Interviews

Health | Interviews | Music

Within “Decay,” A Story of Growth

Akenya releases a single to raise awareness of Lyme Disease

by 3 weeks ago

Sam Fuehring

Akenya is a singer, pianist, and composer from Chicago. In honor of the end of Lyme Disease Awareness Month, this past May, Akenya released a single titled “Decay.” Her fans have waited over two years since the release of her last single, “Disappear.” “Decay” intimately describes her experiences with Lyme Disease, an illness spread by ticks that can cause fatigue and pain, among other symptoms; some 30,000 cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control every year. A percentage of proceeds from the song go to the LymeLight Foundation, which provides grants for Lyme disease treatment. The Weekly sat down with Akenya to talk about her relationship to Lyme disease and her single. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Issue 2018

The Interview Issue 2018

by 4 weeks ago

James Tsitiridis

We’ve come to see the Interview Issue as a place for a different kind of story. The necessities of the newscycle whittle down most interviews to their most barebones and essential parts, leaving out hours of storytelling, shared expertise, and personal histories.

Interview Issue 2018 | Photo Essay

We the Vanguard

by 4 weeks ago

WE THE VANGUARD (2016 -) is a continuing photographic archive of Black women/femmes shifting the contemporary culture of Chicago, primarily emerging and/or at the vanguard of arts, culture, + social justice. This project seeks to share context in regard to the creative and continuing labor of women at the vanguard of cultural innovation and expansion.   

Interview Issue 2018 | Music | Photo Essay

Bringing Jazz Back to the Alley

In South Shore, an old tradition is revived for a day

by and 4 weeks ago 4 Comments

Dancers with the African Dance and Music Institute (Bridget Vaughn)

On 73rd Street and Paxton, toward Merrill, at least one hundred people marched: past cars, over puddles, into alleys and across the block. As they marched, they held bundles of herbs in the air, played percussion, danced, and waved flags. This scene was the beginning of the Back Alley Jazz Festival—and the man at the front of the crowd, who rode in a mint-green Pedicab and wore a sash that read “Grand Marshall,” was Jimmy Ellis, a saxophonist who has been playing in Chicago since 1948.

Interview Issue 2018 | Music

From Rink to Radio

Ahead of Teklife’s latest album release, the Weekly sat down with three of its long standing members to talk Chicago, history of Teklife, and what it’s meant to them

by 4 weeks ago

Teklife is a crew of producers and DJs known for pioneering and popularizing footwork, a genre which produces some of the most futuristic sounds and styles in electronic music even as it draws upon decades of Chicago dance history. In the late 2000s, the group emerged from the Ghettoteknitianz outfit (2004-2009), and went on to prove itself as the decisive force in footwork’s explosion onto the international scene. Between drops on experimental electronic labels Planet Mu and Hyperdub, DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn began touring abroad, bringing their frenetic beats to a growing audience. Today, Teklife is known overseas for pushing footwork forward—and known locally for maintaining the culture.

Interview Issue 2018 | Nature

Soil and Sovereignty

A Pullman resident uses mushrooms to heal a formerly toxic site in the neighborhood

by 4 weeks ago 3 Comments

Viviana Gentry Fernandez-Pellon is a fourth-generation Chicagoan who has taken on an issue they suffer from personally: environmental racism. Co-owner of the Chicago Mushroom Company, Fernandez-Pellon lives in the Pullman neighborhood, a three minute alley-walk away from the community garden they codirect called the Cooperation Operation. It is located on a formerly toxic site that neighbors forced the EPA to remediate (remove contaminants and restore ecological balance) in 1983. That process created public records that Fernandez-Pellon could request to view through the Freedom of Information Act. They did, and used the information to learn the history of the industrial uses—and remediation efforts—within the site. Today, they are using mushrooms, a method of bioremediation—accomplishing remediation through living organisms—to heal that soil, which has suffered from decades of industrial contamination. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

History | Interview Issue 2018

Bones of the City

A Chicago archaeologist makes the case for digging up the past

by 4 weeks ago

Katie Hill

If we can learn something valuable about people by looking at the “mundane, everyday objects” of their daily lives, as Rebecca Graff suggests, the assortment of items littered around her office tells us the obvious—that she is an urban archaeologist. Lanyards from academic conferences are pinned to the bulletin board in a messy gaggle, stray surveying equipment sits in the corner, and her shelves are full of glass bottles with worn-off labels, artifacts saved from digs. Even apparent signs of hobbies, like the half-shelf full of beer cans, lead back to her discipline: the cans are gifts from her students, finds from antique shows across the world.

Interview Issue 2018 | Music

On the Air With K-Max

Longtime WHPK DJ K-Max breaks down hip-hop history

by 4 weeks ago 1 Comment

Kevin “K-Max” Maxey is a DJ and Far South Side native. For nineteen straight years, he’s brought his passion for music to CTA Radio, the hip-hop radio show he hosts with Pugs Atomz and Aja the Cover’It’Girl on WHPK 88.5 FM in Hyde Park. In an interview with the Weekly, K-Max broke down CTA Radio and shared where his unique passion for hip-hop comes from.

Food | Interview Issue 2018

Beer and Bingo in Bridgeport

Steve Badauskas builds community around an old pastime in a changing neighborhood

by 4 weeks ago

Jason Schumer

Steve Badauskas is an artist, musician, and the owner of Bernice’s Tavern in Bridgeport. He’s perhaps best-known for the lively games of Stingo (Steve’s Bingo) he hosts every Wednesday. A lifelong Bridgeport resident, he inherited the bar from his parents, John and Bernice, reimagining it for a changing neighborhood.

Interview Issue 2018 | Politics

Continuing to Challenge the Status Quo

A family legacy of activism guides mayoral candidate Amara Enyia’s vision of social justice in the city

by 4 weeks ago

Senhyo

Between her first mayoral run in 2014 and now, Dr. Amara Enyia hasn’t slowed down in her efforts to effect change in Chicago. She co-authored the book Chicago Is Not Broke and founded the Institute for Cooperative Economics and Economic Innovation, a social lab focusing on educating and assisting in the expansion of innovative economic models. On Tuesday, Enyia will launch her second mayoral bid at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport. The thirty-five-year-old, running with the slogan “all people, all voices, one city,” draws on a legacy of activism stretching back to her great-grandmother’s village in Nigeria.