridangam, even the tanpura—when you hear it from the aspect of sound, you can see that our instruments are deeper but have lesser reverb than the North

Indian counterpart. When you see the sarod, or the sitar, or the tabla, the resonance of each instrument is long—you can see the resonance going out for a long time. The sarod is a deep sound, but when you hit one note, it stays on for a long time. But when you take the veena, it is short; so the gamakas [ornaments applied to or between notes] are di erent, because of how we do that in South Indian instruments. So the aspect of raga and everything changes because of that—or the traditional understanding of it.

WAYNE MONTANA With Ragamala, it’s always great—world-class musicians in the same room, playing all different types of instruments. Hearing them in that room that has this beautiful, long, like, three-second reverb in it, and hearing how certain musicians play against the natural reverb—they hear how long the delay is, and they’re playing with that, and that’s just a cool thing to see, people who play really well and are sensitive to the room, and they’re interacting with the room.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN Every time, I present Carnatic [music] in a way that people can understand, even if it is complicated. I try to pick ragas and ensure that I have a conversation with the crowd so that they can absorb all the more.

DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA You can see the changes of the time, and the mood, the feeling, the energy, and also the environment is changing. Because at the very beginning, people were naive about Indian classical music. But now, in the United States, whenever we play, I have so many students—I have so many people who already studied music, either from me or some of my colleague musicians or their children. So the culture is going in waves.

BRIAN KEIGHER In 2020 we did an online version of Ragamala, so it was four programs that were streamed online. Then in 2021, the city was still not programming events. That was the only year that the Department of Cultural A airs was not involved. We took the initiative and staged Ragamala at the Second Presbyterian Church.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN That was the only time the venue changed.

BRIAN KEIGHER I figured we had to revive it and do something to keep the name alive, so we staged it at the church and did an abbreviated Ragamala, which was packed and pretty well received.

SARASWATHI RANGANATHAN We were able to get the city to back Ragamala again, and it resumed in 2022—I was part of that also. I have been a fixture of Ragamala for most of the years, except for maybe two or three.

SRUTI SARATHY Last year with Unfretted was really special because it was our first tour as a new trio in the United States. And to have this packed audience that was so enthusiastic and cheering at various points—if you’re in a typical Carnatic space, people are certainly expressive, but not in those ways necessarily. So to hear how that resonated with this Chicago audience, how much people were enjoying it, and how much they were willing to share that with us was really special for our first tour as a band.

ASHWIN RODE I’ve performed a few times for South Asian Classical Music Society and one of the events of Mandala Arts—and Brian was overseeing that event, so that’s how I got in contact with him. [Last] year, he [asked] if I were to participate in Ragamala. I don’t know what the time slot is going to be, but it’s a challenge of my musical career to be able to pull this o at 3 AM or whenever it is. [Editor’s note: Rode performs at 6:30 AM in a trio with Praneet Marathe on harmonium and Dhananjay Kunte on tabla.]

GANESH RAJAGOPALAN After the Grammy win, it’ll be [my] first time in Chicago, so it’ll be wonderful to meet the people there, to greet them and say, “Ah, yes!” [Laughs.]

CARLOS CUAUHTÉMOC TORTOLERO Personally speaking, Ragamala’s the highlight of my year.

DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA When [I’m] brought to play in Chicago festival, I [feel] that I’m playing in India, not in America. That kind of warmth and that kind of excitement, I still have. v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

Indrajit Banerjee, Rupak Kulkarni, and Hindole Majumdar (behind Kulkarni) at Ragamala 2022 BRIAN KEIGHER

THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

George E. Lewis embodies a unique strain of musical Afrofuturism

The trombonist, composer, improviser, and academic expands the definition of “Black music” in uncountable directions.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

Every year the Chicago Jazz Festival presents a memorial to recently departed musicians, projected on a screen behind the stage, and this year the list of the fallen was particularly heartbreaking: it included Carla Bley, Calvin Keys, Richard Davis, Eleanor Collins, and David Sanborn. This got me thinking about celebrating jazz’s living heroes—and these heroes definitely include Chicago avant-garde institution and Renaissance man George E. Lewis.

It’s hardly controversial to say that Lewis is world-renowned as a composer, trombonist, academic, and computer-music innovator, but the world of the avant-garde is a small one, so don’t feel bad if you don’t know his work. I consider Lewis the epitome of Afrofuturism— he enacts the “ancient to the future” motto of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a vital Black arts organization with which he’s been involved since 1971. He’s never lost his mooring in jazz, a quintessentially Black art form, but he’s constantly looking forward, expanding his sound with cutting-edge technology, chance-driven elements, and new philosophies. And he does all this with a playfulness that keeps him from sounding stodgy and impenetrable—he combines his iconoclasm with inviting warmth.

“Improvisation can transcend disciplines to illuminate the nature of being human,” Lewis wrote in an essay for the giving program at Columbia University, where he’s been the Edwin

H. Case Professor of American Music since 2004. “For me, music and the arts are part of a larger network tracing the entire human condition of improvisation, whether it be creating a song, trying new ideas at work, or even crossing the street.”

George Emanuel Lewis was born in Chicago on July 14, 1952. His father, George Thomas Lewis, was a postal worker and jazz fan who’d studied electronics thanks to the GI Bill. His mother, Cornelia Gri th Lewis, loved blues, soul, and R&B. They’d both migrated to Chicago from the south, and they met here in 1950.

on an installment plan. By the time he was 12, Lewis was transcribing Lester Young solos, and he shortly began taking lessons from grad students at the University of Chicago.

During Lewis’s school years, the racist policies of CPS superintendent Benjamin Willis meant that Black students were largely confined to overcrowded facilities in segregated districts—his “solutions” included mobile classroom trailers (mocked as “Willis wagons”) and two-shift schedules that only let students attend school for half a day. (He resigned in 1966, after boycotts in ’63 and ’65.)

