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August 5, 2020
INDYweek.com
Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 37 NO. 28
Jasmine Michel's dream come true,
p. 14
PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
CONTENTS NEWS 9
Durham's Racial Equity Taskforce issues a visionary, tough-minded report. BY THOMASI MCDONALD
10 A white state trooper's violent encounter with two Black teens results in no charges and many questions. BY THOMASI MCDONALD FEATURE 12
Raleigh finally pays due to Indigenous people in a ceremony at Dix Park. BY LEIGH TAUSS
MUSIC 14
Food, art, and heritage merge at Dreamboat Cafe.
BY SARAH EDWARDS
MUSIC 15 16 18 19
Machine learning with glittering synth duo Marv. BY MARTA NÚÑEZ POUZOLS Unpacking the extended techniques of Cyanotype. BY CHRIS VITIELLO DeeJay Samps' WXDU show is a hip-hop rite of passage. BY KYESHA JENNINGS Quarantine can't contain these recent local metal albums. BY BRYAN C. REED
CULTURE 20 How local cinemas keep movie-lovers engaged in the pandemic.
BY NICK PARKER
THE REGULARS 4 Voices
6 Quickbait
5 15 Minutes
7 A Week in the Life
COVER Photo by Jade Wilson
WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER Susan Harper
Digital Content Manager Sara Pequeño
EDITOR I AL
Editorial Assistant Cole Villena
Interim Editor in Chief Brian Howe Raleigh News Editor Leigh Tauss Deputy A+C Editor Sarah Edwards Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald
Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods Voices Columnists T. Greg Doucette, Chika Gujarathi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Courtney Napier, Barry Saunders, Jonathan Weiler
Contributors Jim Allen, Will Atkinson, Jameela F. Dallis, Michaela Dwyer, Lena Geller, Spencer Griffith, Howard Hardee, Laura Jaramillo, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Josephine McRobbie, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, Neil Morris, James Michael Nichols, Marta Nuñez Pouzols, Bryan C. Reed, Dan Ruccia, David Ford Smith, Eric Tullis, Michael Venutolo-Mantovani, Chris Vitiello, Ryan Vu
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Contents © 2020 INDY Week All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission.
Interns Mary King, Bella Smith
INDYweek.com
August 5, 2020
3
BACKTALK
In our cover story last week, Sandy Smith-Nonini and Tim Marema took a deep dive into data about coronavirus spread in rural North Carolina, finding compelling evidence that meatpacking plants were a driving force. For one reader, the story brought to mind a more longstanding industry issue the INDY has also reported on: good old hog waste.
“Overcrowded working conditions exacerbated Covid outbreaks in meat processing facilities across the state, and lack of regulation left employees stuck choosing between their health or a paycheck,” writes Raleigh’s LUCY SMITH. “But factory farms are also devastating North Carolina’s environment. About 9.8 million pigs produce 10 billion gallons of manure each year in North Carolina. As farms continue to grow larger, so does the massive amount of waste concentrated in any one location. “Animal defecation feeds directly into unlined, open-facing lagoons in the ground. The cesspools of pig excrement, water, and bacteria create noxious, bubblegum pink environment and health hazards. The swill can seep into groundwater, or overflow when the low-lying counties get more rain than usual. This contaminates waterways and causes major health issues for residents. “In just four years, five industrial agriculture corporations unleashed over 250 million pounds of toxic pollution into waterways across the country. Agribusinesses are just that, businesses. The corporations cut corners to maximize profits, leaving polluted waterways, damaged land and mistreated animals in their wake. “If you are concerned about the impacts of your meat consumption, avoid animal products from large corporations like Tyson or Smithfield. Seek out locally sourced meat with transparent environmental and farming practices. … Reducing overall meat consumption, even slightly, can also make a huge difference. And if you’re feeling especially vocal, reach out to your representatives and urge them to regulate meat and poultry pollution.” For more background on the hog-waste issue, see the INDY’s two-part epic, “Hogwashed,” from 2017.
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indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @IndependentWeekly @indyweek 4
August 5, 2020
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voices
The UNC System Needs an Enema Even in a pandemic, corruption continues
BY T. GREG DOUCETTE @greg_doucette
Y
ou might think the once-in-a-century pan- resented his academic credentials for years —tried to demic jeopardizing our 17-campus Uni- convince the board to misrepresent the tenure of Interim President Bill Roper. Ramsey asked the Board to versity of North Carolina system would remove the “interim” title, making Roper a full President focus the minds of those our politicians entrusted with governing it. That a dis- for a week. Board member Marty Kotis reportedly made ease threatening the lives of students, the motion at Ramsey’s urging, only to then withdraw it, also at Ramsey’s urging, when opposition became staff, and faculty in equal measure would trigger a apparent. The BOG then took a “straw poll” on the idea, degree of sobriety and seriousness when it comes to conducting the public’s business. which failed decisively. But you would be very, very wrong. This is not the sort of thing that can lawfully be conThe past month has confirmed that the UNC System sidered in a closed session; North Carolina’s Open MeetOffice and its Board of Governors continue to play games ings Act requires closed session items to be disclosed to with taxpayers’ money and students’ educations, even in the public in advance and requires all votes (including the COVID-19 era. Consider three burgeoning scandals “straw polls”) to be done in open sessions. But the idea to illustrate the point. that Ramsey and Kotis would even propose this sort of Last month, ousted East Carolina University Chancel- nonsense as a parting gift to the interim president who lor Cecil Staton—a different guy from the other ousted gave us #SilentSham is astonishing. East Carolina Chancellor who came after him—filed a Then we get to the new president himself, Peter Hans. defamation lawsuit against the UNC System, former BOG When it leaked out of the NC General Assembly that Chairman Harry Smith, attorney Peter Romary, and oth- Hans was going to be the new UNC system president, it ers. Staton claims Romary, working for a company called also leaked that current Speaker of the House Tim Moore QVerity—which in turn was working for Smith, who in turn would be made ECU Chancellor as part of the deal. The was working for UNC—went out of his way to badmouth speaker’s office tut-tutted the idea since it would sugStaton to the presidential search committee of a Texas gest the speaker knew Republicans might lose the House university. Staton was a shoo-in for the job, he insists, majority and he would no longer be speaker. And those and only missed out because of an email from “John Q. who held Hans in high regard—myself included, at the Public at ECU” with a lengthy document attached known time—had a hard time believing he would sully himself as “the Dossier” (seriously). by striking that sort of deal in the first place. The lawsuit seems tailor-made for media attention but Yet at the very same BOG meeting, the board got to little else. For example, North Carolina has a one-year stat- review a brand-new revision to the university’s policies ute of limitations on defamation claims, yet all of the BOG on chancellor searches. The policy would allow the UNC defendants except Smith were sued after that deadline had President to designate two people as automatic finalists passed. Staton claims “the Dossier” that so damaged his for any vacant chancellorship, and those finalists would prospects was written by Romary, but ECU’s student news- be included among the list of candidates a campus’s paper got its hands on an affidavit from a former ECU pro- board of trustees sends back to the UNC president for fessor claiming she compiled it years ago. The “email” from final selection. It completely eliminates the vetting pro“John Q. Public at ECU” turned out not to be an email at all, cess for any politician of the president’s choosing. as a FOIA request to the Texas university for the electronic It is comically bad governance in normal times. Against correspondence netted instead a physical envelope mailed the backdrop of the House speaker being guaranteed a out of an Asheville post office. And I already disclosed in chancellorship in exchange for Hans’s ascension as Presimy column back in May that “John Q. Public” is a former dent, it should be downright criminal. The board is slated client of mine who is not Peter Romary. to vote on the policy change at its September meeting. With Staton’s lawsuit now “in the wild” and naming sevMany of us hoped those entrusted with running the UNC eral BOG members as defendants, sources now contend system would get their acts together after their #SilentShStaton lied about his salary and credentials as part of the am deal exploded and the coronavirus took its place. That application process that made him ECU’s chancellor in the optimism appears to have been misguided. We’ll see in the first place. It will be interesting to see what other skele- months ahead just how badly we were wrong. 2 tons tumble out of the closet as the lawsuit moves forward. Voices is made possible by contributions to the Not to be outdone in bizarre legal maneuvers, BOG INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com. Chairman Randy Ramsey—the same guy who misrepT. GREG DOUCETTE is a local attorney, criminal justice reform advocate, and host of the podcast #Fsck ’Em All. Follow him on Twitter @greg_doucette.
