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4B - Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
DETROIT
From page 1B
ed to present "individual suffering due
to occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and
Palestine." Closer inspection reveals
the masks are made from e-mail corre-
spondence with people directly affected
by those various conflicts.
Ramsey's "genus loci" in this sense
is not simply Michigan but the Middle
East as well. Michigan has one of the
largest Arab populations in the United
States, an intersection of different cul-
tures and expressions. Rashid's fig-
ures are locked in disembodied lament
and grief. Their words, their day-to-
day details, stretch across their faces,
mostly unreadable.
They're reminiscent of Shirin
Neshat, an Iranian photographer based
in New York City. She's renowned for
her portraits of women in which she
adds thin,.patterned lines of text across
their faces. Her work will be exhibited
at UMMA's Off-Site gallery beginning
later this month.
There is always more than meets
the eye to any city's indigenous arts.
Detroit's assemblage art, one branch
of a beautifully diverse art scene,
picks up the pieces of something - a
dream, a house, a neighborhood - and
turns them into an object that not only
reminds the artist and the viewer of a
concrete past, but is in fact a work in
progress, a progress toward something
greater than the sum of its parts.
DETROIT GALLERIES
Other noteworthy art spaces
in Detroit:
CPop ArtGallery
4160 Woodward Avenue
313-833-9901
It's a fun place to check out local art
if you're in the neighborhood for a
concert.
4731 Gallery
4731 Grand River Avenue
313-894-4731
People in the arts community are
trying to start a new art district
in 4731's area; it's neighbor to the
Detroit designer-centric Fashion
Incubator,
Fi-nite Gallery
1370 Plum Street
313-283-7177
Another Corktown gallery. Fi-nite
hosts late-night electronic music
events that leave this former boiler-
room shakin'.
Izzy's Raw Art
2572 Michigan Avenue
248-207-7547
Next to a thrift store. Funky.
Scarab Club
217 Farnsworth Street
313-831-1250
Originally called the Hopkins Club,
the esteemed Scarab Club has been
a Detroit institution for nearly a
century. Juried exhibits draw an
eclectic, local crowd.
Zeitgeist Gallery and
Performance Venue
2661 Michigan Avenue
313-965-9192
A former Corktown motorcycle
club (seriously), Zeitgeist has been
a gallery space since 1979. It hosts
performances, too; Saturday night's
fpeningteatured an impressive
tlamenco dun.
Detroit Artists Market
4719 Woodward Avenue
313-832-8540
Comprehensive nonprofit venue for
exhibitions and special events, like
film screenings and fashion shows.
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LEFT: Kathleen Rashid's paper mache work "Home" at the Zeitgeist gal-
lery. BOTTOM LEFT: Azucena Nava-Moreno's multi-media work "Jib"
at the Zeigeist gallery. BELOW RIGHT: Crowds at the opening of the
new Work Gallery in Detroit last Saturday night.
n '.;Sai'ti4ly
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Navigating the perilous
record industry with ease
jump
on the opportunity to see the
world from a unique perspective
If you're curious and adventurous
then pack your bags and say
goodbye to the status quo.
Study abroad to earn college credit,
experience a different culture, learn
a foreign languaye, discover who
you are and much nore
JSAC, your gateway to the world'
HIP HOP
From page 1B
manifested. "To sell the units that
we do out of the trunk of our car,
you have to have some entrepre-
neurial, capitalist, let's-go-get-it
mentality," he said. "America does
not want black people to become
self-sufficient, no matter where
that self-sufficiency comes from
They didn't say the (Black) Pan-
thers were scary because they had
guns, they said they were scary
because they fed the kids."
Hasan expanded his critique to
include the arrests of DJ Drama
and Don Cannon. By indepen-
dently creating and selling their
own mixtapes, the enterprising
DJs were bypassing record com-
panies and profiting directly from
their product.
Navigating the perilous record
industry is a familiar subject
for Hasan's frequent collabora-
tor, AKIR (Always Keep It Real.)
After 10 years on the independent
circuit, AKIR has realized what
many underground artists have
trouble accepting. "At the end of
the day if you consider yourself an
independent, you're forced to be a
businessman," explained the vet-
eran emcee. -
AKIR's strategy for survival in
the industry is simple: "Pimp the
system" - but not the fans. With
performances in Sweden and Ven-
ezuela and features in some of hip
hop's most revered publications,
AKIR has taken full advantage
of any outlet for his music. And
unlike many other enterprising
emcees, the product that AKIR
pushes is well worth the effort.
Legacy, his critically lauded debut
album, boasts appearances by
Jean Grae and Poison Pen as well
as production from the Heatmak-
erz and One Enterprises, his own
beatmaking crew. As shown by
the opening lines on his Immortal
Technique-assisted "Treason,"
AKIR's flow is the ideal vehicle
for his political sentiments: "They
be manipulating politicians del-
egating / Task of perpetrating
sounds like Satan making racist
statements."
As AKIR readies his next solo
album, he's turned to personal
classics such as Public Enemy's
It Takes a Nation of Millions to
Hold Us Back and Mobb Deep's
The Infamous for inspiration. By
examining the songstructure and
sequencingofthesealbums,AKIR
hopes to create full compositions,
not just a collection of "cuts."
It's the desire to create music
both sonically innovative and lyr-
ically challenging that bonds art-
ists like Hasan Salaam and AKIR.
According to Hasan, the current
tour, which AKIR considers his
most ambitious to date, promises
to be fruitful for both emcees:
"This right here I'm hoping is
gonna be a real bigthing for AKIR
and, inshallah, I'll be able to get
some things accomplished, too."
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E-mail andresar@umich.edu to learn how
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