Motor City, 8 Mile, Motown and More..

I flew out to Detroit on Wed June 1. Took the Super shuttle, so got to see a whole lot more of DC while we travelled around picking up everyone from private residences to go to the airport. Our bus consisted of a John Hopkins PhD biology student on her way home to Korea for a holiday; a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who we picked up from the veterans' retirement home on his way to Boston to visit his brother, watch the Red Sox Baseball games, and eat lobster ("3 tails for $12.00 - I've made a booking already"); a woman who didn't tell us much, but was editing a powerpoint presentation on rebuilding communities and combating AIDS in Sierra Leone; and finally an older lady and her son who were on their way to Chicago for her sister's funeral, and to settle her estate.

After picking me up at the airport, I was driven to downtown Detroit by my Uncle Lowell (Dad's brother) and my cousin Randy (yes... his name is Randy Rodd.. hey I know...). My dad grew up in Detroit - actually in the city of Detroit itself, on a street called Leslie. Nowadays the city of Detroit is fairly run down in parts. Some streets have lots and lots of boarded up houses, sometimes there are also lots of empty blocks too, and sometimes some of the boarded up houses are being used as crack houses. There are also some inner city streets where the trees are still beautiful and the street looks much like it did when my dad and uncle were growing up. The difference is that most of the people who were living there then have now moved to the suburbs, where my Uncle Lowell, Aunty Lynn and cousins Ryan and Randy live now, and rarely come into the city of Detroit via the extensive freeway system, if at all. The whole 8 Mile thing is actually the road the divides the city from the suburbs, and forms the northern boundary of Detroit itself.

The problem, therefore, is that each time I go to Detroit, I tend to spend my time hanging out in the suburbs and rarely get to see the any interesting things that are actually downtown. So this time I actually emailed in advance with things I wanted to see, as I had no way of getting to them without being driven, as the limited suburban public transport system doesn't extend to the city, and the city transport doesn't extend to the suburbs.

So I got to reaquaint myself with the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Art, as well as see some of the rest of their collection, and the Motown Museum, where I got to see all the memorabilia, as well as tour the building and actually stand in the studio where all those great songs were created. The tour was kind of fast, so I did it twice, and on the second time, there were enough of us that the tour guide divided us into different groups and we had to sing an excerpt from a famous Motown song on the studio floor. So I have officially sung at Motown ;^) (For those who are curious, it was The Supremes Stop In The Name of Love).

And I finally got to visit the Charles Wright African American Museum and see the main exhibition as well as The American Show by an artist called Tyree Guyton who works with found objects.

Turns out that Tyree used to get some of his materials for his huge public art projects from my uncle when he was involved in a scrap metal business. It also just happened that it was the first day of the exhibition and so Tyree himself was actually there at the museum. So we chatted for a while, and it turns out he'd just spent some time in Australia working with communities there, after an invitation from Aku Kadogo. His main project is called The Heidelberg Project . Check out the website, but it's basically the transforming of a whole street into a giant outdoor art project. Some articles on his Australian experience are here, here and here.

So as I was leaving Detroit, at his invitation, I met Tyree downtown on site at the Heidelberg Project, and he showed myself, my brother David and David's partner Rachel around the site. We also met Aku who was in town and grew up only a few streets away from Dad. I immediately recognised her from arts events such as Red Ochre and others at Ozco, and we chatted with her and also with her daughter Zanzi, who works at the Pilates studio on Holt Street, for those of you Ozcoers who remember going to lunchtime classes. Such a small world, isn't it...?

The Heidelberg project is really amazing, and I have some pictures, which I'll work out how to get them up here soon enough.

So Detroit ended up being really interesting. I also managed to catch up with a whole lot of family - 1st and 2nd cousins who have grown up a whole lot since I last saw them, and my dad's cousins (my first cousins once removed for those of you who care about genealogy), and my late Grandfather's brother and sister, my great aunts and uncles. It was really special to see everyone.

I also visited the graves of my grandfather and great aunt who passed away within the last few years, and being able to go and visit them with my brother was really important to me, so I'm very glad we managed to do that.

Dave & Rach drove from New York to Detroit to meet me, and we hung out with the family and then drove to New York via Niagara Falls..

more about our adventures in Canada tomorrow...

BTW - the settings have been changed so you don't need to register with blogger to comment - didn't realise I'd set it up in that way, so apologies to anyone who tried and had problems..