February 2005 Issue by Urbanite LLC

f ebruary

e t i n e a ur

2005

BALT I M O R E

i s s ue no . 8

on w k e t Lab h t i w ne O n o logy One o p o r Anth n a b : Ur e m o H otes N r e n Lin a b r U

does baltimore have a sound?

Lafaye

tte Gil

christ,

guest

editor

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A LUXURIOUS ADDITION TO THE BALTIMORE SKYLINE.

By every measure, Lexus sets a luxury standard other car makers can only dream of reaching. But now, you can reach an exceptional Lexus selection at two locations in the Baltimore area, Len Stoler Lexus in Owings Mills and Lexus of Towson. Test drive a Lexus today, and experience the passionate pursuit of perfection for yourself.

Len Stoler Lexus Reisterstown Road, Owings Mills lenstolerlexus.com 410-581-7000 2

urbanite february 05

Lexus of Towson York Road at Beltway Exit 26 410-769-9400 lexusoftowson.com

where communities begin! broadway overlook Nestled in the heart of the city just one block south of Johns Hopkins Medical Campus at the corner of Broadway and East Fayette Street, Broadway Overlook offers the best of city life.

riverfront townhomes Walking distance from Harbor Hospital - 126 beautifully renovated two-story townhomes.

hillside park apartments Ninety-four apartments nestled in the hills of southwest Baltimore.

410-234-0111 where communities begin!

www.landex.org

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urbanite february 05

why are our frozen ready-to-cook crab cakes

SO DELICIOUS?

because we make them with americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

# 1 crab meat. *

Restaurant-Quality Seafood. Available at your supermarket. www.phillip sfoods.com *A.C. Nielsen, 52 weeks ending 10/25/04

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ureanite

Urbanite Issue 8 February 2005

BALTI M O RE

Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Managing Editor Elizabeth A. Evitts Elizabeth@urbanitebaltimore.com

—Walter J. Lippmann, American journalist

Guest Editor Lafayette Gilchrist Art Direction Alex Castro, Castro/Arts LLC

urbanite february 05

With the help of Lafayette Gilchrist, accomplished jazzman and musical guru, we explored the audile world of our city and found it ripe and captivating. We found volumes worth of stories and successes. This issue is a scratch on the surface. This is a topic we will continue to explore. photo by Marshall Clarke

hat does it mean to be a successful musician? What does it mean to be a successful musical city? If we define success as record deals, national tours, and international acclaim, then Baltimore is certainly on the rise. Many of Baltimore’s musicians are realizing commercial and critical achievement and are receiving accolades for their own unique sounds, like the neo-cabaret wonder that is Boister (p. 31). Our gospel and blues great, Lea Gilmore, sells out 10,000-seat arenas in Belgium, while Guy Blakeslee leads the pack in the psychedilic folk movement (p. 27). Ikwunga Wonodi’s CD of Afrobeat poetry is garnering critical international acclaim (p. 42). And record labels, born and bred in Baltimore, are signing local and national acts of note (p. 30). But if our view of musical “success” remains strictly tethered to the standard litmus tests, if the candy pop singers accepting their golden statues at annual award shows are the yardstick, if we continue to believe that exterior accolades trump local conviction, then we lose something. We lose our perspective. Baltimore is a vibrant city. It is at once gritty and sublime, poignant and painful, and this is what our musicians are telling us. Listen and you’ll hear a new sound of success emerge. You’ll hear the lifeblood of our city, of our very lives, pulse through the voices, the instruments, the speakers of our storytellers. From the teen rapping aloud as he walks his neighborhood, to the polished artist performing in a concert hall, Baltimore is brimming with musical integrity and talent. You may not always read about it on the pages of the New York Times, and you may not see it on MTV. But if success is redefined as being true and honest to the artistic process, if it means incorporating music—whatever its form—into the daily fabric of your life, then Baltimore is a most powerful place.

—Tracy Durkin

Designer Ida Woldemichael Art Manager Ann Wiker Copy Editor Angela Davids/Alter Communications Advertising Director Jeff Stintz Jeff@urbanitebaltimore.com Administrative Assistant Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com Intern Robbie Whelan intern@urbanitebaltimore.com Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-467-7802 www.ubanitebaltimore.com Editorial Inquiries: Send queries to the managing editor (no phone calls, please) including SASE. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Future Themes: March: Up and Coming April: Film May: Home June: Water July: Independence August: Literary Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2005, by Urbanite LLC. All Rights Reserved. This publication is FREE and is distributed widely throughout Baltimore City. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at: 410-243-2050.

contributors

contents

lafayette gilchrist

11 corkboard

Michael S. Harper Michael S. Harper has been a professor of English at Brown University since 1970, and was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Rhode Island. Of his ten published books of poetry, both Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970) and Images of Kin (1977) were nominated for the National Book Award, and for his 1995 collection Honorable Amendments, he won the George Kent Poetry Award. He was co-editor of Chant of Saints, an anthology of African-American art, writing, and scholarship, and has collaborated on an illustrated poetic sequence on the life and times of famed painter/collagist Romare Bearden. His latest collection, Selected Poems, was published by Arc Publications in 2002.

photo by Mary Beth Mehan

9 guest editor’s note

12 have you heard… 15 food steve blair

16 neighborhoods: highlandtown alice ockleshaw

18 home: urban anthropology 21 encounter: rumor control miriam desharnais

Leo Howard Lubow

22 baltimore observed: painting the town

photo by Annette Wexler

In 1997, after 20 years as a Baltimore business litigator, Leo Howard Lubow gave up his practice to pursue two passions: writing and photography. Since then, he has completed an existential thriller and created portfolios of fine art, portrait, photojournalistic, and street-scene images. His exhibit, Blue Note Moments & Other Points In Time, is currently on view at An die Musik in downtown Baltimore.

lily thayer

25 urban liner notes william j. evitts

26 soundtrack to the city

elizabeth a. evitts, chris hart, l e o h o w a r d l u b o w, i a n n a g o s k i , n e d o l d h a m , b e n n r a y, r o b b i e w h e l a n

Alice Ockleshaw

photo by Marshall Clarke

Alice Ockleshaw moved from Chicago to Baltimore two years ago, after receiving her master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. While in Chicago, she worked for a daily news service, covering housing and transportation. She now lives in Canton, and works full-time as a writer and media relations manager for an international architecture firm. In addition to extensive commercial writing, her work has appeared in a variety of trade magazines, the City Paper and on www.citysearch.com. She recently completed a book for Penguin Publishing.

31 the band that won’t be silenced lizzie skurnick

33 map of music 34 photo essay / poetry leo howard lubow /michael s. harper

37 poetry michael s. harper

Ida Woldemichael

photo by Marshall Clarke

Ida Woldemichael knew art would become a big part of her life as she drew her favorite cartoon characters as a child. Although Ida was born in the United States, she stays close to her Eritrean culture. She studied graphic design at Virginia Tech and is currently a student in MICA’s MFA in graphic design program. Her recent work has made her appreciate the social impacts of design, and her work as designer of Urbanite is one aspect of this.

N EW L E A F PA P E R environmental benefits statement This magazine is printed on New Leaf CyclusPrint, made with 100% de-inked recycled fiber, 60% minimum post-consumer waste, processed chlorine free. By using this environmentally friendly paper, Urbanite saved the following resources:

trees

water

171

79,785

fully grown

gallons

energy

solid waste

greenhouse gases

134

10,087

19,809

million BTUs

pounds

Calculated based on research done by Environmental Defense and other members of the Paper Task Force.

38 conversation:

one on one with Labtekwon lafayette gilchrist

39 facts 40 out there: wade in the water scott paynter

cover illustration: Marshall Clarke / Alex Castro

41 sustainable city: ecotourism christina breda antoniades

42 in review 45 resources

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what you’re saying Point Taken

—Brooks Bage trumansoflocustpoint.com

home. A place where not only can I work, but I can also network with others who are in similar work situations. On occasion, I will pack up my computer and head down to Kiss Café to use their free wireless network. What would be great is if there was a place that also provided business services, such as faxing, scanning, copying, and even conference space. Small business owners can obtain help with accounting and legal issues. I am assuming that there are others who prefer to work like I do. Having a collegiate environment where we can support and converse with each other would be fantastic.

Beverly Hills 21214

—Heather Gazdik

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed Miriam DesHarnais’s article on Locust Point. My brother and I own Truman’s of Locust Point and just began carrying your magazine in our business. I’m happy to inform you that your magazine has gotten a very positive response. I found your article well researched and insightful. It was a joy to read such a positive story about my community. We look forward to your next issue.

The article about Red Canoe Children’s Books & Coffee House on Harford Road was very good. The Red Canoe is not in Lauraville, though. It is in Beverly Hills. We are very proud of our neighborhood and are tired of it being misrepresented as Lauraville.    —Harry Quinn

Looking for the “Café Office” Alternative I am wondering if there are any resources in Baltimore for people who work in a nontraditional environment, such as consulting or freelancing. I live in Canton and up until recently was working full-time for a medical publisher. I have since left to pursue consulting, in which I work on different projects for different companies. Over the last two to three years, I have become a proponent of free agency, as described in Daniel Pink’s book Free Agent Nation (Warner Business Books, 2002).  In theory, you and your talents become your brand. You don’t associate your “persona” with the “company” in which you work a 9-to-5 day. In a way, it is like diversifying my professional assets. I now have to make sure that I am staying on top of my skills and am constantly re-inventing myself as the world changes. What I am looking for in Baltimore is a place to go to work from time to time outside of my

Have an answer for Heather? Join our conversation online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

CASH for Working Families I am writing to introduce you and your readers to the Baltimore CASH Campaign. CASH stands for Creating Assets, Savings and Hope. The campaign works to inform and educate workers about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and help these families avoid costly tax preparation fees and the predatory lending traps known as refund anticipation loans. Right now, we are recruiting outreach partners who will help us spread the word. We are targeting the more than 18,000 Baltimore workers who are eligible for EITC payments but are not claiming the payments. —Sheréa M. Makle, Director Baltimore CASH Campaign 410-539-6800 What’s on your mind? We want to hear what you’re saying. Send your mail, including name, address, and daytime phone, to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com. Mail may be edited for length and clarity.

Open my ears

to music; let Me thrill with Spring’s first flutes and drums— But never let me dare forget The bitter ballads of the slums. —Louis Untermeyer, poet They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art. —Charlie Parker, jazz musician If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. —Henry David Thoreau, writer The music business was not safe, but it was fun. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway. —Lionel Richie, singer and songwriter The world is going to hell, we don’t have a record deal, and I’ve never had a better time in my life. —Jeff Tweedy, lead singer of Wilco I get a real charge from my music. It helps me become a whole person. When I come back [to my office] I have a fresher perspective for sorting out the tangled mess of politics. —Martin O’Malley, mayor of Baltimore and lead singer of O’Malley’s March You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man, and it’s on! —Fats Waller, jazz musician It doesn’t make any sense to play jazz music if you can’t state your own point of view. That would be a direct slap in the face to the history of jazz. —Cyrus Chestnut, Baltimore jazz musician Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. —Ludwig van Beethoven, composer Be grateful for luck. Pay thunder no mind—listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody. —Eubie Blake, Baltimore jazz musician They can’t kill music. God knows, they’ve tried. But music always wins. As long as there’s kids coming up that have a passion. All the bean counters in the world can’t kill that. ...They can try, of course, to feed you the most puerile, benign horse manure, but some kid’s going to come along and demand something more than that. —John Hiatt, singer and songwriter Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind. —Lewis Thomas, author and biologist

urbanite february 05

g u e s t e d i t o r ’ s n o t e

by lafayette gilchrist

Living and working in Baltimore has informed my music in a

those gathered to listen) go sailing into the stratosphere, bouncing

way that has much to do with the nature of the work I get, which

off the walls, ceilings, and floors of various clubs, concert halls,

is pretty varied. I’m always doing what I describe as “multi-world-

studios, and just plain old dives. When the first note of the first

ly gigin’.” I might be doing a solo piano gig at some private party,

piece starts, everything is right with the world and with me. That

duets with singers or other instrumentalists, or writing scores

high—that feeling of connectedness one gets while involved in the adventurous pursuit and exploration of sound, not knowing what is going to happen from one note to the next—has never failed to fulfill and excite me. And when the audience is there, hanging out

photo by Marshall Clarke

For me music happens when sounds (hopefully agreeable to

for short films and musical productions. I might be musical wallpaper one minute, and playing to a crowd at the Ottobar or The Funk Box with my band, New Volcanoes, the next. The people at these gigs couldn’t be more different, but I try to use everything. I

during that trip and deciding you’re worth the hang, it makes the whole experience

try to meld the extremes into one. The worlds that seem not to belong together,

that much more rich and meaningful.

the worlds that run parallel to each other, begin to collide. That’s the thing that

Having been a professional musician and composer in Baltimore most of my

is most true of this town, and the world today for that matter. I am always try-

adult life has shaped me in a way that allows a connection with people—people I

ing to look out and understand where the larger world out there fits with my

otherwise might not meet or identify with. One thing I learned early is that work

little world here. And I try to make them fit in some kind of way. That holds the

is work, and in order to survive, a certain musical and social versatility is required.

key to the music I make and the music I want to make in the future.

So the rule I always follow is this: Work as often as you can and with those who will work with you. Because of this, I’ve traveled Europe with jazz great David Murray

—Lafayette Gilchrist is an acclaimed jazz pianist living in Bolton Hill. When

and I’ve played duets with experimental musicians John Berndt and John Dierker. I

he’s not touring in support of his 2004 release The Music According to Lafayette

interviewed classical pianist Leon Fleischer at the Peabody Institute and I’ve part-

Gilchrist, he’s teaching the next generation of musicians at UMBC.

nered on projects with hip-hop artists and dancers.

Two Gentlemen of Verona A Tony Award-winning Musical adapted from Shakespeare by John Guare & Mel Shapiro Lyrics by John Guare Music by Galt MacDermot Directed by Irene Lewis

Feb 11th– Mar 27th Tickets $10–$65

www.centerstage.org or 410.332.0033 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

COMING SOON TO THE

FRANCE-MERRICK

HIPPODROME THEATRE!

PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 12 NORTH EUTAW STREET, BALTIMORE

TONY NOMINEE BEST PLAY ®

WINNER OUTER CRITICS CIRCLE

“IN A WORD,

MAGNIFICENT!”

FRANK GORSHIN

– The New Yorker

Written by

“The most ravishing spectacle this side of Siam! The King and I is perfect.”

Directed by

RUPERT HOLMES

JOHN TILLINGER

“YOU’LL BE IN HEAVEN!” - NY TIMES

PHOTO: ERICA BERGER

– Columnist Liz Smith

www.saygoodnightgracie.net

February 1-13

February 22-March 6

Tickets: 410.547.SEAT • BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com • Ticketmaster.com Tickets also available at all Ticketmaster Outlets, Hippodrome Box Office (M-Sat 10-5) Groups (20+): call 410.837.0110 or 800.889.8457 • france-merrickpac.com Tickets are subject to handling fees and service charges. No exchanges or refunds.

urbanite february 05

corkboard

t all is a play abou ildren’s Hour Ch e Th ’s an Lillian Hellm do out olescents can things that ad us io sid in y, st the na ’s rs. In Hellman ss to their elde ne us llio be re of spite and about a a dirt y rumor teen spreads us cio ali m a stor y, and fractured d relationships se ui br to g in teacher, lead ed with an Theatre team uction, Ever ym od pr is th r Fo . lives the Ar ts. ore School for from the Baltim student actors

porary Art, Fan Institute of Contem Diller + Scofidio

uset Pier, Boston, Massach

photo by Matthew Hayleck

Ren dering: Diller +

Sco fidio

tre Ever yman Thea s Street arle 1727 North Ch Through Feb 20 410-752-2208 theatre.org w w w.ever yman

Photo © Nigel Young/Foster and Partners

Baltimore city plays host to the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference and the accompanying Tour de Clay. Organized through Baltimore Clayworks and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, this ambitious event organizes 878 artists into more than 160 exhibitions in 123 venues throughout Charm City. Feb 19-April 3 410-578-1919 www.tourdeclay.com

City Hall, London, England. Foster and Partners

This winter, 100 local and natio nal ar tists transform the boarded-up win dows of unoccupied city houses through Picture Windo w, the third in a se ries of winter on-site ar t projects organi zed by the Baltimor e Office of Prom otion & The Ar ts. The ar tists’ work will be af fixed to Projec t 5000 proper tie which have be s, en targeted by the city for redevelopmen t. A map of prop er ties will be available and a slide show of the ar twork will be presen ted at an open ing at the Area 405 ar t gallery . 405 East Oliver Street Feb 12 3 p.m.–10 p.m. 410-752-8632 tbaskervillle@ promotionand ar ts.com w w w.area405.c om

e by th ned public fi e is d nd racy course a mocracy moc s i e d d d t de “If a ter of its s of tha antit y an s c u e a q c h r t e c cha say e su y the c e, th sured b es.” So t ubli a p b de al mea lic spac igns for o e i t b a n b t s mus of its pu new de at the N The . N: it y on , D.C qual s of OPE exhibiti gton fines, n r i t o s h t s e a cura the late ica d , and in W e, mer um e spac g Muse s how A lic spac ter e b e in u n d i l p i e k u m s i P B exa tec t c ts l t o i e r t b i p i exh arch d. and s by gns, di desi es work aha Ha Z d u d incl n an nma Eise W et N Stre ay 15 F 1 y 40 ugh M urda Thro day–Sat . m Mon m.–5 p. . 10 a unday . S d p.m n a m.–5 11 a. 72-2448 g 2 r 202- .nbm.o w ww

In her book, The Politics of Public Housing (Oxford University Press, 2004) Baltimore native Rhonda Y. Williams recounts nearly 70 years of Baltimore’s public housing history, providing an intimate portrait of the black women who fought to make the projects their home. Meet the author during her lecture at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Branch. 400 Cathedral Street Feb 6 2 p.m. Free 410-396-5430 www.epfl.net

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photo by Jessica Beil

photo by Marshall Clarke

have you heard. . .

Books...

When Fells Point’s Black Planet Books closed in January 2004, its owners changed locations and decided to go the route of so many bookstores: Add a coffeehouse to make the cash needed to survive. The result is Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, located in Mount Vernon. Inside, the shelves are devoted to radical literature, like the work of Emma Goldman, the anarchist leader who gives the shop its name. In one corner you’ll ﬁnd pamphlets titled An Animal Liberation Primer and Smashing the Image Factory, while in another nook, next to ﬁction by Tom Robbins and Anna Kavan, there’s a forty-two-volume leather-bound edition of the collected works of Lenin. The shop also sells works by locals Len Bracken, Andrew Smith, and Howard Ehrlich, editor of a zine called Social Anarchism. You’re likely to run into one of these authors in the store, and that’s the idea. Run by a collective of 15 volunteers, the hope is that customers will meet, talk, sip coffee, trade ideas, and maybe buy a WWJBD (What Would John Brown Do?) Anti-Racist Action Network sew-on patch. 800 Saint Paul Street; 410-230-0450; www.redemmas.org.

Radio...

Wander the red line on your FM radio to the far left on Fridays from noon to 1 p.m. or Friday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and you might end up smiling, and feeling a little more Maryland and Baltimore savvy. WYPR’s latest program, The Signal, floats through the air weekly on 88.1 like a dirigible full of Maryland art and cultural morsels. Host Andy Bienstock, together with senior producers Aaron Henkin and Lisa Morgan, offer a collage of deeply explored, passionately approached vignettes, accented by mostly local music. Henkin and Morgan are the brains behind the show, which features topics ranging from the sublime (a look at Baltimore’s ﬁnest independent book and music stores) to the wonderfully silly (a graphologist who plumbs a person’s psychological depths by looking at handwriting samples). One story, recounting the life of Baltimore’s own Virginia Hall, a World War II spy who was known as “The Limping Lady,” opened with Bienstock’s trademark velvety voice telling us: “She had a wooden leg named Cuthbert.” 88.1 FM; www.signalradio.org.

—Robbie Whelan

EVERYMAN THEATRE

—J Gavin Heck

THE CHILDREN’S HOUR by Lillian Hellman January 14 – February 20, 2005 Previews January 11, 12, 13 Directed by Donald Hicken Co-Produced with Rep Stage Valerie Lash, Artistic Director & Baltimore School for the Arts Wednesdays through Sundays Ticket prices: $15–$28 Box Ofﬁce: 410-752-2208 www.everymantheatre.org

Sponsor: Media Sponsors:

1727 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21201 Photo of Paige Hernandez. Photo by Stan Barouh.

urbanite february 05

photo by Eileen Costa

photo by Jeff Fisher

Art...

For ﬁve years, Jo-Ann Aiken, a local artist and now vice-chair of the Metals Guild of Maryland, ran a successful art supply business in Meadow Mill, selling copper coils, piercing tools, and other materials to students from MICA. But over the years she began hearing countless gripes from non-student craftspeople who wanted their own studio spaces and access to metalworking machinery. Today, her new and expanded Made In Metal Studios is like a community center for metalsmiths. Artists can lease studio space and desk space, and they have access to a soldering room, several enameling kilns and other professional-grade equipment. An adjoining gallery space called M.I.M. displays spindly, delicate jewelry and glasswork for sale in big glass cases. “It’s easy to set up your own space in the basement of your house,” says Patty Minkowski, a jewelry designer and part-time student at MICA who set up shop at M.I.M. in early December 2004, “but without the context of other artists, it’s hard to succeed. You need to have the critique of your peers, and that’s what this place is all about.” An exhibit titled Good Love/Bad Love opens February 5, and there are plans in the works to offer classes and workshops on metalwork, glasswork, and other related crafts. 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 130; 410-662-6623; madeinmetal@netzero.net —R.W.

EVERYMAN THEATRE

CyberSounds...

Much has been made about the future of radio in narrowcasting or podcasting, but now the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center—the Long Island City-based institution affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art—has put its street cred behind the establishment of WPS1, the “world’s first Internet art radio station,” streaming audio twenty-four hours a day. Broadcasting since April 2004, the “radio” station’s programming falls into three broad categories: a channel for “edge” musics, one that fills the void vacated by the demise of college radio; rare and archival audio recordings of artists from MoMA’s library; and independently produced arts-related interviews and talk shows. You might hear ABC anchorman Peter Jennings chatting-up Los Angeles photographer, painter and filmmaker Ed Ruscha, chosen to represent the United States at the 2005 Venice Biennale, or you might hear a discussion with Marcel Duchamp, godfather of all that is confusing about modern art—but it doesn’t seem nearly as confusing as you thought. You might find an hour showcasing the golden era of Ethiopian psychedelia. WPS1 is available through its website, www.WPS1.org, and is accessible via iTunes, Real Player, or Windows Media Player. The station’s archives are accessible to the public; past programs can be streamed, or downloaded to your iPod. —Bill Sebring

Sponsor: Media Sponsors:

1727 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21201 Photo of Paige Hernandez. Photo by Stan Barouh.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

Recipe â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S B A L T I M O R E

A R T

C I N E M A

THE CHARLES

James Brownies Half the flour + twice the eggs = funky brownies. 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 1 stick butter 4 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 tsp. vanilla 1 cup flour pinch of salt Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

RLES STREET 1711 NORTH CHA

410-727-FILM

Grease and flour a springform tube pan. Melt the chocolate chips and butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Beat the eggs and gradually add the sugar, continuing to beat until thick and fluffy. Remove the melted chocolate and butter from heat. Stir well and then gradually pour into egg batter while beating. Add vanilla. Combine flour and salt and add to batter in two stages. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with a handful of chocolate chips. Bake for 45 minutes and cool.

urbanite february 05

food

by steve blair

photography by evan cohen

How Sweet It Is Some of the country’s best chocolates are made right here in Baltimore. Baltimore’s sweet tooth owes much to the venerable family businesses that thrive on high standards and generations of tradition. Goetz, Berger and Rheb—all nationally known confection companies— are just part of a long list of family names that give Baltimore its sweet smell of success, particularly in the world of chocolate. Take Wockenfuss Candies, dipping and whipping chocolates on Belair Road since 1915. Though their retail shop adjacent to their factory offers hard candies, cards, and gifts, the chocolates are the “bread and butter” of their business, says Janice Wockenfuss-Motter, one of thirteen family members working for the company. Moore’s Candies, right up the street on Pinewood Avenue, also has a long Baltimore history. Founded in 1919, it’s been operating out of the same single-family home in Parkville since 1929. To walk into their basement retail shop is to walk into their production facility. This is encouraged, and owner Dana Heyl is always eager to talk about their chocolates. He professes that Moore’s chocolates are special because they stick with “family recipes made daily with craftsmanship, quality ingredients, and premium chocolate.”

Moore’s is one of those incredible Baltimore institutions whose notoriety is galvanized by tradition and consistency, both of which have garnered the business national acclaim. The Los Angeles Times heralded this tiny company as “America’s Best” and the Food TV Network profiled Moore’s Candies, calling it “One of America’s Best Candy Makers.” Candy maker or chocolatier? Is one more qualified than the other? Albert Kirchmayr of A. Kirchmayr Chocolatier in Timonium believes so. Initially trained as a chef in Germany before moving to the States, Kirchmayr returned to Europe to become a professional chocolatier, he says, after realizing how difficult it was to find exceptional chocolates in this country. In business for 17 years, Kirchmayr says that he offers a totally different product than his Baltimore counterparts. “We compete with the import market,” he says. “Godiva is the closest you can get.” And speaking of the import market, one of the most unexpected places to find fine imported chocolates in town is at a shoe store, Ma Petite Shoe in Hampden. Owner Susannah Siger beams with delight at the future of chocolate. “Savory chocolates are on the way. And have you ever heard of Choco-

late Sushi?” she asks. Savory chocolates incorporate herbs and spices like rosemary, sage and curry. Chocolate Sushi, despite its name, contains no fish. It has the artistic intricacies of sushi, but is made from all-natural chocolate and other baker’s ingredients. Look for these interesting additions to Siger’s already eclectic mix of chocolates from countries like Belgium and Ecuador. Not far from Ma Petite Shoe is the corporate office of Naron Chocolates, a part of the Ruxton Family of Chocolates that includes Glauber’s and Mary Sue candy companies. Although no retail operations exist at this factory location on Union Avenue in Hampden/Woodberry, Naron chocolates, voted “best” by Washingtonian magazine, are available in candy boutiques and gift shops across the state. Want to make your own chocolate delight for your sweetie this Valentine’s Day? Then try the foolproof recipe at left for ultra-moist “funky brownies” named after the godfather of funk himself. n —Steve Blair wrote about the Slow Food Movement in January and is currently working off his “research” through a new weight-loss regimen he calls abstinence. p. 45

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neighborhoods

by alice ockleshaw

On a street corner in Highlandtown, a sign on the Conkling Salvage Exchange reads: “We buy and sell everything, from flypaper to flying machines.” More than simply a likable—if not outdated—slogan for a fifty-year-old establishment, it resonates on a larger scale for visitors to the neighborhood. Like the store, Highlandtown is a place that finds value in the small and the big, the local and the worldly, the old-fashioned and the innovative. Also like the store, which overflows with a chaotic mix of merchandise, Highlandtown is a trove of diverse and seemingly mismatched offerings that can only be explored up close. This is a neighborhood best experienced by wandering its grid-like streets, soaking up the aromas of Hoehn’s Bakery and Matthew’s Pizzeria, peeking in the decorative windows of Stella’s Bridal and Gift and Beauchic Boutique, and standing in the protective shadows cast by the area’s numerous grand churches. Highlandtown—an area loosely bound by Ellwood Avenue to the west, Haven Street to the east, Baltimore Street to the north and Eastern Avenue to the south— is a place full of character, and characters. Here, a unique blend of immigrants, longtime residents, young professionals and artists join to make it a better place to work and live.

