Move over, Grandpa.

You think ageism is your cause?

Last week, Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies came to town, making stops at the city’s largest college campuses. At Northwestern, they set up shop on Sheridan Road, displaying enlarged images of dismembered fetal parts and passing out leaflets announcing that “Abortion is Ageism.”

“Preborn babies differ from born humans in size, level of development, environment, and dependency. But toddlers and adults differ from one another in these ways as well, yet we don’t kill them based on these arbitrary differences,” their leaflet says.

It’s a perfectly logical argument as long as you’re willing to overlook the fact that the “preborn” environment is somebody else’s body.  

They were ignored by all the students I saw, except for theater major John Jameson, who had stopped to stage his own counterprotest, with a sign that said “Pro-Lifers SUCK.” 

According to a Created Equal press release, the organization’s president, Mark Harrington, maintains that “Preborn babies deserve equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Depriving younger humans of their natural right to life is an age-based discrimination.”  

Huh? The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” and equal protection under the law to all “persons.” Does that mean an embryo or fetus has civil rights? Could this be something that happened with the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

I put that question to Ameri Klafeta, director of women’s and reproductive rights at ACLU of Illinois.  

“Fetal rights are not recognized under the equal protection clause,” Klafeta says. “Not even this [federal] Supreme Court has gone that far.”  

And here, in the state of Illinois, “Our state supreme court has been very clear that a fetus cannot have independent rights. That was case law in Illinois, and it’s now codified in the 2019 Reproductive Health Act.” That act says, very specifically, “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under the laws of this state.”  

“It’s untenable to have a situation where a fetus could have independent rights, and it would be inconsistent with a whole host of other laws,” Klafeta says. For example, “Courts consistently refuse to force one person to have a medical procedure, even if it would benefit someone else.  A woman cannot be compelled to have a C-section, even if that’s purportedly in the best interest of the fetus. So this idea that there can be two separate interests when a woman is carrying a pregnancy that could be competing with each other wouldn’t fit under Illinois law.”

As for federal law, “a fetus has never been recognized as a person under the 14th Amendment.  It does not have the same rights as a child that’s been born.

“One of the holdings in Roe was that there’s not constitutional protection for the fetus, that the fetus is not a person, as that word is used in the Constitution. The Dobbs decision reverses Roe, but in the decision Justice Alito also said that the opinion is not based on any view about whether or not a fetus would have the same rights constitutionally as a person.”  

So that leaves it open?

“It creates a confusing landscape. And organizations like this one, that came to the universities here, will try to capitalize on it. Dobbs just said there is no right to an abortion. It did not take that extra step and say ‘There is no right to an abortion because there are fetal rights under the Constitution.’ This group is trying to take the next step. But that would be an untenable legal position. It’s inconsistent with the idea that someone cannot be compelled to undergo any kind of invasive bodily procedure for the benefit of anyone else. The protections around that are many, including a U.S. Supreme Court case [Cruzan] that says you have a right not to undergo medical treatment if you don’t want to.

“I think anti-abortion organizations are going to try to push ahead to get fetal rights recognized under the Constitution. But that’s not something the Supreme Court has already done.”

Not yet.

Read More

Any smoker can relate to the feeling of release they get from a cigarette, the satisfying blend of calm relief and buzzy energy. When artist Marcela Torres started smoking cigars about seven years ago, they were struck by the respite it offered. So began a relationship with tobacco, which has stretched to include its historical connection to colonization and Latin America, its cultivation, and use in ritual, all of which manifest in Torres’s new choreographic work, Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke.

“Sometimes an ancestor will call to you, and by ancestor I mean a plant, or an object, or a spirit,” Torres says. “Then when I researched more, I realized how tied it was to political movements or to colonization or to culture or like all these different parts of Latinidad that I just thought were really interesting. So I began to dive in further and further. In different voodoo or other spiritual beliefs, when you find an ancestor spirit, it’s a call to get to know that entity in all these different ways. It’s research but also getting to know the thing itself through other folks or other histories or other communities.” 

Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smokeSat 10/1 6:30 PM, El Paseo Community Garden, 944 W. 21st; Sun 10/2 6:30 PM, Malinalli Garden, 2800 S. Ridgeway, free

The Chicago premiere of Iyapokatzin, which is Nahuatl for “venerable tobacco smoke,” will take place at El Paseo Community Garden in Pilsen on October 1, with a second presentation the following day at Malinalli Garden in Little Village. (An earlier performance was staged in September at Minnesota’s Franconia Sculpture Park.) The 45-minute piece is less a dance than a ceremony or offering “both to ancestors but also to the public,” Torres says.

Iyapokatzin is the culmination of three years of research into not only tobacco itself, but also into how to properly tell its story, and how to integrate its history into movement and community and Latine diaspora. Its completion, in the ways the artist envisioned, was made possible through the support of Chicago DanceMakers Forum, where Torres is a 2022 Lab Artist. 

Torres typically works slowly, learning all they can about a subject, and physically practicing it. Over that research period, Torres grew tobacco at El Paseo and built an adobe monument meant for burning the harvested plant and communally releasing grief. They also learned two different types of historical dances: Azteca-Chichimeca, from Chicago native Izayo Mazehualli, and Folklórico, from Texas-based Gabriela Mendoza-Garcia. Mazehualli will also be performing in Iyapokatzin.

“It’s really important to have a community base,” Torres says. Their collaborators also include La Spacer, a local DJ, producer, and composer who created a score for the performance that incorporates both techno beats and Son jarocho, a style of folk music from Veracruz, Mexico. 

“They were important to me, to have somebody who wasn’t going to judge me for being queer in a way, because often these dances can be very binary and controlled,” Torres says. “I’m more comfortable in feeling nonbinary, like not wanting to fulfill certain masculine or feminine roles.”

Torres’s desire to translate these dances in a nonbinary way also comes through in their attire, a flowing black assemblage that pays homage to their goth, clubby teenage years and to the ranchero style of Folklórico dress. “A lot of the Folklórico outfits haven’t changed in a long time, but I wanted to make something that felt more related to my life,” Torres says. “A lot of aesthetics are related to both honoring the pantheon of Aztec gods and also thinking about how the Folklórico outfit can actually make sense to me now.”

Being able to work with people who understood Torres’s diasporic story was crucial—it helped them feel more comfortable in taking traditional movements and making them more contemporary, more relevant to Torres’s life. 

“Some forms of Mexican dance can feel really static, both accessible and yet not accessible,” Torres says. “A lot of dance forms are controlled, partially for real reasons—they want to keep them preserved. But when we think about Folklórico, a lot of those dances aren’t that old.” After the Mexican Revolution, which ended in 1920, Torres explains, there was a period of cultural reform, where the bourgeoisie made decisions regarding what cultural practices would be chosen to represent what Mexico was. “They decided the dances and they decided all the costuming,” Torres says. “It wasn’t necessarily the people themselves. The goal was to unify what Mexico was after the war. So it’s interesting that there can be such rigidity on what it’s considered when it was really just a decision of a few people and often not Indigenous people. My goal is for people to see these dance forms as contemporary options for play in the descriptions of our current lives.”

In some ancient stories, tobacco was seen as a healer, a spiritual protector. This idea of protection is one that resonates with Torres, who has trained in martial arts. That training is evident in the performance, in moments where the artist bobs and weaves, or thrusts out an arm or a leg as if in combat. “A lot of the things I’ve been interested in in my practice have to do with personal journeys or knowing self or finding strength,” they say. “This work is not so much a departure, it’s actually really similar.”

Torres says a lot of the movements of Muay Thai, Azteca-Chichimeca, and Folklórico are similar, with a lot of time spent on one’s toes. “You can do everything you want to feel strength, but if you don’t know where home is or your ancestry or your relations, it might not ever feel like safety,” Torres says. “I have the physical strength, but as far as feeling some wholeness with an idea of the spiritual self—that was what I think was missing.” Deepening their relationship with tobacco, and learning its history and connection to Latinidad, has helped bridge that gap. 

Though Torres also works in sculpture, ceramics, and other mediums, performance remains their preferred art form. “Through performance, we have a relationship with the body and we have a relationship with a location and other people. Through that, there’s always the quest to figure out what space or objects or movement interact to create this physical, emotional experience,” they say.

“Sometimes I don’t totally understand why I’m making . . . but I feel like they’re all connected to this desire to know the earth or know oneself through the earth.”

Read More

Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Read More

Move over, Grandpa.

You think ageism is your cause?

Last week, Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies came to town, making stops at the city’s largest college campuses. At Northwestern, they set up shop on Sheridan Road, displaying enlarged images of dismembered fetal parts and passing out leaflets announcing that “Abortion is Ageism.”

“Preborn babies differ from born humans in size, level of development, environment, and dependency. But toddlers and adults differ from one another in these ways as well, yet we don’t kill them based on these arbitrary differences,” their leaflet says.

It’s a perfectly logical argument as long as you’re willing to overlook the fact that the “preborn” environment is somebody else’s body.  

They were ignored by all the students I saw, except for theater major John Jameson, who had stopped to stage his own counterprotest, with a sign that said “Pro-Lifers SUCK.” 

According to a Created Equal press release, the organization’s president, Mark Harrington, maintains that “Preborn babies deserve equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Depriving younger humans of their natural right to life is an age-based discrimination.”  

Huh? The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” and equal protection under the law to all “persons.” Does that mean an embryo or fetus has civil rights? Could this be something that happened with the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

I put that question to Ameri Klafeta, director of women’s and reproductive rights at ACLU of Illinois.  

“Fetal rights are not recognized under the equal protection clause,” Klafeta says. “Not even this [federal] Supreme Court has gone that far.”  

And here, in the state of Illinois, “Our state supreme court has been very clear that a fetus cannot have independent rights. That was case law in Illinois, and it’s now codified in the 2019 Reproductive Health Act.” That act says, very specifically, “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under the laws of this state.”  

“It’s untenable to have a situation where a fetus could have independent rights, and it would be inconsistent with a whole host of other laws,” Klafeta says. For example, “Courts consistently refuse to force one person to have a medical procedure, even if it would benefit someone else.  A woman cannot be compelled to have a C-section, even if that’s purportedly in the best interest of the fetus. So this idea that there can be two separate interests when a woman is carrying a pregnancy that could be competing with each other wouldn’t fit under Illinois law.”

As for federal law, “a fetus has never been recognized as a person under the 14th Amendment.  It does not have the same rights as a child that’s been born.

“One of the holdings in Roe was that there’s not constitutional protection for the fetus, that the fetus is not a person, as that word is used in the Constitution. The Dobbs decision reverses Roe, but in the decision Justice Alito also said that the opinion is not based on any view about whether or not a fetus would have the same rights constitutionally as a person.”  

So that leaves it open?

“It creates a confusing landscape. And organizations like this one, that came to the universities here, will try to capitalize on it. Dobbs just said there is no right to an abortion. It did not take that extra step and say ‘There is no right to an abortion because there are fetal rights under the Constitution.’ This group is trying to take the next step. But that would be an untenable legal position. It’s inconsistent with the idea that someone cannot be compelled to undergo any kind of invasive bodily procedure for the benefit of anyone else. The protections around that are many, including a U.S. Supreme Court case [Cruzan] that says you have a right not to undergo medical treatment if you don’t want to.

“I think anti-abortion organizations are going to try to push ahead to get fetal rights recognized under the Constitution. But that’s not something the Supreme Court has already done.”

Not yet.

Read More

Any smoker can relate to the feeling of release they get from a cigarette, the satisfying blend of calm relief and buzzy energy. When artist Marcela Torres started smoking cigars about seven years ago, they were struck by the respite it offered. So began a relationship with tobacco, which has stretched to include its historical connection to colonization and Latin America, its cultivation, and use in ritual, all of which manifest in Torres’s new choreographic work, Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smoke.

