Kathryn de la Rosa spoke to a person who had hair. At the time, it was purple, but who knows what it looks like now in this piece. It’s all about being queer, and how colorful hair can help express that queerness.

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Our next piece was put together by ASR producer Blessing Olumoroti, who talked about her experience having natural hair.

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We have a discussion on the ins and outs of curly hair in a culture that really values straight, soft hair. Two of our producers, Carter Barrett and Sheila Raghavendran, sat down to talk about the real-life struggles of having curly hair.

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Our last piece is all about guys. It comes from our producer Hannah Boomershine. She had some questions she wanted answers to. For example: Why is long hair so uncommon for men?

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Last semester, we did a show all about femininity. There was one piece that talked about hair, and our producers got so excited about it, we decided we need a whole episode dedicated to talking about all kinds of hair. All the hair. On all the people. Queer people, people of color, boys and girls and everyone in between. All the hair you can think of.

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Sheila Raghavendran looks into how Lotus affects businesses in downtown Bloomington.

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ASR producer Noni Ford and one of her friends dive into the significance of Chi-Town, an all-male South Asian a cappella group based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Obviously people go to Lotus for world music, but outside the venues you can’t help but notice the local presence of people playing on the street. So, Emily and Abbie stopped to talk to some of them.

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ASR hosts Abbie Gipson and Emily Miles have been going to Lotus International Music Festival in Bloomington for four years. This year, Lotus featured 70 activities, 35 performers in 12 venues. They discuss all things Lotus from their favorite performers to the economics of the festival. Here are some of the artists they mentioned:A-WA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3bjZlmsb4AMovits! :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkz8_d1rUIUThe Dhol Foundation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Rh9PP0cz8

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What makes a music festival? It’s a sort of vibe nearly indescribable, something composed of people. Sure, it’s the musicians, but it’s also the carefully constructed setting, the volunteers, and every face in the crowd.

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