Oliver Wang
Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach. He’s contributed to KCET since 2012 and also writes about arts and music for NPR, KPCC, the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the creator and writer for the audioblog, Soul-Sides.com and the creator, producer and co-host of the album podcast, Heat Rocks. Photo credit: Eilon Paz
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In over 40 years of DJ culture, there have rarely been platforms for women, least of all of color, to talk about records, learn to mix, and importantly, play gigs — that changes with the proliferation of Chulita Vinyl Clubs around the Southwest.
Victor Jaramillo Soriano started raising bees in El Sereno in 1948 but his honey business has a family legacy that goes back hundreds of years.
The legendary crew Beat Junkies have made (sound) waves in the hip-hop scene. Now, they've opened a school to break it down for a new generation of DJs.
Barely five feet tall and thin as a rail, Steven J. Salazar was a wunderkind, learning to master both the piano and guitar on his own by his teen years.
Sam Sweet shares the histories of Shigeru “Tommy” Nishiyama and Michiye “Michi” Hada, the Japanese American couple that purchased the El Centro Market next to the court in 1947.
Recent productions set in Los Angeles continue to highlight the distance between the Hollywood imagination and the people living here.
In his Highland Park home, Charles Lummis invited friends to record traditional Mexican and Native American folk songs -- eventually producing over 450 tunes on wax cylinders.
Chinatown's Velveteria is one of the only velvet painting museums in the world. With it's establishment, co-founders Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin are on a mission to revive "the greatest art in the history of man."
Kendrik Lamar's new album, "To Pimp A Butterfly," has distinct L.A.-centric musical roots.
Grace Lee's new documentary traces the ideological evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American activist who was once a leading intellectual of black nationalism.
For location scout Greg Campeau, few other cities like Los Angeles offer built and natural landscapes that manage to be both deeply iconic and conveniently generic.