Friday-Sunday | Monday-Thursday | Venues

MC Rai, Alla, Eternals

September 14, 2007

By Peter Margasak and Monica Kendrick

Early on the first night of the Viva! Chicago Latin Music Festival, a Saturday in late August, I happened to be driving south past Grant Park on Lake Shore Drive. I knew the festival was happening, of course, but if it hadn’t been for all the tents and sponsors’ banners I might’ve wondered—the lawn surrounding the Petrillo Music Shell was empty except for a few clusters of people sitting on blankets.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Events presents Viva! Chicago as well as Taste of Chicago, the jazz, blues, and gospel festivals, and this weekend’s Celtic Fest. The lineups for those fests all have their bright spots, but Viva! Chicago has become a real disaster. Though the festival is intended to represent the rich variety of music from around the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, it almost always focuses on schlocky commercial stuff from Mexico and Puerto Rico. According to the city’s numbers, this year fewer people attended both days of Viva! Chicago than attended one day of Blues Fest—especially damning given Chicago’s large Mexican and Puerto Rican populations.

The World Music Festival, which kicks off today and runs through Thursday, is a project of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs—the mayor’s office helped get the fest off the ground in 1999, but it hasn’t been involved since 2000. No festival in Chicago has a broader lineup or represents more of the city’s diverse population—and this year, as usual, the WMF outdoes Viva! Chicago on its own turf, presenting music from Cuba, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Spain, and Brazil.

Without the muscle of the mayor’s office to bring corporate sponsors aboard, though, WMF organizer Michael Orlove—whose entire staff consists of two assistants, Brian Keigher and Carlos Tortolero—has to struggle for funding every year. He usually gets only about 60 percent of the money he needs from the city; unlike other festival bookers, he has to scramble for the rest himself, and if he can’t find it the festival suffers. This year, he says, was especially hard, and his failure to sign on enough sponsors resulted in a budget almost 35 percent smaller than the one for 2006—and a lineup with about 20 fewer acts.

That’s not to say there’s a shortage of excellent music at this year’s festival. Two high points should be Morocco’s Orchestra of Tangier, which plays an austere and ancient strain of Arabic classical music, and New York’s Jose Conde, who blends a wide variety of Latin American styles without watering any of them down. The Department of Cultural Affairs was also responsible for this summer’s free Music Without Borders series in Millennium Park, thanks to a second consecutive annual grant from the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Program of the Illinois Arts Council—if you think of the fest as unofficially starting with that amazing lineup, which included the likes of Seun Kuti, Carlinhos Brown, Andy Palacio, and Toumani Diabate, then it hasn’t really lost any firepower at all.

World Music Festival shows take place at 26 venues around the city, and except where otherwise noted they’re free and all-ages. Advance tickets to events with admission fees are usually available from the venues; for more information call the city’s World Music Festival hotline at 312-742-1938, visit cityofchicago.org/worldmusic, or try the festival’s new MySpace page at myspace.com/chicagoworldmusic.

The concert headlined by Jose Conde on Friday evening at the Logan Square Auditorium will be broadcast live on WBEZ (91.5 FM), and the early weekday performances at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater will air on two local college stations: Loyola’s WLUW (88.7 FM) will broadcast the 11 AM concerts, and the 12:30 PM shows can be heard on Continental Drift on Northwestern University’s WNUR (89.3 FM).

As it has for the past few years, the festival closes with “One World Under One Roof,” a free extravaganza that transforms the Cultural Center into a minifestival, with overlapping sets in three different halls inside the building. PM

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11 AM | CLAUDIA CASSIDY THEATER

Louis Mhlanga

Guitarist Louis Mhlanga got his start as a sideman in Zimbabwe, most notably backing local star Oliver Mtukudzi, but his nimble, lyrical style has long embraced American influences as well as the Shona traditions of his homeland. He made his name across the border in South Africa, in collaborations with iconoclastic musicians like Hugh Masekela and Busi Mhlongo that let those influences shine through, but he undercuts his firm grasp of genres from across Africa and the West with a weakness for cloying, lightweight production better suited to smooth jazz. PM

12:30 PM | CLAUDIA CASSIDY THEATER

Dobet Gnahore

In 1999 vocalist Dobet Gnahore moved from the Ivory Coast to France, the world epicenter of the African-music business, and her career took off. She’s thrown herself voraciously into the mix of pan-African sounds in her new home: on her recent second album, Na Afriki (Cumbancha), she sings in seven different African languages and creates polished, mostly acoustic, and equally polyglot music, aided by her husband, guitarist Colin Laroche de Feline. She’s a terrific singer, imbuing her pretty melodies with deep soul and devising novel percussive uses for her voice—some of her songs remind me of an unplugged version of the venerable Afro-European group Zap Mama. PM

