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University Daily Kansan / Friday, February 21, 1992
ENTERTAINMENT
HAPPENINGS
BARS
Benchmarks Sports Bar & Grill
1601 W. 23rd St.
Friday: Big Head Todd and the
Monsters, 10 p.m.-1.30 a.m.
cover charge: $2
Tuesday: The Samples
10 p.m.-1.30 a.m., cover charge: $2
Wednesday: Vixn/Cindy Mizelle,
10 p.m.-1.30 a.m.
Bogarts of Lawrence
611 Vermont St.
Saturday: The Parlor Plays: 9:30
p.m.-1. 30 a.m., cover charge: $3
The Bottleneck
737 New Hampshire St.
Friday: Sin City Disciples,
10.p.m-2.a.m, cover charge: $3
Saturday: Salty Iguanas with Steal
Mary, 10.p.m-2.a.m,
cover charge: $3
Monday: Open mike
9.30.p.m-2.a.m, no cover charge
Wednesday: Kill Whitey with
Course of Empire, 10.p.m-2.a.m,
cover charge: $3
Thursday: Which Doctor with
Camberwell Green, 10.p.m-2.a.m,
cover charge: $3
The Brass Apple
3300 W. 15th St.
Tuesday: Karaoke night
p.m. 1-30 a.m., no cover charge
Dos Hombres
815 New Hampshire
wEDnesday: Karaoke night
10 p.m., no cover charge
Flamingo Club
501 N. Ninth St.
Friday, Saturday: toppless
dancers, noon-1 a.m.
cover charge: $2 or a two-drink
minimum
Monday: Poetry Slam, 7 p.m.
cover charge: $2
Henry T's Bar & Grill
3520 W. Sixth St.
Thursday: Karake night
p.m.-2 a.m., no cover charge
The Jazhaws of Lawrence
9261.2/Massachusetts St.
Friday, Saturday: Homestead
Grays,10.p.m.-1:30 a.m.
cover charge: $3
Thursday: D. Alexander
10.p.-1:30 a.m., cover charge: $3
Johnny's Tavern
401 N. Second St.
Friday, Saturday: Faster Johnny,
9:30 p.m-2 a.m., cover charge:$1
The Power Plant
901 Mississippi St.
Friday, Sunday: alternative
music night
Riverside Bar and Grill
520 N. Third St.
Friday: Wood Band
p.m.-1 a.m., cover charge: $2
Shiloh
Shiloh
1003E. 23rd St.
Friday: Sandy Barket/Bad
Zephyr, 9p-1.m-a1.
cover charge: $3
Stress Dance lessons
7:45-8:45 p.m.
Band: Over Easy, 9p-1.m-a1.
cover charge: $3
The Yacht Club
530 Wisconsin St.
Tuesday: Karaoke night
p.m. 1-4, m. no, cover charge
ART EXHIBITIONS
Spencer Museum of Art
Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
Sunday, noon-5 p.m.
Beyond the Floating World,
Japanese Prints in the
Twentieth Century
runs through March 15
Mexican Retablo Painting:
The Art of Private Devotion
runs through March 8
Documenting the American Dream: FSA Photographs of the Great Depression runs through March 8
THEATER
Liberty Hall: 642 Massachusetts St.
Monday/Tuesday: New Direction
Series: Spalding Gray, 8 p.m.
tickets: $15-students
Crafton-Preyer Theatre Thursday: University Theatre Series: "Romeo and Juliet" 8p.m.
Lawrence Arts Center
200 w. 9th Street
Saturday: Performance Night
Series featuring Jim Krause and
Las Cuatro, 8 p.m., tickets: $2
DANCE
Saturday: Womyn's Dance
Douglas County Fairground
Buildings 1 and 2. 8 p.m.-12 a.m.
$3 donation
Musicians use experiences history to send messages
Rappers use rhetoric
During an age when many people face the threat of AIDS, Redhead Kingpin is preaching safe sex and abstinence.
Sure, he's not the only one, but his message is just a bit different.
Kingpin is not holding seminars or giving speeches to young people. He's rapping about it.
The theme of restraint and abstinence is apparent in his single "Nice & Slow" from his latest album. And Kingpin has even set up a safe-sex hotline for young people.
His rap is entertainment with a political twist
rap groups like Public Enemy and other hard-core rap acts, raps has taken on a political flavor. Message-oriented rap is providing young people with their own type of political rhetoric.
Harry Allen, director of relations for Public Enemy, said the popularity of speaking out about abuses of Public Enemy did, flub-tunted.
Black History Month
"My idea is Public Enemy is popular because they talk about racism, and racism is the thing that is sexier than sex," he said. "The next greatest motivator of people, next to sex, is the practice of and reaction to racism."
Allen said political rap that dealt with racism was popular because there had been little progress in ending racism.
Public Enemy jumped into the political spotlight with the release of "Fear of a Black Planet" in 1990, an album which contains songs about racism in the movie industry, racist 911 emergency services and a fear of interracial relationships.