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Durham
15 MINUTES Sue Sneddon, 66 Artist and Illustrator BY SARAH EDWARDS backtalk@indyweek.com
Tell me about the show you have up at Craven Allen Gallery now. This is my 14th exhibition here, and probably since my 2007 show, there has been more of a theme or a central driving force in the work. This show, I’ve had in my head for forever and have been trying to think of how to paint this pivotal piece, “Pawleys Island Pink,” and standing on these oyster shells with my mom when I was 13. My mother was also a painter, and my sister Nancy is a painter. Standing there with my mom, I thought: Could I paint the joy I’m feeling right now? There were a lot of childhood memories. My mother used to tell people, “Oh, she used to remember coming out of me!” And I say, “Well, mom, I don’t remember that.”
But you do remember a lot. I have quite a visual memory. I don’t remember people’s names sometimes that I’ve only met a couple times, but this visual memory thing, it’s like I take snapshots in my brain that nags at me until I get them on canvas.
I’m curious about this process of painting from memory—does the memory change as you paint it? There are some paintings that I do a lot of sketching and painting and trying to figure out how I’m going to put this in this space for this particular memory. The big Pawleys Island painting was daunting to think, how am I going to get this feeling? A sunset is an ever-changing thing. There’s a pastel in this show, and that’s a medium I’ve been doing since I was nine years old. It is
PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
something where I can get an immediate application to paper from my head. Sometimes I’ll do a canvas from that. Pastels are like breathing in and breathing out for me.
YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC
Do you still live in Durham? I finally got to the coast. I live in Shallotte, North Carolina. Durham is still really my home. I was here for 28 years.
You were an INDY illustrator in the early days— what was that like? That was quite a time. Somebody would come to me and say, “Sue we need this” or “Sue we need that” and I’d get my pen and ink out and do that black and white graphic. I did all the sections for a few years. It was all a very spontaneous and organic thing, and it was very fun working with all those people, some of whom I’m very close friends with. And then there’s Mayor Steve! It was crazy back then. There was a man, Jim Overton, who worked there, and when The Independent had the big 20th or 25th reunion and had a big party downtown, Jim Overton came up to me and said, “Sue, I just want to thank you—back then, you never complained. In all that uproar, we’d ask you to do something, you’d say ‘OK’ and then hand it over to us.” It was something to be there in the beginning of the paper, that’s for sure. W
INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com
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Q U ICKBA I T
N
Who Owns the News?
orth Carolina’s newspaper landscape is a mish-mash of regional and national media empires—many with a history of culling newsrooms for a profit before eventually unloading the skeletal remains to a competitor—speckled with a dwindling number of small, independently owned papers. The newspapers owned by these media giants have seen major cuts over the last two decades. Take, for example, The Herald-Sun, which was purchased by Paxton Media Group in 2006 for at least $100 million. Paxton almost immediately fired 25 percent of the Herald-Sun’s staff despite the paper being profitable at the time. It was then sold to McClatchy in 2016, which, crippled by debt from its acquisition of the
BY BELLA SMITH, MARY KING, AND LEIGH TAUSS
backtalk@indyweek.com
Knight-Ridder company, instituted more cuts. McClatchy was recently purchased by Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey-based hedge fund. While not be ideal, it’s better than the McClatchy bankruptcy bidder that came up short: Alden Global Capital, another hedge fund with deep pockets known for prioritizing profits over robust newsrooms. While we sought to create a map of North Carolina’s media hierarchies, we inadvertently wound up with a stark depiction of the state’s news deserts. Cities and tourism hotspots have at least one surviving daily newspaper, while coastal communities, the state’s rural center, and the far western region have none. W
Daily Newspaper Ownership in North Carolina: Durham Raleigh
Charlotte
Breakdown by Percentage: ONLY 3%
3%
of remaining North Carolina daily newspapers are independently owned
1.5%
5% 5% 10.5%
37.5%
13% 23%
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August 5, 2020
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Key Restoration NewsMedia Horizon Publications Paxton Media Group Boone Newspapers, Inc. (BNI) Chatham Asset Management Lee Enterprises Champion Media Gannett Adams Publishing Group Independently owned* * The Goldsboro News-Argus is owned by John McClure. High Country Press in Boone is owned by Ken Ketchie.
A WE E K IN THE L IFE
The Good, The Bad & The Awful
7/29
THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR IS CANCELED for the first time since WWII thanks to COVID-19. The ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE UNVEILS ITS PLAN FOR 2020 FALL SPORTS, including an 11-game football season for member schools. The UNC Board of Trustees votes to RENAME FOUR CAMPUS BUILDINGS that honored white supremacists. VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE AND SECRETARY OF EDUCATION BETSY DEVOS VISIT APEX and call for a quick return to in-person learning at the nation’s schools.
7/30
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools announce that CLASSES WILL REMAIN ONLINE THROUGH AT LEAST THE FALL SEMESTER.
7/31
ALCOHOL SALES AFTER 11 P.M. ARE OFFICIALLY BANNED STATEWIDE after an executive order signed by Gov. Roy Cooper earlier in the week. Hyde County orders a MANDATORY EVACUATION OF OCRACOKE ISLAND ahead of Hurricane Isaias.
8/1
THE CAROLINA HURRICANES DEFEAT THE NEW YORK RANGERS 3-2 in the first game of their five-game Stanley Cup Playoff qualifier.
8/2
AMERICAN TOBACCO CAMPUS ANNOUNCES A MASSIVE EXPANSION, including a 14-story high-rise residential building. North Carolina records 1,272 COVID-19 HOSPITALIZATIONS, breaking the single-day record set just a day earlier.
North Carolina’s daily count of lab-confirmed COVID-19 CASES DECLINES FOR THE THIRD DAY IN A ROW.
8/3
7/28
(Here’s what’s happened since the INDY went to press last week)
Students at UNC-Chapel Hill begin MOVING INTO ON-CAMPUS HOUSING. THE CAROLINA HURRICANES TAKE A 2-0 SERIES LEAD over the New York Rangers in their Stanley Cup Playoff qualifier. HURRICANE ISAIAS TOUCHES DOWN IN NORTH CAROLINA as a Category 1 storm.
d goo
bad
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Duke COVID-19 treatment Scientists at Duke got approval to start trials for a promising antibody treatment for COVID-19 that could serve as an early defense while a full vaccine is developed. The treatment involves isolating antibodies from the blood of recovered patients and transferring them to patients who are at high risk for the disease. It’s not quite a vaccine, as it involves multiple treatments over time rather than a single treatment, but it could provide a vital stopgap for patients over the next few months. A statement from the Duke Human Vaccine Institute says that trials will likely begin in January, and researchers are also working on a “pan-coronavirus vaccine” that can help medical professionals get the jump on any future coronaviruses.
Hurricane Isaias Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Ocean Isle Beach as a Category 1 storm around 11:00 p.m. last night. Flooding and heavy winds knocked out power for over 370,000 homes statewide, and Gov. Cooper reported that one person was killed by a tornado that formed during the storm. Isaias could certainly have been worse, but that’s not much consolation for families who’ve had their homes flooded, cars overturned, and businesses hammered during an already-fraught economic moment. As Cooper told Good Morning America, “It's double trouble, really, when you’re dealing with a hurricane and COVID-19 at the same time.”
