Tree huggers, funk fanatics, and hip-hop heads rejoice, for your time has come.

Beginning this evening, 25 acts from D.C., New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia will descend upon 13 acres of privately owned land in Lingum, Va., for the eighth annual Mustock Outdoor Music Festival. This year, the public will able to attend the festivities, whereas in years’ past, only close family and friends could attend the festival, says Angela Barnes, an organizer for this year’s Mustock festival.

Also this year, Mustock will conclude Sunday with a ceremonial tree planting—another first for the annual event, Barnes say.

The Mustock festival was created by Mustafa Akbar as a way to pay homage to D.C. artists, and get great use of his family’s land, which it has owned since 1882.

Read more This Weekend in City Lights: Mustock Music Festival

An occasional feature in which esteemed D.C. rapper Head-Roc shares what’s on his mind.

I admit it! I don’t know much about the DC Black Theatre Festival! Because, well, this is the first one ever!

No, it’s deeper than that. I don’t know much about black theater at all, actually. I know Paul Robeson is a theater great of revolutionary impact who was black. I am aware that many actors consider roles in theater to be more “true” to the acting profession. That’s what I’ve heard…

My impression is that Tyler Perry has been pretty much crowned the king of the American black theater. That’s a turnoff for me. In the ads for anything I ever see that the brother produces portraying black life, nothing ever comes off as flattering of black people or the black experience.  I hate the extra-over-the-top stereotype-enriching “art” that gets promoted as black life in America. It’s probably why I have not gone to see the movie Precious yet. I’m just not interested in another artistic production on how fucked up black people’s lives are or can be.

Read more Head-Roc’s Mouth: The DC Black Theatre Festival

Friday

• Buddy Guy w/ Ann Rabson. The Birchmere. $69.50
• The Shirks, the Ladies, Maybe Baby, Social Problems, Electrocutions, Young and High. The Velvet Lounge. $10. +21
• Jason Aldean w/ David Nail. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $30-$45.
• Altar of Plagues, Castevet, Velnias. Black Cat. $10. All ages.
• Bomba Estereo w/ King Chango, Natalia Cavlier. Rock and Roll Hotel. $20. All ages.
• Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Shafqat Amanat Ali. DAR Constitution Hall. $37-$127.
• Thriving Ivory w/ Ponderosa. IOTA Club & Cafe. $15. +21.
• Watermelon w/ Kenton Dunson, Alex Tebeleff. The Red and The Black. $8. +21
• Carolyn Malachi w/ DJ Heat, Taratibu Youth Association, Pinstriped Rebel. U Street Music Hall. $10-$35. +18
• Washington International Piano Festival. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• National Symphony Orchestra: Distant Worlds. Wolf Trap. $20-$52
• Michael Schenker Group, Lynch Mob w/ Baby Jayne, 15 Minutes, Kat Atomic. Jaxx. $30. +21
• Mudlark, Tall Richard. Bangkok Blues. Call for Price.

Read more Weekend Music Roundup: Buddy Guy, Diamond District, Blue Öyster Cult

Mention the name Mercedes Sosa and many people will remember her just as much for her social activism as for her music. The Argentinean folk singer, known for songs such as “Gracias a la Vida” and “Balderrama” (otherwise known as “that song from that movie about Ché with Benicio Del Toro in it”), passed away in 2009 after a long battle with endocrine and respiratory issues. Now D.C.’s own Coral Cantigas is paying tribute to her work and her legacy as a voice for native peoples throughout the Americas and their issues.

The local chorus, whose mission is to increase “awareness and appreciation of the many rich styles of Latino choral music, and promotes diversity by uniting communities through the joyful and transformative power of music,” will be performing a cross-section of Sosa’s songs at the National Museum of the American Indian. The works will be drawn from all eras of her career and will include some of the songs Coral Cantigas performed this spring at the Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda.

Read more Coral Cantigas Pays Tribute to Mercedes Sosa

The director Christian Carion’s latest film, Farewell, opens this weekend at Bethesda Row Cinema. Benjamin R. Freed reviewed it in April when it showed as part of Filmfest D.C.:

Farewell, which gets its title from the code name of a KGB turncoat who gave Soviet intelligence to France in the early 1980s, would like to be a taut psychological thriller. Regrettably, its two lead performances are complemented by ill-placed musical cues (Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell” at the height of one character’s paranoia), celebrity cameos (Willem Dafoe!), and maybe the worst Ronald Reagan imitation ever put on film. Far more worthy are the two leads—Emir Kusturica as the Baudelaire-quoting KGB defector and Guillaume Canet as his low-level contact in the French embassy in Moscow. Kusturica’s weary, hangdog complexion (and a more than passing resemblance to John C. Reilly) convey years of frustration with the Soviet regime. And Canet, whose résumé includes genuinely chilling films like The Beach and his own Tell No One, imbues his reluctant spy with the right amounts of anxiety and fear.

Read the full review here.

Love him or hate him, Hugh Hefner is a cultural force. His magazine played an undeniable role in the sexual revolution, and his early legal battles helped to break through puritanical obscenity laws. In her new documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, Brigitte Berman explores the socially progressive side of the Hef. His TV show was the first to feature mixed racial groups on national television, and his Playboy clubs in the South allowed both black and white guests while segregation was still the law. An early Playboy issue even featured a science-fiction story satirizing homophobia, long before that was part of public discourse. Arts Desk chatted with the playboy himself about the documentary and his legacy.

