Our Story: Athletic Mic League's new single, "Made History," traces the Ann Arbor hip-hop group's legacy while namechecking important figures and Black businesses
In 1994, seven friends never anticipated they’d make hip-hop history in Ann Arbor and beyond. A mutual love of creating music and playing sports prompted the Huron High School students to form a group that would eventually become Athletic Mic League.
“We weren’t Athletic Mic League then. We were the Anonymous Clique, but we all started going to Trés [Styles’] crib writing and messing around on little beat machines and little recording setups in 1994,” said Jamall “Buff1” Bufford, one of Athletic Mic League’s MCs.
“We didn’t become Athletic Mic League until probably [1997]. Wes [Taylor] came up with the name … so we said, ‘Yeah, let’s go with it.’ We all play sports. We took an approach to writing and practicing like it was training.”
Thirty years later, that disciplined mindset has stayed with the members of Athletic Mic League: Trés Styles, Wes “Vital” Taylor, Vaughan “Vaughan Tego” Taylor, Michael “Grand Cee” Fletcher, Mayer Hawthorne, Kendall “14KT” Tucker, and Bufford.
Now, the group is celebrating its contributions and legacy in a new track aptly titled “Made History.”
Commissioned to write and record the track for the Ann Arbor District Library's Ann Arbor 200 bicentennial project, Athletic Mic League also pays homage to Washtenaw County hip-hop history and Black history in Ann Arbor.
Believing in Art As a Saving Grace: "The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry" documents the voices of Michigan writers
Chien-an Yuan is an evangelist.
Not the type who's selling you hope in exchange for a monthly tithe but the kind who just wants you to believe—in art and its healing powers; in music and its succor; in poetry and life-giving energy.
The Ann Arbor musician-photographer-curator works not just in words but in deeds—and sometimes, the deeds are words, carefully arranged and expertly recited as is the case with The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry.
The project is a collaboration between Yuan's 1473 record label, Michigan poets, and Fifth Avenue Studios, the recordings division of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL).
Named after two high school teachers who inspired Yuan, The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is a collection of recited poems, documented at Fifth Avenue Studios, with covers created by local artists for each chapter in the series. (Shannon Rae Daniels' watercolors will adorn the first 10 sessions.) All the recordings can be listened to and downloaded free of charge whether or not you have a library card.
The anthology's construction is ongoing—you can listen to Ann Arbor poets Kyunghee Kim and Zilka Joseph so far—but there's an official launch for the project on Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at AADL's Downtown location. Kim will be joined by upcoming Coolidge-Wagner writers Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, Chace Morris, and Emily Nick Howard, along with Yuan introducing the poets and talking about the project. (Joseph will be at a future Coolidge-Wagner event.)
I sent Yuan some queries about The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, and his answers were so passionate, revealing, and thorough that they stand alone without my framing questions.
Below is Yuan's testament to the power of art and a brief history of The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry:
Tactile Sensations: Ericka Lopez's "touch" exhibit at U-M's Institute for the Humanities Gallery encourages visitors to feel her art
Amanda Krugliak remembers the first time she saw the work of artist Ericka Lopez.
“I was walking a gallery in Chinatown, in L.A., and I saw this work. It just had something undeniable about it,” said Krugliak, curator for the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery, which is hosting Lopez's touch exhibit. “There’s something incredibly powerful immediately about it. It felt like the kind of work that doesn’t have a motive. There’s no other reason for the work, but the immediate human connection, or something material we respond to. There are a lot of contemporary artists who try to achieve this, and here was this artist that just felt so natural.”
Lopez's tactile textiles and colorful ceramics bristle with textures. She also happens to be blind. After finding out about Lopez’s story, Krugliak made inquiries about bringing the show to Ann Arbor.
Going Nuclear: A new play, "Last Summer," imagines a tense conversation between two physics giants in Ann Arbor
Jim Ottaviani has spent much of his career putting words into the mouths of physics geniuses. Sure, he also used the scientists' own words when penning scripts for graphic novels about Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman since Ottaviani's books are always deeply researched.
But for Last Summer, a new play by Ottaviani, he had to imagine the words exchanged during a summer 1939 private gathering at U-M physics professor Samuel Goudsmit's home following a physics symposium in Ann Arbor.
The Summer Symposia had been happening in Ann Arbor since the late 1920s, bringing together the greatest physicists to share ideas. Nobel laureates and nuclear pioneers Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg were at Goudsmit's place that summer 1939 evening, with the former trying to convince the latter not to go back to his native Germany and help the Nazis with their nuclear program. It didn't work: Fermi went on to work for the Allies and Heisenberg returned to his homeland.
Their discussion is the basis for the 20-minute Last Summer, which will be staged by the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (A2CT) on December 7 and 11 at the Downtown location of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL).
Loss, Love, and the Ferryman: Ann Arbor author and musician Michelle Kulwicki on her debut young adult novel, "At the End of the River Styx"
What happens when the goal you've spent an eternity working toward is finally within your reach, but then you encounter something you want even more?
And what if forsaking your long-sought goal also came with an impossible price?
In At the End of the River Styx, Zan needs only one more soul to fulfill his obligation to the terrifying Ferryman of delivering 500 souls in 500 years, but the latest soul to walk through his door is unusual. First, this boy, Bastian, does not seem to be entirely dead; and what's more, he sees something in Zan beyond a grim harbinger of doom.
