Bklyn Sounds 9/13/2023 - 9/19/2023 + The Now Seeds of NYC Musicking

On house shows, backroom series, residencies and the music's health + Shows: Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily / Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids / JADALAREIGN & Theo Parrish / Blacks' Myths / +

There are a few different ways to diagnose the health of a local music culture. As regular Bklyn Sounds readers can maybe tell, my way to gauge it is by attending smaller events in more oddball DIY spaces, going to hear newer (or off-the-beaten-path) artists, checking out what’s being made, and who (if anyone) is listening. Because I think the levels of vibrancy are best spotted in the initial sprouting of the grassroots, and not the full flower of the big-show bill. (Also important, but likely to be influenced by sustained marketing and commerce). So when I write dumb shit like “I’m bullish on New York City,” it’s because my day-to-day experience with the quality of sounds being made away from the spotlight, and the excitement they’re generating among attendees, is instilling a pretty unique feeling in the city right now.

The ways this development is happening, and the outlying places where it takes place, make up a kind of ghost guide to many of the city’s most interesting musicking happenings. And even I can’t — or in some cases, don’t want to — keep up. I cite them in Bklyn Sounds only occasionally because of a desire to give readers a breadth of interesting happenings rather than continuously cover the same ones over and over. Yet some of these residences — whether veteran jazz musicians bringing their craft into small clubs (saxophonist Tim Berne’s nearly weekly appearances at Lowlands Bar in Gowanus, and Oscar Noriega’s Crooked group holding down each Friday evening at Barbes, to name just two), or local DJs owning monthly nights at bigger dance clubs (look no further than Nowadays and House of Yes) — are reinforcing New York-centric musical ideas/songs/artists, bringing their steady popularization from behind a curtain and off the feed. Showing in-real-time street-level culture dispersal.

There are performances I frequent but hardly touch upon here, because of the privacy concerns that come with loudly publicizing house shows, or lock-in parties, or RSVP-before-learning-the-address events. This comes from a desire to not speed-up the killing of DIY by over-promoting — with social media often cited in the death of semi-legal early-21st-century Brooklyn spaces, when flooded by an audience not schooled in a particular community’s ethos, and acting like consumers or musicking participants.  I will only write about them after a green-light from proprietors or producers. So while programs and “places” like Musicland or 49 Shade or Light and Sound Design or Still/Moving make only semi-regular appearances here, they are responsible for some of the most thrilling live-music experiences taking shape in NYC right now, and the ones that Dada Strain is increasingly looking to partner with, in order for the culture to grow in a healthy rather than a destabilizing manner.

Also, I want to reiterate again and again: the above are just the ones I know about and am in regular engagement with. New series, new small venues, and innovative programming quietly inserted into previously underused rooms, are on the rise. And when not driven strictly by commerce, all are adding resonance to what is happening in New York. To get a taste of just how rich and far-flung some of these musical endeavors are, subscribe to NYC Noise — what they don’t for context, they make up for in volume.

There is a lot wrong with the city at the moment — with both real and imagined crises affecting the general population and the artistic communities especially — but the depth of the creativity, and the collective desire to keep it healthy and keep it going is not one of them. I’m not gonna say “what a time to be alive” just yet, but there’s been plenty of worse.

This Week’s Shows: