Digging for Gold
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The stretch of Devon near its intersection with Western is ground zero for Chicago’s sizable Indian population. Among the restaurants, bakeries, butcher shops, and fabric and electronics stores that line the sidewalks is an abundance of video stores, most of which also sell music from India. The one with the largest variety is Bombay Video (2634 W. Devon, 773-743-5575). The shop is crammed with cassettes, CDs, and videos–India’s film industry is three times as prolific as ours–and most of them are stacked high behind the CD-filled glass counters. At first glance it’s not the best place for browsing, but garrulous proprietor Sujay Shah seems to have memorized the location of every recording in the dozens of apparently random piles and is exceedingly helpful. Bombay Video stocks a huge selection of Indian film music and bhangra, and while most neighboring shops carry music from northern India’s classical Hindustani tradition, hardly any boast as broad a selection of southern India’s less restrained, Islamic-influenced carnatic music. On a recent visit I found a terrific collection of carnatic music performed by Sheik Chinna Moulana on the nadasvaram, an oboelike instrument that’s nearly four feet long and produces a piercing, nasal tone. Also worth checking out in the area are Atlantic Video Rentals (2541 W. Devon, 773-338-3600) and Al-Mansoor Video (2600 W. Devon, 773-764-7576).
Another video store to visit for music-hunting purposes is MDD Records and Video (5609 N. Broadway, 773-728-9288). The “records” in the name is misleading–five or six water-warped LP jackets hang on one dusty wall–but this noisy, incense-choked shop does feature a good selection of African music, primarily from Nigeria. A weird mix of Hollywood and African films is flanked by display cases with a modest array of CDs and a better selection of cassettes, including obscure titles from Nigerian superstars like King Sunny Ade, IK Dairo, Barrister, and Ebenezer Obey; there are also a handful of concert videos by such artists. I recently picked up a Sunny Ade tape called Syncro System Movement that documents the raw energy of the Lagos legend before his more commercial bid for stateside success in 1982.
This weekend Lounge Ax hosts the fifth and final annual Cardigan Festival, which benefits AIDS care and research at Howard Brown Health Center. Friday’s bill is headlined by organizer Seth Cohen’s group, Number One Cup, while Saturday features the Chicago debut of Mitch Mitchell and the Terrifying Experience, a new band led by the former Guided by Voices guitarist. “It started out being fun, but now it’s just a headache,” says Cohen, who cites the difficulty of finding big-name bands willing to commit to an unpaid gig in advance as his biggest obstacle.