The political concerns of the group are driven home by such videos as "By the Time I Get to Arizona," which is about assassinating politicians who vote not to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Robert Rowland, associate professor of communication,
practical political rap in his classes as examples of political rap.
"There is more to political rhetoric than public speeches by the president," he said. "Rap is an important way in which rhetoric functions for young people." More information can be obtained from MNFN@Cc.com.
"More young people watch Yo! MTV Raps than Csan."
Van-Don Rias, who is involved with four different rap groups in Topeka, said his groups usually focused on a particular message.
"Most people just rap about what they see every day," she says. "They are getting political and talking about Black life."
Brad Roosa, live music coordinator for Student Union Activities, is researching national acts for a rap show in April because he recognized rap's popularity.
Rooa said he wanted to attract rap groups to bring positive messages to the KU community.
"The new hard core is looking to bring people a message," he said. "Rap acts are usually socially conscious, but it is becoming more popular to send a serious message to the audience."
African Americans are music pioneers
From traditional African
music to blues to jazz,
African-American artists
have been the main
way for
changes in music.
Richard Wright, associate professor of music history, said that African Americans created and developed many musical styles.
"All other people have influenced music, but African Americans have definitely been the dominant influence," he said.
"There is evidence that
The influence of African-American music began with African slave spirituals. Nekta said.
The contrast between the happy and the melancholy continually appeared in African-American music, a tradition that is still evident in African-American music has this element as well.
"As African music is the source Americans look for, African-American music is the model for contemporary music in America," he said.
The blues formed and became the leading expression of the minds and probabilities of American people, he said.
Kwabena Nketia, professor of music and African studies, said that African music and African-American music had strong ties to each other.
on slave ships Africans mixed their traditions and formed music and dance," he said. "This probably means that in music which eventually developed into spirituals."
Harriet Ottenheimer,
director of American-Ethnic
studies in Kansas State
University, could be traced back to
African-American music began as a community art, then moved outside of the community and focused on entertainment. Eventually, the music became very popular to the public, Nketa said.
"Pressures from the public forced further developments of the music," Nketia said.
Stories by Shellv Solon / Illustration by Merri Hilvitz
African music.
She said there was a free flowing, ballad type of African music influenced that influenced the blues.
"It was not exactly the blues," she said. "However, the styles were there."
In her research, Ottenheimer said she saw evi-
nmental music in the 1880s in Midwestern river towns.
She said musicians came up from the South to the Mississippi Delta area, which included Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. They combined their musical styles with European influences to create bimbed blues style back to the South.
but it became popular nationwide in 1920.
"The blues craze utilized the female singer who would either shout or sing the urban blues," she said.
Like blues, jazz was influenced by a style of traditional African music, but it was a style with syncopated and upbeat rhythms, Ottenheimer said.
Richard Wright said jazz evolved from the blues,
African-American gospel music, classical music, folk music and ragtime.
The high point for jazz was from the mid-1940s to the 1950s. Charlie Parker, a saxophonist from Kansas City, was the dominant figurer of Bob Dylan, Beoopa, Wright said.
"African Americans were the innovators of jazz," he said. "They dominated this era."
'What can I say? I'm not a wimp.' screenwriter says about her life
NEW YORK - Twenty years ago, Nora Ephron would not have been in this Upper West Side living room, all bleached wood and high ceilings, meeting a succession of writers with a fresh angle on a media darling.
The Associated Press
She built her career with wity, acerbic takes on everything from feminine hygiene sprays to Julie Nixon Elisenhower. But it's unlikely
Twenty years ago, Ephron would have been asking the questions, not answering them.
the young Nora Ephron was ever assigned a subject juicier than Nora Ephron at 50.
The adjective often used to describe her is "tough" in *as* "tough cookie." Ephron says it's because he lives on a farm, even when her life goes south.
"What can I say? I'm not a wimp," she says. "I'm one of those people who never had a lot of trouble standing up for myself. I speak you rarely regret说话 up for yourself. The sleepless nights are caused by what you keep inside."
Ephron is making her directorial debut with the new movie "This Is My Life," the story of the rise of a female stand-up comic from Queens who finds it hard to balance the needs of her two daughters. The sister, co-written by Ephron and his mother, Delia, stars Julie Kavner.
screenwriter.
It's the latest chapter in Ephron's high-profile career, which began at age 21 when she joined the New York Postas areporter. She later became a successful free-lance writer, Esquire columnist, essayist and Academy Award-nominated
"I've always had a problem with the victim stuff," says Ephron, who looks younger than her age and far pretier than in photographs.
Her personal life, which has included three marriages, has been fodder for her work — and for controversy. Her divorce from her second husband, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, was a messy humiliation that she turned into a best-selling book, "Heartburn," which later became a movie.
"When I was writing about women years ago, I could never relate to all that glorification of the victim. Turning Marilyn Monroe into a heroine. Who are we kidding?"
Ephron specializes in that kind of remark, which sounds brittle in print. It doesn't capture the light wt that shades all of her conversation.
"I'm a big believer in finding out who you are and then moving on," she says. "If you spend your life pointing fingers, then you get stuck."