African American Culture in New York City

African American New York City

Yale historian Robert Farris Thompson called New York “The Secret African City.” He was right. There is a parallel universe of African Diaspora culture in plain sight, if you know how to read it.

New York’s traditional African American neighborhoods are Harlem, Manhattan; and Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Today, Eastchester and HighBridge, The Bronx have large African American communities.

New York’s key African American cultural organizations include:

• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 🇺🇸
• Apollo Theater 🇺🇸
• Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
• Brooklyn Museum
• Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) 🇵🇷
• Dance Theatre of Harlem 🇺🇸
• Harlem Stage
• Jazz at Lincoln Center
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 🇵🇷

African American Art in NYC

• 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair shows African and Diaspora art
• Studio Museum in Harlem exhibits Black artists. studiomuseum.org

African American Books in NYC

• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, is part of the New York Public Library. Mr. Schomburg was a Puerto Rican Black Arts collector during the Harlem Renaissance.

African American Cultural Centers in NYC

• Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) preserves and teaches Black Culture.
• Weeksville Heritage Center preserves the history of one of Brooklyn’s original Black neighborhoods. weeksvillesociety.org

African American Dance in NYC

• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, in Hells Kitchen, is the African American dance company that popularized modern dance around the world.
• Ailey II, Alvin Ailey’s second company, is an incubator of performing arts talent.
• Complexions Contemporary Ballet is a ballet company of people of color.
• DanceAfrica, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), is America’s largest African and Diasporic Dance Festival.
• Dance Theatre of Harlem celebrates 55 years of Black ballet.

African American Festivals in NYC

Black August is an African American celebration of freedom fighters who are unjustly imprisoned. August is when the Haitian Revolution, arguably the most important moment in African Diaspora history, began. It’s also when we remember Emmett Till and his brave mom Mamie, and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Black History Month in the United States is February. There is more to it than the common explanation that many great African Americans were born in that month. In the Latin world, February 2 is the Feast of Our Lady of Candelaria, patron saint of Tenerife, Canary Islands, and the African Diaspora. So February is a big deal in the Diaspora.

Juneteenth is a national holiday that celebrates the promise of freedom for all Americans.

Harlem Week is a celebration of African Diasporic culture during Black August in Harlem.

Martin Luther King Day celebrates the birthday of the great American civil rights leader.

Memorial Day, a commemoration of fallen soldiers, has many origins including African Americans honoring those who fought and died for freedom in America’s Civil War.

Pinkster is an old African American spring festival celebrated in New York and New Jersey at Pentecost. “Pinksteren” is Dutch for Pentacost.

Watch Night is an African American tradition of spending New Year’s Eve in church in celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation which became law on January 1, 1863.

African American Film in NYC

• African Diaspora International Film Festival brings the many faces of Mother Afrika to New York City.
• Film Africa is at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
• Harlem International Film Festival screens Black voices in Harlem.
• Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem screens lots of Black film.
• New York African Film Festival screens films from Mother Afrika at Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Documentary Center, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

African American Food in NYC

• Black Restaurant Week New York is a great time to try African American restaurants.
• Creole Food Festival cooks up delicacy’s of the African Diaspora.

African American Music in NYC

• Afropunk Brooklyn is a Black music festival with more style than Fashion Week.
• Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center swings nightly.
• Harlem Stage celebrates 40 years of visionary artists of color.
• Jazz at Lincoln Center is the world’s leading African American jazz organization.
• Jazz in July at the 92nd Street Y is one of New York’s hot summer jazz festivals.

African American Parades in NYC

• The African American Day Parade is on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd in Harlem, Manhattan; on the third Sunday in September. 🇺🇸

African American Theatre in NYC

• National Black Theatre is growing. nationalblacktheatre.org
• Public Theater; in NoHo, Manhattan; is actively producing artists of color.

