Summer for the City invites everyone to Lincoln Center’s multicultural summer performing arts festival. It pushes the envelope of the types of culture you can see at Lincoln Center. Summer for the City celebrates everyone. Most events are free or Pay-What-You-Wish.
4th Summer for the City 2025 ~ Let’s Soar
The 2025 theme is “Let’s Soar” like a flock of birds flying together.
JUNE
Latin Poetry and Music
La Casita, Summer for the City’s festival of Latin poetry and music, hosted by NYC Poetry Slam champion Felicia Cade, features Guatemalan Colombian poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Indigenous Diné (Navajo) poet Demian DinéYazhi, Cuban Dominican Puerto Rican author Yesenia Montilla, Bronx voice Jesica “Sumbodies Mama” Blandon; plus music by all-female Colombian ensemble La Manga, and pan-Latin Cvgebird. It’s in Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Friday, June 27, 2025 at 5:30pm. Free. 🇺🇸 🇨🇺 🇨🇴 🇩🇴 🇬🇹 🇵🇷
Rwandan, Ivorian, Zimbabwean Canadian Hip Hop
Missy D, a Canadian rapper with Rwandan, Ivorian, and Zimbabwean roots, raps in French and English for families; for Summer for the City at Hearst Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 12pm. Free. 🇨🇦 🇨🇮 🇷🇼 🇿🇼
South African Jazz
NALEDI, the South African-born New York vocalist and composer, sings jazz for Summer for the City and Jazz at Lincoln Center; at The Underground at Jaffe Drive in Lincoln Center; on Sunday, June 29, 2025 at 6pm. Free 🇿🇦
3rd Summer for the City 2024 Pursues “Life, Liberty, and Happiness”
The 3rd Summer for the City 2024 summer performing arts festival features hundreds of free multicultural performing arts on the theme of “Life, Liberty, and Happiness,” including the new Lincoln Center Night Market, at Lincoln Center in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, from June 12 – August 10, 2024. FREE or Choose-What-You-Pay. 🇺🇸 🇦🇷 🇦🇺 🇧🇷 🇰🇾 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇩🇴 🇪🇨 🇫🇷 🇭🇹 🇮🇶 🇮🇹 🇨🇮 🇯🇲 🇯🇴 🇲🇱 🇲🇽 🇳🇬 🇵🇸 🇵🇪 🇵🇭 🇵🇷 🇿🇦 🇸🇩 🇹🇹 🇻🇪 🇿🇼
The Festival is the vision of Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer. This is important because women are the guardians of culture. To open up Lincoln Center, leadership turned to a woman, and she delivered. There are many women artists in the Festival. This year we noticed that women are creating more great art than men. The festival closes with the Ruidosa Fest, a women’s music dance party featuring many great Latin women artists.
Nona Hendryx (Labelle, “Lady Marmalade”) curates and, in avatar form, leads virtual reality and augmented reality experiences that take Lincoln Center to the edge of the intersection of technology and culture. Hendryx is exploring AfroFuturism. It’s striking how well traditional African styling and AfroFuturism go together.
This year is giving more attention to wellness. As we deal with life’s anxieties, many of us forget that we are still recovering from the shock of the pandemic. You are not alone. There is more family programming. There is also an effort to engage audiences because civic engagement is something else we lost in the pandemic and the turmoil around it. Lincoln Center poet-in-residence Mahogany L. Browne is leading civic conversations that bring to mind the words of Bob Marley, “Let’s get together, and we’ll be alright.”
Season highlights include the new Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, India Week, BAAND Together Dance Festival, Pride Month, Juneteenth, and more celebrations. The Festival’s visual design is inspired by flora and fauna of the American prairie, representing a wide-open future of possibilities. That vista is very New York. We’re excited about Cuban songo legends Los Van Van, Dominican merengue legend Fefita La Grande, Colombian cumbia masters Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, reggae legends Steel Pulse, Puerto Rican house DJ and producer Louie Vega, and more. There’s lots of great Latin culture.
The Festival turns Lincoln Center’s main plaza into The Dance Floor. The Silent Discos at 10pm are surreal.
Life, Liberty, and Happiness
This year’s theme is a reference to the phrase, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776. Many of us, especially in the Instagram Era, see those words as a license to party and party hard, but in its original meaning “Happiness” meant virtue.
In his article “The Atmosphere of the ‘Manosphere’ is Toxic” (April 14, 2024), New York Times opinion writer David French comments on words from the book “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Jeffery Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center. “The classical definition of the pursuit of happiness meant being a lifelong learner, with a commitment to practicing the daily habits that lead to character improvement, self-master, flourishing and growth.” French goes on to explain that being a good person actually makes you happier than anything else.
Summer for the City is an expression of Lincoln Center’s own virtue. It’s the time of year when the Center looks outside itself, beyond its classical focus, and invites all New Yorkers and visitors to celebrate life, liberty, and happiness ~ together. That is the very promise of New York City.
Latin Culture at Summer in the City in June 2024
This is the Latin lineup at the April 17, 2024 announcement. Shows will be added.
Opening Night Drag Opera
Summer For the City opens with Soundcake, a drag opera starring RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Star champion Monét X Change, current competitor Sapphira Cristál, and violinist Thorgy Thor with an orchestra conducted by David Bloom; at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park; on Wednesday, June 12, 2024 at 7:30pm.
X @RuPaulsDragRace | Instagram @rupaulsdragrace
X @monetxchange | Instagram @monetxchange
X @sapphiracristal | Instagram @sapphiracristal
X @ThorgyThor | Instagram @thorgythor
Native American Country Music
Summer for the City opens with a Lenape Blessing by the Lenape Center, and a country music tribute to rodeo legend Ace Berry (Delaware Lenape) by Native American band Yellow Trees (Lenape, Navajo, and Hawaiian); in the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center; on Wednesday, June 12, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇺🇸
Lenape is what New York’s First Nation’s calls itself. “Delaware” is the U.S. government’s name for the Lenape people because their lands ran to the Delaware River on what is now the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Nona Hendryx Dream Machine Experience ~ The Bridge
The Nona Hendryx Dream Machine Experience ~ The Bridge is a self-guided augmented reality tour in which a Hendryx avatar takes you back in time through Lincoln Center’s past in the Indigenous Lenape community; “The Jungles” the diverse San Juan Hill African, Puerto Rican, and Caribbean community that was redeveloped into Lincoln Center (as told in West Side Story); and important moments from Lincoln Center’s own history. The Augmented Reality (AR), designed by Sutu with EyeJack, is available June 12-30, 2024 through a downloadable app which enables you to point your smartphone at “Pins” around Lincoln Center to bring the past alive. Other Hendryx AR productions imagine a diverse future.
Afro-Peruvian Salsa and Bachata Dance Party
The Tony Succar Orchestra featuring Mimy Succar plays tropical rhythms for dancing, with a lesson by Talia Castro-Pozo and turntables by DJ John John; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Thursday, June 13, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇵🇪
Tony Succar is a Miami Peruvian multiple Latin Grammy-winner. Peruvian festejo is basically Peruvian salsa. In Colonial Times, Peru had plantations on the coast, and Afro-Peruvian traditions remain from that time. Tony made his way to the top in music with nothing but talent, determination, and the support of his family. Mimy Succar is his mother. They are Grammy nominees for their album “Mimy & Tony.”
South African Jazz
Visions of Ubuntu, led by South African composer and saxophonist Steve Dyer, celebrates the ubuntu communal traditions (I am because we are) and the June 16, 1976 Soweto Youth uprising that ultimately freed South Africa from its colonizers; in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center on Friday, June 14, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇿🇦
The townships of South Africa are producing great music. Amapiano, South African house music, is getting the world to dance.
Mexican and Cumbia Dance Party
Noche Romantica (Romantic Night) has DJ Tenosh spinning a Silent Disco of Mexican cumbia, rancheras, norteños, and boleros for dancing; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Friday, June 14, 2024 at 10pm. FREE. 🇲🇽
Mexican dance is easy and fun ~ even if you think you can’t dance.
Samba Dance Party
Marizete Brown of Sambazina teaches Brazilian samba with live drums by Ivo Araújo of Manhattan Samba; in the Karen and LeFrak Lobby of David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 11am. FREE. 🇧🇷
Colombian Cumbia Dance Lesson for Families
Brooklyn’s La Manga collective, led by Daniela Serna, teaches Afro-Colombian women’s traditions from the Caribbean including cumbia, bullerengue, and tambora; in Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 12noon. FREE. 🇨🇴
Bullerengue is an Afro-Colombian women’s puberty ceremony. The women gather to celebrate a girl’s transition to womanhood.
Argentine Cumbia Punk Rock Pride Dance Party
Kumbia Queers from Buenos Aires, a non-binary and lesbian tropical-punk quintet, plays cumbia villera with punk rock guitar for dancing; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇦🇷 🏳️🌈
Argentina is one of the originators of Latin rock. It also has an amazing club scene. Dutch DJ Dick Verdult created a cumbia house music scene in Buenos Aires. Kumbia Queers brings it all together.
Puerto Rican Reggae Dance Party
Cultura Profética, Puerto Rican Latin Grammy winners and Grammy nominees, play reggae and salsa for dancing; in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 8pm. 🇵🇷
Among its other cultural gems, Puerto Rico has great rock and reggae on the island.
Juneteenth Celebration
Carl Hancock Rux; poet, playwright, and associate artistic director at Harlem Stage; curates Juneteenth musical performances across Lincoln Center; on Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇺🇸
Toshi Reagon and Big Lovely with Special Guests revives her Songs of the Living Community Choir project of music from the American Civil Rights Movement and other freedom movements around the world in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇺🇸
Argentine Tango Dance Party
Abaddón collective, a New York tango sextet, plays tango for dancing with DJ Ilene Marder; on The Dance Floor in Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Friday, June 21, 2024 at 6:30pm. Silent Disco at 10pm. FREE. 🇦🇷
The tango of most people’s imaginations is Stage Tango which is hard and mostly for professional dancers, but the people’s tango, Salon Tango, is easy. It’s just walking in an embrace.
Indigenous Australian Pop and Hip Hop
Electric Fields sings pop and DEM MOB raps about First Nations life down under; in the Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 22, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇦🇺
Afro-Venezuelan Midsummer Procession
Tambor y Caña, the Brooklyn musical collective, leads a drum, song, and dance procession honoring San Juan; in the Garden at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center; on Sunday, June 23, 2024. FREE. Time not available at press time. 🇻🇪
The Night of San Juan, on June 24, is a Spanish and Portuguese midsummer solstice celebration honoring Saint John the Baptist, an important figure in early Christianity. It is marked by gatherings of family and friends, leaping over bonfires as a purification ritual, and falling into the sea or water at midnight. In Brazil, it is Festa Junina, the winter solstice festival. The bonfires of São Joao are famous.
It may seem strange to honor the very religion that enslaved you, but we’re really celebrating other traditions under cover. The African Diaspora preserved its traditions by hiding (syncretizing) them inside colonizer traditions. Yoruba culture dominates African Diaspora culture in the Americas. In Nigerian Yoruba tradition, June is festival time because it is the beginning of African Yoruba new year and the transition from wet to dry seasons, which is planting time. Saint John the Baptist’s association with water is potent because water is sacred in many traditions, and the African Diaspora’s baptism was the terror of the Middle Passage.
French Jazz Funk
Cortex, the legendary French jazz funk band, celebrates the 49th anniversary of its 1975 debut album “Troupeau Bleu,” with a concert at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center; on Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 7pm. FREE. 🇫🇷
Jamaican Ska and Dancehall Dance Party
The NYC Ska Orchestra big band, plays ska and dancehall for dancing with DJ Miss Hap on decks; on Friday, June 28, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇯🇲
Jamaica is not considered Latin, but before the British colonizers, it was Spanish, and before that was Indigenous Taíno. The African Diaspora experience is similar throughout the Americas, so we have a lot in common. Dancehall and reggae have clave, the African and Afro-Cuban bell pattern, in them. Clave is very Latin.
Filipino Dance Party
DJ CherishTheLuv, the first female Broadway DJ (David Byrne’s “Here Lies Love”) makes everybody dance now; on The Dance Floor in Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Friday, June 28, 2024 at 10pm. FREE. 🇵🇭
Ivorian Afrobeats for Families
Dobet Gnahoré, the Ivorian “Best Urban/Alternative Performance” Grammy-winner, drums, sings, and dances afropop afrobeats in a family presentation; in Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 12pm. FREE. 🇨🇮
Côte d’Ivoire has beautiful dance traditions (we love Zaouli). Afrobeats and Afro dancing are taking over TikTok and the world.
House Superstar Silent Disco
Superstar house singer Ultra Naté (“Free”) spins The Dance Floor in Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 10pm. FREE. 🇺🇸
Italian Folk Music
Ars Nova Napoli, plays Neapolitan Italian, Greek, and Balkan folk music; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇮🇹
They play the gaita, a Celtic bagpipe common in Galicia, Northern Spain, and in Ireland.
Haitian Rara House Dance Party
Gardy Girault, the Haitian electronic rara DJ and producer, spins The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇭🇹
Rara is a Haitian Vodou spring festival tradition celebrated from Carnival to a climax during Holy Week (Easter). It is not Carnival, but the street processions are very Carnivalesque. People dance to traditional Haitian rhythms in multicolored skirts and make lots of noise with vaksin bamboo trumpets and klewon metal trumpets (which are similar to the South African vuvuzela trumpet popular in soccer games). Though the trumpets only play one note, together they play melodies in the same way that Cuban rumba drums don’t sound like much alone, but together become a symphony of rhythm. If you are at all spiritual, you will naturally resonate to the droning Haitian drums. The Smithsonian says the best living example of pre-contact African drumming isn’t in Africa, it lives in Haiti. Rara processions are one of the roots of African American marching bands. Rara is great fun and Girault brings it into the EDM world.
Latin Culture at Summer in the City in July 2024
Puerto Rican Dominican Jazz
Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra plays New York mambo and salsa for dancing, with DJ Cruz and a dance lesson by Talia Castro-Pozo; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Friday, July 5, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇩🇴 🇵🇷
Brazilian Música Popular Brasileira (MPB)
BRASIL SUMMERFEST
Rogê, plays the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center; on Wednesday, July 5, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇧🇷
American Anthems Old and New
U.S. INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION
The Brooklyn Public Library is premiering three new anthems to America, composed with coaching from Jaime Lozano, Damien L. Sneed, Martha Redbone, and Aaron Whitby, and judged by artists including Laurie Anderson and Sandra Cisneros. The concert also features historical favorites in Damrosh Park at Lincoln Center; on Saturday, July 6, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇺🇸 🇲🇽
American anthems are an expression of pride in our country. Many are beautiful, but some have verses that promote violence in a way that is unacceptable today. We can do better together.
Big Umbrella Festival
Big Umbrella Day is a campus-wide performing arts festival for neurodivergent audiences and their families. Performances are relaxed so they are easy to take in. The Festival includes three giant stilt-walking puppets that resemble prehistoric birds by the Netherlands’ Close-Act Theatre. The day ends with an early Silent Disco on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center at 6pm. FREE.
South African Jazz
Melanie Scholtz sings jazz on Jaffe Drive (the underpass at the entrance of Lincoln Center’s main plaza); on Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇿🇦
Mexican Cumbia
BROOKLYN CUMBIA FESTIVAL
La Colocha spins Mexican cumbia sonidero (electronic cumbia) for dancing; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇲🇽
Brazilian Samba Rock MPB
BRASIL SUMMERFEST
Gilsons, the Latin Grammy-nominated trio of Gilberto Gil’s sons and grandsons, play música popular brasileira (MPB) in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇧🇷
Chilean Jazz
Claudia Acuña sings jazz with Chilean folk and Afro-Caribbean influences; in the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center; on Thursday, July 18, 2024. Time TBD. 🇨🇱
If you are from one of the countries in the southern Andes, you will resonate with Claudia Acuña.
Puerto Rican Salsa Dance Party
Jeremy Bosch & His Orchestra play New York Puerto Rican salsa for dancing, with DJ Marysoul, and salsa teacher Talia Castro-Pozo; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza; on Thursday, July 18, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇵🇷
La Casita Spoken Word
La Casita, New York’s summer spoken word festival, features readings curated by World Poetry Slam champion Eboni Hogan, including: Nuyorican Edwin Torres, Puerto Rican Jessica Diaz, Puerto Rican Nancy Mercado, and Ecuadorian Sonia Guiñansaca. There are also performances by Nigerian singer-songwriter Kingsley Ibeneche and Yasna Voices, New York’s Bulgarian women’s choir. It’s in Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Sunday, July 21, 2024 at 4:30pm. 🇪🇨 🇳🇬 🇵🇷
Dominican Merengue Típico Legend
Fefita La Grande (Manuela Josefa Cabrera Tavares), a women pioneer on merengue accordion (she is 80 now), plays merengue típico including her hit version of the classic “La chiflera;” for Summer for the City in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Friday, July 26, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇩🇴
Venezuelan Salsa Legends
The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute presents Venezuelan salsa legends La Dimensión Latina “Now or Never Tour” at Summer for the City in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Sunday, July 28, 2024 with DJ Broadway at 6:30pm and a live set at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇻🇪
BAAND Together Dance Festival
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Ballet Hispánico, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and New York City Ballet dance ballet, modern, and contemporary on afternoons in the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center; from July 30 – August 5, 2024. FREE 🇺🇸 🇨🇺 🇫🇷 🇲🇽 🇵🇷
Latin Classical Music and Poetry
The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto, plays Ginastera and Haydn featuring mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges singing Lieberson’s Neruda Songs; in the Wu Tsai Theater at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center; on Tuesday-Wednesday, July 30-31, 2024 at 7:30pm. FREE. 🇦🇷 🇨🇱 🇲🇽
- Carlos Miguel Prieto is a Mexican conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Mineria in Mexico City, and the Orchestra of the Americas in Washington, D.C. 🇲🇽
- Alberto Ginastera was an Argentine composer who was one of the most important classical music composers in 20th-century Latin America. 🇦🇷
- Pablo Neruda was a Chilean Nobel-Prize winning poet and diplomat. His “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada” Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) is famous and beautiful, “Cuerpo de mujer…” A surprising number of Latin Americans can recite his poems by heart, and he influenced many writers. Neruda’s poetry will make you love Spanish. 🇨🇱
Mexican Musical Theatre
Jaime Lozano, one of Broadway’s leading Latin playwrights and composers, and his Broadway creative collective The Familia, debut his new work ¿Bailamos? (“Shall we dance?”), a fusion of Broadway, regional Mexican, cumbia, and salsa traditions; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇲🇽 ~ 🇨🇴 🇵🇷 🗽
Dance is the glue that binds traditional Latin communities, and in Indigenous and African Diaspora tradition, dance is how we pray.
Latin Culture at Summer in the City in August 2024
Mexican Musical Theatre
DJ Madame Vacile spins a silent disco of Afro-Colombian and Afrobeats; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 10pm. FREE. 🇨🇴
Latin Literature Talk
PEN America, the U.S. branch of the international literature and human rights organization, hosts a panel of immigrant authors discussing “The Writer as Migrant.” They are thinking about how to shift the immigration debate away from irrational fear mongering towards the reality that immigration lifts all Americans, and is essential for our present and future prosperity. It’s in The Garden at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center; on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 6pm. FREE.
Puerto Rican Salsa
Luis “Perico” Ortiz & His Orchestra play salsa for dancing with DJ Gia Fu and dance teacher Talia Castro-Pozo; on The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇵🇷
We won’t tell you what “perico” means in Puerto Rican slang, but his nickname places Ortiz right in the middle of 1970s New York Salsa. It was a different time.