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photography by jen dennis

SECONDHAND CITY Mid-morning, Angela Knox, 53, is busy preparing DiPasquale’s Italian Marketplace for the day. Knox, her five siblings and her father, share ownership of the Italian deli and marketplace started by their grandfather in 1914. When asked about the Highlandtown she remembers from her childhood, Knox sighs and shakes her head. “As kids, we’d go to the Avenue, eat ice cream, and shop,” she says of Eastern Avenue, once a premier shopping district in Baltimore. “It was a nice, close-knit neighborhood where people would sit on their front steps and eat snowballs.” Although a quick glance outside the DiPasquale’s Gough Street location reveals the same Our Lady of Pompei church, Formstone rowhouses and marble front steps of Knox’s memories, her discouraged tone is understandable. Many alleys are strewn with garbage, homes have been neglected, and there’s a noticeable lack of activity on the street. Highlandtown suffered the start of its decline when its large merchants, facing increasing competition from new shopping malls, began to leave the area in the 1960s. Problems followed—a misfortune John Rossi, 25, witnessed firsthand during the 15 years he has lived here. As a child growing up on Lombard Street, he got into his share of trouble, he says, “but the cops knew us by name, and we knew it was their block.” By the time

Rossi got to Patterson Park High School, drugs were rapidly gaining a stronghold among local youth, including some of his friends. For all its problems, Highlandtown has weathered the storm better than most, thanks in large part to the dedication of longtime citizens like the DiPasquale family. Today, the numerous discount retailers along Eastern Avenue are intermixed with fresh new stores like Atlantic Stained Glass and High Grounds Espresso & Books. Cultural institutions have again found a home here. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society and the Creative Alliance have converted old theaters into arts centers, and the new Southeast Anchor Library is slated for completion in 2006. With the help of groups like the Southeast Community Development Corporation, new residents are buying renovated row homes. And perhaps most importantly, people outside the neighborhood are finally taking notice. GREAT POSSIBILITIES Ask Owen Lang what he loves about Highlandtown, and he’ll insist you visit his home. The 22-year-old musician resides in a massive sun-lit artist’s loft on Bank Street, with room enough for his band to practice and record its music. With his DARE T-shirt, a growing list of favorite places to eat in the neighborhood, and his enthusiastic dialogue about the responsibility

of young people to be urban pioneers, Lang represents the growing group of young people who are populating Highlandtown. “There is so much potential here,” he says. So much, in fact that Troy Richardson, 42, was willing to stake his livelihood on it. The former human resources manager decided to leave the corporate world in 2003 to start a business in an investment property in Highlandtown “I would have opened anything there that people wanted, as long as I could create a business plan for it,” he says. What people wanted was an old-fashioned ice cream parlor—just like the one they’d frequented during the area’s heyday. In March of 2004, North Pole Ice Cream Co. opened, offering a charming—and successful—local destination. “With Patterson Park right there and the new library opening, I knew I couldn’t go wrong,” Richardson says. Since his opening, others have followed suit. Next door, the new RetroMart offers kitschy home furnishings so hip they don’t seem to fit in Baltimore, let alone Highlandtown. But owner Chris Caprinolo, 35, is optimistic: “This area is constantly improving.” If the growing presence of art and culture is any indication, Caprinolo has every right to feel positive. Ever since the Creative Alliance moved from Fells Point to Highlandtown in 2001, it has brought

different art forms into the community through events, classes and an on-site residency program for artists. “We help the city to appreciate Highlandtown,” says Megan Hamilton, the Alliance’s program director. “We’ve drawn a lot of audience and have had a really healthy impact on the neighborhood.” THE REAL FINDS On a cold and rainy night in December at an open house for the Highlandtown Merchants Association, Katie McKenna, the association’s coordinator, points out everyone in the room by name and specialty. There’s Mary and Nick Antonas, who after four decades of serving up savory Greek dishes at their restaurant, Eastern House, still revel in giving guests a tour of their kitchen. There’s Rafael Alvarez, novelist and longtime reporter for the Baltimore Sun who has made communicating the area’s folklore his life’s work. “Highlandtown could be really great,” McKenna says. “You just have to find the people who are most open to changing it.” As more people are drawn to Highlandtown to explore what it has to offer, the neighborhood’s residents hope that their visitors will discover what they already know: In this diverse and eccentric urban enclave, the most valuable treasures are the people. n

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home

photography by leo howard lubow

`1234

RBAN ANTHROPOLOG The true vintage ﬁnds are at Vanessa’s Vintage Treasures

1234

“Vintage” décor is in demand more than ever, leading to a flurry of suburban chain stores trying to corner the market on retro reproductions. Vanessa White, owner of Vanessa’s Vintage Treasures in South Baltimore, has been supplying the real deal to residents, fashion designers, movie folk, and collectors for fourteen years. Retail showroom designers find inspiration in her ever-evolving window displays, and her extensive knowledge attracts collectors from New York and Washington, D.C., on a regular basis. Digging through her piles of fabrics, jewelry, clothes, and china, you’ll find a home’s worth of truly classic treasures. (1132 South Charles Street, 410-752-3224).

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was attracted to Clipper Mill for a number of reasons; the location, the architecture, and the support we received from Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse. This space is perfect for designers, artists, and craftsman. Clipper Mill creates an environment where we can bring the value of the worker and the designed craft to the forefront of the community.â&#x20AC;?

urbanite february 05

encounter

by miriam desharnais

photography by marshall clarke

rumor control Rumor doth double, like the voice and echo, The numbers of the feared. — Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth, Part II

promise me that after I tell you Baltimore

City has its own “rumor control hotline” you won’t immediately dial up asking whether Nick and Jessica’s relationship is on the rocks or if the mayor is planning a presidential run. The business of controlling rumors sounds funny, but most cities have a phone number with recorded information about closings or hazardous situations. Many can be activated as full-service referral centers during times of disaster or unrest. Baltimore has maintained live service of its phone line since 1968, the year the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and the ensuing riots unsettled the nation and this city. It’s part of the Community Education Division of the Baltimore Community Relations Commission, which, says supervisor Thomas Saunders, is the city’s official agency for fighting discrimination and improving human relations. Saunders started at Rumor Control in 1980 as a college intern. He found the job tied together aspects of his major in health administration with his minor in African-American studies. Today, only Saunders and co-worker Mark Fosler work the lines, but in the days following September 11 or the Rodney King verdict, there were six or more staff available around the clock. Although the city’s website dryly notes that the number is “to obtain factual information on emergency situations,” the actual work done out of the office on North Charles Street is considerably more varied. Individuals, usually about ten a day, call with questions ranging from the simple to the byzantine. Saunders and Fosler research each query by checking with the appropriate authorities before getting back to the caller. Often police or public works officials provide the answers on traffic or water quality, sinkholes or tunnel fires. However, Saunders also hears from folks concerned by rumors about themselves or baffled by “information” that’s really more urban legend. “We don’t deal with personal lives of celebrities or politicians or average citizens having a neighborhood dispute,” Saunders says, “but I do listen to people and if I can, give them constructive advice.”

People occasionally want to know if an e-mail forward is true: Have there really been cases of gang attacks prefaced by a certain type of headlight blink? Have giant rats been mistaken for dogs and kept as pets? Saunders says he likes researching urban rumors, in part because regional variations are so intriguing. For example, the Baltimore version of the “That’s no Chihuahua, mister, that’s a rat!” story almost always specifies that the critter in question is a Norwegian rat, rather than the Thai, Mexican or Egyptian pharaoh rats sometimes used in West Coast variants of the tale. In 1986, the group Radio Executives of Baltimore conducted a test on consumer response to advertising by having seventeen Baltimore-area radio stations promote a “Loch Ness Mall” supposedly being built in the Inner Harbor. The “ad” promoted an underwater restaurant where diners could pick out dinner from the fish swimming by the windows. Rumor Control phones lit up with calls from would-be customers and miffed contractors wanting to know how they missed bidding on the project. Saunders interviewed the questioners to determine where the miscommunication occurred and was able to follow the faulty communication (or in this case, intentional hoaxing) through the radio stations and back to its originators. In this age of propaganda and confusion, the idea of a line one can call to get the facts has enormous appeal. Saunders has a deep understanding of how misinformation works and is deft at identifying different types of gossip. He believes in “alleviating the fear that’s based on uncertainty,” he says. He also has a personal interest in the stories he hears. “I’m inquisitive.” Saunders says. “When there’s an interesting rumor I want to know, ‘Is there some truth to this?’ I get a sense of how people think in the city. Regardless of how ridiculous I may think a given subject is, it gives me a good gauge of p. 45 who’s here.” n

Thomas Saunders cannot tell a lie.

—Miriam DesHarnais wrote about Locust Point in the January issue. She is working on a compilation zine called Library Urinal with Donny Smith. She is rumored to live in Hampden with her pet dog-rat, Bitey.

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baltimore observed

by lily thayer

p h o t o g r a p h y b y j o e g i o r d a n o

Decades after the end of an industry, the Old Friends Paint Club reminds us that camaraderie is the key to creativity.

painting the town From the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, Baltimore’s paint industry thrived. The city was second only to Cleveland as a paint manufacturing center and many of the industry’s most significant innovations were developed here. The trade was built on friendly competition, and the professional friendships that developed helped spur an unprecedented level of creative energy and ingenuity. While market changes curtailed the local paint trade, the friendships that formulated during those seminal years live on. Today, former paint professionals still gather as members of the Old Friends Paint Club and a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry celebrates their successes. The accomplishments of the paint industry offer a vital reminder to contemporary Baltimore: As our city works to redefine itself as a post-industrial destina-

Above: The Old Friends Paint Club surrounded by (clockwise from lower left): Making Stag Paint at the Hirshberg Paint Company, ca. mid-twentieth century; Hanline Paint Can Label, ca. mid-twentieth century; Intercoastal Corporation Consol brochure; Budeke’s Paint Store, 418 South Broadway, Fells Point, ca. 1955.

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tion for cultural creatives, we should remember the lessons of our industrial past. In his 2000 book The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, author Charles Landry discusses ways for cities to reinvent themselves in the postindustrial era. One of the primary goals for cities is to develop a “creative” economy, or as Landry writes, develop “a place with a level of original and deep knowledge coupled with a ready supply of skills, competence and people who have the need and capacity to communicate with each other.” Today’s civic and business leaders often look to the likes of Landry and economist Richard Florida for insight into creating a vibrant local economy. Fostering a creative community built on communication is a concept the paint industry well understood decades ago. Back then, paint companies like Baltimore Paint and Color Works Company, Farboil Paint Company, H.B. Davis and Lasting Paint Company were often family businesses, and competitors and colleagues alike grew up together, went to high school with one another, and many served side by side in the World Wars. Regional manufacture reigned supreme at a time when it was prohibitively

expensive to ship products—especially heavy paint cans—nationally. A burst of new paint factories sprung up during the Prohibition-era of the 1920s. Former breweries had large vats that could be readily transformed for use in mixing paint. “I always like to say you just need a bathtub and a paddle to make paint … it’s cookbook chemistry,” says Tom Mitchell, who entered the paint trade fifty years ago as a recent war veteran. But Baltimore’s paint companies proved that you could build a better bathtub. In the industry’s peak years, local companies invented an electronic kettle that created a more uniform varnish, they created the first odorless house paints, the first “reflectorized” highway paint, the first telephone equipment coatings, and the sculpted cement coating known as Formstone. These inventions were possible, in part, because competitors developed working relationships with one another. Even direct competitors saw each other as part of a collective enterprise. Men and women worked across company boundaries with the recognition that the success of one meant the success of all. Trade associations were created and competitors shared ideas and new technologies.

images courtesy of baltimore museum of industry

“This business is uniquely friendly,” says Rich DiMarcantonio, who has been in the paint business since 1977. “Competitors talk; they share materials.” DiMarcantonio has picked up the phone on more than one occasion to call a fellow chemical supplier to ask for a loan of materials if his regular source fell through. In 1948, when a fire at the Baltimore Paint and Color Works factory threatened to ruin the business, rival H.B. Davis Company immediately offered materials and assistance. Sharing ideas, technologies, even materials, not only encouraged innovation, it also encouraged cross-pollination with other industries. Small companies looked to the paint industry for both supplies and industrial design assistance. “People don’t understand how [interconnected] all these businesses were,” says Mitchell, “There was a men’s hat factory that needed lacquer for its straw hats.” So the paint industry developed it. A holiday ornament factory needed a special coating for blown glass Christmas balls and they developed that, too. The demand for such specialty products helped fuel the explosion of entrepreneurial paint companies. What was a $1 million business in 1914 grew into an $11.5 million industry by 1937, with twelve new manufacturers entering the market between 1919 and 1933 alone. The boom continued until the 1960s, when increasing consolidation, changing environmental standards, and soaring materials costs forced many of the small companies to go under. Today, only four paint manufacturers operate in Baltimore, but the former employees still gather three times a year through the Old Friends Paint Club of Baltimore. “Old friends” is not a euphemism. DiMarcantonio, Mitchell and their fellow Paint Club members are, first and foremost, chums. Seven years ago, the thirty-odd members of the club approached the Baltimore Museum of Industry with an idea to commemorate their history. They helped raise much of the $35,000 needed to mount the permanent exhibit. Painting the Town opend at the BMI in 2004. The exhibit speaks to the ingenuity of an industry,

which took a”bathtub and a paddle” and developed products that improved industries as disparate as shipbuilding, telephony, and men’s haberdashery. Today, the city’s business and political leaders, who continue to learn about the importance of interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches to social, economic and business challenges, can take heart in the example of the functionally diverse yet socially

cohesive Baltimore paint industry. As we become more isolated in our small worlds of work, it would do us good to remember that the key to a creative city may be as simple as camaraderie. —Lily Thayer reviewed The End of Suburbia DVD in January.

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urbanite february 05

MANAGED BY

for music, the city has been both synthesizer and source

Urban Liner Notes BY

WIL L IA M

Call it source music.

J .

E V I T T S

It’s the pure form, refined and polished for generations by a homogeneous culture. It evolves, but it stays true to its principles and roots. Undiluted folk music is a clear example. Blues was a source music from the black community of the American South, built from older African forms and the church music they found in the New World. Bluegrass was source music, whittled out of Celtic folk traditions by people in isolated Appalachian communities. Isolation—or at least the cultural purity that isolation insures—is essential for the distilled, unblemished character of source music. In cities, source music collides to create something new. The overwhelming example is the birth of jazz in New Orleans. Even before the United States bought it from France in 1803, New Orleans was a polyglot mix of Spanish, French, German, and Caribbean. Racial relationships were always different there, and in the nineteenth century a sophisticated community of mixed-race Creoles culturally mirrored the whites by creating their own European operas and symphonies. After Reconstruction, rural blacks seeking work brought source music from their culture into this notoriously musical city. There it collided with brass bands, a dense web of churches and church music, and sophisticated Creole musicians. The Creoles were being forced out of their independent existence by the new Jim Crow laws that defined a person with one drop of black blood as a Negro and demanded they be corralled with other Negroes. With their neither-white-nor-black world legally destroyed, they pooled their European music skills with their blues and gospel brethren. With a dash of ragtime (another musical form crafted in cities out of source music) jazz was created in the Crescent City as a unique new form that fused races and cultures. Cities allowed jazz to circulate and grow. Urban areas’ critical mass supported the clubs and devotees that embraced the new forms, compared and combined them. Cities developed their own distinctive jazz scenes: Beale Street in Memphis, Central Avenue in Los Angeles, 52nd Street in New York. A good case in point is Kansas City’s Vine Street. In the 1920s and ’30s, jazz clubs flourished in Boss Tom Pendergast’s wide-open Kansas City. Vine Street nurtured players from all over; Count Basie is a shining example. A local KC kid nourished on this scene—saxophone superstar Charlie Parker—said, “I came up in Kansas City when the joints were running full blast.” The lyrics of the often-recorded “Kansas City” (Fats Domino and Wilbert Harrison did the most famous pop versions) speak of “standing on the corner / 12th Street and Vine / with my Kansas City baby and / a bottle of Kansas City wine.” Cities spawned multiracial audiences. In Baltimore, around 1910, black boxer Joe Gans’s Goldfield Hotel in East Baltimore became known as a “black and tan” club because whites went there to hear a young piano player named Eubie Blake. Later, in New York, Blake and Noble Sissle gave Broadway a strong shot of black musical tradition. Their 1921 musical review, Shuffle Along, influenced Ziegfeld, the Gershwins and other major producers for years. In the swing era of the 1930s and ’40s, white listeners were told in song to “Take the A Train”—the transit line to Harlem. The city’s role as cultural Cuisinart was not limited to the United States, of course. Django Reinhardt took his gypsy guitar technique to Paris in the 1930s. There he encountered bal musette, a driving dance hall style that was

itself built on a fusion of musical traditions. He combined his native gifts with that style, and then, with French violinist Stephane Grappelli, he learned to jam jazz by listening to recordings of Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. Reinhardt and his sessions at the Hot Club of Paris mixed almost limitless influences from America, Europe and beyond. A legendary fusion of source music happened in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 1950s, where white country music rubbed elbows with Delta blues from nearby Mississippi. Sam Phillips of Sun Records was deliberately looking for a white boy who sang black; the result was Elvis. It is only a slight oversimplification to say that rock ’n’ roll was city-bred from the source music of two races. In the Civil Rights era, America was integrated first and most successfully by music, largely in cities. John Waters got it basically right in Hairspray. Music brought the kids together when everything else fought to keep them apart. Black musicians became cultural icons. And as with Hairspray’s Corny Collins teen-dance TV show, technology played its part. Beginning with basic phonograph records, electronics began to make the city scene vicariously available anywhere. Personal portable radios and inexpensive 45 rpm records liberated teens to follow their musical tastes across cultural boundaries, beneath parental radar. In the late 1950s, in Northern Virginia, a white teen with Lawrence Welk parents used his subversive transistor radio to listen secretly to R&B from the mysterious ghettos of downtown D.C. “Searchin’” by the Coasters springs to mind—at least to my mind, because I was that teen. The genius of George Lucas’s film American Graffiti—with its mysterious “What race is he?” radio DJ played by Wolfman Jack—was the recognition that young Americans had a soundtrack to their lives, and it was multiracial. Cities still created styles—think Motown—but radio itself became the electric city, subsuming even Liverpool. The physical city’s role in music has been changed by the emergence of an electronic global culture. Dispersing musical sources no longer requires cities. World music spreads on the airwaves and the Internet with promiscuous ease. But such digital access is sufficient only for listeners. For performing musicians, for the creators, contact and interaction are still essential, and for that we still need urban life. Live performance is still where talent is cultivated and influences are not just absorbed, but shared. And with the globalization of culture, the source musics of the whole planet are now available for inspiration and fusion in the clubs. iPods aside, the city’s role in music endures. The musical cycle has turned back on itself. The city has become not just the synthesizer, but the source. Hip-hop and rap are pure city, a creative original of urban rhythms and experience. This sound, and this attitude, are strictly street; they could come from no other source. Just as gospel, blues, and the keening violins of bluegrass/country grew up in distinctive rural culture, hip-hop signifies its asphalt origins, touching off a new round of influence, absorption, and renewal. n —William J. Evitts, who wrote “Reclaiming America’s Stepchild” for our January issue, is a historian/writer with a strong interest in American pluralism and culture. He has just returned to Baltimore after a thirteen-year absence, and still thinks Andy Bienstock is the best radio jazz jockey in America.

