ARTS

deciding that I wasn’t feeling it anymore,” she most valuable skill set that I got working in hossays. “Not everyone has that luxury.” pitality. We have to learn how to talk to different

Murray likens coding to bartending because types of people, feel them out, and make sure they everyone has the same tools at their disposal leave happy. It became rooted in me. Customer and the artistry comes from what you build service is a big part of my business venture.” with the skills you’ve honed. She’s pleased that, Unlike others, Jo McDaniel still has one with her new venture, there’s one more woman foot firmly planted in the hospitality induscoder in the world. But she’ll miss the relationtry. She manages Adams Morgan queer bar ships she built with coworkers as they cranked A League of Her Own, but passed her real through busy nights of service in unison. estate licensing exam earlier this month,

Like Lloyd, Murray hopes bar owners invest should it prove useful down the line. Other exmore in their employees. “They’re always lookhospitality industry professionals have blazed ing at numbers, not at their staff and people,” she similar trails and are giving McDaniel advice. says. “There are exceptions to that rule, usually “If you are good with talking to others, when bars are owned by former bartenders. working with urgency, and managing perHopefully they don’t fall into the same traps.” sonalities, sales is a good pivot from the res

Better training is needed, according to taurant industry,” says Mark Rutstein, who Halimah Saalakhan. At 16, she started workpreviously worked at JR’s and the now-closed ing in restaurants as a host and worked her way Cobalt in Dupont Circle. Now he’s a realtor up through a variety of positions including with Compass. server, barback, bartender, and bar manager. “My kid is going to be a senior in high school,” “There’s not enough training and support,” McDaniel says. “I’m figuring out what life looks she says. “Workers get overwhelmed quickly if like when everything isn’t about being a single they have no training.” Depending on tips was mom. How I could use the skill set I have outstressful, as was not side of bartending? I receiving basic benefits like health care and life insurance. “I’m not saying that I’ll never get back into love running A League of Her Own, but I’m pushing 40. The phys“Sometimes you go to work and don’t even bartending again, ical toll of it got me thinking about where make gas money, and you’re so discouraged but right now, it’s not I can go from here.” She knows she evenand beaten to hell,” she continues. “You there... it’s a lot of tually wants to buy and sell residential homes. still gotta keep your smile on and hope and physically demanding “Queer women need representation everypray a table will tip 20 percent.” She’s conwork. It feels good not where,” she says. “To be able to potentially vinced many diners think tips are bonuses, and not how servers and bartenders earn the lion’s share of their to go home and want to fall through the door. Eventually, the party’s sell a queer family their house, I’d be representing our community on another level. Right now, behind the money. “It makes people even more discourgotta be over.” bar, I’m helping people through their first dates aged when they don’t and planning their get the money for the hard work they’re putweddings. When you have regulars, you get to ting in. It makes them switch places or get out watch people go through that.” altogether.” The secret to staying in the hospitality indus

COVID-19 somewhat spurred Saalakhan’s try a long time, according to McDaniel, is findexit from the industry. She was bartending a way to make shift work fit into a healthy ing at Satellite Room when it closed at the lifestyle. That can be tough to do if you reguend of 2019. Then she took a job managing at larly sleep in until 11 a.m. after late nights. It Buttercream Bakeshop. When the Shaw also helps to have a partner who works similar bakery temporarily closed because of the panhours. “For people who stay longer, being childdemic in March, she saw it as a sign to focus less makes it easier,” she admits. on her own event planning business, Design There are also financial considerations that Innovation Yourself. It had been a side project need fixing. “COVID notwithstanding, being for four years. able to make a living in a city that’s as expen

During the pandemic, Saalakhan has been sive as D.C. would be helpful,” McDaniel says. helping couples set up themed date nights in “As a manager, you have to work somewhere their homes or hotels, and she’s put on the occathat can afford to pay a salary. That means not sional intimate wedding. She also has satellite working at fun places that have an impact in businesses selling crystal jewelry and organic the community. My bar will be two years old dog treats. Soon she’ll partner with Pet Winery next month. It’s not enough time for us to have to be a wholesaler of non-alcoholic “wine” and established ourselves. I can stay longer if I have “beer” for cats and dogs. another source of income feeding me.”

“The hospitality industry taught me how to Still, she says it will be hard for her to walk away. manage a bunch of different things at one time,” “There’s nothing on earth like a really good shift, Saalakhan says. “Talking to people has been my and you’re always sort of chasing that.”

