Friday: Diwali Festival at the National Museum of Asian Art
Join the National Museum of Asian Art for a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, with a one-night party showcasing how different regions recognize the holiday. Be immersed in dance, music, and of course, lights. Demi Mohamed, the public programs coordinator for NMAA, says there’s one thing she’s looking forward to most: “Definitely the dance party … just seeing people really happy in that space.” DJ Rekha and DC Bhangra Crew will help fill the dance floor. Attendees will also have the opportunity to grab some cute jewelry—designer Saaj by G will be there—or make some crafts of their own. But the real magic happens after sundown. The museum will be illuminated by local lighting designers in a multicolored myriad of projections to immerse the audience in Diwali, and create a home away from home for those missing the festival with their families across the ocean. The Diwali Festival starts at 5 p.m. at NMAA, 1050 Independence Ave. SW. asia.si.edu. Free, but registration is recommended. —Meg Richards
Saturday: BLK Author Expo at Creative Suitland
BLK Author Expo; courtesy of BBPC Events
This Saturday, young authors of color will have the opportunity to gain exposure and be in community with other Black writers at the BLK Author Expo. The event’s host Aaron Butler is the owner and founder of BookButler Publishing Company, which he started in 2019 to publish the stories his children—Nalani Butler, Leila Butler, and Marco Montero—had written. The first book came out shortly after the pandemic started. In a way, the world shutting down was serendipitous—Butler had to get creative with marketing the books, which paved the way for the kind of outreach BBPC still does today. “We were launching something new, we had all the events planned out … it was going to be a good exposure for my daughters. Once everything shut down, we had to pivot … [to figure out] how to monopolize virtual meetings to still get some engagement with the public.” That was the first stage of BBPC. Now, they serve as a platform for authors, like his daughters, who don’t know where to begin when it comes to publishing. The Black Author Expo, now in its third year, was born from small community events BBPC started doing after the world reopened. “It’s actually pretty exciting, because we positioned ourselves to be able to help other authors,” Butler says. “When we were out promoting the first book, we were finding that there were other authors approaching us who didn’t know how to do exactly what we were doing.” The BLK Author Expo runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 2 at Creative Suitland, 4719 Silver Hill Rd, Suitland. thebookbutler.com. Free. —Meg Richards
Saturday: Mark Swartz: A Day of the Dead Reading at Art Sound Language
Biggie and Yoko, illustration by Jeb Loy Nichols
The Day of the Dead, the feast known in the Roman Catholic calendar as All Souls’ Day, is observed on the second day of November, soon after that annual portal into the other world known as Halloween. Rituals performed on this date somberly acknowledge the passage of time and the passing of ancestors. Yet, especially in Mexican traditions, these rites are also full of playful, macabre touches, like the skeletal figures—figurines and full-body costumes—that enable participants to take images of the dead and act out their daily lives as if they were still among us.. In his irreverent way, Mark Swartz, with the help of illustrations by singer-songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols, plays out a musical feast day in his new book, The Music Never Died. Inspired by the many rock and hip-hop lives cut short in their creative prime, the Takoma Park resident has crafted a series of vignettes in which the likes of Amy Winehouse, Biggie Smalls, and Marvin Gaye did not meet an untimely death, and in fact continued to grow creatively, in often unexpected ways. Swartz flexes a crate-digger’s imagination to invent fantastic bootlegs and second acts that wildly careen from the chart-toppers we thought we knew: just wait till you hear what comes from Biggie’s collaboration with Yoko Ono. It’s hilarious and bittersweet at the same time. Swartz will read from his book with musical accompaniment by ASL Soundsystem, the stage name of Art Sound Language’s shop owner and resident DJ PJ Brownlee. The reading starts at 6 p.m. on Nov. 2 at Art Sound Language, 5520 Connecticut Ave. NW. instagram.com. Free. —Pat Padua
Saturday: The Mummies at the Black Cat
The Mummies; courtesy of the Black Cat
In 1988, when the Mummies first took to the stage at San Francisco’s Chi Chi Club wrapped in bloody bandages, the gimmick wasn’t meant to be thematically resonant. “It got the most laughs, so we ran with it,” said lead singer and organist Trent Ruane in a 2016 interview. “Humor was a bit different back then.” But here in the Dark Timeline, where local music scenes across the country have been suffocated by Spotify subscriptions and post-COVID malaise, the idea of four budget rock wraiths without social media accounts crawling from their crypts to wreak havoc on Washington, D.C., feels symbolic. The Mummies began soon after Ruane met drummer Russell Quan at a California mod show. With the addition of Larry Winther (“the only guy around that we knew of who was into playing surf guitar and shoplifting” according to Ruane) and bassist Maz Kattuah, the Mummies were born. Inspired by the Sonics and other garage rock legends, they toured across California, gaining notoriety with their home-brewed sound and unhinged live shows. They even made a trip out east to play the 9:30 Club in D.C. way back in ’91, and though they broke up three days after that show, the Mummies were spotted—Sasquatch-like—for short-lived revivals throughout the ’90s and 2000s. The big comeback came in 2016 for an Australian tour. To this day they’re mainstays of a pre-internet scene defined by dirt-cheap production techniques that result in lo-fi music to which no one in their right mind would relax or study. “It’s this re-recording method that gives you that sound that’s on the verge of completely falling apart into utter oblivion,” Ruane said in the same Unbelievably Bad interview. “That’s the sound that all the lo-fi garage bands that came after us tried to ape … a case of the Mummies making it safe for bands around the world to sound like shit.” The influence of the Mummies has been huge, encompassing bands such as the Gories, the Oblivions, and the King Khan & BBQ Show. Virginia surf-rockers Ar-Kaics also probably have some Mummies DNA in their arcane genome, so it’s fitting that they (along with power-pop outfit Brower) are opening for the lo-fi legends at the Black Cat. The Mummies play at 7 p.m. on Nov. 2 at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. blackcatdc.com. $25–$30. —Will Lennon
Closes Nov. 17: Timothy Hyde at Multiple Exposures Gallery
Timothy Hyde, “Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama” 2014
For his exhibition Book of Job, photographer Timothy Hyde has combined three threads of his prior work—nighttime images, post-disaster photography, and sites of neighbor-on-neighbor violence—into one. The notion of tying these tropes together is promising, but ultimately unnecessary, because the images are moving enough on their own. The disaster images include a room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with its walls covered with flood residue, and a location in Indiana where a family of five died in a tornado, marked by stuffed animals. The places of sublimated violence are even more disturbing. They include a rural corner of Arkansas where Black residents were massacred in 1919; a stately courtyard in Trieste—Italy’s only Nazi concentration camp with a crematorium; and a Toys “R” Us-style children’s store visible in Ukraine only because Russian shelling knocked down an entire building between it and where Hyde was photographing. The thorniest images are those that document the horrors of the Balkans: a Nazi-era Croatian extermination camp where Serbs were victimized—still standing decades after the war; a salmon-colored train station in Croatia pockmarked 28 years after being shelled by Serbs in 1991; and a cultural center in Bosnia where more than 500 Muslim men and boys were executed. These places may be empty today, but they reek of stolen humanity, and it’s impossible to ignore the relentless cycle of brutality. Timothy Hyde’s Book of Job runs through Nov. 17 at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. Daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson
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