Thursday: El Laberinto del Coco at UMD’s Clarice Smith Center

El Laberinto del Coco is a 2017-formed Puerto Rican group led by percussionist Hector “Coco” Barez that melds powerful Afro-Puerto Rican bomba percussion, jazzy Latin horns, and Santana-esque guitar, with Latin pop and rap vocals. Bomba is a folkloric Black Puerto Rican style of music and dance led by percussionists that has its roots in music created by enslaved people. Barez brought that cultural style of drumming to his best-known stint—playing in the band that backed Puerto Rico’s political rap duo Calle 13. Barez, who studied music at the University of Puerto Rico and the Los Angeles College of Music, has also played with Shakira, reggaeton artist Don Omar, and William Cepeda (who pioneered combining bomba percussion and Latin jazz). Barez also has dance chops that he honed with Ballet Folclórico Nacional de Puerto Rico. His winding career journey is displayed in El Laberinto del Coco’s pun-intended Spanish name, which means both the labyrinth of the mind in English, and Coco Barez’s labyrinth. While Barez’s song-arranging approach allows space for occasional guitar and drum solos, the band focus on teamwork efforts where Barez’s hand-slapping on a barrel drum, the trap set drummer’s stickwork, the potent brass, and the call and response vocals work together to propel the galloping, danceable rhythms. At their most exhilarating level, the ensemble strikingly combine bomba, salsa, and hip-hop-inflected pop. El Laberinto del Coco play at 8 p.m. on Feb. 1 at the University of Maryland Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kay Theater, 8270 Alumni Dr., College Park. theclarice.umd.edu. $10–$30. —Steve Kiviat

Friday: Punk Rock Karaoke for DC Abortion Fund at Black Cat

This Friday, aspiring punk singers, abortion advocates, and energized audience members will gather on the iconic checkered floor of the Black Cat for Punk Rock Karaoke. All money raised at the event will go toward funding abortions in the District. DC Abortion Fund, which recently announced its first My Body, My Festival, is following in a long line of abortion activists by raising funds via community-driven, transgressive events. What could be more punk rock than that? If you’re like me and can’t wait until May’s festival to show up and show out for D.C.’s music scene and abortion rights, Punk Rock Karaoke should do the trick. The venue’s recently updated karaoke catalog can be accessed ahead of time, giving you space to perfect that solo to bring the house down. Can’t wait to hear what you come up with. Punk Rock Karaoke starts at 8 p.m. on Feb. 2 at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. blackcatdc.com. $10–$15. —Serena Zets 

Premieres Friday: DC Street Jocks Rocked the House on WHUT-HD TV

In recent years, D.C.-area filmmaker, DJ, and music scholar Beverly Lindsay–Johnson has highlighted the city’s R&B history with a handful of documentaries including Dance Party: The Teenarama Story and Fat Boy: The Billy Stewart Story, not to mention the creation of the Nation’s Capital website. Now Lindsay-Johnson is back with an hourlong documentary called DC Street Jocks Rocked the House, which premieres this weekend on WHUT, Howard University Television’s PBS affiliate. (Friday is 202 Day at WHUT, when the station airs documentaries on D.C. culture from 8 a.m. to midnight.) Lindsay-Johnson tells City Paper via email that she was inspired to make DC Street Jocks when she heard an interview with former club owner and DJ Daniel “Hollywood Breeze” Clayton reference exuberant, self-promoters of the 1970s and 1980s, who, like himself, hosted parties and spun records in basements, parks, and clubs, as street jocks. The film ambitiously tries to not only highlight leading D.C. street jocks such as Sam “the Man” Burns and DJ Fats from the decades Breeze mentioned, but to also tell the stories of Black music in segregated D.C. and Black women in the music industry, as well as charting the evolution of R&B in the 20th century and technological changes in DJ equipment. The film includes interviews with local Black DJs such as Arthur “Maniac” McCloud, Greg Diggs, Don Baker, and Jas Funk, as well as record promoters like Wanda Hayes. Using interviews, song snippets, old photos, and film clips, the documentary shows how the music evolved from slow dance basement soul to bass-filled funk and polished disco that filled clubs. While the film unfortunately doesn’t always explain where the clubs were located or show why certain individuals became so prominent—I had to google the impressive obituary of Leonard “Smitty the Mighty Blazer” Smith—it offers a valuable overview of often-overlooked local history, as well as conveying the sociological importance of the person who chooses the music at events. DC Street Jocks Rocked the House airs on Feb. 2 at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. on WHUT-HD TV and plays six additional times through Feb. 18. whut.org. —Steve Kiviat

