MOMENT presents – Bowery Jazz Messengers | Jazz Encounters w/Craig Harris
Everybody L.E.S. Culture Mash Music Fest
MOMENT NYC & Subterra Soundsystem present a live music mash-up party celebrating the diversity that has kept the Lower East Side / East Village so interesting and creative for over a century.
DROM 85 Avenue A, NYC, Sunday, June 5th, 6 pm doors
Frank London, founder of the Klezmatics, will lead Bagels and Bongos. Splicing klezmer with Latin rhythms this music defies sedentary listening; Ukrainian Village Voices presents the traditional polyphonic singing style of Ukraine’s villages; Arthur Kill + Xi Feng embellishes rock and pop with traditional Chinese instruments and will dip into the story of Kurt Weill’s connection to the Lower East Side and his classic “Mack the Knife” from Threepenny Opera, in its original German version (“Die Moritat von Mackie Messer”); Momento Rumbero will channel the rumba roots that once colored every summer day around Loisaida’s streets and parks; members of Groove Collective will cook up soul-jazz-Latin-disco grooves with special guests Ruben Rodriguez, Avram Fefer, Ernesto Abreu, Bryan Vargas, and Milo Z; Faith NYC, fronted by Felice Rosser, will bathe us in waves of reggae, soul, and rock as they have throughout the neighborhood since the 1980s; the evening will conclude with the, newly minted, local underground gathering, Subterra Soundsystem. Following the Subterra group, there will be an open jam. Throughout the evening there will be pieces of oral history, local lore, and archival notes giving context to the place we call home – the original melting pot.
$15 adv / $20 at the door / $10 student & seniors / rsvp to info[at]momentnyc.org for guest list info – All are welcome
At one time, everything South of 14th Street to Canal Street and East of Broadway to the East River was known as the Lower East Side of New York. The area has been fertile turf for underground creative street-bred activity as far back as the 1800s and probably further.
A place where terms such as “dives” and “hookers” would be coined. Beer gardens, pleasure halls, saloons, and black and tans – where races and fluid gender roles first mixed – thrived in the Lower East Side well before they were accepted by mainstream society, let alone legal.
Home to early tap dancing, Little Germany, Yiddish theaters, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Jimmie Durante, Al Jolson, Charlie Parker, beat poets, punk rock, Little Italy, China Town, Little Tokyo, Irish, Polish, Ukrainians, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, Indians, Alphabet City, Loisaida, the infamous masquerade balls of Webster Hall, disco at the Saint, the classic rock of the Filmore East, glitter rock, freak folk, anti-folk, the drag scene that spawned Wig Stock, Slug’s in the Far East, the Five Spot, the Half Note, University of the Streets, ABC No Rio, Basquiat, Hells Angels, CBGB, Great Glildersleeves, Henry Street Settlement, Save the Robots, the Gas Station, A7, C-Squat, seed bombed community gardens, Sonny Rollins, Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, NY Dolls, Talking Heads…and so many others have called this little patch of the world home.
Celebrating this all-of-a-kind family, we’ll do our best to pay tribute to the lust for life, dark humor, and creative flamboyance that has defined and drawn people to the Lower East Side for so long.
“Keepers of the Flame” Inside Mambo at The Palladium Ballroom – Sat April 30th
Exploring the significance of the Palladium Ballroom in NYC music History
A living exhibit with discussion, images, live music, and dancing
We invite you on a time-traveling journey to an era when Mambo was king of the dancefloor, with stories, images, live music, and dance instruction.
Join us in revisiting this historic time and place in NYC music history.
6:30 Palladium Ballroom history & Panel Discussion
Panel discussion on the impact of the Palladium Ballroom and the history of mambo in the context of New York City with images and audio from the Palladium era.
7:30 Dance Social
Listen and dance to recordings of music from the Mambo era. Free dance instruction, tips, and demonstration will be offered by Franck Muhel, Satomi Montague and guests.
8:15—10pm Live Mambo band – Mitch Frohman & The Bronx Horns
Dance social continues. If this amazing band doesn’t make you want to move you better check your pulse.
The Palladium in New York City was the nexus of the Mambo scene throughout the 50s, and into the 1960s. Located at 1698 Broadway at 53rd Street in Manhattan, this 750 person capacity, 2nd-floor venue was the home of “the big three” – Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodriguez. Famous for its live bands, dancers, and dance competitions, it attracted celebrities from Marlon Brando to Bing Crosby and because of its proximity to Swing Street on 52nd Street, many of jazz greats from Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington would come by and on occasion sit in, opening a musical dialogue and exchange that spurred immeasurable creativity and fusion still felt in Afro-Latin jazz and other forms today.
