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ausetkmt · 2 years

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The Guardian: British artists recreate ‘A Great Day in Harlem’ photo for Black History Month

Established and up and coming black artists are to be photographed together, marking the 40th anniversary of the start of the British black arts movement, as part of a series of events for Black History Month in October.

The Black Cultural Archives, based in south London, will be commemorating the occasion by paying homage to the classic 1958 A Great Day in Harlem photograph by organising a group photograph featuring black artists who were part of the original movement alongside emerging talents.

The National Black Art Convention, which in 1982 inspired the launch of the British black arts movement, propelled the careers of many artists, including Keith Piper and Sonia Boyce.

Lisa Anderson, the managing director of the Black Cultural Archives, said the decision to recreate the photograph to celebrate the 40th anniversary since the launch of the British black arts movement was due to a desire to “document the community”.

She added: “I want to celebrate the community, and want there to be a sense of the importance of being documented through photography.

“We wanted to enrich the archive, in particular the way the archive represents the history of some of the pioneering and emerging art makers from the black community.”

Anderson added that they were borrowing the concept from Tomorrow’s Warriors, a UK jazz organisation that paid tribute last year to the Harlem photograph with a day of music called A Great Day in London.

“We’re borrowing the concept because we haven’t seen any photograph which documents black British visual artists, and I think it will create an aid for people to go and do further research and engagement with its history, and to also inspire people to pursue their passion for visual art.”

Charlie Phillips, who will be capturing the moment and who has been regarded as one of Britain’s greatest photographers, said his involvement in the project was due to a desire to “document our history”.

“There’s a missing gap in our history, because not a lot has been documented by us, for us,” Phillips said.

Also this month, Brent council will be unveiling a new public artwork in one of its parks, in order to commemorate the victims of the transatlantic slave trade following scrutiny regarding the park being named after a former British prime minister with links to the slave trade.

Gladstone’s father, who was one of the biggest slave owners in the Caribbean, received the largest of all compensation payments made by the Slave Compensation Commission.

Linett Kamala, a director of Notting Hill carnival and the founder of Lin Kam Art, who will be unveiling the artwork, said that as well as commemorating victims of the slave trade, it represented the “huge, fantastic contribution that the black community has made to the borough”.

Kamala added: “The park has a number of murals, but there isn’t anything that reflects the transatlantic slave trade, although the park is named [after] the prime minister’s father who received the largest [slavery] compensation payout.”

Harun Morrison, the artist behind the installation, said that he was interested in creating a piece that “opened up questions for someone who encountered it in the park without being overly prescriptive.

“I was also trying to create for a view to think about the metaphorical potential of plants, and also the history of the park and the history of the Gladstone family,”he added.

In Glasgow, the David Livingstone Birthplace museum will be hosting events celebrating Black Scottish art and culture.

The event, called Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories, has been programmed by the Scottish-Zimbabwean artist Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, and will feature work from artists and creatives from across the Scottish African diaspora.

Thembiso Ruwona said: “I’m really excited to be able to bring together so many brilliant creative practitioners from the Scottish African diaspora to one space and to celebrate their contributions to the creative sector.”

She added: “This project speaks to our past, present, and potential futures that examine Black Scottish history, culture and identity. It is also a timely event that will spotlight the work that David Livingstone Birthplace are doing as they consider the role of museums within truthful storytelling, by asking important questions about legacy and memory.”

#British artists recreate ‘A Great Day in Harlem’ photo for Black History Month.

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jpbjazz · 4 months

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LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

STUFF SMITH, PIONNIER DU VIOLON ÉLECTRIQUE

“When you hear him play, you can’t sit still—it swings so hard; He can go toe-to-toe with anyone. Even [with players] on other instruments—he swings the hardest.”

- Regina Carter

Né le 14 août 1909 à Portsmouth, en Ohio, Hezekiah Leroy Gordon ‘’Stuff’’ Smith a grandi à Cleveland. Smith a étudié le violon avec son père, un barbier qui était également boxeur amateur et musicien. Même si son père l’avait encouragé à étudier la musique classique, Smith avait décidé de se tourner vers le jazz après avoir entendu Louis Armstrong jouer de la trompete. Même si son père n’était pas particulièrement heureux du choix de son fils, il avait accepté sa décision et l’avait même invité à venir jouer avec son groupe.

Comme Louis Armstrong, qui avait été une de ses principales influences, Smith était chanteur aussi bien qu’instrumentiste. Même si Smith avait obtenu une bourse pour étudier à la Johnson C. Smith University, il avait préféré devenir musicien professionnel. À l’âge de quinze ans, Smith était d’ailleurs parti en tournée avec la Aunt Jemima Revue.

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

Smith avait amorcé sa carrière professionnelle en 1926 avec le groupe d’Alphonse Trent, une formation basée à Dallas, au Texas, dont il avait fait partie durant quatre ans. Pendant la même décennie, Smith avait également fait une tournée avec Jelly Roll Morton, mais il avait vite quitté le groupe après avoir constaté que son violon, qui n’était pas amplifié, passait pratiquement inaperçu au sein de la formation plutôt dense de Morton. Durant un séjour à Buffalo en 1930, Smith avait formé son propre groupe. L’un des membres de la formation, le trompettiste Jonah Jones, était demeuré ami avec Smith jusqu’à sa mort. Cité dans l’ouvrage The Rough Guide to Jazz, Jones avait éventuellemen surnommé Smith “the cat that took the apron-strings off the fiddle.”

Après s’être installé à New York, Smith avait joué avec Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, et même, plus tard, avec Sun Ra.