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D o e s B a lt i m o r e h a v e a s o u n d ?

O UNDTRACK SO

to THE

CIT Y

When you think of New Orleans, you think jazz. When you think of Seattle you think grunge. Austin has Southern-fried rock; Detroit has techno and dirty garage rock. Bossa nova was born in São Paulo, fado is pure Portugal, and Ireland would be a different place without its Guinness-soaked trad sessions. So what defines Baltimore? What is our music? The answer is, Baltimore has many sounds, each born and cultivated in the patchwork of neighborhoods that compose our city. From the mellifluous music that pours from the Peabody and the Meyerhoff, to the rock and punk that thunders out of the Ottobar and The Talking Head, to the gospel that fills our churches on

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Sunday morning and the jazz that has blossomed since Eubie Blake took to the piano, this city fosters a ground-level creativity that is at times staggering. Hip-hop, house, punk, blues, jazz, opera, classical, DJ, R&B, soul, funk, Afrobeat, rock … the list goes on and on. We are a city rife with international success stories and local achievement. In the pages that follow, we offer a snapshot of a few of the vibrant musical communities that exist here. Take a tour through the sounds of Baltimore. Listen and you’ll hear what our musicians are telling us about our city: that the diversity of the music created here is what defines the Baltimore sound.

photo of Sonar by Karen Patterson

B y E li z abeth A . E v itts , C hris H art, L eo H oward L U bow , I a n Nagos k i , Ned O ldham , B e n n R ay, a n d R obbie W hela n

photo © Jefferson J. Steele

INDIE ROCK

Jason Dove

photo © Jefferson J. Steele

As exhilarating as rock music is, the making of it can be a singular chore. Just ask The Beatles, or The Shaggs for that matter. There is something in the ether of rock that tends to bring out the bitter, the angst, the tendency toward petty rivalries and divisive politics. Allegedly the most free of all forms of self-expression, rock music instead can be as rule-bound as any classical symphony. It’s a tendency Jason Dove is fighting. Dove and his band Slot Racer are Baltimore indie rock veterans—they’ve been here in one form or another since the mid-90s, a lifetime in rock years. And while the business of making rock music has changed dramatically in that time—“changed” as opposed to “grown up”—the struggle to remain clear-eyed about the music is a constant one. “The thing is, you can’t become bitter,” Dove said recently. “I’ve seen a lot of shtick, and it can be disenchanting. But you can’t let it.” Dove, 28, describes Slot Racer’s output as “basic rock ’n’ roll.” It’s a default tag, but he believes it’s accurate: “Who’s doing rock ’n’ roll anymore?” Dove doesn’t worry whether it’s truly “indie,” either. As he sees it, the music business has grown, died, and been reborn so many times that it’s meaningless to judge a band by the way its music is heard. “It’s become like a Mad Max movie,” Dove says. “There’s a wasteland out there of teen pop, R&B, hip-hop, on and on. It doesn’t matter all that much what you call it.” “Wasteland” doesn’t accurately describe the local scene, though in the ebb and flow of music, indie rock is coming out of a slower period. After the shuttering of the seminal venue Memory Lane in 1997, Baltimore’s indie sound seemed to be on the eclipse. But in recent years, new clubs and smaller venues have risen, giving the city a number of places for young bands to cut their teeth and for touring acts to find consistent audiences. Smaller venues like the West Side’s Supreme Imperial, the Mojo Room & Lounge on Belair Road, and Station North’s Charm City Art Space (an all-ages venue) offer intimate spots for new and seasoned bands, while the Ottobar, Fletchers, and the new Rams Head Live attract larger crowds. Roman Kuebler, lead singer of The Oranges Band and principle booker for downtown’s The Talking Head (where Slot Racer regularly plays), believes that rock in Baltimore is benefiting from new venues of various sizes. “There’s more opportunity for a band in Baltimore to start and grow than there ever was before, at least in my ten years here,” says Kuebler. For his part, Dove doesn’t regret relocating from Atlanta in 1996. Baltimore is ideally located for musicians who want to tour up and down the East Coast. And there are enough new fans and players to keep things interesting. “You just have to work harder here to get attention,” Dove says. These days his labors are devoted to a new record, Pronto. “I’ve been writing songs since I was 12. There’s nothing I’m more skilled at,” Dove says. “Playing in New York and all that is definitely on the agenda. But I’m not talking with travel agents trying to get out of town.” —Chris Hart

Guy Blakeslee

k l o f c i l e d e h c psy Guy Blakeslee, aka Entrance, walks to Donna’s coffee shop for his “morning” coffee in the early winter sunset. He’s just returned from a seven-week U.S. tour and says he’s trying to “smoke and sleep a lot.” He leaves again in two days for California, where he’ll contribute to a solo album by Karen O, infamous lead singer of New York’s meteoric punk-revival band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Blakeslee is a rail thin, tailored bohemian with a publicity photo that looks remarkably like Bob Dylan on the cover of Blonde on Blonde. Big brown hair frames a thin face that looks like he’s both been working too hard and having too much fun. As Entrance, he is Baltimore’s most visible psychedelic folk icon and one of the forerunners of a musical style and sound that’s gathered much steam over the last year, both locally and nationally. The psych-folk revival owes much to the 1960s folk-rock movement, taking musical inspiration from folk’s most primitive origins, and mixing renaissance-fair fashion with hipster chic, seasoned with modern mp3-geek and do-it-yourself indie-rock sensibility. Locally, there is the neo-Druidic goth-folk chants of Long Live Death and The Big Huge’s faithful take on English traditional folk; both have recent releases with Providence, Rhode Island’s obscure psych-folk stalwart label, Secret Eye. In December of 2004, music critic Alec Hanley Bemis dedicated a full page in the New York Times to the emerging sound and to Blakeslee’s friend and sometime touring partner, Devendra Banhart. Banhart has exploded onto the national scene and Entrance may not be not far behind. He recently signed to Oxford, Mississippi’s Fat Possum label, mostly renowned for giving new life to older, African American bluesmen. Entrance’s live show is undoubtedly the kicker that induced underground luminaries like Cat Power to request Entrance as an opening act. Entrance works the stage hard, gyrating and twisting, playing a flipped over acoustic or electric guitar, singing in a high tremulous tenor. The material is mostly old stuff, public domain blues, like “Wandering Stranger,” plus original material like “Vote with a Bullet,” which is about assassinating the president. His fingerpicking patterns are idiosyncratic, rooted in the Delta style. Still, Blakeslee is getting used to life on the road. Over Thanksgiving last year, he played a show in an Oxford, Mississippi, club where he opened for elder bluesman T-Model Ford. The conservative collegiate Ole Miss football crowd didn’t seem to anticipate Entrance’s talents from his looks. “They were just there to drink,” he says. After his second song, “Vote with a Bullet,” he ran out the door. “T-Model, later that night, lectured me about ... how I need to get my nerve up and be a man,” Blakeslee says today. “He was holding my hand and just staring in my eyes and being like, ‘You’re a guitar player, you were born to play the guitar; don’t let nobody fool with you.’” It’s not a lesson Blakeslee’s familiars would’ve imagined him needing. A couple of years ago, he told me that if he could, he would play a show every night. He’s since made a strong effort at doing it. “If I’m feeling down,” he says of touring, “something will probably happen to change my mind.” —Ned Oldham w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

It’s not every day that one finds a music community so definitively centered around a particular place and group of people as the Baltimore experimental music scene. The place is the Red Room performance space, adjacent to Normals Books and Records on East 31st Street, and the people are the Red Room Collective, a half-dozen-odd friends and visionary kooks who, for almost a decade, have been pushing the envelope as far as what sorts of honks, sputters, bangs, and whistles can be considered “music.” This past December at the Red Room, regular scenester and instrument inventor Neil Feather played an hour-long set on his “melocipede” a device that produces music when Feather pedals it like a bicycle, sending vibrations through an electronic mixer, which he uses to tweak the timbre of the sounds. The clangs and bleeps he created were not recognizable as music to the ear of anyone unable to escape the constraints of familiar tradition. It is without discernable meter, melody, or phrasing—the basic units of most “normal” music—but it nonetheless serves as an outlet for emotional expression. It is much more direct, unhindered by the rules and guidelines that give order to other types of music. At its heart, this is what defines the experimental music (or “free music” or “free improvisation”) that is played in Baltimore: It has no rules. Given such a definition, it would seem difficult for free musicians to teach their craft to the younger generation, or to nurture any sort of community, but the Red Room Collective has done both with their monthly Crap Shoot, a free improvisation workshop. These gatherings draw a whole new crop of younger players, including some from local colleges, who are thrilled to both explore the new possibilities offered by the veterans, and to throw out their own moves for everyone to see. More recently, the experimental scene has expanded to new venues including True Vine Records in Hampden, Tarantula Hill in West Baltimore, and even Bertha’s Mussels in Fells Point. For more than three decades, Baltimore has been a veritable Roman bathhouse for avant-garde artists. It is a place for people to make a name for themselves by working up the courage to open new doors and explore offbeat possibilities. Thanks to cheap rent, the inspiration provided by urban decay, close-knit neighborhoods, and the fact that the big pop circuses rarely stop between D.C. and Philadelphia except for gas and coffee, this city has produced a collective spirit of sorts. It’s not “experimental rock” or “free jazz,” it’s experimental music. It’s the strangeness of everyday sounds and everyday perceptions, squeezed out of the bell of a saxophone in a creepy, hair-raising boogaloo. It’s pure Baltimore music.

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—Robbie Whelan

balt

imo

Clarke

experimental

photo by Marsh all

photos by Marshall Clarke

The Volunteers’ Collective Crap Shoot

Baltimore club, the ebullient and aggressive convolution of house and hip-hop that has germinated in Baltimore over the past fifteen years, is one of the city’s most unique and valuable musical manifestations. The sound is a deeply funky and eminently danceable style, developed in a scene of clubs, where DJs, producers, and dancers collide to create a bouncing and booming cross-cut rhythm unlike anything else coming out of the world’s urban sound systems. Although it is by Baltimore for Baltimore, club is standing on the verge of national attention as much as anything our city has produced since John Waters. DJs in Philly, New York and L.A. are beginning to catch on and prowl B-more record stores for the tracks from our beloved cultural backwater. The basic structure of quintessential Baltimore club boils down to several elements: a booming a-symmetrical bass, a quick chook-chooka-cha rhythm as distinctive as a Bo Diddley beat, and a sung or spoken “jingle” repeated and cut up into variations of increasing rhythmic complexity (called the sing-sing break or the think break). Rod Lee, the revered master and one of the style’s originators, recently launched his own label, Club Kingz Records. His “Let’s get HIGH” track with K-Life, settles into a stroboscopic flicker on that single key word, “HIGH HIGH HIGH HIGH…” and feels like the summation of everything you’re on the dance floor to get. Like the raw force of early rock, club is a propulsive, hilariously vulgar music for folks in need of release. “My music comes from anger,” Rod Lee told Stephen Janis in a recent interview in the local arts journal Link. “You got people going to the club to have a drink ’cause they’re mad at their females. You got guys going to the club to get away from their bills … If you could sit there and make someone dance after they got divorced [laughter], I know I’m good!” Non-club-going Baltimoreans have caught on to the sound listening to Friday night broadcasts on 92.3 FM. Some of the best DJs, including K-Swift, Frank Ski, and Cornbread are featured every week spinning at the most visible nightclub for the club sound, Club Choices on Charles Street. Rod Lee also has a regular Friday evening residency on the station. Meanwhile, nationwide hipsters and tastemakers, like East Orange, New Jersey’s WFMU program director Brian Turner, have started ordering club tracks to add to their collections. While the original outlet for club, Music Liberated on West Saratoga, closed its doors after the death of proprietor Bernie Rabinowitz two years ago, and DJ Technic’s Club Tracks store just folded, Rod Lee plans to fill the gap this year with new shops on Monument Street and West Saratoga. —Ian Nagoski

