Dr. Micah Salkind is the Special Projects Manager for The City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + 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 Natalie “La Spacer” Murillo
Micah Salkind
Raised in Chicago by a single immigrant mother who left their home country for a chance to give their child more opportunities, Natalie Murillo fell in love with music at the age of 3. Grew up involved in their school orchestra and marching band as an adolescent. Went on to study music production and engineering at Columbia College, but that was short lived due to the 2008 recession and their mother’s immigration status did not allow her to take out a student loan. She decided to continue their artistic practice independently as “La Spacer,” and started collaborating with performance artists, visual artists, and multi-disciplinary graduates mainly from SAIC. La Spacer was determined to build her own dream production studio. Determined, bit by bit she built her studio using drum machines, synthesizers, and a vocal booth, and began composing, producing, and performing their work. In 2015, she co-founded “TRQPITECA,” a Chicago-based artist duo and production company creating spaces and opportunities for local and international artists who identify as queer (LGBTQIA+), ALAANA, and/or allies to experiment and thrive.
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Interview with Nishi Roothan
Micah Salkind
Dancer Nishi Roothan came of age in Hyde Park before attending Whitney Young arts magnet and the Chicago Academy for the Arts. She began studying Egyptian dance as a teen, and later earned a BA in dance from Columbia, but has always cultivated both a studio and club practice. Roothan began partying at raves in the early 2000s and later became a fixture at spaces like Smartbar.
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Interview with Ozzie Green
Micah Salkind
Ozzie Green is a Latinx music entrepreneur born and raised on Chicago’s Northwest Side. He has been involved in the City’s hip hop and house scenes since the early 1980s.
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Interview with Reggie Corner
Micah Salkind
Reggie Corner is the music entrepreneur behind “The Way We Were.” He has helped to curate exhibitions like the Chicago Cultural Center’s Move Your Body, in addition to promoting and producing outdoor programs like House in the Park and the Chosen Few Old School Reunion Picnic. A fixture on the Chicago house scene since the early 1980s, Corner has been a force for preserving house culture for the generation that birthed it.