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“I think it’s a really exciting time at the Tribune,” said a young reporter there, when it was announced that Gerould Kern is retiring after close to eight years as editor and editorial page editor Bruce Dold will take his place. Young reporters are like that. Older reporters aren’t feeling the moment as giddily. “Bruce runs a vigorous editorial page, one that engages seriously and constantly on issues that matter,” says an admirer....

In 2006 invaluable reissue label RetroAfric dropped Endurance, a collection of killer 70s grooves from Les Mangalepa, a band of Congolese expats making music in Kenya. Their irresistible blend of Congolese rumba and Kenyan benga combined bubbly, crystalline guitars with stuttering yet fluid rhythms that inflected their almost martial intensity with clave patterns adapted from Cuban music. A fleet horn section occasionally delivered extended solos, particularly on trombone—courtesy of Evany Kabila Kabanze, who was also one of the group’s soulful singers....

Despite Pilsen’s claims to the crown, the best Mexican food in Chicago can be found within the confines of Little Village—which makes a trip to Riot Fest a good opportunity to pair its abundance of music with the Douglas Park area’s wealth of restaurants and food vendors. Though the fest doesn’t allow reentry, you can make time to dig in before or after your visit—and in doing so, you’ll directly support the community that’s giving up its regular Sunday futbol matches in order to host your favorite bands....

The National Association of City Transportation Officials held its annual conference in the Loop October 30 through November 2, drawing some 800 leaders, planners, and advocates. Workshop topics included “Designing streets for kids,” “Breaking barriers to cycling,” “Introducing empathy into the public process,” and “Bringing racial and social equity into transportation planning.” “Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism” outlines strategies to prevent the latter outcome. “As cities guide the autonomous revolution, we want technology to solve our mobility challenges; not settle for more of the same,” NACTO president Seleta Reynolds said in a statement accompanying the document....

Trump hates China in order to better hate the United States; by blaming the Chinese for the virus, he can pretend he’s not at fault for our own dead and our own misery. In that poisoned atmosphere, the new self-titled album by Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn isn’t just a relief but a call to solidarity. Born in Beijing and based in Nashville, Fei plays the guzheng, a traditional Chinese zither, while Washburn plays clawhammer-style banjo....

Beurrage beurrage.com When you think of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, most likely you think of two pieces of white bread hastily slathered with Skippy and Smuckers and slapped together, shoved into a brown paper bag, and smushed in the bottom of a backpack until lunchtime, at which point it’s gobbled down in a crowded cafeteria table or at an office desk. There’s something to be said for simple food as fuel, but what if things were different?...

Friends of the Parks Cassandra Francis is going far, far away. Friends of the Parks president Cassandra Francis inspired some creative speculation last week, when she abruptly left her job. So the speculation swirled. All Francis originally said about her departure was that it was a good time to be “moving on.” But Wednesday, the Washington Post Style blog reported a much more mundane reason for Francis’s exit. She’s joining her husband, Northwestern University law professor Clinton Francis, whose appointment as founding dean of a new NU-mentored law school in Qatar was announced in February....

The output of local label Hausu Mountain ranges as widely as the psychedelic folk of Eartheater‘s RIP Chrysalis (2015) and the assaultive techno of Davey Harms’s Cables (2016). The common thread linking most of its releases, though, is an aesthetic of studied avant-garde hermeticism: everyone on Hausu Mountain seems to be sliding down their own tunnel to their navel. Not only does it sound like Eartheater has never met Davey Harms, but you’d also suspect that neither of them has ever met anyone....

The two short, rarely-seen comedies on this engaging bill share a common plot point. In each, a young man is put on trial before a jury of his peers for misdeeds the jurors themselves could be guilty of, or at least sympathetic to. The Devil and Daniel Webster, Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1938 stage version of his 1936 story, is set in 1841 New Hampshire. It tells of a farmer, Jabez Stone, whose marriage party is interrupted by the arrival of Satan....

2020 started off so well. January and February were great months for 27-year-old rapper, dancer, and performance poet Del Marie. After years of performing at small live events, things were finally coming together for her. She had branched out from performance poetry to writing and singing her own songs and had recently completed a video of one of her songs, “Black Wall Street.” The video, which featured both Del Marie rapping and documentary footage shot at Chicago Black-owned businesses, dropped February 28....

