05/19/2026
Washington Heights. It is where I have lived since 1995 when my parents decided to move from Peoria, while I was three years old.
As a musician, it is tough to call this home because as segregated as Chicago is, its music venues, outlaw(unlicensed) or otherwise, are innumerably just as segregated regionally.
I often struggle with this thought, are people just scared to try to book even vaguely alternative bands at a venue that doesn’t take 45 minutes at the fastest to get to via public transit?
In my community when I walk past houses, I hear people practicing instruments who are playing genres that aren’t just R&B and jazz, which even if they were … Who cares? (if you’re a punk and you look down on anyone or anything about those genres… You’re a racist I’m sorry to tell you, they’re both the children of the working class and no rant about Berkeley music college is gonna convince me otherwise.)
As far as I am aware there is one venue around maybe 118th and Halsted that’s booking even just jazz and r&b bands? That’s about it.
So…how do we solve this? Instead of constantly virtue signaling about the history of rock ‘n’ roll being invented by Black people, about black bands, being a part of punk since the beginning with pure hell, etc.,.
How can we stop gatekeeping DIY culture from black neighborhoods on the south and west sides? And when I say the southside, I mean the actual southside, not Chinatown, nor Bridgeport, home of the Daley family, where just as recently as 15 years ago black children lived in fear of riding their bike too far north or else they may not come home due to the blatant racism of that community.
