Dada Strain Holiday Mixer & Coat Drive, Thurs. December 21st @ Sisters, Clinton Hill

INVITE: A community get-together with community intentions. Gathering clothing and essential products for refugees in NYC — providing seasonal joy and Bklyn Sounds by great local musickers. Join us!

TL;DR version

Dada Strain is having a Holiday Party that is also a Coat Drive for refugees new to New York City. Price of admission is winter clothing, feminine hygiene products, baby/children’s products and new bathroom products. (Please no canned/hard-to-open good.) Or a suggested $10 donation.

The event will take place on Thursday, December 21st, at 8p until it’s over. At Sisters, 900 Fulton St. (at Washington), Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Music will be provided by a team of great local musicians, DJs and musickers, regulars in Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds, with a few special guests.

Please come and please bring friends. Good times x Good cause!

Long-winded, Over-sharing Piotr version

Dear Dada Strain community -

First off, I want to thank you for your time, for reading, for following and for supporting the werk. 2023 has been — and continues to be — a hard year on many levels. But if there have been positives to take away, it is that the objectives being drawn up here — connecting artists and audiences, aligning musicians and musickers, erasing falsely drawn distinctions, illuminating community relationships around music and all it engenders — are finding their mark. The feedback to Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds has been absolutely incredible. And it’s all because of the beauty that many of you help put out into the world, and others among you graciously accept. Thank you. I am beyond excited to keep the feedback loop going in 2024, and inspire more changes in the world. Rhythm, improvisation and community into the future.

I’ve always loved holiday parties. And now that Dada Strain is more than an idea, I wanted to find a way to bring folks together before they head out on break, to create a space for friends, readers and great local musicians and DJs to share a drink, a chat, and meet each other in a relaxed setting. Less performance — more hang. There were two immediate impetuses: An old friend from Berlin, who is also an excellent DJ, was coming to visit NYC and up for playing a few tunes (as long as it wasn’t “work”). Then the good folks at Sisters, whose back-room has been hosting incredible musical get-togethers all year long, had an open date close enough to (and far enough away from) the big holiday, that this made sense. Some of my favorite Bklyn musickers agreed to DJ for a bit (as long as it wasn’t “work”— and they weren’t officially billed). A low-key party was forming.

I also thought this opportunity for gathering could be put to good use. Riding the subway this year, seeing many new-refugee arrivals to New York, hearing stories of their under-served needs, I’ve had constant flashbacks to arriving in the city as a seven year-old immigrant kid, clinging to my mom, being overwhelmed. Some of our circumstances were markedly different. Other details feel eerily familiar. Many of my first pieces of clothing in America were out of refugee-donation bins, my then-pregnant mother and I were regularly reliant on goods and services provided by charitable humans. So here is an opportunity for the Dada Strain community to give locally during the giving season. With the guidance of the office of my NYC councilperson, Shahana Hanif, I am gathering winter clothing (coats, but also sweaters/sweatshirts, socks, longjohns, etc.) as well as hygiene and health-related products for migrant families spending their first winters in New York. If you have such items, please bring them to Sisters, bins will be provided. Otherwise, admission is a suggested donation of $10.

Thank you - and I hope to see you on Thursday, December 21st.