Strings and Skins

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-81
Author(s):  
Benjamin Lapidus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Percussion Instruments ◽  
Latin Music

This chapter outlines the important history and role of craftsmen based in New York City who produced and repaired traditional instruments used in the performance of Latin music. It introduces individuals who came from Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Jewish communities, and examines how their instruments physically represented the actual sound of Latin Music to New York and the world on widely disseminated recordings. Many of these instrument makers also sold their instruments beyond New York City and the United States. The chapter also discusses the work of builders and musicians in New York City to create and modify the tools used to forge the sound of Latin music and diffuse both the instruments and their aesthetic throughout the world. Ultimately, the chapter seeks to unify into one coherent narrative, the efforts of folklorists, journalists, and authors who paid attention to the origins of hand percussion instruments in New York, their subsequent mass production, and the people who built the instruments used to play Latin music in New York City.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States

Puerto Rico ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Duany
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Puerto Rican Diaspora

What is the Puerto Rican Day Parade? The Puerto Rican Day Parade (Desfile Puertorriqueño) in New York City is the most visible display of Puerto Rican identity in the United States. The parade was first held in 1959 as an offshoot of the...

Days of Chess and Backgammon

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Zeitlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
City Parks ◽  
The World ◽  
Chess Players ◽  
The Village

The author here considers the games of chess and backgammon. The author shares how he became fascinated by chess, intrigued by its philosophical side. He was twelve years old in 1959, when Bobby Fischer won the United States Chess Championship. As a folklorist, he did field research on chess havens in New York's West Village, interviewing the players in Washington Square Park and at the two warring chess clubs on Thompson Street, Chess Forum and the Village Chess Shop. He talks about the Capablanca table; José Raúl Capablanca, world chess champion from 1921 to 1927, is said to have won the World Chess Championship on that table. Fischer also played on that table, in New York in 1965. Chess, the author observes, seems to lend itself to grandiose metaphors. Metaphors abound in the down-and-dirty trash talk exchanged by the chess players in New York City parks. The author concludes by recalling how he and his father would engage in a gentle competition playing online backgammon games.

The Movement and Settlement of Puerto Rican Migrants within the United States, 1950–1960

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
J. Hernández-Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Trend ◽  
The U.S

This article presents a concise summary of the geographic movement and settlement of Puerto Ricans within the United States from 1950 to 1960, based on data drawn from the Census taken on the latter date. The Author observes that a shift away from New York City occurred both in terms of migration from Puerto Rico and internal movements between states. This resulted in the development of major Puerto Rican communities in eight other metropolitan areas of the U.S. The Puerto Rican population was found highly mobile within the U.S., especially from neighborhood to neighborhood within the same city and usually in the direction of neighborhoods marked by out-migration of non-Puerto Ricans. The analysis is then extended to the different patterns of settlement outside New York City and the present evolution of the migrant colonias and to the diaspora of a small portion of the Puerto Rican population throughout the U.S. In the final remarks, the Author discusses the future trend of dispersion of the second generation population, especially, and the correlation between economically favored cities and the setlement of Puerto Ricans on the mainland.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Benjamin Lapidus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Music Education ◽  
York City ◽  
Instrument Making ◽  
Latin Music ◽  
Leonardo Padura

This chapter draws the main themes of the book together and offers ideas for a clearer and more coherent overview of Latin music in New York, as well as ideas for future scholarship. It outlines Cuban author Leonardo Padura Fuentes' ten points to defend the position that salsa might or might not exist as a genre. Using this as a model, the chapter presents ten themes from the book that show how musicians based in New York City shaped the international sound of Latin music. These include: (1) the physical and metaphysical aspects of clave, (2) the importance of folklore, (3) the emphasis on music education, (4) musical biculturalism and triculturalism, (5) the evolution of the anticipated bass part, (6) instrument making and its impact on performance and recording, (7) the role of dance, (8) lineages of musicians, (9) interethnic collaboration, and (10) the role of jazz. All of these are not treated in each chapter, but they recur throughout and overlap considerably.

Puerto Rican Engagement With Jazz And Its Effects On Latin Music

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-230
Author(s):  
Benjamin Lapidus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Latin Music ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores how Puerto Rican and Nuyorican (New York-born Puerto Rican) musicians in New York City used jazz harmony, arranging, improvisation, and musical aesthetics to broaden the sound of Latin popular music from the postwar period into the 1990s and beyond. It argues that the Puerto Rican connection to jazz was extensive and encompassed a variety of styles and eras. The chapter challenges the debate over salsa's patrimony and development, by demonstrating how particular Puerto Rican musicians in New York City were fluent in jazz and incorporated it into Latin music. Much discourse has unfortunately centered on pitting Puerto Rican against Cuban musicians or looking only at commercial or sociocultural considerations when considering Latin music in New York. Proficiency in both jazz and Latin music allowed Puerto Rican musicians to innovate in ways that did not happen in Puerto Rico or elsewhere. The chapter also explores other themes discussed in the introduction, such as the importance of clave, the impact and extent of music education among Puerto Rican musicians, family lineages, the importance of folklore, and inter-ethnic collaboration.

(r) we there yet? The change to rhoticity in New York City English

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Becker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
East Side ◽  
Internal Constraints ◽  
Variable Production

AbstractLabov (1966, 1972b) described the variable production of coda /r/ in New York City English (NYCE) as a change in progress from above in the direction of rhoticity. Since then, scholars have commented on the slow rate of change toward rhoticity in NYCE and characterized (r) as a superposed feature restricted to formal speech (Fowler, 1987; Labov, 1994; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006). This study's ethnically diverse sample of speakers from the Lower East Side of Manhattan (n = 65) shows a mean rate of /r/ production of 68%, with young people, women, and middle-class speakers leading in the production of /r/ in apparent time. Speakers from five ethnic backgrounds—African American, Chinese, Jewish, Puerto Rican, and white—show coherence for the internal constraints on variable nonrhoticity. However, only Chinese, Jewish, and white speakers participate in the change toward rhoticity. These findings highlight the role of ethnicity in patterns of variation and change and demonstrate that the change toward rhoticity in NYCE has accelerated and is no longer restricted to formal speech.

New York City at the dawn of neurological surgery

2016 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1291-1300
Author(s):  
Robert A. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Surgical Subspecialty ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Neurological Surgery ◽  
Neurological Surgeon

Although there are many cities that can claim to have been the incubator of modern neurological surgery, the rise of this surgical subspecialty in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th century mirrors what was occurring around the world. The first confirmed brain tumor operation in the US was performed there in 1887. The author describes the role of several pioneers in the development of neurological surgery. Charles Elsberg was the first dedicated neurological surgeon in New York City and was instrumental in the development of the Neurological Institute and the careers of several other notable neurosurgeons.

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