With CMJ flooding our collective musical consciousness this week, it’d be a shame to overlook (gasp!) all the other music around the borough. Especially when you can take in 50 years of home-grown artistic culture in one jam-packed day. Saturday at Brooklyn College, The Brooklyn Arts Council is throwing the Black Brooklyn Renaissance Conference and Concert, a full day devoted to Black arts in Brooklyn. The free day of jazz, Hip-Hop, post modern dance, academic talks and more runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Show up anywhere in there, and you’re likely to learn a thing or two about all that’s made Brooklyn “a global center of Black culture over the past 50 years.”
Performances and lectures are interspersed throughout the day, starting with jazzy historical reflections at 11 a.m. and Afro-Caribbean drumming and Up-rocking Brooklyn-style at 1 p.m. Then at 2:30, an Afro-Caribbean specialist and gospel singer take on ceremony and festival traditions. At 4, “The New Hybridity in music and dance,” is the focus, with a drummer, composer, dancer-choreographer, and Hip-Hop scholar all weighing in together.
The festival’s keynote address will be Greg Tate‘s “Refractions from the Renaissance: An Exploded View of Brooklyn Culture” at noon, with a scholars round table following at 1. And the big day ends with a 6 p.m. performance by Brooklyn Jazz with the New Cookers, featuring Kenyatta Beasley (trumpet), Keith Loftis (sax) and Anthony Wonsel (piano).
See the full schedule and read about all the day’s speakers and performers here.
The Black Brooklyn Renaissance Conference and Concert, Saturday, Oct. 23, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Brooklyn College’s Woody Tanger Auditorium and Levenson Recital Hall, 2900 Campus Rd. at Hillel Pl., Flatbush.