Grace Hebron

Fifty years ago, Baltimore’s festival scene birthed a summertime shrine to Black music and culture. The first AFRAM Expo was among the city’s many bicentennial celebrations, packing national and local talent into Hopkins Plaza on an early August weekend. With performances by local groups like Frankie and the Spindles and the Baltimore Dance Theater, it was headlined by some of the day’s biggest acts, including Gil Scott-Heron, Lou Rawls, Billy Taylor, and Art Blakey.

“When I was a kid, I used to break into houses … This is ‘The Thief,’” says Future Islands’ sweat-soaked, undisputed spark plug of a vocalist Samuel T. Herring. That gets a couple laughs before he builds up to the track’s chorus. All night, without taking so much as a quick break, his body has gyrated, leapt, danced, and lunged like a human amusement park ride for the band’s throngs of fans, who have waited 10 years for this moment.

Rod Lee — “Puff That Lye” Rod Lee’s “Puff That Lye” is a remix of the 1996 banger “Puff That Lye” by KW Griff, DJ Booman, and K-Life, who handles the vocals and beat. K-Life traces that original back to a local world where weed was everywhere but not necessarily something people in Baltimore were making records about. “I really made it for, like, the hood,” he told the Beat.