Cynthia Albritton, a Chicago native and South Side resident better known as “Cynthia Plaster Caster,” has lived the dream of teenage girls around the world. A self-titled “recovering groupie,” she has been making plaster casts of rock stars’ naughty bits since 1968. It all started in her college art class, where she was given the assignment to “plaster cast something solid that could retain its shape.” The Dick Clark Caravan of Stars happened to be in town that weekend, so Cynthia and her friend Pest decided to approach band members at the event in search of willing castees. While the weekend ended without a cast, she ended up losing her virginity to a member of Paul Revere and the Raiders—and, as she says on her website, “‘The Plaster Casters of Chicago’ were thus born.”

Cynthia is currently working on her autobiography. A complete list of her castees, a scrapbook of totally safe-for-work photos (she doesn’t publish photos of her “sweet babies” online), and a list of “Upcumming Events” are available on her website.

I called Cynthia five minutes before the scheduled time for our interview and she insisted I call her back; she was not kidding when she told me a few days before that she has been incredibly busy. Her voice boomed with assertiveness and I was almost too terrified to go through with the interview, but when she answered again, she was engaging and warm. She even spent our last few minutes asking me questions—the highest of honors coming from someone who, at my age, plucked Jimi Hendrix’s pubic hair one by one from an un-lubricated plaster mold. For a woman who’s seen more in her life than any teen girl (on the outside or inside) could ever hope to see, Cynthia “Plaster Caster” has maintained a giggly humility. Her life is a shining example for those hoping to find something they love and run with it—or dip it in dental alginate.

So, I guess my first question has to be…how’s the autobiography coming?

Yeah, that’s my big baby. I call my plaster casts my sweet babies, but my storybook is my big baby. I’m hoping to finish it by the end of this year.

I read an earlier interview that said your parents never found out about what you do. Is your mother still in the dark? Even with the autobiography coming out?

Well my mother passed away a few years ago. She never found out. It would’ve been perhaps less scary if my father found out. He would probably think it was funny. I realized that too late. But my mother would never understand. Never, ever, ever understand. I’d need to hire a bodyguard if she ever found out.

You were a young woman alone (or semi-alone) with celebrities in hotel rooms; was it ever scary? Did you ever feel unsafe?

Umm, yeah I mean I was and still am a shy girl and well, you know, I found it to be…I realized later it was kind of dangerous to be alone with anybody in a confined area without anybody around, but I was initially pretty tongue-tied being in the awesome presence of these so-called “rock gods” in or out of hotel rooms. It was overwhelming, unbelievable that they were actually talking to me. It’s dangerous, and I had a bad experience with Led Zeppelin—but that’s all I’m going to tell you about that.

Right, I’ve read that you’re going to include that in the autobiography.

Yeah. Never go to a guy’s room unattended unless you’ve checked out their background carefully. Interviews especially—the way they talk, the way they answer questions. If you do enough research you can get a sense of how wild they are.

Do you feel that Chicago’s music scene was the best for what you were doing back then? I know you moved to LA for a little while, but did you ever consider going to other cities?

Yeah, I dreamed about moving to London. But I didn’t have the money to move anywhere so I just stayed in Chicago, not really knowing how I’d get out of here until Frank Zappa came along. He was the one who thought I should move to LA, because he wanted to help finance this idea I had for a Plaster Caster museum. He said “LA is where the rock stars roam,” so that’s why I moved to LA.

How was the Chicago scene then compared to now?

Back then it was mainly a blues scene in Chicago, and there were some garage bands. They were modeled along the lines of the British Invasion and later that name applied. I didn’t really care for Chicago garage bands—the best were elsewhere. The music scene really sucked, except for the blues. And I was only interested in mop-top boys. But some of my favorite music now comes from Chicago.

Like who?

Right now I like a guy called Ezra Furman, originally from Evanston. And I liked The Redwalls when they were still around. I think Wilco is pretty great. Gosh, there’s quite a few. I’m not really a fan of The Smashing Pumpkins, but I think they got the ball rolling in terms of Chicago being a good place to live and make music. I tend to like bands that are relatively unknown, so I can say I saw them first, and hopefully they’ll be willing to pose for me.

Does anything bother you about today’s music scene, their groupies, etc.?

Groupies still are like groupies…but I think it was more exciting back in the ’60s because it was new and we were creating the formula as we went along. It was more of a challenge and there were more interesting personalities amongst just regular girls that became fans because of their love of music, and maybe other reasons. And now the only groupies that I know of with any notoriety are movie stars or musicians, like Courtney Love or Winona Ryder. I recommend it as a lifestyle to check out. Well maybe not a lifestyle, but an experience to have. It really taught me about who I am and who I was not.

Who was your most recent subject?

Unfortunately I haven’t cast anyone in a couple of years. The last one was Ariel Pink. I’d never heard of him. I think it was a Saturday night. My friend was going to the show and insisted I go with him, and by 1am Ariel Pink was in my apartment. I was so impressed with his music. We didn’t have a fluffer because he didn’t know anyone in Chicago…that person usually is—preferably—a wife or girlfriend of the subject. He had to take care of things himself. He wasn’t representing his full “capability” [laughs]. The dental mold is like a camera; it takes a picture of a moment in time and space. And he’s always welcome for a return, because he has way more “capability” than has been shown.

Have you ever gotten any stern rejections when you’ve asked to cast someone?

Well I’m very careful about reading people beforehand, because I don’t want to be rejected. I realized I had to research them before being alone with them. I’m a big analyst—I guess that’s the Gemini in me. I watch them onstage, watch their body language, see what’ll happen if I get backstage…I also don’t just flatly go up to them and hand them my calling card, as I used to. I like to take some time to get to know them, and them to know me, hopefully without telling them who I am. And if they seem like they have a heart of plaster, I’ll pop the question!

Would you ever cast someone because they were particularly famous?

Well, now not because they’re famous but because they’ve done something extraordinary—make my life better, make me happy. I’ve fantasized about casting Barack Obama. A lot of fantasies I might have, about someone who happens to be well known. That kind of person, especially a politician, is likely not to do it. It might not be good for their career, and it’s always a crapshoot how they’re gonna come out in the mold. Wayne Kramer, if people didn’t know better—it looks like he has no penis at all, just because of the way the mold looked that night. I’m not a fame queen and I’m not a size queen, I’m just a talent queen.

Have you gone out of your way (travelling-wise) to cast a particular celebrity/normal person? Or do you always let them come to you?

No. I mean I have travelled. I did travel to see MC5 and I had my kit with me. I was actually coming from New York and I had a stopover. I was planning on coming straight to Chicago but someone told me to stop in Detroit. But no; at this point, I’ve never gone out of my way to travel just to cast someone. It’s sort of a spontaneous thing.

Which makes it better, I guess.

Yeah, because they might change their mind if they think about it too long!

Where, besides New York and San Francisco, have you exhibited your work?

The Jimi Hendrix cast was very briefly displayed in Boston, but it was banned because the owner of the gallery was afraid that the parents of some kids would get mad at him because there was also a restaurant next to this gallery and the kids might ask some difficult questions about this sort-of lifelike cast. That’s the reason he gave; who knows. I’m hoping to have more exhibits after I finish my book.

Will you be exhibiting your work in the Chicago area anytime soon?

I’d like to, since I’m born and bred here, but it has to be the right gallery. There isn’t that great of a choice of galleries in Chicago, compared to the rest of the world.

You ran for mayor in 2010. How was that?

Yeah, it came about suddenly over a couple of margaritas, and Daley was stepping down, and I knew there would never be an election like this again. The race was up for grabs and I had to throw my hat in. I know very little about politics and I’m still just learning. I don’t think it’s important. The mayor should bring people together and have more forums and town hall meetings, discussions about what people want and need. And also, all these political speeches are very boring—so boring that you can’t listen to them long enough to get the platforms. The whole process needs to be less boring. Change the language. I thought Rahm Emanuel would be good at that, but he’s not. Where’s the potty mouth?!

I may run again. I’m thinking about it. I’ll be more prepared—I was really taken by surprise the first time, people talked me into it. I didn’t get registered as a write-in, and I’ll make sure next time I will be.

This was not a show that catered to the uninitiated. Audience and cast members for an upstairs production of “The Vagina Monologues” clustered outside the doors of Hallowed Grounds coffee shop tentatively. The more adventurous peeked inside, but true fans made themselves known. This crowd—college age, mostly male, and largely bespectacled—almost looked ready to take a serious academic interest in the proceedings. Hallowed Grounds, while still open, was not selling much coffee.

Wyche was followed by Spanyurd and Preachy Preach, two local bands specializing in the kind of music that you feel more than hear. Spanyurd, a Chicago trio that jokingly fancies itself “nu-metal for the politically correct,” thickened the air with its manic psychedelia and heavy post-hardcore riffs. Preachy Preach played on its home turf; the band is comprised of UofC undergraduates Steve Balogh, Mike Splendore, and Josh Oberman. The trio has appeared over the years at both South Side and more northern venues, including the now defunct Moving Castle. On this night, they delighted in their own apocalyptic noise. Forceful riffs and deep grooves were considered by the audience rather than celebrated—many in the front row sat nodding appreciatively. One man lay on his back with a book. There’s a healthy contingent of Hyde Park devotees. But who else knew that UofC actually had punk bands? It’s a not-quite-rhetorical question that the show asked even in its promotional materials. Now, thanks to the efforts of TRIX operatives, the answer is “everyone who was on University Avenue between 56th and 58th Streets on Saturday night.”

With a well-established local reputation for quality opera, it is surprising that the SSOC is only in their fourth season. The group was founded by Dr. Marvin Lynn, who is no longer with the opera. Today, SSOC has a simple and clear vision, as Johnson explains, “to spread high caliber music to South Side Chicago. We want to give artists an opportunity to perform with minority groups, and we want to work with the youth.” Elsewhere, there are not many opportunities for African Americans in opera, a field traditionally dominated by those of European stock. To stir change, the Company presents three programs a year: two free performances and one gala event, all at the South Shore Cultural Center.

Although they primarily perform scenes from classical American operas, the SSOC often includes an eclectic repertoire ranging from musical theatre, such as “Porgy and Bess” by Gershwin, to traditional African-American music. On June 23, students who are of college age will be performing a selection of musical theater pieces in the Company’s “Showcase of Our Young and Emerging Artists.” Although they have many veteran singers, most of whom reside on the South Side, the SSOC doesn’t have a fixed group of vocalists. In addition to auditions, such showcases aim to draw new talent to the group.

This past February, the Company collaborated with the Chicago Parks District, the composer Jonathan Stinson, and librettist Alan Stinson on their opera-in-the-works, “March on Washington,” for their Black History Month program. This new opera follows Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others from a civil rights meeting scene at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, to a confrontation with President Kennedy at the Oval Office in Washington. The Company’s most talented were showcased in these short segments from the show, which feature works ranging from traditional freedom songs to classical arias. This show, still a work in progress, will hopefully be complete for the 2013-14 season to mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.