Après avoir signé un contrat avec les disques Vocalion en 1936, Smith avait obtenu un certain succès avec la pièce "I'se a Muggin'" avec son groupe Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys. Après avoir entendu la pièce, le musicien et imprésario Dick Stabile avait engagé Smith avec son groupe qui comprenait également le batteur Cozy Cole. Le groupe, qui avait connu un grand succès au célèbre club Onyx de la 52e rue durant plusieurs années, avait éventuellement été rebaptisé Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys. Si la pièce “I’se a Muggin’” avait été relativement populaire, Smith avait connu davantage de succès avec la pièce “You’re a Viper” qui avait été reprise par Fats Waller en 1943. Redevenue à la mode dans les années 1960 en 1970 en raison de ses références à la consommation de drogues, la chanson avait été enregistrée par le chanseur folk Dave Van Ronk ainsi que par le rocker Wayne Kramer du groupe MC5. Le mot ‘’viper’’ était un terme des années 1930 qui désignait les fumeurs de marijuana. Un extrait particulièrement révélateur de la chanson comprenait les paroles suivantes: “Dreamed about a reefer five feet long/Mighty mezz, but not too strong/You’ll be high but not for long/If you’se a viper.”

Après avoir enregistré avec Vocalion en 1936, Smith avait gravé d’autres pièces pour Decca en 1937, ainsi qu’avec Varsity en 1939–1940. Smith avait aussi participé à plusieurs pièces de l’album ‘’After Midnight’’ de Nat King Cole.

En 1938, Smith s’était également produit dans le cadre de ce qui est considéré comme le premier festival en plein air de l’histoire du jazz. Appelé ‘’Carnival of Swing’’, le festival avait lieu sur l’île de Randall près de New York. Enregistrée pour la radio, la performance de Smith qu’on croyait perdue à jamais, avait refait surface en 2012 lorsque Loren Schoenberg, le directeur exécutif du National Jazz Museum de Harlem avait fait l’acquisition des enregistrements. En 1938, Smith avait aussi fait une apparition dans le film ‘’ Swing Street.’’ Après avoir démantelé son groupe, Smith avait refait surface avec un trio avec lequel il s’étai produit à New York et Chicago dans les années 1940. Après la mort de Fats Waller, Smith avait brièvement pris la direction du groupe du pianiste. Même si Smith avait fait une série d’enregistrements avec son trio en 1943 et 1944, sa carrière était sur la pente descendante.

DERNIÈRES ANNÉES

Auteur de nombreux standards du jazz, Smith était aussi un des compositeurs du standard ‘’It's Wonderful" qui avait été reprise par Louis Armstrong et Ella Fitzgerald. En 1956, Smith avait également interprété un solo avec Ella sur la chanson “Sophisticated Lady” de Duke Ellington. Smith vivait en Californie lorsque le producteur Norman Granz l’avait contacté en 1957 pour enregistrer avec Dizzy Gillespie et Oscar Peterson pour les disques Verve. Même si Smith avait énormément ralenti à la suite de problèmes de santé consécutifs à son abondante consommation d’alcool, il avait continué d’enregistrer jusqu’à sa mort.

En 1958, Smith avait fait partie des cinquante-sept musiciens de jazz qui avaient été immortalisés sur la légendaire photographie intitulée ‘’A Great Day in Harlem.’’

Après s’être installé à Copenhague au Danemark en 1965, Smith s’était énormément produit en Europe. Il avait également enregistré avec un de ses admirateurs, le violoniste suédois Svend Asmussen.

En 1965, Smith avait aussi enregistré l’album live ‘’Swingin’ Stuff.’’ Tombé malade au cours d’une tournée à Paris, Smith avait le foie et l’estomac en charpie à la suite de ses nombreux abus d’alcool. Ses médecins l’avaient même qualifié de véritable ‘’musée médical.’’ Après s’être rétabli, Smith avait recommencé àse produire sur scène jusqu’à sa mort.

Stu Smith est décédé à Munich en Allemagne le 25 septembre 1967. Smith a été enterré au Klakring Cemetery de Jutland, au Danemark. Bon vivant, Smith adorait raconter des histoires. Il aimait aussi les femmes, le whiskey et Jésus-Christ. Mais la plus grande passion de Smith était assurément la musique. Dans un extrait de ses mémoires malheureusement inachevés, Smith avait déclaré: “Music starts where words leave off. And who tries to talk words about it, is missing the whole point.”

Smith s’est marié à quatre reprises. De quinze ans plus jeune que Smith, Arlene Smith avait été la quatrième et dernière épouse du violoniste. Maintenant âgée de plus de quatre-vingt-treize ans, Arlene avait raconté comment elle avait rencontré Smith en pleine tempête de neige à Chicago à la fin des années 1950. Arlene expliquait:

“He was offered a job for one night in San Francisco. The people there, they talked all the time. And he was broken-hearted—he was almost in tears. He said to the owner, he said, ‘They’re talking while I’m playing.’ And the owner said, ‘Well, this is San Francisco.’ “And Stuff said, ‘Well, I’ll fix that.’ So he turned the amplifier up as high as it would go. Played so loud they couldn’t talk. Then he brought the [volume] down, down, down, down, down—down to almost a whisper. When he got to that absolute silent place, he started to play. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. He could touch your heart so much.”

À l’époque, Arlene était propriétaire d’un magasin de livres. Après avoir entendu Smith jouer à la radio, Arlene avait cru qu’il était un ange. Arlene avait précisé: “The first time I ever saw him, he went around and kissed every woman in the nightclub. They were all with their boyfriends and husbands, and nobody seemed to object.” Arlene se rappelait également qu’à l’époque, Smith était propriétaire de trois violons. Le violon favori de Smith était surnommé ‘’Big Red.’’ Arlene avait ajouté: “It was stolen at one point. He went into a great depression for a whole year, until he got it back.” Big Red était une copie d’un Guarnerius fabriqué au Michigan. Smith avait également eu un Stradivarius, mais celui-ci avait été volé après que Smith se soit endormi dans le métro de New York. Arlene expliquait: “At one time, he had a Stradivarius, given to him by Ann Sothern, the movie star. He was having an affair with her, and she gave him a Stradivarius. And he came home one night in New York, he fell asleep in the subway. When he woke up the violin was gone.”