Lewis was among the many Black students limited to half days, but fortunately his parents could muster the resources to enroll him in the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools at age nine. They also urged him to pick up music, hoping it would help him make friends at the mostly white institution. He chose the trombone, and they paid for the instrument

One of his classmates, trombonist Ray Anderson, took him to an AACM concert in 1968 to experience the revolutionary playing of tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. About a year later, he heard the groundbreaking Art Ensemble of Chicago on campus. “I was stunned by Joseph Jarman’s body-painted arms, attacking a vibraphone with mallets swishing dangerously close to my nose,” Lewis wrote in his 2008 book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. “I remember being so frightened that I literally seemed to faint.”

Accepted to Yale in 1969, Lewis studied law and music theory, and jazz musicians such as Sam Rivers, Keith Jarrett, and Archie Shepp visited while he was there. Lewis’s direct asso-

ciation with the AACM began in summer 1971, while he was taking a year o from college. Lewis had a union job at a steel mill at the time, and on his way back from work he heard some fascinating music coming from a building near his parents’ home on 88th Street near Stony Island. Inside he met trumpeter John Shenoy Jackson, saxophonist Steve Galloway, guitarist Pete Cosey, and pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams, whose Experimental Band had provided the nucleus around which the AACM formed. They invited him to come hear their next gig, but Lewis misunderstood and showed up with his trombone—the 19-year-old had unwittingly scheduled an appointment with destiny.

Lewis performed that night in an ensemble that also included Jarman, saxophonist Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and drummer Steve McCall. McCall, whom Lewis remembers as “very kindly and engaging,” asked him to do

another gig, and soon he began theory lessons at the AACM’s neighborhood school. He met some of the crew’s other heavies, among them Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Douglas Ewart (who’d become a lifelong friend). Lewis applied to join the AACM and was immediately voted in as its secretary. He also joined the Muhal Richard Abrams Big Band.

Lewis returned to Yale in 1972 and graduated in ’74 with a degree in philosophy. But his most important takeaways were arguably his relationships with future associates he’d met at the school, including trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist Anthony Davis (a 2020 Pulitzer winner whose opera Amistad would premiere in Chicago in 1997).

Lewis cemented his reputation as an adventurous player with his first album under his own name, 1976’s The George Lewis Solo Trombone Record , whose ambitious and irreverent experiments broadened the vocabulary of the instrument. Side one is taken up by the 20-minute “Toneburst (Piece for Three Trombones Simultaneously),” which touches on whimsical trad jazz, microtonal events, minimal bop balladry, car horns at rush hour, and maybe even an alien conversation against an interstellar backdrop.

“Lewis’s precise mastery of extended technique gave the AACM its first world-class trombone soloist,” wrote Reader critic Neil Tesser in 1995.

In 1976, Lewis replaced trumpeter Kenny Wheeler in the quartet led by AACM saxophonist Anthony Braxton. He also toured with the Count Basie Orchestra, traveling to Japan and Europe, where he once “played” a three-chorus solo with nothing but silent gestures—and didn’t lose his job. “I like all that experimenting you’re doing,” Basie later told him. “I think more people around here should be doing that kind of experimenting.”

The following year Lewis became an important sideman to Muhal Richard Abrams and Fred Anderson. He also appeared on several influential avant-garde jazz LPs, including Mitchell’s Nonaah , Braxton’s The Montreux/ Berlin Concerts, and Barry Altschul’s You Can’t Name Your Own Tune

In 1978, Lewis released the LP Shadowgraph on Black Saint, whose roster features Mitchell, Abrams, Ewart, Anthony Davis, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and cellist Abdul Wadud; it’s the first time Lewis is credited with Moog synthesizer. His other albums for Black Saint in the late 70s include Jila–Save! Mon.–The Imaginary Suite and Homage to Charles Parker, which display

his grasp of trombone tradition, his electronic explorations, and his expansive compositional intellect.

In 1980, when guitarist Rhys Chatham quit as musical director of the Kitchen, a nonprofit avant-garde art institution in New York, Lewis took over, serving till ’82. (He’d moved to New York in the late 70s.) Throughout the decade, he would record forward-thinking albums with avant-garde heroes such as Derek Bailey, Irène Schweizer, Steve Lacy, Misha Mengelberg, and John Zorn. He also made appearances with Bill Laswell’s supergroup Material (on 1981’s Memory Serves), Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra (on 1983’s Intergalactic Blow), and Laurie Anderson (on her 1982 debut album, Big Science).

Lewis was an early adopter of synthesizers, electronics, and computers, and since the late 70s he’d been working with composer and synth player Richard Teitelbaum. In 1982, Lewis moved to Paris to work at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music), Pierre Boulez’s haven for avant-garde and electroacoustic music. After two years there, he spent another two in Amsterdam at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music).

By 1987, Lewis had developed his own music software, Voyager, which responds to music in real time as a virtual improviser and simultaneously creates sounds on its own—it can actuate a piano or sound like an orchestra. Between 1988 and ’90, Lewis created interactive performances where his trombone activated and accompanied videos by artist Don Ritter.

In 1993 Lewis released Voyager , his first album under his own name in nearly a decade; he was joined by Mitchell and by the evolving Voyager software. Two years later, Lewis appeared on the debut record by pianist Vijay Iyer. Later in the 90s his regular collaborators included koto player and sound artist Miya Masaoka (his wife since 2004).

Lewis’s career as an educator didn’t begin at Columbia in 2004: he became a professor at the University of California San Diego in 1991, and beginning in the late 80s he taught briefly or intermittently at Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and elsewhere.

Like many academics with decades-long careers, Lewis has amassed a voluminous list of publications. His most frequently cited articles include “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives” (published by Black Music Research Journal in 1996) and “New Music Decolonization in Eight Di cult Steps” (published by

VAN Outernational in 2020). He also coedited a 2013 two-volume set called The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. As teaching, lecturing, and writing took up more of his time, Lewis shifted his focus from performance to composition, but he continued to build his discography. He released Endless Shout for the Tzadik label’s Composer Series in 2000, with works for large ensemble, solo piano, narrator with tape, and solo trombone with computer. He collaborated further with Zorn, Chatham, Lacy, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Joëlle Léandre, and Wadada Leo Smith. Lewis has won too many awards to list even half of them, but highlights include a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002, an American Book Award in 2009 (for A Power Stronger Than Itself), and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. In 2019, Lewis and Mitchell released Voyage and Homecoming , a duo album that recapitulated their 1993 sessions with Voyager. Last year, the International Contemporary Ensemble put out a recording of Lewis’s first opera, Afterword: The AACM (as) Opera, captured at the work’s Chicago premiere in 2015. (He became the ensemble’s artistic director in 2022.)

Lewis wrote the 2020 article “Lifting the Cone of Silence From Black Composers” for the New York Times , looking as far back as Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins’s work in the 1860s. He also edited and wrote for a 2023 essay collection called Composing While Black

Not many artists who’ve reached their 70s can get me wondering what earth-shattering work they’ll surprise me with next, but Lewis is one of them. Last year alone he premiered seven works on multiple continents, and his second opera, The Comet/Poppea , debuted in Los Angeles in June. I highly recommend looking into his output now, and not just because it’s so vast that I probably had to skip mentioning something you’ll love. He deserves the biggest audience he can get. v

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of September 12

Chicago drone rockers Zelienople continue to reach for the sublime on  Everything Is Simple

FRIDAY13

Lavender Prairie Queer Country Festival day one See also Sat 9/14 and Sun 9/15. Featuring the Devil Said Jump (7 PM), Iris Marlowe (8 PM), Abigail Austin (9 PM), and the Kentucky Gentlemen (10 PM). 7–1 PM, Judson & Moore Distillery, 3057 N. Rockwell, $25. 21+

In the early 1970s, gay activist and singersongwriter Patrick Haggerty began to use country music to explore his sexual orientation, share stories, and upli the queer community. His pioneering 1973 album, Lavender Country, wraps a welcoming arm around you with its deeply personal, observational songs about queer love, life, and liberation, o en inviting you to laugh through pain. Haggerty passed away in October 2022, just months after releasing his second and final studio album, Blackberry Rose (Don Giovanni), but his witty, empathetic music and his compassionate fighting spirit live on. The Lavender Prairie Queer Country Festival celebrates Haggerty’s legacy with three days of country, folk, and Americana made by LGBTQ+ artists from near and far. On Friday night, the Kentucky Gentlemen headline; this Nashville-based duo, formed by twin brothers Brandon and Derek Campbell, combine country with R&B, soul, and pop. Saturday’s headliner is H.C. McEntire (formerly of Mount Moriah), a North Carolina songwriter and producer whose evocative records, most recently last year’s Every Acre (Merge), root themselves in a wealth of southern music traditions. On Sunday, Philadelphia acoustic duo Big Benny Bailey (featuring multihyphenate musician Shamir) close out the final night of the fest. Among the can’t-miss local acts are queer cowboy band Olivia & the Lovers, alt-country songwriter Iris Marlowe, folk duo the Devil Said Jump, and Andrew Sa, a close friend of Haggerty’s, who will lead a tribute to Lavender Country that includes former touring members of the band. —JAMIE LUDWIG

Fri 9/13, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $5 livestream. 18+

FOR MORE THAN A QUARTER CENTURY , Chicago drone-rock trio

Zelienople have evoked the feeling of quietly searching. Their songs are tranquil and eerie, and as often as their music reaches for the sublime, they also let you understand that what they aspire toward isn’t confined to the music—that is, it doesn’t end when the last note decays. Zelienople’s ability to simultaneously hold these two feelings enriches all their work, so that their discography feels like one lifelong conversation. If you’ve been following it, you’ll notice the subtle tonal shifts on the group’s new Everything Is Simple (Shelter Press). For one thing, this is Zelienople’s first album since COVID-19 shut down the country—their previous release, Hold You Up , came out a few days before Chicago went into lockdown in March 2020. That same year, Zelienople drummer Mike Weis moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Up till that point, the

band had recorded in Weis’s Chicago basement; he and his bandmates, Matt Christensen (vocals, guitar) and Brian Harding (acoustic and electric bass, clarinets, guitar), would build their songs piecemeal by layering tracks over time. By necessity they took a radically di erent tack for Everything Is Simple, recording most of the album live. They also brought in two auxiliary musicians to enhance the music’s mystical pull: P.M. Tummala (vibraphone, synths, Fender Rhodes) and Eric Eleazer (synths and Fender Rhodes). Weis plays a resonant ostinato on bell-like bowls that lends “In This Town Again” a cavernous sprawl, so that Christensen’s gentle incantations sound like they’re emerging from deep below the earth’s surface. Simon Scott, who drums for shoegaze pioneers Slowdive, mastered Everything Is Simple, which helps infuse the music’s patient levitation with an otherworldly majesty. —LEOR GALIL

Zelienople See Pick of the Week at le . Paige Alice Naylor opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $5 livestream. 18+

SATURDAY14

Lavender Prairie Queer Country Festival day two See Fri 9/13. Featuring Edie McKenna (7 PM), She Returns From War (8 PM), H.C. McIntire (9 PM), and Andrew Sa’s Lavender Country Tribute (10 PM). 7–11 PM, Judson & Moore Distillery, 3057 N. Rockwell, $25. 21+

SUNDAY15

Lavender Prairie Queer Country Festival day three See Fri 9/13. Featuring #QueerCountry Bandwagon (7 PM), Olivia & the Lovers (8 PM), Big Benny Bailey (9 PM), and Hawk & the Talons (10 PM). 7–11 PM, Judson & Moore Distillery, 3057 N. Rockwell, $25. 21+

ZELIENOPLE, PAIGE ALICE NAYLOR

Matt Christensen, Brian Harding, Mike Weis, and P.M. Tummala of Zelienople COURTESY THE ARTIST

Tommy Richman 8 PM, Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, $33.39, advance tickets sold out. 18+

