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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I am grateful that you are here. On today's show, a new podcast from the former Radiolab host Jad Abumrad dives into the life and legacy of Nigerian musician Felikuti. Jad will be with us to discuss plus Casino Bullock on a new cookbook, My Harvest Kitchen, 100 plus recipes to savor the Seasons. And Punch is a new Broadway play about restorative justice. We'll have the star of the show as well as the play right here. That's the plan. So let's get this started with some New York music history from San Juan Hill. About a century ago, before Lincoln center existed, the area was the neighborhood was San Juan Hill, a predominantly black, Afro Caribbean and Puerto Rican community. In the 1950s, Robert Moses used eminent domain to raise the community, displacing all of its residents so that Lincoln center and Fordham University could exist. In recent years, Lincoln center has gotten real about what happened to the people in the area and to learn to celebrate San Juan Hill's rich cultural history, which includes Felonious Monk and Benny Carter. Today, Lincoln center is launching a series of events called the Legacies of San Juan Hill Festival and will feature film screenings and musical performances, including one of my guests, Etienne Charles, whose song Gullah Roots was just playing. Charles is also the composer of San Juan A New York Story, which will be performed by Charles, his band Creo Soul, and the Frost Symphony Orchestra of the University of Miami. That will be on October 23rd. Etienne, welcome.
- [02:02]
B
Thank you, Alison. It's good to be here.
- [02:04]
A
Also with me today is Lauren Schoenberg, the senior scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. He'll be moderating a panel tomorrow following a screening of the documentary San Juan Manhattan's Lost Neighborhood. It is directed by Stanley Nelson.
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C
Lauren, welcome to you as well, Alison.
- [02:21]
D
Thank you. Can you hear me?
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A
I hear you.
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D
Great. The panel is this evening.
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A
The panel is this evening. It is not tomorrow. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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D
You're welcome, listeners.
- [02:31]
A
We want to hear from you. Do you have questions about history and legacy of San Juan Hill? Maybe you even had family who lived in the neighborhood? Call in or text us with your questions. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692.
- [02:46]
C
Etienne, when and how did you first hear of San Juan Hill?
- [02:51]
B
Ironically, it was while I was at Juilliard. I was a student there in in 2006 and my combo was assigned. Our very first concert was the music of. It was called House Party Starting. And it was about the music of Herbie Nichols, who was a great piano player and composer. And I recognized the name Nichols. And the teacher. We had a coach who came into coaches for that concert named Frank Kimbrough. And he explained that Herbie Nichols was from San Juan Hill, New York. And he pointed from the classroom out the window to where the neighborhood was. And I was like, well, Nichols is a name that I know in Trinidad. And he said, yeah, well, Herbie Nichols parents were migrants to New York, specifically San Juan Hill, from Trinidad. And that was. I mean, that was almost 20 years ago. But that was the spark. And then Monte Alexander was. We were in a rehearsal, and he started talking about Thelonious Monk, and he was talking about the Caribbean bounce in Monk's music. And he used Green Chimneys as an example. He went. And he was like, yeah, Monk grew up in this Caribbean. He explained the Caribbean neighborhood. And the musicians, Denzel Best, all these different musicians who were of, you know, Caribbean descent in San Juan Hill, that kind of influenced Monk's style. And so then, you know, I was just hooked after Robin D.G. kelly's book came out around 2011. And then, you know, many a conversation with Lauren, who was my jazz history teacher at Juilliard. So it's funny how things come full circle.
- [04:40]
C
Well, let's talk to your former teacher, Lauren. When you think of the music of San Juan Hill, what comes to mind?
- [04:48]
D
Well, what comes to mind is a very broad mixing of people from a lot of different backgrounds. And because usually, you know, because America still really hasn't dealt with the issue of race definitively in so many ways, that things get kind of very simply categorized. And so the. The real multiplicity and. And all the different kinds of people that were living in San Juan Hill created something. It's almost like New Orleans back a couple hundred years ago. So many different kinds of people there. And the. It all came together in the music, as ATN just mentioned, that it's not just one thing. And I just want to mention real quick that when they started this thing at Lincoln center and ATN wrote this piece with the New York Philharmonic, and I went with a friend of mine, and we saw the concert. It was just wonderful. And it was really like kicking off this whole new thing of Lincoln center, kind of accepting responsibility and acknowledging the history of where they sit. A friend turned to me as we left, and we're saying, man, wasn't it wonderful? Yes. And he said, well, I'll tell you something. I hope it's not just like a flash in the pan that, like, yes, they had a great trumpet player come in, write a piece of music with the Philharmonic, and now they're going to forget. Has not been that. Not only has it not been that, but they have kept it, kept that flag flying, including this upcoming festival that we'll talk about in just a moment. But it's. I've never seen a commitment like this for a historical institution embracing. In fact, you know, on. On the side of Al Stelly hall on West 65th street and Broadway, the whole wall is just painted with pictures.
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A
Yeah. Nina Chanel, Abney. Yeah.
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D
And at some point, ATN's picture will be there too, because he's playing. Well, this piece that he wrote is a tremendous addition to the literature for symphony orchestras and for jazz bands. So it's. This is all great.
- [06:49]
A
When you think of the music of San Juan Hill, Etienne, how would you describe it?
- [06:54]
B
I mean, I would say it was revolutionary in the sense that because there were so many people living there, some in harmony, some unlike the sheer volume, you know, there were sayings that, you know, they were. Those tenement buildings were overpopulated. You know, sometimes 10 and 12 people to an apartment. Right. And so all these different cultures. So when you listen, you know, when you listen to Benny Carter, you know, Benny Carter was probably a rental arm. Lauren, you could correct me, but Benny Carter was a pioneer, not only as a player, but he was one of the first, if not the first arranger to write a five saxophone solely and to write for that sound of five saxophones moving together. So it was a place of innovation. Thelonious Monk, innovator, you know, Rex Stewart, trumpet playing. Russell Crop's woodwind playing. You know, Zora Neale Hurston lived in the neighborhood when she, you know, when she lived in New York. Even Aaron Copeland, who lived at. He lived in the Empire Hotel so that he could be around the action of San Juan Hill. And, you know, like, people like, if you go back further to, like, you know, people like Willie the Lion Smith make some great accounts of what was going San Juan Hill and people like James P. Johnson and because of shipyard workers coming from the south, from the Carolinas, and, you know, working during the day, but needing to party and hang out in lime and socialize at night, you know, finding where's the joint, where's the places to play. So, you know, this is how things like the Jungle Casino, Jungles Casino came to be. And so you end up with this dance, which really was just a cotillion step in Charleston becoming known as the Charleston, with this incredible piece of music and really like a new style of music, because I'm not sure how much piano music before this time incorporated that specific Charleston groove. And so then, you know, and then the evolutions of swing coming from it. You know, Thelonious Monk was one. They know him as the high priest of bebop in the next part of this neighborhood. Tito Rodriguez had some really big hits that came out during the time of. Many of his musicians lived in San Juan. They had these huge drum circles on the weekend in the courtyards of the plazas of these buildings. And so, you know, like songs like Mambo, La Libertad and Mambo Madness and Harlem Nightmare, there was all this different music that came out of San Juan Hill. And, you know, so I tried to put as much of it into the piece.
- [09:31]
D
And if I can just follow up, Alison, just real quick with what ATN said. You know, it also takes us back to Louis Marie Gotchalk. It goes way back. All these threads that he was talking about. I want to add just a personal experience here. Just real quickly. You mentioned Benny Carter. And Benny Carter, you know, there'd be no Quincy Jones without Benny Carter. Quincy Jones always said that. I played a concert with Benny Carter in the Goldman Band shell on Amsterdam Avenue in 65th street, or whatever street it is, 40 years ago. And there were still people from the San Juan Hill neighborhood who knew him, who came up outside just to shout at him from the street corner. And so the reason I mentioned that is for those of. Of a certain age, the legacy of San Juan Hill is still something that we saw, something that we experienced. And of course, the world at large knows west side Story. And what they don't know about west side Story is that that is the area exactly, of San Juan Hill. It's a shame they didn't get into the jazz history, but at least it's a nice. It's a nice tinge.
- [10:39]
C
I'm speaking to Harlem Jazz Museum senior scholar Lauren Schoenberg. He'll be moderating a panel tonight. And also with me is Etienne Charles, whose composition San Juan A New York Story will be performed on October 23rd. It's part of Lincoln Center's Legacies of San Juan Hill Festival, running today through October 29th. All right, one of the names you mentioned, Lauren, was James P. Johnson. I think Etienne mentioned it, but I'm going to put it towards you, Lauren. Who was Johnson and how was he Connected to San Juan Hill?
- [11:11]
D
Well, let's put it this way. James B. Johnson was born in New Brunswick, N.J. and a lot of people who were associated with San Juan Hill may not have been born there, but they were raised there and. Or they lived there and they expanded their musical genius by being there. Simply put, it's hard for me to answer short, but I'll do it real quick. If you had to trace jazz piano, all jazz piano, back to one person, that person would be James P. Johnson. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Art Tatum, it all McCoy Tyner, it all comes from James P. Johnson. And just like Etienne said, he wrote a tune that today, if you go to a party and they play the Charleston, somehow even young people know how to dance this dance. He was a brilliant, innovative pianist, but also an inspiration to someone like Etienne Charles, because he also wrote symphonic music and he wrote symphonies and he wrote all kinds of things that integrated Afro Caribbean rhythms. He was really the first one. So that's. That's who he was. I want to mention just real quick in terms of the overview of the festival, that, that there are so many great things going on there, including some people who were at Juilliard back in the day when Etienne was there. Aaron Dio is doing a wonderful presentation of the music of James P. Johnson.
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A
And we actually have. We actually have a clip of him playing some of James P. Johnson. So let's, let's listen to that first.
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D
You got it.
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B
Sam.
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A
And Aaron Deal performing live at Lincoln Center. You want to go on with a little bit extra and want to tell us some other things that are going to go on at this festival?
- [13:38]
D
Sure. The bass player who's been with Wynton Marsalis for so many years now, who's a real king in the world of what they call Latin jazz, Afro Caribbean music. Carlos Enriquez is doing an original thing of his called A New Orican Tale, and he'll be at Dizzy's Club, I believe, from October 28th and the 29th. There's a who Is Thelonious Monk? Coming up, which is a wonderful introduction to the music of Thelonious Monk. On the 26th at 3pm at Lincoln Center. Aaron Deals, music of James B. Johnson. There's this wonderful film, great documentary film that we're showing tonight, then having a panel discussion, and that's being shown a number of times. I would just urge people to go to the Lincoln center website and just type in legacy legacies of San Juan.
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A
Hill Festival and Etienne, your piece will be formed on October 23. San Juan, a New York Story. Where does that begin for you?
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B
Where does San Juan Hill? Where does the story begin? The piece begins. So the piece is in two parts. It's. The first part features my small group. There are five short movements that last about somewhere between 25 and 27 minutes that goes from. It starts with honoring the Lenape, hoking people to the indigenous people, the indigenous nation that populated what is now now known as New York City, which was Manhattan. And it starts with a poem written and read by a great Caribbean American New Yorker poet named Elgin Wardali. And she talks about the history of the Lenape people and how what we now know today as Broadway has always been a trade route going all the way back to before the Dutch came. It was Quaguysiwek, and then it became Bredeweg in Dutch to eventually become Broadway. And then we play a piece to tribute to the Lenape. And then we go into when Different People started coming, that movement called Where Two or More Gathered. And then from there we go into a piece called Swing Culture. Because for me, that was a term I kind of came up with when I was dealing with San Juan Hill, that incorporated the adventurous style of people, because Rashida Ali, who's a great musician who grew up in San Juan Hill, his parents are from Trinidad, and he actually lived in Thelonious Monk's house when he was a teenager. Long story there and even longer story is that when we did the piece, he realized by learning about the Jungles casino, that in 1921, that building would be the building that he would grow up in 30 years later, not even knowing that the Charleston Dance came to be in the actual basement of the building that he grew up in. So all these circles happening. So we talk about swing culture specifically to deal with the evolution of swing in San Juan Hill, as well as the style that would happen with Thelonious Mark. One of the things that was so iconic was like all his different hats and all of his. His shark skin suits that he was very, you know, so talking about specifically the evolution of culture, this fusion of America's blacks, black Americans from the South America, blacks from the Caribbean, Latinos, all these different cultures coming together and what the style becomes. And then there's a movement that addresses specifically Robert Moses that's called the Destroyer. And there's a piece about Zora Neale Hurston, because she had a romance in San Juan with a guy named Percy Punter, who, funny enough, the links to sound Juan. Like Lauren said that people still connected when I was At Florida State University, 24 years ago, the bass professor was a bass player from New York named Melanie Punter. So as soon as I saw this Percy Punter, I called her and I said, you ever heard of a guy named Percival Punter? And he's coming up in my research. She said, you know, Uncle Percy and right there. And she's the bassist still in the orchestra. St. The orchestra, St. Luke's in New York. And so it's like there are all these connects. Like I always tell people there's a great quote by a poet from Trinidad named Dionne Brand. And her quote is, when I walk in the room, history is already seated in the chair.