Blonde incendiaire, Sothern avait joué le rôle d’une violoniste dans une comédie romantique de MGM en 1943. Au cours de sa carrière, Smith s’était d’ailleurs lié d’amitié avec plusieurs vedettes d’Hollywood. Après avoir entamé une liaison avec Sothern, Smith avait dû se cacher sous le lit après que le mari de cette dernière soit arrivé à l’improviste. Sothern précisait: “Her husband came home unexpectedly, and Stuff spent the night under the bed.”

Smith avait joué avec ‘’Big Red’’ durant environ vingt et un ans. Après la mort de Smith, le violon était demeuré dans son étui pendant les cinquante années suivantes.

Un autre des violons de Smith était un violon électrique de couleur jaune. Le petit-fils de Smith, John, se rappelait d’ailleurs avoir joué de ce violon lorsqu’il était enfant. La soeur de John, Cheryl, était devenue par la suite chanteuse d’opéra. À la fin des années 1960, la maison de Smith avait été la proie des flammes, et deux de ses violons avaient été emportés par le feu. Seul le violon jaune, qui était conservé dans un étui, avait échappé à l’élément destructeur.

Au moment de sa mort, Smith s’était séparé d’Arlene et vivait avec une jeune danoise nommée Eva Løgager. Après le décès de Smith, Løgager avait envoyé ‘’Big Red’’ à Arlene, qui l’avait fait parvenir à son tour avec d’autres effets personnels à un des fils du violoniste, Jack. Ce dernier est mort dans les années 1980.

Smith avait également eu deux enfants de son premier mariage.

Ironiquement, même s’il avait éprouvé de la difficulté à s’adapter au bebop, Smith avait interprété un style de musique qui se situait à mi-chemin entre le swing et le bebop. Smith est également considéré comme le premier violoniste à avoir utilisé des techniques d’amplication au violon. À l’époque, il était particulièrement difficile pour un violoniste de se faire entendre au milieu des trompettes et des saxophones. C’est d’ailleurs pour cette raison que Smith avait quitté le groupe de Jelly Roll Morton dans les années 1930.

C’est en se produisant au club Onyx à la fin des années 1930 que Smih avait commencé à jouer du violon électrique. Un peu comme Charlie Christian à la guitare, Smith n’avait pas tardé à découvrir tout le potentiel de l’amplification pour son instrument. Le premier violon électrique de Smith, un Guarneri d’une valeur de 5000$, était sans doute une des explications de la puissance de son jeu. Le micro incorporé (pick up) avait été conçu en 1948 par le guitariste et inventeur Harry DeArmond. Les violonistes de musique country avaient surnommé le dispositif du nom de “fiddle bug.” Décrivant le travail de Smith au violon électrique, les historiens du jazz Len Lyons et Don Perlo avaient écrit que le violoniste avait développé ‘’a bluesy, speech-inflected style that was quite distinct from the European-influenced approaches of Swing Era violinists Joe Venuti, Stephane Grappelli, and Eddie South.” Commentant à son tour le jeu de Venuti, Smith avait déclaré: “I got some Venuti records and they were pretty, but they didn’t push me enough. I use my bow the way a horn player uses breath control and I may hit a note the way a drummer hits a cymbal!”

Smith, qui avait été un des musiciens les plus originaux de l’histoire du jazz, avait inspiré le commentaire suivant à la violoniste Regina Carter: ’’On the violin, or any other instrument. “When you hear him play, you can’t sit still—it swings so hard; He can go toe-to-toe with anyone. Even [with players] on other instruments—he swings the hardest.” Carter avait ajouté: “The violin, he’s making it talk. It makes you laugh. But then when he strikes it—unh!—when he does that with the bow, he makes everybody listen. It’s just like he’s the drummer at that point. He grabs your attention—and then he says something.”

SOURCES:

SCHULMAN, David. ‘’Chasing the Sound of Stuff Smith.’’ Strings, 16 mai 2018.

‘’Stuff Smith.’’ Wikipedia, 2023.

‘’Stuff Smith.’’ All About Jazz, 2023.

‘’Stuff Smith 1909-1967.’’ Encyclopedia.com, 2023.

#jazz

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art150class · 11 months

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Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Showcases Black History

For this assignment, I decided to follow the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The stories they highlight are important to understanding the history of the United States more in depth and spotlight the diversity that has always been present in our nation.

The NMAAHC publishes Instagram posts highlighting individual Black trailblazers throughout US history. Two examples of people the NMAAHC have posted about include Mary McLeod Bethune and Diahann Carroll, who were pioneers and proponents of diversity in their respective fields.

Mary McLeod Bethune was a teacher who was appointed Director of Minority Affairs for the National Youth Administration under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was the first Black woman to head a federal agency and was part of Roosevelt’s “Black cabinet,” the group of FDR’s Black policy advisors which Bethune herself led. This was significant as this was during the Great Depression, a time where segregation still persisted in the US. Bethune also founded the National Council of Negro Women “to empower Black women concerned with social justice and human rights issues.”

Diahann Carroll was an American actress known for movie musicals such as Carmen Jones (1954) and the TV shows Julia (1968-71) and Dynasty (1984-1987). Julia, in which Carroll played a nurse, was significant to television history, as she was the first African-American lead character in a non-stereotypical role. For her role on Dynasty, where she played Dominique Deveraux, “Carroll immortalized Black female power.”

A picture of Caroll as Julia and Marc Copage as Corey on the TV show Julia.

Bethune and Carroll are important to the history of the United States as they were trailblazers in their respective fields. They were Black female role models at a time when segregation still existed. It is important to have representation of all races and ethnicities in our culture, and Deborah Willis is furthering this with her mission of looking for photographs of Black people throughout US history. As she explains in the documentary Through a Lens Darkly, she was ”amazed and dismayed” there were no Black people in history textbooks, so she made it a goal to show the history of African-Americans through photography with Black people both in front and behind the camera. Her project has lasted over 35 years and is further exemplified in Picturing Us, where she shows pictures of African Americans throughout US history and explains its significance.

The image Racoon Couple in Car in Picturing Us symbolizes “the celebration of Black life…and cultural achievement.” The photograph also celebrates Harlem as “a source of pride” for African Americans as it was a time of cultural, literary, and musical achievement. Racoon Couple relates to the NMAAHC’s photographic archive, including one of Duke Ellington, who was a prominent musician during the Harlem Renaissance. Many of his compositions, such as “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” have since become jazz standards. In the picture (which can be found in the citation section below), you can see the joy on his face as he plays the piano and the audience’s sheer happiness around him. Both Racoon Couple and the photo of Duke Ellington are a celebration of Black history in the United States.

youtube

Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington perform “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. Both were influential figures in jazz.

People like Deb Willis and institutions like the Smithsonian help expose us to important stories in history that may be otherwise untold. By highlighting important African American figures that have broken barriers and blazed trails, the NMAAHC shows us the celebration of Black pride throughout history.

Works Cited (Listed Alphabetically)

Family Pictures USA, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, June 19, 2013, 7:49-8:46, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THZWSexAjgk.

Alice George, “Was the 1968 TV Show ‘Julia’ a Milestone or a Millstone for Diversity?,” Smithsonian Magazine, updated October 4, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/was-1968-tv-show-julia-milestone-or-millstone-180970198/#:~:text=Squarely%20situated%20at%20an%20intersection,American%20authenticity%20to%20win%20viewers.

“Mary McLeod Bethune and Roosevelt's ‘Black Cabinet’”, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian, accessed July 19, 2023, https://anacostia.si.edu/exhibitions/mary-mcleod-bethune-and-roosevelts-black-cabinet%3Aevent-exhib-4309.

National Museum of African American History and Culture (@nmaahc), photograph of Diahann Carroll, photograph by G. Marshall Wilson, Johnson Publishing Company Archive, courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, July 17, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CuzDWHWPUbZ/.

National Museum of African American History and Culture (@nmaahc), “Duke Ellington, 1959,” Instagram, photographed by William Lanier, Johnson Publishing Company Archive, courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, April 29, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/Crnoi1dPcBE/.

National Museum of African American History and Culture (@nmaahc), “Mary McLeod Bethune - Daytona Beach, Florida,” circa 1915, photo by William Ludlow Coursen, courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, July 10, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CuhByc0MP6D/.

Deborah Willis, Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (New York, The New Press, 1994), 8-9.

Picture/Video Credits

The Ed Sullivan Show, “Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing),"” YouTube, uploaded June 26, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0.

NBC Television, “Diahann carroll julia 1969,” circa 1969, uploaded August 31, 2011, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diahann_carroll_julia_1969.JPG.

James Vanderzee, Racoon Couple in Car, 1932, courtesy Donna Vanderzee, from Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (New York, The New Press, 1994), 7.

#nmaahc #smithsonian #duke ellington #ella fitzgerald #diahann carroll #mary mcleod bethune #history #Youtube

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carmenvicinanza · 1 year

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Sonia Sanchez

https://www.unadonnalgiorno.it/sonia-sanchez/

Sonia Sanchez poeta, scrittrice e accademica femminista pluripremiata, è un’importante protagonista del Black Arts Movement, nato per il rinnovamento della volontà, dell’intuizione, dell’energia e della consapevolezza delle persone nere.

Ha scritto molti libri di poesie, testi teatrali e libri per l’infanzia e pubblicato saggi in storiche riviste come The Liberator, Negro Digest e Black Dialogue.

È conosciuta per la sua innovativa fusione di generi musicali, come il blues e il jazz, con forme poetiche tradizionali come haiku e tanka che utilizzano lo slang della comunità nera e una punteggiatura e ortografia sperimentale.

Attivista militante sin dagli anni sessanta, ha scritto di identità, razza, femminismo, amore, degrado, AIDS, dolore, emancipazione, orgoglio, cambiamento e senso comunitario.

Nata a Birmingham, Alabama, il 9 settembre 1934 col nome di Wilsonia Benita Driver, perse sua quando aveva solo un anno. Era stata, per questo, mandata a vivere con la nonna paterna, morta, anch’ella, quando aveva sei anni. Il trauma le fece sviluppare una balbuzie che la rendeva molto introversa, portandola a leggere molto e prestare molta attenzione al linguaggio e ai suoi suoni.

Nel 1943 si è trasferita ad Harlem per vivere con il padre, la sorella e la terza moglie del padre.

Col tempo ha imparato a gestire la balbuzie e trovare la sua voce poetica, nei corsi di scrittura creativa mentre frequentava l’Hunter College, dove si è laureata, nel 1955, in Scienze Politiche.

Ha completato il percorso post-laurea alla New York University e studiato poesia con Louise Bogan. In quel periodo ha formato un laboratorio di scrittori e scrittrici nel Greenwich Village chiamato Broadside Quartet.

Quando faceva parte del CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), ha incontrato Malcolm X.

Tra le pioniere del femminismo nero, ha iniziato a scrivere drammaturgie teatrali negli anni ’60. Le forti protagoniste delle sue opere sfidavano lo spirito patriarcale del movimento.

Per un periodo, all’inizio degli anni settanta, ha fatto parte della Nation of Islam, che ha poi lasciato per la conflittuale visione sui diritti delle donne.

Ha tenuto il cognome Sanchez dal suo primo matrimonio, anche se poi ha sposato il poeta Etheridge Knight. L’esperienza della maternità, ha una figlia e due figli, ha influenzato la sua poesia negli anni settanta.

Ha scritto molte opere teatrali e libri che raccontano le lotte e le vite dell’America nera e curato le due antologie We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans e 360° of Blackness Coming at You.

Sonia Sanchez ha insegnato in otto università e tenuto lezioni in oltre 500 campus in tutti gli Stati Uniti, tra cui la Howard University. Ha sostenuto l’introduzione di un corso di studi sulla comunità e sull’arte nera in California.

È stata la prima, in tutti gli Stati Uniti, a tenere un corso universitario di letteratura femminile afroamericana e a ricoprire la carica di Presidential Fellow alla Temple University, dove ha iniziato a lavorare nel 1977 e terminato nel 1999, quando è andata in pensione. Attualmente è poeta residente dell’ateneo.

