Twenty-three years ago this month, jazz vocalist Steve Cromity was a Contract Compliance Manager in the Engineering Department with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey on the 73rd floor of No. 1 World Trade Center.
During one sweltering summer day in Brooklyn, a group of musicians formed a circle in Prospect Park to continue a tradition that has been taking place on Sundays for 55 years.
At a space named Congo Square in honor of the antebellum site in New Orleans where former enslaved Africans gathered for cultural expression and entertainment, drummers began to beat on their African styled Congo drums.
As Black History Month comes to an end, I must pay homage to an influential Black leader who recently passed away. That person is the late, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts III of Abyssinia Baptist Church, which is my home church. He died on October 28. 2022 after losing his battle to cancer.
Renown drummer and composer, the late, great Max Roach, was feted by Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium and Concord Baptist Church of Christ on what would have been this jazz giant’s 99th birthday; and launched a series of events coming in 2023 leading to Roach’s centennial birthday.
African drums could be heard loudly on Monday to celebrate the dedication of a Central Park gate for the group of men known as The Exonerated Five.
Mongo Santamaria, Ray Baretto, Candido all Latin artists who’ve lead their bands into “A” rooms (i.e., Blue Note, Village Gate, Carnegie Hall) throughout New York City by use of the percussion, trap drum, notwithstanding.
In February 2023, the Cultural Museum of African Art Eric Edwards Collection (CMAAEEC,) the largest collection of African Art in New York State, will be open to visitors at Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.
