Fw: Tomorrow!! Battle of the Bands: A NIGHT OF MUSIC & SONGS

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Tomorrow!! Battle of the Bands: A NIGHT OF MUSIC & SONGS

Please come and join us tomorrow night! You don't want to miss out!

ACCESS LIVING & BODIES OF WORK are pleased to present:

Battle of the Bands: A NIGHT OF MUSIC & SONGS

When? Friday, November 11th, 2011, 6-8 pm

Where? Access Living, 115 W Chicago

DHF EXPRESS' signature blend of power pop covers and off-beat originals will

make you sweat...but also make you think. These talented musicians have eclectic

tastes and a unique sound and are members of Project Onward, which supports the

creative growth of artists with mental and developmental disabilities.

The Arts of Life Band

makes danceable party music with a rock edge. It is an ongoing collaborative

project between disabled and non-disabled artists in the Chicago area, based out

of the Arts of Life community of artists.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a

state agency; and by a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of

Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

HERE is the article about The Arts of Life Band in the READER!

Saved by rock ’n’ roll

The Arts of Life Band shows that being developmentally disabled doesn’t stand in

the way of rocking out

By Leah Pietrusiak

Feature archives »

Sandro

, sporting a foam shark hat whose toothy mouth flapped as she moved,

strutted toward the Magic Hat Stage of the North Coast Music Festival. " No

walkie-talkies on during the show, " she shouted at a security guard. " I'm

singing loud! "

It was Labor Day weekend in Union Park. A guy with her started chanting, " Shark

a-ttack, shark a-ttack. " He turned to me and said, " Have you heard 'Shark

Attack'? " He laughed. " I had it in my head for three weeks once. "

's hat was a kind of mascot for the Jaws-meets-B-52s tune, whose lyrics

begin, " He's got big sharp teeth / And a nose to smell blood. " wrote the

song with other members of the Arts of Life Band, who have played at venues such

as the Empty Bottle, the Old Town School of Folk Music, and the Cork Lounge in

North Center, where I first caught the band three years ago. I remember being

hesitant before that show, almost scared for the performers for some reason—how

often do you see someone with Down syndrome hanging at the bar and then rocking

out onstage?—and then totally embarrassed when they performed with a nonchalant

confidence.

Arts of Life Inc. is a nonprofit that encourages adults with developmental

disabilities to explore visual and performance art—and to show it off in

mainstream public venues. " It's really about integration, " says Arts of Life art

director Shuquem, who heads up the band, plays keyboard, and contributes to

the vocals. " This is the meeting of two different worlds that have definitely

been separated over many years. "

After the North Coast performance, came out into the audience clacking

her drumsticks and getting down to Orville Kline (a DJ from the weekly Porn and

Chicken dance party), her shark head still bouncing along.

" We want people to realize, 'Hey, this person is in the same world I'm in; they

enjoy the same things I do—that we all have some form of disability, and that we

should focus on the similarities and not so much the differences, " Shuquem says.

" But just like any other rock band, we're here to wow the audience and make them

dance their asses off. "

is 52. You maybe wouldn't guess it from her rock-star attitude and

exuberant one-liners ( " I wanna see some rock, man—with his shirt off! " ), but she

spent most of her life in state-run institutions. She remembers being pushed

around, being angry, and hardly ever interacting with anyone. Now she lives in a

place called L'Arche—part of an international network of small, community-based

residences—and has two housemates, one with a developmental disability that

keeps him from living independently and one without.

Before coming to L'Arche in 2000, couldn't really communicate her

feelings verbally; she'd pound on things with her fists and growl. In her new

environment people asked her opinion on things and allowed her to make choices,

such as what she wanted for dinner, and her reactions started to change. But

Conroy, executive director of L'Arche Chicago, says would revert to

old behavior whenever she came home from her vocational program, which had her

doing work along the lines of putting brand stickers on cups.

In 2007 Conroy helped enroll in the Arts of Life. Every week day

spends five hours at the studio, where she plays and records music and makes

art. One of her boom box paintings is the cover art on the band's first album.

