Detroit is a city of immigrants and migrants, and their legacies are seen in our music, in our food and even in our buildings.
It’s
fitting, then, that the Michigan premiere and DVD-release of a movie
about a migration of sorts will be at the Bohemian National Home, a place
that once was a center for Bohemian immigrants in Detroit.
Dan
Rose’s film,
Wayne County Ramblin', tells of a road trip from Detroit
to Mississippi, mixed with sexual tension and West African spirits.
Rose is something of a migrant himself — the Detroit-area native
recently moved back to the Motor City from Katrina-devastated New
Orleans.
Rose says the Southwest Detroit home, dubbed the "Bo House" for
short, is a more-than-appropriate venue for his film’s local debut.
Having spent the last 15 years writing, filming and editing
Ramblin’,
he sees some kinship between the making of his movie and the ongoing
transformation of the building. “It’s been a work in progress — it feels
a lot like how our movie does. … It’s going to feel like a kindred
spirit.”
Bo House through the yearsWith
notable exceptions to be found in Hamtramck’s Polish clubs and
Corktown’s Maltese and Irish clubs, many Detroit neighborhoods are
populated with buildings constructed for groups of people who have
long since sprawled away — buildings like Delray’s Hungarian Club and
West Vernor’s Lithuanian Hall are examples.
The social halls
once hosted parties, weddings, meetings, language and dance lessons,
and even potluck dinners. Back when people walked everywhere, these
ethnic hubs were a “third space” for the neighborhood, falling
somewhere between churches and pubs when it came to wholesomeness.
Bohemians
fleeing Prussian persecution first arrived in Detroit in the late
1800s, originally settling on the near East Side. In the 1910s, in order to
accommodate their still-growing community, they constructed the
Bohemian National Home west of Corktown and north of Michigan Avenue in
the old Western Market area. Situated at the northwest corner of
Butternut and Tillman, the three-story, 16,000-square-foot building
served as home base for the Bohemian community until it was sold to the
Detroit Lithuanian Home Association, which used the building until the
early 1990s.
Recent historyNow
the Bo House is home to a new community, one made of artists, musicians
and performers. Joel Peterson says Bo House has evolved into a
“cooperative venue for any arts discipline including, but not limited
to, music, dance, theater and visual arts.” Peterson, who can be
roughly described as the building’s co-owner/event producer/public
relations and marketing director/facilities manager/maintenance
guy/door man, says the goal is to “curate performances and gallery
shows based on quality as opposed to genre.”
It’s been a long
road. Another of the four co-owners, Scott Martin, bought the building
about 10 years ago to save it from demolition. He brought Randa Haurani
into the ownership fold about five years later. Over the decade, a
sporadic slate of events financed improvements needed stabilize the
building, but the whole thing really started taking off about two years
ago, in part because Peterson joined the team.
Martin and
Haurani also had secured a façade improvement matching grant from the
Michigan Avenue Business Association. The money went towards
second-floor art stained glass windows, exterior brickwork, a double
door on Tillman and a new roof. Sweat equity from friends and family
went towards plumbing, electrical work and plastering. “There are
50,000 pounds of plaster we put up on those walls,” Peterson says.
There’s
still work to do, but Peterson and friends are able to
host all manner of events in the space, which has fast become one of
“the” places in Detroit to see art, hear music, dance and even play
basketball. (A hoop installed in the gym located right off the ballroom
is an irresistible draw to some event-goers, and has even prompted
talks of a Bo House basketball league.) The rehearsal
space/studio/living quarters/gallery has hosted a diverse line-up,
including Odu Afrobeat Orchestra, Quintron, SSM, Blowfly, a screening
of Blue Velvet, Ectomorph, Frank Pahl, Charles Gayle and Thollem
McDonas. Peterson savors the McDonas show the most, calling him the
“best improvising pianist that I’ve seen.”
It is to this type
of polyphonic, discordant, non-mainstream music that Peterson wants to
give a home. “I feel like there’s a lack of venues in the city that
consistently support creative artists,” he says. “We’re trying to build
Southeastern Michigan’s scene by making this stuff affordable to all
segments of the community.”
Bo House eventsBut
the Bo House isn’t just about music. Artist (and the fourth and, so
far, final Bo House co-owner) Jerome Ferretti curates the building’s
gallery,
where local sculptor Chris Turner’s show opens on Friday, June 23. Jeremy
Kalio, a dancer who lives in the building, is helping to put on the Bo
House’s very first dance show, B.E.R.M.U.D.A., on June 17, featuring
choreographer Jo Anna Norris’ Detroit debut.
In the future,
Peterson envisions large shows held in the ballroom, acoustic and
chamber performances in the library, and smaller bands and DJ events
held in the still-under-construction bar. Peterson also hopes to
accommodate dance and music workshops, music lessons, a regular ethnic
folkloric music series and community meetings.
In the meantime,
Peterson et al have two big events on the near horizon to keep them
busy. First up: the Bohemian National Home’s First Annual Festival of
Jazz and Improvised Music. With some saying the Detroit International
Jazz Festival is stretching too thin (Chaka Kahn is jazz?), Peterson
wants this festival to “provide people with [music] that is more
adventurous but is also based more in tradition,” and he hopes to segue
this event into a major regional festival in the coming years.
The
festival’s headliner, the Sam Rivers Trio, is of certifiable
jazz-legend status. Rivers, born in 1923, has played with all the
giants: Dizzy, Sassy, the Bird, Lady Day, Herbie and Miles, to name a
few. He had a big role in launching New York City's loft scene in the
’70s. He takes the Bo’s stage just two days after being awarded the
2006 Vision Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. The Jazz and
Improvised Music Festival will also feature local free-jazz icon Faruq
Z. Bey’s Kindred Ensemble, Spectrum Two, an adventurous drum and tenor
sax duo, Afro-Cuban orchestra Grupo Escobar and Middle-Eastern
improvisers Ara Topouzian/Mark Sawasky Duo. (General admission is
$18. Reserved seating is also available.)
The
other big event is Rose’s
Wayne County Ramblin’ local premiere and DVD release on
Saturday, June 24. (Admission is $15; show starts at 7 p.m.) Music is
central to the movie, which employs local icons such
as Iggy Pop, Mick Collins and Nathaniel Meyer.
In the spirit
of the film, the event will feature musical performances from diverse
genres and geographies, including Memphis rock 'n' rollers The Reigning
Sound and Jamaican-born Detroiter Eddie Kirkland. It’ll also be the
Detroit debut of Mississippi farmlanders The Rising Star Fife &
Drum Band, which performs West African-influenced pre-jazz music.
“Detroit
is a big music town because of this migration,” Rose says, reflecting
on the Bo House, the city and his movie. “[
Ramblin’] backward-traces
this migration in a sense.”
Such events fill the Bo House with
people from all over who've found their way to Detroit. Nearly a century
later, it all comes full circle: Built on immigrants' sweat, kept alive
by artists’ perspiration, the Bo House is still a cultural force, still
keeping a community together.
For
more information about the Bohemian National Home, call 313-737-6606 or
e-mail [email protected]. For more information about Wayne County
Ramblin’, click here.
Photos:
Bo House Performance Space
Bohemian National Home
Joel Peterson
Jerome Ferretti
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger