Elliot Park music series– a long time in coming

BY DWIGHT HOBBES

A great deal of change has taken place at Elliot Park over the last decade. And, it can be traced to that often-disparaged word “gentrification.”

When the East Village apartment complex starting going up at 14th Street and 11th Avenue, abandoned and dilapidated housing came down, displacing havens for drug dealing and related activity. As the complex neared completion, cops suddenly found the wherewithal to crack down on drug traffic, prostitution and related loitering that had gone unchecked for years in the park across the street. The bible college, North Central University, had bought the neighborhood liquor store at 14th & Chicago, turning it into a bookshop for the students, getting rid of a magnet for panhandlers.

So, from one end to the other, what used to be a sprawling eyesore and hub of illicit goings on actually began to resemble a decent place to have a nice time in the outdoors. Today, it actually looks like and functions as, well, a park.

A good way to keep it like that is to make constructive use of the area, hosting community-friendly events in the vicinity. This helps to keep the park full of nice folk, which in turns means the cops will be around to maintain an eagle eye on things, and citizens in general a will have a neighborhood they don’t mind one bit calling home.

Accordingly, the new Music & Arts in Elliot Park series, initiated in August, is a very good thing. It’s a monthly concert event sponsored by KFAI Community Radio to bring folk out of their houses and celebrate all different kinds of music and, along with it, a variety of cultures—which in the true spirit of diversity doesn’t confine it to aesthetics of color, but includes white people, too. In conjunction with the Elliot Park Neighborhood Inc., Gethsemane Church and Augustana Lutheran Church, most happenings are free and all are open to the public.

Artists who have performed as part of the Music & Arts in Elliot Park series include such Minnesota luminaries as folk and bluegrass songbird Becky Schlegel, Celtic/Cajun/Americana band The Sweet Colleens and guitar phenom Justin Roth.
Just last month, Celtic artist Laura MacKenzie was at Gethsemane Church, sharing music from Ireland, Scotland, England, France and Northern Spain on an array of wind instruments, including flutes, whistles, concertina and bagpipes as well as singing.

Ellen Stanley, who hosts Womenfolk, a KFAI program of women’s folk and acoustic music, and gets the PR word out on Music & Arts in Elliot Park, says of the series’ content, “It’s all different kinds, different languages. Styles of music and performance. So, when we say diverse, we really mean all those things. To make it interesting to more groups of people, to really connect with the [Elliot Park] residents.”

More recently, organizers were looking for a winter holiday event. The American Swedish Institute already had an annual to-do in place. It only made sense to team up. Hence, the December event, ASI’s annual Lucia Celebration. “This [is] a unique opportunity to do something positive in [the] neighborhood, which has gone through so many changes.”

A favorite Swedish holiday tradition, the Lucia Celebration honors the saintly figure of Lucia who illuminates the darkness of winter each Dec. 13. At the celebration will be a pageant and a performance by ASI’s Swedish Youth Choir. For tickets and further information, you can call 612-871-4907.

In January comes “Womenfolk at Gethsemane, featuring Brianna Lane.” Lane, it happens, started her musical exploration on a college-bound journey from her native Minneapolis to Asheville, North Carolina. Lauded as refreshing and poignant, Lane’s style developed from that road trip as she listened to the likes of, for instance, the Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan and Aimee Mann. She’s now on a national tour promoting her newest album Radiator.

Ellen Stanley will be on-hand as host: as a bit of background, for KFAI’s Womenfolk, Stanley airs a wealth of otherwise underexposed fare and has interviewed, among others, Joan Baez, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock, living legend Cris Williamson and Red House Records siren Lucy Kaplansky.

The Music & Arts in Elliot Park/American Swedish Institute Lucia celebration is Saturday, Dec. 9, 2:30 p.m. at Augustana Lutheran Church, 704 11th Ave. S., just outside downtown Minneapolis. Tickets: 612-871-4907.

Parking is free. Womenfolk at Gethsemane featuring Brianna Lane, is Sunday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m. at Gethsemane Church 905 4th Ave. S. It’s free. For further info: 612-332-5407. For general information about Music & Arts in Elliot Park, call 612-281-1364.