Dada Reads_Summer 2026 | Bklyn Sounds 7/2/2026—7/7/2026
This week's events include Mister Sunday: Optimo (Espacio) & Eamon Harkin / CMS presents "We Keep Us Safe" / Ali Berger x Present Sounds / Caito Sanchez / Fourth World / A Guy Called Gerald / + more
Among Dada Strain’s more ambitious ideas in the throes of the pandemic was to regularly write “Recommended Reads” posts. A few were published, primarily of then-current articles, but that idea fell by the wayside on the account of “not enough time.” Sporadic recommendations remain on Dada Strain’s BlueSky, and in S*bst@ck Notes. But by definition those platforms broadcast fleeting signals, easily lost in the ether. Meanwhile, the book shelf swells with increasingly connected themes, and a desire to arrange their harmonies into something substantive.
Not every read deserves an essay, or even a review—just as not every thread needs a response, or each daily piece of news a hot take. (Especially now.) Yet ideas around Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds keep stacking atop one another, and I keep answering questions about their sources. Or finding reads pertinent to the surrounding chaos. So maybe some of those tomes deserve a comment or two (or 200 wordsworth), and maybe (relatively) early summer is a good time to publish a new Dada Reads.
A lot of my reading interests the past few years have been directly related to attempts at understanding what Dada Strain/Bklyn Sounds is for—this newsletter’s purpose in my life, in the context of New York’s cultural history, and the stories of its musickers, who are Dada Strain’s primary protagonists. Hence, the book topics often tackle the city’s music/art/media, how New York responds to creativity, how it documents stories, and stories of that documentation. All the books below (plus one article from the archive) fall into these overlapping categories. Like Bklyn Sounds, it’s a bunch of New York shit, but hopefully not “merely New York” shit.
J Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop (2025) - A film critic at the Village Voice between the early-‘70s and 2012, Hoberman has been New York media’s institutional memory on all things cinematic (especially independent and cinematic) as long as I’ve been reading in English. His many books address the art of the movies, or use film as windows into broader socio-political topics. Everything Is Now is different, chronologically tracing the “radical” changes that took place in New York’s overlapping art, film, music and literary circles between 1959 and 1971, in a “cauldron of avant-garde ferment and artistic innovation.” The book documents what happened, to whom, and when—no theory, no interpretation, only the publicly reported, published facts. Reporters and critics present, wrote what they saw and experienced; whether readers should believe them is another matter entirely. One of the beauties of Hoberman’s book is the quiet critique of the critics, and media institutions. The alternative presses—whether the Voice, East Village Other, or the flurry of free political or porn papers whose archives Hoberman trawled—were inevitably first on the scene, but at times sending correspondents who in their cluelessness or conflicts of interest were untrustworthy narrators. While the once and future local behemoth (Times) often had trouble instantly comprehending the cultural significance. Regardless, these ears and eyeballs observed and documented the goings-on, and Hoberman’s book is a salute to being there.
Major cultural figures inhabit the length of this book, the lives of folks like Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and Bob Dylan providing its bole. But the great magnets of Everything Is Now are the branches of information on offer, seemingly minor facts that bring different looks to the known knowns. Most music-related stories here have such twists: Blind “doorway bard” Moondog shares bills with Tiny Tim and Hugh Romney, not yet Wavy Gravy, the hippie organizer who tells Woodstock not to “eat the brown acid,” the trio creating a weird beats-era coterie. Minimalist composer Steve Reich’s early work gravitates towards Park Place Gallery, a hotbed of art-world conceptualism, but also premieres at a benefit for the Harlem Six, its coldness suddenly acquiring a social aura. Folk singer Dave Van Ronk shows up as a character during the Stonewall Riots. LES heroes Velvet Underground play in Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable happenings not only in Village and LES dives but at fancy Uptown discos. In Hoberman’s pages, the city happenings are fluidly alive, given unlikely context. Even in the midst of an avant-garde reinvention, Manhattan sounds both culturally antiquated (there are many stories of the NYPD morals squad run amok), and thoroughly familiar (the community destruction tales of San Juan Hill and what would become the World Trade Center footprint). Don’t look for outer boroughs in Everything Is Now, and few of the Black or Latinx New Yorkers/artists who appear in these pages are previously unknown. Yet much of this story feels like a timely restoration, using basic research competencies to add details to an old story. Related Listen: ‘These Were the Real Culture Wars,’ Alyssa Katz interviews J Hoberman on The City podcast about Everything Is Now
Lucy Sante, “My Lost City” (New York Review of Books, November 6. 2003) - I read this wonderful two-decades-old Sante memoir of quasi-bohemian life in ‘70s/’80s New York just as I was finishing up Hoberman’s book this spring. (It came in one of NYRB’s invaluable “Archives” emailers.) And the essay provided a perfect epilogue for Everything Is Now. Not only did the years completely line-up, the juxtaposing writing styles did too. What Hoberman provides in terms of pure information but little literary adornment, Sante flips by using anecdotal insight and a gorgeous voice rather than hunting down facts. To put it another way: Hoberman tracked the musicians (among other types of artists), while Sante unpacked the day-to-day lives of musickers, at a street-level view. That Sante was describing her New York life while on the cusp of writing one of the all-time great books about the city’s history makes the read a kind of literary look beneath the hood, to see how this author’s engine got its rev. And Sante’s imagistic prose is an extraordinary machine.