“Sometimes an ancestor will call to you, and by ancestor I mean a plant, or an object, or a spirit,” Torres says. “Then when I researched more, I realized how tied it was to political movements or to colonization or to culture or like all these different parts of Latinidad that I just thought were really interesting. So I began to dive in further and further. In different voodoo or other spiritual beliefs, when you find an ancestor spirit, it’s a call to get to know that entity in all these different ways. It’s research but also getting to know the thing itself through other folks or other histories or other communities.” 

Iyapokatzin; the venerable tobacco smokeSat 10/1 6:30 PM, El Paseo Community Garden, 944 W. 21st; Sun 10/2 6:30 PM, Malinalli Garden, 2800 S. Ridgeway, free

The Chicago premiere of Iyapokatzin, which is Nahuatl for “venerable tobacco smoke,” will take place at El Paseo Community Garden in Pilsen on October 1, with a second presentation the following day at Malinalli Garden in Little Village. (An earlier performance was staged in September at Minnesota’s Franconia Sculpture Park.) The 45-minute piece is less a dance than a ceremony or offering “both to ancestors but also to the public,” Torres says.

Iyapokatzin is the culmination of three years of research into not only tobacco itself, but also into how to properly tell its story, and how to integrate its history into movement and community and Latine diaspora. Its completion, in the ways the artist envisioned, was made possible through the support of Chicago DanceMakers Forum, where Torres is a 2022 Lab Artist. 

Torres typically works slowly, learning all they can about a subject, and physically practicing it. Over that research period, Torres grew tobacco at El Paseo and built an adobe monument meant for burning the harvested plant and communally releasing grief. They also learned two different types of historical dances: Azteca-Chichimeca, from Chicago native Izayo Mazehualli, and Folklórico, from Texas-based Gabriela Mendoza-Garcia. Mazehualli will also be performing in Iyapokatzin.

“It’s really important to have a community base,” Torres says. Their collaborators also include La Spacer, a local DJ, producer, and composer who created a score for the performance that incorporates both techno beats and Son jarocho, a style of folk music from Veracruz, Mexico. 

“They were important to me, to have somebody who wasn’t going to judge me for being queer in a way, because often these dances can be very binary and controlled,” Torres says. “I’m more comfortable in feeling nonbinary, like not wanting to fulfill certain masculine or feminine roles.”

Torres’s desire to translate these dances in a nonbinary way also comes through in their attire, a flowing black assemblage that pays homage to their goth, clubby teenage years and to the ranchero style of Folklórico dress. “A lot of the Folklórico outfits haven’t changed in a long time, but I wanted to make something that felt more related to my life,” Torres says. “A lot of aesthetics are related to both honoring the pantheon of Aztec gods and also thinking about how the Folklórico outfit can actually make sense to me now.”

Being able to work with people who understood Torres’s diasporic story was crucial—it helped them feel more comfortable in taking traditional movements and making them more contemporary, more relevant to Torres’s life. 

“Some forms of Mexican dance can feel really static, both accessible and yet not accessible,” Torres says. “A lot of dance forms are controlled, partially for real reasons—they want to keep them preserved. But when we think about Folklórico, a lot of those dances aren’t that old.” After the Mexican Revolution, which ended in 1920, Torres explains, there was a period of cultural reform, where the bourgeoisie made decisions regarding what cultural practices would be chosen to represent what Mexico was. “They decided the dances and they decided all the costuming,” Torres says. “It wasn’t necessarily the people themselves. The goal was to unify what Mexico was after the war. So it’s interesting that there can be such rigidity on what it’s considered when it was really just a decision of a few people and often not Indigenous people. My goal is for people to see these dance forms as contemporary options for play in the descriptions of our current lives.”

In some ancient stories, tobacco was seen as a healer, a spiritual protector. This idea of protection is one that resonates with Torres, who has trained in martial arts. That training is evident in the performance, in moments where the artist bobs and weaves, or thrusts out an arm or a leg as if in combat. “A lot of the things I’ve been interested in in my practice have to do with personal journeys or knowing self or finding strength,” they say. “This work is not so much a departure, it’s actually really similar.”

Torres says a lot of the movements of Muay Thai, Azteca-Chichimeca, and Folklórico are similar, with a lot of time spent on one’s toes. “You can do everything you want to feel strength, but if you don’t know where home is or your ancestry or your relations, it might not ever feel like safety,” Torres says. “I have the physical strength, but as far as feeling some wholeness with an idea of the spiritual self—that was what I think was missing.” Deepening their relationship with tobacco, and learning its history and connection to Latinidad, has helped bridge that gap. 

Though Torres also works in sculpture, ceramics, and other mediums, performance remains their preferred art form. “Through performance, we have a relationship with the body and we have a relationship with a location and other people. Through that, there’s always the quest to figure out what space or objects or movement interact to create this physical, emotional experience,” they say.

“Sometimes I don’t totally understand why I’m making . . . but I feel like they’re all connected to this desire to know the earth or know oneself through the earth.”

Read More

Through the first three weeks of the season, the Chicago Bears have gone 2-1 despite all of the criticism surrounding the team.

At the end of the day, a win is a win, so they say.

But, it’s not all sunshine, rainbows and polish sausages in Chicago. The Bears have looked flat-out deceased on offense — at least, when it comes to the passing game. As a second-year pro who was supposed to take a big leap this year, Justin Fields has done anything but impress.

Bears fans want him to be the guy. We all want to see him succeed, which is why it’s been so difficult watching him struggle. The offense truly looks a lot like it did last year under Matt Nagy, and that’s not a good sign for this new regime. Still, there’s time and the Bears are learning a new offense which is far more complex than Nagy’s.

Now, as for how bad the Bears have been, there needs to be context. For example, a recent stat released will prove the Bears can do at least one thing in elite fashion.

The Chicago Bears are an elite rushing football team, so if Justin Fields can catch up, they might surprise some people.

Who knew the Bears were tied for the fourth-most explosive plays in all of football through three weeks? 23 explosive plays in three games — that’s pretty impressive, considering the company they keep atop that list.

Just below them, though, are the Cleveland Browns who are in a similar boat. The rushing attack is where these two teams hang their hats.

For the Bears, it hasn’t mattered who is taking handoffs. Whether it’s been David Montgomery, Khalil Herbert or even wideout Equanimeous St. Brown, the Bears have been able to generate explosive plays on the ground.

It is actually impressive that the Bears rank so high in explosive plays, considering Justin Fields set a record for fewest passing yards through a quarterback’s first three games, dating all the way back to 1975.

Much has been made about the offensive line and their struggles at times, but they have not played as bad as some may think. The holes they’re opening up in the run game have been massive, leading to so many explosive plays, of course.

Should Fields and the offense catch on, the Bears’ offense will not be as bad as they are currently. Things cannot possibly get a whole lot worse than they are at the moment, therefore faith has to be in place that this group can take at least a small step forward.

Read More

NBA training camps opened this week, and players from all 30 franchises are preparing to refine their skills and build chemistry with their teammates for the 2022-23 season.

But a handful of serviceable players are still unsigned and not yet sure which team they will be helping this upcoming season, if any. Injuries, age and reduced minutes from previously playing on teams with deep rosters have lowered their stock as players, but several teams still have time to take a chance on these unsigned players and bring them in before the season.

Seasoned veterans such as Jeremy Lamb and Hassan Whiteside and former All-Star Blake Griffin are among the top unsigned players who could make a solid late addition to an NBA team, either as a role player for a contender or a mentor for young teams.

Here’s a look at the best unsigned players who still have a chance to find a home this season and where they could fit in best:

Jeremy Lamb Forward

When she filmed the music video for “OMG BRITT,” a trap anthem off of her new record, Natural Brown Prom Queen, Brittney Parks was determined to smash a violin on camera. Not just any violin, either: She wanted to destroy her very first instrument, the one on which she’d taught herself to play by ear in fourth grade. Parks, who performs as Sudan Archives, has made the violin a defining part of her aesthetic since her vibey, luscious self-titled debut EP in 2017. Her sound is just as indebted to the liberatory musicianship of West African and Sudanese fiddlers as it is to the DIY scene in her native Cincinnati. It was there that a teenage Parks resisted her stepfather’s attempts to manufacture a family pop duo from her and her sister. Instead, she broke curfew at underground raves. Eventually her rebelliousness got her kicked out of her family’s house, and at age 19 she winged it to Los Angeles, where she’s remained ever since, releasing her first two EPs and the 2019 album Athena. Natural Brown Prom Queen lurches in the direction of those late-night raves, bottling the effervescence and irreverence of being young and invincible. Despite Parks’s symbolic violin demolition, the instrument is still a key ingredient on the new album—a fiddle figure animates “TDLY (Homegrown Land),” for instance—but it’s mostly camouflaged, just one of many swatches in her band’s instrumental palette.

Natural Brown Prom Queen doesn’t just depart musically from Parks’s earlier records; it’s also her most confessional release yet, and her most vulnerable. A few tracks after the brooding ballad “Homesick,” the album ends with “#513” (the area code of Cincinnati and environs), in which Parks vows to go back to her hometown. But the repatriation seems more symbolic than literal: Natural Brown Prom Queen sounds like catharsis, its 18 tracks confronting the life she fled as a teen. On “NBPQ (Topless)” and “Selfish Soul,” Parks counsels her younger self through the anguish of trying to conform to white beauty standards; in “Selfish Soul” her violin playacts as a grungy guitar, in “NBPQ” as a tanbūra (a Sudanese cousin of the oud). Parks also implies that her path on the violin hasn’t always been easy. The interlude “Do Your Thing (Refreshing Springs)” uses dreamy keyboards as a backdrop for an old voice mail from her mother, who encourages her not to worry about being unable to read music. “The other musicians are not playing by music, either,” her mother says. “Get up there and do your thing.” Parks has ever since.

Sudan Archives Lulu Be opens. Wed 10/5, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25, $22 in advance, 18+

Read More

When she filmed the music video for “OMG BRITT,” a trap anthem off of her new record, Natural Brown Prom Queen, Brittney Parks was determined to smash a violin on camera. Not just any violin, either: She wanted to destroy her very first instrument, the one on which she’d taught herself to play by ear in fourth grade. Parks, who performs as Sudan Archives, has made the violin a defining part of her aesthetic since her vibey, luscious self-titled debut EP in 2017. Her sound is just as indebted to the liberatory musicianship of West African and Sudanese fiddlers as it is to the DIY scene in her native Cincinnati. It was there that a teenage Parks resisted her stepfather’s attempts to manufacture a family pop duo from her and her sister. Instead, she broke curfew at underground raves. Eventually her rebelliousness got her kicked out of her family’s house, and at age 19 she winged it to Los Angeles, where she’s remained ever since, releasing her first two EPs and the 2019 album Athena. Natural Brown Prom Queen lurches in the direction of those late-night raves, bottling the effervescence and irreverence of being young and invincible. Despite Parks’s symbolic violin demolition, the instrument is still a key ingredient on the new album—a fiddle figure animates “TDLY (Homegrown Land),” for instance—but it’s mostly camouflaged, just one of many swatches in her band’s instrumental palette.

Natural Brown Prom Queen doesn’t just depart musically from Parks’s earlier records; it’s also her most confessional release yet, and her most vulnerable. A few tracks after the brooding ballad “Homesick,” the album ends with “#513” (the area code of Cincinnati and environs), in which Parks vows to go back to her hometown. But the repatriation seems more symbolic than literal: Natural Brown Prom Queen sounds like catharsis, its 18 tracks confronting the life she fled as a teen. On “NBPQ (Topless)” and “Selfish Soul,” Parks counsels her younger self through the anguish of trying to conform to white beauty standards; in “Selfish Soul” her violin playacts as a grungy guitar, in “NBPQ” as a tanbūra (a Sudanese cousin of the oud). Parks also implies that her path on the violin hasn’t always been easy. The interlude “Do Your Thing (Refreshing Springs)” uses dreamy keyboards as a backdrop for an old voice mail from her mother, who encourages her not to worry about being unable to read music. “The other musicians are not playing by music, either,” her mother says. “Get up there and do your thing.” Parks has ever since.

Sudan Archives Lulu Be opens. Wed 10/5, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25, $22 in advance, 18+

Read More