re c

lub

jazz

—Leo Howard Lubow

J. Steele

gospel

photo © Jefferson

photo by Leo Howard Lubow

Gospel has been a vital part of the urban music landscape ever since Thomas A. Dorsey wrote the classic hymn “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” in 1932. And while today’s gospel music retains a certain universality, Baltimore is unique for its groundswell of local talent and for its rising stars, like Lea Gilmore. Lea Gilmore has taken gospel out of the parish and brought it to the people, singing to sell-out crowds in Austria, Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Africa and the U.S. In October 2004, 12,000 fans gathered in Ghent, Belgium to hear her sing in front of a 2,000-voice choir. She is also revered for her ability to belt out the blues, and in 2003 she won the prestigious “Keeping the Blues Live Award, ” which is like the Grammys of the blues world. Gilmore’s successful musical career is the culmination of a lifetime of passionate endeavors. She learned music by sound as a child and earned a scholarship to study piano at the Peabody Institute. As a student at Morgan State University, she decided to switch her focus from music to political science. “I wanted to get more involved in social work,” she says. Gilmore went on to become the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and to volunteer for a number of political and social causes. But singing was her calling and she ultimately found a way to marry the two worlds. “For me, this is about much more than just music,” Gilmore says. Gilmore’s live CD release Gospels for Damien – Let Your Light Shine (2001), for example, supported The “Man, the last time I heard a group like that, I had an Afro and money Father Damien Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists victims of leprosy in my pocket,” says Keith Covington, owner of the New Haven Lounge and TB in several third-world countries. in the Northwood Shopping Center. He’s talking about Mofofunka, a Gilmore also lectures in universities around the world on music. “I talk about Hammond B3 organ boogaloo band that’s bad—and that’s good! (Think working together to find common ground and about bridging the gaps between George Clinton, Jimmy Smith, and Isaac Hayes.) cultures,” Gilmore says. “I talk about the music in context of social activism. I The Baltimore jazz scene is filled with quality players like Mofofunka, inspire the kids not to be apathetic.” just waiting to be heard. And what’s their sound? It depends who you ask. Her spirit and her passion for humanity come out in her gospel hymns, and Benny Russell, head of the Jazz Department at the Maryland Conservatory her humble understanding of the sweet melancholy of life flows out in her sulof Music, sees Baltimore as a hard bop town, where R&B, gospel, and bebop try blues tunes. She finds inspiration and strength for both in her hometown. meet. Andy Bienstock of WYPR sees a city of “funky little bars” providing When she’s not touring and teaching, Gilmore frequents local churches to a rich variety of styles. One thing, though, on which everyone agrees: The hear other gospel singers. “We’ve got such talent in this city,” Gilmore says. local talent shines. “There’s a spirit here and I carry that with me wherever I go. I love to get up Barry Glassman—whose website baltimorejazz.com offers what’s hapon stage and say, ‘I’m Lea Gilmore and I’m from Baltimore.’” pening and where—says Baltimore’s top sax players match any in the world. Her life of activism and the arts came full circle recently when she was Gary Bartz and Gary Thomas immediately come to mind. Internationally asked to sing for an ACLU event honoring Mohammad Ali. Gilmore sang known and respected as masters in their own rights, these guys played with “The Greatest Love of All” to a star-studded crowd, including comedian Miles Davis. Another fine saxophonist is TK Blue, who uniquely fuses hard bop Dave Chappelle, but it was Ali who left the lasting impression. “At the with an African/Caribbean sound. end of the song, I turned and he was right there,” Gilmore says. The ailing As for drummers, Baltimore is home to Dennis Chambers, the “most boxer, who can barely walk, struggled the length of the stage to whisper influential drummer on the world scene,” according to Russell, and the innovator something in Gilmore’s ear: “Don’t ever stop doing what you’re doing.” of a double base pedal technique that sends the feet to Mach 1. Gilmore is busy working on her latest album of original blues music On piano, Lafayette Gilchrist is the man of the hour. A player who respects and will record a new Gospels for Damien CD in the summer. traditional jazz, Gilchrist blends in hip-hop and funk with a modern percussive beat that drives a dark, spiritual sound uniquely his own. “This cat has to be —Elizabeth A. Evitts listened to!” Covington says. Jazziz magazine agrees, naming Gilchrist’s CD, The Music According to Lafayette Gilchrist, one of the best releases of 2004. On the B3 organ—the instrument that defined the Baltimore sound in the ’50s and ’60s—the master is Greg Hatza. “Intensity, drive, he’s got it all,” says Glassman. He created a stir at last fall’s Cape May Jazz Festival. “Everywhere I went,” says Covington, “all I heard was how the cat from Baltimore really turned the place out.” In addition to those “funky little bars” mentioned by Bienstock, Baltimore offers two exceptional venues, each with its own signature. Covington’s New Haven Lounge has been Baltimore’s “Village Vanguard” since 1987. If you’re a top-notch bopinfluenced or “straight ahead” player, it’s been part of your journey. On the other side of town, just south of Mount Vernon, An die Musik now offers an intimate concert hall, seating up to 75. This upscale venue showcases exceptional Baltimore-based musicians like bassist/composer Michael Formanek, an avant-garde player who can do it all. And the future? “The new cats are coming,” says Covington. Hard bop, jazz-funk, avant-garde, and more, it’s there, in your neighborhood, just around the corner. It’s all straight ahead.

Lea Gilmore

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The tricky thing about discussing punk music is defining your terms. Everyone has a different definition. So along with the obvious choices, like The Ramones, The Stooges, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash, an argument can be made that Johnny Cash is punk. Punk eschews the mainstream. Punk sounds the way it does because of a do-it-yourself attitude that forgoes formal training for a purer expression. Baltimore has a strong punk history, dating as far back as The Stooges performance at the Latin Casino in 1973 before punk had a name. It evolved through the underground glory days of the 1980s and the Hour Haus and then Memory Lane in Sowebo in the 1990s. Something is happening again with the punk scene in Baltimore today. Through the rise of The Ottobar, The Talking Head, The Sidebar Tavern, Fletchers and numerous other venues (some legal and some, um, we’ll call them “makeshift”), Baltimore has had a constant stream of punk passing through. There are far too many local bands to discuss them all here, and some like Human Host, Liars Academy, Landspeedrecord, Penny Regime, Triac, The New Flesh, and Never Enough definitely deserve to be checked out. But think of the list of bands below as recommendations for anyone making a mix tape of definitive Baltimore punk. Double Dagger, a group of graphic designers, has constructed their very own genre of punk—Graphicdesigncore. Their sound is so full and aggressive you don’t even realize that vocalist Nolen Strals is screaming about Photoshop over Bruce Willen’s pounding bass. Fascist Fascist is a punk rock supergroup, made up of Baltimore musicians from other notable bands. With female vocals over standard punk song constructions, the band pulls off a sound totally refreshing and relevant. The Fuses have been around for years, playing a few shows, releasing a single, then going on hiatus (like when the lead singer accepted a Fulbright scholarship). They are one of the most electrifying live bands. You feel compelled to jump up and down as each song makes you think, “Yes, I can change the world.” The Fuses wrote one of the city’s all-time best punk songs, “Jazz Makes Me Nervous.” Formed in 1988, Lungfish mixes repetitive, highly intense guitar riffage with the shamanistic vocals of the heavily bearded Daniel Higgs. The result has generated a national cult following. Lungfish is on Washington D.C.’s legendary Dischord Records, a label with a policy of only releasing D.C. music. This band is an exception to many rules. Roman Kuebler’s The Oranges Band uses layered and at times angular and disjointed guitars to deliver immediate, poppy melodies that bring to mind Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground. Their live shows are frequent (when compared to some of Baltimore’s other “established” punk bands), intense and always rewarding. The Oxes play the media almost as well as they play their instruments, and they do that with mathematical precision. After a little publicity prank over some staged album cover art for their 2002 album, Oxxxes, the trio drew some serious national spotlight. They recently returned from a European tour where they recorded a live Peel Session through the BBC. For those who like their punk to be a little on the British-influenced side, like Joy Division or Gang of Four, then the well-dressed young men of Two If By Sea are a must. Their live shows are an excellent lesson in how to modernize New Wave Post-Punk. n

punk

Baltimore’s record labels are often kept out of the spotlight by the city’s proximity to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York—all hotspots when it comes to successful record companies. And yet, there is plenty of quality music being produced in this city, by our own musicians and also by nationally known artists. Below are some local record labels of note.

Monitor records Started by Baltimoreans Brian DeRan and Jason Foster, Monitor first gained exposure outside of the city with the release of two records: Fold and Perish by Jeff Mueller, and Everlasting the Way—Long-Stretch-Motorcycle-Hymn, the solo debut by Sean Meadow. Both artists played in the popular Louisville math-rock band June of 44. But it was albums by Baltimore metal/rock pranksters Oxes that really made Monitor a household name in the indie underground.

Morphius Along with its manufacturing and distribution arms, Morphius has been enjoying a national popularity fueled in no small part by the reissue of the back catalog of legendary art-punkers The Homosexuals. With a strong roster that also includes The Oranges Band, Rocket From The Tombs and Labtekwon, the future looks bright for Morphius as well.

Box Tree records Ned Oldham’s Box Tree label only has two releases under its belt, (The Derby Ram by Oldham’s band The Anomoanon, and Long Live the WellDoer, the debut by locals Arbouretum) but it has already started to gain attention outside of the city. This year will see the release of a new record by Anomoanon friend and collaborator Jodie Marston.

Heresee The music released on the hand-packaged CD-R label HereSee is hard to pin down. From the homemade electronics of Nautical Almanac (made up of label owners James ‘Twig’ Harper and Carly Ptak) and Max Eisenberg, to field recordings of the Maryland State Fair, to the nonsensical rock mess of Leprechaun Catering, the only thing you can expect from a HereSee release is the unexpected.

Reptilian records Chris X’s record label and his North Fells Point record shop have been area staples for fifteen years now. Reptilian has released records by well known punk/hardcore bands such as the Dwarves, Negative Approach and Vaz. 2005 should see releases by locals Triac, Never Enough and Fascist Fascist, to name only a few.

Recorded John Berndt, local musician and cofounder of the Red Room Collective and the High Zero Festival, operates this label, which specializes in experimental music. Recorded garnered national attention by releasing the 1980-81 recordings of minimalist composer and nihilist philosopher Henry Flynt, as well as recordings by free improvisation heavyweights like Joe McPhee and Jack Wright.

Club Kingz Records/Clubtracks

J. Steele photo © Jefferson

—Benn Ray

LABELS

The Oranges

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For years, Baltimore’s indigenous dance music, “Baltimore club” has been one of the city’s best-kept secrets. Its repeated refrains and hypnotizing use of the sing-sing break, have been used by DJs from San Fransisco to Germany. Club Kingz and Clubtracks, owned by Rod Lee and DJ Technics respectively, are the two labels on the forefront of this movement, and are growing as Baltimore club becomes more popular each year. —Jason Urick

the band that won’t be silenced BY

L I ZZ IE

S K UR NICK

Ask Anne Watts where the name of her semi-jazzy, semi-post-punk, neo-cabaret and altogether homegrown Charm City band Boister comes from, and her answer is simple. “We’re loud,” she says. Boister’s defiantly exuberant spirit—four albums’ worth since 1997—spans an amazing array of musical genres. With Watts helming the group, Boister— rounded out by Craig Considine (trombone), Charles Freeman (bass), Curt Heavey (guitar), Lyle Kissack (drums), and Denis Malloy (clarinet)—has been compared to everyone from Edith Piaf to Erik Satie to Frank Zappa. (To give just one genre-bending example, Boister’s newest album, the husky Les Foules en Amour, includes “Les Jours Dansant,” a French cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days.”) The band has also emerged as a premier scorer of silent films, a burgeoning genre that is finding a renewed zest among a small but talented group of local and national “neo-cabaret” musicians. Their live performances alongside screenings of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill and Greta Garbo’s Love have received rave reviews, including kudos from film critic Roger Ebert. The peculiar evolution of Boister is a mix of Watts’s family history, her musical education, the Baltimore art scene, and her experience with the city itself. Her first band, which she started with Curt Heavey in the late 1970s, played swing and country songs in bars. She’s a little reluctant to reveal the name, which turns out to be pretty par for the era. “Do I have to tell you?” Watts asks. “We were called Full Moon.” But Watts recovered, and after attending Massachusetts’s Hampshire College, where she was “steeped in amazing jazz theory and Schoenberg,” she returned to the city in the mid-80s and embraced the underground art scene. “Baltimore was an incredibly fertile place to be then,” Watts says. The musicians who would ultimately compose Boister were “picked up along the way,” she says. “Artists just gravitate toward one another, like old men smoking cigars on benches in parks.” Yet it was her life outside the art scene that proved the central catalyst to Boister’s unique sound. Watts worked as a recreational therapist at a Baltimore nursing home and found her relationships with the inhabitants life-changing. “I became smitten with these old people,” she says. “I don’t remember what I ever wrote before I had that experience. I was trying to be cerebral, but people in there were so alive and so neglected and they didn’t have anything. They had nothing but their stories.” At night, she returned home to her Druid Hill address. “There was a lot of violence [in my neighborhood],” Watts says. “Children died, old people died, the whole process.” She began writing lyrics that were “slightly hallucinogenic,” songs that reminded her of what it’s like to watch the process of dying. Yet there’s nothing remotely

PHO TO

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preachy or dirge-like about these compositions. “I really don’t want to make it a political thing. It’s just you or me fifty years from now in a wheelchair, the human condition, which for me is endlessly fascinating,” Watts says. There’s also some of Watts’s experience as a mother of two young children in there. “Having children is so similar. You’re just wandering through a hall of mirrors waiting for this creature to come out, and it’s very surreal.” Scoring silent films involves an entirely different creative process for Watts. She watches old films over and over again with the TV next to the piano. “A lot of it is looking for commonality between you and the character,” Watts says. “It’s psychological. Keaton or Garbo—they become band members.” Her fascination with cabaret and Kurt Weill, famed theater composer, began with another senior citizen, this time her grandfather, a theatre producer who worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. “The reason we fall back on the cabaret term is because we’re drawn to history and to politics and to theatre,” Watts says of Boister’s foray into the world of silent films. “We’re interested in being a force, part of a movement, even if there’s no movement and there’s just a dream, and it’s just a play or a joke.” And this “movement,” judging by what Watts lays out, is political. “It’s one that says we’re not going to Wal-Mart, we’re not buying another car, we’re not turning on the television, we’re not doing it, we’re doing this other thing. And it’s simply drawing circles around the things that excite us,” Watts says. That may mean, of course, that the band may never achieve multi-platinum status. “Of course they want the cool big gigs,” Watts says of her bandmates. “But I also think career is the antithesis of what any of us are doing. We’re trying to be real here, and that’s what’s tricky.” That realness, that unique pastiche of musical influences, has earned Boister international acclaim. The Swiss press marveled at Watts’s ability to take “seemingly incompatible elements and craft them into remarkably cohesive soundscapes.” The French magazine Jade named Boister’s self-titled release “the best album of the last ten years.” For her own part, Watts has scads of ideas—and not a lot of desire for the big-time. “I don’t understand running out of material,” Watts says. “But I just don’t feel ambitious, I don’t get that.” Her project with Boister is both simple and colossal. “I can’t understand the world,” Watts says, “so I’m trying to create something that makes sense.” n —Lizzie Skurnick wrote about sustainable home products in January. A chapbook of her poetry—Check‑In—is forthcoming from the Caketrain Imprint. See Boister kick off the Creative Alliance’s Silent Sounds Series with original live scores to two Buster Keaton films. February 18-19, 8 p.m., www.creativealliance.org. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

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map of music

The sounds & where to find them punk/alternative hip-hop Ottobar 2549 North Howard Street 410-662-0069 www.theottobar.com

jazz/blues

New Haven Lounge 1552 Havenwood Road 410-366-7416

classical opera/gospel/ musICals

Meyerhoff Symphony Hall 1212 Cathedral Street 410-783-8000 baltimoresymphony.org

experimental

The Red Room at Normals Books and Records 425 East 31st Street 410-243-6888 www.redroom.org

