AirGo

As part of AirGo's #RunItBack Series, Ricardo Gamboa comes back to the show to catch up and bring some more gems to the airwaves. Since previously appearing, Ricky has returned full-time back to the city and launched numerous projects, including web series Brujos, bimonthly talk show and podcast The Hoodoisie, and community theatre project Meet Juan-ito Doe. The dimple chin remains unchanged. NOTE...

As AirGo hits 100 episodes, we run it back with the parent of Chicago's radical renaissance Mariame Kaba. The wonderful organizer, educator, and community creator talks about her move back home to New York, angry old Socialists, a shift in battlefield since the election, and more. NOTE: this is the first episode of #AirGoRunItBack, a five-week series featuring return conversations with folks who h...

Sadia Nawab creates across media as an arts educator, youth educator, artist, curator, DJ and organizer. She is the Youth & Arts Manager of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), an organization aiming "to serve as the model of the Muslim tradition of facilitating transformational change in urban communities, by inspiring others towards critical civic engagement exemplifying prophetic co...

Elgin Bokari is a multidisciplinary artist, creator, and Program Director for Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy, an organization that teaches writing and creative arts at the Cook County Juvenile Detention facility. A St. Louis native, he DJs, produces, raps, and makes visual art. He is a member of the Elephant Rebellion creative collective. Recorded live 7/13/17 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicago Music...

The Stitch Gawd is here. Emma Mckee is a cross-stitch artist whose work has blessed the sleeves and jackets of pretty much every rapper and singer you know and love from the city of Chicago. She breaks down her craft, talks getting kicked out of Canada, her love for Pivot Gang, North Korea vs. Mormons, and more. She has a mixtape featuring many of the hottest acts in the city coming soon. Recorded...

Jorge Mikell is a true veteran of the Chicago Renaissance. He just released Soliloquy, his debut full-length album, which is available literally everywhere. He is also deep in the Chicago urban agriculture game, facilitating all types of programs through his role at the Experimental Station to connect Chicagoans with affordable, delicious, fresh food. Recorded live 6/29/17 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicag...

Terrence Thompson is a filmmaker and Chicago native who's been documenting, shaping, and retelling stories throughout the city. His most recent film, "Drive Slow," just premiered through the Chicago Track program, an initiative of Free Spirit Media and DCASE. It also stars one of your favorite podcast cohosts (it's Damon). Recorded live 6/22/17 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicago Music from this week's show...

Rachel Leider understands momentum. She's a central organizer for the Chicago chapter of IfNotNow, a national community of young American Jews committed to erasing American Jewish support for the Israeli occupation. She stops by the show to talk movement-building, Jewishness, and more. Recorded live 6/8/17 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicago Music from this week's show: Bird On A Wire (Instrumental) - Harry...

This week, we're doing something a little different–an AirGo doubleheader featuring two one-on-one interviews. Daniel's back in New York for the week talking with an old friend, while Damon holds down the on-air slot. Enjoy all of the conversation! Back in Chicago, Damon sits down with Ayinde Cartman. Ayinde is a poet, organizer, and caretaker, who actually was featured with a live performance all...

NOTE: This week, we're doing something a little different–an AirGo doubleheader featuring two one-on-one interviews. Daniel's back in New York for the week talking with an old friend, while Damon holds down the on-air slot. Enjoy all of the conversation! Daniel sits down with Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a rapper and old friend back in New York. The son of acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair and postcolonial r...

greenSLLIME may have been traveling around the world for the past couple years as Mick Jenkins' DJ, but his style stays lowkey, homemade, hilarious, and fly. In addition to spinning for Mick, he's the host of SLLIME's Broke Ass Low Budget Show, a brilliantly, bluntedly surrealist talk show that has featured Joseph Chilliams, Sharkula, Dally Auston, Qari, Smino, and AirGo alums Jean Deaux and theMI...

LaSaia Wade is the forceful, brilliant voice at the front of the movement for trans liberation in the city of Chicago. She's the director of Brave Space Alliance, a "grassroots funded initiative created by trans people of color, for trans people of color, to generate opportunities to engage in healing, community building and the creating of kinship." She's also a member of the Chicago's Trans Libe...

AJ Christian is coming for your television with an eye to the future. He is the founder of Open TV, a Chicago-based platform for intersectional television that has been the home for web series Brown Girls (written by AirGo alum Fati Asghar), Brujos (created by AirGo alumn Ricardo Gamboa), and many more programs reimagining the form and distribution of television in the digital age. He's a professo...