Ismail Lumanovski & the NY Gypsy All-Stars

Led by excellent young Macedonian clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, this New York group—whose roster also includes members from Turkey and Greece—kicks up a hell of a ruckus for a quintet. Lumanovski, whose mastery of Roma traditions is reinforced by classical training, shares the front line with kanun player Tamer Pinarbasi, who gets an almost guitarlike sound from the instru- ment; the bandleader’s astringent, sorrowful horn lines tangle with the fleet, percussive runs Pinarbasi ham- mers out on his dulcimer. Kit drummer Jordan Perlson and darbouka hotshot Seido Salifoski keep up an insistent, funky throb, no matter how knotty and lopsided the time signatures get, and though bassist Panagiotis Andreou sometimes drops a bit too much science—he occasionally comes off like a fusion wanker—that’s hardly enough to spoil the fun. PM

12:30 PM | BORDERS ON STATE

Louis Mhlanga

See above.

7 PM | CHICAGO LATVIAN COMMUNITY CENTER

Chris Bajmakovich & Muzika 4 U featuring Ljupco Milenkovski

Based in Gary, Indiana, this group of Macedonian-Americans plays Roma dance music with plenty of zest, but on the recording I’ve heard, bandleader Chris Bajmakovich too often sets aside his accordion to play a chintzy electronic keyboard—and he sounds just as weak doing it as the thousands of Balkan lounge lizards who’ve preceded him. With any luck the presence of guest musician Ljupco Milenkovski—a fellow Macedonian-American and a master of the traditional bagpipe called the gajde— will make this such a special occasion for Bajmakovich that he’ll leave the cheap synth at home. PM

T-Rroma

This local quintet of Croatian-Americans renders the Roma music of the Balkans and Hungary in a toothless form that’d be perfect for an Adriatic cruise ship. PM

7:30 PM | OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC | $12

Dobet Gnahore

See above.

Louis Mhlanga

See above.

7:30 PM | MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $12

Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan

Because so much of the Roma music we hear in Chicago comes from eastern Europe, it’s easy to forget that the Romany people—and yes, they are a single ethnic group, to the extent anyone can be these days—have their origins in northern India. The ancestors of these Rajasthani performers didn’t end up migrating quite so far over the past thousand years, so you could argue that their songs, dances, and costumes represent an earlier, purer form of the culture—though I suspect it’s just as mongrelized as any Balkan tradition, I doubt anybody alive can remember the ancient strains that went into it. Thankfully this band doesn’t try to rely on a pedigree, instead getting right down to the business of blowing you away. The six musicians stay seated during the show, but their reedy, keening, stirring sounds are totally riveting—in fact they don’t even get upstaged by the other two members, a sinuous female dancer and a fakir who walks on a bed of nails and eats fire. MK

Lamajamal

This local band calls itself “Gypsy surf” but claims to have harvested rhythmic influences everywhere from Egypt to Peru—and as you might expect given that sort of ambition, it sometimes gets tangled up in its own eclecticism. Not all cuisines work well on the same plate, after all, and even if you’re lucky enough to end up with something yummy, it won’t necessarily be nourishing. Usually when you add rock ’n’ roll to a stew like this, it gets blander by an order of magnitude, but fortunately these folks have just the right touch with that stuff—I’m not gonna say I can taste everything they say they’re putting in, but the end result is uplifting and exuberant all the same. MK

8 PM | LOGAN SQUARE AUDITORIUM| $12

Jose Conde y Ola Fresca

Singer-songwriter Jose Conde was born in Chicago to Cuban parents but raised in Miami, where he absorbed a dizzying range of Afro-Caribbean sounds. His terrific Revolucion (Pipiki/Mr. Bongo), though grounded in Cuban music, is strongly American in its hybrid vigor: guided by unjaundiced ears, he creates imaginative blends of all kinds of party-stoking grooves. The compas of Haiti, the cumbia of Colombia, the joropo of Venezuela, the soca of Trinidad, even good old stateside funk—it all goes in, and what comes out is like a flare of supernova-bright inspiration bursting from Conde’s head, not a calculated combination or a formalist exercise. He’s got a killer band, Ola Fresca, to bring his notions to life, and the presence of an occasional high-profile guest—Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, trombonist and salsa dura kingpin Jimmy Bosch—sharpens everyone’s performance instead of turning the tune into a showcase for the visiting star. No matter how many rhythmic or stylistic accents it manages at once, this music breathes organically, with slinky, propulsive beats supporting Conde’s simple melodies and pleasantly low-key vocals—rather than pile up flashy variations on a simple framework like a showboating sonero, he puts his faith in the strength of his songs. PM