African American Culture is American Culture

African American culture defines New York City and the United States. We built Wall Street. It’s complicated, but we’ve been Americans of the Americas since 1492, North Americans since 1513, Americans of what became the United States since 1619, and New Yorkers since 1626.

American history is African history, and a lot of both Latin culture and American culture is African Diaspora culture.

Yale historian Robert Farris Thompson called “New York The Secret African City.”

Eddie Palmieri said, “In the States, they took away the drum and we got the blues.” The blues is the root of most American popular music and dance including: gospel, jazz, folk, country, R&B, swing, rock, disco, funk, hip-hop, house, trap, and now Afro-everything.

The Jazz Age of the 1920s defined American popular culture. Jazz became R&B, rock, and house. Reggae became hip-hop, which became reggaeton and Afro. Together we rule world youth culture.

Latin and African American culture keep mixing back and forth across the border. The blues has Cuban rumba in it. Now we’re mixing back and forth with Mother Afrika across the Kalûnga (the Atlantic) in afrobeat: R&B and soul that went back to Mother Afrika, and returned to the Americas first as Colombian champeta and now Afro-everything. In our house, we groove to amapiano, South African house music, mostly sung in Zulu.

Bebop (modern jazz) and cubop (latin jazz) were both created at the same time by these same artists, in 1940s New York City.

Fifth Avenue, Manhattan’s spinal chord, is the border of jazz and Latin jazz, Harlem and “El Barrio” East Harlem. Tito Puente, “The King of Latin Jazz,” used to sneak out of his mom’s house in “El Barrio” to go listen to jazz bands in Harlem. Tito Puente Way (110th St where he grew up) starts at Duke Ellington Circle on Fifth Avenue.

Caribbean Hero Twins for sure.

Congo Square (Place Congo)

Congo Square was a Sunday African Diaspora gathering on Bayou St John, which was then outside of town.

From around 1740 into the early 1800s, this gathering featured drumming, singing, dancing, selling, loving; all the things we still do in Cuban rumba, Haitian vodou, Puerto Rican bomba, Colombian cumbia, Venezuelan tambor, Peruvian festejo, and so on. Nowadays we go to the theater or a night club, but it’s really the same thing.

We are all mixed everywhere, but the centers of African Diaspora culture in the Americas are Haiti/New Orleans, Cuba, and Brazil.

The three African Diaspora cultures that rooted in Latin America are Dahomey (meríngue, merengue, and jazz), Yoruba (rumba, Latin jazz, and salsa), and Kongo (samba, bossa nova and Latin jazz).

Kongo musicians were singing “La Bamba,” the iconic Mexican wedding song in Vera Cruz Mexico in the 1600s. In Cuba, traditions mixed together into what we now call Yoruba.

Congo Square, New Orleans is where jazz is from, and is one of the taproots of African American and therefore American culture. 🇺🇸

Dizzy Gillespie Put the Latin Back in Jazz

Dizzy Gillespie, one of the founders of bebop modern jazz, is a pivotal figure in both African American and Latin culture. Jazz is from New Orleans, but before that, it’s from the Caribbean. Jazz and Latin are the Caribbean Hero Twins, separated at birth.

Dizzy brought the Latin back into jazz when he asked Mario Bauzá (Machito & His Afro-Cubans music director) for a conga player and got Chano Pozo (“Manteca,” “Tin Tin Deo”). Now nobody thinks twice about Latin percussion in a jazz band, but Dizzy did it.

Harlem Renaissance 3.0

We call the current renaissance in the Black Arts , the Harlem Renaissance 3.0.

• Harlem Renaissance 1.0 defined American culture in the 1920s.
• Harlem Renaissance 2.0 (Black Arts Movement) defined the 1960s-70s.
• Harlem Renaissance 3.0 is in New York now. George Floyd RIP. You changed the world.

Closing Thought

If African Diaspora influences were somehow magically erased from the United States, we wouldn’t recognize our country, and as an American of the United States, I wouldn’t recognize myself. Keith.