In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]
Author Archives: Sandra Treviño
Posted inArts & Culture
Building hope with Free Street
Free Street Theater has been making theater in Chicago, connecting communities through art, since 1969. They do itinerant touring work across the city, creating accessible, inclusive, and transformational performances that seek connections between different issues facing Chicago communities. Their newest performance, There Is a Future/Tenemos un Futuro (TIAF), is an outdoor show directed by Elizabeth […]
Posted inMusic
Dave Herrero connects new roots to the blues
Dave Herrero and friendsPart of the Chicago Blues Festival. Sat 6/10, 12:30 PM (music starts at noon), Rosa’s Lounge stage (North Promenade), Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, free, all ages My love of music, especially Chicago blues, was strongly influenced by the weekly trips my family took to la pulga, as we called the famous […]
Posted inArts & Culture
CLATA launches an incubator for new Latine voices
Through theater, we can experience a variety of perspectives, while examining dialogue, monologue, and characters that allow us to reflect, learn, and connect. The Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA) is an organization that helps foment this idea by supporting Latine theater through rich storytelling locally and worldwide with theater projects like Destinos: Chicago International Latino […]
Posted inMusic
The Chicano futurists of No Sé Discos share cosmic sounds from the working class
Musicians such as Woody Guthrie, Victor Jara, and Chuy Negrete have championed the working class in their struggle for dignity, justice, and fair pay by telling their stories in song. In Chicago, Brandon Johnson’s victory in the mayoral election demonstrated the power of the working class (and of young people), and he’s named his transition […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Homecoming
Being in the spotlight isn’t something multidisciplinary artist Diana Solís ever sought, despite capturing influential socio-political movements through her camera for decades. But now, having just turned 67, and with the release of her new book of photography, Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us, the spotlight on her has never been brighter or so deserved. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Festival “Lit & Luz” ofrece una visión para la revisión
Centrado en el lenguaje, la literatura y el arte, el festival Lit & Luz, reúne a escritores, artistas visuales y músicos de México y Estados Unidos en un claro esfuerzo por fomentar el intercambio cultural. Los resultados artísticos de estas experiencias interculturales—desde la poesía hasta la fotografía y demás—se presentan luego a través de una […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A vision for revision at Lit & Luz
The Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature, and Art (Lit & Luz) brings together writers, visual artists, and musicians from Mexico and the United States in an effort to foster cultural exchange. The artistic results of these cross-cultural experiences, from poetry to photography and everything in between, are then presented through a series of […]
Posted inMusic
The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022
The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too. Americans don’t […]
Posted inMusic
Daniel Villarreal guides his far-out grooves with the distant star of tradition
Chicago-based percussionist Daniel Villarreal says his debut solo album, Panamá 77, is a soundtrack of his life and an introduction to who he is. “It’s about my upbringing and my experiences as a musician and artist in the city of Panamá and also in the city of Chicago,” he explains. “It’s a blend of all […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best Latin alternative music festival
Ruido Fest debuted in 2015 with a phenomenal lineup of Latin alternative music that’s been hard to match, with Café Tacvba, Molotov, Kinky, Ozomatli, Kali Uchis, the Nortec Collective, Chicano Batman, and dozens more. (The recent announcement of the Besame Mucho festival, scheduled for Dodger Stadium in December 2022, also sets a very high bar.) […]
Posted inMusic
Dos Santos push Latine music out of its box with City of Mirrors
It’s not easy to forget the prejudice confronted by Chicago’s Latine bands and artists who were trying to build relationships with venues and recording studios in the late 90s and early 2000s. I experienced some of it personally as manager for one of those bands. From 2001 till around 2014, I worked with [.DESCARGA.], and […]
Posted inMusic
Seven more doors into Chicago in Tune
Chicago in Tune is a difficult festival to describe, since it includes basically all live music happening in the city from August 19 till September 19. How that looks to you depends heavily on which shows are on your radar. The Reader has provided you with a number of assists: a show calendar spanning the […]
Posted inMusic
Buenört Collective spread their hot revolution across the Atlantic
Chicago-based party incubator and microlabel Buenört Collective release the new album by Spanish band El Sombrero del Abuelo.
Posted inBest of Chicago
Chicago’s Latinx musicians rolled with the pandemic’s punches
New projects kept coming from A Flor de Piel, the Los Sundowns, Lester Rey, Gabacho, ÉSSO, and others.