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D
That's a great one.
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B
So, like it's always there. And so I tried to apply that to the piece. So that's the first part. And then the orchestra comes on stage. Kind of like Lincoln center showed up in the neighborhood. So it's like the orchestra literally coming on stage without an intermission, without anything. They literally just walk on tune. And we start the next part, we do a piece about a riot which was. Well, there were a lot of riots in the neighborhood, specifically on Amsterdam between like 66, 62nd and 63rd. That neighborhood was called the Gut because of all the violence that would happen there. And this riot specifically happened on July 13, 1905. I read about it in the New York Times. And then I wrote this piece about that riot, starting with one person walking down the street. And then actually it was a white European descendant guy walking down the street with a bunch of bag of rags. And a black guy tried to help him with the rags. And then that started a whole thing. And so that's riot. And then there's a piece about the incredible woman named Hannah Elias.
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C
All right, you got to tell me about Hannah Elias.
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B
So Hannah Elias was this incredible. She was one of the first black millionaires in New York. She was from Philadelphia originally and she lived on Central park west in a seven bedroom mansion. And. And there's like a whole drama with Hannah because she was involved with a wealthy, wealthy businessman named Platt who eventually sued her. His family got him to sue her. And that, I think that was one of the first instances of like mass cancel culture in the US There were articles all over. All over the nation. In Omaha, Nebraska, there were articles. And I'm talking about. This isn't in the 1900s, 19 teens, maybe 1940s, there were articles, of course, in the Times of Philadelphia, there were articles all over about this woman who posed as white, you know, but the Funniest part to me of the story is that the lawsuit was so well publicized. And then she won the lawsuit and she kept the money. And the day they announced the lawsuit, thousands of people appeared outside her house to protest. Because back then when they called your name in the article, it was like so and so of 62 Central Park West. They literally always put your address right after your name. And so I had to write what I see as like a seven minute musical, soap, comedy, romance, drama, suspense tribute to her.
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C
I got a really interesting text here that says thank you for covering San Juan Hill. My dad and his Cuban family lived there for decades until they moved with the quote, urban removal. Lauren?
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D
Yeah, well, as ETN mentioned, you know, he has a piece in his, in his piece about Robert Moses and you know, everything that ATM was just talking about, I was thinking that that quote about history is in the room. You could take every single event that you just talked about and that's what you do in the piece and thread it into 2025. And I think that's the fascinating thing about the whole project is that the one hand we're looking because we're looking back at the heyday of this great neighborhood from the early 1900s for about 50 or 60 years, but on the other hand we are looking at today and, and that's what I find so fascinating about it and why I enjoyed the piece so much. And again, hats off to Lincoln center just, you know, for having an ongoing commitment to telling this story year after year after year. And as far as I understand, it's never going to end. But this is a very signal moment what the events and the documentary film that we're showing tonight and that they have some other screenings of is a great entry point into it because it kind of tells the whole story.
- [22:06]
A
Etiennel, you are performing with the Frost Symphony Orchestra of the University of Miami, where you teach. Is there any special meaning to having this orchestra perform?
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B
I think it's very special meaning 1 University of Miami, we are celebrating our centennial as a university. So that's for me, one of the huge things we're also, for me is a celebration because Maestro Gerard Schwartz, who's conducting the orchestra, he's the director of orchestral studies here, has had a storied history with Lincoln Center. He to this day has the most respected and most revered recording of the Haydn Trumpet concerto. As a trumpet soloist, he was the principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. He spent much time playing with the New York City Ballet with the Metropolitan Opera, and then returned as a Conductor. And now he's returning in his first full time position at a university with the orchestra to play a faculty composition. Because a part of the centennial celebration was they commissioned small pieces from each composition faculty. And even though I'm not composition faculty, he knew that I was a composer. He was at the premiere when we did it in New York. And so for me that's very special with both trumpet players. We've become good friends and you know, he's loving the piece and you know, to add to what Lawrence said is that about it being like now is that, you know, I saw that when I was studying the piece, studying to write the piece. And so I was lucky enough to be able to commission a great visual artist by the name of Bayate Ross Smith. And what he's done. Because you know, New York as a city is so well documented by photographs, right. So you know. Cause the city hires photographers to document each building. I don't know if it's every year. So he was able to take photographs of every address and put what is there now and juxtapose it with what was there at the time of San Juan Hill. And so there were photographs of the demolition. So we put that. And then so there's a movement called urban removal with the orchestra and there was actually recordings of the demolition. Guy named, his name was Schwartz, Tony Schwartz. Maybe he had a show called Sounds of My City. And in one of the episodes, I can't remember if it was a WNYC show, maybe it was, but. But he. Yeah, it was in one episode. He's like, welcome to Sounds of My City. And you're listening to the demolition of some tenement buildings in the Lincoln Square area because they're getting ready to start construction on the new art center that's going to replace it at Lincoln Square. So we use that sound of the demolition in the piece while there's like a really like the wrecking ball. And so, you know, and I have to give a big shout out to Dean Shelley Berg for making this possible, bringing an orchestra, 70 students to New York. And I have to thank Lincoln center, of course, especially Giordano Lee, who commissioned this piece four years ago, and of course Ashanta and Henry Timms, who's no longer the president there, but they were also instrumental, but especially Jay and the team. So I'm really grateful.