Pacha Massive

This Bronx duo—Dominican multi-instrumentalist and producer Ramon Nova, formerly of King Chango, and Colombian bassist Maya Martinez—proves once again that electronica can absorb just about any kind of music and make it sound bland. On All Good Things (Nacional) Pacha Massive lays down a matrix of dub, drum ’n’ bass, trip-hop, and hip-hop and uses it to soak up a blend of neutered Latin rhythms—if you need a soundtrack for sipping chocolatinis in the chill-out room, this ought to do fine. Colombian singer Lucia Pulido turns in a great cameo on “La Verdolaga,” but her splendid voice makes the music’s lack of personality even more starkly obvious. PM

Alla

There’s not much competition, granted, but Alla is far and away Chicago’s best Spanish-language rock band—and Jorge Ledezma, the group’s producer and one of three core members, writes sophisticated pop hooks that few English-language outfits in town can match. On Alla’s newest recordings, lush, elegant studio-crafted atmospheres cradle the pretty singing of Lupe Martinez, and the combination of sunny melodies and seductive beats recalls both the delicacy of bossa nova and the retro-futurism of Stereolab. PM

9 PM | HEARTLAND CAFE | $10

Ismail Lumanovski & the NY Gypsy All-Stars

See above.

Steve Gibons & Gypsy Rhythm Project featuring Nicolae Feraru

These locals, led by manic violinist Steve Gibons, might be the city’s best practitioners of Roma music—and there’s only one ringer in the bunch, cimbalom virtuoso Nicolae Feraru, a Romanian expat who also leads his own group and a few years ago backed Serbian legend Saban Bajramovic at HotHouse. Gibons’s band brings the improvisational sophistication of jazz to Romanian and Bulgarian Gypsy music without smoothing out its ragged edges; bassist Dan Delorenzo and guitarist Mike Allemana spin some harmonically wild interludes, and drummer Tim Mulvenna deftly juggles the shifting meters no matter how brisk the tempo. PM

10 PM | SONOTHEQUE | $10 | 21+

Barrio Boogalu: the Super Barrio Brothers vs. the Agzate DJ crew

The time seems right for a boogaloo revival. A variant of New York salsa with heavy strains of soul and R&B, boogaloo was wildly popular in the late 60s thanks to ultracatchy hits by folks like Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, and Pete Rodriguez—the sound became so ubiquitous that just about everyone on the scene, including vets like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, dipped into it at least once. Over the past couple years new owners have resuscitated Fania Records, a powerhouse New York City label that was at the heart of that scene for much of the 60s and 70s, and the music is becoming available again. Tonight two teams of local crate diggers, the Super Barrio Brothers (Joe Bryl and Supreme Court) and the Agzate DJ crew (Abner Bardeguez and Omar Torres-Kortright), go head to head to see who has the best collection of Afro-Latin grooves. PM

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NOON | GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY

Balla Kouyate & World Vision

Balla Kouyate, a superb young balafon player from Mali, has already been through town supporting kora player Mamadou Diabate, but his band World Vision has legs of its own. The instrumentation is unlikely—Kouyate’s gorgeous, fluid balafon is accompanied only by the djembe of Pablo Dembele and the violin of Patty Tang—but it sure does work. Tang mostly stays in the background, sometimes approximating bass parts—her harmonies and countermelodies work like glue, connecting Kouyate’s warm and inventive lead lines to the simple, hypnotic hand-drum grooves. Most of World Vision’s material is traditional, but they do a killer version of “Chan Chan,” the Cuban classic by Compay Segundo. PM

1 PM | NAVY PIER

Chirgilchin

Burned out on Burning Man? I’m a fan of immersive experiences in alien cultures, homegrown or otherwise, and I was mighty tempted by the 12-person camp that Chirgilchin’s label, Pure Nature Music, organized in the southern Siberian republic of Tuva this August—on top of traditional Tuvan meals, accommodation in actual yurts, a visit to a harvest festival, and lessons in Tuvan language and music, campers got to sit in on rehearsals with this masterful mixed-gender trad quartet. (Well, not entirely trad, since there are very old taboos forbidding women from throat singing.) Chirgilchin’s latest, last fall’s Will Teach, translates some of their pedagogical techniques to disc: many of the songs are demonstrations of throat-singing styles from particular regions and as mastered by particular individuals. And of course we get to hear more of their instrumental prowess—austere, galloping rhythms, played on traditional lutes and spike fiddles built by Aldar Tamyn, whose handiwork is in demand across much of Mongolia and Siberia. MK

1 PM | BORDERS ON MICHIGAN

Jose Conde y Ola Fresca

See Friday, September 14.