The SSOC is determined to offer young African-Americans with vocal chops a new path. Johnson, who played civil rights leader John Lewis in “March on Washington,” says, “I think that people would be really pleased in attending any of our performances because of the range of what we present on the stage. Each of our programs has been very high quality. It is a wonderful evening. And you can’t beat the value.” Although opera tracks aren’t reigning on the Billboard Top 100 lists, there is no doubt that the SSOC offers a great deal of training, relevancy, and community to the young South Siders that attend their rehearsals. Johnson repeatedly mentions the importance of spreading opera to minorities, “but,” the tenor says, lowering his voice, “I really want to stress that the bigger goal is to promote good, quality music.”

Showcase of Young and Emerging Artists, South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr. June 23. Saturday, 7:30pm. Free. southshoreopera.org.

(Rachel Wiseman)

On April 10, in the mezzanine of the South Shore Cultural Center, an unusual partnership was formed between Ed Borstein and Noah Emmanuel. Ed is a lanky 25-year-old University of Iowa graduate and drummer for the Chicago punk band T’Bone. Noah is a sixteen-year-old South Shore resident and avid Drake fan. The pair spent over two hours locked in a room with an Akai MPD Midi drum pad controller and a computer equipped with Ableton Live, a music-editing program—they were trying to make a hip-hop song.

“You see the trick to making beats, I think, is finding an isolated instrument and just chopping it up into little pieces,” Ed lectured Noah. “So what we need here is just one little trumpet sound. You ever heard of Arturo Sandoval?”

“I may have heard the name,” Noah replied in a low, slow voice—a stark contrast to his double-timed rap delivery, which has earned him the title of the “new Twista” among his friends.

Ed nodded and pulled up a YouTube clip of Sandoval playing the National Anthem. Slowly, he began to chop up the song into individual notes until it became something entirely new, a blaring four bar trumpet loop.

Noah nodded his head and muttered verses inaudibly under his breath. After a few minutes he pulled out his cellphone and began reading out rhymes he had saved: “I feel/my body is steel/I’m ill/I verbally kill/so tell the cops to stop/ the popped shots/and the crack rocks.”

****

This musical duo is just one result of a series of recording projects and initiatives currently funded by the Chicago Parks District. The idea of a software-based music composition program, particularly one focused on making rap music, might seem outside the jurisdiction of the public parks. However the program’s organizer, Jayvi, sees no conflict.

“You know I just don’t really make those sorts of distinctions, like, between technology and nature, or musicians and non-musicians,” he says. “Age doesn’t really matter that much either. As long as you’re a sentient being, I’m going to talk to you like I talk to anyone else.”

This last statement is particularly important for Jayvi’s Chicago Mobile Recording Studio project, which seeks to record not only the voices of teenagers, like Noah, but also those of younger children. In the summer, Jayvi loads his recording equipment into the back of his van, drives out to the parks, and records songs made by the kids who happen to be hanging around. His main goal, though, is not to record just any song, but those which are sincere and recount real life experiences.

“Because of all the ‘crap’”—Jayvi’s favored moniker for commercial rap—“you get all these kids talking about crazy stuff. Like, if you find a nine year old boy and give him a mic and ask him to sing a song, the first thing he’ll start singing about is having birthday sex and going to the club.”

Shaking his head, Jayvi says, “I’m just like, man, you’re nine. You’ve never been to a club. Tell me about something you actually know about. And once, you do that, you’d be surprised what they’ll tell you.”

****

At the studio, Ed plays some of the recordings he and Jayvi made this past season of kids in various parks around the city.

“Every day we would just go out and do these four hour sessions, you know,” he recounts. “And we’d get the kids to do everything: they made the beat, they rapped and they sang. They made whatever music they wanted to make.”

The recordings are enough to make one believe in Jayvi’s principled opposition to age-based distinctions. Despite being planned out by pre-teen children, the music sounds completely professional. The rhymes vary from the playfully mischievous (“this park is cool/I like this park better than school”) to sincerely concerned (“stop, please listen, you’re wasting your time drinking forties with the homies/you could be learning/instead of burning”).

Jayvi himself did not grow up in a musical family and found few opportunities to play when growing up. “I played clarinet for maybe about a year before I got a marble stuck in it and, well, that was the end of that,” he explains. “But later on I bought a toy trumpet and started collecting other small instruments.”

Jayvi went on to study sound at the School of the Art Institute, but later dropped his studies and began working for the Chicago Parks Department. It was around this time six years ago that he also met a group of teenagers who recorded under the name of “the Inferno Mobile Recording Studio.”

“Those guys though, they just wanted to make ‘hot tracks,’ get it, that’s why it was the Inferno,” Jayvi says. “But I wanted to do more than that. I wanted do something that isn’t just about making music, it’s about documenting something. And that’s what just totally made Ed’s wig flip, that you could actually do something like that with music.”

“The project honestly did change my life. It’s the greatest job ever,”  Ed says. While he has been drumming since he was very young, he had never used computer software to create music until Jayvi trained him.

“These kids make me feel kind of out-dated sometimes,” he admits. “I’m used to just making music with drum, bass, guitar, but through this project I realized how much you can make with just a computer.”

****

Back in the booth, Noah’s rap, for instance, documents a time and a place—“it’s about this neighborhood. It isn’t so bad now, but it used to be real, real bad. I was just rapping about what I remembered from growing up.” But this isn’t his main goal. In fact, Noah wants to be an entertainer, not a  storyteller.

“My guy out in Atlanta,” Noah said, referring to a friend and amateur rapper who goes by the name of Rosco Perrelli, “he’s getting to be real big time. He’s got like, 2,000 followers on Twitter. And he said like maybe I could come down and do a show with him. So I’ve just been telling him like lets stay off the streets for now and in a couple years we’ll just be kickin’ our feet back, on top of this, you know.”