" There's a lot written about what's wrong with the programs in Illinois, but I

don't know if there's a lot of attempts to find the good ones, " says Conroy.

L'Arche and Arts of Life share the same philosophy, she says: each person's

interests and talents—and that includes staff members—should be nurtured and

shared in a larger community.

" People with disabilities, by necessity, live much of their lives in

environments that are designed—and to a certain extent, controlled—by other

people, " Conroy says. That's especially frustrating, she says, if the residents

and the staff aren't on the same page about the ways in which they deserve to be

respected as adults.

At Arts of Life, the resident artists can choose how they spend most of their

day. And they don't have to ask permission to head to the bathroom.

has trouble with some concepts, such as how to use money and how to

travel alone, which keeps her from being fully independent. But after she came

to Arts of Life she quickly acquired a new set of social skills.

" If someone would say something about a piece she was working on—like maybe you

could add some more color—she'd rip it up or paint over it, " says Fisher,

cofounder and executive director of Arts of Life. " But now she's able to listen

to critiques, think about it, and make her own decision based upon that instead

of either shutting down or getting super-mad. "

Now she pounds on drums. Well, on one drum. And it was her idea to play it. " I

hear it in my heart, " said this March during a segment on WCIU profiling

the band. The drumming helps connect with the band's other drummer, an

Arts of Life volunteer. " They have to really be in sync with each other to play

at the same time, " Shuquem says.

The physical act of making music is therapeutic, according to Greg Stasi, a

neuropsychologist at North Shore Pediatric Therapy. He says it reduces stress

and boosts processing speed by stimulating a number of senses at once, from the

tactile to the visual and auditory.

" Any presentation of information increases cognitive awareness, but when you

have something with multiple stimuli, like music, the synapses become more

sensitive, so the brain will respond more quickly and be able to work at a

quicker pace, " Stasi says. " The act of repeating words over and over again, and

being encouraged to speak in a format that's fun and engaging, can also help

with memory retention and speech. "

· Bauer

· plays with the Arts of Life Band at the Fulton Street

Collective, July 17, 2010

When Shuquem became Arts of Life's art director in 2006 he quickly noticed

how much some of the residents enjoyed the drum circles Fisher arranged. An

artist and musician himself—he helps run the Reversible Eye Gallery in Humboldt

Park and plays with circus-punk marching band Mucca Pazza and his own band, the

Loto Ball Show—he got the Arts of Life Band off the ground the same year.

The band has its shining moments during live shows, but it also runs into

technical problems. Some of its members sing exceptionally loud and others

exceptionally quietly, so adjusting the sound just right is a trial. " They don't

always know to say, 'Hey, turn me up,' " Shuquem says. And they don't always sing

directly into the microphone.

But what the band lacks in technical proficiency it more than makes up for in

stage presence. Last year, when they opened for the Loto Ball Show at the

Whistler in Logan Square, " the Arts of Life Band blew my other band away, "

Shuquem laughs. " Twenty-three people didn't get in. "

Shuquem recalls how a city-sponsored performance of the Arts of Life Band was

cancelled last year because the organizers—Shuquem doesn't want to say who—were

nervous that the band would be heckled by drunks. But that's never happened. " I

think that's a thought that's pretty prevalent, that we need to be protected

from drunk people, " Shuquem says. " But 100 percent of the time our audiences

have welcomed us with open arms. Everyone is always like, 'You guys are awesome.

