Most of the Gypsy folk music that’s made its way to our shores in the past few years has been celebrated for its raucous vitality and virtuosity–and from Boban Markovich’s wild Serbian brass band to the woolly Romanian string ensemble Taraf de Haidouks, the Rom do know how to get loose. But Czech Gypsy Vera Bila takes a different approach, selecting tightly arranged jazz- and Latin-flavored settings for her sanguine, throaty vocals; her sound is somewhere between the Gypsy Kings and the Manhattan Transfer (without the scatting)....

Barbara Sfraga’s only disc so far, 1998’s Oh, What a Thrill (Naxos), is a remarkable display of versatility. Her slow-dance simmer on “Great Balls of Fire” pegs her as a neatly updated throwback to old-time torch singers and blues-belting mamas, and her warm, round contralto projects an earthy, enveloping sexuality on Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.” But when she dances through her own words to Lee Morgan’s curvy hard-bop classic “Free Wheelin’” (retitled “Livin’ the Life of Freedom”), or picks her way through the tongue-twisting lyrics to “Slug It Up,” Sfraga becomes a thoroughly modern jazz singer, an heiress to past vocalese champs like Annie Ross....

9 FRIDAY Tonight’s “Experimental Encore” program, the second in this year’s Chicago Ear and Eye Control series, combines experimental film and video shorts with improvised musical accompaniment. Wen Hwa Tsao, Anna Cimini, Paula Froehle, Bruce McClure, Keith Sanborn, Phil Solomon, Zack Stiglicz, Jim Trainor, Todd Wieneke, and Fred Worden are among the artists who’ve contributed new footage; musicians include Ken Vandermark, Kevin Drumm, Axel Dörner, and Paul Lytton. The concert and screening start at 8 at Columbia College’s Ferguson Hall, 600 S....

A curious kind of double game is being played in Dark Blue, a cop thriller that sets out to “explain” the 1992 LA riots. For a good while I sat thinking, “At last—a movie that doesn’t mince words about police corruption and racism,” for even if it’s a decade late and a bit simplistic in some of its moral positioning, the story doesn’t soft-pedal the facts. (It even prompted me to think how useful it might be if someone in Hollywood delivered a thriller about the Enron scandal—not ten years from now but before the next presidential election....

Creature Comforts Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lillig remembers seeing the Animal Court back in the 1980s, when he was a student at Saint Ignatius. A few years ago he developed an interest in the artists of the New Deal era and went to investigate the plaza. By that time the Addams Homes were among five developments making up the ABLA Homes, a sprawling complex of 167 buildings, and the high ideals of public housing had been swallowed up by urban blight....

This is written in response to a December 6 letter from “a librarian with 25 years’ experience.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » says that the Harold Washington Library Center (HWLC) is not in the same league as the New York Public Library. Of course it isn’t. The NYPL is not a public library: it’s a privately funded research library. However, the HWLC is still the largest public library in North America....

Best known as one of Thee Headcoatees, the British girl group programmed by DIY overachiever Billy Childish, garage-blues enthusiast Holly Golightly has released a flood of albums, EPs, and singles under her own name since 1994. But this show, rescheduled from September, will be her first in town since Thee Headcoatees disbanded in 2000, and it’s a rare opportunity to see her front and center. Golightly may have been named after Truman Capote’s aspiring New York socialite, but her life and her music have little to do with that world: back in London she works as a truck driver and lives on a barge, and her songs–sampled on last year’s great Holly Golightly’s Singles Round-Up (Damaged Goods)–wallow in the grittiest sort of low-rent blues and noir country....

When James Spooner started working on his documentary Afro-Punk: The “Rock n Roll Nigger” Experience two and a half years ago, he was motivated by his own experiences of alienation. The filmmaker–who’d been in bands, put out zines, and started a label, Kidney Room Records–“basically wanted to tell my life story through the mouths of as many other people as I could find,” he says. But by the time he finished he seemed well on his way to helping mitigate that alienation for many....

After I get off work, I like to come here and hang out with the jazz musicians, and sometimes I sit down and play a bit of piano myself. For such a little corner of the city, this place sees a lot of action. I’ve always played music on the side–that’s what’s kept my balance all these years of working in the nightlife. The life is rough, the hours are brutal, but it’s also lucrative–if you save your money....

