ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LATIN FESTIVAL RETURNS TO OLD CITY
EXHIBIT DISPLAYS ADOPTION SUCCESS STORIES
The Mexican Independence Day Festival, hosted by the Mexican Cultural Center, took place on Sept. 14. It featured latin food, music and local vendors to celebrate the liberation of Mexico. PAGE 11
Willow Street Pictures is hosting a photo exhibit featuring the adoption success stories of the nonprofit organization, the Morris Animal Shelter. The shelter is the first animal refuge center in the country. PAGE 10
temple-news.com
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014
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Nonprofit expands to Italian Market Mighty Writers aims to raise the literacy rate among kids in the city. VICTORIA MIER The Temple News Tim Whitaker still remembers the little boy from Pakistan who showed up on the doorstep one day – the boy with floppy hair who looked like Ringo Starr, the boy who was painfully shy and unhappy about moving to America. More than that, Whitaker remembers how much that boy changed. Then again, as the executive director and founder of the nonprofit group Mighty
Nerdy rap takes the spotlight
Writers, Whitaker has seen a lot of kids change. “Over time, day by day, by working with him and letting him express himself, he slowly but surely came around,” Whitaker said. “Now he’s one of our strongest kids and he’s completely comfortable in his own skin.” Mighty Writers aims to teach children in the Philadelphia area how to write and think clearly. The group offers daily after-school programs, writing classes at night and on weekends, as well as scholarship programs and college prep courses at two locations in South and West Philadelphia. All courses and workshops are free to Philadelphia students.
“We’re trying to get kids to think clearly,” Whitaker said. “Because once they can write something that makes sense, they can express themselves confidently.” Whitaker swears he can see a change in the children on a weekly basis, watching their personalities and confidence blossom through the help and tutoring that Mighty Writers offers. Now, Mighty Writers hopes to reach even more children with their latest expansion into the neighborhood surrounding the Italian Market. Whitaker hopes the space will be able to open soon in order to help those children become clear thinkers and good writers.
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MEAGHAN POGUE TTN
Mighty Writers reaches kids in the city through writing and literature.
The soundtrack of equality Philadelphia hosted OutBeat, the nation’s first LGBTQ jazz fest, last weekend to feature queer jazz muscians. ALEXA ZIZZI The Temple News
W
The “Nerdcore” genre came to Philly with hiphop rapper MC Frontalot.
D
amian Hess, 40, titled one of his raps “Nerdcore Hiphop” in 2000 to describe his rhymes full of “nerdy”
content. Apparently, the name stuck. Now, Hess, the “Godfather of Nerdcore” is a full-time rapper known as MC Frontalot. Beside him, fellow Nerdcore artists Dr. Awkward and Brooklyn-based musician Corn Mo, stopped by Philly last Friday to perform for the promoALBERT HONG tion of Hess’s new album “Question Bedtime.” MC Frontalot and Dr. Awkward are just two of the many all around the country who associate themselves with this subgenre of hip-hop that can be about anything from comic-books, to computer coding. All performed as rap music. Hess came up with the idea for the name “Nerdcore” back in his college radio days listening to bands that would try to create new genres. “Every band wanted to have their own genre that only described them,” Hess said. “Half of the time they had the word ‘-core’ in them and I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous.” What had initially started out as a joke soon gave Hess the idea that “this could be something that sparks interest just because it’s called that.” “So it was almost like a little piece of branding that seemed like a good idea after it had seemed like a joke,” Hess said. Hess considers the gaining popularity of Nerdcore a collective effort from those before, and after him, in the genre. “The term ‘Nerdcore’ turning from a comedy idea into a real thing and a whole movement, that’s amazing to me. But it’s not something I did,” Hess said. “That’s what happened because a lot of other people got involved.” Zilla Persona, a Nerdcore and chiptune artist – music made with sound chips sampled from retro video game consoles – wanted to bring this nerdy music into the spotlight.
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KARA MILSTEIN TTN
OutBeat was the first jazz festival of its kind. It was hosted by the William Way LGBT Community Center.
“If I could, without
getting in trouble, I would compare jazz to being queer, lesbian, transgender or gay.
”
Jaye Sanders / jazz vocalist
hen Tyrone Smith was growing up in North Philly, he said the Gay Paree was the only bar where the gay community could enjoy jazz music “without being bothered.” Smith, an active board member of various LGBTQ organizations in the city, said he is finally seeing growth in the LGBTQ community. “Now that I’m in my 70’s and see that now people can be jazz artists, they can be out, they can be who they are,” Tyrone Smith said. “It’s magnificent to me.” The William Way LGBT Community Center hosted the country’s first LGBTQ jazz festival, OutBeat, over a series of four days and 35 events, this past weekend in Philly. The festival included a wide variety of local and emerging artists, performances and panel discussions, highlighting intersections between sexual orientation, gender identity, jazz history and jazz culture. “We started working on OutBeat about a year ago and we’re so happy with how it’s turned out,” said Karen Smith, a volunteer coordinator and percussionist who performed at Friday’s event. The opening kickoff reception began at a small intimate setting with buffet style food and refreshments in the Mark Segal Ballroom at the William Way Community Center located in the “Gayborhood.” It opened with a conversation between Nate Chinen of the New York Times and six-time Grammy award nominated pianist and jazz artist, Fred Hersch, and ended with a duo performance by vocalist and pianist Dena Underwood and vocalist Jaye Sanders. Jaye Sanders expressed her excitement to perform at the Billy Strayhorn Tribute, an honorary figure in the LGBTQ community
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Entertainment goes underground Carnivolution, an underground sideshow in West Kensington, will close its 2014 season on Oct. 3. BRIANNA SPAUSE The Temple News The magic began in a West Kensington warehouse, between four walls of wire sculpture, littered with menacing-looking tools. A short trip down dimly lit Arizona Avenue, Frankie Bones was waiting at the door with a permanent marker ready. It was a smooth exchange as he reached for the hand clutching $15, simultaneously exchanging payment for large “X”s on the hands of eager audience members. Just beyond the doors of Carbon Coalition on Sept. 12, Carnivolution was set to begin. The side-show extravaganza with a wild reputation has a residency at the cooperative metal-art space for its performance season, which draws together an expansive palate of talents every second Friday of the month, from May to October. Jelly Boy the Clown and Matterz Squidling make up the Squidling Brothers,
who pioneered the circus side show in 2004, and have been arranging a bouquet of edgy local artistry ever since. The first nine seasons of Carnivolution took place in the back yard of the Tiberino Museum in West Philadelphia, but was transported to the Carbon Coalition for its 10th season to appeal to a younger crowd in the neighborhood. “Carnivolution is an ongoing story, so the characters have a lot of history that we know about, but I’m not sure if the audience totally knows about,” Jelly Boy said. “Every show, we add to this ongoing story. So it’s complicated, and is interactive with the audience. We started the story of Carnivolution at the Tiberino Museum, but the concept of combining different acts is a year or two older than that. We started this at the Rotunda on South Street.” The seasoned show has a little taste of everything; there’s burlesque, aerial dancing, music, puppetry and sideshow. Acts included Madeleine Bell, a fire eater with sultry dance moves and gypsy attire to Alpha Mouse McDonald, clad in white makeup, a frayed red wig and shoulder pads who downed a hamburger smoothie and proceeded to drink his own urine. Not once, but three consecutive times. “I like the danger aspect of it, and that you never know what is coming
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CIRCUS PAGE 11