Who is Tommy Richman? It’s hard to say from his music, which the Virginia singer has doled out in loosies and EPs for the past couple years. All I could tell for sure from his big stylistic swings (last year’s watery house number “Pray 2 U”) and pop pastiches (this year’s 1980s mash note “Selfish”) was that he has solid taste in music other people have made. But Richman won me over with his breakout hit, April’s “Million Dollar Baby.” This hooky tune burrowed its way into my brain like few other contenders for song of the summer. Richman’s slippery R&B falsetto sashays over sparse modern-funk keys, blunt electro percussion, and swinging bass so fat

you can sink into it like a beanbag chair. His suave voice fuses the track’s disparate pieces, allowing each to retain its connection to an older pop-music phenomenon (90s Memphis rap, new jack swing, G-funk) while manifesting a new sensibility. Richman and his crew shot most of the “Million Dollar Baby” video in Paris and Los Angeles, but the best part is a six-second clip from Queen’s Gambit, a karaoke spot in D.C. exurb Woodbridge that Richman references in the song. For that brief moment, Richman is at the center of a packed room singing his big hit in his hometown, and the irrepressible joy and comfortable looseness of the scene makes the footage of him high-stepping in more luxurious surroundings feel stilted and awkward by comparison. Richman recently gave a rather limp performance

on Jimmy Kimmel Live! , so I hope he carries that Queen’s Gambit energy with him on this brief tour in support of Coyote, his forthcoming debut album.

—LEOR GALIL

Fabio Frizzi Frizzi will perform a live score to Zombie (1979) and other selections from his catalog. 8 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $40, $60 reserved seat, $75 premier reserved seat, $50 VIP add-on (includes meet-and-greet and merch). 17+

The 1970s were an incredible time for Italian genre films. Auteurs were given huge piles of money (and broad creative license) to crank out schlock, including grindhouse movies that piggybacked off popular American titles. Enter Lucio Fulci’s 1979 flick Zombi 2 , an unofficial sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead , which had been reedited by Romero’s friend Dario Argento and released to Italian audiences as Zombi the year before. The films’ plots have nothing in common, but Zombi 2 (released as Zombie in the U.S.) attracted a similarly strong cult following for its inventive practical effects and outlandish flourishes: a zombie and shark throw down underwater, and a woman gets her wide-open eye slowly impaled on a jagged piece of broken wood (the first appearance of a gag that became one of Fulci’s gore signatures). It also features music from one of the premier Italian horror composers of the day: Fabio Frizzi.

Fulci had a collaborative relationship with Frizzi similar to Argento’s with composer Claudio Simonetti and his prog-rock band Goblin (who provided music for Dawn of the Dead and the full score of Zombi ), which helped give his films aesthetic consistency. Frizzi’s compositions use 60s-style jazz and rock sensibilities with an ear toward what would become hallmarks of 80s American horror films. He’s made delightfully far-ranging soundtracks for more than 100 films, and they o en incorporate elements of lounge, funk, and New Orleans jazz. His music for Zombi 2 is infused with calypso because

the film is set on a Caribbean island, and it’s further distinguished in Frizzi’s oeuvre by its heavy use of keyboards and synthesizers. He employs them to create the mechanical anxiety typical of the style perfected by horror composers like John Carpenter in the 70s and 80s (and later aped by contemporary synthwave projects like Carpenter Brut). But he also holds on long, languishing vibrations that create tension not with a pulsing, uneasy build but rather with an eerie, meditative electronic hum. And sometimes his scores erupt in moments of soaring discordance, like rockets that explode midair and fall back to earth: the music in the eye- piercing scene was inspired by the wild orchestral crescendos in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” At this Reggies appearance, Frizzi will live-score Zombie with a special composer’s cut of the music and play other selections from his catalog. Come prepared for an enhanced experience of one of the most gruesome, bizarre walking-dead movies of all time.

—MICCO CAPORALE

La Armada, Racetraitor Tropiezo and Pasture open. 6 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $27, $25 in advance. b

For more than 20 years, fiercely righteous hardcore group La Armada have fought to keep their band together. They left their home country, the Dominican Republic, one by one, and lived in Florida for a time before reconvening in Chicago, which they’ve made their home base since 2008. Their aggressive metallic hardcore sound is flexible and assured, and on their records—most recently 2022’s Anti-Colonial, Vol 2 —they weave Afro-Caribbean rhythms and politically charged lyrics (in Spanish and English) into their thick, chugging riffs. Everything they do is in the service of a rage for justice and a hard-earned catharsis, and there’s certainly plenty to be furious about now—but there’s also joy in finding a creative outlet, raising awareness, and inspiring people to fight the good fight. La Armada’s live shows are fantastic, and here they top a won-

Tommy Richman JOSH FLORES

La Armada JOSE IBAÑEZ

Fabio Frizzi FLORIANA AUSILI

MUSIC

continued from p. 31

derfully rich bill.

Legendary Chicago hardcore outfit Racetraitor proved ahead of their time with their fiery 1998 debut album, Burn the Idol of the White Messiah, though they’d probably say they simply rose to the moment. They answered the call again in 2016, when the rising Black Lives Matter movement and the mask-off malignancy of Donald Trump and his fellow white-supremacist demagogues helped spur them to reunite. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, Racetraitor organized the compilation Shut It Down, bringing together nearly 50 anti-racist and antifascist artists from across the loud-and-heavy spectrum, including Sunn O))), Xibalba, Primitive Man, and War on Women. Last year they released a new album, Creation and the Timeless Order of Things (Good Fight), taking cues from their own lives and geographies to address colonialism, racism, and the struggle for liberation.