Ed, who has been performing in live shows for over a decade, seemed skeptical of this attitude. “You know, I heard this story on NPR the other day, it was one of those big time hip-hop guys—Jay-Z, I think—talking to Terry Gross. He was talking about why young rappers always grab their crotch when they’re on stage. You know why?”

Noah shook his head.

“It’s because when you’re on stage, you feel naked. If you’re naked, what’s the first thing you’re gonna try and hide.” Ed pointed down and said, “It’s not easy being naked on a stage.”

There were a lot of minor disagreements between Ed and Noah. Ed objected to Noah using words like “murder,” “kill,” and “ill,” even metaphorically. Noah didn’t like having to make “topic songs” like the disabilities PSA rap which they recorded the previous week. Ed was upset that the only rock band Noah knows is Dragonforce, “and that’s only because they had that one song on Guitar Hero.”  Yet despite these differences, the two of them have been making music together, co-operatively, for months, meeting up every Tuesday night at 6:30 to record.

At the end of this particular session, Ed ran out of the room yelling to Jayvi and the kids he was helping edit a loop in the other room.

“You guys hear this track Noah and I just made,” he shouted. “It’s dope!”

Claire Hungerford/Ethan Tate

[Show as slideshow]

The sound of children sets Fenn House apart from its neighbors. A sunny Friday afternoon on a week when schools are out for spring break elicits inevitable shouts and laughter from children pouring out of the house. They duck in and out of a  wooden makeshift lean-to erected on the front lawn, a tribute to 1968’s Resurrection City in Washington D.C. and 2012’s Occupy movement in Chicago.

Currently, the space is home to the Southside Hub of Production (SHoP). Just as the modest wooden structure in the yard at 57th and Woodlawn brings together events from different times and places, SHoP was intended from its beginnings in October 2011 to provide a meeting point for differing perspectives. “We wanted to pull people of different backgrounds and ages and social backgrounds, drawing them into one space so that they might make connections they didn’t think they could make before,” Laura Shaeffer, SHoP’s creative director, explains.

To that end, SHoP has carefully cultivated a relationship with artists and residents of Hyde Park. No stranger to the neighborhood’s art community, this relationship was built upon SHoP’s previous guise as the Op Shop, a nomadic project which moved from storefront to storefront throughout the neighborhood. Shaeffer describes the valuable lessons learned through Op Shop’s four iterations.

“Because they were on four different corners on four different streets, you really got to know the demographics and how they do shift between blocks,” she says. “I learned so much about my community and my neighborhood through the Op Shop, and I thought it was very successful.”

She continues, “On the practical level, though, one seeks some kind of stability, and it became very obvious to me that the ideas that were the focal points of our projects needed a longer time to develop. To have a communitybuilding center, you really need longer than one month.”

Traditions and projects which have benefited from having a permanent space in Fenn House include weekly Sunday night potlucks and a small thrift store which, stocks everything from personally drawn postcards to luxurious men’s coats.

SHoP’s current arrangement, however, will soon be coming to an end in the summer with the expiration of their lease from the Unitarian Church. For Shaeffer, this new uncertainty about her own artistic future is both exciting and nerve-wracking.

On one hand, she explains that moving away from the current location allows for the next stage in the evolution of her long-term artistic project. In her view, projects like SHoP need to change with the needs of a community. “I really do treasure the freedom in being able to revisit something from a different perspective,” says Shaeffer. “There’s a freedom in not having a manifesto, and instead being responsive to the community.”

Yet, it is uncertain that the organization will find its next location in Hyde Park. They are in talks with Alderman Willie Cochran for a possible move to an open lot in Woodlawn—a change that would pose new questions for SHoP.

“When you go to a new neighborhood, you’re committed to understanding and learning about it. Woodlawn would be very different in feel and demographics, history and politics, and so we would require a new relationship with the community,” Shaeffer says. Even though her community art would have to adapt to these new surroundings, she insists that she would welcome a challenge of this nature.

What seems likely is that the new project will be centered on children and the ways in which they engage with artwork. For her next project, Shaeffer envisions a junkyard playground, a concept adapted from Denmark in the wake of the Second World War. Though a vacant lot in Woodlawn is a far cry from the rubble caused by global war, she still sees a great potential in children learning about subjects like woodworking. Ultimately, she hopes the children can put those lessons into practice by building something themselves.

This would, however, be old territory for Shaeffer and her partners in SHoP. The educative possibilities of art are already at the forefront of their installations, and much work has gone into making their current Fenn House a space for play. Time and again, this passion for engaging with children and families shines through when Shaeffer speaks. Much of this can be attributed to her own dual responsibilities as an artist and a parent, a tension which she wanted to solve in setting up SHoP.

“SHoP was always meant to be an intergenerational space, focusing a lot on the family. It’s a space where you can come with kids, or where you can even come as an older person to interact with children,” she explains.

“We need to be artists and parents at the same time and we cannot separate that,” she continues. “It’s enlivening to come into a space that is full of voices and cries. It’s fairly chaotic sometimes! But it’s orchestrated chaos.”

It is thus unsurprising that Fenn House is nearly always filled with the sound of giddy children dashing about. While their current space is well-endowed with plenty of space and a large, welcoming yard, there is the distinct possibility that the next location will be much smaller. To Shaeffer, such a transition wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

“We’re in a mansion now, and maybe I won’t need a mansion when I move!”

Underneath these tangled issues of location, neighborhood, and community lies the central question: What is home? It is a question she has sought to answer through the art on display at the Southside Hub, most notably in “This House Is Not a Home,” an installation which opened at the end of February. “We wanted to talk about home, and then broadening that to what makes the feeling of being at home, even if that home isn’t necessarily a physical structure,” she states. “Places like prison become your home but are not your home at the same time, so we wanted to open it up as broadly as we could.”

