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Lincoln Center revisits the painful history of San Juan Hill : NPR


Composer and trumpeter Etienne Charles, in a portrait taken inside the newly renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

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Composer and trumpeter Etienne Charles, in a portrait taken inside the newly renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Lawrence Sumulong / Lincoln Center is allowed

Remember the opening of the 2021 movie version of the musical West story. The first thing we see is rubble, and a sign: “This property was purchased by the New York Housing Authority to clear the slums.”

It was an allusion to an actual neighborhood that was demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. In the 1950s, San Juan Hills was dominated by Black and Puerto Rican populations. Their stories – and even the names of their neighborhoods – have been virtually erased from history. Now, a new track is released by New York Philharmonic for the purpose of admitting that the past.

Long before Lincoln Center existed, the San Juan Hills were the nexus of African-American and Caribbean culture. It has nurtured many jazz musicians who live and play there – including saxophonist Benny Carter, who grew up in the neighborhood, and pianist Herbie Nichols, who was born there to parents from St. Kitts and Trinidad. Duke Ellington and cornet player Rex Stewart even co-wrote a tune called to thank this communitywhere discos and jazz clubs thrive.

But in the 1950s, powerful urban planner Robert Moses spearheaded efforts to level the San Juan Hills, with the intention of establishing a central campus for Fordham University and creating Lincoln Center. He has relocated more than 7,000 families as well as about 800 businesses. In a 1977 interview with New York’s public broadcaster, WNET, Moses guard destroy the San Juan Hills.

When the interviewer asked about San Juan Hills, Moses retorted, “Now I ask you, what neighborhood was that? It was a Puerto Rican slum. Remember?” No, the presenter admitted.

“Well, I’ve lived on one of those streets for years, and I know exactly what it’s like,” Moses replied. (There is no record of Moses residing in this neighborhood, according to the biography of Moses by judge Robert Caro, Power broker.)

“It’s the worst slum in New York,” Moses insisted in the television interview. “You want to leave it there? Why? Not counting the neighborhood business? God, you can never be there. It’s the worst slum in New York,” he growled. and clap for emphasis. “And we deleted it.”

Professor Yarimar Bonilla is director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. She said Robert Moses intentionally used highly persuasive language about the San Juan Hills.

“Especially Robert Moses,” Bonilla said, “He used a lot of medical language to talk about the slums because these cancers had to be eradicated and cleaned up, almost as if it were It’s a contagious disease.”

A mural depicting the history of the San Juan Hills by graffiti and visual artist Wicked GF (Gary Fritz) and his graffiti team The EX VANDALS, created in Brooklyn as part of the San Juan Hills: A New York Story project.

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Lawrence Sumulong / Lincoln Center is allowed


A mural depicting the history of the San Juan Hills by graffiti and visual artist Wicked GF (Gary Fritz) and his graffiti team The EX VANDALS, created in Brooklyn as part of the San Juan Hills: A New York Story project.

Lawrence Sumulong / Lincoln Center is allowed

60 years after Lincoln Center opened and then a $550 million remodel, the home of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, David Geffen Hall, will reopen this weekend. Lincoln Center is taking this opportunity to reread its founding story.

It invited Etienne Charles — a composer, trumpet player, percussionist, and fellow Guggenheim — to think deeply about that complicated past and create a piece of music that captures that hidden history. So Etienne Charles created a new piece for the Philharmonic and his band, Creole Soul called San Juan Hills: A New York Story.

Charles is of Trinidadian descent. He had never heard of San Juan Hill until he moved to New York for a master’s degree at Juilliard, part of the Lincoln Center campus.

However, Charles eventually realized that the razed neighborhood had important connections to the Caribbean – and to jazz music. Initially, Charles knew that the pianist Herbie Nichols (also from Trinidad) was from San Juan Hill. Not long after, Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander told Charles that composer and pianist Thelonious Monk also grew up in the San Juan Hills.