3 PM | AFRIQUE RHYTHM FEST

DJ Le Spam

The DJ from the Spam Allstars (see below) spins a set of his own.

3 PM | BORDERS ON BROADWAY

Haale

Born in New York to Iranian parents, singer-songwriter Haale tries to work elements from the music of her ancestral homeland into the music of her cosmopolitan hometown, but arch Manhattan art-pop dances uneasily with the transcendent chants of the Sufi mystic tradition—and in cases like this, is David Byrne’s endorsement a blessing or a curse? Thankfully the power and conviction in her voice—buoyed by surging percussion and swirling figures played on an Iranian lute called a setar—carry her two self-released EPs, Paratrooper and Morning. And you can’t go wrong nicking lyrics from the poetry of Rumi and Attar. . . well, you can, but she doesn’t. Morning is the stronger disc to my ears, largely because it draws more on Persian sounds and less from pop, making for a richer, less structured version of her particular fusion. MK

3:30 PM | NAVY PIER

Lenka Dusilova

Slick, mediocre alt-rock exists just about everywhere, and singer Lenka Dusilova—a top 20 star in the Czech Republic—proves that eastern Europe is no exception. PM

4 PM | AFRIQUE RHYTHM FEST

Balla Kouyate & World Vision

See above.

6 PM | NAVY PIER

Puerto Plata

Singer and guitarist Puerto Plata (born Jose Cobles) is a living repository of vanishing traditions from the Dominican Republic. Now 84, he’s long had to struggle to get his music heard—because he grew up during the reign of dictator Rafael Trujillo, when guitar-based folk music was stigmatized as vulgar and low class, he could only find gigs in the seediest bars in the rough-and-tumble Santiago neighborhood of La Jolla—and he’s got the magnetic charisma of a man who’s been down but never out. He excels at the Dominican version of son, delivering his elegant, stripped-down songs with soulful gusto, and his repertoire also includes boleros, rancheras, a grassroots take on bachata, and an early form of merengue that’s long since been overshadowed by varieties based on accordions and saxophones. On the forthcoming Mujer de Cabaret (IASO), his first recording to be distributed internationally, he plays with the fire of a man one-fourth his age. PM

6 PM | HUMBOLDT PARK BOATHOUSE

Jose Conde y Ola Fresca

See Friday, September 14.

7:30 PM | MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $12

Hazmat Modine

It’s hard to find much of Old New York in New York these days, but on their latest, Bahamut (Barbes), Hazmat Modine sound like everything you might’ve heard spilling out of the windows on a Lower East Side street a century ago—except all mashed up into one seam- splitting mutant genre and amplified to within an inch of its life. I hear klezmer, blues, and swing, plus folk musics from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and Appalachia, and the instrumentation includes—well, God knows what it includes, actually, but the band’s fronted by gonzo dueling harmonicas, and I can positively identify slide guitar, saxophone, trumpet, a tuba that sounds like it’s been backed over by a truck, and (with help from the liner notes) a Chinese mouth organ and an Armenian double reed called a duduk. Oh, and Tuvan throat-singing stars Huun-Huur-Tu guest on three tracks—those are less “Doctor Who Meets the Gangs of New York” and more “Genghis Blues From the Black Lagoon.” MK

Chirgilchin

See above.

8 PM | OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC | $12

Romashka

Romano Drom, a band from Hungary led by Antal “Anti” Kovacs of the venerated Ando Drom, were scheduled to play this show until Wednesday—according to festival organizer Michael Orlove, they were denied a security clearance, though their visas were approved more than two weeks ago. Fortunately the Department of Cultural Affairs was able to find a replacement on extremely short notice. The nine-piece New York band Romashka, fronted by a Lithuanian-born singer, plays the Roma music of Romania, Russia, and the Balkans with instrumentation that includes tuba, accordion, violin, trumpet, guitar, and saxophone. PM

Ismail Lumanovski & the NY Gypsy All-Stars

See Friday, September 14.