The pressures of being an artist and having a family at the same time also came to the fore, she says, because “some of the people in the show talked about how to be an artist and a person who has a family, and how to involve your children in that creative process.”

It therefore becomes clear that her immediate artistic interests are deeply intertwined with the larger fate of SHoP, and her life more generally. It is only fitting, then, that the last show before their move away from Fenn House will be anchored by the idea of leaving.

“The last show we’re going to title “On How Much Things Matter,” and it’ll be about ends,” she says. “We do not want this to be heavy and somber, but we wanted to end with thought and reflection on endings. What we leave behind, what we take with us, how we leave spaces.”

To leave, however, one needs a destination. Shaeffer is still unsure where that will be, and how a move away from Fenn House would be financed. She offers up a variety of possible routes, ranging from the realistic to the relatively far-fetched.

“There’s the possibility that an angel sweeps down and decides that he needs to buy this building because the Southside Hub is serving the larger community and bringing people together through the arts,” she says hopefully. “Or there’s the possibility that ten people decide to invest in this space because this building isn’t going to lose its value and it’s a good investment.”

Yet, regardless of the outcome, she remains optimistic. “Otherwise, we all leave and pack up, enjoy the wonderful year and know it was a great ending. The lease is up on July 31st, and I’m very sure everything will be clear by mid-July.”

Jane Fentress

“With a melody, we’re always going somewhere,” said Julianne Skones, oboe clutched by her side. Next to her, Dominic Rotella stood with his French horn pressed to his pursed lips. Scattered in chairs throughout the room, a motley crowd of listeners waited attentively for their part of the performance.

“Let’s follow along with our hands,” she said. As Rotella’s horn sounded out a few lines of Beethoven, the audience traced the gentle arch of the music up and then down with their open palms stretched out in front of them. The next bit of song was a little more complex—hands darted rapidly trying to follow the ambitious runs and bounding staccatos of the horn.

The two musicians formed part of the Civic Woodwind Quintet, with the three other woodwind players seated behind them. Along with a string and brass quintet, and a percussion trio, the groups are part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Musicorps program. The sections regularly travel the city, giving concerts in parks, schools, and other public venues, spreading a love of classical music to anyone with an ear. Each crowd is a little different, which means that each performance is unique.

“We’d love your ideas and your imagination to help us tell a story of the music,” said Maria Schwartz, the flautist, after the quintet had played through Beethoven. Behind her, clarinetist Brian Gnojek produced a white sheet of paper, and a handful of colored pens. Drew Patterson played a soft yet stern melody on his bassoon. “What does the music remind you of?” The crowd was silent.

Filling the silence, Patterson jumped in: “One of my favorite suggestions came from an elementary schooler, who said it sounded like a person walking.” He played the melody again, the notes teetering along from side to side. “Another person said an elephant,” he continued, and drew out the same line, heavier and slower. After playing it once more, a man threw out a suggestion: “Tom and Jerry?”

Drew started playing the oboe in his school’s 6th grade band, later going on to study at Oberlin Conservatory. “I had a good music teacher,” he shrugged, attempting to explain his interest in the instrument. Yet it was the first time he watched Disney’s visually immersive interpretation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” and it’s prime bassoon solo, that hooked him on the instrument. For him, it’s all in the power of imagination. “Like what we were doing today,” he said.

The performance took place on the second floor of the Washington Park Refectory. Out the windows, the sun shined over little kids running through a glistening playground, and a light breeze rollicked through the fresh buds on the trees. Inside, the room was less than half-full. The success of the performance, however, will be revealed by the turnout at the next concert.

Julianne recalled a time she was helping out the CSO with a performance of “Peter and the Wolf.” Afterwards, a little boy came up with his mother, ecstatic to see her. She couldn’t quite tell where he was from, or how she knew him. “How could he remember me?” she asked. Alas, she had performed at his elementary school.

Lauren Hunter Thomas

Johnny Drummer wants to know if Lady Cadillac is in the building. A woman at the back of the joint in white go-go boots, ostensibly not Lady Cadillac, calls out to the septuagenarian bluesman, letting him know that he is  “S.O.L. tonight,” and proceeds to raise her highball. She’s either flagging down a hostess or saluting the piano, drums, guitar, and harmonica-playing house band who has just elected to play right through the break scheduled for the middle of their three-hour set.

It may not be the Caddy Johnny Drummer is looking for, but tonight at Lee’s Unleaded Blues there is at least one sleek-finned machine to admire: a powder-blue 1950s Eldorado idles outside the elbow of concrete upon which the club sits, an isosceles impingement on the 74th block of South Chicago Avenue.

While praise for Lee’s Unleaded Blues Club is not exactly in short supply, as press clippings in the entryway attest, the music showcased here over the past few decades has proven that the acclaim is well-deserved.

The juke spot began as Queen Bee’s Lounge, and changed hands at the end of the 1970s when Lee himself bought the property from Bee’s daughter.  At that time, some of Alligator Records’ biggest names—Son Seals, Snapper Mitchum—were regulars on the lounge’s stage.

Forty years on, Lee’s still has nothing but “quality acts” to offer, as bouncer Ernest describes the musicians that owner Yvonne Davis brings to the joint. Tonight, she sits at the end of the red-trimmed, floodlit bar, holding court in red bifocals, a beret, and skirt suit,. At Lee’s, a five-dollar cover charge is a relatively recent institution—unlike the musicians themselves, who have played on the South Side for most of their lives. Drummer, born Thessex Johns in Alligator, Mississippi, even worked for the Board of Education and then the CPD, after cutting his first record in 1962.