This rocks.' "

Shuquem describes the Arts of Life band members as " five musicians who are able

to drive themselves and seven who are not. " (Driving, he says, is a significant

indicator of processing speed.) Shuquem drives. So do two guitarists, a drummer,

and a bassist/vocalist/keyboardist. The band covers a range of genres, all spun

through an indie rock filter. There's the rap-inspired " Happy and Proud, " sung

by Mike Marino as a tribute to his kidney donor, and the rock ballad " Puppies

and Babies, " sung by Stone and inspired by an Arts of Life session with a

social worker on what makes you happy. ( " Puppies and babies / They are soft /

Warm and smooth / They are cuddly / Cuddle and hug / I love them. " ) Fisher

points to the improvement Stone has shown since joining the band. " He came to us

with very little language because of his autism—not that he couldn't talk, but

because he didn't understand the value of using language, so he would become

very physical, " Fisher says. " And now he's singing onstage. "

When I played " Puppies and Babies " for local DJ Dave Duchek, without telling him

anything about the band, he said, " It's kind of quirky. It reminds me of

something Beck would do in the studio just fucking around, churning out little

ditties. Who is this? "

Local glam rock legend Bobby Conn, who has shared a bill with the Arts of Life

Band, including a Pitchfork afterparty last summer, says they remind him of the

60s all-female outsider rock band The Shaggs. " They have a similar songwriting

aesthetic—honesty, " Conn reflects. " I wish I could write songs as directly. "

The Arts of Life Band is part of a growing lineage of American musical acts that

include performers with disabilities. In 1987 Bill Gage—who has Down syndrome

and a mesmerizing voice—began fronting the rock band BILL with his brother ,

an early collaborator of Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. In 1988 the Kids of

Widney High (named for a special ed high school) formed in Los Angeles, and its

songs have been covered by bands including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The late Chicago

icon Wesley Willis, who suffered from schizophrenia and was known for his

intricate ink drawing of city scenes, came up in the early 90s, and songs of his

such as " Rock and Roll Mc's " became standards of the era's underground

music scene.

Gage of BILL says it's hard for some people, including booking agents, to

picture what to expect from mixed-ability bands. " But once you see us

functioning as a band, when Bill grabs the mike and starts talking to people and

singing and rocking out and doing what he obviously, clearly, loves to do, it

doesn't seem unnatural. "

" I guess people are always trying to look for descriptions, and I've thought of

the movement in terms of a new kind of punk rock, " says Shuquem, who got the

band a gig opening for a side project of guitarist Greg Ginn, who was the lead

songwriter for seminal punk band Black Flag.

" These are people who have been alienated from the mainstream for a long time,

and are now playing in bands, being included on compilations, getting press, "

Shuquem says. " And they don't care what anyone thinks. They're just up there to

have a good time. "

The way Arts of Life got rolling in 2000 had nothing to do with music.

Fisher, who was then managing a residential program, noticed that one of her

charges, Cuculich, was coming home extremely agitated from her workday

sorting bottles. So she asked Cuculich what she'd rather be doing.

Cuculich—who became one of the original Arts of Life band members and who died

last year at age 79—was " super-creative, " Fisher says. " She would take, like,

5,000 bobby pins and try to create an art piece in her hair. So one day we asked

her, 'You seem to like art—what about being an artist?' "

Fisher started doing art projects with Cuculich as a cool-down activity after

work. When she realized that about 20 other residents—a third of the house—were

coming home with similar behavioral issues, she offered them all a chance to

paint too. " I just saw how limited their lives were, " Fisher says. " And I

thought, 'This sucks; I would be freaking out too.' "

Within ten months—with a bit of her own money, a loan from her parents, and ten

interested residents—she founded Arts of Life, a cooperative of sorts where

residents could act creatively and share in the decision-making, including the

hiring of staff.

Fisher was then 30 years old, part of a new generation of support professionals.

Her older colleagues were touting the improved conditions at state institutions

and the emergence of smaller-unit housing and " sheltered workshops " that offered

what's now called " prevocational training. " Fisher was less impressed.

" Sheltered workshops were a creative idea in the 70s because people weren't

doing anything all day locked in an institution, " Fisher says. " But it's really

just busy work. Practice sorting these colored poker chips and we'll find you a

job—and the job never comes. "

One advocate for the disabled I spoke with argues that making art all day is

also busy work. Yet the artists at Arts of Life display and sell their work—at a

dozen Starbucks outlets and at venues such as the Judy A. Saslow Gallery and the

Kinzie Corridor Art Walk. " We use art as a tool to teach things that are

important to people—dignity, self-efficacy, independence, " Fisher says—things

the residents hadn't necessarily been thought capable of learning.