Melvin Gibbs, How Black Music Took Over the World (2026) - As more than one reviewer pointed out, the title of the bassist’s book is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not quite an explanatory “How?” so much as an insightful “What?” - as in, “What Black Music did/does so that it could take over the world.” It succeeds in approaching Black Music from multiple narrative touch-points. First and foremost, as a kind of contemporary version of LeRoi Jones’ definitive Blues People, explaining sources for Black music, how historical and social circumstances shaped its rhythms and tendencies, especially in America, though the Black Atlantic is a major character as well. Yet rather than an omniscient history, the book presents a tight first-person POV, the story of how Gibbs matures, interacts with and gains the music’s power, a great memoir of a young musician growing up in New York (Bklyn primarily but The Bronx as well) in the 1970s and ‘80s. (Again, the years line-up very well in the wake of Hoberman and Sante’s stories.) The breadth of Gibbs’ experiences is an extension of his life-long cultural curiosities. The singular electric bass style Gibbs has become famed for destroys all ideas of “genre,” which is how he’s played with, among others, Ornette Coleman and Defunkt, James Chance and Henry Rollins, Arto Lindsay and Caetano Veloso, while also collaborating with the likes of artist Arthur Jafa and physicist/cosmologist Stephon Alexander, and an original member of the Black Rock Coalition. Gibbs regards his life with Black Music in factual, mythical and metaphysical terms, accepting them all as part of the story. Does this drag the book into the occasional theoretical weeds? You betcha. But Gibbs also makes connections that only multi-faceted, worldly-wise, first-hand exploits enable. Which makes Black Music a great read not only for New York musickers, but for all culturally inquisitive minds looking to break out of the shell imposed by Western societal structures.
One other thing worth mentioning in regards to Black Music: A media-curious discourse popped off during its early reviews that temporarily consumed some corners of the “jazz” commentariat, while providing a fresh perspective on the state of music criticism. Well-reviewed within its niche constituency upon release, Black Music also received a relatively caustic write-up in the pages of Jazz Times by a veteran jazz musician/author whose occasional byline often indicates incoming contrarianisms, and same across as a cup of self-promoting tea brewed in music academia. It got Gibbs upset enough to publish a point-by-point response, critiquing what he regarded as the reviewer’s disingenuous approach to his work. Where the commentariat debated the back-and-forth, my question centered on editorial responsibility: why was this particular reviewer chosen for the task at hand, knowing full-well his predilection to dissent? Was the assassination pre-determined? Rage-bait for meager extra clicks? My curiosity was compounded by the book’s topic and the fact that Gibbs is himself a contributor to the magazine. Publishing this review felt almost disrespectful—but also smartly strategic, an attempt to incite a “conversation” in the same way that listicles and historical ranking packages have, while also undermining actual debates. It made me think of something that New York Times senior book critic Dwight Garner wrote recently about the gutting of book-review sections at Washington Post and elsewhere: “American literature can’t thrive without serious, fervent and quick-witted criticism…[the] public talk, back and forth, between competing voices, in something like real time.” Pedestrian mud-slinging and egomaniacal self-aggrandizement have always been part’n’parcel of criticism; the fear is that the current media environment is more rewarding of such disguised clickbait than serious “public talk,” and that assigning editors know which side butters their bread. Consume your critical content wisely, beloveds. Related Read: On the other hand, in March, George Grella wrote a wonderful review of Melvin’s book in The Brooklyn Rail
Ronen Givony, Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004-2014) (2026) - Another memoir embedded inside a period survey, Givony’s Us v. Them offers an interesting perspective on Bklyn musicking life during which the author worked notable music-biz corners, over a decade when the local indie scene punched above its commercial and media weight, segregation of genre categories and their audiences seemed to be fading, “hipsters” ruled a pre-social media internet, and Brooklyn evolved into one of the planet’s cultural epicenters while gentrifying longtime communities. The “perspective” part is crucial because when Ronen (full disclosure: an old friend, constant colleague and confidante) devotes chapters to artists or spaces that grabbed his attention, they’re rarely the ones that ended up being mythologized. His is a unique take on that “moment,” one not shared by many. In fact, numerous friends have reacted to Us v. Them with an incredulous, “Wow, that’s not at all how I remember it” take. Funny then that to my eyes, such critiques reveal the book’s strength. Many can find meaning in the rise of LCD Soundsystem and Vampire Weekend, McCarren Pool gigs, or the day that Jay and Bey showed up to see Grizzly Bear play on the Williamsburg waterfront, and many should. That history launched a thousand playlists.