The breath of chattering patrons warmed up the door’s single glass pane, and a few improvisational minutes proceeded to do the same for the Starliters, whose set kicked off with a little bit of banter punctuated by kick drum and cymbals. Decked out in three-piece suits, the musicians frequently leave the stage to weave amongst the crowd, a motley assortment of both high-spirited locals and curious young folk. The overwhelming impression of the guests at Lee’s, whether they’re mixing drinks, plucking on stage, perched on a barstool or bouncing the door, is of a crowd in their Saturday-night best.

The tunes are just as polished. In contrast to the more bare-bones style of the Memphis school, Chicago blues—or at least what’s on tap at Lee’s—errs more on the side of soul and even jazz. Willie Dixon’s blues standard “Wang Dang Doodle” is perhaps the best example of this sound, and it aptly opened the Starliters’ set. First performed by Howlin’ Wolf, and not too far from Lee’s, the tune speaks to Dixon’s personal transition from down-home rhythm and blues to a more urban up-tempo, big-beat style.

The Starliters drew on a wide swath of the 20th-century catalog: the early R&B number “Fever,” famously performed by Peggy Lee in 1958, followed later in the night. The audience didn’t hesitate to chime in.

The challenge in keeping this institution hopping three nights a week involves juggling more than a few variables. There’s the difficulty inherent in hiring musicians of both talent and repute, on top of  the challenge of keeping cover fees, drink prices, and operating costs down. What’s more, the South Side population hasn’t really been able to anchor the joint, as Ernest attests: “as far as having a core group of 40 or 50 regulars, or locals…” He trails off and shrugs. “Someday, we hope.”

For now, Davis and her staff enjoy the patronage of a diverse and lively crowd. Three men speaking Japanese sit at a table littered with Ray’s potato chip bags and empty bottles of Zinfandel, and in the front row, no fewer than four guests celebrate their birthdays with cake on the house and flutes of a sparkling grape. In the nearly impossible case that Drummer’s own compositions, odes to Chicago’s juked-up sound, hadn’t already charmed the ever-loving ears off of the guests at Lee’s, a fifteen-minute plus rendition of “Happy Birthday,” complete with saxophone serenades for the birthday boys and girls, surely did the trick.

Lee’s Unleaded Blues. 7401 S. Chicago Ave. (773)349-4377. leesunleadedblues.com

Room 43, the new home of the Hyde Park Jazz Society, is already more than a venue—it’s a niche social scene. After decades of lacking a regular venue for affordable jazz performances, harmony (preferably of the discordant Miles Davis variety) is within earshot for legions of South Side jazz fans, and the people packing Room 43 on Sunday nights know jazz. An embrace is the most common form of greeting and no one is shy about telling you the size of his record collection. One gentleman couldn’t wait to detail the best of his three-thousand LP library. But before getting there, he had a few questions. “Hold up,” he boomed, by way of introduction. “Do you know who this is?” pointing at a speaker issuing a stand-in melody. By luck, sheer dumb luck, his interlocutor knew the name. “Oh, well I just had to check up on ya’. Make sure you were for real.”

For area resident John Lee (also, like Bernard Scavella, of the pharmaceutical persuasion), the Hyde Park Jazz Society’s return and permanent residence is no minor feat. “I’ve been following Bernard for years,” says Lee, weighing his words carefully, beret slightly askew. “Its an achievement that we can bring people like him in regularly. I’ve been listening to this stuff for over 40 years and I would always come back to hear him here.” He explains that his love for the medium began as a kid in Alabama, back in the day when the Norman Rockwell-vision of the whole family huddling round a radio had already ceased to be a societal norm.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society’s new (or rather, renewed) home is located a good eight blocks beyond the neighborhood’s northern border. If not for the nearby bistro, African art gallery, and the muffled sounds of ’40s ballads, Room 43 would blend seamlessly into this staid section of 43rd Street. The area betwixt Bronzeville and Hyde Park once vied with Harlem as jazz’s national epicenter. Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, but when his dynamic riffs had become a local legend and he was ready for the big time, Satchmo ditched the Bayou and set up shop on the South Side. The area had a good half-century run until the late ’60s, when the number of clubs dwindled and then—with the help of, as a few audience members put it sourly, “urban renewal”—ceased to exist.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society formed back in 1995 to try and revitalize the scene by regularly enticing musicians to stray farther south of the Loop. Despite the group’s huge success with its annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, the organization has  had trouble maintaining weekly performances. At long last they found Room 43, offered by local restaurateur Norman Bolden in 2009. But a bureaucratic snafu caused the city to halt performances until Bolden went through the lengthy process of obtaining a Public Place of Amusement license. With amusement legalized on 43rd St., the Hyde Park Jazz Society celebrated its new digs in high style on January 5.

Still, it’s not exactly promising when a building feels the need to advertise itself as “classy.” (But that’s the trouble with classiness: if you use it you lose it.) In the case of Room 43, though, the word presents itself as something of a self-evident truth. The venue sports elegant tables complete with candlelight and black tablecloths, the wait staff is attentive, the bar well-stocked, and the hors d’oeuvres not abnormally expensive. The décor appears to have been lifted from the nearby African art gallery and makes what might have seemed a generically chic layout distinctive and worth pausing over.

But Scavella doesn’t seem to need pauses. As evening wore into morning, the tunes’ tempo and verve steadily increased. Scavella, like any venerable musician, can master any mood, but seems practically transcendent when he slips into classic jazz anthems. The group performed a peerless rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” and the song’s Spanish intensity forced one aged attendee to attempt an interpretative dance number without leaving his chair. Scavella is backed up by a crack ensemble, staffed with soloists that can keep pace with his trilling, bar after bar. Guitarist Randy Ford gets so absorbed in the improvisation that he silently scats his killer riffs before he plays them; reading his lips is a preview of the soaring rhythms that are next on tap. Toward the end of the night, the quintet brought the house down with the Herbie Hancock mainstay “Cantaloupe Island.” The tune is an improviser’s dream, an infectious melody that hooks the listener into the extended solo section that mercifully refuses to end. The four-hour format is one of Room 43’s chief strengths.  Jazz is an art form best absorbed live and at length. The call and response needs to be teased out and the harmonies absorbed over time to be cared about.