Kaina's twitter bio says it best–she works hard and she loves her city. She's a wonderful singer who has stepped onto larger and larger stages over the past year with her musical collaborators The Burns Twins, including festival Mamby on the Beach this summer. They recently put out an EP together, entitled sweet asl. She's also one of the associates holding down Chicago footwear brand Bucketfeet's...

Thaddeus Tukes is a master on the vibes and community journalist in the making. Featured across Chicago's music scene, including on The Social Experiment's Surf, Thaddeus is a gigging jazz musician, producer, and rapper. He also is in a masters program studying new media innovation and entrepreneurship at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, where he was a central figure in the campus' musi...

Rebel Diaz is about the work. The brother-brother duo came up in Chicago as self-described "movement kids," and has since traveled the world bringing their music and radical framework to resistance moments and movements around the world. They've been organizers and community members in the Hunts Point neighborhood of The Bronx for the last 15 years. Recorded 4/5/17 in Chicago Music from this week'...

Eddie Sanders both holds down one of Chicago's most popping spots, and holds the degree to get you out of trouble if things get a little too wild. A veteran of the Chicago creative community, he is a lawyer for many of the artists in the scene, as well as one of the main folks at popular night spot East Room. He also spins records, has dope glasses, and runs distribution label Freshly Baked, and d...

Monte Booker makes sounds you've never heard in a song before, but seem like you've heard them around you your whole life–the clicks and whirs of machinery, the hums and whistles of a flock of birds, the resonances inside our heads. An undeniably innovative talent, The Chicagoan producer has been making sonic tidal waves with rapper/crooner Smino, AirGo alum Ravyn Lenae, a bunch of other talented...

Naledge may be a student at Northwestern's School of Communications within the Media, Technology and Society Program, but he's a kid no more. One half of 2000's-era rap group Kidz in the Hall, who sold more than 100,000 records worldwide on both Duckdown Records and Rawkus Records, he is also the founder of the Brainiac Project, which provides safe spaces and professional training at a recording s...

As an antidote to all of the endless yammering we bring you week-in and week-out, this week AirGo presents music by all of the musical artists who have come on AirGo through the first 82 episodes. The mix is done by AirGo's own DJ Empathy (aka Daniel). Peep the tracklist below! Music on this week's show: Divine Love - @wowtashawow Untitled 04 (summertime) - @jhonmyquale Suitcase - @bellabahhs Blk...

Safia Elhillo is a badass and poet of Sudanese origin who manages the space between her words with fearless grace. She's in town for Halal if You Hear Me, a special event for Louder Than A Bomb that shares its name with the anthology of which she is co-editor with AirGo alum Fati Asghar. If you have any questions about Ja Rule and Ashanti, she is your go-to person. Her first book, The January Chil...

Charles Preston is an organizer and radical spacemaker. A central figure in CSU's fight for survival, which AirGo alum Dave Ellis broke down on Episode 73, Charles is also the creator of Church on the 9, a popup cypher and community-building event on 79th Street here in Chicago. He talks spacemaking, organizing, and mental/emotional health with the AirGo crew. Recorded live 3/2/17 at WHPK 88.5FM i...

In the frantic recallibration of what is, what isn't, and what might be since January 20th, our definitions of journalism, the press, media, and the truth are all in flux as real threats solidify and old tensions reemerge. How do we humanize our journalism and root it in the information different communities want and need? Ellen Mayer is the Engagement Consultant at Hearken, an "audience-driven te...

Amika Tendaji is a mother, a longtime Chicago youth and community organizer, a co-founder of Ujimaa Medics (UMedics) a collective focused on health justice and self-determination for Black people and a lead organizer of BLMChicago. She is also a poet, photographer, artful dodger, orca lover, storyteller, base builder, amateur comedian and a flamethrower extraordinaire. Recorded live 2/16/17 at WHP...

bLAck pARty, also known off the mic and boards as Malik Flint, is an old friend and raw music-maker whose most recent project, Mango, is available everywhere now. A Little Rock native, he moved out to LA a couple years ago when he began to work with Wolf & Rothstein, Childish Gambino's management company. We break down some big ideas, how he got to this moment, and even a few UFO sightings. Re...