Directed by Dave Dalton, UVA Drama’s production of "Lungs" features three different casts performing on separate evenings. Publicity photo
Fatal thaws: The decision to bring a child into the modern world, with its escalating climate change and varying degrees of global unrest, is the foundation of Duncan Macmillan’s smart, funny drama Lungs. Set on a bare stage, the play unfolds through a heart-to-heart talk between partners who debate with ferocity and vulnerability the pros and cons of adding a new life to a planet in peril. Directed by Dave Dalton, UVA Drama’s production features three different casts performing on separate evenings.
Through Saturday, October 12. $8-14, 8pm. Helms Theatre, 109 Culbreth Rd. 924-3376.
Platinum-selling rapper WALE gives a free concert at the Sprint Pavilion Tuesday, October 8. Publicity photo
Way to go-go: Grammy-winning, roof-shaking, innovating rapper WALE grew up in Northwest Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, in the heart of the go-go music scene. WALE says go-go “made me the man that I am today, and I will never let it go.” You can hear it in his platinum-selling records, like 2011’s Lotus Flower Bomb, on which WALE honors old-school style, but doesn’t hesitate to add something new to the hip-hop tradition. Thirteen years after his debut, his single “On Chill” is climbing the hip-hop charts.
Tuesday, October 8. Free, 7pm. Sprint Pavilion, 700 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 877-CPAV-TIX.
Fans of go-go will get their kicks on Saturday night when Ebony Groove delivers it old-school style at the Jefferson. “There are some things that we just didn’t, and don’t, want to bend on,” says vocalist and saxophonist Ivan Orr. Photo courtesy Ebony Groove
When Ebony Groove posted some old photos to its Facebook page in 2009, the comments came quickly.
“Can we get a reunion please?!”
“OMG what memories.”
“Damn, now this brings back the real good ole days, cats!”
“How about a reunion concert?”
“You know I will be there if there’s a reunion!!!!”
The band had put up throwback photos from its go-go group beginnings in the late 1980s, photos of band members posing together in loose-fitting faded jeans and high tops (and, in one case, coordinating bold-striped shorts-and-T-shirt ensembles).
Nearly a decade after that post, and more than two decades after the band’s “last show” at Outback Lodge, Ebony Groove gave the fans what they wanted: A reunion show, the day after Thanksgiving 2018, at IX Art Park. Not surprisingly, the show sold out.
After starting in 1987 as an offshoot of Charlottesville High School’s pep band (itself an offshoot of the CHS marching band), Ebony Groove went from playing basketball games to school dances, local parties, and eventually opening for national and regional touring acts at Trax nightclub. “People have a lot of ownership in what we were able to accomplish,” says vocalist and saxophonist Ivan Orr, particularly for black Charlottesvillians. “They’ve always thought of us as ‘their band,’ since we were an outgrowth of school.”
On Saturday night, Ebony Groove will get them going again, this time opening for 100- Proof GoGo Band at the Jefferson Theater.
For the unfamiliar, go-go music is a subgenre of funk unique to the Washington, D.C. area. It developed in the mid 1960s and ‘70s, with large bands comprised of musicians steeped not just in funk, but in Latin, soul, hard bop, and jazz.
In the late 1980s, go-go seemed poised for a breakthrough. Island Records founder Chris Blackwell (who worked with Toots and the Maytals and Bob Marley, and is often credited with bringing reggae to international audiences) took interest in the genre and signed some go-go bands to his label. And the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s 1988 comedy School Daze, featuring D.C. go-go band Experience Unlimited, peaked at number 14 on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums chart. But the genre never took off beyond the Washington, D.C. area, and Orr has a theory as to why: “It’s hard to capture in a three-minute and 30-second song, what the feeling is… It’s a music that you have to experience live. You can get a feel, but it’s nothing like being there.”
Many of the crowd-pleasing aspects of the genre, like call-and-response refrains and “roll call” (band members calling out friends when they sneak in late, for example), don’t have the same effect outside of the live show.
Real to reel: Taping culture, in which fans tape live sets from the floor, or sound engineers capture a performance on the board, is most often associated with jam bands like the Grateful Dead. But it’s just as important to go-go music, explains Ivan Orr, Ebony Groove founding member and saxophonist/vocalist, in large part because it’s difficult to capture the feel of go-go music in a recording studio. Orr remembers the first time he realized the value of these tapes: all-female go-go band Pleasure played Trax in the early 1990s, and at the end of the show, the sound engineer auctioned off the tape he recorded from the board. One opportune fan got the tape, and the band got another hundred bucks.
Recently, go-go has started to focus more on percussion and vocals and less on horn, guitar, and bass, but Ebony Groove has consciously avoided that tendency, says Orr. “[We have] a respect for musicality, and there are some things that we just didn’t, and don’t, want to bend on.”
Ebony Groove’s membership is somewhat flexible, as the band invites guest musicians to sit in with them depending on the show, and who’s available to rehearse. But at the core of the group is Orr; vocalist and trumpeter Jesse “Jay” Turner; percussionists Raymond Brooks, Curtis Kenney, and Kyle Reaves; congas player Larry Johnson; keyboardist Chris Redd; bassist and keyboardist Keith Carter; and guitarist Tom Butler.
Not only are they all seasoned musicians who have been playing together and apart for more than three decades, they’re all rather accomplished in the community outside of the band, says Turner. They’re fathers and husbands, business owners, educators (Turner is principal of Buford Middle School and Orr teaches music at Albemarle High School), barbers (Johnson), police officers (Kenney), and more.
Recent shows have been very nostalgic, says Orr, bringing audience members back to their youth, dancing to music their friends and classmates and neighbors made. The band’s added some contemporary songs into its set (get ready to hear some Adele), and since many of band members compose music for other projects, they’re contemplating writing some E.G. originals, says Orr.
But nostalgia’s not the only reason for Ebony Groove’s reunion. The band wants to bring something positive to the city, to Charlottesville’s black communities in particular, says Turner. “Charlottesville has been through a lot since August 2017…and we felt we had something to offer to bring some healing to our community and to certain individuals in our community,” sort of how funk icon James Brown used music to soothe unrest in Boston, and later Washington, D.C., in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in April 1968, he says.
“It’s really gratifying, and makes us feel good,” to have started and continued something that black Charlottesvilleians have been proud of for so many years, says Turner. “We’re just excited to be in a position to still do this. Music has a way of bringing communities together.”
It’s also a way of keeping culture alive. Charlottesville has a “very, very rich” musical lineage, says Orr, one that Ebony Groove has benefitted from and contributed to, and it’s brought black music into venues that don’t host black music often enough. “And we want to keep that going.”
Fans of go-go will get their kicks on Saturday night when Ebony Groove delivers it old-school style at the Jefferson Theater.
”Rumors of War” is currently on display in Times Square. In December, it will move to its permanent location on Arthur Ashe Boulevard
in front of the VMFA. (Photo: Kylie Corwin)
A new take on an old design
The Confederate generals who populate downtown Richmond will soon have a new neighbor. “Rumors of War,” a bronze statue from artist Kehinde Wiley, is modeled after that city’s J.E.B. Stuart monument, but features an African American man with dreadlocks, a hoodie, and ripped jeans sitting atop a rearing horse.
Wiley is most famous for his portrait of former president Barack Obama, which is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. His new piece, scheduled to be moved to the lawn of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in December, was unveiled in Times Square September 27.
“Rumors of War” is the latest effort by the city of Richmond to install statues that counterbalance Confederate monuments that can’t be removed due to state law.
In 1996, a statue of African American tennis champion Arthur Ashe joined those on Monument Avenue. More recently, the city unveiled a statue of Maggie Walker, a civil rights activist and Richmond native who was the first American black woman to charter a bank. And on October 14, it’ll host a formal dedication of the Virginia Women’s Monument, which includes seven women who have made significant impacts in the commonwealth.
Looking for justice after JADE raid
Herbert Dickerson (center) stands with his lawyer Jeff Fogel (right) outside the Charlottesville Police Station. (Photo: Brielle Entzminger)
Herbert Dickerson, whose home on the 300 block of 7 1/2 Street was raided by Virginia State Police and the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force on August 27, has demanded an apology and compensation from the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia State Police, and Governor Ralph Northam.
Twenty police officers stormed Dickerson’s house with flash-bang grenades and automatic weapons looking for Dickerson’s son, a convicted felon, because a confidential informant said he had a weapon. Attorney Jeff Fogel, who’s representing Herbert Dickerson, says officers had no probable cause for the raid, and that they conducted themselves in an unreasonable manner, which he says violates the Fourth Amendment.
Fogel has sent a letter to Northam, as well as Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, asking for a meeting to discuss Virginia State Police protocols and an independent investigation of the raid. If they do not receive a response, Fogel says they “are prepared to go to court and file suit.”
Quote of the week
“You guys are living on borrowed time. We are one event away from Congress overreacting.” —Virginia Senator Mark Warner on the “Recode Decode” podcast, where he said he sees big privacy restrictions coming for large tech companies
In brief
Riggleman ruckus
Bob Good, an athletics official at Liberty University who sits on the Campbell County Board of Supervisors, is expected to mount a GOP primary challenge against incumbent Representative Denver Riggleman. This news comes shortly after the Rappahannock County Republican Party censured Riggleman for “abandoning party principles”—a decision Riggleman’s supporters suspect stems from the freshman congressman’s recent officiation of a same-sex wedding.
Exposed
The City of Charlottesville announced September 25 that more than 10,000 former and current utility customers had their personal information exposed in a March security breach. The city has no evidence so far to suggest that the sensitive information—including names, addresses, and Social Security information—has been used improperly. The breach was discovered while investigating a separate phishing scam that had compromised the email data of a city employee.
Longo steps in
Former Charlottesville police chief Tim Longo has been appointed interim UVA chief of police, after current chief Tommye Sutton resigned after just 13 months on the job. Sutton had been on paid administrative leave since early September, for unspecified reasons.
Power couple
Eugene and Lorraine Williams, who have long fought for racial equality in Charlottesville, will be recognized by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on October 5 with its Reflector Award, honoring their activism and civic engagement. The Williamses, now in their 90s, played a crucial role in ending the segregation of Charlottesville schools in the 1950s.
Rethinking history
Albemarle County and Charlottesville City schools have begun revamping their history curricula with one goal in mind: telling the truth. In partnership with Montpelier and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, U.S. history teachers in county and city schools will participate in workshops, community forums, and visits to local historical sites, and curricula revisions are expected to begin next summer.
Do better
Five area public schools are not fully accredited, according to data released September 30. Two schools in Albemarle and three schools in Charlottesville, including Buford Middle and Walker Upper Elementary, were conditionally accredited and will need to file school improvement reports with the state. Many of the schools were not fully accredited due to poor testing performance, particularly among black and disabled students.
Independent City Council candidate Bellamy Brown (left) saw a surge of campaign donations this past summer, and drew the support of Democratic councilor Mike Signer.
When Mayor Nikuyah Walker was elected to City Council in November 2017, she became the first independent candidate to claim a seat since 1948. A few weeks ahead of the 2019 election, another independent is making headway among prospective voters—and current councilors.
Bellamy Brown raised more than double the amount of money between July and August as any other candidate who will be on the ballot next to him in November, according to election data reported by The Daily Progress. That includes $250 from outgoing Democratic Councilor Mike Signer, donated through his New Dominion Project political action committee.