My friend Jake asked me to help him sell “Packers Suck” T-shirts at the Bears-Packers game last month. He had sold them when the Bears played the Packers in Champaign last year and made $500 in less than two hours. “They sell themselves,” he told me. “One for $10, two for $15.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We hopped on the el with two duffel bags loaded with about 60 shirts....

Dear Mike: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was saddened by the fact that she had to recant. I realize that the Tribune has come under attack from voices in the Jewish community as having an “anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian bias.” (There are other voices in the community that may disagree; mine, for one.) I have found the Trib’s coverage of this crisis eminently more evenhanded and fair than that of any other large establishment newspaper in the country....

I found it quite interesting in your 11/15/02 article “Man Bites Watchdogs,” by Michael Miner, how bias was clearly detectable in an article about bias. First off, let me say I believe it was an important article, talking about the hot-button issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the remarkable spin campaign of the Israelis. It’s exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t get talked about in American media, for fear of being branded with the anti-Semitism stick....

The Hammond B-3 organ inspires extroversion, thanks to its enormous and protean sound, the opportunity for knuckle-busting speed afforded by the electronically assisted keyboard action, and the sheer adrenaline kick of playing three lines at once using the two manuals and the bass pedals. But even among organ improvisers, Tony Monaco stands out, with an almost ferocious technique that echoes the style of jazz organ’s prime mover, Jimmy Smith, and that rivals Joey DeFrancesco’s playing for outsize virtuosity....

In 1995 the Reverend Paul Southerland moved his congregation, the Redeeming Church of Christ, into an old funeral home at 67th and Dorchester. He had big plans for the run-down property that surrounded his new church, which he wanted to turn into “a beacon of spiritual prosperity in the west South Shore community.” Things aren’t going quite as planned. But Southerland also wanted to build a new 800-seat church, with lots of glass to let in light, and a new school building....

The next time you’re tossing out those old cardboard mailing tubes or the cores of wrapping paper rolls, think of this: you could have made them into a house for an earthquake victim. Well, probably not you, but Japanese architect Shigeru Ban could have. He’s built a career creating incredible structures out of recycled paper. He’d tested the construction technique in 1994 Rwanda, where genocidal civil wars had left much of the population homeless....

Vocalist Willie Clayton was born in Indianola, Mississippi, in 1956. By the late 60s he was singing professionally, and after moving to Chicago in 1971 he impressed WVON deejay Pervis Spann, who became his manager. Spann got him a contract with the Memphis-based Pawn label, a subsidiary of Hi Records, and though none of Clayton’s 70s releases made him a star, Memphis was good to him: mentored by legendary Hi producer Willie Mitchell, he developed a distinctive voice that fused churchy intensity with sophisticated R & B sensuality....

What’s in the water in Scotland? First we get collegiate mopes Belle & Sebastian, then the less melodic but even more depressed Arab Strap. And now Ballboy: on Club Anthems (Manifesto), these lads sulk like the former with fangs or the latter with tunes. Like the Auteurs, whom they also resemble, they make inviting music that showers disdain on the outside world. Compiling cuts from a handful of earlier UK-only EPs, Club Anthems sets its tone with a nasty little recitative titled “I Hate Scotland....

The city’s annual literary festival continues through October 30, with readings and book signings by local and national writers, poets, and scholars as well as discussions, lectures, workshops, and children’s activities at bookstores, public libraries, and other venues. All events are free unless otherwise noted. For more information call 312-747-4300, see www.chicagopubliclibrary.org, or contact the hosting venues. SATURDAY 23 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Celebrating the History of America’s Foodways” Talks by contributors to The Oxford Food Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink....

Italian saxophonist and clarinetist Daniele D’Agaro is so well-rounded it’s ridiculous. His working units in recent years have included the three-tenor Trio San Francisco with Tobias Delius and Sean Bergin, a quintet performing previously unheard Don Byas tunes (with Han Bennink on drums and Benny Bailey on trumpet), a duo with a church organist reviving 12th-century chants, a clarinet and strings chamber trio, a quintet with Richard Teitelbaum on computers and Senegalese singer Mola Sylla, and two hard-blowing jazz trios....

OCTOBER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Magician David Parr is always on the lookout for spots to stage his brand of interactive theater that explores “the gray area where history meets myth.” He says Evanston’s Charles Gates Dawes House, the 1895 mansion that’s now home to the Evan-ston Historical Society, is the perfect setting for Haunting History, his adults-only Halloween tour. “We’re not trying to attract the hockey-mask-and-chain-saw crowd; it’s not about shock and gore,” says Parr....