The city of Detroit is issuing an open call for a sculptor to create a new statue of Detroit legend Joe Louis.

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The statue, which will be located alongside the Joe Louis Greenway, aims to highlight the iconic boxer’s life outside the ring.

Known as one of the greatest boxers of all time, Louis was a national hero who broke racial barriers in the sport. But some may not know that he also broke racial barriers in golf.

Louis played golf in the mid 1930s and became a major supporter of the United Golf Association. He was the first African American to play in a PGA sanctioned event.

“In Detroit, we celebrate the contributions Detroiters have made to the city and to the world, and Joe Louis is one of our greatest examples,” said Mayor Mike Duggan in a statement.  “It’s only fitting that a statue reflecting his accomplishments outside of boxing grace the magnificent greenway being built in his honor.”

The new Joe Louis statue is just one of many public arts projects led by the City’s Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) to highlight Detroit’s rich Black history.

Artists interested in applying for the statue commission must send a packet of their work to Detroit ACE by Monday, Nov. 11. A selection committee made up of community members, artists, members of the Louis family and business owners will choose the artist, and the statue will be unveiled in August 2025.

For more details on how to apply, visit detroitmi.gov.

Other headlines for Friday, Nov. 1, 2024:

• Election day is coming up on Tuesday, Nov. 5, and the city of Detroit is putting in extra work to ensure that the election is secured.
• “Candlelight: The Best of Han Zimmer” — a live, multi-sensory musical experience featuring music from “Inception,” “The Lion King,” “Interstellar” and more — is coming to Christ Church Detroit on Saturday, Nov. 2 for two shows.
• The 2024 All Things Detroit Holiday Shopping Experience & Food Truck Rally is taking place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 3, in Sheds 3, 4 and 5 at Eastern Market.

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

Tejano music, or Tex-Mex music, is a blend of different sounds and instruments from Mexico and other countries — like Poland and the Czech Republic. 

Martin Solis helped make Tejano music popular in Detroit with his band Los Primos. 

As a self-taught musician, he started playing the Bajo Sexto, a Mexican 12-string instrument from the guitar family, and developed his own unique musical style.

Solis wasn’t born here, but Detroit was his home. And the history of Southwest Detroit can’t be told properly without the inclusion of Martin Solis and Los Primos. Solis is the first person from Michigan to be inducted into the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in San Benito, Texas, and the Tejano Roots Hall of Fame in Alice, Texas.

Martin Solis’ son, Frank Solis, is a local historian who’s preserving Tejano music in Detroit. He joined The Metro to discuss his father’s legacy.

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There were few recordings of Los Primos, but Frank found some lost treasures while cleaning out his father’s attic. He uncovered a bag of cassettes, filled with rehearsal recordings of the band.  

“(Jack White), he’d hear these Mexican bands, and that was my dad,” Frank said. “So he assigned his brother to clean them up with an engineer. They cleaned up the tapes, and the album came — his first and last album.”

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation with Frank Solis about Tejano music in Detroit.

More headlines from The Metro on Oct. 10, 2024: 

• A local author wants to spread the joy of reading, writing and stretching imagination. Mianne Adufutse is a graduate of Columbia College of Chicago where she studied fiction writing and poetry. Adufutse joined the show to discuss her new book, “Garbage Dump” – a dystopian fictional story set in Detroit. 
• The Tigers are red hot. They beat the Houston Astros in the wild card round and now lead the Cleveland Guardians 2-to-1 in the American League Division Series. The Tigers could win the series and move on to the next round if they win today at Comerica Park. Detroit Free Press Sports Columnist Shawn Windsor joined the show to talk about the team’s unpredictable run. 
• The holiest day of the year for the Jewish people starts tomorrow night. Yom Kippur goes from sunset to sunset and is marked by fasting, prayer and atonement. For Jews observing the holiday, that means apologizing directly to those they’ve wronged over the year. Professor and writer Susan Shapiro joined the show to talk about apology, forgiveness and why those two things are important to everyone, everywhere. Shapiro’s most recent book is titled “The Forgiveness Tour: How To Find the Perfect Apology.”

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

Womxnhouse Detroit offers a residency for women creatives who aim to spread their knowledge and crafts while also bringing new lovers to the arts. The home acts as a rotating exhibit with 10 women showing their art in the space. 

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These interactive exhibitions are personal reflections of what the artists create in the home, with this season at Womenxhouse bringing a new set of local artists, workshops and events. 

To discuss Womxnhouse Detroit, Co-founder Asia Hamilton, ceramics artist Michaela Ayers and fiber artist Cat Washington joined The Metro.

“The first two iterations of Womxnhouse was at my childhood home, so we are still in the neighborhood that I grew up in. We’re on Grandmont, right off Grand River, and the neighborhood has really received us so well,” Hamilton said. “Two people came down to the house last week, and they were like, ‘We’ll be right back’ and then they came with like eight people to come and see the space. So it’s just been an honor to be in the neighborhood that I grew up in, and it’s just an opportunity to provide art and culture in a space where, you know, art can be desolate in a neighborhood.”

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation with Asia Hamilton, Michaela Ayers and Cat Washington about Womxnhouse Detroit.