Election rhetoric When Fox News’ Chris Wallace directly asked Donald Trump if he would commit to accepting an electoral loss in November, he ominously said that he would “have to see.” On Thursday, he tweeted that mail-in voting necessitated by the pandemic would create “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and suggested delaying the election “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.” Putting aside the president’s ongoing war against the very Postal Service that facilitates fair and accurate mail-in voting and the fact that a president does not have the power to delay an election, it’s worrying to see Trump already throwing the results of the election into doubt. We’re just 90 days out from the presidential election, and Trump’s message to his base is clear: If he loses at the ballot box, it’s because the system was rigged against him, not because of his handling of the pandemic, or the allegations of sexual abuse, or the Ukraine scandal, or—well, you can fill in the blank.
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Durham
Den of Inequity Racial Equity Taskforce report may be uncomfortable for white Durham residents: “So be it.” BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
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ast month, members of a task force whose focus is increasing racial equity in Durham called on city leaders to “formally acknowledge and apologize for the city’s historical compliance for redlining, discrimination in housing covenants, urban renewal projects, and the neglect of historically Black cemeteries.” The report centers on the unkept promises of urban renewal that destroyed thousands of Black-owned homes and hundreds of businesses in the Hayti district with the creation of NC-147. On July 23, the 17-member Racial Equity Taskforce submitted the visionary, tough-minded 60-page report to Durham City Council. Mindful of the Black Lives Matter signs on front lawns and white residents joining anti-racism protests, the task force offered a challenge to the city and private institutions in the report. “We need to be not merely anti-racist in thought, but actively and continuously anti-racist in deed,” says the report’s executive summary. Later, in a summary of the racial wealth gap, the task force urged the city in bold print to “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” Prior to submitting its report, the task force examined data and spoke with elected officials and residents across the city, including citizens in underserved communities. The report noted the distrust in communities hit hard by gentrification and encouraged city officials to be more accessible to the city’s Black and Brown citizens, saying “those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” The city’s first racial equity task force was formed in October of 2018, the brainchild of council member and mayor pro tem Jillian Johnson.
The multi-racial task force is chaired by retired Superior Court Judge Elaine O’Neal, who is now interim dean at the N.C. Central School of Law, and Kaaren Haldeman, an anthropologist, writer, and activist. The group spent nearly two years studying wealth and the economy, criminal justice, health and environmental justice, education, and public history. The conclusions in each area were blunt. “Our criminal legal system is working as it was designed: to protect white people by controlling people of color,” the report says. Likewise, the nation’s housing system was created to maintain private, whiteowned land by controlling people of color’s access to land. Blacks, people of color, and poor whites have lacked access to build and sustain wealth. Meanwhile, the health-care system values the well-being of white bodies at the expense of the bodies of people of color. Finally, the report indicts an educational system that was “designed to indoctrinate all students with the internalized belief that the white race is superior.” The task force members note that their assertions may cause discomfort among white residents. “So be it,” the report states. “Sit with that. If we are to dismantle racism, we must begin to look at how our systems are designed to advantage white people rather than merely focusing on how our systems have failed people of color.” That said, the task force sounded a cautionary note: “White discomfort is powerful; it can lead white people to disrupt anti-racist work, or to become participants in the work. We are calling on white Durhamites to embrace this discomfort and actively learn from seasoned white anti-racists how to live racially just lives
and how to do this work without causing more harm.” The task force dismissed “race-neutral” solutions that ultimately perpetuate the privileging of white Americans, noting that for all of the city’s celebration of inclusion, its downtown development plan—including the American Tobacco Campus—“directly resulted in the re-segregation of downtown Durham” and the surrounding areas. The plan “did not apply equity to ensure the growth and success of Black citizens. This is a re-traumatization of the experience of Hayti, and a failure that the city needs to immediately address.” The report noted that the city, however well-intentioned, has “limited power over many of these issues. State and federal government not only have more power and capacity, but also place limitations on city capacity to remedy long-term institutional inequities.” The task force also recognized that it “cannot undo such a deeply ingrained system of racial inequity in one fell swoop.” Nor will the work of undoing racial inequity be the work of one city council or one mayor. The task force promised that “re-imagining, re-aligning and sustaining an equitable infrastructure” will not be a comfortable process, “but it can be a liberating one, especially for white people.” Using a 1925 Ku Klux Klan march past the White House as a launching point, the task force surmised that substantive change has not come. “Black Americans are still enslaved, now in what is called prison, and slaves are now called inmates, felons or defendants. In other words, the terms have changed; but the outcomes and inequities have not,” the report says. Black people in Durham still disproportionately live in substandard housing, have less wealth, and are being killed by the police. The task force offered a sweeping list of recommendations, including the comprehensive collection of data to understand the intersections of race, gender, and disability experiences. The group says the city should create a database of business ownership by race, ethnicity, and gender, and create access to credit available for Black and Latinx business owners. In the criminal justice sector, the task force recommends a database that tracks
police misconduct and a community oversight board, with subpoena powers, to review it. Health and environmental recommendations include focusing on gun violence prevention, mapping areas that have been designated as food deserts, and making efforts to improve the air, water, and soil quality in low-income communities. The task force also recommends increased funding for eviction diversion programs and ramped-up municipal efforts to increase home ownership in historically Black communities. The group recommends that the school system should track the number of students who are deemed “transient” due to the housing crisis, evaluate language access for non-English-speaking students, and re-evaluate the role of school resource officers. The task force says there needs to be a new narrative about the city’s history that includes voices that have been ignored or dismissed, suggesting the building of a history museum that collaborates with storytellers, the N.C. Central Department of History, and local activist groups to share a more comprehensive history of the city. Citing “the racialized impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the task force recommends that the city and county’s major institutions, including government, banking, and philanthropic industries, “invest and reallocate resources to communities of color in order to build an inclusive economy where we all thrive.” The report found that while inequities affect people of color most profoundly, they also undermine community life for everyone. It cited numerous studies that show unjust societies as being less safe, healthy, and happy but more fearful. The task force said that its report is in solidarity with the tens of thousands of Americans who are in the streets protesting systemic racism, and praised Asheville city leaders who approved reparations for its Black citizens last month. At one point the report even struck a poetic sensibility that recalled the best of American activism: “It is time to recognize the stagnation of the poisoned water we all swim in and deal with the reality of the bloodshed that taints the sea.” W INDYweek.com
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Johnston County
Panic Attack A state trooper’s violent encounter with two teens—and the cover-up attempt that followed—results in no charges and many questions BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
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state highway patrol trooper and his fiancée have been accused of assaulting two Black teenagers, holding one at gunpoint while the other was bashed in the back of the head with a police-issued walkie talkie, according to a complaint filed against the NC Department of Safety. Two Raleigh attorneys filed the complaint last week. It accuses NC State Highway Patrol trooper Sgt. Sean Luther Bridges and Leann Weber, who are white, of assaulting the teens while they were visiting a home their mother had under contract for purchase in Wendell. On September 10, just after 6:00 p.m., the teens left their father’s house on Old Johnson Road to visit their future home at 157 Terracotta Way, which was still under construction. The attorneys say Bridges, a resident of the neighborhood, was not in uniform and did not identify himself as a law enforcement officer when he prevented Xavier Atkinson, then 14, from leaving the premises. The attorneys say Bridges also threw Xavier’s 19-year-old sister, Mahogany, in a ditch, handcuffed her, and held her at gunpoint when she tried to intervene. Weber, Bridges’ fiancée, bashed Xavier Atkinson in the back of the head with Bridges’ police-issued walkie talkie, according to the complaint. The teens’ mother, Beth Harris, is a mental health nurse at the UNC Health Care Addiction Treatment Center at WakeBrook in Raleigh. She is “200 percent sure” racism fueled Bridges’ behavior and said her children would not have been subjected to that type of mistreatment if they were white. “Never, never,” she told the INDY. “They thought because they were African American children that they were in the house stealing. The Johnston County Sheriff’s Office even went over to their aunt’s house 10
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First Sgt. D.L. Mobley
COURTESY OF NCDPS
and searched the home to see if they had stolen something.” The Johnston County deputies did not find any stolen items, but in the sometimes-illogical world of law enforcement reasoning, the Atkinson children were still threatened with charges of assault on a law enforcement official. In an 18-page claim for damages filed July 23, Raleigh attorneys Donald Huggins and James Hairston assert that the state department of public safety deployed an African American Highway Patrol trooper, First Sgt. D.L. Mobley, to empathize with Harris “as a fellow African American.” Mobley told Harris that he did not want to see Mahogany charged, because he knew how a criminal record could hinder a young Black woman. Huggins and Hairston say Mobley might have identified with Harris, but they also think his actual intent was to cover up the incident. In essence, Mobley dangled a quid pro quo before Harris, said Huggins and
Sgt. Sean Luther Bridges
COURTESY OF NCDPS
Hairston. If the teen’s mother “dropped the issue against Bridges’ wife, then Mahogany Atkinson and Xavier Atkinson would not be [criminally] charged,” the claim says. Two days after the confrontation, on September 12, Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle reviewed the incident and sent an email to Mobley that recommended criminal charges against the Atkinson siblings, but not against Bridges or Weber. “Sergeant Bridges,” Doyle wrote in the email, “did not commit any crimes.” On September 17, Mobley came to Harris’s workplace to ask her to drop a potential civil lawsuit against Bridges’ fiancée in exchange for the dismissal of criminal charges that were pending against her children. “[Mobley] called me at work and said he didn’t want to talk with me over the phone, he wanted to talk face-to-face,” Harris says. “That’s what prompted me to record what he needed to tell me, to save my kids.”
Whatever Mobley’s intentions were, what he proposed to Harris on September 17 appeared to be an attempt to blackmail her. On Harris’s audio recording, Mobley can be heard telling her that Bridges’ concern for his fiancée was behind the offer. The mental health nurse told Mobley that Bridges should be tested for drugs after his encounter with her children. “He was high. Something was wrong with him,” Harris later told the INDY. “I have been a substance abuse nurse for 10 years. I know high when I see it. My daughter said the same thing. ‘His eyes were glassy, Mommy.’” On the recording, Mobley told Harris that Bridges had tested negative for alcohol, but he was not tested for drugs, though state troopers are subjected to random drug tests. Mobley told Harris that if she could “see it in her heart to not go after [Bridges’ fiancée], then these charges [against her children] will not be filed.” “Bottom line, we got to make these charges go away, because in my heart it won’t right,” Mobley later added. Harris told Mobley she had canceled the contract for the home. “My children are traumatized,” she said. “And it’s not fair for them to be scared when they walk out their door. We’ve already been branded.” Mobley, after speaking with Harris, decided not to charge the children, Hairston told the INDY last week. But many unanswered questions remain.
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ccording to the claim, which paints a vivid picture of the incident, the trooper’s encounter with the Atkinsons began with an angry and profane command instead of a simple introduction. Harris says it’s yet another example of the systemic police brutishness that sparked global outrage with the murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day. As outlined in the claim, the teens used an all-terrain vehicle to visit the house, which the sales contract allowed them to do. They parked the ATV in front of the home and stayed inside for less than 10 minutes. Upon leaving, they were approached by Bridges, a “tall, muscular, Caucasian man with tattoos wearing shorts and a T-shirt,” who immediately began to yell at them.
Beth Harris and Mahogany Atkinson COURTESY OF THE SUBJECTS
When Xavier started the ATV, Bridges yelled, “Don’t crank that loud shit up!” Not sure what Bridges had said, Xavier shut off the ATV and asked his sister if she had heard. That’s when Mahogany asked Bridges, “What did you say?” Bridges continued to walk toward the Atkinsons and told them again, “Don’t cut that loud shit on.” Mahogany told Bridges, “You could have said that better. We are only trying to see our house. Do you know where we are? We are in the country. I have been riding this area for years, and this is our home.” “This is not your house,” Bridges angrily stated, still approaching. The teen grew fearful and asked her brother to go get their mother. When Xavier mounted the ATV and started it, Bridges stepped in front of the vehicle and attempted to grab the handlebars. “Visibly angry,” he commanded Xavier to turn the ATV off. Xavier says he did, though Bridges later “wrongfully asserted” that the teen tried to hit him with the vehicle, according to the complaint. Mahogany stepped between Bridges and her brother. “Bridges grabbed Mahogany Atkinson by her wrists and slung her into a nearby ditch,” the attorneys claim. “He then proceeded to illegally restrain her by sitting on her torso with his arm underneath her breasts.” Bridges then identified himself as law enforcement and “repeatedly stated that Mahogany Atkinson was under arrest for assault on a government official.” He “yelled to his significant other to retrieve his firearm, walkie talkie and handcuffs.” As Xavier tried to pull the state trooper off of his sister, Weber, who is not named in the complaint, struck Xavier in the back of the head with Bridges’ walkie talkie. “Xavier Atkinson grabbed the woman’s hair to prevent her from striking him again” and then “escaped to the ATV,” driving to his aunt’s home, where his mother was visiting, according to the complaint.
When Xavier got there, his mother was alarmed by the reckless way he pulled into the yard and the blood on his shirt and face. He was “frantic, speechless,” only able to say his sister’s name and the word “accident.” Harris, her best friend, and other family members got into a minivan and rushed to the new-home site, where Harris saw her daughter in handcuffs near the ditch. Bridges had his gun drawn, pointed at Mahogany’s torso. “Don’t fucking move,” Bridges said to them, and they raised their hands in the air. Harris attempted to explain the situation to Bridges, but the trooper “swung and aimed his firearm in the direction of Harris and stated, ‘Shut the fuck up!’” He then used his radio to call for backup. Harris tried to reason with Weber. “Shut the fuck up,” Weber said to Harris. “The more you talk, the more problems you will have.” Mahogany, who has asthma, was having trouble breathing under Bridges’ restraint. “After several moments of pleading, Bridges finally allowed Harris’s best friend to administer a dose from an inhaler to Mahogany Atkinson,” the claim says. When multiple law enforcement agencies arrived, Mahogany was placed in the back of a Johnston County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, where she had two panic attacks. Xavier was taken to the WakeMed children’s emergency room after Johnston County deputies arrived at his aunt’s home, searched it, and detained him in a manner that injured the teen. When Harris looked at the video of George Floyd’s murder with Xavier, he told her, “Mommy, that’s how they had me.” “He told me two months later that he couldn’t take the pain,” Harris says. “He had torn ligaments in his elbow and his knee.” Harris says she intends to file a legal claim against the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office. “I want to see the cameras,” she said. “My son has been emotionally scarred since that happened. He’s a very angry young Black child right now. I told my mother, ‘My daughter could have been a Sandra Bland.” Doyle told the INDY that Bridges would not be charged because a witness, described by Mobley as a neighbor in the recording, claimed that Bridges identified himself as a law enforcement officer before the struggle escalated, contrary to the attorneys’ claim. Bridges was hired by the Highway Patrol in 1998, one year after Mobley. Highway Patrol officials declined comment about the complaint. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Harris says about the Highway Patrol and the Johnston County deputies. “Honestly, [Bridges] should have gotten charged.” W
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Kaya Littleturtle blesses the land at Dix Park by lighting a combination of sacred plants. PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
BY LEIGH TAUSS ltauss@indyweek.com
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he ancient percussion of cicadas rattles in the treetops above Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park as Kaya Littleturtle uses golden eagle feathers to gently fan wisps of smoke from a turtle shell. The Lumbee tribe memAugust 5, 2020
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ber, adorned in ceremonial floral-stitched regalia, turns in four directions, smudging to the four winds, and the earthy fragrance of tobacco, sage, sweetgrass, and cedar smoke fills the air. It’s a blistering August morning, and the normally bustling park is all but empty save two tents under which a dozen tribal representatives and city officials sit in socially distanced lawn chairs. The ceremony is low-key out of necessity in the time of pandemic, but it is nonetheless historic: It’s the city’s first native-land-acknowledgment ceremony and one of only a few ever conducted in North Carolina. The recognition that Indigenous people walked these hills for thousands of years before white colonizers arrived is a reclamation of history necessary for the city to begin the process of reckoning with its white supremacist roots. But it was also a call to action: a promise that the land’s future—
which officials hope will be a “park for everyone� after a currently stalled multi-million dollar redevelopment—will celebrate the cultures white settlers attempted to erase. “The property that Dix Park sits on today was originally land that natives inhabited, either by living there or using that as a place to rest, to hunt, to live off the land,� says Kerry Bird, president of the Triangle Native American Society. “There’s that history of the park itself that has native roots.� Before Dix was a park, it was the state’s first psychiatric hospital when it was founded in 1856. It housed Native Americans long before it accepted Black people, and several members of the Lumbee Tribe, including Riley Locklear, are buried in unmarked graves in the cemetery. Before that, it was a plantation whose fields were worked by enslaved African Americans. But ten thousand years ago, it was land that nomadic Indigenous tribes passed
through while hunting large game, says historian and City of Raleigh Museum Director Ernest Dollar. While the evidence is sparse and more research is needed, a handful of artifacts—fragments, of tools, weapons— date the earliest Indigenous presence in the area to 8,000 BCE. “For thousands and thousands of years, Indigenous people roamed Raleigh,� Dollar says. “Our history is a short window compared to this bigger picture.� By 1,000 BCE, the nomadic tribes began to settle into agricultural communities. It was this rich society explorer John Lawson encountered in 1701, as described in his account, A New Voyage to Carolina. While passing through the town of Occaneechi—what is now Hillsborough—Lawson described ornate cabins hung with tapestries and stocked with bear fat, dried venison, and other lush provisions. He watched people play sports, sing, and feast. The tribe’s chief, Enoe-Will, escorted Lawson south to the Falls of Neuse, which the Occaneechi called “wee quo whom.� There, the two laid all night under the stars discussing spirituality beside the babbling creek. What we now know as Wake County was a gray area between the territories of several large native communities—the Tuscarora, the Catawba, and the Siouan—each with its own unique culture. Lawson’s writings were partly blamed for the rapid expansion of white settlers into native lands, and in 1711 he was killed during the onset of the Tuscarora War, the state’s bloodiest known colonial conflict. The war, combined with diseases brought by white settlers, forced thousands of Indigenous Tuscarora people to relocate west and join the Iroquois Confederacy near the Great Lakes. By the time European surveyors returned to the area in 1737, no native communities remained. “We were a group that was intentionally wiped out and our culture erased, and we’re still here,� says Trey Roberts, a Haliwa-Saponi native who works with Dix Park Conservancy. “We have a culture that’s rich and important and beautiful, and we want to use this opportunity to teach people about it.� Roberts grew up in Hollister, a small town of predominately Haliwa-Saponi, where he attended tribal classes that celebrated his culture. After moving to Raleigh, he says “it felt like the culture disappeared, and no one really knew about it.� He was drawn to working with the conservancy because of the idea Dix could be
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Kerry Bird, president of the Triangle Native American Society
the city’s cultural heartbeat—a place for everyone that celebrates every aspect of the city’s history. Roberts, who organized Saturday’s event, was nervous before approaching the microphone to kick off the ceremony. “We stand here today to make a statement that more work needs to be done to unlock the history, the story, and the injustices done to native people in the area, including their displacement and removal,” Roberts said. “This isn’t just a ceremony to recognize or bless the land of Dix Park, but this is the start of an ongoing commitment to celebrating our native culture, because we’re still here.” That commitment will include an official proclamation from the city, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin promised during the ceremony. She attended alongside councilor David Cox and newly appointed councilor Stormie Forte. “We can’t let that history be hidden,” Baldwin told the INDY. “We have to celebrate it.” According to the 2010 census, North Carolina is home to about 122,000 Native Americans. Many don’t see their culture reflected around them, Bird said. History books downplay the genocide of the Indigenous people, and the media often reduces their culture to a shallow stereotype. Because of this, many Native Americans suffer “an invisibility complex,” Bird says. Without traditional attire, many tend to blend into a crowd. “Our language has changed. Our religion has changed,” Bird said. “We’re involved in politics on both sides of the aisle.” Combatting that invisibility means voices like Roberts must seize the space to be
PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
”The property that Dix Park sits on today was originally land that natives inhabited, either by living there or using that as a place to rest, to hunt, to live off the land.”
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heard and tell their stories. For the city, it means taking the initiative to “to build real relationships and connections,” says Dix Park communications spokeswoman Lauren Weldishofer. “It’s also how we are going to really make this place somewhere that everyone feels they have a connection to but also that they are welcome and a part of.” Littleturtle concluded the ceremony with a song of blessing. The earth, air, water, and trees contain medicine, he says. Music, too, he believes, has the power to heal. He beats a drum like a rapid heartbeat as his voice rings out over the ever-present hiss of cicadas. His eyes close as he sings. The drumbeat slows, but the song continues to burst out of him, from a place deep and raw. The trees sway slightly behind him, and further still, downtown’s metal skyscrapers poke up through the skyline. “Every single one of us comes from a rich cultural background with our songs, our dances, our languages, our cultural customs, our food,” Littleturtle says in a thick Southern drawl. “I appreciate this respect we’ve shown each other here today.” W INDYweek.com
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FOOD & DR I NK
Nourishing Tradition Food, art, and heritage are at home in Dreamboat Cafe BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
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ne night in 2018, Jasmine Michel had an epiphany: She wanted to create a new kind of restaurant. “Dreamboat was literally created on the couch, talking to one of my friends as I was working at a restaurant,” Michel says. “I said, ‘I’m going to do this, and it’s going to be based on recipes that I was raised with.’ It was also my transition in realizing that the food industry is fucking Eurocentric. I was tired of feeling like I was wrong for that being my standard of food—beans and rice and plantains and curry.” That vision has come to life as Dreamboat Cafe, a pop-up meal service that Michel runs out of her kitchen in Durham. The concept is a bit hard to summarize, but spend a little time on Dreamboat’s Instagram and you’ll get a better picture. There are the bountiful photos of food that we’ve come to expect from chefs, but the account is also full of zine excerpts, Golden Girls clips, and thoughtful primers on food apartheid, sustainability, and decolonization. Dreamboat Cafe, which also offers bake sales and virtual cooking classes, seems to sit right at the intersection of art, food, and heritage. “The whole point of doing pop-up dinners was to have an extremely intimate gathering and have this kind of sacred intimacy amongst people,” Michel says. “I try to keep that, now that we’ve transitioned during COVID into pop-up deliveries and pickups.” Michel, born in Southern Florida, has “always been cooking,” according to her sister Jackie Morin, who owns a gourmet cotton candy company, Wonderpuff. Morin describes Michel as a “Gene Kelly in the kitchen,” keeping burners and pots and pans organized and clean and looking at peace while doing it. “I’ve always been inspired by Jasmine,” Morin says, “She’s able to create something from nothing. It’s all rooted from love. That’s how we were raised at home, and her ultimate goal is to make people feel loved.” In 2012, Michel moved to New York City to study at The French Culinary Institute. It was a change of pace from her conservative Muslim upbringing, she says, but 14
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Jasmine Michel
PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
working in the pressure cooker of the city’s kitchens, she fell in love with pastries. “The one piece of advice I got when I moved to New York, from a family friend, was to ‘get myself lost,’” Michel says. “And find my way back home.” After she graduated in 2014, that offhand advice became a philosophy over the next few years. Michel traveled throughout the Southeast, working as a chef, and then moved to Hawaii in 2017 to farm. In Maui, she says, she felt “safe to be Black and Brown and extremely angry.” Here, she also began to dream about Dreamboat. In 2019, she moved to Durham to be near family, including her sister, brother, and parents, who have all settled in North Carolina. She found a home back in the South and began to experiment more with the foods she grew up cooking and eating, like snapper, which she says has been her biggest pilgrimage home. The process of starting Dreamboat might not have panned out as expected, given 2020’s unique curveballs, but her original model of pop-up dinners at places like Jeddah’s Tea made for a natural transition to pop-up dinner deliveries. As restaurants around the country have scrambled to find new takeout models in the pandemic, pop-up dining experiences have become a particular symbol of the moment. Events usually take place once or twice a week and stretch between 20–30 orders. They sell out fast. Some have themes—one was themed after Matilda; another was a tribute to Sara Baartman, the South African Khoikhoi woman who was enslaved and exploited at 19th-century freak shows—while others are crafted around dietary
