Mahmoud Ahmed

Can’t jet away for the Memorial Day weekend? You'll find plenty of live and DJed international sounds in the area, including groups from Ethiopia and Haiti and selectors from Jamaica, Brazil, Ghana and Angola. I spoke on the phone with renowned Ethiopian guitarist Selam Seyoum Woldermariam, who'll back up Ethiopian stars Gosaye Tesfaye and Mahmoud Ahmed Saturday night at the Howard Theatre.

Woldermariam, also known as Selamino, is now a Virginia resident. He's played with Ahmed since 1974, including the recording sessions that became Ethiopiques No. 7, part of a series of recordings of Ethiopian music beloved by collectors. Because of his stage presence, Ahmed has been likened to Otis Redding and James Brown; Selamino, in his understated manner, says his colleague “has entertained five or six generations.” While the 71-year-old should display his Amharic wail over plenty of horns and guitar-led funk and  Afropop-influenced Ethiopian music of the 1960s and '70s—this will be more than an Ethiopian oldies show. Selamino says most of Ahmed’s band is young, and he excitedly thanks God he'll also be backing 37-year-old singer Gosaye Tesfaye. When I observe that much contemporary Ethiopian music relies on syrupy synthesizer sounds, he responds, “We’re trying to defuse that. Technology should help bring out our talent; we should not be dominated by it.”

Read more This Weekend in Global Music: Mahmoud Ahmed, Skah Shah, and More

On WDCW-TV, Mark Segraves devoted his entire NewsPlus show this week to a 2010 interview he did with the late Chuck Brown at Uline Arena. Uline, which is no longer open, was where Brown started working as a shoe-shine boy when he arrived in D.C. as a kid—as well as the Howard Theatre, where Brown will lie in state on Tuesday before his funeral Thursday. "There’s a certain vibe you feel when you walk inside here," Brown told Segraves. "And I’m always reminiscing. I love to reminisce and remember things. Those things I could never forget." He also reminisced in the interview about D.C. radio legend Petey Greene, who Brown met while they were both incarcerated at Lorton.

The show aired this morning on Channel 50, but you can catch the entire program online here.

Photo by Mike Madden via Instagram

The Half Street Fairgrounds, a collection of shipping containers circled around a fallow parking lot across from Nationals Park, failed in its first attempt at becoming a destination for pop-up retail: Jewelry and clothing didn’t mix well with booze and music, the vendors said. So this summer, Fairgrounds management is doubling down on the tunes, with a series of country-rock concerts dubbed “South on South Capitol”—almost as cool as it sounds—that should play well with the heavily Virginian crowds the team draws. They’re promising cornhole games and mechanical bulls. D.C. may not be a sleepy town anymore, but it’s still somewhat Southern, at least where baseball is concerned. The South on South Capitol concert series begins at 11 a.m. at the Half Street Fairgrounds, 1299 Half St. SE. The series continues June 22, July 27, and Aug. 24. Free. fairgroundsdc.com. (Lydia DePillis)

Not trying to spend $70-plus to see Drake at the Verizon Center tonight? Try this Grey Goose-sponsored after-party hosted by the pop star himself. It looks classy—and boozy—but the price is nicer. Doors at 10:30 p.m. at The Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. $20-$40.

Jazz in the Garden begins its 12th season this evening. Tom Principato Band opens the popular summer series at the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden tonight at 5 p.m. 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free.

Dance parties and so very much more after the jump.

Read more ToDo ToDay: Memorial Day Weekend Edition

Hip-hop is all about bragging rights: who's got the biggest chain, the iciest wrist, and the best rhymes. So how's this for a brag: Afrika Bambaataa helped create hip-hop, a perch only a few can claim.

His use of electronics not only crystallized hip-hop's electro-funk sound, it set the course for the creation of electronic dance music. "The hip-hop we created took from all forms of music," Bambaataa tells Arts Desk. "When hip-hop first came, it spoke to so-called black people, then it reached out to all other nationalities of the great human race."

Before his DJ set this Sunday at U Street Music Hall, the South Bronx native discussed the magnitude of go-go legend Chuck Brown, the need for unity within hip-hop, and the lack of local music being played on FM radio.

Washington City Paper: What is your opinion of today's hip-hop?

Afrika Bambaataa: Most people, when they claim or say "hip-hop," they think of a rapper, or a rap record. Most don't associate it with the whole culture movement of the term "hip-hop," which includes the b-boys, the DJs, the MCs, etc. Those elements hold it all together, along with the knowledge and the overstanding of the culture. So most people, when they say "hip-hop," they just connect it with what they hear on the radio and forget about all the other products of the culture.