After quitting Room 43, the fact that many Americans’ exposure to jazz begins at Starbucks and ends with three excruciatingly mellow-minutes of Kenny G. starts to seem like an ongoing national tragedy. Locally, there is an escape route. South Siders no longer have an excuse for feeling lukewarm about jazz. Elevator music has a cure and it just gained a new lease on life on 43rd Street.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society holds concerts every Sunday Evening at 7:30 in Room 43. 1043 E. 43rd Street. $10 adult/$5 students and children. hydeparkjazzsociety.com

Traditionally the music of the Colombian peasantry with a distinctive Afro-Caribbean beat, cumbia has begun to incorporate other music genres, from reggaeton to house as it modernizes. As cumbia evolves, so does its fan base: no longer only a favorite of Latinos and Latin-music enthusiasts, cumbia is drawing in young Chicagoans looking for something to dance to. One of the genre’s virtues is its ability to retain and expand its appeal, incorporating the sounds of the people and places it comes into contact with.

A style less renowned than salsa or bachata—at least in Chicago—cumbia is rarely played in these parts. To make up for this shortage of that signature shuffle, the People’s DJs Collective holds monthly cumbia nights where the lively and danceable music is given its due. When they first started playing, they showcased Maracuyeah, an all-female DJ group from Washington, DC. Maracuyeah’s name is a play on the Spanish word for passion fruit, maracuyá, and denotes how they, like the People’s DJs Collective, are interested in injecting Latin music with the sounds of hip-hop and dubstep.

Earlier in the night, familiar salsa and meringue beats reverberated: a more folksy style of cumbia issued from the turntables, with fewer of the touches that give cumbia its contemporary, poppy flavor. Later in the night NuCumbia came on, a subgenre that infuses elements of hip-hop and house. The DJs played some tried and true remixes, like Juanes’s “La Camisa Negra,” and some pleasant surprises, like a mashup of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

The People’s DJ Collective got their start playing fundraisers for non-profits. Their promise to serve the community through the fusion music they play remains evident today in their decision to hold cumbia night at Zhou B. While the swank art gallery is not exactly of the masses as cumbia professes to be, Itzi-Nallah says that Zhou B’s location in Bridgeport helps to attract a local crowd—one of the Collective’s primary objectives. “Many times the Latin community has to go north or to expensive places to hear nice music, or just a generic Latin night. A lot of our people don’t want to go to Wicker Park.”

The dancers on the floor included Latinos living on the South Side and young adults with a taste for cumbia’s syncretic sound. There were a few members of the crowd engaging in the kind of sexy shimmying that Shakira removed her bottom rib to do, but most of the attendees seemed relaxed and insouciant, practitioners of a more homegrown groove. Another DJ summed it up nicely later that night: “It’s a traditional kind of music, but anyone can dance to it.”

Tyler Leeds

Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in laughter. Taylor moved on to the next student.

“My grandma and my mom named me Ashley because they didn’t want stereotypes thrown upon the family,” answered another student. “Instead of being called a black name, they chose a common name so that unless I told someone my race no one would know.” This time no one laughed. Instead, a few hands crept toward the book lying on everyone’s desk—Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Taylor was unfazed, and moved on to the next student. Ashley’s response was exactly what he was looking for.

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The students all came from King College Prep in Kenwood, one of Chicago Public Schools’ selective-enrollment high schools. They had come to a classroom on the University of Chicago campus to participate in an enrichment program called Living Bookshelf. The program, created by Taylor, attempts to push student engagement with the arts beyond plot quizzes and reviews. In Taylor’s classroom, the students were pushed to emotionally identify with Ellison’s work. In preparation for their first session, the class attended Court Theatre’s production of the “Invisible Man”—the novel’s first theatrical adaptation.

After four two-hour sessions of discussion and collaboration, the students will have produced their own creative response to Ellison’s novel—a two-scene musical theatre piece exploring the identities of two secondary characters. Mary Ann Ivan, a veteran of Broadway musical pits, will be flown in to compose music to accompany the lyrics the students write. Taylor will then hire professional actors and singers to perform the scenes on stage at Court Theatre as part of the Hyde Park Bank High School Performance Festival on February 24. But before lyrics can be paired with notes, the students have to do some work.

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While Ashley’s response quieted the room, Taylor was just beginning to warm up. At age 65, Taylor is a spry man. He has a mess of grey hair and a full mustache. He speaks with the intonation and cadence of someone used to an audience. As his students sat along narrow tables that formed a hollow rectangle, Taylor ran about in the middle. He never waited for his students to raise their hands. Instead, he would rush up to whoever hadn’t spoken in awhile. He would lean across the table and look them in eye and ask, “What do you think?” If they took too long, he would reach across and poke the students gently in the head. Their stunned expressions and indignation didn’t change the fact that Taylor’s enthusiasm was infectious.

Taylor’s first question was intentionally pointed—the history of one’s family and culture are often expressed in one’s name. Taylor’s class contains nine African Americans from the South Side, and he was seeking an emotional avenue into Ellison’s text. “Invisible Man” is the story of an African-American man leaving the South for New York City during the turbulent inter-war years.

After Ashley’s remark, everyone could make out the connection between their own lives and the novel. But how clearly did they see it? While Taylor allowed the power of Ashley’s words to linger in the classroom, he is still, like many great educators, quite demanding. Taylor began to drill his students on the basics.