Saturday and Sunday: Sanctuary Road at GMU’s Center for the Arts

He is the most successful abolitionist you have never heard of: William Still, who, as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helped ferry more than 800 enslaved individuals to freedom in the North and in Canada. Still was also a meticulous record keeper, making his already risky vocation even riskier. But through his interviews with those he helped escape—later turned into a self-published memoir—we know some of the daring stories of those who made it out of bondage. Still’s 1872 book has since been adapted to an opera by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell, both Pulitzer winners in music (Moravec for Tempest Fantasy, Campbell for Silent Night). The choral oratorio, performed by Virginia Opera, recounts history leading up to and through the Civil War through the stories of some of those escapees, including Henry “Box” Brown, who incredibly shipped himself in a crate from Richmond to Philadelphia. Still is played by Damien Geter, Richmond Symphony’s composer-in-residence. As a new American composition, the opera is in English and is largely tonal, reflecting trends of more accessible and historically informed works in modern American opera. Sanctuary Road, performed by Virginia Opera plays Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 4 at 2 p.m. at George Mason University Center for the Arts, 4373 Mason Pond Dr., Fairfax. vaopera.org. $40–$110. —Mike Paarlberg

Tuesday: Bonnie and Clyde at E Street Cinema

Lead into Valentine’s Day with the iconic romantic drama that reset Hollywood: The trending mob wife aesthetic pays homage to Hollywood mob glamour, reintroduced in the 1960s by Bonnie and Clyde. The film, controversial during its release for glamorizing the lives and crimes of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, later became a sleeper hit and a classic of the New Hollywood era. The film follows the thieving duo Bonnie and Clyde—falling in love at first sight while Clyde steals Bonnie’s car, and their ensuing partnership in crime. The pair’s storied—and murderous—crime spree took them through Texas and all over the country for several years during the Great Depression. As they continued to elude law enforcement, Bonnie and Clyde lived outside the rules. Their crimes shifted from store and funeral home thefts to bank robberies, but the film takes liberties to portray the young gangsters as drunk in love, amusing, and sympathetic criminals targeting the rich. Originally meant to be in black-and-white, the film turned to color and its shadowy, fainted hues give the graphic violence an alluring aura. The couple captured the attention of the nation between 1931 and 1934, a time sometimes termed the “public enemy” era. Their biographic film, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, portrayed gangsters and violence through a new artistic lens, garnering nine Academy Award nominations and two wins for Supporting Actress and Cinematography. Decades later, Bonnie and Clyde holds a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is a renowned bit of cinematic history. Bonnie and Clyde plays at 4 and 7:15 p.m. on Feb. 6 at E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW. landmarktheatres.com. $5. —Anupma Sahay

Ongoing: Chaosmosis and Collaborative Ecologies at the National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences exhibit Chaosmosis lives up to its clever name, and more. Chaosmosis offers varied attempts to document and explain the endless mysteries of fluid dynamics. Some of the works are relatively staid, such as a white-toned 3D-printed sculpture that depicts the air patterns made by spoken words; a fabric print showing the wavy surfaces caused by flames; and metallic photographic prints of the fragile process by which a raindrop freezes. But the most engaging pieces harness video or digital simulations. One low-res infrared video of an opera singer’s breath combines the beauty of an aria with the menace of the then-new coronavirus (it was made in 2020). One three-part simulation tracks cross sections and long views of fluid moving through a pipe, while a black-and-white tabletop video shows chemical droplets from a pipette exploding into fantastical shapes, including ones that suggest the sun, fractals, or a human egg. The simplest work may be the most relatable: an utterly realistic video simulation of cumulus clouds unfurling over a watery horizon. In its entirety, the exhibit convincingly argues that nature is united in its chaos. A second exhibit, Collaborative Ecologies, features two series in which artist Julia Pollack collaborated with scientists. In one, Pollack photographed small groups of honeybees in a hive, but her images are undercut by goofy, anthropomorphic captions such as “Just scratching,” “I missed you,” and “WHUT.” Pollack’s second series is smarter, showing petri dishes with two individuals’ microbial fingerprints, along with a third showing the microbes from something both of them touched. The series is a reminder that ours is a microbial world; we humans are just passing through. Chaosmosis runs through Feb. 23, Collaborative Ecologies runs through June 7 at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. cpnas.org. Free. —Louis Jacobson