Violent Crimes

The Shadow of Violence

Directed by Nick Rowland Barry Keoghan has quickly risen to that top tier of actors that I’ll watch in absolutely anything. You might not know his name, but his face, somehow cherubic and demonic at once, is impossible to forget. He was the earnest helper on a boat journey in Dunkirk and the mysterious teenager who torments Colin Farrell and his family in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He’s terrific in a supporting role in The Shadow of Violence, playing the short-fused son in a closeknit crime family. It’s an archetype that goes back to The Godfather, but Keoghan infuses it with fresh details. With his platinum hair, deepset eyes, and violent temper, he’s a boy trying to hide that he’s nowhere near ready for the real world.

The film is a new twist on an old, essential move. On paper, The Shadow of Violence is nothing special. It’s filled with plot elements that, if you’re familiar with stories about organized crime, you’ve seen a hundred times before. Even the title sounds like a fake film within a film about Hollywood. But its pedestrian screenplay, based on the novella Calm with Horses by Colin Barrett, is enlivened by the strength of its filmmaking and a collection of truly stellar performances. Keoghan gets the most colorful role, but, guided by first-time feature director Nick Rowland, each actor in The Shadow of Violence creates their own riveting interpretation of our flawed, beautiful humanity.

Our protagonist is Arm (Cosmo Jarvis), an ex-boxer in a Irish coastal town who, after killing an opponent in the ring, has taken work as an enforcer for a local crime family. Dympna

(Keoghan), the hot-headed son of the clan, manipulates Arm into doing their dirtiest work—beating people who have crossed them to a bloody pulp—by making him feel like he’s part of the family. We don’t know the details of Arm’s upbringing, but it’s easy to see that his acceptance into this unorthodox family fills a childhood void. He offers them protection. They do the same for him.

He is a mountain of a man, muscled beyond description, but Jarvis’ beautifully recessive performance forces us to look deeper. His eyes, tiny slivers set against his enormous physique, reveal a volatile tenderness reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando. As Arm struggles to balance his violent work with his wish to be a presence in the life of his ex-girlfriend Ursula (Niamh Algar) and their son (Kiljan Moroney), a portrait emerges of a conflicted man who has reason to fear both his rage and his compassion. He lives in two worlds, and each is a liability. It’s only a matter of time before they dangerously collide, and Arm is forced to choose.

It’s a promising feature debut from Rowland, who displays an instinct for storytelling that is well beyond his years. It’s there in his exemplary use of color, like the way Ursula, with her pale skin and blonde hair, seems to blend into the yellow walls of her kitchen, making Arm look even more out of place amidst her domesticity. It’s in the way he conveys the impact of violence, showing the blood on Arm’s knuckles, without ever reveling in the bloodshed. It’s in the way the story of this boxer-turned-bruiser becomes a universal tale of quarter-life crisis, of trying to get your shit together before your chance at happiness passes you by for good. It’s the rare occasion in which trite material is elevated into high art through the sheer competence of all involved. —Noah Gittell

The Shadow of Violence is available Friday on VOD.

Child’s Play

How a 5-year-old rapper became one of the newest faces in go-go

By Alona Wartofsky

Contributing Writer Rapper Pinky Killacorn has performed with top go-go group Backyard Band dozens of times, so when someone started echoing her lines during the band’s recent show at Geno’s Ball Park, she assumed it was one of the band members, most likely BYB rapper Carlos “Los” Chavels.

Then she looked down.

Holding down the mic was 5-year-old Mikael “Lil Kelz” Murray, and as she rapped over a go-go version of Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé’s “Savage Remix,” he was right there with her, line by line. “I couldn’t believe it was him. Everything I said, he repeated. He was sicing my part up—he siced me up, that’s what he did,” she says, using local slang for acting as a hype man. “His ad-libs were so on point, you would have thought we had rehearsed. He was just cranking—C. R. A. N. K. I. N. G.”

Backyard bandleader Anwan “Big G” Glover was also impressed by the pint-sized freestyler. “I have never seen a kid take over and do that,” he says. “He reminded me of me back when I was a kid and wanted to be in Junkyard. I just saw it all over again: His body movements, the way he grabbed the mic, his call and response. He was attentive, like, I’m not gonna step on your words, but I’m gonna get my words in, too.”

“He’s super ready,” Big G continues. “He’s gonna be somebody’s superstar.”