Read more Afrika Bambaataa: Young Rappers Need Teachin’

Old photos of Memorial Day 1942, mostly involving a parade around the White House. Historic eye candy! [DCist]

R.I.P. Hal Jackson, who broke color barriers across many Washington radio stations. [New York Daily News]

Protect-U on its start in D.C., plus five influential songs! [Fact]

A plea for peace-focused monuments. [Huffington Post D.C.]

D.C. will get the opportunity to send off the Godfather of Go-Go next week, the mayor's office and Brown's family announced this evening. A public viewing of Chuck Brown's remains will take place Tuesday, May 29 at the Howard Theatre from 11 a.m to 10 p.m. A memorial service will take place Thursday, May 31 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from noon to 3 p.m.

The release is light on additional details, but you'll probably want to line up early for both events—never mind that the Convention Center's capacity is in the tens of thousands. According to the press release, Brown's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, mourners make donations to the Chuck Brown Foundation, a newly established fund that will "give back to the causes he felt so passionately about....Education, Homelessness, and Re-entry Into Society After Incarceration."

The city's cable television office will provide a live feed of the memorial.

Read more Chuck Brown’s Public Viewing, Memorial Set for Next Week

Not too many bands could take off seven years between releases and still have a big fan base. But Garbage—Shirley Manson, Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker—are mostly playing as tight as they ever did, and they were rewarded with a sold-out crowd last night at the 9:30 Club. With the arch of an eyebrow, Manson commanded the audience, which sang the "oh-ohs" during "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)" and pogoed in unison during "Only Happy When It Rains." Even when the band botched "Supervixen" at the top of the encore, Manson defused the hiccup with humor. To this crowd, Garbage could do no wrong.

Photos from the show can be seen in the here.

Yesterday would've been the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog analog synthesizer, aka one of the coolest-sounding instruments in the history of music. As it often does on the birthday of a famous weirdo, Google created a "doodle" in tribute: a functional facsimile of a Moog. Surely the Web's more musical denizens lost hours of productivity as a consequence.

I asked some D.C. musicians to play around with Moogle—to write a piece of music, record it using the doodle or on their own, and send it my way. (The ones recorded via Moogle seem to only work on some computers.) America Hearts' Kristina Buddenhagen recorded the group's new single, "A Whole Lotta Love," on the Moogle. The Aquarium's Jason Hutto, no stranger to wacky-sounding keyboards, came up with this. Ian Graham of Lenorable sent in this version. And ACME's Prince Weirdo sent in this one, which he describes as "cops and robbers hot pursuit chase."

Read more D.C. Does Moogle

Still from "Painting Room Lights," © 1980, David Haxton

In which one of our art critics highlights a favorite work on view in a local gallery.

A couple months ago, when the Smithsonian American Art Museum unveiled its video game show,  a little gallery next to the exhibit was closed for installation. The latest installation of "Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image" was taking shape with a new set of works on display, with one exception. Sticking around is Peter Campus' "Three Transitions," which incorporates chroma keys to overlap live and recorded video. It is through Campus' work that the audience might gain a better understanding of another work in the gallery that also benefits from the layering possible with chroma keys.

David Haxton's "Painting Room Lights" is a nine-minute, 16 mm film, transferred to video and projected on the wall of the gallery. To get it requires watching all nine minutes, because even though the wall text says it is "part of a series [of films] exploring the construction of perspective," the concept won't come across with a passing glance.

An arm draws out a quick line sketch of a pyramid on the horizon, and a box in two-point perspective. The device of linear perspective creates the illusion of deep space. The line drawing is superimposed with film of a man appearing to paint poles. The nature of film also creates the illusion of deep space, but with both of these illusions overlapping, the film and the linear-perspective drawing flatten.

Read more Vitamin A: David Haxton’s “Painting Room Lights”

As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, Cynthia Connolly watched art-deco signs whiz by from the backseat of her mother’s car. Her exhibit at Civilian Art Projects captures the years she later spent tracking down fascinating signs, traveling to places in Arizona, Louisiana, New York, West Virginia, and the D.C. area. Her D.C. signs—Bloomingdale Liquor, Yellow Cab—are probably familiar sights to any conscious resident, but they’re intriguing even without the local references. Her images, ringed with a simple black frame, always point skyward, pairing the aging, archaic, scaffold-supported signs with almost heavenly views of the sky. Connolly’s images aren’t infused with the wittiness of Robert Cottingham’s photorealistic paintings of old neon signs or the pathos that pervades Camilo Jose Vergara’s photographs of decaying Americana, but they do justice to bygone architectural details that are at once derelict and grand. “Letters On Top of Buildings” is on view 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at Civilian Art Projects, 1019 7th St. NW. Free. civilianartprojects.com. (202) 607-3804. (Louis Jacobson)

Read more ToDo ToDay: Cynthia Connolly’s America