needs or bulk orders. A recent family meal for four included, for $50, a whole roasted chicken, herbed potatoes, salad, and brownies. That menu, according to Michel, has all the basic building blocks of a family meal: meat, a starch, a “piece of green land,” and something sweet. This is the Dreamboat approach to food: You don’t just order a few items off the menu and call it a night. You’re being nourished by a tradition. In July, at a Golden Girls inspired pop-up with a pick-up at the LGBTQ Center of Durham, cars lined up to get $30 meals inspired by Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia: fried shrimp wontons, green papaya salad, roasted plantains, and Wonderpuff cotton candy. “Every time I’ve come across someone who loved Golden Girls as much as I did, it was because it was healing and funny,” says Michel, who has a warm, easy laugh. “You weren’t thinking while you were watching it, and somehow, these women were your friends. That whole popup dinner was circled around what we’re doing to heal ourselves and how we’re taking up space while hurting. Because everyone inevitably is.” Bake sales and meal deliveries do the job for now. But Michel has a vision that extends beyond the pandemic: a physical home, a brick-and-mortar American diner and French bistro where everything on the menu is “ethnic as hell.” “[Cooking] is how my family cared for people, and it’s how I want to care for people,” Michel says. “I want those I serve to feel freedom from pain because existence for many is incredibly painful, now more than ever.” W
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Machine Learning Experimental duo Marv lets synths lead the way on its self-titled debut LP BY MARTA NÚÑEZ POUZOLS music@indyweek.com
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he first time I experienced Marv live Marv consists of Geoff Schilling, a conwas when they opened Cochonne’s tributor to the Triangle music scene since tape-release show at Nightlight. It was 2007, and Nathan Taylor, also known as back in November, when nobody suspect- techno producer and DJ Sponge Bath. ed that concerts would soon be relegated When they started rehearsing in 2018, they didn’t have a specific sound or aesthetic in to longing memories. My first thought before the show was mind. Schilling’s previous project had just that Marv, the Carrboro-based synth duo, disbanded, and Taylor wanted to begin a was an unlikely pairing with Cochonne, collaborative project after working as a solo the Francophile post-punk femme-front- artist for well over a decade. Their first set-up was radically different ed band. But once the lights were off than what Marv is today: and the fog machine Taylor played bass and was on, Marv’s other“The record has a drum machine while worldly performance Schilling riffed on the made me forget about the mystery and keys. But this lasted context entirely. for about two practices A minimalist, slowdistant beauty before boredom set in. paced excursion into of a stranded So the duo decided to sound created a deep, focus on synths, laying intriguing atmosphere spaceship being the groundwork for an before the music proslowly devoured experimental process gressively opened up that they still follow and enveloped me in by glittering today. a melancholy dream of “We fell into a weird new-age landscapes. vegetation routine of just startAt certain moments and time.” ing practice without I was reminded of talking about a directhe utopian leanings of the dearly missed Carl Sagan-inspired tion and noodling around,” they said in a duo Sagan Youth (aka Sagan Youth Boys). recent email chat, “letting the machines Active from 2010 to 2015, they released take us where they may until we stumbled one of their albums on Tone Log, the local upon something that we were into.” In late 2018, Marv opened for Cave and experimental label that released Marv’s Object Hours, and right after stepping off self-titled debut album in July. Available on vinyl and cassette, the debut the stage, they were asked to record an LP lives up to the strong atmosphere creat- for Tone Log. They’ve been at work ever ed that night. The record has the mystery since—so much so that they’re almost finand distant beauty of a stranded spaceship ished recording the follow-up to this LP. There’s something about Marv that being slowly devoured by glittering vegetamakes you think of Tangerine Dream, tion and time.
The cover of Marv’s self-titled album
though they mention Cluster and Conrad Schnitzler as more direct influences. Above all, they feel indebted to the local electronic music scene. “We’re heavily influenced by the local history of performers and labels from the Triangle, and we’re just trying to add to that ecosystem,” they say. During summer 2019, the duo experienced an intense burst of creativity, recording almost one track per week. Their goal was to record a lot of material and then pick through it all for cohesion and quality. They decided to record each track in just one session, and this decision of not overthinking the arrangements contributes to the immediacy and unpredictability of the album. Even if Marv is not fundamentally improvisational, they walk a middle path between compositional intent and structured improv. Their interest in experimentation is emphasized by the collaborative nature of Marv. “We try to let the machines take the role of lead improviser,” they say. “We follow where they lead down the random path. Marv is totally different compared to our other projects. There is more of an openness to diver-
gent ideas and more attempts to try out different techniques and processes. There are a lot of variables that we embrace.” The pandemic has been hard on performing artists, Marv included. The experience of a live show, they argue, is irreplaceable. “We’re not really into the whole livestreaming culture that has blossomed up,” they say. “It feels sterile, weird, and easily co-opted by the digital platforms that make them possible.” The release show was supposed to be April 4 at Nightlight in Chapel Hill, with Hard Face and the Bowles/Bowne/Wagg Trio. But despite the sadness of all the shows that never got to happen and the myriad hardships that performers have had to confront this year, Marv demonstrates the resilience of our local music scene. “It has been difficult to focus on recording and practicing with everything going on,” they say. “At the same time, it has also been therapeutic—a small response to the tragedy of it all. Music has got to be a part of whatever future we’re heading toward, and we’re committed to being a part of whatever that might look like in the Triangle.” W INDYweek.com
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Cyanotype
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS
How to Get a Buzz Using classical instruments in radical ways, Cyanotype collaborates with quarantine on its new album BY CHRIS VITIELLO music@indyweek.com
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ow do musicians improvise together when they can’t be together? Birdsongs of the Necromancer is the North Carolina-based experimental group Cyanotype’s answer to that question. Releasing August 7 on Bandcamp, it features eight musicians who use extended techniques— unorthodox ways of making sounds with classical instruments—to bridge the gap. Cyanotype is a loose collective that consists mostly of classically trained musicians who have been playing together in various ensembles for years. They don’t have a set repertoire—instead, someone starts playing, others listen a bit and respond, and that listening and reacting guides them into a kind of groupthink. It’s electrifying to hear these real-time decisions and reactions in person, which 16
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has been captured well on their previous, essentially live recordings. But Birdsongs, made entirely under quarantine, is different. “There is a long history of these albums that get constructed over the internet or through the mail from people in far corners of the world, sending files back and forth, remixing and layering,” violist Dan Ruccia says. “But that’s very much a process of iteration, right? Using the mail as a compositional tool. We’re thinking about this as an improvisational tool.” [Disclosure: Ruccia writes about music for the INDY.] For the eight pieces on the album, Ruccia put together scores that merely listed four musicians in a certain order. The first musician would record a five-minute improvisation in a single, unrehearsed take, and send it back to Ruccia. Then the
second musician would receive the track scrabbling grows to percussive thumping with a specific time window in which they before Jil Christensen’s oppressive elecwould improvise to the recording with- tronic washes and organ sounds overout listening to it in advance. That would come them amid Michael Thomas Jackbe mixed and sent to the third musician, son’s clarinet scream. and so on. On “Oakland Drive,” David Menestres Instead of iterative composition, it’s a (bass) and Ruccia use unconventional process of accumulating improvisation bowing to get atmospheric sounds, like that resembles Cyanotype’s live works to the instruments are being scrubbed with create that unique sense of connection. steel wool, creating a soundscape for Since each musician is improvising sepa- more tonal playing to emerge from later. rately to a different, accumulating piece, The piece ends with Jackson talking uninquarantine itself can be said to be a fifth telligibly through his clarinet, giving the member of the ensemble. effect of eavesdropping on people passing But the extended techniques the on a busy sidewalk. group always employs are the still the “I am playing second on that track, after binding element. David,” Ruccia says. “I’m doing vertical bowJeb Bishop (trombone) and Laurent ing, where you bow parallel to the strings Estoppey (saxophone) open “Watch a rather than perpendicular to them, to get Wasp” with an insectoid sound like a drone a wah-wah, whooshy, airy sound. I’m going