Sol Patches is a gender abolitionist artist from the South and West Sides who makes music influenced by poetry, theater, and Black and brown queer and femme culture. Their new album Garden City includes a host of local collaborators including Hora English, Plus Sign, and Mykele Deville. In this video, Sol Patches performs solo, sharing verses from “Dear Chicago.”
Hieroglyphic Being (Jasmin Liang)
On a blustery autumn day in West Town, Chicago Phonic, a new educational center for electronic musicians, held its first public open house. Mixers, turntables, and computers were all neatly arranged in a room wrapped with lush, seafoam green wallpaper. Prospective students asked questions and milled around the narrow facility. Daryl Cura, one of Chicago Phonic’s founders, patiently answered questions on modern electronic productions while cracking open cold bottles of Peroni.
Courtesy of Sol Patches
This week on SSW Radio, we spoke with a musician, discussed transit activism in Chicago, and heard your New Year’s resolutions
HUEY Gang (Dmiri Christiel)
This week on SSW Radio, we spoke with the HUEY Gang team, learned about mental health in Black communities, and investigated the racist origins of a childrens song
Lizzie Smith
Open Mike Eagle, born and raised in Chicago, moved to Los Angeles after college, and for the most part, he didn’t look back. He joined the hip hop collective Project Blowed, formed the trio Thirsty Fish with Dumbfoundead and Psychosiz, released his first solo album Unapologetic Art Rap in 2010, and has a forthcoming stand-up and music show, The New Negroes, on Comedy Central that he will co-host with comedian Baron Vaughn. But on his most recent album, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream—a hazy, dark, powerful, and sometimes sweet recollection of the Robert Taylor Homes and their demolition, he comes home. The album reimagines the story of the Robert Taylor Homes, imbuing it with equal parts childhood fantasies, fuzzy memories, and the real-world darkness of a city that isolated, ignored, and then forcibly displaced thousands of its most vulnerable residents. This mix is perfectly encapsulated by the video for “Brick Body Complex”: Eagle plays Iron Hood, a superhero trying to warn residents that their building is coming down, fight back against gentrification, and stop the city’s demolition; in the end, at the moment when it seems Iron Hood has stopped the demolition, the cops show up to haul him off to jail.
Bridget Vaughn
In its eleventh year, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival drew large crowds two weekends ago. The free two-day festival offered music lovers ten venues to hear some of the best local, national, and international music on the planet.
Willis Glasspiegel
From the day she got her first ghettoblaster while growing up in Chatham, Jana Rush—aka JARu—has always been connected to Chicago music. Her ascent into the scene reads like folklore: at ten years, she called Kennedy-King’s WKKC 89.3 FM to schedule an audition. “Once they were done laughing,” Rush tells me, the DJs showed her the ropes, and juke icon Gant-Man took her under his wing. By 1996, Jana had put out a single and a split 12” with DJ Deeon on the legendary house label Dance Mania, where she was billed as “The Youngest Female DJ.”
When the Weekly profiled Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb) in July, he explained that he was always most eager to share new music that sounds nothing like his audience had heard before—and Jordan’s new album Piety of Ashes, out September 1, does not disappoint. Every track is its own musical journey, but each transitions seamlessly into the next to create a cohesive album that covers sounds from the crunching of leaves and the blowing wind to metallic, electronic beats, all contributing to a complex narrative of transitions and loss.
Christopher Good
There’s something unusual about DJ Deeon’s Friday night set at Pilsen’s Fiesta del Sol: it’s clean. Tonight, his stage is within earshot of neon-lit carnival rides and family friendly attractions, so the raunchiest matter has been scrubbed out, presumably for the children’s sake. But as the bobbing and juking of the crowd suggests, even some conveniently placed backspins can’t dampen a cut like “Let me Bang.”
Courtesy of Benn Jordan
Right now, Benn Jordan, aka The Flashbulb, lives just outside of Atlanta. But that doesn’t stop him from repping Chicago: he continues to be influenced by his South Side upbringing in his performance style and experimental artistry. Using everything from acoustic guitar to ambient sound recordings, no track of Jordan’s is quite the same.