This all-ages Cobra Lounge date also includes Puerto Rican band Tropiezo, who’ve been a powerhouse in the Latinx punk scene since 1997 and released a collection of flab-free ragers last year called Existe un Mundo Mejor, Pero Es Muy Caro Playing first are local hardcore up-and-comers Pasture, whose roster features members of Snuffed and Si Dios Qiere. Come out for the music and open your mind to a unifying anti-colonial, antifascist message and a spirit of collaboration that transcends race, gender, class, and borders. —MONICA KENDRICK

Paul Weller George Huston opens. 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, $59-$200. 18+

Music fans o en extend their favorite artists some grace as they age. We’ll buy a ticket to a Vegas residency even though the diva’s voice has gotten raspy; we’ll look the other way when a favorite soul singer attempts to get back on the charts by working with an EDM producer. Fortunately for fans of Paul Weller, the 12 songs on 66 (released on May 24, the day before his 66th birthday) can stand alongside anything he’s written in his solo era. The British singer-songwriter’s best-known work is still with the Jam and the Style Council in the 70s and 80s, but he’s been making reliable music under his own name for much longer. Weller sounds less rootsy now than he did in the mid-90s, and 66 combines a troubadour’s storytelling sensibilities with rock instrumentation. Weller isn’t an old punk telling tales to feed our nostalgia; he combines reflection and a bit of middle-aged melancholy on “Nothing” and “A Glimpse of You,” while his integration of synths and mellotron on “Flying Fish” demonstrates a flair for experimentation. He may be decades away from the version of himself whose worship of mods and fascination with transgressive politics shaped the slightly sneering mod rock of the Jam and the faux Marxism of the Style Council, but 66 is the work of a man still in pursuit of justice. “I Woke Up” follows a nameless unhoused protagonist (“Wearing someone else’s shoes I found / In bins around the town”) attempting to make sense of life, and for guidance on its video, Weller and director Johnny Harris turned to UK nonprofit St. Mungo’s, one of Great Britain’s largest charities supporting unhoused people. (St. Mungo’s has since been

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews

using it as a fundraising tool.) On his current tour, Weller has been concentrating on recent work, but he still sprinkles his sets with new versions of old hits, including the Jam’s “That’s Entertainment.”

—SALEM COLLO-JULIN

WEDNESDAY18

Forest Claudette 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18, $15 in advance. 21+

For Australian singer-songwriter Forest Claudette (born Kobe Hamilton-Reeves), vulnerability is a blessing, not a curse. The soulful alternative hiphop artist uses their music to work through personal ups and downs: the slow-grooving February single “Kobe Beef,” for instance, feels like an inner monologue, as Claudette opens up about coming out as nonbinary and chooses just how much of their private life they want to share with the world. Last month, Claudette released a three-song EP called  & Stone Between, whose lead single, “Moonlight,” takes inspiration from the acclaimed 2016 film of the same name. Over sparse acoustic guitar and strings, Claudette reflects on the movie’s queer coming-of-age drama in light of their own experiences grappling with gender and sexual identity as a young Black person. Claudette’s lyrics o en confront their struggles with self-acceptance, but as a performer, they’re clearly ready to put themself on the map: their current North American tour travels exclusively through major markets such as New York, Atlanta, Toronto, and Chicago.

—JAMIE LUDWIG v

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Claudette LISSYELLE LARICCHI

JOBS

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems.

REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or Bus Admin or a rel fld + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

Morningstar DBRS (f/k/a DBRS Inc.) seeks a Project Manager (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to be responsible for creating all necessary project tools for kickoff (i.e., milestones document, process decision charts, project plan, RAID logs, work breakdown structures, Gantt charts, etc.) (10%).

BS in STEM or rltd field & 3 yrs of exp in project management req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-045391

HR Manager Bodorlaser Inc. seeks a HR Manager in Schaumburg, IL to manage HR functions. Bachelor’s in HR Mgmt, or its foreign equiv. 2 yrs work exp in the HR field. Knowl of HR Mgmt. Proficiency in Excel, PowerPoint, & ERP software. Great leadership, adaptability, & initiative abilities. X’lnt comm, interpersonal& analytical skills. $95,389/ yr. Apply to 1690 N Plum Grove Road, Schaumburg IL 60173, or email: wangkeju@bodor.com

Architectural Intern

Goettsch Partners (Chicago, IL) seeks Architectural Intern to dev. alt. architect. building design studies & provide doc. of alt. design studies, using 2D & 3D architectural design software, involved in all phases of architect. services on large-scale commercial projects, incl. high-rise office/ hotel/apt. & mixed-use developments in domestic & Asian markets. Must submit electronic version of portfolio w/examples of academic projects/ digital images/photos & examples of technical drawings of high-rise office/hotel or mixed-use projects. Portfolio must dem. samples of work in AutoCAD, Revit & graphic & digital presentation software programs. May work remotely 20% of

the time. Submit resumes to hr@gpchicago. com, ref. Job ID: 24h08z08 in the sbj. line.

Lead Transptn Plnnr – (Chicago, IL), WSP USA, Inc. Mng cnsltnt dsgn team to complete inclusv commnty invlvmnt process & engg contrct docmts. Reqs: Mas’s (or frgn equiv) in Sustnbl Urbn Devlpmt, Urbn Plnng or a rltd fld; 3 yrs’ exp as Transptn Plnnr, Devlpmt/ Zoning Plnnr or a rltd role. Will acpt Bach’s + 5 yrs’ exp. Email resume to jobs@wsp.com, Ref: 1316.

Trader CTC Trading Group, LLC seeks a Trader in Chicago, IL to engage in dynamic problem solving by rotating through multiple areas across our Trading & Quant organization. Telecommuting is permitted. Apply at https:// www.jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref #14562.

Software Engineer Tempus AI seeks a Software Engineer to work in Chicago, IL, to write clean, efficient software that performs at scale. Telecommuting permitted. Apply @ www.jobpostingtoday. com #67520.

Data Analyst: Data Analyst: (Multiple Openings): Design and develop ETL jobs using Talend using K2 view Fabric Studio for data integration. Responsible for data mapping for feature enhancement using PL/SQL under the agile methodology using the knowledge of Oracle SQL Developer(SQL), Cassandra(NoSQL), Java, K2view Fabric Studio, Talend, Jira, Grafana, New Relic, ServiceNow, Advanced Excel, Linux, Postman. Reqs MS in Comp Sci, Sci, Engg or rel. Must be willing to travel and reloc to unanticipated client locations throughout the U.S. Mail resumes referencing JOB ID- 9 to Cyberbridge International, Inc. d/b/a Creospan, Inc.,1515 E Woodfield Rd Ste 370, Schaumburg, IL 60173

Gelber Securities, LLC seeks Fin. Quantitative Analyst in Chicago, IL to devise strategies to capitalize on inefficiencies in fixed-income mkts. Reqs. Bachelor’s deg. or frgn equiv in Econ, Math. Econ. Analysis, Appl. Math., or rel. fld. plus 1 yr post-bacc. exp as a Trader using fixed income instrs. Exp. must incl. researching & trading fixed-income instrs., Python, & Bloomberg Terminal. Must have passed the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) Exam and Series 7 (General Securities Representative) Exam. Email resume: recruiting@ gelber group.com.