Ha utilizzato i Black Studies come una nuova piattaforma per lo studio della razza e una sfida ai pregiudizi istituzionali delle università americane, prevalentemente frequentate da persone bianche.

Ha fatto parte di importanti organizzazioni femministe per i diritti umani.

Nel 2012 è stata la prima poeta laureata di Filadelfia.

Nel 2015 è uscito, BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, documentario sul suo lavoro e sull’influenza che ha avuto nella storia della cultura, che è stato proiettato in molti festival internazionali.

È tra le venti donne afroamericane che fanno parte di Freedom’s Sisters, mostra itinerante voluta dal Cincinnati Museum Center e dalla Smithsonian Institution.

#unadonnalgiorno #sonia sanchez

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osarothomprince · 1 year

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The National Arts Club Continues 125th Anniversary Year, Celebrating Asian-American and Pacific Islander Month with Explorations into Fashion, Music, Dance & More

May 1-June 30. The New Age of Anxiety(dragged) May spotlights such programs as a performance featuring NAC artist fellow Barkha Patel with Barkha Dance Company, a conversation with award-winning photographer Louie Palu, continuing our year-long concert series in collaboration with The National Jazz Museum in Harlem with a performance by Helen Sung Trio, and our Medal of Honor for […]The National…

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trascapades · 1 year

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🕊📷#ArtIsAWeapon

Peaceful journeys and deep gratitude to #ArtistActivist #KwameBraithwaite. 🙏🏿 #BlackIsBeautiful #KeeperOfTheImages

📸 1. @alvinailey #revelations, reposted from @kwamebphoto

Reposted from @nmaahc Our museum mourns the passing of renowned photographer and one of the architects of the “Black Is Beautiful” movement, Kwame Braithwaite, who died on April 1, at 85, in Brooklyn, New York.

Born on January 1, 1938, Brathwaite captured the beauty of Black life and culture over a career that spanned more than 60 years. His work covered a range of themes and aesthetics, from vivid color and somber black-and-white images to portraits of fashion, Harlem’s streets, and jazz.

An advocate and proclaimed “keeper of the images,” Brathwaite and his older brother Elombe Brath and others cofounded the African Jazz Art Society and Studios (AJASS). An association of art and activism, AJASS organized jazz and other cultural events that helped mobilize communities in Harlem at the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Created in 1956, the year following the killing of Emmett Till and the start of the Montgomery bus boycott, AJASS represented artists who defined themselves and their work from an Afrocentric point of view. Influenced by the Pan-African nationalism of activists like Carlos Cook and Marcus Garvey, AJASS distinguished itself by embracing the African and beauty in African American culture.

Brathwaite is also known for his candid images of jazz, including his portraits of such luminaries as Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Max Roach, and Abbey Lincoln. In addition to being a product of the modern jazz era, he helped shape its visual aesthetic while working with AJASS to bring top performers to Harlem.

From the poetry of African prints and fashion to the chaos and choreography of Harlem’s streets and music, Kwame Brathwaite left a legacy that helped shape today’s conversations on the beauty in Black culture and Black Lives. #APeoplesJourney #ANationsStory

📷 2. Untitled (Kwame Brathwaite Self Portrait at AJASS Studios) 3. Untitled (Sikolo Brathwaite at AJASS studios) 4. Untitled (Man smoking in a Ballroom) 5. Untitled (Sikolo Brathwaite, Orange Portrait) Photographs by Kwame Brathwaite. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Courtesy of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive & Philip Martin Gallery, Kwame Brathwaite

#photographers #Black Photographers

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mosaicrecords · 5 years

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Harlem's Best-Kept Secret Jazz Treasure

If you can get past the annoying advertising pop-ups and the reference to Art Kane’s famous photo being referred to as “Drop Me Off In Harlem” (the real name of that photo is “A Great Day In Harlem”), this Forbes interview with Loren Schoenberg gets us closer to the passion and mission of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.

-Scott Wenzel

Read from Forbes… Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

#National Jazz Museum #Harlem #Loren Schoenberg #Savory Collection #trad & big band #classic jazz #Jon Batiste #Christian McBride #Scott Wenzel

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lauraamaz · 5 years

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The National Jazz Museum, Harlem

#national jazz museum #jazz #harlem #new york #35mm #film is not dead #film photography #film is alive #b&w film #b&w photography

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1962dude420-blog · 3 years

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Today we remember the passing of Eubie Blake who died February 12, 1983 in Brooklyn, New York

James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works.

Eubie Blake was born February 7, 1887, at 319 Forrest Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks.

Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003—U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his birth year as 1887.

Blake's musical training began when he was four or five years old. While out shopping with his mother, he wandered into a music store, climbed on the bench of an organ, and started "foolin’ around". When his mother found him, the store manager said to her, "The child is a genius! It would be criminal to deprive him of the chance to make use of such a sublime, God-given talent." The Blakes purchased a pump organ for US$75.00, making payments of 25 cents a week. When Blake was seven, he received music lessons from a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, an organist for the Methodist church. At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's Baltimore bordello. Blake got his first big break in the music business in 1907, when the world champion boxer Joe Gans hired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "black and tan club" in Baltimore. Blake played at the Goldfield during the winters from 1907–1914, spending his summers playing clubs in Atlantic City. During this period, he also studied composition in Baltimore with Llewellyn Wilson.

According to Blake, he also worked the medicine show circuit and was employed by a Quaker doctor. He played a Melodeon strapped to the back of the medicine wagon. Blake stayed with the show only two weeks, however, because the doctor's religion didn't allow the serving of Sunday dinner.

Blake said he composed the melody of the "Charleston Rag" in 1899, when he would have been only 12 years old. It was not committed to paper, however, until 1915, when he learned to write musical notation.

In 1912, Blake began playing in vaudeville with James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, which accompanied Vernon and Irene Castle's ballroom dance act. The band played ragtime music, which was still quite popular. Shortly after World War I, Blake joined forces with the performer Noble Sissle to form a vaudeville musical act, the Dixie Duo. After vaudeville, the pair began work on a musical revue, Shuffle Along, which incorporated songs they had written, and had a book written by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. When it premiered in June 1921, Shuffle Along became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about African-Americans. The musical also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way." Rudolf Fisher insisted that Shuffle Along "had ruined his favorite places of African-American sociability in Harlem" due to the influx of white patrons. The reliance on "stereotypical black stage humor" and "the primitivist conventions of cabaret," in the words of Thomas Brothers, made the show a hit, running for 504 performances with 3 years of national tours.

Blake made his first recordings in 1917, for the Pathé record label and for Ampico piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the Victor and Emerson labels among others.

In 1923, Blake made three films for Lee de Forest in de Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process: Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, featuring their song "Affectionate Dan"; Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs, featuring "Sons of Old Black Joe" and "My Swanee Home"; and Eubie Blake Plays His Fantasy on Swanee River, featuring Blake performing his "Fantasy on Swanee River". These films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection in the Library of Congress collection. He also appeared in Warner Brothers' 1932 short film Pie, Pie Blackbird with the Nicholas Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, and Noble Sissle. That same year he and his orchestra provided as well most of the music for the film Harlem Is Heaven.

In July 1910, Blake married Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee, proposing to her in a chauffeur-driven car he hired. Blake and Lee met around 1895, when both attended Primary School No. 2, at 200 East Street in Baltimore. In 1910, Blake brought his newlywed to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he had already found employment at the Boathouse nightclub.

In 1938, Avis was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died later that year, at the age of 58. Of his loss, Blake said, "In my life I never knew what it was to be alone. At first when Avis got sick, I thought she just had a cold, but when time passed and she didn’t get better, I made her go to a doctor and we found out she had TB … I suppose I knew from when we found out she had the TB, I understood that it was just a matter of time."

While serving as bandleader with the USO during World War II, he met Marion Grant Tyler, the widow of the violinist Willy Tyler. Blake and Tyler married in 1945. She was a performer and a businesswoman and became his valued business manager until her death in 1982. In 1946, Blake retired from performing and enrolled in New York University, where he studied the Schillinger System of music composition, graduating in two and a half years. He spent the next two decades using the Schillinger System to transcribe songs that he had memorized but had never written down.

In the 1970s and 1980s, public interest in Blake's music rekindled following the release of his 1969 retrospective album, The 86 Years of Eubie Blake.

Blake was a frequent guest of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. He was featured by leading conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler. In 1977 he played Will Williams in the Jeremy Kagan biographical film Scott Joplin. By 1975, he had been awarded honorary doctorates from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Dartmouth. On October 9, 1981, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Ronald Reagan.

Eubie!, a revue featuring the music of Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, Andy Razaf, Johnny Brandon, F. E. Miller, and Jim Europe, opened on Broadway in 1978. The show was a hit at the Ambassador Theatre, where it ran for 439 performances. The production received three nominations for Tony Awards, including one for Blake's score. The show was filmed in 1981 with the original cast members, including Lesley Dockery, Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines. Blake performed with Gregory Hines on the television program Saturday Night Live on March 10, 1979.

Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn, five days after events celebrating his purported 100th birthday(which was actually his 96th birthday).

He was interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. His headstone, engraved with the musical notation of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", was commissioned by the African Atlantic Genealogical Society. The bronze sculpture of Blake's bespectacled face was created by David Byer-Tyre, curator and director of the African American Museum and Center for Education and Applied Arts, in Hempstead, New York. The original inscription indicated his correct year of birth, but individuals close to him insisted that Blake be indulged and paid to have the inscription changed.

#february 12 #1983 #r.i.p.#eubie blake

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gagosiangallery · 4 years

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Stanley Whitney at Gagosian Rome

September 1, 2020

STANLEY WHITNEY Opening reception: Thursday, September 10, 12–8pm September 10–October 17, 2020 Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome __________ The color, the light, the ancient architecture—I never tire of contemplating Rome. Rome always clarifies and inspires my work. The current form of my painting started to take shape in the nineties when I was absorbed in the city and looking at ancient and Renaissance architecture. In Rome, there is an order, an ancient rhythm, that I want in my paintings. —Stanley Whitney Gagosian is pleased to present new paintings by Stanley Whitney. Originally scheduled to open in April, but delayed by the pandemic, this is his first exhibition with the gallery and his first major exhibition in Rome, where he lived for five years during the 1990s. It features paintings produced both in New York and Bertacca, Italy. Whitney’s vibrant abstract paintings unlock the linear structure of the grid, imbuing it with new and unexpected cadences of color, rhythm, and space. Deriving inspiration from sources as diverse as Piet Mondrian, free jazz, and American quilt making, Whitney composes with blocks and bars that articulate a chromatic call-and-response within the bounds of each canvas.

Whitney has spent decades experimenting with the seemingly limitless potential of a single compositional method, loosely dividing square canvases into multiple registers. The thinly applied oil paint retains his active brushwork and allows for a degree of transparency and tension at the borders between each rectilinear parcel of vivid color. In varying canvas sizes, he explores the shifting effects of his freehand geometries at both intimate and grand scales as he deftly lays down successive blocks of paint, heeding the call of each color. Although Whitney has been deeply invested in chromatic experimentation throughout his career, he consolidated his distinctive approach during a formative trip to Italy in 1992, shifting his compositions from untethered amorphous forms to the denser stacked arrangements that characterize his mature style. It was Roman art and architecture—including the imposing facades of the Colosseum and the Palazzo Farnese and the stacked shelves of funerary urns on display at the National Etruscan Museum—that informed Whitney’s nuanced understanding of the relationship between color and geometry. Italy remains a central and enduring source of inspiration for Whitney, who spends his summers painting at his studio near Parma. When working there, he adapts his palette to the surrounding history, permitting muted colors—rounded beiges and browns, and Pompeiian red—to assume prominence in his rich and varied compositions. These warm hues appear in full force in Bertacca 2 (2019), one of three large canvases included in this exhibition that Whitney painted in Italy. Here, he re-creates the shade of vermilion featured throughout the Boscoreale frescoes at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, transposing this jewellike tone onto canvas in dense strips and lozenges of paint, then directly juxtaposing it against the cardinal red that he developed in the United States. Thus Whitney’s intercultural chromatic contrasts create a dynamic interplay of space and mass, bringing the rhythms of the classical past into conversation with the active present. Stanley Whitney was born in 1946 in Philadelphia, and lives and works in New York and Parma, Italy. Collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO;and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Solo exhibitions include Recent Works, A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, Rome (2004); Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, NY (2012); Dance the Orange, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); and FOCUS, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX (2017). Whitney participated in Documenta 14 (Kassel, Germany; and Athens) in 2017. _____ Stanley Whitney, That’s Rome, 2019, oil on linen, 96 × 96 inches (243.8 × 243.8 cm) © Stanley Whitney