Signer has been under fire for the donation from the Charlottesville Democratic Committee, which abides by state party bylaws that prohibit members from publicly supporting opponents of Democratic candidates in local elections. In a September 21 meeting, Signer was threatened with expulsion. He says he didn’t know he was acting in violation of the bylaws and that he hadn’t heard from the committee “in two years.”
“These party rules are kind of baked in the cake and they’re so antiquated…They come from this different era, which is before what we’re looking at now when an independent candidate can win 8,000 votes,” Signer says.
Brown is running against Democrats Sena Magill, Michael Payne, and Lloyd Snook, as well as fellow independents John Hall and Paul Long. Councilor Heather Hill’s husband, Jonathan, also donated $500 to Brown’s campaign, but that’s not a violation of the party bylaws. Hill donated $225 to Magill and says she’s most concerned with identifying candidates whom she could work well with.
“The Democratic slate of candidates is strong, but there are strong candidates beyond the Democratic slate and I welcome the opportunity to work with whoever is successful in the election,” Hill says. “Each candidate brings something unique to the table that’s beneficial.”
Both Hill and Signer have expressed frustration with public outbursts at City Council meetings, and Signer has criticized Walker for not enforcing rules. Brown has called City Council conduct “shameful,” and said governance cannot succeed among disorder.
Typically, members who wish to support an independent candidate must resign from the Democratic committee in order to do so. They have the option of reapplying to the committee after the election, but can no longer retain ex-officio status granted to former officials. Former mayor Dave Norris was among the members who stepped down when Walker ran.
“I was never involved in committee matters,” Norris says. “I can’t remember the last time I attended a Democratic Party event or a committee meeting, it’s been years. So it was really kind of a moot point for me, and even when I was in office I publicly endorsed, for instance, [Chip Harding], a Republican for sheriff of Albemarle County. I’ve always voted for the person over the party.”
None of the Democratic nominees running against Brown say they were offended by Signer’s decision to support someone from outside the party, but Magill believes elected Dems have a “responsibility” to the party that helped them get elected. And Snook said he expected Signer to have the party’s back “because that’s what the rule says.” Payne declined to comment on the councilor’s decision.
When asked about their views on Brown’s platform, both Magill and Snook said they didn’t really know what it was because he’s been “vague” about specific policy ideas.
“I know that the other candidates will say that I’m vague, but to me that’s because they don’t have anything else to say,” Brown says. “They try to define me in different ways and they haven’t been successful at doing so.”
Brown, like the other candidates, considers affordable housing to be one of the most defining issues of the upcoming election, but has yet to lay out a specific plan for fixing the local crisis. He promotes “fiscal responsibility,” and has said he wants to reduce taxes and create more jobs in the area rather than rely on public funding.
“When you have to work across the board and get at least two other votes [to pass a City Council decision], you can’t go in and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go and get a $50 million bond for public housing,’ because you need two other people to do that,” Brown says. “You can be specific all you want, but if you can’t implement it, it doesn’t matter.
If another independent joins Walker on City Council, the local Democratic party will have its weakest majority hold on the local governing body in decades. Regardless, Signer hopes the committee will reconsider its role in the community, taking a more active approach by advocating for its elected members’ policies and reexamining its bylaws.
“The party isn’t proactively serving in a resource capacity to current Democratic office holders,” Signer says. “We have had real political and policy fights where it would be helpful to have back up and resources…It would be nice to know the party had our back and was there doing what parties traditionally do, which is support their office holders. And that hasn’t happened at all.”
With schools closed since March due to the ongoing pandemic, Charlottesville-area teens have had to finish their high school careers with makeshift versions of the events they had looked forward to for years. PC: Eze Amos
Shana Bullard felt terrified. She was about to meet Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni, for a roundtable discussion on mental wellness initiatives at Charlottesville High School.
“I was very intimidated,” says the CHS junior, who’s been active in several of the school’s mental wellness programs.
