Your 2007 Schedule for SummerDance
by Terry Matthew | Published July 2007 | Features Archives

If you've got a hankerin' for authentic Transylvanian and Hungarian folk music in July, I've got an event you'd be crazy to miss. But you're one of the thousands of House Music fans in the city that started it all, it looks like you're out of luck this time around.

The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs finally released the schedule of performers for this year's SummerDance. Long gone are the stable, weekly events in Grant Park's Spirit of Music Garden that characterized the 2005 edition of SummerDance. Even last year's fiasco, when events were first spread out across the city and then moved indoors to the Metro, appears to be a fond memory. This year, there's not one authentic House Music DJ on the roster, and only a single date by the Chicago Afrobeat Project (June 14, if you missed it) has been thrown out as a nod to the city's dance music heritage.

In place of the House Music acts of years past, SummerDance features a long schedule of musical acts with little in common except that they seem, almost uniformly, to appeal to an older crowd: mambo, polka, Balkan folk dancing, square dancing, and more big band, swing, and ballroom dancing acts than I thought existed in this town. Only one DJ is scheduled to perform - DJ Delores, playing Brazilian Electronica (yes, Brazilian Electronica, in the city that several Grammy winning and nominated dance music pioneers reside).

Is there a secret plan afoot to cater to the thousands that turned out for Derrick Carter and Cajmere last August by adding the city's most popular worldwide cultural export of the last forty years in the remaining six weeks of summer? There have been rumors, but so far, that's all they are.

Whatever the case, it looks like House Music is once again the bastard child of Chicago's cultural mileau. Enjoy instead the stylings of the Uszturu Ensemble for all of your "authentic Transylvanian and Hungarian folk music" needs this July 5th at the Spirit of Music Garden!

5 Magazine is supported in large part by the patronage of our readers. If you like what you see, consider subscribing to the 5 Magazine Digital Edition and receive the complete contents at the beginning of every month as well as access to members only stories for only $1.50 per month!