New York: Day Nine - Music & Museums
Happy 50th Anniversary to Hip-hop. I’ve got a special celebration planned today, but I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow. This is all about ‘Day Nine’ of my New York trip, when I finally start to feel like I might need to take a rest.
My original plan was to go around Greenwich Village and soak in the sights and sounds of the 50s and 60s Folk scene there, as well as visit some of the famous Jazz and Gay spots in the area and maybe even wonder a little further to the sites of iconic Disco venues such as The Loft, The Gallery and The Paradise Garage. But let’s face it, they’ve quite literally paved over Paradise and as I’ve learned from my previous days in Harlem and Lower East Side, it’s hard to get a sense of time and history from a lot of these buildings now, especially without someone else to guide you around, or at least share your enthusiasm. Plus I’m absolutely knackered, so I’m going to save all of that for another trip to the city. I’ve already got the playlists ready though, so here they are before I tell you about the Universal Hip-hop Museum, the National Jazz Museum and a great exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art.
Firstly, here’s my Greenwich Village playlist, featuring many of the Folk artists who made the area famous and really boosted the Folk revival into the mainstream. If you’d like to go back a little further then check out my American Folk Music Revival: 1940s-50s playlist.
Secondly, here’s some of the tracks you might well have heard in those early New York Disco venues. When Franccis Grasso was spinning at The Sanctuary and David Mancuso kicked things off at The Loft with his Love Saves The Day Party. The kind of tunes Steve D’Aquisito and Nick Siano played when they helped create the culture that came before the music we now know and love as Disco.
Finally, here’s a playlist I made during the first lockdown, which includes over 115 hours of music that Larry Levan played at the Paradise Garage from 1977 to 1987, when he was truly the King Of New York and almost certainly the most important DJ in the world. I gathered these from various books, documentaries, albums, interviews, newspaper articles and internet lists. It’s now almost certainly the most comprehensive collection of his selections, and it’s still growing.
Back to the Hip-hop though, and I headed to The Bronx to check into my new Air BNB and visit an exhibition called ‘[R]evolution of Hip hop’ which is curated by the Universal Hip-hop Museum. The Museum are currently building a permanent home for their collection, and so in the meantime they have a space up the road in the Bronx Terminal Market, which due to its size is currently focussed on the years 1986 to 1990, known as Hip-hop’s ‘Golden Age’.
It’s a seriously impressive collection, though save for some work by Eric Orr, it’s almost exclusively music based, with little representation of graffiti or breaking. There’s tons of awesome exhibits and installations from heavy hitters of the period such as Run DMC and the Def Jam family, Eric B & Rakim, BDP and the Juice Crew. It’s primarily New York focussed with a smaller section for the influential West Coast artists of the period, but I don’t want to give too much away in case you make it here in time to visit, which I recommend you do if you’re heading to the city at all. This month it’s free in celebration of Hip-hop 50, though you might have to be quick to get tickets in advance.
After cancelling my Greenwich Village plans, I was going to stick around The Bronx for a party with pioneering DJs Grandmaster Caz, DJ Hollywood, Tedsmooth and Grand Wizard Theodore, with a B-boy exhibition curated by Crazy Legs. Sadly the heavens looked like they were about to open and so last minute, the whole event was moved to next week. Instead I headed down to the Bronx Museum Of Art for an exhibition of work by Dianne Smith, a Bronx native now living in Harlem, whose work here includes sculpture, photo montages and canvas graffiti art, created using Montana Spray and Molotow markers.
‘Two Turntables & A Microphone’ is curated by Souleo, a “creative, curator, impresario, consultant and muse” from Harlem, and it really captures the creativity of an incredible artist, whilst also paying homage to the importance of the current Hip-hop celebrations here in the place it was born. There’s also other films, ephemera and gig posters which feed into that, as well as books such as ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’, ‘The Come Up’ and ‘God Save The Queens’ outside in the reading area.
As I wasn’t too far from Harlem, I decided to go over to the National Jazz Museum there, as it had been closed when I’d been in the area previously. Although a relatively small exhibition given the long and rich history of Jazz here, it is nevertheless a great introduction to some of the area’s most important luminaries. Plus even the hardcore jazz enthusiasts will likely be impressed by items that once belonged to James Reese, Duke Ellington and ‘Invisible Man’ author Ralph Ellison, who wrote extensively about Jazz when he lived in the neighbourhood. There was also a fantastic temporary exhibition of Miles Davis portraits by Brooklyn based artist Voodo Fé.
That was about all I had in me. I headed back to my new Air BNB, picked up some Puerto Rican food nearby and made use of the giant TV and endless channels in my room. I slept for hours, thanks in part to having no windows in my room, and a mattress thicker than at least two of my old Emma. Just as well, big day today.
