minneculture Archives | KFAI - Minneapolis + St. Paul

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KFAI’s MinneCulture

Discover stories about Minnesota arts, culture and history. Hear audio diaries, sonic portraits, documentaries and more about purring gorillas, forced Native adoption, polka, hip-hop, local food, Minnesota’s immigrant communities and, of course, Prince. In our latest season, hear stories about Minnesota artists working through the pandemic and the time of unrest since the killing of George Floyd.

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Connect with KFAI’s MinneCulture editorial team at legacy[at]kfai.org. Arts press releases, underwriting opportunities and story ideas are always welcome.

Support for MinneCulture on KFAI comes from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

KFAI’s MinneCulture · MinneCulture Podcast

Five members of the The Baldies stand on a rooftop against the backdrop of the Uptown Theater marquee in Minneapolis, circa 1988.

MINNECULTURE IN-DEPTH: ‘Fighting Back: The Rise of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis’

In the days after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, youth-led protests in the city helped spark rebellions around the globe. The police, military, and white supremacist groups all responded. President Trump blamed the protests on “antifa” and called for participants to be labeled terrorists.

Anti-Racist Action (ARA) started in Minneapolis and is a predecessor to the crews often now called antifa. ARA started in 1987 with a multiracial group of teenage skinheads who fought the rising white power movement. It grew into a network of groups in at least 120 towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada. ARA’s first principle was: “We go where they go. Never let the Nazis have the streets.” They eventually applied that not only to white power organizing, but to homophobic and anti-abortion organizing, and to police violence, which they saw as all connected.

Told through vivid first-person accounts, archival audio, and music from the era, “Fighting Back: The Rise of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis.” It starts under the railroad tracks in Uptown, Minneapolis and traces a movement that continues to shape the U.S. to this day.

Listen here:

KFAI’s MinneCulture · Fighting Back: The Rise of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis

(Photo Courtesy of Kara La Lomia)

“Fighting Back: The Rise of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis” is a production of KFAI’s MinneCulture. Funding for MinneCulture made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It was produced by Anna Stitt. Alexis “Lex Amor” Adimora composed the original score.

Anna Stitt is a fiscal year 2020 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A group of temperance advocates protest outside a saloon in Anoka, Minnesota, 1873.

MinneCulture In-Depth – A Brief History of Women in Bars: A Minnesota Story in Three Rounds

One hundred years ago, two major constitutional amendments went into effect. The 18th marked the start of Prohibition and the 19th granted many women the right to vote. It wasn’t a coincidence that these laws went into effect adjacent to one another. The movements were linked in some surprising ways.

In this new documentary, “A Brief History of Women in Bars: A Minnesota Story in Three Rounds,” Fulbright Fellow, historian, and podcaster Katie Thornton looks at how the state’s temperance movement set the stage for its women’s suffrage movement. But she also looks at how temperance leaders—and, by proxy, many early suffragists—failed to engage many women who weren’t wealthy, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And the Minnesota women who didn’t fit that bill empowered themselves in other ways—sometimes through the economic and social opportunities presented by the alcohol industry.

Listen here:

KFAI’s MinneCulture · A Brief History of Women in Bars: A Minnesota Story in Three Rounds

“A Brief History of Women in Bars” was researched, written, narrated, and produced by Katie Thornton. Co-narration by Daniel Bergin. Sound design by Katie Thornton, with mix assistance and editorial guidance from Ryan Dawes.

Special thanks to Misti Harper, Sabine Meyer, Andy Sturdevant, and Doug Hoverson. Sabine’s book is called “We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota.” Andy’s new book with Bill Lindeke is “Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities.” Doug’s book is called “The Drink That Made Wisconsin Famous: Beer and Brewing in the Badger State.” Nettie Hayes’s oral history came from the Minnesota Historical Society archives. The tempermance song was written by Ms. E. A. Parkhurst. The saloon music was by Scott Joplin via the Free Music Archive. Background music by Architect and Confectionary from Blue Dot Sessions. More work from Katie Thornton is available at itskatiethornton.com or on Instagram at itskatiethornton. This documentary was made mostly from home during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Support for MinneCulture on KFAI comes from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. This documentary was made with the support of a 2020 Minnesota Historical Society Legacy Research Fellowship.

Againsts a backdrop of books, Piotr Szyhalski draws a piece in his latest "Labor Camp" series in his basement. The room is dimly lit and a flag mutes the light of an egress window.

MinneCulture – Scarce Paper, Extreme Historical Phenomena

By Sheila Regan

During the Covid-19 stay at home orders, Polish American artist Piotr Szyhalski turned to drawing, regularly posting his work to his Instagram feed. Working in his basement, he responded to news reports about the pandemic by making incisive drawings that utilize sharply drawn humor to criticize America’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

KFAI’s MinneCulture · Scarce Paper, Extreme Historical Phenomena

“I made the first drawing because I just had to do something with my hands,” said Szyhalski. “

People began responding to the image, sharing it on social media, and offering positive comments. The next day, as national leaders floated the possibility of opening up the country despite the dangers, he created another image, this time with a knife, a tongue full of dollar signs, and a caption that reads, “Open it Up, for Business.”

The drawings are part of an artistic framework Szyhalski has been working with for many years called “the Labor Camp.” As part of that project, in the years following the Iraq war, Szyhalski was spending time investigating sound based on archival records and historical recording from important moments in history.

“I would refer to those events as extreme historical phenomena,” he said. “It could be compared to, for example, an impact of a mallet on the drum.”

In the midst of the mallet strike that is the novel COVID-19 pandemic, Szyhalski is capturing these phenomena in real time.

“We are actually in a unique position to be right in the middle of this and, and so I’m trying to not just pay attention to it, but I’m trying to unpack as much as I can using the language that that I speak, the language of visual art.”

Szyhalski likens the experience of making this most recent body of drawings to growing up during a period of political strife in Poland, where he came to recognize the responsibility as artists as makers of culture.

“I used to tell students, you know, that when I had a one sheet of good quality paper, back in Poland, I would stare at it for weeks, sometimes months, because I really needed to know exactly what I was going to do with this. Because there was no room for error. But what do you know, we find ourselves in a situation where suddenly, I was like, looking at every scrap of paper in my basement thinking, Oh, my God, like, I’m having flashbacks here… that’s part of that experience of being in in this you know, turbulent, kind of vibrating moment.”

Support for MinneCulture on KFAI comes from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. More Minnesota arts, culture and history stories at MinneCulture’s Soundcloud page and at the MinneCulture Podcast.

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