Lyric Opera House 140 West Mount Royal Ave 410-685-5086 www.lyricoperahouse.com

dj/latin/ live eclectic performances Thirteenth Floor The Belvedere Hotel 1 West Chase Street 410-347-0888

open mic

Organic Soul Tuesdays 429 Eutaw Street 410-358-6484

dj/house

Club Choices 1815 North Charles Street 410-752-4602

live music/rock/funk

Fletcherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 701 South Bond Street 410-558-1889 www.fletchersbar.com

The Funk Box 310 East Cross Street 410-625-2000 www.thefunkbox.com

classical/jazz An die Musik 407 North Charles Street 410-385-2638 www.andiemusik.com

Latin Palace 509 South Broadway 410-522-6700 www.latinpalace.com

Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University 1 East Mount Vernon Place 410-659-8100 www.johnshopkins.edu/ divisions/peabody/

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photoessay

photography by leo howard lubow

counterclockwise from upper left: Ahmad Jamal, Arturo Sandoval, Benny Golson, Lou Donaldson, Maynard Ferguson, Shemekia Copeland, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Kebâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Mo

urbanite february 05

poetry by michael s. harper

Ray Brown: “If You Don’t Force It” He’s talking about interpolations riffs that come in the midst of action, responding to the line, accommodating the blues and not neglecting the melody refusing to smother beauty with too many chords to show off is the bungle the melody with chordal blocks not building anything to your baby hiding the melody like only the young can do

Lester Young would watch the dancers moving into his vernaculars with rhythms augmenting the melody Herschel would set the pace Pres would follow Count would comp time as though you could improve on stride piano Ben Webster could do stride when you get possessed with wild chords tie your left hand behind your back then play the melody with one finger on your right hand: put the melody on your heart w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

Strong... MECU has grown to be the third largest credit union in

establishing and building

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urbanite february 05

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poetry

b y m i c h a e l s . h a r p e r

As you approach your 62nd year we must discuss the next phase of your life ‘born with a veil over your face’ said the fortune-teller on Olvera Street “in my father’s house there are many mansions” your knowledge of scripture exacting psalms you learned to recite at catechism the guile you learned the hard way at school I thought you would keep your own house with an endless bay of warm waters cruise you learned to love when you were off your feet (with service everybody in white or nearly

Caretaking Supreme for my sister

Above: Photograph taken at the poet’s grandparents’ house, Brooklyn, New York, 1937: “My mother, Katherine Louise Johnson Harper is pregnant with me—she’s in the coat buttoned up; next to her is her sister, Alice Elizabeth Johnson, my Aunt Liz, with the open coat; my father in the suit, W. Warren Harper, born in Catskill, New York, on the Hudson River before there was a Rip Van Winkle Bridge; next to my papa is my “Uncle Jack,” Dr. John Ford, a dentist, and husband to my Aunt Edith Ford, a schoolteacher, graduate of Hunter College, who taught the nucleus of “Murder Incorporated” in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

so the tone of service ‘out of africa’ the order of the godfather firmly in place) Firm knowledge of film as comfort zone to the long perfect ending consequence

We lost our brother Jonathan in 1977 (I was in South Africa and did not hear)

faultline revenge a subtle tension from the old testament Mandela prince

Our mother began to fade from then on (Liz answered the call from an unknown

of prison King sacrificing all to avoid a bloodbath when those who cannot be forgiven

assailant ‘who dialed’ to apologize for backing into his pathway: Continental)

are let off free truth and reconciliation (I would make you “judge” of such proceedings

Even with a helmet on you can’t sustain headfirst flight onto pavement

and watch you work kinder than you know so much like our mother subtle from left

Our father took him off ‘life support’ (he also began to fade but took his luck

to right side I am reminded of our grandmother who died in ’47 with no convalescence ever

with sleeping with our mother as grace the kind we said over meals mechanically)

the secrets of our parents where they lived what they hoped for for us I see it now

In 1988 our mother left the premises (I heard the call in the night moved

in your lovely touch and blended presence: “strong in the broken places”

little until Kaiser called to remove her) You and I know she left her body

our father for whom you care in trust is off his game medication not quite himself

long beforehand her whispers were shots of adrenalin to your steady frame

“I can get over any death but my own,” our mother chortled for she was saying goodbye as you will not

I saw you rush to her protection without comment the kill in your eyes and cadence

no quit in you “control freak” I badly called when you were never carefree or careless

under your breath your instincts were deadly (from then on you were married to two men)

in your close minuscule monitoring cellphone ’round your neck raft from whence we won’t let you sink

Symmetry on this conundrum no mercy anywhere as in a lost detail commissary no recompense from purgatory no contrition large enough to hide your very own Vietnam

Michael S. Harper @ Yaddo 6 6 04 composition a work-in-progress ‘in love and service, evermore’

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

conversation

by lafayette gilchrist

ONE ON ONE WITH LABTEKWON

collage by marc fanberg

urbanite february 05

Labtekwon, aka Omar Akbar, is an emcee and producer who works in Baltimore. Over the course of more than ten years, twelve self-released CD-Rs, and two albums on the Mush and Morphius imprints, he has established himself as the most notable talent to come out of the Baltimore underground hip-hop scene. He has two albums forthcoming, The Ghetto Dali Lama: African Rhythms, American Blues, and Avant God, on the local labels Ankh Ba and Morphius, respectively. His style is a gruff, unapologetic mixture of hardcore rap, effete jazz samples and sinister bass lines, spiritual trips into self-exploration, and Garveyite panAfricanism, but Lab hardly ever takes himself too seriously. He often slips into a whackier, science fiction-style of hip-hop inspired by Sun Ra, P-Funk, and Kool Keith. His lyrics do take pains, however, to remind us that he has not yet gotten his due. He has sold records in Europe, but never toured there. He has appeared on the same stage as acts like A Tribe Called Quest, but his name is unfamiliar outside a very few underground hip-hop circles. He knows he has the skills, as do the critics, and he’s spent long enough on his style to make it into something completely his own, but that’s not good enough to get him the types of audiences he deserves. In this month’s conversation, Lafayette Gilchrist, a celebrated Baltimore jazz pianist and this issue’s guest editor, talks to Lab about the creative process, about his new albums, and about how the black community can benefit from black art. Labtekwon comes from the black community, but when he puts out art that seems to draw on the deepest of black tradition, it almost always draws, perplexingly, a primarily white audience. Is black art music no longer the pabulum of the black community? Is the same thing happening to Labtekwon as did to Sonny Murray, Cecil Taylor, or even John Coltrane—that their music is appreciated and profitable only among the white elite? And what does this say about the current state and future of hip-hop?

GILCHRIST: How do you feel about this new release coming up? ... You’ve got one coming out on Morphius. LAB: I feel good. I feel up. GILCHRIST: What’s the name of the new album? LAB: The newest album is The Ghetto Dali Lama: African Rhythm, American Blues. That’s just coming out on Ankh Ba [Labtekwon’s own independent record label], but the newest one on Morphius is Avant God, and that comes out in April. GILCHRIST: And when is the joint on Ankh Ba coming out? LAB: February 1 for Black History Month. GILCHRIST: Let’s talk a little bit about The Ghetto Dali Lama. How did that come about? LAB: In 2002 I did my first tour, other than just doing spots in nightclubs locally and in New York or Atlanta, or L.A. I started doing gigs from state to state, and it was an experience where, my audience being the people that buy it and the people that I speak to, I realized that there was a gap. I had a lot of experiences where I was doing shows where you see the audience and they would be predominantly young white males, and no females. Nobody was dancing to the music; they were just standing there watching. There would be like three girls there out of a hundred dudes. I did a brief tour in 2003 for [my previous album] The Hustla’s Guide to the Universe and spent two weeks in Brooklyn, New York at Linden Plaza. After that I spent a month in Northeast D.C., and a month in Atlanta. I compared my experiences. For instance, when I was in Brooklyn, I was basically in the projects, and I was hanging out with dudes that really didn’t even know anything about my music. They were my friends, but they weren’t my friends because of my music. They were just my boys. And you know, spending time rhyming, like in hallways, on a rooftop with them, it was a totally different context than doing a tour with a bunch of people who bought your stuff off the Internet … I realized that I don’t do much music for my family and friends. I do music for my listeners. [My family and friends] don’t relate to a lot of this stuff that I put on my last few albums, because a lot of my stuff is abstract and kind of to the left. So, I said as much as I spend time with cats on the block and just trying to be a positive influence, I need to do an album that’s a reflection of that. In my [earlier] music, I talk about outer space, I talk about ancient times, I talk about real weird psychedelic stuff, which is not what I live. I don’t live in outer space and I don’t live in ancient times. So I said I need to do something to deal with now and deal with people who I care about. And I did The Ghetto Dali Lama as an album that basically was my way of trying to be a positive influence through my music. I do a lot of stuff other than music to make a message ... I work in the community, working with kids or just trying to represent. So that album was specifically designed for my cousins, people who I know that hustle for a living; people who I know that struggle on a day-to-day basis; and people who relate to being outside of the mainstream; people who are left out of the equation when we talk about the American Dream, so to speak. GILCHRIST: Could you talk about the concept behind this album, The Ghetto Dali Lama?

LAB: I realized that coming from my background—my great-grandparents being Garveyites [I wanted] to recognize the whole concept of Pan-Africanism, of connecting black people together all over the world through the ideology of negritude, and having a common thread that puts us together even though we might be in different geographical and social locations. So, it’s a concept of Pan-Africanism, it’s a concept of community development. At the same time it’s not done as a righteous, better-than-you, holier-than-thou type thing. Because I admit my flaws. On the album, I talk about how I have a preoccupation with women; a lot of times sex and lust is a big thing in my music. GILCHRIST: But you know, man, in this age of Puritanism … it was really nice to hear the different excursions that you went through in Hustla’s Guide to the Universe. To me, what’s missing in this culture is that gray area. In this culture it’s black and white. It’s ‘for me’ or ‘against me’, ‘this way’ or ‘that way.’ And in your music, there’s room for that—the gray area is an integral part of the dialogue. LAB: Jesus said, I didn’t come for the flock that was there, I came for the lost sheep. So, if I’m only preaching to the church, I ain’t saving anybody, because everybody at church is supposed to already know. So, for you to reach people who are not at that place, you have to go where they are and bring them to where you’re trying to get them. And the only way to do that is to speak in a code, a language that they can recognize and relate to, and they see that you have a shared experience enough to say, ‘Well, you know what, maybe there’s something to what he’s saying” because he can relate and understand the struggle on a level more than just saying, ‘Don’t sell drugs; don’t do this, don’t do that.’ So I didn’t necessarily preach on The Ghetto Dali Lama, I reflected on it and I did have two or three songs that are abstract, and just can’t help it. It comes out like that regardless. For this album, I just want to convey ideas more than I want to convey aesthetic. You know, in terms of just using big words, or just using certain imagery, I want to convey the idea that when you analyze the body of the composition, the idea comes through clearly. GILCHRIST: What do you feel about your music as a process? You know as a person who gazed into the creative process, how has your music changed from the time you started until the present? LAB: This is what my experiences have taught me. The most enigmatic aspect of the concept of the artist is being an owner and a businessman. The conversation is redefined to a point where a fan has a perspective of it; and a businessman has a different perspective of it. Idealistically, it’s about having a product, and knowing how to market it properly, and getting as much profit as possible with minimal capital investment ... So my perspective is different because I’m a businessman as well as an artist. I came in the business aspect before I started doing hip-hop for business ... The idea of trying to hustle and make money off of sales. If you’re a producer on a product, it’s just finding people—you have to figure out how many people will want to hear what you make and how you get it to them so that they buy it, so that you can keep making more. And how to increase your audience. That’s all it is. Anything can sell. Anything. There is no formula; there is no guarantee. Nothing makes sense, as far as that goes, because if you have the right people behind you, they’re going to make

FACTS Baltimore’s ragtime piano legend Eubie Blake (1883– 1983) has a museum in his honor at 847 North Howard Street. Drummer Chick Webb (1909–1939) was born in Charm City and moved to New York at age 17 to play drums for Duke Ellington. Jazz vocalist and Baltimore resident Ethel Ennis earned international recognition in 1958 when Benny Goodman selected her as the female vocalist for an all-star band that toured Western Europe. She performed for presidents Nixon and Carter at the White House, and performed with Louis Armstrong, Count Basic, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis. “Mama” Cass Elliot (1941–1974), singer for the Southern California group The Mamas and the Papas, was born in Baltimore. Best known for his work in the band The Cars, Ric Ocasek was born Richard Otcasek in Baltimore. John Doe of X, the pioneering alternative rock band of the 1980s, spent his early adulthood singing and playing in Baltimore bars. David Byrne, now an acclaimed solo artist and champion of world music, moved to Baltimore from Scotland at 8 years old, and later attended the Maryland Institute College of Art. Tupac Shukar (1971-1996) attended the Baltimore School for the Arts until his family moved to Marin City, California, when he was 17 years old. Dru Hill, named after Baltimore’s own’s Druid Hill, got their start singing at the Inner Harbor’s Fudgery, where they entertained customers with their performances while making fudge. Known simply as Mario, this 18-year-old Baltimore-born performer had a hit with his single “Just A Friend 2002.” His second album, Turning Point, with the single “Let Me Love You,” has earned him appearances on BET and MTV. Baltimore vocalist Ultra Naté has several major charttopping singles in Europe and the UK, including her single “Free,” which sold more than a million copies and reached #1 in Spain and Italy. Baltimore producer DJ Who’s remix of Japanese singer Aya Euto’s “Hello” sold 13 million copies for Sony Japan. Sources: www.eubieblake.org; www.nathanielturner.com; www.mdarchives.state.md.us; www.biography.com; www.vh1.com; movies.yahoo.com; www.sing365.com; www.mario2u.com; www.ultranate.com —Compiled by Tracy Durkin and L.G. Concannon, aka, DJ LoveGrove