#Stanley Whitney #Gagosian

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ballroomhistory · 5 years

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Queer Figures of the Harlem Renaissance

Gladys Bentley

Gladys Bentley was a blues singer who thrived during the Harlem Renaissance during the 20s and early 30s, becoming known as Harlem’s favourite ‘bulldagger’ and was known to have many female lovers during her life. Often singing controversial songs and known as a male impersonator for dressing in white tuxedos and top hats, she frequently performed and headlined at the famous gay speakeasy, The Clam House. Around 1930, Bentley married a white woman in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But later, Bentley went back in the closet and her all-too-brief period of fame ended in the 1930s. Ultimately, homophobia, uniting with racism, sexism, and classism, destroyed Bentley’s ability to live creatively and freely and she drew back into the closet and claimed to marry a man who denied ever being married to Bentley (Wilson 2010).

Richard Bruce Nugent

Richard Bruce Nugent was one of the few publicly out queer artists of the Harlem Renaissance and was as the ‘perfumed orchid of the New Negro Movement’ (Glick 2009:86). Nugent was known to have lived with another queer writer Wallace Thurman from the years 1926 to 1928 in Harlem, which led to the publishing of the story ‘Smoke, Lilies, and Jade’ in Thurman's black literary publication Fire!!. The story covered themes of bisexuality and more explicitly interracial male desire. Despite his openness about male attraction, Nugent married Grace Marr in 1952 until her suicide in 1969 (Wirth 2002).

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker was a well-known singer, dancer and actress within the early years of the Harlem Renaissance. However, she struggled to find an audience within the US and predominantly grew her large career overseas in Paris. Because of this, she is often known as the first Black international star. Her song, ‘J’ai Deux Amours,’ meaning ‘I have two loves,’ became one of her biggest, in which Baker took to mean France and the United States (Goodman 2019). Baker identified herself as bisexual. She married four different times throughout her life but carried on affairs with women, including Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and French author Colette.

Langston Hughes

One of the most well-known and written about, poet, novelist and playwright, Langston Hughes, was a primary voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Although Hughes never spoke of his sexuality often in public, there are a lot of homosexual themes in his work such as ‘Blessed Assurance’ and ‘Seven People Dancing.’ Garber wrote that ‘Hughes was exceedingly cagy and evasive about his emotional involvements, even with his closest friends; as a result, though most of Hughes' biographers concede that the poet was at least sporadically homosexual, the exact nature of his sexuality remains uncertain’ (1990:326). He also often attended and was fond of the Harlem drag balls, naming them the infamous ‘spectacles of colour’.

As professor Henry Louis Gates describes, the Harlem Renaissance was, ‘surely as gay as it was black’ (1993:233). With the growth in art, jazz and blues, and drag balls, this time period was defined as ‘homosexual mecca’ or queer paradise and can be seen to have had many other LGBTQ artists that led the Harlem Renaissance. Some of the famous names including Countee Cullen, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey, Claude Mckay, Alain Locke, Bessie Smith, James Richmond Barthé, Alberta Hunter, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Angelina Weld Grimké.

Gates, Henry Louis (1993) The Black Man’s Burden. In Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory ed. Michael Warner, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 230-238.

Glick, Elisa (2009) Materializing Queer Desire: Oscar Wilde to Andy Warhol. Albany: State University Press.

Jules-Rosette, Bennetta (2007) Josephine Baker in Art and Life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Schwarz, A. B. Christa (2003) Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wilson, James F. (2010) Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Wirth, Thomas H. (2002) Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance. Durham: Duke University Press.

Photo 1: Unknown n.d. A silver gelatin print depicting a black-and-white image of entertainer Gladys Bentley. Bentley is depicted standing in three-quarters profile with her head turned towards the viewer, and her proper right foot forward. She is wearing a white tuxedo, top hat, and she is holding a cane under her proper right arm. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Photo 2: Unknown n.d. Photograph of Richard Bruce Nugent (also Bruce Nugent). Image courtesy Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Photo 3: Walery n.d. Photographic print of Josephine Baker performing at the Folies Bergère. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and National Portrait Gallery, gift from Jean-Claude Baker.

Photo 4: Unknown n.d. Langston Hughes as a young man. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library.

#ballroom #house ballroom #lgbt ballroom #harlem renaissance #queer #gladys bentley #richard bruce nugent #josephine baker #langston hughes #queer history

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tracyshomesick · 3 years

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25 things that were invented in NYC.

1. Toilet paper: In 1857, Joseph C. Gayetty began selling packs of “medicated paper for the water closet” out of his wholesale shop at 41 Ann St. The paper was made from pure Manila hemp and treated with aloe. Best (or worst) of all, each sheet was watermarked with his name.

2. Chicken ’n’ waffles: After its 1938 opening, Wells Supper Club in Harlem was the last stop for jazz greats like Sammy Davis Jr., Gladys Knight and Nat King Cole. Catering to its night-owl talent, Wells created the perfect dish for acts who’d missed dinner but couldn’t wait till breakfast: leftover fried chicken on a sweet waffle.

