Leading Bronx musicians related the artwork in the Bronx Museum of the Arts to their own personal experiences. Laura Sanicola/The Ram
By Laura Sanicola
“We are the boogie-down Bronx,” exclaimed activist, singer and poet Caridad de la Luz to roaring applause from her audience. “Celebrate the rainbow of culture that you have within your veins.”
Host de la Luz, who goes by “La Bruja,” commanded the attention and cheers of the crowd that filled the galleries of the Bronx Museum of the Arts on Friday, Nov. 16. The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, is a free art museum that holds over 1,000 works of art in the Bronx Museum Permanent Collection. The museum states its mission that “connects diverse audiences to the urban experience through its permanent collection, special exhibitions, and education programs.”
The evening event, called “Bronx Stories,” was designed to “challenge stereotypes about the Bronx and provide a platform for voices from the community while encouraging a deeper engagement of the arts.”
The evening was comprised of spoken word poetry, live music, an open bar of rum mixed drinks and observation of the socio-political forces at work in the world and the community. The multiracial mix of attendees supported the message the event hoped to convey — that, despite cultural differences, the Bronx is the shared bond that brings the community together.
Crowds formed around acclaimed Bronx Latin-jazz musicians like saxophonist Jorge Castro, bassist Alvaro Benavides, pianist Desmar Guevara and percussionist Gabriel “Gabo” Lugo.
Musicians and audience members were invited to perform their own short stories, poems or songs about the identity of the Bronx community and individual ties to native or ancestral countries.
Art displayed in the gallery spoke to socio-political struggles that were all too familiar the musicians. They related their performances to specific artworks in the gallery, tying in their own stories and recollections.
“This piece of art,” said Venezuela-born bassist Alvaro Benavides about a wooden figure before him, “makes me think of communism. The communism that unfortunately has landed in my Venezuela.”
Desmar Guevara Santiago, an award winning multi-instrumentalist, described how, as a mixed race boy, he witnessed racism first hand in his own barrio in Puerto Rico.
“Hispanics, even poor Hispanics, used to joke around about the ‘blacks’ and ‘negritos,’ but in reality Puerto Ricans are very racist,” Santiago said. “And we are hypocritical about racism. We don’t want to talk about how it exists and its real and it is very bad for the society. We need to talk about how we going to start using our language to stop this.”
Puerto Rican musician and composer Jorge Castro pointed to a painting that displayed rows of orderly black dots arranged inside the outlines of vessels. “My great grandmother, who was given away at the age of thirteen as a slave in Puerto Rico, had this painting in her house,” Castro said. “I used to like this painting as a child because everything in it was organized and lined up.”
Castro’s grandmother explained to him that the dots were representations of the slaveships that brought his ancestors to Puerto Rico from Africa. “My grandmother would point to the dots and say, ‘This is my mom. This is my dad. I can just feel it.’”
Open mic performances from Bronx natives varied from a white man’s reminiscence of the adolescent Bronx rooftop culture to an adolescent girl’s observation of how money consumes her society. The event closed with an hour of original performances by La Bruja and the Bronx musicians.
In the audience, some closed their eyes and let the music say the things they could not. “The music speaks to my soul,” said Salvador Jimenez, a man who has worked and lived on Crotona Avenue for his entire life. “It reminds me of where I am, and who I come from, and lets me be proud of being from here.”