Continued on page 44 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

out there

by scott paynter

photography by eric vincent

Wade

in the

Water

How does a reggae singer from Baltimore end up on a tiny speck of an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, singing at a sunrise baptism? Truth is stranger than fiction. While on an Armed Forces entertainment tour of Asia and the South Pacific, my band, Jah Works, spent a week on Diego Garcia, a British territory between Madagascar and India. Through a leasing agreement with the Brits, it plays host to a slew of American military personnel, doing any number of top-secret jobs. This was our last stop after performing our way through Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Guam, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. Our shows that week were played in a number of large ballrooms, officer’s clubs and an outdoor venue near the U.S. Air Force’s “Tent City” encampment. While playing the Officer’s Club show, which was a bit more sedate a crowd than our band is used to, I met one of the chaplains on the island, the Reverend Jennifer Bixby. She approached me during a set break to say that she was quite taken with one of our original tunes, “Moses.” She asked if we’d be willing to perform it at a sunrise baptism that coming Sunday. Being a full-time musician, the thought of singing at sunrise initially caused me to shudder. Usually I’m going to bed at sunrise. But I quickly realized that this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. For the longest time, I’d been telling family and friends

that I wanted to incorporate my music into something larger and more meaningful than the normal smoke-filled bar and club scenes. I told Rev. Jennifer that we’d be honored. I walked out of my quarters at about 7:15 that Sunday morning to see the sky a painting of light blue, burning red and orange. The sun was just up over the water, and the air was still cool, for Diego Garcia anyway, which is seven degrees below the equator. As I walked the quarter mile toward the beach pavilion where the baptism was to be held, I saw my guitar player, Kevin, and was relieved. Honestly I wondered if one of us would oversleep and not show. Rev. Jennifer went over the service with us and we learned that the song would be a cappella. Singing with a band playing through a sound system is one thing, but the thought of singing with no music had me sweating more than the increasingly humid morning. The service began, and the small group of 15 people gathered together to sing hymns and say prayers for the world. Rev. Jennifer talked about the places where people were suffering. Haiti was reeling from another hurricane, while the “first world” mouthed half-hearted pledges of support (and this was well before the devastation of the tsunami). Russian schoolchildren were taken hostage and massacred, and CNN pumped it into living rooms as some kind of macabre entertainment. Yet here

we were, on a beautiful morning in the middle of the Indian Ocean, gathered together to witness the baptism of five Filipino men who worked on the island. How beautiful was it that people of faith could gather together and welcome these five men into a spiritual community? After the brief service, we jumped into two vehicles and rode to the water. We walked through the trees and bush until we found ourselves on a beach of blinding white sand. The sun was rising fast and it shot diamonds off the surface of the water. We stood in a circle and Rev. Jennifer told the assembly that she had a special surprise. Jah Works, she said, was gracious enough to come and sing a song for the baptism. As the faces of the people turned in our direction, I felt all my nervousness wash away. I was filled with the spirit of God, of my Irish ancestors and all the singers I’d ever admired as I opened my mouth to sing: Send us, another brother Moses You got to lead us, across the Red Sea Why don’t you send us, another brother Moses Because truly, that’s who we need right now My bandmates joined me in a three-part harmony, with nothing but the wind and the sea to sing along with. I felt transported to another level. When we finished, Rev. Jennifer led the men into the water. They waded up to their elbows, and she supported them one by one as they leaned back into the ocean. They each came out of the water in their own way, one jumping with happiness, another smiling quietly as he wiped tears from his eyes. Music and spirituality have always been linked for me, and that morning was proof that they always will be. The spirit moved amongst us, bridging the distance between heaven and earth. n —When not touring with his band Jah Works, Scott Paynter writes from his home in Baltimore. The island of Diego Garcia was not affected by December’s tsunami.

A Musical Weekend at Beth Am Synagogue In Celebration of our 30th Anniversary February 12 & 13, 2005 Both events are FREE and open to the public Reservations required BCAS Director Tom Hall

Ysaye Barnwell

Saturday, February 12, 2005, 2:30-5:30pm

Sunday, February 13, 2005, 2:30 pm

Community Sing

A Choral Concert

A Choral Workshop for Adults and Children

What a Beautiful City: Jerusalem, City of Hope Featuring: Tom Hall and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society with Rheda Becker as narrator

Conducted by Ysaye Barnwell, of Sweet Honey in the Rock, & Members of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society

Including works by: Verdi, Copland, Brubeck, Ysaye Barnwell, William Dawson and more

No experience or special talent is required—just a willingness to have fun.

Beth Am Synagogue (in Historic Reservoir Hill) 2501 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD

urbanite february 05

For more information or to make reservations call: 410-523-2446 or visit bethambaltimore.org

Sponsors: The Alfred H. Moses Fund and WYPR Radio

sustainable city

christina breda antoniades

EC0T0URISM

See the world while saving the world.

Learn more about ecotourism through the following resources, many of them local. Green Earth Travel 888-246-8343 301-229-5666 www.vegtravel.com

When 21-year-old Joanna Jarosinski headed to the coastal town of Gandoca, Costa Rica, for a vacation in May 2004, she did all the usual tourist things: white-water rafting, a rainforest hike, snorkeling, sightseeing. But Jarosinski’s trip had an unusual element. By night, the Towson student patrolled pitch-black beaches as part of a group of volunteers on hand to protect and research nesting leatherback sea turtles. The trip, run by the National Aquarium in Baltimore and its Costa Rica-based partner Asociacion ANAI, gave Jarosinski the perfect opportunity to combine tourism with volunteer work. For most of the weeklong trip, she attended lectures, tracked turtles, and talked to locals about how to keep sea turtles safe. “It was a learning and working vacation,” explains Jarosinski. The best part: “Actually seeing huge leather sea turtles up close and being welcomed and made to feel at home in a different country.” Now in its third year, the Costa Rica trip is rapidly gaining in popularity among those who want a chance to explore and protect a diverse natural habitat. In 2004, eight people spent $2,495 apiece to take the trip; in 2005 the Aquarium expects to send as many as 45 people total in three different groups. While there, ecotourists live with the locals—many are turtle poachers-turned-conservationists—and pitch in on turtle research and preservation projects. And, of course, there’s a bit of tourism thrown in as well, says David Schofield, manager of Ocean Health Programs at the National Aquarium. “But this is not your normal vacation,” he says. “There’s one afternoon of laying on the beach and the rest is go, go, go.” In fact, volunteers/tourists can expect to take several night shifts, which involve walking five to ten miles in search of sea turtles. Although they’ve been around since the 1970s, ecotours truly took off in the 1990s, fueled by a population of travelers concerned about the environment and driven to go farther afield and do more than just bake in the sun and drink pina coladas. More than just nature trips or adventure travel, ecotourism is defined as responsible

travel to natural areas that conserves or has a low impact on the environment. An ecolodge, for example, might use sustainable building materials, solar power rather than a diesel generator, and strive to conserve water and recycle whenever possible. By the late 1990s, ecotourism had become a $20 billion a year industry and snagged the title of fastest growing segment of tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization. Today, 5% of outbound U.S. tourists are ecotourists and about 500 U.S. companies now seek to serve them. In recent years, the concept of ecotourism has expanded to a broader ideal—sustainable travel and tourism, which includes the same principles but extends to urban areas as well as natural areas. Tourists seek to help the local communities become self-sufficient. The end result is a sort of global community service that puts travelers in the role of volunteers and helps the locals help themselves. “I think people who travel are looking for something more meaningful,” says Marcia Selva, founder of Global Spectrum, a tour operator that specializes in sustainable travel. On Selva’s tours, travelers typically make a donation—medicine, a fishing boat, school supplies—to the local community. “The travelers themselves get involved with the donation so they can look them in the eye and see where the money goes. It’s an amazing experience.” Jarosinski says the extra effort is well worth it and she’d jump at the chance to do it again. n

The National Aquarium In Baltimore Contact: David Schofield 410-576-1098 www.aqua.org Tierra Vista Tours and Consulting Contact: Abigail Rome 301-608-8094 www.tierra-vista.org UFX Travel 703-591-3544 800-477-8785 www.ufxtravel.com Sustainable Travel International 720-273-2975 www.ecotourismtravel.com International Ecotourism Society 202-347-9203 www.ecotourism.org

—Christina Breda Antoniades is a freelance writer living in Baltimore.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m f e b r u a r y 0 5

b y b i l l s e b r i n g a n d j a s o n t i n n e y

photo by t.p. Luce

in review

MUSIC

BOOK

Calabash: Afrobeat Poems by Ikwunga (Rebisi-hut Records, 2004)

t.p. Luce, thaBloc: words, photographs and baltimore city in black, white and gray (Baltimore: Obie Joe Media, LLC, 2004)

The calabash is an annual vine (Lagenaria siceraria) having white flowers and smooth, large, hard-shelled gourds often pressed into service as containers, utensils, or—in West Africa, among other locales—as musical instruments. Calabash is also the title of the first volume of Afrobeat musician and poet Ikwunga Wonodi’s domestic CD release on Rebisi-hut Records (www.rebisihut.com). Ikwunga, a Nigerian-born assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine says, “Calabash is in many ways a concept album; [a] fusion of spoken word with African-style call-and-answer dialogue and western-style rhymes, and a new contemporary chilling Afrobeat. Calabash is poetry, contemporary African artistic design, and music in one.” The CD provides many avenues for the uninitiated to arrive at an appreciation of this contemporary amalgam of styles. Afrobeat—the innovative 1960s cocktail of African highlife music, with its western and Christian musical connections, and jazz, with bits of James Brown funk—has had a high profile in the West since the 1970s under the genre’s standard-bearer, Fela Kuti. The enigmatic Kuti casts a long shadow across all West African musicians, but Ikwunga’s bona fides are securely in place: As a young medical doctor, his band regularly opened for Fela’s son, Femi, at the Afrika Shrine, Lagos’s legendary nightclub. The Shrine’s audience, accustomed to instrumental jams, responded to his patois with jeers and boos. “They called me ‘Di Poet,’” laughs Ikwunga. Other members of Femi’s band Positive Force, including former Fela Kuti keyboardist (and Calabash producer) Dele Sosimi, “informed me that this was what I should expect delivering a new style and that I should keep at it.” He would interrupt the music, charm the hecklers, and press on. The smooth jazz sound of Calabash retains the texture of the Nigerian sound and instruments; but it is the anticolonial political content—consistent with the history of Afrobeat music from its inception—that joins with Ikwunga’s contemporary, American hip-hop and beat poetry stylings to create a surprising fusion that is strong yet easy on the ears. The artist cites dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson as an influence, one that is clear in “Di Bombs,” the album’s third track, a vernacular pidgin English selection that traces the parallels between slavery and modern war-making in the first and third worlds. Ikwunga is mindful of Johnson’s and the elder Kuti’s relations with the American Black Panther party, updating the music’s heritage for a twenty-first century audience. In the end, though, this self-styled herald of pan-Africanism is less doctrinaire and more compassionate than his musical forbears: He is a man involved with the grassroots establishment of The African Alliance for the Mentally Ill (TAAMI) in Nigeria, an organization devoted to public health efforts to raise awareness, provide access to resources, and be an advocate for the stigmatized and afflicted in his homeland. Fela Kuti famously characterized music as a weapon, but, in the hands of Ikwunga, it is a weapon against sickness as much as a weapon against injustice. — Bill Sebring is a mathematician and senior editor for Link, Baltimore’s critical art journal.

“Here, in the city, on the line, I try to connect words with pictures like dots on a map leading to the unseen treasure buried in the soul.” So writes t.p. Luce in his book, thaBloc. It is a clear and eloquent explanation to a book that needs no explanation, once you’ve taken a look inside. Welcome to East Baltimore, a place “where working class people play, out in the open, without propaganda,” where families sit on front porches, where children laugh and folks dress in their Sunday best. And young men brandish pistols and the ghosts of the Dawson family linger on corners; where scarred houses are memorialized with teddy bears and BELIEVE bumper stickers. t.p. Luce has made an ambitious debut as a poet and photographer in a book that is elegant, gritty and full of quiet power. In the title poem, “thaBloc (my bohemian),” Luce writes: where I live there seems to exist some mysterious energy that—is, but we are told—is not, cannot, be some sparkle, some shine breaking through the bleak landscape of the city which no one knows is there and therefore shines unseen ... but still, I love this place ...

The complementing photographs have a subtle pulse and life of their own—brutal, beautiful and always honest. They are portraits of men and women, and children, “whole on the outside but premature, half grown on the inside,” he writes. Young girls, too young for the poses, lean against street lamps. In “manchild: eyes on the prize,” a teenage boy sits on a front porch, thumb in his mouth, eyes fixed on two pistols lying by his side. A disclaimer states, “There is no correlation implied nor should any be inferred from any photograph to any poem or story.” It is apparent, however, that the verse and photos play off one another, like a horn and rhythm section, occasionally with chilling effect. Luce dedicates “general lee’s black army” to the slaves enlisted “to help fight for the confederate cause ... and those brothers and sisters today who walk in their footsteps straight faced biting both tongue and lip.” The corresponding photograph is of two black Baltimore City police officers. Luce sees much injustice and misconception perpetrated by government and media, “the architects of the quicksand.” In “thaRecipe” he illustrates how to roll a “blunt.” The first ingredient is “municipal leadership with a greater appreciation for American mythology than for that which is self-evident.” But for all of the adversity there are dreams in his words. In “clean hands” he writes of “the pure light of hope that may brighten long days.” And there are the sweet-toothed words of “chocolate” where he speaks to a loved one who makes him “feel like sugar cane,” makes him “feel like—chocolate.” Perhaps Luce’s most powerful line comes in “thank you.” Speaking as the father of two, he knows that true poetry and grace come from children. “To the boy and the girl for showing me that only children really see and so wise adults spend the rest of their lives, from the onset of the blindness ... trying to see again and the unwise accept the darkness as light.” This is a book that not everyone in Baltimore may want to see. But they should. — Jason Tinney is the author of two collections of short stories and prose—Bluebird and Louise Paris and Other Waltzes (Hilliard and Harris Publishers). He performs with two Baltimore-based bands, Donegal X-Press and The Wayfarers.

urbanite february 05

DVD The Giant Clam: A Rock Opera (self-released, 2004) The rock opera’s genetic material claims rockers and theatrical folk among its forefathers. In the late 1960s, when all things seemed possible, the Who’s Tommy and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s portrait Jesus Christ: Superstar saw a bright future for the art form. By the time Pink Floyd mounted The Wall, though, punk’s nihilism—“never trust a hippy”—put an abortive end to the rock opera, and the bloated genre lay beached on pop’s shoreline. From time to time, fringe luminaries have resuscitated the form. Laurie Anderson, the performance artist who scored a British new-wave hit in “O, Superman,” floated Moby Dick in 1999, but no one has laid claim to a large popular audience on the scale attempted by Ken Russell, director of the film version of Tommy. Enter local writer, editor, and musician Geoff Brown, auteur and creative force behind The Giant Clam: A Rock Opera, released in December as a onehour-and-eleven-minute-long DVD. The Baltimorean, who wrote the rock opera with fellow musician John Keating, had originally planned to bring The Giant Clam to the live stage, a project that culminated in a performance at the Ottobar in December of 2002. The one-time event was covered at the time by the Sun and Sport Diver magazine, and recorded on digital video by Gavin Elder. Two years later, Brown has delivered a multimedia work from the world of Lewis Carroll by way of the Discovery Channel. The Victorian photograph on the cover of the disk’s keep-case is an invitation to Clam’s deeps: It depicts a woman, “The Wife,” seated in a parlor, dressed in a formal gown and confronted by “The Husband,” outfitted in a period diving bell, impassive behind his metal helmet. Brown began to rethink the video project: “I saw the original footage, and it was about twenty-five percent useable—which was a problem. So I asked around, and [Baltimore filmmakers] Skizz Czyzk and J.R. Fritsch pointed me toward the National Archives.” He began to cut in archival film covering a variety of nautical themes, from oceanographic footage to wartime documentation, from ice cutters to performing seals. “The stuff [they] have there is stunning, both in quality and quantity. I mean, I found a clip of a dolphin grabbing a cigarette out of the mouth of a guy who looked like he was either Jan or Dean.” The two-act concert itself remains faithful to the operatic form, replete with costume changes, piscatorial props, a bubble machine, and a g-strung ring girl, announcing the music—ranging from Neil Young-tinged singersongwriter fare to southern-fried rock to Clashlike anthems—with titled cards. The supplemental visuals extend the opera in a cinematic way: The balletic footage of swimmin’ squid to a guitar-pickin’ ballad is striking, and the violent conclusion to Act I, whereupon The Husband is captured by the giant mollusk, is an homage to Coppola’s Godfather. As for the question posed at the opera’s climax, “What good is a pearl?”: What good, indeed? The Giant Clam: A Rock Opera is available at Atomic Books, Peter’s Inn, and online at thegiantclam.com. —Bill Sebring

Tour de Clay is a collaboration among artists, galleries and leaders from the Greater Baltimore cultural community who have joined together to showcase all possibilities of art in clay. One hundred and sixty (160) exhibits featuring 878 artists from around the world will be held in 122 venues throughout the Greater Baltimore region beginning February 19 and continuing through April 3, 2005.