Procurement Specialist

Medical Shipment LLC seeks Procurement Specialist in Skokie, IL to wrk drctly w/ suppliers to rduce cst, imprv pymnt trms & vol dscnts. Reqs BS in Bus, Fin, or a clsly rltd fld + 24 mnths exp in a clsly rltd ocptn. Reqs 24 mnths exp w/ the fllwng: dta anlys, incl bus/fin dta; lgstcs mng, strat plng & crdntn of vrs dep/tms, supplier rltshp mng; Imp/ Exp regs & gov/dept. of Frgn Affrs regs and cmplnce stndrds; Plng sftwr, wrd prcsng sftwr, sprdsht sftwr, fin anlys sftwr. Trvl req 5% dom; 3% intnl. Mail resumes to Daniel Micic at 8060 Saint Louis Avenue Skokie, IL 60076.

Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Senior Software Engineer (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to maintain & develop Morningstar’s ByAllAccounts data aggregation system that gathers data from thousands of Financial Institution’s websites using the Parsing system to extract & translate financial data (15%). BS in Comp Sci, Comp Info Tech, Comp Engg, or rltd engg field & 5 yrs of relevant software development exp req’d. Alternatively, MS in Comp Sci, Comp Info Tech, Comp Engg, or rltd engg field & 2 yrs of relevant software development exp req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-046000.

Software Engineer II w/ McKinsey & Company Inc. US (Chicago, IL). Pioneer the dvlpmnt of product suite of web apps that ensure high performance, responsiveness, & seamless user exp using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React. Telecommuting permitted. Req’s Master’s in Comp Sci, S/W Engg, or rel field, or foreign degree equiv + 1yr of s/w dvlpmnt exp. Email your resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to Job # 8063447.

Data Scientist sought by Enova Financial Holdings, LLC in Chicago, IL to conduct ad hoc analysis using statistical & financial tools. Occasional telecommuting permitted. Apply @ jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref #77761.

Morningstar Investment Management LLC seeks a Senior Investment Analyst (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to lead projects, support & partner w/ other team members & be responsible for analyzing invest data to determine solutions for portfolio construction, determining model portfolios, performing manager/ fund selection incl ability to consider criteria such as style consistency, risk/

return statistics, correlation to benchmarks, etc., performing due diligence, & recommending solutions &/or changes to client products, services & deliverables (13%). BS in Finance, Econ, or rltd field & 2 yrs of exp in rltd position working in or servicing the Retirement Plan Market req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-045998.

Project Analyst Marsh USA LLC (FT; Chicago, IL - A hybrid work schedule may be permitted w/in a commutable dist from worksite, in accordance w/ company policies.) Develop high quality business solutions in the Agile context that deliver valued business outcomes & informed decisions.

RQTS: Must have Bach deg or forgn equiv in Info Tech & Mgmt, Comp. Sci, or rel plus 4 years of experience in the job offrd, or rel. In the alt., employer will accept a Master’s deg or forgn equiv, in Info Tech & Mgmt, Comp. Sci, & 2 years of experience in the job offrd, or rel. 4 yrs of exp (or 2 yrs in the alt. w/ a Master’s) must include: Working w/ diversified teams to plan, design, build, test, & deploy reporting solutions to support business operations & modernize capabilities. Using Visio or PowerPoint to create Business Process Models. APPLY: https:// careers.marshmclennan. com using Keyword R_280258. EOE

Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Senior Software Engineer (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to support existing systems and offer production support. Address any issues promptly and ensure uninterrupted operations of critical systems (5%). BS in Electrical Engg, Electronics Engg, Comp Engg, Comp Science, MIS, or rltd field & 5 yrs of exp developing software solutions req’d. Alternatively, MS in Electrical Engg, Electronics Engg, Comp Engg, Comp Science, MIS, or rltd field & 3 yrs of exp developing software solutions. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-045997.

related, 2yr experience as an Advertising writer or related, understanding of Chinese’s social and etc; Interested applicants can mail resume with code AS24 to: Apartment Shared Services, LLC., 1364 E. 53rd St., Chicago, IL 60615.

The university provides accommodations to applicants and employees https:// jobs.uic.edu/requestand-accomodation/

Data Scientist sought by Enova Financial Holdings, LLC in Chicago, IL to conduct ad hoc analysis using statistical & financial tools. Occasional telecommuting permitted. Apply @ jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref #77761.

Senior Software Engineer, Chicago, IL, for Team TAG Services, LLC (TAG) (2 positions available): Work on a team focused on customer and practice facing websites. Req’d: Bach. or higher deg. (or foreign equiv.) in Comp. Sci., IT, or related field & 2 yrs. of exp. working in Software Development. Exp. must incl. 2 yrs. exp. working w/: JavaScript, incl. DOM manipulation & the JavaScript object model, front-end frameworks, popular React.js workflows (such as Flux or Redux), and data structure libraries (e.g. Immutable. js). Demonstrated prof. w/ integrating RESTful APIs also req’d. May work from home up to 2 days/wk. Resumes to code JQ-SSE, c/o Juliana Ximenes, TAG, 800 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 (juliana. ximenescoutinhodias@ aspendental.com).

Lead Data Engineer, Chicago, IL, for Team TAG Services, LLC (TAG). Partner with business, analytics, and engineering teams to design and build data structures to facilitate reporting, models, and monitoring key performance metrics.