Even before that outdoor, mask-required July 18 show, which was part of the annual DMV & Beyond event, Mikael had won fans around town and on social media; earlier that week, he was featured on Reese Waters’ “Most D.C. Thing” segment on WUSA Channel 9. He has rapped around town with various ensembles cobbled together by his grandfather, Alphonso “Petey” Murray, a veteran go-go conga player, and others. He is stealing hearts partly because he is absolutely adorable and as talented a rapper and dancer as a child his age can be. But there’s more: At a time when bad news seems relentless on all fronts, Mikael personifies a promise for the future of go-go.

“His mannerisms, the way he dances, the way he played the tambourine, the cowbell, it was amazing,” Pinky Killacorn says. “And his 5-year-old rapper, Mikael “Lil Kelz” Murray

voice? That wasn’t rap. That was pure go-go, the fact that he handled himself like that at a go-go onstage, that proves that there is a future for go-go.”

Mikael’s parents, Patricia Coleman and Marquese Murray, like to say that go-go is in his blood. They are not go-go artists—she works at the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter and he is a violence interrupter for Cure the Streets— but they are both longtime fans. His grandfather Petey has played with Rare Essence, Pure Elegance, and Junkyard Band at various times. According to Coleman, the boy’s father and grandfather have been showing him go-go videos on YouTube since he was a toddler, when Mikael would enjoy drumming go-go beats on anything—the noisier, the better.

Mikael lives with his mother and two older brothers, aged 12 and 13, in Southwest D.C. In the fall, he begins first grade at Leckie Elementary School. He has always been the life of the party, eager to flex his dance moves for any audience. “Everybody wants Mikael to come to their cookouts and kid’s birthday parties,” Coleman says. “Ever since he was 2, he always wins the party dance contests.”

He spends many hours watching YouTube child sensation Super Siah, but he invariably returns to go-go. His top bands are Rare Essence, WHAT?! Band, and Backyard, and he is particularly fond of Backyard’s Big G and vocalist Leroy “Weensey” Brandon Jr. “Sometimes, I wake up, and he’s already figured out how to work the remote, turn on the TV, and watch Backyard,” Murray says. “I’m just like him. I love Backyard, that’s my number one band.”

Typically, Mikael’s days are filled with football, basketball, or baseball, but since the coronavirus pandemic began, he has sharpened his focus on music. “With the pandemic, there’s not much going on with the sports, so he is on pause with all that and putting 100 percent more into his music,” Coleman says.

He has watched Backyard’s March livestream performance of its Street Antidote album at least 300 times, she reports, all the while an active participant: “He makes drums out of everything, just banging on everything,” Coleman says, “and uses air freshener spray [cans] and my deodorant as his microphone.”

Mikael’s career as Lil Kelz began casually last summer, when Petey assembled a few veteran go-go artists for a neighborhood back-to-school cookout. Later, Julante “G-Magic” Shoatz, keyboardist for WHAT?! Band, Reaction, and TOB, met Mikael at another community block party. G-Magic says he was setting up under the watchful eyes of several kids when Mikael approached him: “He came up and asked, ‘Can I rock the mic?’ I replied, ‘You don’t know how to rock the mic. You don’t know what you doing up there.’ He stood tall and said, ‘Yes I do! I know I can do it.’ So I was like, ‘OK, cool. Let’s see what you got.’”

Clearly, young Mikael had something. A few weeks later, G-Magic brought him to an outdoor show by an informal group of go-go musicians at Fort Greble Park and later posted a video of Lil Kelz rapping on their rendition of WHAT?! Band’s original track “Crystal Skate.” Go-go artist Michelle Blackwell loved what she saw in that clip. “He is a natural,” she says. “His timing and rhythm look very instinctual, and he has the charisma and energy that is essential in a lead mic. I can’t wait to watch him blossom. He represents the future of go-go. The leadership in go-go must get this kid a band to lead ASAP.”

Even before the 2012 death of go-go founder Chuck Brown, many of the genre’s artists have expressed concern about the music’s viability down the road. Gentrification and years of discrimination against go-go artists are longstanding problems; for decades, go-go and bounce beat bands have been unable to book as many venues as their popularity would warrant. It has been particularly difficult for younger bands to get venues, and as a result, many area youths have gravitated toward hip-hop rather than go-go.

While the tremendous popularity of bounce beat bands suggests that there’s nothing to worry about, many in go-go would like to see more young bands playing either the traditional go-go sound or bounce beat. Advocates for the genre have long argued that stronger