Tenzin Dekyi is a multihyphenate force in Chicago’s grassroots music industry: she comanages artists, she curates hip-hop and R&B playlists on Spotify, and she writes about rising musicians for outlets such as Complex and Pigeons & Planes. She builds community on Twitter (she posts as @newmusictenzin) and uses the platform of her playlists to create […]
Category: Music Feature
Posted inMusic
The accidental postrock diner
In the early 90s, Dead Rider guitarist Todd Rittmann moved into a three-bedroom apartment with an attic on the corner of Paulina and Grace in Lakeview. He’d recently left DeKalb, where he’d studied at Northern Illinois University. Rittmann shared his Lakeview apartment with three musicians, including Tom Mioducki and Pat Samson, who’d formed a noisy […]
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Tink comes home to thank the fans who’ve stood by her from the start
This Sunday at the Chicago Theatre, Tink began her sold-out show by dimming the lights, hushing the murmur of a crowd of thousands. Her voice filled the space as she thanked an ex-lover for his deceit and betrayal: “Thanks for showing me I could survive, I could thrive without you,” she sang. “Thanks for nothing.” […]
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Shi-An Costello confronts prejudice with the piano in The Orient
In 2015, when pianist and composer Shi-An Costello was 28 years old, he learned his Chinese given name. It was written in his maternal grandfather’s hand, on an errant slip of paper tucked between old medical documents: 可 世 安, or “Co Shi-An.” For his entire life, Costello had been going by Andrew, his legal […]
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The Reader’s guide to Record Store Day 2023
Record Store Day began 15 years ago as a way to mobilize consumer support for independent brick-and-mortar record stores, which were seen as niche enough to be at risk of extinction from big online retailers. Streaming wasn’t yet the behemoth business it is today—Spotify also launched in 2008, and it wouldn’t reach the U.S. till […]
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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 inCity of Win
TheGr8Thinkaz elevate as teachers, healers, and artists
It was a cloudy March day when I walked into Classick Studios to conduct my next interview for this series on Chicago artists impacting their communities. I was greeted by one of the purest forms of hip-hop: a bevy of rappers freestyling together, rhyming to the classic instrumentals of Mike Jones’s “Still Tippin’” and the […]
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Depeche Mode celebrate the endurance of life and music at the United Center
Three years into the pandemic, practically everyone is grappling with some sort of loss. The circumstances are individual, of course, but we’re basically all facing the same questions: How do you grieve without letting grief destroy you? How do you honor the memory of departed people and vanished places while still pushing forward into new […]
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The ladies who sing from the back
The 2013 film 20 Feet From Stardom tells the stories of background singers who’ve supported stars such as the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Ray Charles, and Donna Summer. The movie, which won the best documentary Oscar the following year, focuses mostly on singers based in Los Angeles and to a lesser degree New York, among them […]
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The great touring gamble
Elijah Montez launched his psych-pop project, Daydream Review, after moving to Chicago from Austin in 2018. He put together a band to play his material live, and they planned their first tour for March 2020. We all know what happened next. “It kind of derailed where we were at,” Montez says. “We were playing a […]
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Proposed fee hikes on U.S. visas will hurt independent music and inhibit tours from abroad
Now that COVID shutdowns are receding into memory, being a live-music lover in Chicago is once again like being a kid in Candyland. But the concert industry in the city—and in the rest of the country—could be significantly harmed by a proposed rules change from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). If the […]
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Chicago punk loses a champion
In 1980, Chris Bjorklund frequented a River North bar called Oz, which two years earlier had become one of the first places in Chicago to embrace punk. He visited often enough that he got to know the owner, Dem Hopkins. Bjorklund played in a band called Strike Under, and Hopkins offered to introduce him to […]
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Julian ‘Jumpin’ Perez makes the leap into Chicago politics
Update 10:51 AM, Friday, February 24: This morning, Heather Cherone at WTTW reported that flyers distributed this week to attack 26th Ward candidate Jessica “Jessie” Fuentes are tied to the campaign of Julian “Jumpin” Perez and to the Fraternal Order of Police. The flyers mention several arrests and convictions on Fuentes’s record, all from more than […]
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Smooth Chicago bluesman Jimmy Burns celebrates 80 years
Bluesman Jimmy Burns prefers sensitivity over shouting, and since he moved to Chicago from Mississippi in 1955, several sources outside the blues have shaped his fluid guitar tone—including gospel quartets and arena-rock bands. He turns 80 on February 27, and for the occasion he sat for a Reader interview that digs as far back as […]
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The Frequency Festival tunes into music that grows between methods and genres
Beginning on Tuesday, February 21, the Frequency Festival returns for its seventh iteration in eight years. Its seven concerts consist of a diverse array of performances united by a common thread—the thirst for growth and adventure that drives musicians and composers to transcend the boundaries of any genre. The festival is an outgrowth of the […]