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 Robert Williams
Micah Salkind
Legendary promoter who, along with Frankie Knuckles as his DJ, established Chicago’s prototypical house music venue, The Warehouse. Robert Williams came of age in New York City’s underground discotheques before moving to Chicago and working with the US Studios collective who had been attempting to translate that New York energy for Chicago audiences. After Williams parted ways with the group, he created some of the City’s most beloved juice bars, including the Music Box, where he established Ron Hardy as one of Chicago’s top house music DJs.
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Interview with Shaun J. Wright
Micah Salkind
Born and raised in West suburban Chicagoland, Shaun J. Wright spent most of his teen years immersed in the sounds of house music. His love for dance music expanded throughout his high school years as he partook in the underground dance scene now globally known as Juke. While in undergrad at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he developed his skills as a dancer/voguer in professional dance companies and the ballroom scene. After acquiring an MA Fashion Curation, from the London College of Fashion, Wright enjoyed an active career in fashion in New York City. That is where he met Andrew Butler, founder of Hercules and Love Affair, and began a whirlwind collaboration with the ensemble as a vocalist. Currently, Wright is exhilarating dance floors worldwide as a DJ and is featured on several acclaimed releases with Stereogamous, Bell Boys, Bobmo, Kiki, Alinka, and System of Survival with more stellar collaborations on the horizon.
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Interview with Teri Bristol and Val 'Psychobitch' Scheinpflug
Micah Salkind
DJs Teri Bristol and Val “Psychobitch” Scheinpflug came of age as DJs during the late 1980s in Chicago, having been born and raised in the City’s south suburbs and North Side. They cut their chops at legendary mixed/alternative venues like Medusa’s, learning from master spinners like Mark Stephens, before developing their own inclusive gay nights at spaces like Crobar, where Bristol acted as music director for twelve years, and the duo held their infamous Glee Club party. The duo is well-regarded for its path-breaking work as house producers and DJs during the 1990s and beyond.
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Interview with Toy 'Tonka Toi' Foster and Victor 'The Dizz' Blackful
Micah Salkind
Foster has been a supporter of house music since her youth, acting as a promoter and producer with the Chosen Few Picnic each year in Jackson Park. Blackful became well known in the City as a radio personality and music entrepreneur when he co-hosted WGCI’s Bad Boy Radio during the early 2000s. Both were avid listeners of hot mix radio as teenagers, noting the critical role that cassette tapes played in disseminating Chicago’s house sounds.