Malian Kora Fusion
Malian kora master Yacouba Sissoko & SIYA play West African Mande music in a fusion of griot and contemporary traditions; in the Karen and Richard LeFrak Lobby at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center; on Saturday, August 3, 2024 at 12noon. 🇲🇱
This is West African classical music. Griots are West African storytellers. European troubadours, Cuban trova singers, Puerto Rican trovadores, Native American pow wow singers, and hip hop rappers play similar roles in human culture. People do similar things around the world and across time because we are human. The kora is an ancestor of the American banjo (yes, even American country music originates in the African Diaspora. Go Beyoncé).
globalFEST World Music
globalFEST, New York’s world music festival, takes over the Lincoln Center campus with a great world music artists in Damrosch Park, Hearst Plaza, and Josie Robertson Plaza; on Saturday, August 3, 2024 at 4:30pm.
- Alsarah and Nubatones play retro Sudanese dance pop. 🇸🇩
- La Dame Blanche mixing hip hop, dancehall and Cuban beats. 🇨🇺
- Makoomba playing Zimbabwean funk rock afrobeats. 🇿🇼
- Swanky Kitchen Band Cayman Islands fiddlers. 🇰🇾
- Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, Colombia’s iconic folk cumbia band 🇨🇴
- Brooklyn Magam curates Arab music featuring:
- Taktouka Band playing Arab folk jazz fusion.
- Zahra Alzubaidi singing Iraqi Jordanian pop music. 🇮🇶 🇯🇴
- Firas Zreik playing the Palestinian kanun harp. 🇵🇸
Latin culture is a mix of Indigenous, European, and African culture, but we are Arab too, especially Lebanese and Palestinian. The pandereta, the Puerto Rican plena drum, is originally an Arab drum. Dutty Boukman, one of the early leaders of the Haitian Revolution, was called “Boukman” because he was a man of the book, the Muslim Koran. There’s Shakira whose hips don’t lie because of her Lebanese heritage.
Roots Reggae
Steel Pulse, the Grammy-winning English reggae band who helped globalize reggae, celebrates Jamaican Independence Day (August 6, 1962); in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; on Sunday, August 4, 2024 at 8pm. FREE. 🇯🇲
Puerto Rican House
Louie Vega & The Elements of Life, has the legendary Grammy-winning Puerto Rican DJ and producer bring his Grammy-winning live band, and dance teacher Talia Castro-Pozo; to The Dance Floor at Josie Robertson Plaza in Lincoln Center; on Thursday, August 8, 2024 at 6:30pm. FREE. 🇵🇷
Trinidad Steel Pan
Josanne Francis leads elite pannists in a celebration of World Steelpan Day (August 11); in Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center; on Friday, August 9, 2024 at 6pm. FREE. 🇹🇹
Festival Closing Latin Women’s Music Dance Party
Summer for the City 2024 closes with the Ruidosa Fest women’s music festival, a takeover of the Lincoln Center campus on Saturday, August 10, 2024 at 4:30pm. This is one of the concerts of the year. It features:
- iLe, of Calle 13, Puerto Rican pop. 🇵🇷
- Buscabulla, Puerto Rican electronic pop. 🇵🇷
- Francisca Valenzuela, Chilean pop. 🇨🇱
- Mare Advertencia Lirika, Mexican hip hop. 🇲🇽
- Salt Cathedral, Colombian electronic pop. 🇨🇴
- Renee Goust featuring Khylie Rylo, Mexican American folk pop and electronic dance music. 🇲🇽
- Cyber Mashaka
- Riobamba, Ecuadorian Lithuanian sound artist. 🇪🇨
- Tayhana, Mexico City-based, Argentine house DJ. 🇦🇷
- Mireya Ramos of Flor de Toloache, Caribbean Mexican mariachi pop. 🇩🇴 🇲🇽 🇵🇷
What a great festival. Everyone is included. Thank you Lincoln Center.
Tickets and Info
Choose-What-You-Pay tickets, starting at $5, go on sale on May 16, 2024 at 12noon.
Many free performances include a free Fast Track registration that lets you skip general admission lines. Check the Festival’s web listings for details.