At Arts of Life, Shuquem and volunteers contribute to the songwriting

process—finding loops in GarageBand, helping the band members talk out and rhyme

lyrics, and singing with some of them onstage to help them remember lyrics.

ec, a volunteer guitarist, recalls what it was like working with

on " Shark Attack. "

" We really wanted to have a Jaws theme in the beginning, at a really peaked

volume, and said, 'No, you have to start it slow—it has to build to

somewhere. If we play it really loud in the beginning where is it gonna go from

there?' She said, 'You just gotta listen to me.' And that's one of the best

parts of the song. It's like a rock explosion. "

Another song, " Around the World, " was selected for the second volume of Wild

Things: Sounds of the Disabled Underground, a series released by Heavy Load, an

English punk band that has two members with developmental disabilities. (The

2008 documentary Heavy Load focused on the band's ongoing " Stay Up Late "

campaign to encourage caregivers to work later shifts so their charges can get a

taste of nightlife.)

" Around the World " is a call-and-response routine Shuquem does with band member

Krueger, 48, who has Down Syndrome. They improv about places they'd like

to travel to (Turkey's been one, and so has hell) and Krueger goes out into the

audience, getting people to join in. " I'm shy, " Shuquem says, " and when I go

places with Dave it's easier for me to interact with people. When we do 'Around

the World' I'm following his dance moves. "

· Rob Karlic

" If we look back 50 years, the societal approach to people with disabilities was

'out of sight out of mind,' " says Jeffers, executive director of Little

City, a private provider of housing and services for people with disabilities.

" People were considered uneducable. " Jeffers worked 23 years for the state of

Illinois; during a visit to the Dixon State Hospital in the early 1980s he

witnessed crowded wards, inadequate clothing, and " biters " who were dealt with

by having their teeth pulled, often without anesthesia.

" People used to be warehoused and provided with 'sheets and eats,' " says Tony

auski, executive director of the advocacy group the Arc of Illinois. " Feed

'em and put 'em to bed. "

It wasn't until the election of President Kennedy, whose sister Rosemary had

received one of the first lobotomies in 1941, that Washington started to change

its approach to disabilities—one change being federal funding for programs such

as special education. " After many years, we of course realized that kids should

be going to school with their friends and neighbors rather than being

segregated, " auski says.

To help commemorate the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration this past

January, Arts of Life was invited to exhibit its work at the Kennedy Center in

Washington D.C. But for some disability advocates, it was a tough time to feel

celebratory. Even in good times, Illinois has ranked low when it comes to how

much money it spends on programs outside its own institutional system. And this

year, as Illinois prepared to release its next fiscal-year budget, the state

faced a $2.2 billion deficit.

A 2008 report out of the University of Colorado, The State of the States in

Developmental Disabilities, ranked Illinois 43rd in the amount of money it spent

on community programs versus state institutions. A 2011 update released in

February dropped Illinois two spots to 45th—and listed it behind only Texas and

New Jersey for the largest number of people living in state institutions. (In

what some disability advocates see as a positive development, Gov. Pat Quinn

announced this year the closure of two of the state's eight institutions for the

developmentally disabled.)

" Institutions aren't the horror stories they were in the 70s—they just don't

provide the chance for people to interact with people who aren't disabled, "

Fisher says. " Some people want to live on closed campuses and work in sheltered

workshops. We just want to make sure that's not the only option. "

The state budget was finally passed in June, and auski says community

programs weren't slashed as drastically as their advocates had feared—but " we're

not out of the woods yet. " Because of the state's budget woes, the time

community providers must wait to be paid for services already provided keeps

getting longer and is now about six months on average. " Wouldn't you be fearful

if your paycheck was delayed that long? " auski says.