Yet first drafts of history rarely tell all the good stories, often leaving crucial ones behind. Maybe a better way to think about the characters, scenes and sounds that Givony’s book collects is that they represent a kind of ‘zine report of the period. Not something definitive and capital-I “important”, but elements regarded as ephemeral, except that the author’s choice of capturing and contextualizing them carries great value in drawing out history. What makes zines by their very nature engaging, is how they document smaller, more private and individual viewpoints; and when discussing his book, Givony has remarked that different authors capturing the same period would have produced completely different books, evoking a periodical personality. Calling Us V. Them a ‘zine doesn’t demean it as a history—on the contrary, it elevates the book’s singularity, informed by Givony’s wealth of heavyweight experience (Wordless Music, Le Poisson Rouge, Nonesuch Records, Lincoln Center). More writers should be encouraged to tackle the many-threaded stories with the comfort and confidence to excavate secondary anecdotes, then add their “zines” to the archival record for future J Hobermans. (Some great historical ones already have.) If the memories of the many early-21st century bloggers (essentially digital zine publishers, right?) who didn’t get sanded down by mainstream media are recoupled with anywhere near the meticulous curiosity Givony devoted to Us V. Them, the bookshelf on the social and cultural turns of the era will be well-stocked. Let others argue about how it stacks up against oversaturated histories of other (potentially less distinctive) pop moments.But Related Listen: In March, I hosted Ronen Givony on The Lot Radio to play music from 2004-14, and to discuss the book
Aster(IX) Journal: “This Woman’s Work: A Listening Session” (Winter 2025-26), edited by Carina del Valle Schorske & Danielle Amir Jackson - Speaking of ‘zines, the latest issue of Aster(ix), a “transnational feminist literary arts journal” is all about elevating stories of femme musickers, many of them dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers. Under the editorial guidance of del Valle Schorske and Amir Jackson, two of my favorite cultural journalists working, “This Woman’s Work: A Listening Session” compiles a dozen thoughtful pieces—poems, interviews, and essays— into a collection of diverse approaches on the theme of music-culture work. Here, an intimate critical observation like Jessica Lynne’s study of Missy Elliot’s “Sonic World” from the viewpoint of a kid growing up in southern Virginia, slots comfortably next to Brittany Rogers’ poem written from the perspective of Aretha Franklin’s money-purse, next to Harmony Holiday’s tender memoir-ilizing of her love affair with a hip-hop producer of some renown, his records forever playing in the background. This is the personal perspective of ‘zines, writ large and in full effect.