Additional information on Tour de Clay can be accessed at

www.tourdeclay.com

February 19 - April 3, 2005 www.baltimoreclayworks.org 410.578.1919 Supported in part by Bank of America, The Abell Foundation, The Baltimore Community Foundation, Deutsch Foundation, Mt. Vernon Cultural District, The National Endowment for the Arts, The William G. Baker Memorial Fund, The Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation & The Charlesmead Foundation Media Partners American Craft Council, American Style Magazine, Clay Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Urbanite, WYPR, Comcast, Patuxent Publishing, Inside Annapolis, Skelton Design & The Cecil Whig Special Thanks to NCECA

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Conversation continued from page 39 it sell based off of the machine. It’s like it doesn’t even matter what you give them. GILCHRIST: How are you seeing the current scene in Baltimore and D.C.? LAB: We hunt America for culture, art. You go to New York, Philly, you might even go to Boston; you push it here in Baltimore and D.C. You know that when you’re looking at a preferred art form in any genre, it’s going to be soulful. It’s going to have conviction and power. There’s a strength in it, and that’s the essence of it. That’s Baltimore energy ... energy like Billie Holiday, Bull Stewart ... it’s soul power. GILCHRIST: Let me ask you something. When I look at Avant God, the new record coming out on Morphius, I think about Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor. I think about [Charles] Mingus—you know I think about Mingus—and even Archie Schepp and the latter work by John Coltrane. Avant God has to do with these, this black art. With those guys, black art was basically patronized only by a white elite. How do you see that question in contemporary terms? LAB: I mean, this is obvious, man. It’s always a cycle where some people look at your music in terms of refinement, and they associate it with class. In certain music forms, people can do that. If you play a harp, and you’re classically trained as a harpist, it holds a greater value in certain circles of society compared to [playing] a drum machine. Some people, in their minds, can’t conceive of that as true musicianship. It’s a form of pseudomusician. But believe it or not, the art of a person using the beat box, just with their mouth, there is mastery to that art. It’s still a fundamental thing to it, but it shows on Avant God. The refinement is based on ideas, and on the weight, like in jazz, and the phraseology and the timing. And just like the sonic aspect, like in hip-hop. Lyrically it’s more tone in the picture, the imagery, the scenery as well as the timing ... It’s not really concrete rules, but it’s a general idea, where it’s a level of mastery where we passed redundancy. Repetition we use to a point where we find new parts on the outer edge of the cycle that fit maybe every seven times when it comes back around … and you listen to the whole flow. And then you break it down like, ‘Oh, don’t repeat that.’ It’s like a puzzle.

GILCHRIST: I’m glad you said that, because I was just thinking as you said it, that’s the piece of the puzzle that we as instrumentalists are kind of missing. I never focused on the lyrics. The way my mind is organized, I always hear the music first, and everything in the music, especially the voice. So I would hear the rhythms inside of the rhythms, and I always hoped that rap and jazz would evolve together much in the same ways that jazz and scat singing did. It seems to me that the contribution of artists like yourself is that you take all of that rhythmic complexity and you have a real searing lyrical content to place in it. You’re painting pictures with the words. LAB: Right, right. That’s the energy, the scenery, the whole idea, and the irony to it. The irony and the drama and the comedy could be done in words. So yeah, as far as writing styles, I think jazz has already reached the point where hip-hop is a student of jazz, from the context of when you add the melodic content and sometimes the phraseology to deliver your rhyme. Here is where hip-hop is: a critical point that people don’t understand. We’re talking about the emceeing aspect. If you try to separate it from the cultural standpoint of hip-hop culture, you blow the point. The point is, it’s a DJ repeating a pattern with two records, and someone doing the lyrical delivery over that. So repetition in the actual musical composition is fundamental. It’s not just to say, ‘Can a drummer sit here and play this the whole time?’ It’s to say a person is taking two records and becoming a one-man band, that art form. That’s where you develop the styles that say ‘avant-garde hip-hop.’ I think greatness in itself is just a blessing from the Most High, but it ain’t really greatness until it can be born and born again, and born again. The cycle repeats itself, like for science—if somebody takes your experiment and does it, and proves the same results as you do, consistently over and over, then people start to accept it as fact. There are anomalies too, and in there, and in a pop context, it gets to a point where it blurs the line of quality and skill, and the art changes into something else, you know what I mean? GILCHRIST: But also, I like that balance between artistic integrity and pop success. I always think about that line in scripture that says, ‘What does it profit a man, to gain the world, and lose a soul?’

LAB: Well, that’s right. Soul power. GILCHRIST: But, the thing about it though, there’s a thing with your approach and with your level that really I don’t think the average emcees even have. LAB: The thing is having those emcees know more, dog. You know what I believe? I believe it’s like—being a person like Jackie Chan, or Jet Lee, like when you practice for years your art, and you grow out of it, man, you just do this dumb-ass movie. GILCHRIST: Well, whenever an art form advances, it’s always about coming to terms with the roots of the art form itself, about reaching back while you’re reaching forward, which is a spiritual journey as much as it is a philosophical one. LAB: Yeah, rhythm and blues is real in itself. I mean that is soul music. That’s your so-called blues. Rhythm and blues that’s like more the jazz-fusion and the musicianship, but blues would just be call-and-response, you know what I mean? But if you use a band, you use a choir, you use a drum in Africa. It’s still called responding. That’s all hip-hop is. You have to put it in that context, just to appreciate the glow to the art. GILCHRIST: I liken that to going back for nostalgic purposes, but it’s the actual functionality. That’s part of what’s really plagued jazz. LAB: You’ve got to fuse the future with the past and the present. When you talk about the future, think about it like this: The Jetsons was futuristic, but when you put it in a bigger context of the ’60s cartoons, think about it. The technology, and the things—we achieved all that in a time period without leaving earth. You know what I mean—the flying machines, the walking on the conveyor belts. All that ... is what we have now. Talking robots: They do our dishes and laundry; food that you just pop it in a box and it comes out hot. Come on, that’s it. We already did that. I did an album in ’94, ten years ago, The Future’s Now … What’s Next? I asked the question and I answered it for the rest of the albums I did in [the next] ten years. You know what I mean? GILCHRIST: Yeah. The future is now.

coming next month Who is “Up and Coming” in Baltimore? Free subscriptions upon request: www.urbanitebaltimore.com 44

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Resources Food, from p. 15 A. Kirshmayr Chocolatier 9630 Deerco Road Timonium, MD 21093 410-561-7705 www.fineeuropeanchocolate.com James Brownies recipe www.pulpkitchen.com Ma Petite Shoe 832 West 36th Street 410-235-3442 www.mapetiteshoe.com Moore’s Candies 3004 Pinewood Avenue 410-426-2705 www.moorescandies.com Naron Chocolates 1786 Union Avenue 410-467-9338 www.naroncandy.com Wockenfuss Candy Company 5420 Belair Road 410-483-4414 www.wockenfusscandies.com Other local sources of handmade chocolate creations: Lisa Anne’s Decadent Gifts 2121 North Charles Street 410-752-4111 www.theapplelady.com Louis J. Rheb Candy Co. 3352 Wilkens Avenue 410-644-4321 www.rhebcandy.com Encounter: Rumor Control, from p. 21 Rumor Control Line: 410-396-1188 www.ci.baltimore.md.us/services Other sources of information include the city and county public libraries (www.epfl.net and www.bcpl.info) and the Urban Legends Reference Pages (www.snopes.com) Feature: Soundtrack to the City, from p. 26 Recommended Listening Baltimore Club: DJ Cornbread: Mix #31 (self-released, 2003) Rod Lee / K-Life: Rod Lee / K-Life EP (Club Beats, 2000) Blaqq Starr: Tote It (Club Kingz Records, 2004) DJ Technics: Movin’ Asses, Volume 6 (Clubtracks, 2004) DJ Nike: Mix #33 (self-released, 2001) Experimental / Free Music: Andy Hayleck: The Disappearing Floor (Recorded, 2004) Ian Nagoski: The Effortless Battle (Recorded, 2003) Nautical Almanac: rooting for the microbes (Load Records, 2003) John Dierker: Live at the Red Room (Generate Records, 1999) Peter B.: The Sound of Doves in a Cave (Shinkoyo Records, 2002)

Gospel: Sandtown: Based on a True Story (Gotee Records, 2003) Church of the Redeemed of the Lord Mass Choir: Oh Most High (S. Ford Music, 2004) Lea Gilmore: Gospels for Damien—Let Your Light Shine (Damien Music, 2001) Choir Boyz: This Time (Platinum Hill, 2003) Steven McCoy & Greater Purpose: Strivin’ Da Struggle (Vibin’ Productions, 2004) Indie Rock: The Anomoanon: Joji (Temporary Residence, 2004) Two If By Sea: Translations (Speedbump Recordings, 2004) The Twin Six: The Twin Six (selfproduced, 1999) Slow Jets: Remain in Ether (Morphius, 2004) Lake Trout: Another One Lost (Palm Pictures/Rx Records, 2002)

The Funk Box (Varied, Indie) 10 East Cross Street 410-625-2000

The Sound Garden 1616 Thames Street 410-563-9011

Golden West Café (psych folk) 1105 West 36th Street 410-889-8891

The True Vine (also features live experimental, psychedelic folk music) 1123 West 36th Street 410-235-4500

Hammerjack’s (Club) 316 Guilford Avenue 410-234-0044

On the Web

Mojo Room & Lounge (Folk, Indie, Varied) 4825 Bel Air Road 410-325-7427 Morgan State University Choir (gospel) Contact: Sherrell Dameron 443-885-3287 The New Haven Lounge (jazz) Northwood Shopping Center 1552 Havenwood Road 410-366-7416

Jazz: Gary Bartz: West 42d Street  (Candid, 1990) TK Blue: Eyes of the Elders (Arkadia Jazz, 2001)   Lafayette Gilchrist: The Music According to Lafayette Gilchrist (Sindrome, 2004) Greg Hatza: To A New Place (I-Ching, 2001) Gary Thomas: Till We Have Faces (JMT, 1992)

One Baltimore (Club) 300 East Saratoga Street 410-230-0049

Psychedelic Folk: Arbouretum: Long Live the Well-Doer (Box Tree, 2004) Long Live Death: To Do More Than God … To Die (Secret Eye, 2003) The Big Huge: Crown your Head with Flowers, Crown your Heart with Joy (Secret Eye, 2004) Entrance: Wandering Stranger (Fat Possum, 2004) White Magic: Through the Sun Door (Drag City, 2004)

The Red Room (experimental) 425 East 31st Street 410-243-6888

Punk: Double Dagger: Double Dagger (HitDat Records, 2003) The Fuses: Are Lies (Morphius Records, 2000) The Oxes: Oxxxes (Monitor Records, 2002) Lungfish: The Unanimous Hour (Dischord Records, 1999) The Oranges Band: All Around (Lookout! Records, 2003) Where to Hear the Music An die Musik (jazz, chamber music, experimental) 409 North Charles Street 410-385-2638 The Baltimore Museum of Art Summer Jazz Series 10 Art Museum Drive 410-396-6051 Charm City Art Space (punk) 1729 Maryland Avenue Club Choices (Baltimore club, house, hip-hop) 1815 Charles Street 410-752-4602 Fletcher’s (Indie, Punk, Varied) 701 South Bond St. 410-558-1889

The Ottobar (indie, punk, club/house, psych folk) 2549 North Howard Street 410-662-0069 Ram’s Head Live (Varied) 20 Market Street 410-727-5151

The Royal Baltimore (indie, punk) 1542 Light Street 410-783-7776 Sidebar Tavern (punk, indie) 218 East Lexington Street 410-659-4130 Sonar Lounge (Baltimore club, house) 407 East Saratoga Street 410-327-8333 The Supreme Imperial (Indie, Punk, Varied) 223 Pearl Street 410-727-8335 The Talking Head (indie, punk, experimental, club/house, psych folk) 203 East Davis Street 410-962-5588 Tarantula Hill (experimental, punk) 2118 West Pratt Street 410-945-7825 The Vault (Punk, Indie, Folk, Varied) 401 West Baltimore Street 410-244-6000 Where to Buy the Music An die Musik 409 North Charles Street 410-385-2638 Normals Books and Records 425 East 31st Street 410-243-6888 Reptilian Records 403 South Broadway 888-909-6853

baltimorejazz.com/calendar.html The home page of this local reference guide provides a calendar of upcoming events. The links page lists local musicians and local points of interest. www.baltimorechamberjazz.org/ schedule.html  The Chamber Jazz Society of Baltimore www.leftbankjazz.org The Left Bank Jazz Society webdrive.jhsph.edu/eschaaf/sas Set up by the Peabody Institute, this online exhibit explores the musical history of Maryland’s AfricanAmerican Communities, with a photo gallery, an online listening room, and links to information about the musicians, musical venues, and musical organizations of the good old days of Baltimore music and across the state. www.highzero.org The official website of the High Zero experimental music festival, which happens annually in Baltimore and is one of the biggest festivals of its kind. Includes schedules of performers and other info about the festival. www.heresee.com Website of HereSee, a Baltimore experimental music label that releases material mostly on CD-Rs. the website also includes info about Tarantula Hill, an alternative music venue in West Baltimore, and the local free music band Nautical Almanac. www.recorded.com Website of the record label owned by John Berndt, cofounder of the Red Room Collective and local musician. The label has put out twelve recordings by some of the country’s most important experimental musicians, and focuses on the local scene. lists.topica.com/lists/phiba-improv/ ?cid=4106 Includes a link to the PhiladelphiaBaltimore Experimental Music Listserv, an email community that connects musicians and fans of the music along the mid-Atlantic corridor. Members post discussions, announce performances, and anyone is invited to join. bluesland.net/thang Local blues and gospel singer Lea Gilmore’s “It’s A Girl Thang!” website focuses on important women in the Blues. The site also includes a page devoted to “Gospel Divas,” which includes a featured artist and some helpful links. Where to Visit The Eubie Blake National Museum & Cultural Center 847 North Howard Street 410-225-3130 www.eubieblake.org

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