9 PM | MARTYRS’ | $12 | 21+

Spam Allstars

It was only a matter of time before Miami produced a band like this—the city’s a vibrant collage of Afro-Caribbean cultures, a hip-hop hot spot, and a center of innovation in dance music. Unfortunately the Spam Allstars don’t do their hometown justice with the recent Electrodomesticos (Spamusica), a collection of funked-up Cuban grooves that sound like a kind of electro-descarga for jam-band fans. I’m sure the Allstars can rock a party as well as any DJ, but the album—despite impressive guests like James Brown saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, Martin Perna of Antibalas, and Latin-jazz percussionist Sammy Figueroa—is seriously a snore. PM

Pacha Massive

See Friday, September 14.

DJ David Chavez

Veteran DJ David Chavez, booker at the defunct HotHouse for the past few years, spins a mix of house, Latin, Brazilian, soul, funk, and electronica. PM

10 PM | KINETIC PLAYGROUND | $12 | 21+

Yohimbe Brothers

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the Yohimbe Brothers, led by Living Color guitarist Vernon Reid and DJ Logic, seem to be trying to go in a zillion directions at once—both musicians have always been restless, jumping from hard rock to hip-hop to jazz to blues. Their most recent album, The Tao of Yo (Thirsty Ear, 2004), is an entertaining, sprawling mess, with Reid waffling between solo heroics worthy of Sonny Sharrock and restrained vamps that serve the group sound, but ultimately the band seems like a typically incoherent side project—a real shame given the amount of talent on hand. PM

Haale

See above.

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1 PM | NAVY PIER

Andreas Kapsalis Trio

Chicago guitarist Andreas Kapsalis is a brilliant talent still in search of his best setting. His romantic, Spanish-inflected playing with this jazz trio, decked out with airy scalloping and filigree, occasionally meanders into the desert of new-age formlessness or sinks into the merely pretty—but on the group’s self-titled 2005 debut, he just as often seems to find a real purpose, following his star to some genuinely breathtaking places. Kapsalis’s latest project is the score for Nick and Marc Francis’s documentary about fair trade coffee, Black Gold. MK

1 PM | BORDERS ON CLARK

Puerto Plata

See Saturday, September 15.

2 PM | BORDERS ON 53RD

Hazmat Modine

See Saturday, September 15.

2 PM | ELI’S CHEESECAKE FESTIVAL

Balla Kouyate & World Vision

See Saturday, September 15.

3 PM | CLAUDIA CASSIDY THEATER

Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le’s Fragile Beauty Quintet

Huong Thanh, born in Saigon but now living in France, is a stunning interpreter of Vietnamese traditional music, the sweet tone of her voice contrasting beautifully with her sharp-edged phrasing, but I’m not all that keen on the arrangements jazz-rock guitarist Nguyen Le has put together for this group. He’s clearly skilled—I love it when he mimics traditional Vietnamese string instruments with his electric guitar—but too many songs are marred by treacly smooth-jazz trappings. PM

3:30 PM | AFRIQUE RHYTHM FEST

Louis Mhlanga

See Friday, September 14.

5:30 PM | AFRIQUE RHYTHM FEST

Lekan Babalola

As a young man Nigerian percussionist Lekan Babalola played in the Yoruba Christian Church run by his father in Lagos, then in 1980 moved to London to study engineering and ended up making music his profession. He was hired by fellow expat Gasper Lawal, an Afrobeat maestro who’d worked with rockers like Ginger Baker and the Rolling Stones, and Lawal’s broad perspective rubbed off—since then Babalola has landed work with everyone from Fela Kuti to Roy Ayers to Branford Marsalis to Ernest Ranglin. The open-ended Afrobeat on his recent Songs of Icon (Mr. Bongo) ripples with a strong jazz feel, using funk to propel rather than shape the grooves, and a second disc includes broken-beat and house remixes. PM

6 PM | HUMBOLDT PARK BOATHOUSE

Puerto Plata

See Saturday, September 15.

6 PM | NAVY PIER

Spam Allstars

See Saturday, September 15.

7 PM | INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan

See Friday, September 14.

8 PM | MARTYRS’ | $12 | 21+

Romashka

See Saturday, September 15.

Hazmat Modine

See Saturday, September 15.

9 PM | EMPTY BOTTLE | $12 | 21+

Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le’s Fragile Beauty Quintet

See above.