3. Chewing gum, a New York invention, was first manufactured in 1870 by Thomas Adams in a warehouse on Front Street. Called ''Adams New York Gum No. 1,'' it was made from chicle, a form of sapodilla tree sap chewed in the Yucatan and Guatemala.

4. The Waldorf Salad: The Waldorf Astoria boasts two inventions on this list, the first of which is its classic salad, which combines lettuce, apple, celery and walnuts. It was first served in 1896.

5. Teddy Bears: In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot an injured black bear while on a hunt. Inspired by the story, Morris and Rose Michtom, candy-store owners from Brooklyn, sewed a plush bear and displayed it, calling it “teddy’s bear.” The toy was so popular, they gave up candy and opened a factory to make the cuddly critters.

6. The Tom Collins: In 1874, a hilarious joke swept through the city: A prankster would tell a friend, “I was at [insert local saloon], where Tom Collins was saying [insert insult] about you!” The offended party would rush off to defend his honor, but there was no Tom Collins. (Cool joke, bro.) Inspired by the prank, New York mixologist Jerry Thomas created the recipe in 1876.

7. Coal-fired pizza: Pizza was cooked with wood fires until Gennaro Lombardi introduced the tasty magic of coal. Legend has it he served the first coal-fired pie in 1905. Cooking pizza that way is technically illegal now, but the ovens of a few select haunts around the city were grandfathered in, including Lombardi’s, Totono’s and Patsy’s.

8. Scrabble: Out-of work architect and anagram lover Alfred Mosher Butts conceived this wordy board game in 1931 while living in Jackson Heights, Queens. The street sign on Butts’s corner in Queens now reads “35t1H4 a1V4e1n1u1e1” after the famed letter-scoring system.

9. Spaghetti primavera: When this faux Italian dish (fresh vegetables and Parmesan cream sauce on pasta) was served at Le Cirque in 1977, it was, according to The New York Times, “the most talked-about dish in Manhattan,” much to the chagrin of head chef Jean Vergnes. The classically trained Frenchie was so offended, his cooks had to prep the dish in a hallway—yet later he claimed its invention.

10. The remote control: Nikola Tesla conceived of a radio-controlled boat way back in 1898. The idea was so novel that nobody believed such technology could exist.

11. Sweet’n Low: Fort Greene entrepreneur Benjamin Eisenstadt teamed up with his chemist son, who found a way to create saccharin in powdered form (before it could only be a liquid or a pill). He named his pink-label brand after a Tennyson poem.

12. Eggs Benedict: Stockbroker and bon vivant Lemuel Benedict woke up one morning in 1894 with a raging hangover and booked it to the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where he ordered a poached egg, crispy bacon, toast and hollandaise sauce. Legendary maître d’hôtel Oscar Tschirky was such a fan of the creation, he added it to the hotel’s menu.

13. The Bloody Mary:  Fernand “Pete” Petiot imported his tomato-juice-and-vodka concoction from Paris to the St. Regis hotel’s King Cole Bar. Catering to the spicier local tastes, Petiot added Worcestershire sauce, lemon and a dash of cayenne and black pepper.

14. Credit Cards: You have John Biggins of the Flatbush National Bank to thank for those interest charges and late fees: In 1946, he created the charge-it program, which issued customers bank credit cards for use at local Brooklyn merchants. The shop owners would then deposit the sales slips at the bank, who would then bill cardholders.

15. Baked Alaska: In 1876, the pioneering pastry chefs of lower-Manhattan restaurant Delmonico’s conceived of piping-hot sponge cake topped with crispy meringue and filled with ice cream, naming this miracle of food science in honor of the country’s newest territory.

16. General Tso’s Chicken: While exiled in Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, chef Peng Chang-Kuei created a spicy-and-sour chicken dish as an homage to a famous Hunanese general. When he jumped ship to New York in the 1970s and opened Peng’s, the dish became a huge hit— after he added sugar to the recipe.

17. Frozen Hot Chocolate:  Stephen Bruce, the cofounder of iconic East-Side restaurant Serendipity 3, kept the recipe of this decadent dessert a secret for 40 years. Bruce recently revealed that the famous frozen treat is 14 kinds of cocoa mixed with crushed ice and topped with whipped cream. (The types of cocoa still remain a mystery.)

18. Air conditioning: In 1902, Willis Carrier created his “apparatus for treating air” to keep the humidity from warping the paper at a printing plant on Grand St in Bushwick. Saving workers from the sweltering summer heat was just a fortunate side effect.

19. The Reuben Sandwich: Alright, this one’s contested, but many say Arnold Reuben, owner of Reuben’s Delicatessen, invented the meat-and-krout combo in 1914. Legend has it, the sandwich was created for a famished actress, who came in after a show, using the few ingredients left on the deli shelves.

20. Mr. Potato Head: When New Yorker and toy designer George Lerner first created plastic facial features to stick on real vegetables, toy companies worried that food wasting wouldn’t fly with a postwar public. But in 1952, Hasbro bought Lerner’s  idea and made the first TV ad ever for children’s playthings, selling a million units that year.

21. Hot dogs: Coney Island baker Charles Feltman had the genius idea to serve hot sausages in a  bun for a dime each. His frank fortune bought him a beachside empire of hotels and beer gardens, until former employee Nathan Handwerker opened Nathan’s Famous and sold his dogs for only a nickel.

22. ATMs: the first money-dispensing device was conceived in 1939 by Luther George Simjian, who convinced the City Bank of New York (today’s Citibank) to test his contraption for six months. The bank declined to use the machine after that, because “the only people using the machines were a small number of prostitutes and gamblers.”

23. Cronuts: Dominique Ansel labored for months to perfect his doughnut-fried, fluffy hybrid from heaven. The pastry, which debuted in May 2013, still inspires down-the- block lines each morning.

24. Children's Museums: The Brooklyn Children's Museum, located in Crown Heights, opened in 1899 and was the country’s first museum dedicated to the education of kids. It was also the first to introduce a “hands-on” policy for its exhibits.

25. Hip-hop. Enough said.

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