“Monty Alexander came to my house,” Charles recounts, “And we were doing some music for his concert. He started playing Monk’s music and he said, ‘You recognize his music. Monk has a Caribbean vibe, doesn’t it?’ And I said, ‘I never thought about that.’ He started playing Green chimney – ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,’ says Charles, emitting the rhythm of a Monk tune. . “

Composer and trumpeter Etienne Charles, whose San Juan Hills: A New York Story inaugurated the newly renovated David Geffen Hall.

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Lawrence Sumulong / Lincoln Center is allowed

Charles notes that once Lincoln Center opened in 1962, even its physical campus looked like it was reserved for only a few people. The general shape of the institution, he said, is C-shaped, with a large plaza and impressive fountain facing Broadway. “And building C turns its back on the neighborhood,” he added — an area that includes Amsterdam Houses, a public housing project right behind Lincoln Center. “You can make huge statements with architecture,” the musician commented. “It’s body language in bricks.”

Charles recalled in an interview that he and one of the San Juan Hill collaborator, photographer Hollis King, worked on this project. “Hollis asked someone who still lives in the neighborhood, ‘What’s your most memorable musical event in the neighborhood? “

“And he said,” Charles continued, “My most memorable musical event was when Tito Puente played.” And then he added, “But it’s not in the neighborhood. It’s in Lincoln Center.” “Charles paused to let that exchange sink in.” Sometimes there are moments when someone tells you what you understand. “

Charles’ Meditation on San Juan Hill will be the first to be heard in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. This is also the first time Lincoln Center has assigned music to the New York Philharmonic. Charles worked with a number of creative cross-disciplinary collaborators to bring San Juan Hill to life.

Shanta Thake is the artistic director at Lincoln Center. She said getting Charles to write such a piece was a pivotal moment in reckoning for the organization.

David Geffen Hall’s newly refurbished interior: Wu Tsai theatre.

Michael Moran / Courtesy of Lincoln Center


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Michael Moran / Courtesy of Lincoln Center


David Geffen Hall’s newly refurbished interior: Wu Tsai theatre.

Michael Moran / Courtesy of Lincoln Center

“What an example, a moment that will open David Geffen Hall to this committee, to this story and really confront our past directly as we move into the future,” Thake said. “Not the kind of emptying things out, but really making things more complicated for ourselves – and I think in a way that really allows us to make room for what’s next.”

Thake continued, “I think the culture industry even has a responsibility to preserve our histories and not beautify them. It’s important who we tell the stories of. What’s important is that we tell them. we tell our own story fully and with all the complexity and mistakes we’ve made. That’s okay.”

In her musical portrait of the San Juan Hills, Etienne Charles wants to move through many facets – chronology, style and demographics, from Gullah Geechee shipyard workers to recently arrived European communities, as well as historical moments and figures in the vicinity.

“This piece shows the magic of the culture that was created when these people came together,” said Charles. “Gullah dances here, paseo the rhythm there, the Antillean waltz here, the Sicilian folk song there, the Irish drunken song there – all these different music mixed together, the blues from the South. It gives off a vibe that not only affects American culture, but influences everything that will happen and go beyond New York in the next 50 years. “

Charles’ work refers to the many music created and heard in the vicinity – including the Charleston dance. Though it’s named after the South Carolina city, it was actually born right here in San Juan Hill, thanks to composer and pianist James P. Johnson, who grew up partly in the neighborhood and then later. regularly plays at one of its clubs.

“Then from Charleston, we get to the serious part,” explains Charles, “It’s the urban elimination, with 10 years from 1949 to 1959 when it goes from Housing Act to the groundbreaking of Lincoln Center. And then there’s the last part called House Rent Party, you know, we can all come together. “

Tickets to this world premiere are priced however you want, starting at $5 per seat, with some free tickets available on show day – another way to make Lincoln Center a A truly welcoming space for all New Yorkers.

San Juan Hills: A New York Story will launch to the world this Saturday.

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