Thanks to our sponsor: Hope for Teens is Wake County’s ONLY organization dedicated to the LGBTQ+ Youth. Hope for Teens is hosting the 2nd Annual Queer Prom for all LGBTQ+ High School Students and their allies to include awards, dancing, and performances! Join us on June 1st.
Hi! Happy weekend.
Two of the Triangle’s big culture festivals are now behind us, for the year, but of course, we’re still dreaming about them—to relive, you can wade through a gallery of glitzy photographs and read writer Ryan Cocca’s winding, trippy dispatch from Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park:
Comprised mostly of out-of-towners, whose frames of reference were not the local fare of Hopscotch or Moogfest, the drumbeat of commercial encroachment seemed hardly noticeable at all, and the trademark Dreamville aura of community and earnestness felt dutifully preserved.
The range of attendees, as diverse and wholesome as the festival’s inaugural edition in 2019, underscored the point: a mother from Winston-Salem with her teenage son, who had been gifted the tickets as a birthday present (during the Teezo Touchdown set, she said: “I’ve never heard of him before but I love him!”); a father from South Carolina with his college-aged son, excited to see the OG acts on the bill like Jeezy and 50 Cent; a trio of twentysomething sisters named Tasha, Tia, and Tamara who buy early-bird tickets every year; a massage therapist from Baltimore who hung back from the most packed, tighter areas because of her anxiety but said that when her younger cousin wants to see certain acts up close, “I’ll do it for her.”
Cocca also writes the hip-hop blog Super Empty, which the INDY has been partnering with for a song of the week series.
It would be impossible to write about the Triangle’s hip-hop and broader music community this week without mention of the passing of Joshua “Rowdy” Rowsey, who died on Wednesday at the age of 32. Rowsey worked at the INDY years ago and has been a passionate changemaker in the local music scene as an artist and as executive director of Blackspace, among many, many other things. More to come, but here is an INDY interview with Rowsey from just two months ago. Rest in peace, Josh.
Thanks for reading, y’all.
Earthgang performs at Dreamville. Photo by Brett Villena.
elsewhere in the culture section
The singular Shirlette Ammons has a new album, Spectacles, out next week. Read writer Jordan Lawrence’s feature on the album here.
Tomorrow is 4/20 and Monday is Earth Day: Dive into it all with our Earth Day package, which includes a feature on Raleigh’s Hemp Generation, a close look at Duke’s follow-through on its climate commitment, a feature on a handful of Durham entrepreneurs making innovative good on promises to “reduce and reuse,” and an interview with an entomologist about the incoming cicada brood‘s “ascent of a lifetime,” which features my favorite illustration and pull quotes in some time, and which will certainly deepen the Biblical-feeling dimensions of this year. (See also: earthquakes, political unrest). For good measure, here are Earth Day pieces from last year: A look at climate change across the Triangle and a feature on aquamation.
ICYMI: A review of Civil War and an interview with Naomi Dix about the queer nightclub and bar she’s planning to open in Durham.
out and about in the triangle
In Durham, cocktail bar Glori is sadly closing after a short downtown run, and Lady Gold Tacos—the breakfast taco pop-up cart outside Durham’s Remedy Room—is back with inside and late-night hours. In Raleigh, a look at rooftop restaurant La Terrazza; meanwhile, taproom Bru Public House is expanding to Carrboro and the Raleigh location of Armadillo Grill is closing.
The NCMA’s performing arts season lineup is now live, with film screenings and outdoor concerts from performers that include Wilco, Babyface, and Andrew Bird. (Once, many years ago during a downpour at an Andrew Bird outdoor NCMA concert, an emotional stranger grabbed my hand and held it for the duration of Andrew Bird’s last song—perhaps you, too, can have such a strange experience this summer.) The Squirrel Nut Zipper’s Tom Maxwell has a book out about the golden years of Chapel Hill’s alt-rock scene and Mipso has a new song out about Jesus and weed.
out and about in the world
On the “dumbphone boom” and a nice poem about April.
— Sarah Edwards —
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