“I created a playlist highlighting several artists from the DMV area who speak to the importance of peace, community, and the beauty of Blackness through song.”
Kayla Boone, Summer Intern
Emergency & I Is Turning 25, But the Album’s Fans Are Only Getting Younger
Twenty-five years later, wintery young-adult alienation still creeps over “Spider in the Snow” like frost. The fourth song on the Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency & I starts with synthesized strings wafting like steam through a sidewalk grate. Air hangs cold and still around the bass and drums as Travis Morrison looks back on a group of…
Cuni Keep D.C. Emo’s Fire Blazing on Prescribed Burn
The Christmas lights went dark about two minutes into “24 Hr Drive-Thru.” On a Saturday night in November 2019, D.C. emo duo Origami Angel were celebrating the release of their debut album, Somewhere City, at Planet Slush (a College Park basement venue with cinder block walls), topping a bill packed with local acts such as…
Swing Beat: (Re) Introducing BJ Simmons
Two conversations I had in September: The first was with a much-loved D.C. jazz musician, as we stood together watching tenor and alto saxophonist BJ Simmons play at the Wharf’s Transit Pier during the DC Jazz Festival. “Wow, he sounds great,” the musician said. “I think I first heard him 10 years ago, and he…
Feel the Blues: DJ Dr. Nick Johnson Recommends Southern Soul, Blues, and Jazz
For 20 years, Nick Johnson, under his radio sobriquet of Dr. Nick, has charismatically and creatively brought the sounds of blues and soul, new and old, popular and obscure, to listeners via a trio of outlets. An Anacostia High graduate and former air traffic controller, Johnson started with the D.C.-based WPFW in 2004. Two years…
She Got the Beat: Claudia A. Lawrence Knows Where to Go When You’re Craving Cumbia, Chicha, and More
Leon City Sounds is the DJ team made up of married couple Claudia A. and Charles Lawrence. The duo plays Latin American genres such as cumbia, chicha, salsa, and boogaloo—mainly on vinyl—at monthly parties and one-off gigs throughout the city. To keep audiences guessing, they sometimes throw in Latin American psychedelic surf and garage rock…
The Reanimation of HFStival
“We’ve returned to the scene of the crime!” an impish Brian Ritchie, bassist of the Violent Femmes said when the band took the stage at HFStival at Nationals Park on Saturday, Sept. 21. The Violent Femmes played the second iteration of the festival in the summer of 1991 at Lake Fairfax Park in Reston, Virginia.…
Branch Out: Psalmayene 24 Recommends Fall Events From Creators Who Won’t Be Pigeonholed
Psalmayene 24, known as Psalm to his collaborators, is arguably the most exciting theater director in the D.C. area. Over the past few years, his productions have focused on the Black experience in innovative new ways. This spring, his take on Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, which explored Greek myth and legend through the lens of Black…
Craving Go-Go? Darrin “X” Frazier Says There’s a Show for That
Darrin “X” Frazier is still passionate about go-go. The musician has been involved with the official music of D.C., known for its percussion and call-and-response vocals, for a number of years in a variety of different roles: In the ’90s, he played keyboards with Rare Essence. In the early 2000s, he played with 911, and,…
Watch This: DC/DOX’s Co-founder Sky Sitney has Film Fest Recs and More
If you have any interest in documentary cinema, you probably know Sky Sitney. She is the festival director of DC/DOX, the city’s new-ish documentary film festival that ran for the second time earlier this summer. A cinema professor at Georgetown University, Sitney attracts luminaries in the nonfiction film world, and sometimes even the subjects of…
Don’t Sleep on the DMV: National and Local Hip-Hop Acts to See This Fall
The DMV rap scene is one of the nation’s most underrated music communities. Many of the country’s favorite hip-hop artists have roots in D.C. and its surrounding neighborhoods, but the city is frequently overshadowed as a hub for the genre by massive markets like Atlanta, New York, and L.A. This fall, D.C. will maintain its…
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