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.