hovering overhead. “Jeb does a lot of stuff light with the tension and pressure and using breath in interesti g sorts of ways using a lot of bow speed.” to change the timbre and sound coming out,” Ruc“ Quarantine itself can be cia says. “He does stuff with his embouchure to said to be a fifth member get a buzz, and he hums and speaks while playof the ensemble.” ing to create different kinds of pitch sets and multiphonics. Menestres also hits the wooden part of “Laurent has a similar sort of vocabulary, the bow against the body of the bass to but for him, the sax has a lot more to do make percussive clacks. with using the valves to create different “That’s something that David does a lot kinds of sounds,” Ruccia continues. “Key more of than me,” Ruccia says. “The bass clicks and different pitch stuff, playing with lends itself more to that. There’s more different fingerings for things.” physicality to it, and it can handle a lot These kinds of techniques aren’t just cool more abuse.” noises. There’s also a politics to it. While In its accumulating improvisationthe music that has been played on classi- al form, through the expressive use of cal instruments has changed and expanded extended technique, Birdsongs of the Neccontinuously since they were invented cen- romancer is an example of how to overturies ago, the white Eurocentric conven- come physical and emotional isolation to tions of how those instruments are to be remain part of a musical community and played have stayed about the same. to expand one’s vocabulary when old ones Many trained musicians take those con- are failing. ventions as an unquestionable truth, but “Saying that you can only make this one others see them as a silencing of possibili- kind of sound or range of sounds, it’s repreties of expression, a muffling of unconven- sentative of all the various forms of cultural tional voices. Extended technique is a form hegemony that we’re unpacking and talking of dissent—its aesthetics is a politics. about right now,” Ruccia says. “I’m not going Estoppey’s valve clicks and odd breaths, to be so bold as to claim that we are upsetheard early in “Threnody for Breonna Tay- ting the system—we’re not—but it’s still a lor,” sound unnervingly like something way of thinking about different ways that outside getting ready to burst in. The things could be said or done.” W
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Her Take: On Carolina Hip Hop
ILLUSTRATION BY JON FULLER
Radio Dynasty DeeJay Samps’s Street Flava Mixshow has been a hip-hop rite of passage at Duke for 26 years BY KYESHA JENNINGS @kyeshajennings
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f you’re a hip-hop head, you’re probably familiar with Adrian Bartos and Robert Garcia, the stars of WKCR at Columbia University’s legendary hip-hop radio show, The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show. For eight years, the duo played a pivotal role in rap’s emergence in New York City. Having appeared on Stretch and Bobbito’s show is almost a requirement to be considered a golden-age hip-hop veteran today. From a 17-year-old Notorious B.I.G. to Jay-Z, Nas, Wu-Tang, Fat Joe, and Big L, the unfiltered show gave aspiring rappers a chance to be heard when no one else—that is, mainstream stations—would. Today, technology offers artists far more autonomy, but independent radio still matters in hip-hop, where influential shows can also become documents of history. One shining example is right here in Durham. 18
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DeeJay Samps hosts the Street Flava Mixshow on Duke’s WXDU, which launched as the UndaGround Sound Mix Show in 1994. Since then, Samps has both contributed to and influenced the Triangle’s hip-hop scene, making him a pioneering local legend. It’s arguably the longest-running hip-hop show on college radio in North Carolina and the second-oldest in the country. “DeeJay Samps is literally the glue that holds the Triangle hip-hop scene together,” says Durham rapper and community advocate Joshua Gunn. “Many got their first airplay on Samps’ show, and most of us made meaningful connections through Samps that advanced our careers to the global stage.” Many other artists share similar sentiments about Samps. He’s “more than a DJ and a hip-hop legend,” says the rapper Shame. “He’s always a good friend and somewhat of a father figure. When Samps has your back, you’re more than just an artist. You are family”. “DeeJay Samps is a pillar of hip-hop in Durham,” says the comedian Bishop Omega. “Before Apple Music, before YouTube, no rapper did not go to Samps and rock with WXDU.” While attending North Carolina Central University, Samps began his love for deejaying by practicing on his roommates’ turntables. Eventually, he moved into local clubs. “I had these 12 crates of records I pulled in, and then they just wanted to hear the same five to 10 songs,” Samps recalls. Realizing that deejaying parties didn’t allow him to immerse himself in the music he loved, he responded to a call for a hip-hop DJ at Duke by making a demo tape. After receiving a call back the next day, Samps began what would become an iconic Friday-night run that was only recently disrupted by the pandemic. Many of the stories about the golden moments consist of song premieres, rap battles between local emcees (Phonte vs. Joshua Gunn, Joshua Gunn vs. Kaze), and the $1 beat raffles led by Samps and 9th Wonder. Currently, Samps is the CEO, A&R, and manager of Street Flava Entertainment, an independent hip-hop label whose roster includes Precyce Politix, Mallz, Gram-
my-nominated producer D.R.U.G.S. Beats, and Beat Battle champion Steve Skyline. “If we had a DJ Khaled in N.C., it would be Samps,” says Gunn. “The 919 hip-hop scene that we are all so proud of wouldn’t be where it is without him. DeeJay Samps is hall-of-fame level talent. A legend.” I got a chance to chop it up with Samps and asked him, among other things, about his most memorable moments at WXDU. This is what he said: “I can’t really say one, but J. Gunn used to call the radio station and freestyle over the air. I would play an instrumental at the radio station and he was on a threeway with two or three other guys rapping. I was amazed because they were all like 15, 14, 13. That was a big thing, because eventually I managed Thyrday, which is their group that they put together, and I started with them before they were Thyrday as a result of the show. Of course, seeing [Joshua Gunn] battle people when he was 14—he battled students at NCCU and killed them! “Clearly, working with 9th Wonder—I met him through the show. I was one of the first people to play his music on the air. Here’s another story: So [Little Brother] had just finished “Speed,” and they came here straight from the studio. After my show, I was going downstairs, and they were sitting outside and pretty much formed Little Brother. They weren’t Little Brother at that point. They were just doing songs as a collective of The Justus League. I’m not gonna say I formed Little Brother or nothing like that, but the song was played first at my show. And then right after it played on air, they were downstairs talking about creating the group. “Another good memory was before [9th] had done any work with major artists. He was mainly working with local artists at that point. He was still just kind of bubbling, and people were trying to get on his beats. As a way to make a little money, but also just to get his name out there, he would say, ‘Hey, if you come up to the station and put a dollar in the hat, at the end of the show, we’re going to pull it out and give [the winner] a beat for a dollar.’ I don’t know how many times we did that, maybe four or five. I don’t know if they did anything with them or not, but some people won some good beats for a dollar from 9th Wonder.” W
M U SIC
Reviews
Heavy Duty Quarantine can’t contain these four cathartic new albums from the local metal scene BY BRYAN C. REED
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few months ago, the N.C.-bred metal band Æther Realm seemed poised for a breakout. Back in 2018, they’d inked a deal with stalwart Austrian label Napalm Records and put the finishing touches on their ambitious, anthemic third album, Redneck Vikings from Hell. With a May 1 release date looming and a promotion cycle underway, the band was ready to support the new album in all the usual ways. I was about to cover their music video shoot for the INDY, just before they launched an East Coast tour. Then COVID-19 came. The wave of cancellations that followed has staggered the music industry beyond the barrooms and halls where bands perform. Limited access to practice spaces and studios has forced them to cobble together releases from B-sides and oneoffs, to figure out how to livestream gigs, and to take more insular approaches to writing and recording. But Redneck Vikings from Hell was released, as planned, on May 1, and Æther Realm still seems poised for a breakout. While past efforts—notably 2017’s Tarot—proved Æther Realm’s panache with melodic metal’s most bombastic elements, Redneck Vikings from Hell showcases the band’s full range. It begins with the title track, a whimsical collision of gallant power metal and rollicking Southern rock, while lead single “Goodbye” infuses anthemic, big-tent metal with post-rock and electronica. The somber, piano-driven