As Thanksgiving bombshells go, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool’s letter of apology regarding his role in “invoicegate” isn’t anywhere near as explosive as the release of the Laquan McDonald video. In 2016, Claypool, Emanuel, and Ronald Marmer, the chief lawyer for CPS, decided to sue the state on the grounds that its funding formula discriminated against low-income black and Latino kids in Chicago. Claypool seemingly was still determined to hire Jenner & Block....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Nonsun, Black Snow Desert Ukrainian duo Nonsun made their full-length debut in January with an arid sprawl of hypnotizing instrumental doom. This stark, pitch-black music drapes crawling drones atop distorted chords as huge as hills, while icy arpeggiated guitars meander in and out of phase with tolling bass and tumbling drums. Fried desert-­rock riffs and clip-­clopping percussion give the darkness a vaguely rustic flavor, but the album’s eerie ambient passages and eruptions of distant thunder mostly bring to mind vast un­­inhabited spaces—the kind that make you think about how far away the wind comes from....

Elevator Lucki Ecks Between the surprise release of Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment’s Surf last Thursday and Lil Durk’s eagerly awaited major-label debut (Remember My Name) landing in stores yesterday it might’ve been easy to miss Lucki Ecks‘s third mixtape, X (Vol. 1), which came out Saturday. On X the local MC-producer continues to rap like someone who sounds like they’re just barely awake—and he continues to make it sound interesting, teasing out a subtle tension in his cool, lackadaisical flow....

Welcome to Flopcorn, where Reader writers and contributors pay tribute to our very favorite bad movies. In this installment, social media editor Brianna Wellen tries to find the appeal in her father’s favorite series. Just before the holidays I woke up to see that my dad had left me a voicemail at six in the morning. It’s the kind of thing that would make most people freak out and assume someone was dead, but I know my father well enough to know that this means he had to tell me about something he had seen on TV....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Cook County clerk David Orr should consider running in the 49th Ward. My obit for the lakefront liberal was barely out before I got one of those calls for clarification from a man I’ll call Michael Gaylord James—as that’s his name. James wanted me to know that, yes, liberalism may be dead as a doornail in Lincoln Park, where 43rd Ward voters gave Mayor Rahm more than 80 percent of the vote....

There may be no better musical representation of the adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts than instrumental postrock group Tortoise. Nearly 30 years after its inception, the Chicago-born quintet continue to synergize the disparate influences of its members, combining groove-filled, indie-leaning Krautrock with electronic flourishes, jazz sensibilities, global influences, and minimalist beauty. Though a few members still reside in Chicago, the rest are now spread throughout the country, making it even more rare for the band to record or perform—and this is a group that took seven years to complete its most recent album, 2016’s The Catastrophist (Thrill Jockey)....

One summer night during the mid-1980s, Mayor Harold Washington visited the Taste Entertainment Center in the heart of Englewood. He walked into the kitchen, put on an apron, and offered some culinary advice to the staff. Even more remarkable is that Taste has survived the ups and downs that hit Englewood for four decades. On Saturday, May 5, a Taste reunion featuring house music legend Farley “Jackmaster” Funk and former staff could serve as an introduction to some and a reminder for the old heads....

When we say essential frontline workers we think of doctors and nurses, delivery workers, and all of the industries and people providing us with the resources we need to stay alive. But as the United States surpasses 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, another industry has been witness to the devastating toll of the pandemic. Funeral homes have always been the last responders, serving families during some of their darkest moments. Now with an increased workload, a lack of resources and space, and ever-changing regulations, funeral directors are having to adapt to the unique needs of the profession, while worrying for their own safety....

Mdou Moctar’s albums bring to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant; taken individually, each one gives a misleading impression of the Nigerien artist’s full measure. His first recording, Anar (Sahel Sounds), is a cheap digital production with galloping drum loops and liberally auto-tuned vocals that would be the perfect soundtrack for a Mario Kart video game set in Northern Africa. Last year’s Sousoume Tamachek is a solo studio session, but Moctar’s imploring vocals, hand percussion, and rustic guitar picking affirm his music’s roots as communal entertainment for desert caravan stops and small-town picnics....

The provocative poster art for this year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival shows a border wall with a couple of sections that have been flattened by an advancing path of celluloid film. The image might seem particularly timely this year, given the steady progress of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, but cinema has always provided a gateway between the U.S. and its southern neighbors. Politics takes front and center on opening night as well, when the festival presents the Puerto Rican comedy Broche de Oro: Beginnings (reviewed below)....