AJ Dance Legacy

Rock The Park DC 

Rich Medina

Day 2 

Exit the McPherson Square Metro Station, at the corner of I and 14th Streets.  Watch out!  Carefully, look both ways before crossing the bustling intersection. Turn right onto the walkway.  That leads to the fountain, the epicenter of the greenspace named after a Founding Father.  Forward north is the performance stage.  A steel beam structure with canopy top protects the music equipment from torrential elements.  Rain?  Not today.  The sky appears as a glass ocean. Cloudless. Without celestial disturbance. However, the wind gusts at 30 miles per hour. Today, the temperature is chillier than twenty-four hours earlier at this exact location. The sun’s rays are challenged to warm the family of five picnicking on the grassy knoll.  Their jackets and hoods blow in the air as screaming children run to the play area.   (more…)

The Sun. The Rain.  The Super Moon.

Kai Alcé

“Put em’ up.  Put em’ up.  Put em’ up.”  The host yells into the microphone.  There is not one but two of em yelling into microphones. Their mumblings about someone later giving hugs and then that someone giving two hugs after dark.  All the while the deejay appears perplexed.  Confused at the vocal back and forth between the two.  Against the soundtrack of snaps and hiss on Mary Mary’s “Walking.” (more…)

TRILOGY ACTS 5 & 6: NYC LOUIE VEGA, DEON COLE & KENNY DOPE

Enter

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1600

Music. Is the reason for this journey. An expedition meandering through space and time.  Arriving.  At the V.  Where 54th Street veers from Flushing Avenue. In Maspeth.  A working class community located somewhere in the borough of Queens.  That is New York City.  Where a brick and motor mammoth slumps with two erected smoke stacks.  That eyes you. Only if in your imagination.  That beckons you to enter its ingress. Crushing gravel beneath your soles. As your bag is checked. Electronic ticket is scanned. And your wrist is branded white with red dots. Enjoy! Security smiles. All before you kick more rocks. Past the food truck.  Across from the lonely picnic tables. There you eye the expanse.  A massive slab of concrete sloped downward towards a music stage. State of the art light rigs. Hanging sound gear. Fog machines.  Where twenty early birds dance in seventy-seven degree heat underneath scattered cirrus levitating across the oceanic azul.  

(more…)

Masters At Work 

2100

Darkness has crept up to slowly reveal its face. Black. Devoid of light. That traces around and about the atmosphere.  Invisible.  Upward, the stars keep watch over night.  Night’s all seeing eye, the moon is lucent, keeps watch over the people, the party, the property.    (more…)

OPEN AIR AND INTIMATE

Part I 

Kai Alcé

Yeah, you are at the right place.  As the car door closes, you overhear faint thumps where you are parked adjacent a curb monitored by vagrants. Walk a block pass the open air parking structure as the ontz expands in the atmosphere.  Juxtaposed against the skyline of high rises, onward forward lies the destination.  A folding table and portable fence where your mobile ticket is scanned.  Grab a smiley face wristband.  Say hi to security.  Enter. Tents. Vendors. Lounge chaises. Restrooms?  Behold the center piece of the event.  That is not the surrounding professional lighting towers, nor the arena-sized sound gear but an aerodynamic aluminum mobile trailer titled Rock The Disco Soundsystem.  Coachella eat your fucking heart out.  (more…)

OPEN AIR AND INTIMATE

Part II 

LOUIE VEGA

“You, you, you….’ The F sharp and C minor notes dot the soundscape.  When the tappings of drums dissipates leaving only emptiness to expand.  A sound of sweeping ocean waves builds and builds to a climatic fall that washes away Upper Alabama Street. A refreshing rain of vibe and rhythm drenches the tops of heads. Possessed by unspoken rhythms. All bodies dance. Bent over. Feet stomping the ground. Hands swaying on the brick.  The Thakzin and Sun-El Musician produced Afro-banger with sutlry vocals by Thandazo’s “I.C.U” provides the most cinematic scene of dance thus far.  (more…)

The Phenomenon That Is Demarkus Lewis 

“Yooooooooooooooo!!!  What’s up?”  He grabs you by the hand giving you a bear hug. 

“I haven’t seen you in a minute.”  You reply.

“Oh, wait, you have to see someone.”  He leads you meandering through the heat.  The sweat.  And the thump from Jimpster featuring Mavhungu’s “Tribute.”  Luminiferous flashes guide you through the mass.  Their bodies careful not to brush against you and you them.   (more…)