power ballad “Guardian” stands in stark contrast to the melodic death-metal rush of “One Hollow Word.” References from In Flames to Muse seem apt, and it’s easy to picture a mud-soaked singalong at some European festival. Maybe someday. But for these days of confinement, perhaps the dark post-punk of Durham’s Wailin Storms is more appropriate. Rattle is the band’s third full-length (and their first for the well-regarded label Gilead Media) and its most fully realized. Drenched in eerie reverb and riffs that twang and clang, pummeled with heavy, resonant drums, and led by Justin Storms’ haunted—well, wailing, it recalls death rock and shoegaze as much as Gothic Americana and doom. Take “Grass,” which opens with an echoey death chant and Storms singing over a sparse drumbeat before a searing, lumbering riff lurches to life. Then the band leans into the swaggering groove, countering with jagged flashes of lead guitar and a rumbling undercurrent from the rhythm section. The low-end feels like a stoner procession, while the upper range blends noise-rock and post-punk into an electrified haze. Wailin Storms has a knack for dynamic shifts and finding open space within tight grooves. Unexpected stylistic intersections is a trait they share with Grohg, albeit with markedly different results. The Raleigh quartet’s self-titled third EP, released in late May, builds on a foundation of
Clockwise from top left: Æther Realm, Grohg, Wailin Storms, and Kult Ikon album covers
sludgy punk-metal with anthemic vamps, post-hardcore dissonance, and melodic leads that wouldn’t be out of place on an At the Gates album. In “Familiar Stench,” a twisting death-metal chug buttresses frontman Will Goodyear’s raw-throated polemic. The rhythm section of bassist Cody Rogers and drummer Tyler Gresh is able to wind technical shifts into a steady headbanging groove, and lead guitarist Andy Townsend cuts bright melodic lines through the mix. The self-titled EP follows a pair of efforts that drew out more of a pummeling post-hardcore sound. After several lineup changes and a six-year gap between recordings, this is Grohg’s most traditionally “metal” but also its most idiosyncratic and engaging work so far. As Grohg continues its evolution, another Raleigh band has emerged with a heavy and dynamic approach that trades urgency for atmosphere. The instrumental trio Kult Ikon released its debut,
Sheet Metal Sessions, in May, capturing the meandering mix of post-metal, shoegaze, and doom they’ve been building on local stages for the past few years. The four tracks each sprawl across at least eight minutes, showcasing Kult Ikon’s patient swells and atmospheric relief. Like Pelican or Russian Circles, they use cleaner tones and space-rock detours to make sudden descents into crushing doom feel all the heavier. Album closer “Circle Birds” exemplifies this as the trio contrasts passages of reverb-diffused guitar and meditative drones that suggest OM with metallic vamps, Crowbar’s viscous sludge, and Isis’s surging, textured crescendos. These four releases fit a time that feels both stagnant and volatile. From Æther Realm’s melodic finesse and whimsical range to Wailin Storms’ dark haze, from Grohg’s vicious outbursts to Kult Ikon’s deliberate ebbs and surges, the output of the Triangle’s heavy music scenes can’t be quarantined. W INDYweek.com
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SC R E E N The Carolina Theatre PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA
Rooting for the Home Screen You don’t need your local cinema to stream a movie online, but your local cinema needs you BY NICK PARKER arts@indyweek.com
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ou can stream a movie many places online, but only streaming them via your local cinema helps ensure that you’ll have a local cinema to come back to. Movie theaters were some of the first businesses to be shut down when the pandemic started. Now, nearly four months after they locked their doors, independently owned cinemas across the Triangle are looking for ways to keep their customers engaged and thinking about the big screen. The Lumina Theater in Chapel Hill’s Southern Village has taken its screenings outdoors. “I know that we’re probably one of, if not the only, movie theaters that is still showing films,” says Doug Rowe, the theater’s general manager. In terms of regular in-person theater experiences with concessions, this is true, though drive-in theaters like the one in Henderson are thriving. Taking advantage of the Southern Village Market Street Green, the staff at the Lumina has worked with county health officials to launch Movies by Starlight. The lineup so far has featured classic movies Back to 20
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the Future and Grease. According to Rowe, since showings started at the end of June, most have been sold out. A long list of safety precautions has been implemented. Viewers watch films on an outdoor screen from one of 40 “pods,” which each sit five people and are spaced six feet apart. Masks are offered free of charge, and social distancing is required. The theater has gone cashless, limiting customers to card transactions, and restrooms are cleaned up to six times per screening. They’ve also developed new wellness checks for employees. “We’re screening our employees with temperature checkers before every shift. We’re going through a questionnaire to make sure they don’t have any symptoms,” Rowe says. “Everybody is wearing a mask and gloved up.” The Lumina has been active on its Facebook page, engaging fans in discussions about film. A recent question asked, “What’s the best non-Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?” Over at the Chelsea Theater, a co-op-owned, membership-based theater in Chapel Hill, multiple new pro-
grams have been created to keep moviegoers involved with the theater. In addition to streaming new movies online, such as the John Lewis documentary Good Trouble, the theater is also spotlighting the works of local filmmakers, shifting the lineup every couple of weeks. The program, known as Chelsea Selects, makes local filmmakers’ projects streamable via The Chelsea’s website, bringing them to a wider audience than local independent films usually receive. Executive Director Emily Kass says this is a natural fit for a community-owned cinema. Another new program at the Chelsea seeks to create discussions between filmmakers and viewers. The latest guests were the directors of Silence Sam, a recent documentary on Silent Sam. Producer Courtney Symone Staton chatted with fans about the movie in a streamed appearance after a screening. Like the Carolina Theatre in Durham, which recently completed renovations to its historic crown moldings that it claims would have cost the city $100,000, the Chelsea has taken the pandemic as a chance to work on previously planned renovations. Donors can sponsor parts of the effort, from individual seats to a new box office. Facing an uncertain fall release schedule and potentially reduced theater sizes to comply with social distancing when theaters do reopen, the donations are a big help. The Carolina also started a virtual streaming program for new movies to complement its existing program for streaming retro films. “It’s based on availability, what’s coming out, and what’s available. We’re not bringing classics back to the virtual screen, they’re first-run art-house releases,” says Jim Carl, director of film programming at the Carolina. “As far as Retro, it’s based again on the studios and what they’re making available online.” Since early March, the Carolina’s Retro Films Facebook page has gone from around 20,000 followers to over 100,000. “People really do miss the Retro Films series we do— the classic repertories, back on the big screen,” Carl says. “I get a lot of feedback from people about how much they miss coming to Retro, how much they miss coming to the Carolina Theatre.” Studios are working with theaters to get many movies, new and old, available to viewers. Much like how you need a ticket to enter a theater, the Carolina charges a fee to view the new first-run movies, which is then split with the studios. Many studio releases, however, are being held until theaters reopen. That date is still uncertain. “The new Wes Anderson film has had its date changed four times in the last month,” Carl says. “My fear is that when we reopen, there will be a glut of so many titles that
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we will be logjammed, and we’ll have to move titles in and out within two weeks.” The earliest a new major studio film could be released is Labor Day weekend, when Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is scheduled for a limited release by Warner Bros. in select cities. If it turns a profit, many studios may follow suit and release their films as well. When movie theaters do reopen again, it is almost certain they will do so with limited capacities and significantly longer periods between showtimes. The goal will be to both spread people across the theater and for staff to thoroughly clean the theaters before a new group arrives. Until then, local cinemas are
“My fear is that when we reopen, there will be a glut of so many titles that we will be logjammed.” doing everything they can to keep their distinct brands intact online while their theaters sit empty. “It will be different,” Kass says. “But we know that it will be safe.” W INDYweek.com
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There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.
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