But she found Qarni to be personable and down-to-earth.
“He shared that he had similar struggles,” says Bullard. “He was there to listen and internalize—not listen to respond.”
Qarni visited CHS on September 24, as part of his larger effort to highlight mental health and suicide prevention programs in Virginia during National Suicide Prevention Month. A 2017 Virginia Youth Survey found that one in five females and one in 10 males in middle and high school had seriously contemplated suicide in the last 12 months.
In recent years, CHS has introduced several new peer-led models to support students’ social and emotional health. Last spring, it was one of only two high schools in Virginia selected to pilot a national program, Teen Mental Health First Aid, which trains students to recognize and respond to a peer’s mental health crisis. CHS also offers Link Crew, which connects a select group of ninth-graders with junior and senior mentors, and Green Dot, a bystander awareness program designed to prevent harassment and violence.
During the discussion, students shared their own mental health struggles, and how school programs have supported them.
“Freshman year I was just kind of all over the place,” says Bullard. “Link Crew leaders helped with telling us how to get help if [we needed] it. They tried to make [school] a comfortable space.”
Senior Jade Gonzalez, who participated in Link Crew as a freshman, says her mentor “really did help me emotionally because I could just go to her for a lot of things. [She was] a face I knew when I was surrounded by people I didn’t.”
In addition to having multiple professional school counselors on staff, CHS provides in-school mental health services, like one-on-one counseling, to students through a partnership with Y-CAPP and Region Ten Community Services Board. And last year, the school created a “calm space,” where students can use tactile and sensory tools to help them recenter when they’re stressed.
During Qarni’s visit, students suggested other changes schools could make to reduce stress and anxiety, such as eliminating standardized testing.
“I really like how a lot of teachers started switching to doing projects,” says Gonzalez, who experiences anxiety during tests.
Bullard touched on the “excessive pressure of AP classes and college.”
“The teachers [put] pressure on going to college,” says Bullard, but “we don’t really talk about the other options, other than joining the military.”
Both Bullard and Gonzalez expressed concerns about teachers who have yet to undergo any mental health training, and said they believe Teen Mental Health First Aid should be a schoolwide program for students and staff.
Qarni plans to discuss the initiatives he learned about at CHS, among other schools, during the upcoming legislative session, and says he will advocate for more state support of mental health resources for students across Virginia.
“It’s really comforting to hear that there is a change going on,” says Bullard. “There are people caring and listening to actual students for input.”
Correction October 7: CHS has multiple professional school counselors on staff, not guidance counselors as originally reported.
Robert Tracci hopes to fend off challenger Jim Hingeley to retain his seat as the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney in a race that’s already had an “unprecedented” twist. Photo by Jen Fariello
Political races in Albemarle County are usually pretty staid compared to Charlottesville’s—except for the commonwealth’s attorney race.
Prosecutors Jim Camblos (in 2007) and Denise Lunsford (in 2015) were both ousted after controversial, high-profile cases. And 2019 has promised to be another closely watched contest—even before incumbent Robert Tracci’s opponent received an unheard-of $50,000 donation.
Republican Tracci, 47, is a former federal prosecutor and U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsel. Jim Hingeley, 71, founded the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office in 1998. Both men tout their experience—and their opponent’s lack of it.
Democrat Jim Hingeley, founder of the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office, faces Republican Robert Tracci in the commonwealths’s attorney race.
“He doesn’t have any prosecution experience at all,” says Tracci.
“I’m proficient as a criminal trial lawyer,” says Hingeley, noting his more than 40 years as an attorney. A factor in his decision to run, he says, “was [Tracci’s] inexperience and the mistakes he made…When he was elected, he’d never tried a case on his own in state court.”
Hingeley calls Tracci’s failure to secure a perjury conviction against Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler “a rookie mistake. He failed to prove the perjury occurred in Albemarle County.”
“The court made a finding with which I disagree,” says Tracci.
