Dallas gets another outdoor music and arts extravaganza with the inaugural Dallas Music District Festival, set for May 16-17 at the Trinity River Greenbelt near and under the Commerce Street Viaduct.
In addition to music, expect art installations, street performers, artisan craft market, and an array of food trucks like Ssahm BBQ and Jack’s Chowhound.
“We are excited to introduce the first music festival of this type in downtown Dallas,” said Jerry Su, founder of DMD Fest, in a statement. “DMD Fest will provide an extraordinary cultural and musical experience that celebrates this great city while continuing to grow and embellish Dallas’ thriving creative scene.”
The festival comes right on the heels of the annual Trinity River Wind Festival, which takes place earlier in the day at the same location on Saturday, May 16.
You can get in on the ground floor of the festival now; $20 day passes are on sale for a limited time. That price will soon increase to $30 per day, with two-day passes available for $55 for regular admission and $149 for VIP. All tickets are available at DMDfest.com.
Jonathan Tyler, minus his band the Northern Lights, is one of the headliners at the inaugural Dallas Music District Festival.
Jonathan Tyler/Facebook
Jonathan Tyler, minus his band the Northern Lights, is one of the headliners at the inaugural Dallas Music District Festival.
Writer/director Ryan Coogler has become so well-known for his blockbuster films - Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - that it’s easy to forget that he made his debut with the small-but-powerful 2013 film, Fruitvale Station. After more than a decade, he’s finally returning to original material with his latest film, Sinners.
Each of Coogler’s films has either starred or featured Michael B. Jordan, and this one gives moviegoers a double dose, as Jordan plays twins who go by the nicknames of Smoke and Stack. Set in 1932, the two hustlers have recently returned from mysterious (and possibly criminal) work in Chicago to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to open a juke joint.
They call upon a number of friends and family to help them with the venture, including cousin and guitar player Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), Smoke’s old girlfriend Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), piano player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller), and Chinese couple Bo and Grace Chow (Yao and Li Jun Li). Trouble is never far from the brothers, though, whether it’s Stack’s old girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the Ku Klux Klan leader who sold them the property for the juke joint, or something even more sinister.
Coogler began his feature film career by confronting the issue of unjustified shootings of Black people by police, and how Black people are perceived by society has been a part of everything he’s done since. By placing this film firmly in the middle of the Jim Crow era, he infuses the story with all manner of subtext, including the injustice of sharecropping and prevalent segregation in the South.
Music, specifically Blues, plays a big part in the film as well. It’s championed through the emerging talent of Sammie and the veteran presence of Delta Slim, but it’s also a driving force for other parts of the plot. Sammie is decried by his pastor father for playing “the devil’s music,” while strange newcomer Remmick (Jack O’Connell) seems to appreciate it a little too much. A fantastically surreal scene at the juke joint turns into an entertaining and educational lesson on the history of Black music.
It’s Remmick’s obsession that’s at the center of the final hour or so of the film, one in which all hell breaks loose. The manner of that hell is probably better enjoyed if it’s not spoiled here, but suffice it to say that Remmick has an evil to him that threatens to destroy Smoke and Stack’s venture before it even gets started. The horror aspect of the film is fine, but it actually winds up being the least interesting part of the whole story.
Jordan can occasionally go over-the-top with his performances, and with him playing twins the threat of doing so was doubled. But he remains relatively restrained for most of the film, giving each twin their own unique spin. Caton, a rising R&B singer, makes his acting debut in the film and winds up stealing every scene he’s in. The rest of the cast complements each other well, with Mosaku and Steinfeld being standouts.
Coogler has proven himself to be a savvy filmmaker in each of his previous four films, and with Sinners he combines the personal with crowd-pleasing elements to great effect. It features great music, an insightful story, and even some gory action for an experience you’re not likely to find anywhere else.