Alejandro Ayala, 42, is a Chicago event organizer and record collector who DJs as King Hippo. He runs the biweekly show QC on Lumpen Radio, and he’s hosted or cohosted a series for Worldwide FM that focuses on Chicago R&B, jazz, soul, and more, beginning with the 2018 show Chicago Overground. He’s worked in various capacities for Sleeping Village and the Whistler as well as for the label International Anthem.
When the lockdown first started, I was in Mexico on vacation. I left Chicago and actually never really came back to the same world. As my vacation kept going, I was seeing an increasing amount of strange posts from America and seeing all these weird e-mails. And, you know, I was on vacation. I was trying not to read them, but a lot of them were like, “Cancellation! Cancellation! Cancellation!” I’m like, “What is going on over there?”
I remember thinking that the Royal Sessions felt exactly like what the Preservation of Fire events had been about. So I asked Angel and Isaiah if it was cool if I came by and documented everything to then present to the city. They were hosting weekly sessions at the Perennial Garden in Jackson Park, and the first few were pretty sparsely attended, but as the summer went on and into the fall it started to swell up. The garden is so wide and people that went were very careful, so their picnic blankets were really far apart from one another. And even if they weren’t on their blankets, it wasn’t like people had their masks off. Everyone always had their masks on. They would take a sip of their drink and then cover their face right back up.
I suppose what I like to help them focus on is the importance of community and the importance of gathering and what happens once you bring people together. It’s magical. In my experience, you bring people together and something will always happen. And I think that’s an incredible thing to experience. It’s the why, more than the how. The how is pretty easy, but the why is more important to me.