The two men differ on their interpretations of prosecutorial discretion and on the role of money in the campaign, notably activist Sonjia Smith’s $50,000 donation to Hingeley.
Hingeley says he also decided to run because he disagrees with Tracci’s approach. “Mr. Tracci has, for the most part, the view that prosecuting people, convicting them, and removing them from the community is the way to address criminal behavior and solve crime in the community,” says Hingeley, who describes himself as a progressive.
For his part, Tracci says Hingeley is part of a “political prosecution movement in which the commonwealth’s attorney is a political activist rather than a legal advocate.” He is “already expressing a reluctance to bringing felony offenses and that has consequences that are not good for public safety,” says Tracci.
“We don’t have authority to summarily disregard the law,” says Tracci, who suggests Hingeley is running for the wrong job and should be seeking a seat in the General Assembly to change the laws with which he disagrees.
“I have a different approach,” says Hingeley. “I know a lot about what is driving criminal behavior.”
Mass incarceration is the “result of the kinds of policies Mr. Tracci has in his office,” says Hingeley. “I think we need to look at ways to keep people in the community.”
Both Hingeley and Tracci cite support for treating substance abuse and mental illness outside of incarceration. “Jails and prisons are not equipped” to treat those issues as well as the services that are already available in the community, says Hingeley.
Tracci says, “I’ve sought alternatives to prosecution, including the therapeutic mental health and drug dockets.” He says his is the first commonwealth’s attorney office in the state to have overall responsibility for sexual assault at UVA, rather than have cases handled as Title IX. “We were ahead of the curve,” he says.
And while he’s committed to enforcing laws as written, Tracci says some reforms are in order. “I’ve written the attorney general that it’s time to look at cannabis laws.” And he wants to see a uniform standard to determine cannabis impairment.
That was an issue Hingeley cites as an example of Tracci’s inexperience. When a train collided with a garbage truck on the tracks in Crozet in early 2018, Tracci tried driver Dana Naylor on involuntary manslaughter and maiming from driving while impaired because he had THC in his bloodstream.
The problem, says Hingeley, is that the science on THC, including results from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is that “THC in the blood does not appear to be an indication of impairment.“ And when Tracci attempted to prove Naylor was impaired, “his own toxicologist said that’s not correct,” recounts Hingeley.
Hingeley has raised more than $150,000, the largest amount for any commonwealth’s attorney race in memory. That includes $50,000 from Smith, who also gave $10,000 to Andrew Sneathern, who, when he decided not to seek the prosecutor’s job, contributed those funds to Hingeley.
“I think it reflects the support I have gotten for change and for criminal justice reform,” says Hingeley.
Tracci thinks it reflects an “unprecedented” amount of campaign money in this district, if not the commonwealth, and that Smith’s $50K was almost equal to what he spent on the last election.
“The community should have the right to know what conversations were made before that contribution,” he says.
Tracci says he met with Smith, who disagreed with his support of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail’s notification of ICE when undocumented immigrants are released from the jail. “After that, I learned she wrote the $50,000 check,” he says.
Smith says she’d contributed to Hingeley more than two months before she met with Tracci at his request on April 1, and that her record as an active Democratic donor shows “that I do not support Republicans.”
Tracci says he didn’t do any fundraising his first three years in office, and as the county’s current prosecutor he doesn’t accept contributions from any defense attorney with cases that will appear in Albemarle courts. “I’m going to be outspent and I know I’m going to be outspent.”
Hingeley says he wants to find solutions that will break the cycle of racial injustice and the disproportionate number of minorities in prison. “I’m seeing a lot of interest in this community in doing things differently.”
“We don’t have the authority not to prosecute violent crimes,” says Tracci. That disrespects the victims, he says, “and there’s nothing compassionate about that.”
Tracci and Hingeley will face off at The Center on Hillsdale Drive on October 9 at 1:30pm.