Fisher opened the first Arts of Life studio (on Grand near Damen) with $15,000,

but she had to raise $50,000 to launch a Glenview studio in January 2010. " When

we opened the Chicago studio ten years ago, the state was paying us on time,

every month, " says Fisher, whose facilities provide daytime vocational services

to about 50 people. " But now that we're not getting paid on time I have to

account for at least three months, sometimes six months, of expenses. "

Because Arts of Life has no assets to borrow against, Fisher explains, the state

put it on an expedited payment schedule, and checks arrived only 45 days late.

But in August she received an email from the governor's office telling her the

wait would be extended—by how many weeks or months, it did not say.

The two Arts of Life studios operate on a total budget of about $385,000. When

Arts of Life was launched 11 years ago it received 90 percent of its funding

from the state; that portion is down to 65 percent, and Fisher says that every

year she tries to drop it another 5 percent. The balance comes from grants,

individual donors, and entertainment-driven fund-raisers, such as the Half Acre

Chili Cook-Off on November 5 at the Chicago studio.

" I'd like to see the state raise their expectations for what people with

disabilities are capable of—meeting their basic needs, but also taking risks so

they can grow as individuals, " Fisher says. " [] used to be in an

institution. Nobody thought she'd be a rock star. Now she's signing CDs at

events. "

One night last March at the Hideout, ordered a nonalcoholic Clausthaler

and asked a bandmate if his mom would take them to go see the film Little Red

Riding Hood. Then she broke into a howl—her stage name is the Wolf. The

band was out to celebrate the release of its second album, Around and Aroundi>,

and premiere its music video for " Shark Attack. " Filmed at the 31st Street

beach, it features and Krueger taking turns wearing a shark costume and

attacking people in the water. There's a lot of fake blood.

I asked why she wasn't performing in the shark costume. She said, "

tore the eyes off and tore my fins off. What am I gonna do now for Halloween? "

Local mixed-ability band DHF Express—part of the arts-based Project Onward—were

the opening act, and the Arts of Life musicians were the first ones on the dance

floor. During a cover of " Down Home Blues, " Krueger got down on one knee

and started headbanging.

When the Arts of Life Band took the stage the dance floor filled and began to

sway. pounded hypnotically on a drum and chanted, " Let's get this band

going. " The keyboards came in, then crashing guitars. The bouncing of 12 bodies

made the Hideout stage seem even tinier than it is.

" As a live music fan, I won't be able to see things the same way again. And I

mean that in a good way, " said , who came to see headliner Bobby

Conn and knew nothing about the Arts of Life Band. " And I also just started to

play music, so to see them up there and have joy and support and doing it for

the purest reasons—it's pretty invigorating. "

As for Conn, he took home a picture of him that Krueger and Shuquem had painted

and brought to the show. " They really captured me, " said Conn. " That's what's so

disturbing about it. " He sauntered off singing, " Puppies and babies . . .

Puppies and babies . . . "

Like any band, the Arts of Life Band has dealt with creative differences and the

kind of personal issues that affect performances. had a seizure the day of

the record release show, and another member was dealing with a change in

medication, battling voices in her head in the bathroom. But she was good to go

come showtime.

Dutka, who was at the Hideout show, got to know the Arts of Life while

looking for places in the midwest to screen the Heavy Load documentary. He's

also technical director at the dance company Momenta, whose dancers with full

use of their legs perform alongside those in wheelchairs—but he admits that it

took him a while to get comfortable talking to people with disabilities.

" Growing up, we were always told, 'Don't look at that person,' " says Dutka, 59.

" But in time you realize that we're all different, and we're all human.

" This movement is picking up momentum. It's 10:30 PM, and we've got people from

group homes out enjoying themselves. This is a success. "

Tags: Feature, Arts of Life

M. Arnold

Public Relations Coordinator

Access Living

115 West Chicago Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60654

312-640-2199

www.accessliving.org

Find Access Living on Facebook

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--

Sandie Yi

Graduate Assistant

Bodies of Work: A Network of Disability Arts and Culture

http://www.bodiesofworkchicago.org/

Ph D Student, Disability Studies and Human Development

University of Illinois at Chicago

E-mail: cyi9@...

Personal Artist's Website: http://cripcouture.org