The music of New York City is a diverse and important field in the world of music. It has long been a thriving home for popular genres such as jazz, rock, soul music, R&B, funk, and the urban blues, as well as classical and art music. It is the birthplace of hip-hop, garage house, boogaloo, doo-wop, bebop, punk rock, disco, and new wave. It is also the birthplace of salsa music, born from a fusion of Cuban and Puerto Rican influences that came together in New York's Latino neighborhoods in the 1940s and 1950s. The city's culture, a melting pot of nations from around the world, has produced vital folk music scenes such as Irish-American music and Jewish klezmer. Beginning with the rise of popular sheet music in the early 20th century, New York's Broadway musical theater, and Tin Pan Alley's songcraft, New York has been a major part of the American music industry.Richie Unterberger, The Rough Guide to Music USA, pgs. 1-65
Music author Richie Unterberger has described the New York music scene, and the city itself, as "(i)mmense, richly diverse, flashy, polyethnic, and engaged in a never-ending race for artistic and cosmopolitan supremacy." Despite the city's historic importance in the development of American music, its status has declined in recent years due to a combination of increased corporate control over music media, an increase in the cost of living, and the rise of local music scenes whose success is facilitated by the cheap communication provided by the Internet.Gotham Gazette The Gotham Gazette specifically notes the rise of Pitchfork Media, based out of Chicago, as a source for New York music info; since Pitchfork is not a New York-based company, this is held to be evidence of a decline in New York's importance (note: Pitchfork's popularity is cited to The New York Observer)
Institutions and venues
New York has been a center for the American music industry since the earliest records in the early 20th century. Since then, a number of companies and organizations have set up headquarters in New York, from the Tin Pan Alley publishers and Broadway to modern independent rock and hip-hop labels, non-profit organizations, and others. Many music magazines are or were headquartered in New York, including Blender, Punk, Spin, and Rolling Stone.
Carnegie Hall is one of the most important music venues in the world, especially for classical music; the hall is noted for its excellent acoustics. The venue was named for philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, but fell into disrepair in the 20th century until being renovated between 1983 and 1995. Radio City Music Hall was also a major venue after opening in 1932, and was also recently renovated; it is now a significant architectural attraction as an example of the Art Deco style.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is the largest performing arts center in the world. The center is home to twelve resident organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society, New York City Opera, Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. The New York Philharmonic, which performs at Avery Fisher Hall, is the oldest orchestra in the United States, founded in 1842. , Lorin Maazel is the conductor. The Philharmonic has made more than 500 recordings since 1917, and was one of the first to broadcast live performances, beginning in 1922. The New York Philharmonic produced celebrated composers such as George Bristow and Theodore Thomas. Bristow was a fiercely nationalistic composer who left the Philharmonic because he felt it did not glorify American music adequately, a situation he, and later Thomas, attempted to rectify.
Other institutions and organizations in New York include the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City Ballet, the Jazz Foundation of America and the Louis Armstrong House. Notable venues that have closed include the Aeolian Hall of Rhapsody in Blue fame and the old Metropolitan Opera (demolished in 1967) at 1411 Broadway. The Apollo Theater has long been a place for African American performers to begin their careers; it has such an iconic status that Congress has declared it a National Historic Landmark.
Club influence The New York club scene is an important part of the city's music scene, the birthplace of many styles of music from disco to punk rock; some of these clubs, such as Studio 54, Max's Kansas City, Mercer Arts Center, ABC No Rio, and CBGB, reached iconic statuses in the United States and the world. New York is home to several major jazz clubs, including Birdland, Sweet Rhythm (formerly Sweet Basil), the Village Vanguard, and the Blue Note, the latter being one of the premier spots for jazz lovers. There was a time—now long gone—when 52nd Street in Manhattan, with its numerous clubs, was one of the epicenters of jazz. Future generations of music venues would retain the prolific elements of this culture. Since transmogrifying the local dance scene (deep house) to form "acid-jazz" in the late 1980s, Groove Academy/Giant Step has launched several major-label bands such as Groove Collective and Nuyorican Soul.
The Greenwich Village folk scene is home to venues such as the long-standing landmark The Bottom Line. New York's rock scene includes clubs such as Irving Plaza, while the city's avant-garde "downtown" scene includes The Kitchen, Roulette, and Knitting Factory. The Latin and world music scene features venues such as S.O.B.'s and the Wetlands Preserve, which closed in 2001.
Festivals, holidays and parades New York has a long history of using music in various festivals and parades, though the vibrant local music scene has meant that festivals are less of a draw than in other cities, since residents are near major sources of live music all the time. The diverse groups of immigrants living in New York have each brought with them their own holiday traditions. As a result, major festivals of music in New York include the Chinese New Year celebrations, Pulaski Day Parade, and the St. Patrick's Day Parade run by the Ancient Order of Hibernians. New York is home to the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the world, a tradition that has continued since 1762 due to the large Irish population in New York. Irish folk music and folk-rock are the major styles at the two-day Guinness Fleadh festival. The College Music Journal Network's annual Music Marathon has been held since 1980, providing a major showcase for new music. Central Park SummerStage, a series of free concerts presented by City Parks Foundation and hosting performers of many kinds, is also a major part of New York's summer music scene, which also includes the July Intel New York Music Festival. There are numerous New York jazz festivals, including the Texaco New York Jazz Festival, Panasonic Village Jazz Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, and the free Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. The City Parks Foundation also presents a series of thirty free concerts in ten parks across all five boroughs of the city each summer. Roz Nixon founded Great Women in Jazz in 2001. It is a month-long festival in October in New York.
Additionally, New York hosted the yearly Electric Zoo festival, which was second only to Miami's Winter Music Conference as a mecca for house and electronic music fans in the United States. It also holds the annual Dance Parade which brings together all types of dance-oriented music from across the world (both traditional and contemporary) in a combined parade down Fifth Avenue. The NYC Musical Saw Festival has been a summer staple since 2001, bringing musical saw players from around the world to perform diverse types of music on this unique instrument. The festival, organized by Natalia Paruz, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest musical saw ensemble.
Music history The first music performed in the area that is now New York City was that of the Lenape Native Americans who lived there. However, little is known of these peoples' musical lives. The earliest documented music comes after the foundation of the city (then called New Amsterdam) by Dutch explorers, who controlled the area until the British conquest in 1664. The music of New York's colonial era was primarily British in character, gradually evolving as the United States became independent and developed a distinct culture; the influence of African-American music became very important as the city's African American population increased throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
By the 1830s, New York was gradually becoming the most important cultural center in the United States, and was a home for many varieties of folk, popular and classical music. Late in the 19th century, many influential conservatories and venues were founded, including the world-famous Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall. New York's status as a center for musical development continued into the 20th century, leading to the foundation of many companies associated with the American music industry in the city. These companies included sheet music publishers, based around an area called Tin Pan Alley, and later record labels and other organizations and institutions. The rise of the Broadway theatres began in the early part of the century; the songs from Broadways musicals became some of the earliest American popular music, and eventually came to be treated as pop standards.
NYC is famous for its subway musicians. The Music Under New York program started as a pilot project in 1985 and was officially established as a full program under MTA Arts & Design in January 1987. The launch of the program followed a 1985 court challenge that declared the previous city-wide ban on subway performances unconstitutional. Acclaimed musicians who play in the NYC subway regularly are Natalia Paruz (also known as the "Saw Lady"' for playing the musical saw), Afrikumba Utibe Drummers, Anthony Carrera sitar and handpan, and G Wyll (guitarist and vocalist).
Early history As the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, New York was populated by Dutch settlers who left little musical trace behind, excepting some songs such as "Dutch Prayer of Thanksgiving," "Rosa," and "The Little Dustman." Under English rule, sea shanties, open-air singing gardens, sometimes with fireworks, ballads and other Anglo-Irish traditions, became widespread. New York's colonial ballads were often topical, concerning the events of the day and the local gossip. Beginning in 1732, ballads were placed together with a story tying them together, forming a performance genre called the ballad opera, the best-known of which is The Beggar's Opera, first performed in 1752. That same period also saw the first concerts held in New York, and the arrival of William Tuckey, who helped establish church music in the city.Burk, Cassie, Virginia Meierhoffer and Claude Anderson Phillips, America's Musical Heritage
New York's rise as the intellectual and artistic center of the United States occurred in the 1830s. This period, which coincided with an upsurge in American nationalism, saw major growth in choral music, with musical societies being formed in most major cities, like New York; these choral societies remained a fixture of American music throughout the 19th century. Military bands were also common throughout the country, as was singing family troupes such as the Hutchinson Family. Later still, minstrel shows, comic and musical acts performed by whites in blackface, spread across the country. In New York, Italian operas were very popular throughout much of the century.