INDY Selects: What to Do in the Triangle This Week

If you’re out and about for Durham’s annual Third Friday Art Walk and Gallery Crawl, consider stopping by a familiar downtown storefront that’s not usually open in the evenings: Merge Records. The local record company is opening its doors for Office Hours, its first-ever Third Friday event that will include a sale of music paraphernalia—vinyl, CDs, merch, and other items—alongside a deejay set from WUNC’s Brian Burns and refreshments from Ocelot Brewing Co. 

While you’re there, catch up on some recent shake-ups at the hometown label, known for megawatt indie artists, both local and national, like Superchunk, Caribou, The Mountain Goats, and Waxahatchee. Just last week, Merge announced that it had reached a partnership agreement with Secretly Group, an organization behind four record labels, with the Indiana-based group acquiring a 50 percent stake in Merge. It’s a move that will bolster Merge and potentially increase its distribution.

Juneteenth, sometimes called the “nation’s second independence day,” celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people by federal decree on June 19, 1865. And while it’s a holiday marking a specific moment in history, it’s also an opportunity to celebrate, honor, and document contemporary Black life today.

Proofs of Life, a special edition of local artist Derrick Beasley and Marcella Zigbuo Camara’s open studio series, Open Stu, is such an opportunity—an “invitation to the North Carolina creative community to create archival memory that centers Blackness,” as the NCMA website states. Against the backdrop of the NCMA’s visionary current exhibit, The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, participants are invited to come by on Friday evening (RSVPs are encouraged) and sit for a portrait by Beasley and explore “archival ephemera curated by Camara from both their personal collections and the NCMA’s archive.” Childcare is available, and there will be a cash bar with refreshments.

There’s a killer hook in the Atlanta-born (now based in North Carolina) singer Misha Fair’s song “Not One” that goes like this: “So I pour a little gas on / Watch it burn down / Who’s gonna smolder these embers now / Who’s gonna tell me what’s not allowed? / Not one … hmm hmm / And I’m gonna ignite this GA sky / Like fireworks on the 4th of July / Who’s gonna dim this light of mine / Not one!” Fair’s barn-burning lyrics are paired with a barn-burning voice—a little soulful, a little rock, 100 percent classic—making her an artist to look out for. Fair takes the stage at this special Juneteenth Jamboree event curated by Kamara Thomas and presented by the Country Soul Songbook. As the Cary Theater website puts it: if you’re still on a high from Biscuits & Banjos, keep the music going with Fair. Tickets are $12.

The longest day of the year is nigh, and on June 20 at 10:42, summer begins in its official calendar capacity. Throughout history, this long-lit occasion has been marked by cold plunges, maypole dances, bonfires, and other rites and rituals; in Durham, it’s marked by a festival at Shadowbox Studio where revelers can take in three evenings of performances. On Friday, catch the Body Orchestra (burlesque dancers paired with stringed instruments) and How to Talk to Strangers (“a pairing of scratch turntablists with string players where they will ‘talk’ to each other through their instruments,” per the event description). Saturday and Sunday follow with more of Shadowbox’s specialty: a blend of experimental film, music, and performance.

It’s hard to believe, but next Tuesday marks three years since the Dobbs decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion. Shattering though that decision may have been, reproductive rights often get lost in the noise of all the other rights currently being stripped. But this is a good time to remember that ongoing fight, especially since reproductive rights activist Loretta Ross will be in town, the night before the anniversary, for a reading and talk on her new book, Calling In.

Per the event description, Ross’s memoir-manifesto details her “five remarkable decades in activism, highlighting her work as a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists and a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism.” The reading and talk is an event put on by the new North Carolina INGO Ipas, which hosts an event series called Read to Resist. Learn more about Ross, Ipas, and the campaign at the event, which kicks off at six p.m.

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