Deferred No More: Advancing Reparations in Maryland, Lovely Lane Church, 2200 Saint Paul Street, March 11, 7 p.m.
There’s a lot of spinelessness among our political class, but late last year, the House of Delegates voted to override Governor Wes Moore’s veto of a bill to establish a commission to study reparations, showing a bit of backbone that has become rare among legislative bodies.
The Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism, the Center for Africana Studies, and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, all of Johns Hopkins University, are using this event to highlight the legislative victory and the publication of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commmission report. There will be live music from the jazz trio BRICKHEAD as well as a conversation between Kaye Whitehead and David Fakunle II, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And another live podcast convo between Michelle Coles, Nkechi Taifa, Lawrence Grandpre, and Joanne Braxton.
Finally, there will be a “documentary theater performance” making “the case for reparations for Marshall Eddie Conway,” the former Black Panther and political prisoner, who various people associated with the Beat worked with after he was released following more than 40 years of unjust incarceration.
Now if we could only get Johns Hopkins to stop doing things — police force, data center, et cetera — for which they’ll probably have to try to get out of paying reparations in the future.
Black Audio Society at Le Mondo, 406 N. Howard Street, Friday March 13, 10 p.m.
As our technology gets worse, wonkier, more addictive, more invasive, and downright dumber, the idea of analog and “obsolete technologies” sounds better every day. I mean, sure, the DJ could just have a Spotify playlist, or they could be spinning vinyl on turntables. And, while the playlist might be fine for your little-ass apartment where you don’t really have room for all the records (in this economy?!), when you go out, you damn sure want some old heads — or at least people with old-head technology and records — so you dance like it’s 1979.
That’s what DJs gum.mp3, Diaspora, and Chilly Willie are doing to get the party going late on a Friday night for this monthly residency of the Black Audio Society, which defines itself as an “intergenerational DJ night dedicated to Black music, eclectic taste, and obsolete technologies.” Chilly Willie is also the proprietor of Mount Vernon Records and has given his life to building community around vinyl, and this party should be no exception.
JaneliaSoul, with Urban Foli at Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard Street, Sunday, March 15, 6 p.m. doors
“Dear Mr. Colonizer,” JaneliaSoul’s latest single, is frighteningly on point as we enter yet another colonial war of choice. And, having grown up in Nigeria, yet another oil-rich country, her defiance sounds hard-bitten and hard-won. “Dear Mr. Colonizer, you’re going to have to find another soul.”
According to her site, JaneliaSoul grew up steeped in Yoruba folksongs, into which she later incorporated soul, reggae, and Afrobeats with her seven-piece band, which is a smoking hot combo. Their live show will shake your bones and move your soul as JaneliaSoul seems to burst into some other dimension at the intersection of percussion and bass.
“Not in Service” documentary screening, Old Major, 900 S. Carey Street, Saturday, March 21, 7 p.m.
Waiting for things to change can be even more frustrating than waiting on a bus that never comes while cars splash the endless rain water all over your legs, zooming by with butt warmers blowing from their seats.
Take the endlessly elusive Red Line, the by-now mythical east-west light rail line that seemed ready to go in 2015, with $2 billion of federal funding backing it up. But, you know the only way for greedy-ass Republicans to refuse money: propose to do something that might help Black people. So then-Governor Larry Hogan refused the money and killed the plan. When the state’s first Black governor succeeded the pasty Reagan-worshipper, people began to dream of the Red Line once more. Then came Trump, under whose petty tyranny we may not even get the Key Bridge rebuilt, and the state budget crisis and, once again, those of us waiting on the Red Line begin to feel like J.D. Vance’s couch.
But still, thousands of us ride the bus every day and, with apps that make it easier to pay and to know when a bus is coming, it feels like things are still getting better, despite boondoggles and super villains. We even got new subway cars earlier this year? Oh, you didn’t know we had a subway? Check it out.
And, for more on all of this, check out “Not in Service,” a new short documentary by director David Sebastiao, at Old Major. Sebastiao, along with Angel King Wilson, previously directed the award-winning “Hiding in the Walls,” a powerful short on lead poisoning in the city.
“In my mind, there’s no real good reason why Baltimore can’t have a great public transit system, like D.C. or New York,” Sebastiao said via email. “For the many residents that rely on public transit everyday, Baltimore’s let them down for decades.”
Ducky Dynamo + Friends, “Feathers 2.0” Release Celebration, Metro Baltimore, 1700 N. Charles Street, Sunday, March 22, 4 p.m. doors
No issue on Baltimore as a matriarchal city or celebration of women in the city’s history and in the art scene right now would be complete without mentioning the reigning Baltimore Club queen Ducky Dynamo. Meagan Buster, as the multihyphenate DJ is legally known, wears many hats in the city, from working for the Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts District, attempting to revive and preserve the legacy of Odell’s Nightclub, serving as an amateur meteorologist to those in the know (full disclosure, she also helped with my former syndicated column Democracy in Crisis), and as a producer championing the city’s art scene. “I do a lot of things,” she told the Beat in 2024. “I DJ, I curate, I produce, I teach, but all of that falls under the umbrella of me preserving what I see is important to our Black Baltimore culture in terms of art.”
But it is behind the turntables that Ducky gets truly dynamic, and she’ll be releasing “Feathers 2.0,” a follow-up to her 2020 release “Feathers,” on Sunday at the Metro Gallery.
“The thematic idea behind the project’s name is molting: when a bird molts to prepare for a new phase, it sheds its feathers, and to me, the songs I’ve collected and created along the way are those feathers — giving land to this mixtape-esque collection of songs,” Buster told the Beat over email. “This album represents a snapshot of my production evolution and Baltimore Club journey over the last few years.”
She says that the release show is “not just a celebration of the project, but for me a celebration of Baltimore Club in general,” presenting the genre “as it stands today, presented by Black femme native Baltimoreans and elements of this culture.”
Buster will be supported by a slew of friends including Aasha Adore, Antimrgn, and the Beat’s own multihyphenate distro-chief MC extraordinaire Eze Jackson. If the new single “Baltimore Bullet (Baltimore Club Music)” is any indication, this record will force you to get up off your ass and shake it, and a lot of us are gonna be sitting at work the next day with sore legs and buzzing ears.