The lincoln center of New York, one of the most important cultural institutions in the United States, gave the spotlight this Saturday to a forgotten story in its shadow: that of the humble but vibrant black and Latino neighborhood that its construction destroyed last century.
“San Juan Hill” (San Juan Hill), one of the first victims of gentrification in the city, received a moving and original tribute at the premiere of the David Geffen Hall, the new home of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which was reopening after a multi-million dollar renovation.
For the occasion, the entity commissioned a work from the jazz composer and trumpeter Etienne Charles, who delved into its history and, together with his Creole Soul sextet and the Philharmonic, toured the sounds of jazz, swing, funk and salsa those streets buried under the complex, which includes the Ballet and the Opera.
And not only that: on a large screen, he projected in black and white archive images and interviews with old neighbors who remembered life in San Juan Hill, where musical icons like Thelonious Monk grew up and later race riots followed by African-Americans they used to be blamed.
In one starring moment, a narrating voice related that in 1959, when the last of 7,000 to 8,000 African-American and Puerto Rican families left the neighborhood, they all realized that the “development” project devised by urban planner Robert Moses had been, in reality, a “destroyer” project.
With this vindictive declaration, the unusual musical group displayed on stage showed off with an energetic jazz piece entitled “Destroyer” (Destroyer) that combined the timpani, DJ “scratches” -suited and with sheet music- and the band’s saxophone with classical instruments of the prestigious local orchestra.
Among the vignettes of the concert stood out “Riot 1905”, about a clash between blacks and whites; “The Negro Enchantress,” about a sex worker who became the richest black woman; or “House rent party”, the last one, an exuberant entertainment with Caribbean airs that brought the room to its feet for a long standing ovation.
Before an audience as diverse as the talent responsible for the show, with luxury spectators such as the maestro Chucho Valdés, the composer Etienne Charles embraced the conductor of the orchestra, Jaap Van Zweden, and pointed out that the story he told today is not unique, but that there are other San Juan Hills throughout the US.
The interest of lincoln center to recover the history of this displaced working-class neighborhood in the name of modernization does not seem to end with the concert that will be repeated tonight, since it has created a portal on the “Legacies of San Juan Hill” that it hopes to feed with content.
In addition, the institution has stressed that it wants to bring culture closer to all kinds of audiences and has installed a huge “digital wall” outside the room that broadcasts live and free of some performances, while it will charge “the will” or give away tickets for many shows of the season that begins.
In this sense, the organization highlighted that the reform of the David Geffen Hall had a double objective: to give the orchestra a decent space after years of acoustic problems, and to make the very building in which it is housed more “a public place” than an “isolated temple of culture. EFE
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Lincoln Center dedicates a concert to the black and Latino neighborhood it destroyed