Culture Couch

Migiwa Orimo is a visual artist in Yellow Springs. The work she creates in her studio, might end up in a traditional art gallery  – or carried through the streets during a political protest. Because alongside her formal studio work, Orimo makes protest banners. She’s been showing her art work in galleries for over 30, years but recently her banners were included in an exhibition of protest art called “Still They Persist.” 

Dayton, Ohio – the birthplace of Funk Music will celebrate the opening of the Funk Center and Museum on Friday. Funk music started flowing out of Dayton in the 70s – and scores of hit records became part if the American soundtrack.  Groups like The Ohio Players, Heatwave and Parliament became household names.

Today on Culture Couch, Community Voices Producer Renee Wilde gets a private tour of the center with a local musician whose band, called SUN, was part of Dayton’s funky scene back in the day.

Dayton filmmaker Leah Byrd is trying to break down racial and gender boundaries in a new web series called Hot & Bothered. The characters in her series are among the most underrepresented in television: black women and members of the LGBTQ community.

A 2016 report by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found that less than 40% of all regularly recurring characters on TV shows are black, and that only 25% of LGBTQ characters are people of color. Leah Byrd’s series Hot & Bothered has both.    

Owner of the Meadowlark Restaurant in Kettering and Wheat Penny Oven and Bar in Dayton, Chef Elizabeth Wiley, has been a player in the area’s restaurant scene on-and-off for almost 40 years. Over that time, she’s made more of a name for herself nationally, and watched other local female chefs climb the ladder alongside her. 

In late 1878, a father gave his two boys a toy that flew under its own power. It had a small propeller, and made a big impression. Twenty-five years later, one of the boys became the world's first pilot, and never lost his fascination with flight.

The Opera Guild of Dayton was incorporated 54 years ago.  Their mission is to support Opera in the Dayton region.  They’ve given more than 2 million dollars to the Dayton Opera, but they do more than raise money – they get school children involved in opera performance.

This fall, people from all over the Dayton region came together to for the second annual Longest Table event. Organized by UpDayton, the Third Street Bridge downtown is blocked off to traffic and turned into a community dinner party open to the public, and Community Voices reporter Renee Wilde went to break bread with fellow Daytonians.

It’s a beautiful fall afternoon and the Third Street Bridge spanning the Miami River in Downtown Dayton is lined end to end with long, white, folding tables and chairs, ready for the crowd of people gathered at the far end of the bridge. 

Dayton’s Dia de los Muertos celebration is this Sunday, October 29. The Day of the Dead is a Mexican Holiday that has its roots in Aztec rituals that honored the dead.  Today, it’s celebrated in countries around the globe. Here in Dayton, there’s a parade, Mexican songs and dancing, and lots of altars designed to lead the spirits of lost loved ones back home.

It promises to be a good time for both the dead and the living.

Tattoos have become a major part of our culture, and with over 20,000 tattoo parlors in the U.S. alone, tattooing has become a billion-dollar industry. But it’s the stories behind the ink that interested Community Voices Producer George Drake, Jr. and he went to Dayton to learn about some of them.

If someone gets a tattoo, chances are there’s a story.

Dayton History’s “Old Case Files” opens this Friday at the Old Montgomery County Courthouse in Downtown Dayton.

The story is ripped from the headlines—but not today’s headlines. The cast will be reenacting a murder trial from 1935, when, on Christmas Eve, a former police officer shot a man five times at the postal telegram office on 3rd Street in Dayton. To at least one passer-by, it seemed pretty cold blooded.