rhythm and blues and blues by the railroad tracks, built because of cotton. One was right next to my grandfather’s blacksmith shop, and his house was on the other side of that, the house I was born in. That’s how hoppin’ it was! So much so that they had two, they doubled their operations when they went down there. But they were bars.įun fact: this club called Club Tay-May on Roosevelt moved down to Mason. He also notes that there are direct Chicago connections to Mason, which for a small town had a lively nightlife scene, composed of what Lewis calls “juke joints on a boardwalk. That’s where white people came in.” He adds, “Probably the most tense moments are when I’ve asked if we’re related.” You get to certain folks and the trail ends. That goes to show that what you put into books and what you put in schools, people will take with them. In earlier work, he was referring to the Civil War as the War Between the States. I’m able to more intentionally find stuff. there’s a lot of gold in what he has given. Says Lewis, “John Marshall has helped a bunch of people and spoken at Black people’s family reunions, met with folks, given information-it’s a lot of work. Whenever I asked my mom about that, she’d say, ‘I got that from your father.’ I was like, ‘How does a Black rural Deep South person become Episcopalian? Most everyone else is Baptist-it’s weird!’ Slavery: that’s why.” That was one of the things that got me asking, because I grew up as an Episcopalian. “I have a baptismal record of my great-grandmother being baptized during the Civil War in that church. They worshipped there at different times, but they sat on the same pews! And those pews are still there.” Lewis visited the church, known as Old Trinity or Trinity in the Field, the same year. “They were the people they were closest to as a family-so much so that they worshipped in the same church, which my ancestors helped build. “The reason he had a lot of information on my family was because my ancestors were the children of his relatives,” says Lewis.
Lewis contacted Marshall, a white judge in Memphis, Tennessee, and they met in 2019. “She was reading a book that this man named John Marshall wrote- Mason: A Glimpse into the Past, a self-published book about Mason, Tennessee.” “I started asking questions and got on Ancestry.” Through relatives who had also moved to Chicago, Lewis began to trace his lineage, starting with information provided by his cousin Stephanie Pegues. So I never knew much about that side of the family,” he says. I didn’t really see him unless we were intentional about it, which we always were one time during the visit: this is the time you’ll see your dad. I would go down there and visit but was mostly with my mom’s side of the family. “My mother and father separated when I was three, and we moved from rural Tennessee to Saint Louis. In late 2018, Lewis’s curiosity about his heritage began to deepen. But am I master over him or just facilitating?” “I wanted people to see that I was the one manipulating Jus Hambone: a Black man is also the puppet master in this scenario. “In the scene, the puppeteer is usually deemphasized,” notes Lewis. In the hands of the self-described “accidental puppeteer,” Jambo the Jiver transformed into a new character named Jus Hambone (“One day for dinna, my ma says, ‘What you want fo’ dinna?’ And I say ‘Jus Hambone,’ and it kinda stuck!”). Szalon, Sun 2/26 6 PM,, freeĪ cofounder of experimental music and performance venue Elastic Arts, Lewis began to incorporate the puppet into collaborations with other Elastic musicians such as Marvin Tate and his band Kitchen Sink, for which Lewis also sang backup vocals.
Chicago reader samuel steward free#
He Worked Hard (excerpt of Everybody Knew His Place), Sun 2/19 2 PM, Art Center Highland Park, 1957 Sheridan, Highland Park, 84,, free I realized I could use him to show people that this kind of thing existed and how people felt about us in this country, but also to tear that down and reclaim it, embrace that stereotype to say, ‘Come on over-come sit with us-let us work together.’” Jambo the Jiver is negative-he has this big wide smile, a humongous bowtie, purple jacket, gold pants.
It dealt with Black iconography and negative stereotypes.
Chicago reader samuel steward movie#
“That movie was why I felt compelled to do something with it. “I found him after watching Spike Lee’s Bamboozled,” recalls Lewis. Built in 1948 by a company called TalenToon, along with other characters such as Pim-Bo the Clown, Toonga from the Congo, Kilroy the Cop, and MacAwful the Scot, the marionettes were packaged with music-phonograph records meant to accompany their movements. Lewis II discovered a vintage Black Americana marionette named Jambo the Jiver in his father-in-law’s attic. Some 20 years ago, Chicago artist Samuel J. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.
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