Req’d: Bachelor’s in Data Science, Mathematics or related data or computational social or hard science field & 5 years exp. in IT, Analytics and/or Data Science OR Master’s & 3 years of exp. May work from home up to 2 days/wk. Resumes to code YZ-LDE, c/o Juliana Ximenes, TAG, 800 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 (juliana. ximenescoutinhodias@ aspendental.com).

a Lead QA Automation Engineer (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to develop test cases for multiple new features of the Retirement Manager application (5%). BS in Info Tech, Comp Sci, Software Engg, or rltd engg field & 7 yrs of rltd exp or in field involving coding req’d. Alternatively, MS deg. in Info Tech, Comp Sci, Software Engg, or rltd Engg field & 5 yrs of rltd exp or in field involving coding req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-046001.

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www. ChestnutCleaning.com

AUDITIONS

IDM/EDM ARTISTS WANTED original music only. contact : idm-edm.com

HOUSING

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS

HOUSING WANT

Apartment Shared Services, LLC is seeking an Advertising Writer to Work closely with the advertising team to plan, write and edit weekly contents such as articles, poems, posters, flyers, and newsletters, for promotion programs in both Chinese and English languages with high readability etc. Position requires a master’s degree in Chinese literature or

Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology/ Physician Surgeon The Dept of Pathology, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking full-time Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology/Physician Surgeon to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, teach, train, and advise medical students, residents, and fellows in fields of Pathology, and specifically Dermatopathology and Hematopathology. Provide clinical patient care in the specialties of oncologic and non-oncologic Dermatopathology and Hematopathology to a diverse patient population in the hospital. Participate and collaborate on other sub-specialty diagnostic services, such as molecular pathology, digital pathology, HLA, and informatics. Conduct medical science research, publish and present scientific research findings, and perform University service and administrative duties as assigned. Some periodic travel may be required for conferences, professional development, and/or local travel in between worksite locations. This position minimally requires a Medical degree (MD) or its foreign equivalent, one (1) year of Dermatopathology fellowship training and one (1) year of Hematopathology fellowship training, a valid IL med license or eligibility for an Illinois medical license, & board certification or eligibility for certification in Anatomic & Clinical Pathology. For fullest consideration, please submit CV, cover letter, and 3 professional references by 10/5/2024 to Ms. Alsera Hayes, 840 S. Wood Street, 130CSN, MC847, Chicago, IL 60612 or via email to Alsera. edu. The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit https://www. hr.uillinois.edu/cms/one. aspx?portalId= 4292&pageId =5705uic to view our nondiscrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/ misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.

Engagement Manager positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL. Lead teams of consultants to resolve business probs for variety of clients/ industries. Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or nonbus adv degree, & 1 yr exp as Associate-level mgmt consultant w/ a major toptier int’l mgmt consulting firm. Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict. Telecommuting permitted. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR08EM. Multiple positions.

Morningstar Investment Management LLC seeks

1506 N Hudson 4 bedroom duplex 1506 North Hudson, Unit 2, quiet neighborhood Spacious 4 bedroom duplex (2nd/3rd) floors. Large living room, den, two baths with 4 sinks, hardwood floors, kitchen includes dishwasher and microwave, washer/dryer in unit, central air and heat; private deck off third floor, large shared deck over garage. No Pets; gas and electric not included; $3,850 monthly, $5,775 deposit. garage space $140. 773.255.6988, 312.343.0449. Block from El station

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GOSSIP WOLF

12/8

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

CHICAGO PUNK SINGER and multi-instrumentalist Jen Dot (aka author and Reader contributor Jen B. Larson ) launched Beastii as a solo project nearly a decade ago. The first Beastii release, the 2016 EP Love Harder, augmented Dot’s guitar with the humming and thumping of synths and programmed beats. Beastii have since become a full band, with a dirtier garage-punk sound, and last week they issued their second album, Follower

“One of the things I think ended up surprising me the most—which almost shouldn’t have been a surprise—was we added a lot of electronic elements,” Dot says. “The reason why I say it shouldn’t have been a surprise is because Beastii actually started out as an electronic darkwave project and morphed into a garage-band project. This album pulled all of those elements together.”

The version of Beastii that made Follower began to take shape a few years ago, when guitarist Jesse Fevvers moved to Chicago from the UK. “We’ve been friends for 20 years,” Dot says, “and we were like, ‘Let’s do a project together.’ It was like, ‘Well, you already have this project—why don’t we just do a Beastii album.’” Fevvers joined a Beastii lineup that consisted of Dot, drummer Chris Lee, and bassist Maureen Neer

“Some of the songs were just Jen and Jesse completely coming up with stuff by themselves and bringing it to the rest of us, like, ‘Hey, here’s our idea,’” Lee says. “Which is very different [than] if we had been a traditional band that had band practice every week.” When Neer decided to bow out, Dot recruited the members of lo-fi indie duo Orisun : Asha Adisa (keyboards, vocals) and Kai Black (keyboards, vocals, bass).

“Kai and Asha are good friends of mine,” Dot says. “We play in some cover bands

together. We just click, and usually we can work things out very quickly.” Orisun will perform at Beastii’s listening party for Follower at Liar’s Club on Friday, September 13, with Dusty Turrets and the Cell Phones; Jill Hopkins, new media and civic events producer for Metro, hosts the show.

Beastii aren’t performing at their own party, because Fevvers has moved back to the UK. Dot says they’re figuring out how to play live in the future. But they’ll debut a video for Follower track “Justine,” directed by Jim Sikora Dot says it involves a roller derby team: “I’m on rollerblades,” she says. “I can’t skate, and I look really awkward in them, but it’s fine.”

ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , cellist, composer, and improviser Lia Kohl headlines Constellation to celebrate the release of her album Normal Sounds. The record emphasizes the work Kohl does with field recordings, which she says helps her listen to the world more intentionally. Normal Sounds emerged from her increasing interest in quotidian noises that people usually learn to tune out.

“I ‘started’ this album in an airport in Boston, captivated by the rich frequencies coming from the fridge at the Hudson News,” Kohl says. “The next week I took a recording of the light by the tennis court in Humboldt Park. Slowly it became a collection of drones and then a collection of various mundane anthropogenic sounds. And then I started layering other sounds with the recordings.”