"At the End of the River Styx is a book about grief and about love, about two boys finding themselves at the edge of Death," says Ann Arbor author Michelle Kulwicki about her debut young adult novel. "I think it's really about conquering grief and learning to love again, learning to love yourself, learning to love other people around you."
I spoke with Kulwicki about At the End of the River Styx and other creative pursuits.
Singer-Songwriter Jo Serrapere Looks Inward on Her New Two-Volume Album, “The Beautiful Ones”
Despite life’s obstacles, Jo Serrapere sees the beauty in herself and the world around her.
The Dearborn singer-songwriter shares that hopeful mindset on her latest double album, The Beautiful Ones, Volume I and Volume II.
“The whole record is about beauty and about seeing beauty through light and dark and the good times and the bad times. It’s most fulfilling to write from a personal [perspective] and try to help people,” said Serrapere, who’s a clinical psychologist and U-M alumna.
“It’s [also] coming to that realization of where I want my music to go. I could just sing in my bedroom and that would be fine … but the whole point is to try to touch other people in the process.”
Serrapere includes 22 tracks that explore her emotional struggles and the growth she’s experienced along the way. Those personal reflections also prompted her to take a more autobiographical approach to songwriting for the album.
“I joke that I’m at an age where I’m going to write my autobiography,” Serrapere said. “I wanted a personal record and all these songs fit in that genre.”
Cards for Humanity: Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.'s "Random Thoughts on Poster Cards" Exhibit at EMU
An empowering quote from Bell Hooks is printed in a black serif typeface on a brown handbill-size poster card.
The statement from the late author reads, “If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.”
That motivational proclamation is one of numerous type-driven messages hand-printed on 3,000 vibrant 8-inch-by-6-inch poster cards by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.
The Detroit printmaker’s renowned letterpress work is featured as part of Random Thoughts on Poster Cards, an exhibit running at Eastern Michigan University through December 14.
“People give me quotes, I read things, and then I just compile a list. And depending on the mood I’m in, I print what I want to,” said Kennedy alongside fellow letterpress printer Gerald Schulze during the exhibit’s November 7 opening reception at EMU’s University Gallery.
“It’s just a matter of someone telling me something, and I’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, that would make a good poster,’ or I’ll read something and think, ‘That would make a good card,’ and then I just print them.”
For the Culture: "Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection" at UMMA
Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is an eclectic collection of 40 works of sculptures, lithographs, photographs, paintings, and a gelatin silver print. The media includes acrylic, ink, pastels, graphite, crayon, oils, metals, wood, glass, and even 24-carat gold.
Styles and subjects vary, too.
What unifies this exhibition is that all of the work represents Black artists and expresses feelings or thoughts about Black culture or life.
“The exhibition came to be through decades and decades and decades of Spelman College’s commitment to collecting art by Black artists,” says Liz Andrews, Ph.D., director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Andrews says the immediate reasons for putting together a touring exhibit, the museum’s first, are less significant than Spelman’s groundbreaking efforts over the years in prioritizing art by and about women of the African diaspora.
Deeply Personal: Saba Keramati sifts life and the world in her new poetry collection, “Self-Mythology”
Saba Keramati writes about the hopes, dreams, characteristics, and experiences that form the self but that also stir up more mysteries in her new poetry collection, Self-Mythology.
Keramati, born in America, writes from the perspective of being an only child of political refugees, her Chinese mother and Iranian father. Her poems probe how holding many identities results in feeling not fully one of them. The first poem, “THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SAY THIS,” conveys the pang of these distinctions: “I have to write this poem in English / I do not speak my mother’s language / I do not speak my father’s language / I am not grateful for this country.” These circumstances and the desire to claim an identity, while at the same time chafing against the divisions of self, set the foundation for the collection that asks, “Who am I being today? / … / You’ll always be wrong, and I’ll always be / here, chameleoning myself / with every shift of the light.”
Self-Mythology is forthright about its focus on the poet, but the poems also look outward. A series of centos, poems with all their lines borrowed from others, are sprinkled throughout the book, and each is called “Cento for Loneliness & Writer’s Block & the Fear of Never Being Enough, Despite Being Surrounded by Asian American Poets.” The third such poem contains lines like “I hold things I cannot say in my mouth—” and “There is mythology planted in my mouth which is like sin. / I cannot help but know the words.” In addition to these recurring centos, poems also reflect on attempts to learn a language, miscarriage, what it is like to be in a relationship, fire season in California, social media, astrology, and 9/11.
Moments of revelation emerge in Self-Mythology. In “Chimera,” the speaker listens to the radio and hears lyrics conveying a thought that had earlier seemed original to the poet:
Illustrating Freedom of Speech: "An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire"
Journalists are the white blood cells of democracy, and their ability to report news and share opinions without repercussions is one of the best measures of a free society's hardiness.
The right to employ comedy and satire freely is another solid assessment of a democracy's health, and the Clements Library's online and in-person exhibition An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire is a compelling reminder of illustrative journalists using humor to make a point.
The University of Michigan exhibition—produced with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum and loaned original art from the Wallace House Center for Journalists—ties into a multi-event program this semester on how the arts interact with presidential politics during this election year.
“I think using Clements Library materials to help people think about the democratic processes in the country, and how we have historically talked about elections is important,” says Paul Erickson, the director at Clements.