The Palladium was the first big midtown nightclub that offered exclusively Latino music yet it was known for its diversity and played a major role in expanding the appreciation and understanding of traditional Afro Cuban rhythms in the US and around the world.
MOMENT’s mission is to preserve New York City independent music and diversity through exhibit, performance, and education. Join MOMENT at www.momentnyc.org and email us at [[email protected]]
We are pleased to present this event as part of an ongoing series exploring New York City clubs and the communities they connect. To be notified about future events, please join our mailing list and support our vision of a living museum of music in New York City.
Spring/Summer 2021 images
Plant Based Community Health Day
MOMENT NYC is proud to support Artists Athletes Activists’ Plant Based Community Health Day event on Attorney Street between Delancey and Rivington in the Lower East Side this coming Sunday, September 12th. We will be providing live Salsa music in partnership with The Salsa Project and with support from the James Gallery.
MOMENT NYC L.E.S. Community Music Fest
Considering all the pros and cons we will move the event to nublu. 151 Ave C (between 9th & 10th Streets)
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AND UPDATE ANY INVITES AND PROMO THAT WENT OUT!!! THANK YOU!!
THIS IS STILL A FREE EVENT
IT”S STILL GOING TO BE GREAT!!!!!
SEE YOU TOMORROW!!
This is a free show Friday, July 9th, 3-7pm
The MOMENT NYC L.E.S. Community Music Festival – Celebrating LES music diversity – Friday, July 9th, 3-7pm. Presented by MOMENT NYC, sponsored by the Local 802 AFM Musicians Performance Trust Fund, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and in support of Music Workers Alliance (MWA), and the East River Park Action to Save the Park!
MOMENT NYC – the Museum of Music & Entertainment in New York City, is celebrating Lower East Side music diversity at the East River Amphitheater Friday, July 9th with local musicians of all ages who have been part of the downtown music scene, in some cases for multiple decades. The Lower East has been home to diverse music since the Black and Tans and dives of the 1800s, where transgender and racially mixed underground music, dance, and drinking paved the way for a century of artists and scenes that followed. MOMENT NYC’s mission is to preserve NYC independent and underground music diversity. For over a hundred years New York City has been a breeding ground for new music and a mecca for musicians worldwide, but in recent years it seems more a place for rich investors and has become increasingly inhospitable to the underground and independent artists that helped create new music scenes that changed the world, such as: stride, swing, bebop, cool, free jazz, fusion, mambo, boogaloo, salsa, do wop, disco, house, folk, minimalism, punk, new wave, and hip hop. While the Lower East Side was not the point where all this music originated, the LES has always held an especially important place in the art and music world where anything was possible and all was tried. The true innovations in NYC music mostly occurred in non-institutional, diverse, small underground communities. This event will celebrate that aesthetic and history. With Grammy-nominated NYC Groove Collective as the core band, this event will feature players who have lived and performed in the area over many years — musicians who have worked with people such as Celia Cruz, Tupac Shakur, the Sugar Hill Gang, D’angelo, The Jazz Passengers, The Lounge Lizards, Brooklyn Gypsies, Lee Scratch Perry, Subatomic Sound System, Curtis Mayfield, John Zorn, The Skatalites, Pharaoh Sanders, and many others. This event is being presented by MOMENT NYC whose mission is to preserve NYC independent and underground music diversity. MOMENT NYC has been providing NYC music history to students in the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and has presented events in spaces like the NY Library for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, University of Virginia, and in NYC public gardens and DIY spaces with programs and events that focus on local music history and important figures who deserve greater recognition, like Gil Evans and David Mancuso. The Lower East Side has struggled to get its fair share of resources, one of New York City’s first neighborhoods, it became the infamous Five Points where violence, indulgence, and debauchery kept many away, and for periods it has been left to survive on its own with inconsistent assistance from the city, and survive it did! Lower East Side resilience comes from its undeniable grit and the tenacity of a will to continue outside the boundaries of “normal” society. Even gentrification has been unable to fully convert this area and in some cases interlopers, as they assimilate, have found themselves de-gentrified.
There has been news of preserving the Amphitheater and the Ecology Center which have been important parts of the community for decades. However, as the entire park will be raised, it is hard to imagine they will not have to be completely rebuilt. After years of planning a coastal resiliency project designed to protect the Lower East Side, many have been disillusioned by a process that left community voices out. Some demands have been met, but only after the plans and good faith of 4 years work, with the local residents, was unilaterally and secretly scrapped. Many protests were held but the plans are now in motion to completely rebuild East River Park. The last time the East River Park was renovated, work that was estimated to take 3 years, left the park closed for 10 years.