“Our understanding must begin with context,” Taylor declared. “What is the context of this work?”

“Racism. Those were racist times,” said one student, half as an answer and half as a question.

“Correct, but tell me more,” Taylor pressed. “Tell me specifically. Jim Crow laws have a lot to do with the context of this work. Now, which Jim Crow laws offend you the most, and which offend you the least?”

Taylor marched around the room, passing from student to student. They all had the chance to demonstrate their opinions, with Taylor supplementing their knowledge of history along the way. In this manner, the students not only strengthened their understanding of the text, but also the connection between Ellison’s reality and the South Side today.

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Taylor has a long history with theatres. In the mid-1970s, Taylor was the production stage manager for the Seattle Opera. Under the Carter administration, federal money became available to arts organizations that were willing to bring their programming to public school students. This is where Taylor got his start as an arts educator. To prepare students to experience opera—never an easy task—Taylor was sent to prep classes on what to expect before arriving at the theatre. According to Taylor, “I had done almost everything anyone can do in a theatre, but I found I really enjoyed [teaching] and that I did it well.”

From this beginning, Taylor conceived of a post-viewing session to help students refine their understandings of the performances and to discuss their reactions. But Taylor knew arts education shouldn’t simply work to increase his student’s appreciation of work. He wanted his students to love art with the same intensity he possessed, but he also wanted them to get a job so that they could continue to appreciate the arts. As a result, Taylor claims it is his job to “get kids to really use in their own lives what we in the arts use in our profession. So I thought to myself, ‘What are the habits of mind that artists develop? How do we think? How do we create? How do we work together?’”

The seed of Living Bookshelf was planted, but Taylor still needed inspiration. During this time, Taylor came across the Foxfire Magazine. Created in 1966, “Foxfire” is one of the most prominent examples of 1960s experiential education.

Based out of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private high school in Georgia, “Foxfire” was a student-produced publication that documented the cultural history of the declining Appalachian culture. A collection of the articles was published as a book in 1972, later becoming a national bestseller.

“After reading the Foxfire book,” says Taylor, “I asked myself, Why couldn’t kids do that in the arts?” As a result, Taylor began a program entitled “Creating Original Opera.” As in Living Bookshelf, students were tasked with not only understanding a work—in this case, an opera—but also producing an artistic response to be performed. According to Taylor, “Creating Original Opera” was conducted in over 1000 schools across twelve countries.

But “Creating Original Opera” was always seen as a supplement to his students’ education. While Taylor may wish otherwise, operas never play a central role in primary education. In today’s world, the reaching of national standards in the language arts and mathematics controls school funding. Taylor had to adapt.

“Common Core State Standards dominate primary education. They have been adopted by 46 states. And so I looked at the Common Core requirements, and I thought that I could slightly modify what I do to meet these new requirements,” says Taylor. Living Bookshelf is Taylor’s attempt to meet state education requirements through the arts.

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Taylor recently left the East Coast for Chicago because his wife found a new job. “She makes way more money than I do, so I had to move with her,” he says. “I moved here without a job. I still don’t have a job, but arts education is what I do, so I don’t care if I get paid to do it or not. I like to think that I am my wife’s contribution to the arts.”

Once in Chicago, Taylor got in touch with William Michel, executive director of the UofC’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Taylor’s current incarnation of Living Bookshelf is being offered through the UofC’s Arts and Public Life Initiative. Taylor had no plans to work with “Invisible Man,” but took advantage of Court Theatre’s production. According to Dara Epison, program coordinator of University and Community Arts Collaborations, “The fact that the students chosen to work with him would have the opportunity to perform their work on Court’s stage with professional actors was simply a result of the stars aligning properly and Court being incredibly supportive.”

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By the end of the first session, the students had had no problem identifying the two characters from “Invisible Man” that they wanted to explore. Selecting the character of Ras, who is loosely based on the Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, was especially easy. The students were intrigued by the man they interpreted as vengeful, strong-willed, and determined.

In between the end of class and the second session, held last Saturday, the students were tasked with creating a biography for Ras that explained his traits. Whether the result of Taylor’s careful prodding or not, imagination was in strong supply.

“Ras witnessed the murder of his family,” said one student, serious and soft.

“Yeah, his father was betrayed by a white guy involved in the Brotherhood,” whispered another.

As they traced out the source of his anger, Ras’s identity came into focus. He was a poet, and a few years had passed since the time of “Invisible Man.” Ras was now a participant in the Harlem Renaissance—another context for the students to explore.

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Most classrooms don’t work this way. Often, mastering the plot is what matters. It demonstrates a student’s ability to grasp and recall information, as that line of thinking goes. But while Taylor has adapted his project to state requirements, he believes foremost in protecting his students’ futures.

“Plenty of people have iPhones or iPads—if you want to know something, you just look it up,” he notes. “The students of today, if they want to succeed, need to learn how to think and create. They will be paid to be creative. The thing we have to prove, and I want to demonstrate with these kids, is that artists can contribute to student achievement. But we’re not going to succeed by having kids just act, sing, and dance. We have to have them get creative in a way they can apply to an academic subject.”

By leading his students through lyric writing, Taylor hopes to grant his students a command of metaphors—something required for state tests and successful communication. Placing these lyrics atop a melody will be no easy task, but the students still have a few more weeks to prepare. In the end, Taylor’s class will have created something new. This ability—creativity—is at the heart of Taylor’s mission.

“Because of the tests, teachers don’t ask students what they think, they ask what do you know, which isn’t so important. When you ask younger kids what do you think, they freeze. But the jobs out there today are conceptual and creative. The arts can help them think and create.”