1. Most Popular Musical Styles 1910 -2019.
Posted on December 23, 2019
Radius Ticketing Already Sucks
By Steve Rhodes
Radius is the new venue in Pilsen.
First, the press release. Then, reality.
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CHICAGO, Dec. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ – New independent Chicago music venue RADIUS, set to launch in 2020, has announced AXS as it’s official ticketing partner, utilizing patented Mobile ID technology that offers consumers an innovative, mobile-first identity-based ticketing solution. The first set of RADIUS events are set to go on sale this week on the AXS platform.
Posted on December 17, 2019
Inuit Throat Singing Is Basically A Beat Box Battle
By Aeon
In traditional katajjaq, also known as Inuit throat singing, two women stand face to face and perform a duet that doubles as something of a musical battle. Chanting in rhythm, they attempt to outlast one another, each waiting for any crack in the pace of her opponent – whether in the form of loss of breath, fatigue or laughter.
Posted on December 12, 2019
The Problem With Urban Music Classes? Me.
By Lincoln Smith/The Hechinger Report
Nothing truly prepares you for the realities of teaching in an underserved community.
Racial disparities in public education are an essential issue for every teacher to understand – but especially for white educators who teach children of color. While most pre-service teaching programs do not equip you to meet these challenges, each school I have taught in has provided me with experiences that have shaped me and the way I’ve worked as a music teacher in urban schools.
After spending 10 years as a contract musician stringing together gigs, teaching private music lessons and performing odd jobs, I stepped into a part-time music teaching position in an urban charter school. My first day as a music teacher was harrowing. I found 12 playable guitars in my classroom – and 14 students who were resistant to me. After several chaotic classes, I wondered, What was I doing wrong? Why won’t they listen to me?
Posted on December 11, 2019
Remembering Juice WRLD
A ‘Supernova’ Who Was Just Getting Started
“Juice WRLD, one of a crop of sweet-voiced singing rappers who emerged from the streaming platform SoundCloud in recent years, died on Sunday, the authorities said. He was 21,” the New York Times reports.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office in Illinois confirmed the death in a statement.
Identifying the artist by his real name, it said Jarad A. Higgins, of Homewood, Ill., had been pronounced dead at 3:14 a.m. at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill. The cause of death was not available and an autopsy was to be done, the office said.
The rapper’s sharp, catchy songs – which were often freestyled in only a few takes – combined the melodic hip-hop instincts of Lil Yachty, Post Malone and XXXTentacion with the heavy-hearted angst and nasal hooks of emo and pop-punk bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco.
“I’ve always been different,” he told the New York Times last year. “I used to try to hide it a little bit, but now I have a platform for being different.”
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Jessi Roti wrote for the Tribune in June 2018 that “no artist has had such seeming overnight success quite like Juice Wrld – the 19-year-old Calumet Park native who signed a reported $3 million deal with Interscope in March after his 2017 EP Juice Wrld 999 started racking up millions of streams on SoundCloud, thanks to singles ‘Lucid Dreams’ (currently No. 6 on Billboard’s ‘Hot 100’) and ‘All Girls Are the Same’ (first featured on the three-song Nothings Different EP, amassing 48.3 million plays).”
Posted on December 9, 2019
Lurlean Hunter’s Chicago
By Steve Rhodes
This Lurlean Hunter song, “My Home Town Chicago,” was posted on YouTube over the weekend, presumably on the occasion of her birthday on Saturday . . .
. . . and that sent me on a journey to learn more about Hunter, who died in 1983 at the age of 63.
Let’s take a look at what I found.
Posted on December 3, 2019