Music

Bronx Birthplace of Hip Hop Being Honored With Street Renaming

It was a hot summer day on August 11, 1973 in the Bronx at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue as DJ Kool Herc and his sister held a party in what would become known as the birth of Hip Hop—a genre which has transcended cultural, national, and many other boundaries by leaps and bounds.

Now, the New York City Council, thanks to the leadership of Councilwoman Vanessa L. Gibson, has passed a resolution to co-name to stretch in front of 1520, ‘Hip Hop Boulevard’ further solidifying The Bronx’s importance in the creation of the genre as the birthplace of Hip Hop.

Carnegie Hall Comes to The Bronx Tonight at The Bronx Museum!

Let there be Latin Jazz!!

Tonight, as part of The Bronx Museum’s First Friday events, in collaboration with Carnegie Hall, Chris Washburne and the SYOTUS Band will be performing with their own inventive take on Latin Jazz so put on your dancing shoes and let’s get ready to mambo!

Parranda in The Bronx! Puerto Rican Style Christmas Caroling in Melrose

Join the Bronx Music Heritage Center for the first ever Parranda, the traditional fun-filled Puerto Rican way of celebrating the holidays in this inaugural event that will take on a different theme each year!

The event is scheduled for Monday, December 21st and kicks off at the Bronx Documentary Center at 4pm.

If you’ve never been to a parranda or know what it is, it’s basically Christmas caroling on steroids with traditional Puerto Rican instruments and the crowd grows as it goes from place to place, picking folks up along the way.

Frida Kahlo Exhibition Shatters New York Botanical Garden Attendance Record

Last year when we first got wind that The New York Botanical Garden was planning a Frida Kahlo exhibition we knew it was going to be big—but never imagined how big.

When we wrote about the show coming, a full year before it was scheduled to open, tens of thousands of people flooded our servers and shared our posts in excitement that this was happening and that it was happening in The Bronx.

Hugo Chavez, an Oil Company and the Beautiful Sound of Bronx Youth

When we first started our music program with a handful of kids in 2009 we only dreamed of one day having an orchestra full of youth from the South Bronx. Now, not only does such an orchestra exist but it’s had the incredible good fortune to travel to Venezuela for a week of intensive study and performance with El Sistema, the world-renown Venezuelan system of youth orchestras and choirs that inspired us to start UpBeat NYC six years ago.

The Venezuelan-Bronx cultural exchange continues this weekend when the National Youth Orchestra of Caracas comes to Crotona Park for a free outdoor concert open to the public. The 160-piece orchestra will also be performing this weekend at the United Nations for its 70th anniversary celebration. It is noteworthy that this renowned orchestra, one of El Sistema’s most important orchestral and educational achievements, will be holding its public concert in the South Bronx, a community rich in its own culture but so often overlooked and underserved.