The standout track “Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren,” for example, blends a tornadosiren test Kohl recorded from the front window of her home with music from an ice cream truck she heard in Kilbourn Park. “It was playing a song I hadn’t heard before over a particularly crunchy freezer drone,” she says. “So I stopped to record, and then a car

alarm started going off in the same key! Those kinds of coincidences are so magical to me.”

She pulled Normal Sounds together by improvising synth and cello parts in response to these field-recording collages. She also augmented her own work with remote contributions from New York–based experimental multi-instrumentalist Ka Baird and Los Angeles saxophonist and improviser Patrick Shiroishi. At Saturday’s Constellation show, Chicago sound artist Kikù Hibino opens; tickets cost $20, and the music starts at 8:30 PM.

LEFT-LEANING CHICAGO-BASED punkrock label Red Scare Industries celebrates 20 years of antiestablishment, anti-fascist underground music with a two-day all-ages showcase at Beat Kitchen that runs Friday, September 13, and Saturday, September 14. Last week, Red Scare released a compilation called 20 Years of Dreaming and Scheming, the third such comp in its history, and it’s crammed with previously unissued songs from 17 artists, including a few friends of the label and many of the 50+ artists in its catalog.

The Red Scare ethos is about DIY spirit, camaraderie between the artists and label owners, and independence from corporate interests. “It’s important to us that we don’t have any dirty money involved in our business,” says cofounder Toby Jeg Jeg and childhood friend Brendan Kelly (from the Lawrence Arms) started the label in San Francisco in 2004 to put out the debut EP by Kelly’s band the Falcon. Kelly’s current group, Brendan Kelly & the Wandering Birds, appear on Friday’s Beat Kitchen bill, and he plays a major role in bringing new artists to Red Scare. “He’s the guy that plays music, and I’m the guy that, like, pays invoices and sends the emails,” Jeg jokes.

A er two decades, Red Scare has achieved tastemaker status. One of the older bands on the label are Chicago veterans the Bollweevils, whose lead singer, Daryl Wilson, has been a doctor specializing in emergency medicine for more than 20 years. (They also play at Beat Kitchen on Friday.) One of its newer acts is local pop-punk group Sincere Engineer, led by singer-songwriter Deanna Belos. “If we’re going to be fucking tastemakers, I don’t want to sound like we’re Chuck Klosterman,” Kelly says. “I want to sound like we’re your older brother’s best friend in the garage, huffing glue and giving you a fucking Sidekicks cassette.” —D-M BROWN AND LEOR GALIL

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

The lies that bind

He lied to me but I still want to rebuild.

By DAN SAVAGE

Q : What do you think of a man who lied to a woman to manipulate her into staying in a relationship (doing so with the knowledge that if he told her the truth she would leave)? My boyfriend agreed to exclusivity and monogamy. He immediately began to violate this agreement. He lied repeatedly to me about who these other people were and what he was doing with them. He constantly told me he was honoring our agreement to be monogamous. He gaslit me and made me feel ridiculous for worrying.

I eventually found out he was constantly engaging women online in chats and asking them to have phone or video sex with him. He had video sex with someone the same week he began talking to me about getting married!

He got a phone number from a woman he met at work and only stopped texting her because sneaking out to date her was a “step too far” for him morally.

I told all of his family and friends that he had been lying to me and cheating on me throughout our relationship. I stand by my right to let people know this. What do you think about my refusal to be quiet about his behavior?

I believe women too often protect men’s reputations at our own peril. That is why I refused to keep his secrets. The shame should be his, not mine! Now he tells me

his friends and family don’t want us to get back together because I “overreacted” to his shameful behavior. I feel that with all the cards out on the table there’s no room for lies and that we could rebuild. What’s your opinion?

CHOOSING ABSOLUTE TRUTH

a: What I think of your ex-boyfriend (by the way, you should get used to calling him your ex-boyfriend) is irrelevant. What matters here, CAT, is what you think of your ex-boyfriend: you think he’s a manipulative piece of shit who cheated on you throughout your relationship, lied to you, gaslit you, and emotionally abused you. And you—presumably not a crazy person—want to get back together with him? Let’s quickly review what he did: he flirted with other women online and asked them to have phone sex or cybersex with him, CAT, which was a shitty thing to do each and every time he did it. At least one woman agreed to listen and/ or watch while he had a wank, which was an even shittier thing for him to do. And he got one woman’s phone number and was tempted to meet up with her but didn’t go through with

it, which allowed him to tell himself he didn’t do the shittiest thing he could’ve done. He may have even told himself he honored the monogamous commitment he made to you because he never actually touched another woman with his dick. He lied to you about all of this and made you feel like a crazy person. Now let’s review what you did. When you found out that his definition of monogamy was a lot narrower than yours, you didn’t turn to your friends and family for moral support or drag him to couples therapy to hold him accountable. No, you dragged his friends and family into your conflict. Not because they needed to know, not because they could do anything about it, but to punish your boyfriend by making him look like an asshole in the eyes of his friends and family. And while you probably succeeded in making him look bad in the eyes of his friends and family, you also succeeded in making yourself look like a crazy person.

While I agree that women shouldn’t have to keep men’s secrets to protect their reputations, no one wants to live in a world

where dragging in friends and family is the go-to move for every angry boyfriend, girlfriend, enbyfriend, husband, wife, or spouse on the planet. Even if your ex-boyfriend’s friends and family think he was in the wrong—even if you succeeded in exposing him for the manipulative piece of shit they already knew him to be (they’ve known him longer than you have)—they don’t want him to get back togeth-

er with you because they don’t want you blowing up their phones every time you have a fight.

And if you convince him to get back together with you, CAT, you’re gonna have more fights. Hell, you’re going to have this fight

again because he’s not going to stop flirting with other women. So, unless you’re looking forward to having this fight again—and maybe you are (some misguided people think conflict is passion)—you’ll stop pursuing this lying, manipulative, deceitful piece of shit. v

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