View This Email In Your Browser

Hi! Happy weekend.

Hope you’re doing well. Below, find links to a few INDY stories and links to a few other local culture happenings that have caught our eye recently. 

First, though, here’s a story on Fandango de Durham, which takes place tomorrow (May 10) at the Avila Center for Community Leadership. Fandangos are block-party-like events organized around Son Jarocho, a genre of folk music that originated in Veracruz, Mexico, and dates back centuries. Like many forms of folk music—bluegrass, the blues—Son Jarocho is rooted in themes of liberation and social change. (Themes more relevant than ever!) 

Ahead of the event, I spoke with organizers Sophia Enriquez and Dorian Gomez (who you may remember from her involvement in the magazine Nuevo South) about Fandango de Durham, which is drawing musical collectives from around the country and which marks its third year this weekend. 

“We also want people to see,” Enriquez says of the event, “that the South has it going on. And we’ve got people holding it down and doing really amazing things. It’s a great place to build a Latino community, despite some historical narratives and contexts that might suggest otherwise.”  

Finally, you’ll find more details about this in the next few weeks, but…come roller skate with the INDY at Wheels Durham on June 12! All ticket proceeds go to support the LGBTQ+ Center of Durham. If you haven’t made it out to the newly reopened Wheels, this is the community event to turn out for, and we are greatly looking forward to seeing your sick moves. Thanks for reading!

Participants at the 2024 Fandago de Durham. Photo courtesy of Roderico Y. Diaz & Emily Gibson Rhyne from Iximché Media.

elsewhere in the culture section

Here are a few more ideas of things to do this weekend. 

Earlier this week, I visited 11-year-old author and budding botanist, Bea Boggs Allen, to learn more about houseplants, ahead of her (and her mom, Belle Boggs’) book talk at Flyleaf Books. 

Meanwhile, Lena Geller visited Shanghai (Durham’s oldest operating Chinese restaurant!) for our new series Lunch Money. Does an order of Cantonese chicken, wonton soup, fried rice, and a 20 percent tip slide under our $15-or-less goal? Read her recap to find out. 

ICYMI: On NC Theatre’s Closure. Remembering Raleigh’s matriarch of the hardcore scene. Local incoming! films (I’m trying to see Sinners this weekend!). The Duke Arts summer concert series lineup. A lovely review of TaTaco.

out and about in the triangle

Carrboro is launching its inaugural bluegrass festival this year on May 28. Mipso, the popular four-piece folk outfit that launched in Chapel Hill, is hanging up its hat this fall. (Relatedly, UNC’s Alpine Bagel is closing, making this a uniquely nostalgic week for anyone who went to UNC-Chapel Hill between 20010-ish and now).

Tomorrow has the hottest event of the year: strawberry day at the Durham Farmer’s Market. Arts North Carolina puts out a call for folks to rally behind the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The 55th annual Bimbé Cultural Arts Festival is coming up, as is Artsplosure. A special showing of No Other Land is coming up at the Carolina Theatre. Here’s the New York Times’ take on Biscuits & Banjos. (And hey, if you missed it, here’s mine!) 

— Sarah Edwards —
Send me an email | Find me on Twitter
If you’d like to sponsor the Field Guide,
please contact [email protected]

Want even more local arts and culture content?
Support us by joining the INDY Press Club.
Join the INDY Press Club

Sarah Edwards is culture editor of the INDY, covering cultural institutions and the arts in the Triangle. She joined the staff in 2019 and assumed her current role in 2020.