But for my current NYCentric mindset, “This Woman’s Work” peaks with three slices of local musicking and media storytelling, all served up as interviews. del Valle Schorske speaks to Sheila Maldonado, a poet, culture reporter, fact-checker in magazines like the Village Voice, Blaze and Latina, whose own experience and archive Carina calls “a paper trail of the Nuyorican generation…filling in the story of the city.” Michael Gonzales speaks with the club music and dance-floor photographer Alice Arnold (full disclosure: both are friends and occasional colleagues) about her experiences of shooting artists such as Missy and Salt-N-Pepa for glossy mags, but also about the photographer’s eye at parties, how it captures the momentary into the permanent. And then Miles Marshall Lewis interviews Sheena Lester, the former editor-in-chief of hip-hop bibles Rap Pages and XXL, about her role in staging a very different kind of photograph: Gordon Parks’ 1998 picture, A Great Day in Hip-Hop. Each piece spotlights creative workers essential in the building of culture, none of whom have become household media names or achieved a broader status that passed down generation-to-generation. At least not yet. But to those who were once present, who check mastheads and fine-lines, search for trustworthy sources to triple-check a fact, or the private archive to reveal otherwise lost information, these are legends. These voices, found more often in zines than at institutions, will shape the future that the corporate AI/algorithm overlords disregard. Related News: A sad reading/writing-about-music note I received as I was writing this post: on Facebook, the mighty Mike McGonigal posted that his exquisite zine, Maggot Brain, has now ceased publication. McGonigal has been making crucial zines his entire adult life (see also: Chemical Imbalance and Yeti), so chances are he’ll do it again. But in the meantime, treasure those issues back-issues beloveds. #RIP
Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: essays on contemporary America (1992/2026) - One last book, a guaranteed winner, so good it’s just gotten a fancy reissue. Regular readers (and social followers) have already been directed to my admiration for the late Greg Tate (see: HERE). And each semester, my students are forced to tackle Tate’s review of A Tribe Called Quest’s Beats, Rhymes and Life as a way of exploring the writer’s use of voice, the creation of a critical argument on-the-page on-the-fly, and how, without necessarily trying, a person who keeps showing up and paying attention to the evolution of art in the community just might predict what happens next. I wish I could link to Tate’s “Diatribe” (September 1996, Village Voice) so you know WTF I am talking about, but I can’t find it online, so you’ll have to trust me that it’s simply another great piece of writing from one of the best culture-related wordsmiths and thinkers of my lifetime. “Diatribe” dropped years too late to make it into Flyboy, the first collection of Tate’s essays to be issued in book form, and a music-critical bible for me since the late ‘90s. I haven’t gotten the reissue that came out on Questlove’s new book imprint this month, but apparently it has a fresh introduction by the mighty Hanif Abdurraqib. I can’t recommend a book about music more than this one, not for language, not for ideas, not for discovery. All these years later, I still occasionally turn to it, and I keep learning. Thank you Greg!
Also Reading: Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: Journey to End of Taste (2007) // Christopher Dunn, Brutality Garden: Tropicalia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (2001) // Ralph Ellison, Shadow And Act (1964) // Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)
More Old Dada Reads
THIS WEEK’s SHOWS:
Before we get any further, please be careful out in the heat this week folks. Remember to hydrate and look out for your friends who may not be taking care of themselves.
Ali Berger is an amazing producer of electronic music (see his Trackland label) who over the winter returned to the greater Bklyn Sounds area (now in Ridgewood) after a decade of rubbing shoulders with some of the best DIY crews of Midwest techno/house, in Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. My favorite Ali works are the live hardware improvisations, but he’s also a helluva selector. At Thursday’s Present Sounds, he’ll be doing all of the above. (Thurs 7/2, 7p @ Light & Sound Design Studios, Greenpoint - $20-$30 w/RSVP)
It’s Andi Synthicide’s birthday, and one of the city’s great Italo-Industrial-EBM-’80s DJs is throwing herself a party, flanked by two other excellent femme DJs (both with Miami roots and Bklyn pedigrees): bass queen Jubilee is another of the best we’ve got, and recent arrival Carozilla mixes her hometown’s electro with global disco and synth-heavy 80s rhythms. (Thurs 7/2, 10p @ Bossa Nova Civic Club, Uptown - $TK)