- [25:33]
C
Lauren, anything else you want to share about the event?
- [25:37]
D
Oh, yeah, sure. You know, this is, this is the kind of event and the kind of festival I think in years to come people will look back and say, well, I wish I could have been there. Can you imagine? They did all this in two weeks? And you have a contemporary composer, jazz artist, trumpet master, like Etienne, you know, bringing his piece back. And actually, the. The Philharmonic performance was exciting, but to hear it played actually by the school where you teach with these students, with Gerard Schwartz, it really is like a red letter event. And so I'm just thrilled to be part of it and hope that everybody can come see the film this evening and just go online, look up the festival. And I'm just proud of it and so proud of atn and just the whole darn thing. It's just incredible. And, Alison, it's nice to be on the show. I have a long history with nyc, and it's nice to be back, and it's great to see you. I'm a big fan of yours.
- [26:28]
A
Oh, well, thank you so much. Atn, we're gonna go out on a piece called watch night 2 ring shout. You want to set it up for us?
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B
So watch Night 2, which features the rhythm of the ring shell, is a piece I wrote about a Gullah tradition by the same name. Watch Night. It's a ritual that goes all the way back to December 31, 1862, which was the. The night before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Now, it's funny, I just played this in Texas Saturday and Sunday, and I. I kind of. I kind of alluded to. I know that it took a little longer for y' all to find out in Texas, but. But. And so it's. You know, it's a ritual that starts very solemn because it's in remembrance to the past, but then it breaks out in joy because of the future. And it's referenced to emancipation, becoming free. And I chose this piece one because the rhythm of the Ring Shout is the exact rhythm that the Gullah shipyard workers would clap after they started drinking. They would clap it to James P. Johnson because he then went home to his piano to try to write this piece based on that groove. And I think, you know, just. Just tying the Carolinas and the Low country into San Juan Hill and into New York. It's so important because when you think of people like Dizzy Gillespie, like, one of my favorite. One of my famous favorite sayings of Dizzy Gillespie is that I'm just a Geechee from South Carolina. And for me, it says. It says. And I learned about it at Louis Armstrong's house in Queens, Corona, right? When. Because Lewis would make these memes, he would make these collages from. He would cut out from magazines. And he cut out one about how to Eat by Dizzy Gillespie. And he talks about, I'm just a Geechee from South Carolina, which for me shows the Gullah roots in bebop the same way there's Gullah roots in swing. You know, people like Freddie Green is a Gullah, Cat Anderson is Gullah. And so there are all these different links to what became the most famous music of the time, which was Duke Ellington's band, which featured people like Rex Stewart from San Juan Hill, Russell Proko from San Juan Hill. So.
- [28:48]
D
And Tricky Sam Natten.
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B
Yeah, Tricky Sam Nant in Jamaican American. So the rhythm is the Gullah rhythm that started this whole Charleston thing. I hope you enjoy it.
- [28:57]
A
Etienne Charles will perform San Juan A New York story on October 23rd as part of Lincoln Center's Legacies of San Juan Hill Festival. My guests have been Etienne Charles and Lauren Schoenberg, senior scholar at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [29:15]
B
Thank you so much, Alison. Thank you. See you in New York.
- [29:20]
A
This is watch Night 2 Ring Show.
- [30:19]
E
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- [30:52]
F
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.