Eternals

Lots of bands don’t even exist for as long as it’s taken the Eternals to find the sweet spot in their heavy-duty hybrid of dub, funk, art-rock, electro, and hardcore—these locals have been playing together in one configuration or another for a decade, but only in the past three or four years have all their ideas made the leap from the drawing board to the sound system. The recent Heavy International (Aesthetics) is the second album front man Damon Locks and bassist Wayne Montana have recorded with drummer Tim Mulvenna, who’s turned out in many ways to be the trio’s missing link. With his help they push a rock-solid sound in just about every direction it’ll go—their fearless progressive instincts are about as punk as it gets. Off-kilter grooves, anchored by Montana’s nimble, sculptural bass lines, remain at the core of the music, but unexpected flavors jump out everywhere. Locks nonchalantly skips from an eerie falsetto to a hectoring rant to a kind of rhythmic jabbering derived from dancehall, tossing in odd melismatic flourishes that seem inspired by Oum Kalthoum records or east African taarab singing—and Mulvenna’s intricate, hypnotizing beats draw from an equally wide range of influences. I don’t know if there’s another band anywhere doing such a killer job playing to both the head and the feet. PM

9 PM | SONOTHEQUE | $5

Lenky Don

Born in Trinidad but raised in Brooklyn, Lenky Don delivers a slightly stale hybrid of dancehall and hip-hop. It ain’t bad, but if you were paying attention you probably heard something like it five years ago—and if you weren’t, he won’t inspire you to catch up. PM

DJ Rikshaw

Richard Smith, aka DJ Rikshaw, has one of the city’s finest collections of vintage Jamaican music—rocksteady, roots reggae, hard-core ska, mind-bending dub plates, and more. He’s been sharing it with Chicagoans since 1995, when he founded the Deadly Dragon Sound System DJ crew to soften up Wicker Park indie-rock types and get them on the dance floor. These days he’s the resident Sunday-night DJ at Sonotheque. PM

9:30 PM | HIDEOUT

17 Hippies

This veteran world-music group from Berlin, which actually has 13 members at last count, is eclectic in a particularly annoying way: with only a half-baked understanding of anything they’re appropriating, they combine elements of traditional music from Romania, Morocco, and most points in between to create a deliberately zany melange that might appeal to people who think They Might be Giants are paragons of sophisticated wit. PM

Friday-Sunday | Monday-Thursday | Venues

Venues

Afrique Rhythm Fest Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson, 773-463-7200, afriquenewsmagazine.com
Borders 4718 N. Broadway, 773-334-7338, bordersstores.com
Borders 2817 N. Clark, 773-935-3909, bordersstores.com
Borders 1539 E. 53rd, 773-752-8663, bordersstores.com
Borders 830 N. Michigan, 312-573-0564, bordersstores.com
Borders 150 N. State, 312-606-0750, bordersstores.com
Chicago Latvian Community Center 4146 N. Elston, 773-463-2288, ethnicdance.net
Claudia Cassidy Theater Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org
Conaway Center Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, 312-344-7188, colum.edu
Daley Civic Center 50 W. Washington, 312-744-3370, cityofchicago.org/specialevents
Eli’s Cheesecake Festival 6701 W. Forest Preserve, 773-205-3800, elicheesecake.com/festival.aspx
Empty Bottle 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, emptybottle.com
Garfield Park Conservatory 300 N. Central Park, 312-746-5100, garfield-conservatory.org
Heartland Cafe 7000 N. Glenwood, 773-465-8005, heartlandcafe.com
Hideout 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433 or 866-468-3401, hideoutchicago.com
Humboldt Park Boathouse 1301 N. Sacramento, 312-742-7529, chicagoparkdistrict.com
Instituto Cervantes 31 W. Ohio, 312-335-1996, chicago.cervantes.es
International House University of Chicago, 1414 E. 59th, 773-753-2274, ihouse.uchicago.edu
Kinetic Playground 1113 W. Lawrence, 773-769-5483, thekineticplayground.com
Logan Square Auditorium 2539 N. Kedzie, 773-252-6179, lsachicago.com
Martyrs’ 3855 N. Lincoln, 773-404-9494 or 800-594-8499, martyrslive.com
Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660 or 312-397-4010, mcachicago.org
Navy Pier 600 E. Grand, 312-595-5184, navypier.com
Old Town School of Folk Music 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000 or 866-468-3401, oldtownschool.org
Preston Bradley Hall Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org
Pritzker Pavilion Millennium Park, Michigan & Randolph, 312-742-1168, millenniumpark.org
Randolph Cafe Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org
Sonotheque 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-7600, sonotheque.net

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