More headlines from The Metro on Oct. 9, 2024: 

• A new Detroit ordinance is being discussed to lower rents in the city. The Fast Track PILOT would offer property tax cuts to developers that would then get passed on as cheaper rental units. The cheaper the rent, the deeper the tax cut. Council Member Fred Durhall III joined the show to discuss the ordinance and how it would create more affordable rent.
• Planet Ant in Hamtramck is a neighborhood theater, specializing in improv, plays and musicals. It gives people the opportunity to get on stage and stretch themselves artistically. Planet Ant begins its theater season this weekend and we were joined by Program Director Mike McGettigan to hear more about what’s in store. 
• It is Hispanic Heritage Month and as we get closer to its end on Oct. 15, we want to discuss the community that has been extremely important to the growth of Detroit — especially in the last 200 years. Wayne State University history professor and Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies Dr. Reyna Esquivel King joined the show to discuss the history of the Detroit Latino community.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

The fourth annual Woodbridge Porch Concerts are set to take place this Saturday, featuring live music from local artists with connections to the neighborhood. 

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Every year the event grows with more businesses participating. One of the features is Woodbridge Ale, a beer made by Brew Detroit with hops from Woodbridge gardens. 

What’s more, The WB5 — a tribute band to MC5 — will be playing in honor of MC5’s 2023 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

Vicky Bash, a member of the Board of Directors for Woodbridge Neighborhood Development, and Dave Nantais, a neighborhood resident and a performer at the Woodbridge Porch Concerts , joined The Metro on Wednesday to chat more about the event.

Use the media player above to hear the conversation with Bash and Nantais.

More stories from The Metro on Oct. 2, 2024:

• The Tigers are good, the Lions are good, but will the Pistons luck change? A lot of fans are wondering if the Pistons are going to be worth following this season.  Recently, the team hosted its media day, which gives everyone a good preview of the upcoming season. Pistons beat writer for the Detroit Free Press and co-host of The Pistons Pulse Podcast Omari Sankofa II joined the show to discuss.
• Detroit Public Theatre just kicked off its 10th anniversary with a new fresh take on Hamlet. WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper sat down with Detroit Public Theatre Co-founder Courtney Burkett to learn more about the show “Fat Ham.” 
• Vice President of the Center for Equity, Engagement and Research at Detroit Future City Ashley Williams Clark joined the show to discuss a new report looking at ways to grow the middle class in Detroit.  

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

Art is one of the oldest forms of storytelling, but a lot of Black stories get overlooked, particularly in Detroit. 

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The Black Artists Archive (BAA) aims to ensure all people’s stories are preserved. The Detroit based-initiative fosters creativity, exhibition, learning, and the preservation of Black art history and visual culture.

BAA Founder Dr. Kelli Morgan joined The Metro on Monday to discuss how the organization is preserving history in the city. 

Use the media player above to hear the conversation with Morgan.

More headlines from The Metro on Sept. 30, 2024: 

• For Freedoms is hosting a conversation called “Pollution Has No Boundaries: Where Do We Go From Here?” on Monday night. The event aims to bring people together to share their personal climate stories and envision steps toward a cleaner environment. Community organizer and activist Theresa Landrum and Filmmaker  Wesaam Al-Badry joined the show ahead of the event to share more.
• It’s been gray for the last few days. And because of climate change, this season has also been unusually warm. Former WDIV Meteorologist Paul Gross joined the show to discuss what kind of weather patterns to expect this fall. 
• It’s now been a few years since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While cases are going around in parts of the Midwest, it’s hard to know by how much since Michigan and other states no longer track the virus. Dr. Paul Kilgore is the director of research in the department of pharmacy practice and the co-director of the Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases at Wayne State University. He joined the show to discuss the importance of flu and COVID-19 vaccines this fall.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

The Charles H. Wright Museum is hosting a series of carefully curated lectures by both nationally-recognized and local performers.

The series, titled The Wright Performances, kicked off on Thursday with a set of performances from internationally acclaimed actor, playwright and director Roger Guenveur Smith — best known for roles in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” and Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster.”

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Smith began the series with the first of three solo performances, titled “Frederick Douglass NOW.” Smith joined The Metro on Thursday before the show to talk about Douglass and this weekend’s performances.

“We’re in a very extraordinary political moment in this country. And I think that Douglass certainly [would have] a lot to say about this particular moment,” Smith said. “He spoke in 1861 when Fort Sumter was fired upon by Confederate troops. And he saw it as an immediate opportunity for the country to liberate the one-seventh of the inhabitants of the country who were enslaved at that point,.

“He saw the Civil War as an abolition war, and I think that he would see this particular moment as a continuation of that war in which people are fighting for freedom and people are fighting for a certain kind of slavery.”

Smith will perform the second one-man play of the series, “Otto Frank,” on Friday, followed by “In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat” on Saturday.

Use the media player above to hear the full interview with Smith.

More headlines from The Metro on Sept. 26: 

• The Federal Reserve recently lowered interest rates to hopefully tame prices, but a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau just showed that Michiganders household incomes are falling behind rising prices. To discuss why this is happening, and what can be done about it, economist Don Grimes joined The Metro.
• A collection of musicians are coming together at the Fox Theater for Smooth Jazz Fall Fest. Founder of Detroit Musix Sam Donald and Co-owner of Anderson and Denham Entertainment Derek Denham joined the show to share more about the event.
• Detroit is full of artists, but many of them are not well known. Art Clvb is a new app that works to connect artists and collectors. And as part of their work, the app is throwing an in-person event called Art Fair at five locations around Detroit starting Friday. The event will include about 200 artists selling their work. Detroit artists Dorota and Steve Coy joined the show to talk about the Art Clvb app and Art Fair event.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.