The legend of Mancunian Gerald Simpson, better known as A Guy Called Gerald, is forever assured because “Voodoo Ray” remains a peak UK rave touchstone for pretty much all club DJs, regardless of what they spin. Yet that classic barely scratches Gerald’s import as an innovator. From his early days co-founding 808 State, through ‘90s explorations of techno and breakbeat—on the still-underappreciated classics, Automanikk and Black Secret Technology—into more recent (though already a decade-old) sonic explorations, his forward motion never subsided. An all-night session with him is a guarantee of both hits and new ideas. (Thurs 7/2, 10p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $25)
Is it me or is the 12th annual Fourth World (always 4th of July gathering) trading a little of its warehouse-rave roots for something that more broadly reflects the great happenings of electronic and club music around NYC. In addition to its usual gathering of some of the city’s best club DJs, there is an amazing line-up of live-set players, some electronic-adjacent instrumentalists, and an overnight ambient room. The afternoon program is indoor-outdoor, and the line-up so stacked with personal faves-on-faves-on-faves (30 acts over a minimum of 16 hours) that it would be embarrassing to call out some but not others. If you want a one-night primer on how culturally hot the city is atm, go here. (Fri 7/3, 3p @ Basement, Maspeth - $15-$35)
There’s a bunch of great parties counter-programming against the Tall Ships and Fireworks on the national holiday, but if I had to choose one, this collaboration of between Sadiq Bellamy, Tabu and Jeff Mendoza’s Soul Summit Music (est. 2002) and Timmy Regisford’s Shelter (est. 1991), two of the city’s best and longest-running Black dance-music parties trumps on history and breadth. Their day-night takeover of Public Records also features the best gathering of local DJ talent this side of Fourth World, with Analog Soul, Lovie & Honey Bun (i.e. Soul Connection), Madre Guía, Niyah West, Shawn Dub and Suze Ijó. (Sat 7/4, 3p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $35-$40)
From the first time I heard JD Twitch and JG Wilkes (aka Optimo) DJ in the early ‘00s, I felt the Glasgow-based duo’s affinity for NYC. It was in their name, lifted from a Liquid Liquid song named after the city’s corner tobacco stores; more importantly, it was how Optimo put together their sets from a wide world of possibilities, omnivores who respected difference and change and social unexpectedness. When Twitch (Keith McIvor) passed away in 2025 after a short battle with glioblastoma), most people I knew were crushed. So it feels amazing that his longtime creative partner, Jonnie Wilkes, has kept the Optimo (Espacio) flag flying. He will hoist it at Mister Sunday, a long-time Optimo host, alongside Mister Eamon Harkin, whose Optimo roots run deep. (Sun 7/5, 3p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $35-$40)
The other great Sunday afternoon jam brings together two of the city’s star DJ forces. I’ve written at length about the deep mixological powers of Brandon & Craig musclecars. So maybe it’s worth spending a minute to sing the praises of Rimarkable, Maria Garcia, a first-gen Puerto Rican from Detroit who spends a lot of time in NYC, and whose typically massive 313 techno-house flavors as a DJ is informed by her Afro-Latin roots. (Sun 7/5, 4p @ Signal, East W’burg - $25)
Barbés’ best regular night, Tropical Vortex, a weekly live-meets-DJ folkloric Latinx dance-party run by Sonido Chichadelico and Adrian Is Hungry, brings in drummer Caito Sanchez. He’s best known for studio and live work with a plethora of excellent NYC alt-disco bands, global-minded producers and legendary vocalists; but Sanchez has also recorded some dope garage-soul singles under his own name with help from the mighty Ticklah (Dap-Tone house-band keys-man, Victor Axelrod), who lives in the neighborhood. (Mon 7/6, 9p @ Barbés, Park Slope - $20suggested)
Various members of Bklyn’s improvised music community have been putting together small-room benefits and fundraisers for friends and neighbors affected by ICE raids. We Keep Us Safe, presented with the help of Creative Music Studio, is one of these, the first in the Sunset Park neighborhood’s great outdoor live-music spot, and with a massive line-up. Expect guitarist alana amore colvin; an all-star trio of violinist gabby fluke-mogul, drummer Tcheser Holmes and bassist/Moogist Shahzad Ismaily; and the quartet of Bakudi Scream, Scott Li, Kaiwei Chang and ELYAI. With Ether Fallick on MC duties. (Tues 7/7, 7p @ Mama Tried, Sunset Park - $20suggested)
MORE RECOMMENDED EVENTS:
FILM: Wild Style (Thurs 7/2-Thurs 7/9, various showtimes @ IFC, Manhattan - $18-$20) - big-screen run of the foundational 1983 hip-hop film, director Charlie Ahearn will be doing a Q&A after the Thurs 7/2, 7p screening.
FaithNYC (Thurs 7/2, 7p @ Mama Tried, Sunset Park - $uggested) - bassist/vocalist Felice Rosner’s long-running soul-rock project lands in the great Sunset Park backyard.
Rich Medina (Fri 7/3, 10p @ Green Room, East W’burg - FREE before midnight w/RSVP—$15-$20) - a 6hr dip with a veteran soul-disco-house-hip-hop-Afrobeat DJ who, three legendary decades later, still feels like is barely known by the masses. Change that y’all!
Aurora Halal (Fri 7/3, 10p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $25) - an all-night session with the Bklyn trance-techno lifer, who started the great Sustain-Release weekender; she;s got records for days.
Kai Alcé (Sat 7/4, 4p @ “warehouse,” East Williamsburg - FREE before 9p/$25-$28) - one of ATL’s resident geniuses, formerly of both Detroit and NYC, an incredible classic-house DJ.
Hot Chip (DJ) + Mike Simonetti (Sat 7/4, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $30-$40) - between the massive dance-pop band’s involvement (Joe Goddard is an excellent DJ), and appearance by one of NYC/NJ’s secret-best DJs, this will be a populist hands-in-the-air good time.
Juan Atkins (Sat 7/4, 10p @ Signal, East W’burg - $25) - Detroit’s techno godfather, still kills it with regularity
DJ Python (Sat 7/4, 10p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $25) - an all-nighter with the Queens-born progenitor of “deep reggaeton,” and one of the city’s alt-Latinx beats’ budding stars.
Joe Bataan (Sun 7/5, 2p @ Union Pool, W’burg - FREE) - boogaloo king returns for his annual gig at Union Pool’s free “Summer Thunder” series.
Stacey “Hotwaxx” Hale + Lovie (Sun 7/5, 4p @ Elsewhere Rooftop, Bushwick - $10-$15) - Detroit’s Godmother of House, Hotwaxx has four decades of DJing under her belt, and is, on an average night, beyond massive.
Sorry Records Vinyl Night: Russell E.L. Butler + fleet.dreams + Nick Boyd (Sun 7/5, 10p @ Bossa Nova Civic Club, Bushwick - $10) - Boyd’s label’s boisterous real-head-only Sunday night jam returns with vinyl-only turns from the mighty Butler and the Texas-born leftfielder.
Gaby Moreno (Mon 7/6, 7p @ Joe’s Pub, Manhattan - $42+minimum) - excellent Guatemalan-born singer-songwriter who explores American and Latinx folk roots.
Jacob Garchik, Adam O’Farrill, Hannah Marks & Tomas Fujiwara (Mon 7/6, 7:30p & 9p @ CloseUp, Manhattan - $25) - trombonist Garchik leads a sparkling quartet into the best young jazz club in the city.
UPCOMING:
Goodhaven, Queens Percussion Concert 2026 (Sat 7/18, 3p @ Seuffert Bandshell, Forest Park, Queens - FREE) - John Colpitts (aka Oneida drummer Kid Millions) has been producing annual free shows at the Bandshell for a few years now—for 2026, he’s foregrounding three globally diverse rhythm ensembles: Gamelan Yowana Sari, Ryan Sawyer Shaker Ensemble, and Mali’s dance and drum troupe, Farafina.
Makaya McCraven (Tues 7/28 - Sun 8/2, 8p & 10p @ Village Vanguard, Manhattan - $40) - Alongside Shabaka, Jeff Parker and the late jaimie branch, the Chicago-based drummer has, for me, embodied the decade-long turn that the improvised music sometimes called “jazz” has made towards popular embrace. Makaya front-and-center’d the music’s groove. Now he’s making his leader debut at one of New York’s remaining jazz temples. The band will swing and stomp accordingly.
Bex Burch: as yet untitled + Tomin (Fri 7/31, 8p @ Judson Church, Manhattan - FREE w/RSVP) - The good folks at FourOneOne present two of my favorite musical humans as a double-bill. Burch brings her conceptual work-in-progress, “as yet untitled,” back to NYC (it debuted at Dada Strain’s Winter Jazzfest showcase) with an exquisite ensemble that includes Peter Zummo, Mikel Patrick Avery, Lia Kohl, Gabriel Birnbaum, Evan Ziporyn and Carmen Quill. Opening the evening is my woodwind brother Tomin.
Cécile McLorin Salvant (Sat 8/15 - Sun 8/16, 8:30p @ Little Island Amphitheatre, Manhattan - $15-$25) - A late but welcome announcement that Little Island is indeed hosting performances this summer, was made even cooler by the news that Salvant, one of today’s indisputable vocal queens, is curating a weeklong program of Tin Pan Alley songs, and playing two of those shows. Jump on these!
Dada Strain @ L&SD (Sat 8/22, 7p @ Light & Sound Design Studios, Greenpoint) - SAVE The DATE! I have another great #rhythm #improvisation #community line-up for you.
Haruomi Hosono (Wed 9/16, 8p @ Radio City Music Hall, Midtown - $$$) - The 78 year-old co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and one of the great figures in 20th century Japanese popular, electronic and experimental music, is returning to the U.S. to support a new album also dropping in September.