Video Americain is about to celebrate its 20th year on Cold Spring Lane. Take that, Netflix!
Video Americain. Even the name sounds like a relic from a previous generation, like having a store called Polaroids R Us or the Atari Superstore. Of course, Video Americain rents DVDs now, too-...
For nearly a century, Baltimoreans have been painting window screens, a tradition that is alive and well.
John Oktavec likes to say that he leaves his body when he paints pictures on window screens. In the after-dinner quiet of his Pasadena home, Oktavec brushes color on a wire screen. "Painting takes...
Jack Carneal's field recordings of Malian musicians have made him a reluctant world music entrepreneur.
Amid the agreeable mix of spirited ngoni plucking and syncopated karignan scraping on the second track of Bougouni Yaalali—a compilation of indigenous musicians recorded by Jack Carneal in the West...
Four local collectors discuss various ways of putting together an impressive art collection.
Twenty years ago, Michael Salcman's 7-year-old daughter Dara was walking through the family's house in Homeland when she glanced up at him and asked, "Daddy, why do we live in a museum?"
It was an...
Native Deen, Arty Hill and the Long Gone Daddys, and Wye Oak
Native DeenNot Afraid To Stand Alone (self-released)Fusing hip-hop rhymes, soul harmonies, and Middle Eastern rhythms, Baltimore/D.C.-based Native Deen frames its Muslim-centric message with an...
Afaa Michael Weaver, Max Apple, and Michael Buckley
Afaa Michael WeaverThe Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (Pittsburgh)Weaver grew up in East Baltimore, served a voluntary stint in the U.S. Army Reserves, and worked at the Proctor and Gamble...
Blake LeyhX-Ray Yankee Zulu Tango (self-released)A few weeks ago, I was out for a ride with this CD playing in the car. Ostensibly an ambient (background music) disc, it proved to be anything but...
George Liston Seay, Jonathon Scott Fuqua, and Jeana DelRosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothe
George Liston Seay/edited by Peter J. BeanThe Art of Conversation (Johns Hopkins)Culled from taped interviews at D.C.'s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, this volume features down-...
It won't have Johnny Depp, Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop, or Traci Lords, but the musical version of John Waters's 1990 film Cry-Baby will have plenty of cool-kid drapes and uptight squares (plus new songs)....
Park School's Laura Amy Schlitz is still ebullient from her Newbery Medal win.
Laura Amy Schlitz was trying to cheer herself up in the early morning hours of January 14 when her phone rang. The longtime Park School librarian had already concluded that her children's book,...