What prompted this documentary—were you approached about it or was it your idea?

It was not my idea at all. I became aquainted with and friends with Bridget when she did her Academy Award-winning documentary on Artie Shaw. She also did a documentary on Bix Beiderbecke the iconic early jazz cornetist, and we play Dixieland all the time here at the mansion. So we became friends, and three or four years ago she said she was interested in doing a documentary on the parts of my life that people don’t know about.

How did the process of actually making the movie begin?

She said she simply wanted to focus primarily on the part of my life that other people were generally unaware of–the other facts were out there, but people weren’t noticing them for obvious reasons. Ray Bradbury related to the magazine a number of years ago, “People don’t see the forest because of the Ts.” The lifestyle and the girls get the attention, but what she found interesting was the other part of my life—not just the sexual revolution, but the impact I’ve had on race, abortion reform, drug reform, and such.

Read more “People Don’t See the Forest Because of the Ts”: Hugh Hefner on His New Documentary

Campello (photo by Darrow Montgomery)

Good morning! Lenny Campello, author of the forthcoming book 100 Washington Artists, isn’t happy—at all—with Kriston Capps‘ Arts Desk piece on him from yesterday, and says so at length on his D.C. Art News blog. Jeffry Cudlin—artist, curator, WCP art critic—has some thoughts on his blog, which he gets to after having some fun with his own inclusion in Campello’s book:

So, if this were my book, how would I do it? I don’t want to diminish for a second the hours, organization, and mental energy that Lenny has put into his book…but it seems to me that to really put this concept to bed, one needs not just to identify a pool of notable working artists, but to sort them according to the various disciplines in which they work.

This imaginary book, then, would survey and classify the various strains of DC gallery culture, with brief intros to each section, and offer a little history, a little criticism, and bios of key players in galleries and museums as well.

Right out of the gate it seems to me that this book would need to account for the division between traditional gallery culture (”new realism”, landscape painting, black-and-white street photography, etc.) and avante-garde gallery culture (new media, installation, cross-disciplinary project work, and traditional consumable media oriented toward contemporary art museums/Artforum/Chelsea).

He goes on, and it’s worth your time.

Read more Arts Roundup: 100 DMV Artists Edition

From D.C., the Gulf Coast’s oil-spill crisis can feel remote. And donating money to relieve it can feel like mere drops in a large body of water. But Brandon Moses, of the D.C. band Laughing Man, says it’s a cause worth partying for. And so Laughing Man and a handful of local acts—Typefighter, Drop Electric, and DJ Smudge—are getting together tonight at the Rock and Roll Hotel to raise money and awareness to aid the Gulf Coast.

The “Heal, Baby, Heal” concert’s Facebook event says that besides “taking advantage of the awesome D.C. local music scene [attendees] are gonna drink/party/dance with the goal of helping some of those de-employed workers and oily birds that don’t deserve any of this.” Tickets are $12, and will go toward the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and Second Harvest Food Bank.

STREAM: Laughing Man – “Almost Always” (unmastered recording from the band’s forthcoming EP)

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For his part, Moses got his start in service, not indie rock. When he lived in Philadelphia, Moses worked with a community development program that gave children a place to eat and work on homework after school. After a while, the program came across some issues, and funding fell through. Moses decided to turn to music, and started performing to raise money so that the kids could still have a safe place to go to. He compares his efforts to that of Positive Force D.C.—in the sense that music can be used as a form of activism.

Read more Tonight: Laughing Man, Drop Electric, Typefighter Raise Money for Gulf-Coast Relief at Rock & Roll Hotel

I’ve been pumping Mustock as the best D.C. indie music festival for at least five years. This is now its eight year.

Mustock is the love child of the one and only Mustafa Akbar. The first time I went to his ancestral farmland in Lignum, Va., I was blown away by the festival the brother had envisioned and brought to fruition.

Mu, as many endearingly call him, is a D.C. funk veteran. He’s traveled the world hustling funk to the masses. Whether through his solo music projects or with more commercially known bands like Thievery Corporation, Thunderball, and Fort Knox Five, Mustafa has always been in the mix—and most likely, as some point in time, your mix. He’s rocked many cultures and embraced many customs When I ask him (sometimes jealously, I admit) about his favorite place to rock and entertain, he tells me, “Mustock!”  It’s his home and with his great appreciation for history, Mustafa understands that many people may not be connected to where they come from like he is.  So, since 2003 Mustafa has been sharing his roots; offering an overnight “spiritual grounding” experience to all who attend.

Read more Head-Roc’s Mouth: Mustock 2010!

A vibrating porn star. A petty henchman in love with his crime boss’ long-jumping girlfriend. Two Chileans arguing about knives. These are the kind of unexpected and darkly flawed characters that litter the short stories of Roberto Bolaño’s collection, The Return, which is newly translated by Chris Andrews.

These masterful works are haunting snapshots of the lives of the unfulfilled and unrequited. Often, when we leave them they have come to some sort of brutal end, though occasionally one of Bolaño’s characters will rise above the emotional muck and the worst of luck to brokenly triumph. But even if they do manage to achieve a minor victory, it is never without a great cost that leaves greater scars, both tangible and intangible. One story, “Clara,” ends with its narrator admitting, “From his voice and the turn the conversation was taking, I could tell that what he needed from me, or someone, anyone, was friendship. But I was in no condition to provide him with that solace.”

Read more Reviewed: The Return by Roberto Bolaño