n. pl. rites of passage A ritual or ceremony signifying an event in a person’s life indicative of a transition from one stage to another. Much like its predecessors, hip hop has its own rites of passage that varies little among local scenes throughout the country. Gabe Benn (emcee “Asheru”) was 21 when he went through […]
Ira Aldridge was a teenager discovering his love of theatre before becoming the first of his kind to be known internationally. William Henry Brown established a theatre before writing what many considered to be the first play of its kind. James Hewlett was a tailor by trade before becoming the first of his kind to […]
Stand in any metropolitan corridor and ask the art scene denizens there what they know about Aniekan Udofia. Some might list the 33-year-old among the most talented visual artists of his generation, with national attention on his work in hip hop magazines such as XXL, Vibe and The Source. And on a local level, others might […]
Hey, parents. Remember scolding your kids for sitting in front of the TV all day, or for texting at the dinner table? Or maybe you considered it a waste of time for them to be on the computer – playing with other online gamers from around the world, or surfing the net to watch their favorite music […]
A year after emigrating with her husband to the U.S. from Germany, Soline Krug, a multi-disciplinary artist, is still trying to get her footing in the D.C. arts scene. She’s done OK on her own, for now, with an art show at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Va., and recently exhibited at Artomatic in D.C. […]
At the beginning of this month, I got an opportunity to travel to Kingston, Jamaica, to write about the island’s history and also cover the island’s 47th Independence Day celebration. Below is Part III of the travel series. The publication I traveled on behalf of did not post all the articles written in the travel […]
At the beginning of this month, I got an opportunity to travel to Kingston, Jamaica, to write about the island’s history and also cover the island’s 47th Independence Day celebration. Below is Part II of the travel series. The publication I traveled on behalf of did not post all the articles written in the travel […]
It’s a Friday night, when emcee Ardamus (Artemis Thompson) lets loose on a chrome-handle microphone upstairs in what used to be Capital City Records on Washington, D.C.’s historic U Street. A crowd of mostly White youth pack the humid record shop — some wiping their sweaty faces and thumbing through wooden shelves of vinyl records, […]
Alan W. King 