Dr. Micah Salkind is the Deputy Director of The City of Providence Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Department of American Studies at Brown University. As part of his work, he collaborates with large non-profit cultural institutions as well as emerging artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs. He also serves on the boards of the Providence Public Library and Community MusicWorks and is an ongoing collaborator with dancers and scholars in Chicago’s Honey Pot Performance collective and Matthew Cumbie Projects’ “Growing Our Own Gardens” initiative.
A DJ, sound designer, and curator, he is the author of Do You Remember House? Chicago’s Queer of Color Undergrounds for which these oral history interviews were collected. The work "historicizes house music, the rhythmically focused electronic dance sound born in the post-industrial maroon spaces of Chicago's queer, black, and Latino social dancers. Working from oral history interviews, archival research, and performance ethnography, it argues that the remediation and adaptation of house by multiple and overlapping crossover communities in its first decade shaped the ways that contemporary Chicago house music producers, DJs, dancers, and promoters re-remember and re-animate house as an archive indexing experiences of queer of colour congregation."
Currently, the audio files and biographical information are available; transcripts will be added when complete.
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Interview with Aay 'Nina Ramone' Preston-Myint
Micah Salkind
Aay Preston-Myint is an artist, publisher, and educator working in the San Francisco Bay Area, after several years building a career and community in Chicago, Illinois. His practice employs both visual and collaborative strategies to investigate memory and kinship, often within the specific context of queer community and history. In addition to his studio work, he is a founder of No Coast, an artist partnership that prints and distributes affordable contemporary artwork, is co-director of the Chicago Art Book Fair, and has served as a DJ and organizer for Chances Dances, a party supporting and showcasing the work of queer artists in Chicago. He is currently the Program Manager at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, a member of the studio collective Real Time and Space in Oakland, and a Fellow at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.
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Interview with Alan King, Esq.
Micah Salkind
DJ Alan King is, according to a recent article in Crain’s Chicago Business, living a double life. He’s an employment litigation lawyer for the Chicago office of Philadelphia-based firm Drinker Biddle by day, and a longstanding member of the Chosen Few Disco Corp. by night. Influenced by DJs like Michael Ezebukwu and Frankie Knuckles, King got his start DJing at juice bars and parochial schools for teens on Chicago’s South Side during the early 1980s. He is part of the team that produces the annual Chosen Few Old School Reunion Picnic each year in Jackson Park during July 4th weekend.
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Interview with Alena 'Alinka' Ratner
Micah Salkind
Alinka’s musical journey began at an early age in Kiev, Ukraine, where she was born and spent her early childhood. Raised by a pianist mother, she began reluctantly learning to play the piano. Her family emigrated to Chicago from the USSR as refugees in the late 80’s. Her first exposure to House Music came from local radio shows that played tracks by Chicago legends like Cajmere and DJ Funk. In 2011 Chicago DJ Justin Long recruited her to be resident for his .Dotbleep party at Smartbar where she honed her skills until 2008. In 2012, an impromptu meeting with former Hercules and Love Affair vocalist, Shaun J. Wright, changed her life forever. The pair instantly bonded over their shared love for Chicago House Music and Cajual Records, and it wasn’t long before their evolving friendship resulted in what would be the first of many musical collaborations. Alinka has become an in demand DJ both on her home turf and across the globe.
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Interview with Andre Hatchett
Micah Salkind
A true DJ’s DJ, Andre Hatchett may be one of the Chicago juice bar era’s most beloved artists, yet he is almost unknown outside the City. As he tells the story, the younger Hatchett brother had already been making pause mixes, and pause remixes, on cassette tapes for some time when older brother Tony gave him a chance to get on the decks at his aunt’s birthday party. That night he realized that he had an innate talent for mixing and an irrepressible love for the craft of DJing. Hatchett moved on from spinning family functions to carrying equipment for his older brother and The Chosen Few, all the while developing his taste and appreciation for a diverse array of danceable sounds partying at the original Warehouse at 206 South Jefferson. He went on to DJ events for David Risqué’s Gucci Productions and Craig Loftis’ Vertigo, joining The Chosen Few Disco Corp. in the early 1980s. Even though Frankie Knuckles never formally mentored him, the Godfather had a formative influence on Hatchett’s sonic approach and work ethos. Hatchett emphasizes that his craft was built on listening for both repertoire and programming, and that Knuckles was an inspiration on both fronts. He counts as his protégés DJs Celeste Alexander and Keith Fobbs, and was a co-resident DJ at The Pleasuredome with Pharris Thomas.