LOWER MANHATTAN-
GREENWICH VILLAGE
Dora Psoma
Take a closer look at Manhattan
People talk about Manhattan, but do they actually know that it is just one of the five New York City boroughs?
Manhattan itself is also divided into 5 different areas.
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Lower Manhattan
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Midtown Manhattan
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Upper Manhattan
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Harlem
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Washington Heights
In a decade marked by Hypersegregation after the end of the Prohibition Era and the Great Depression, Lower Manhattan nightclubs in New York City became a space where jazz music would challenge racial injustice.
And yes! Spaces of music performances and entertainment, as Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in theirAural Architecture study write, create other spaces where people interact with each other and the music itself:
“When participants split into two groups, their respective spaces are separated: performers sit in one area, the audience in another; musical space split into a performance space and a listening space.”
Blesser, B., & Salter, L.-R. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007
Café Society
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Café Society: The wrong place for the Right people
During the 1930’s in Lower Manhattan a new cabaret was about to bring changes within the urban space and the identity of Manhattanites. Café Society! It was a New York City nightclub open from 1938 to 1948 on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, “The wrong place for the Right people”, as it was also called.
picture exists on public domain
Café Society was unique! The first night-club outside Harlem that promoted integration among black and white patrons and an interracial work environment. A semi-public urban space where blacks and whites across class boundaries could meet and socialize. The club showcased talent regardless of race, so it became the ideal space where Billie Holiday would launch her career as a jazz singer and a political activist in the heart of Manhattan!
Prior to that, Billie Holiday was constantly being discriminated against, when performing in several gigs. As a black woman, she was denied access in specific interior spaces of Hotels or night-clubs in Manhattan and was usually forced to take the freight elevator.
picture exists on public domain
The Big Apple and “The Strange Fruit”
Holiday started singing her most popular song, “Strange Fruit”, as a special performance by the end of every evening.
A manifesto against lynching in the South, "Strange Fruit" had been performed by Holiday in New York City as a protest song. Many scholars of the African-American community consider this song and the specific performance in Café Society to be the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.
“Strange fruit” had become a ritual! Elaborate directions were given to the staff in order to create the atmosphere Holiday needed for her performance. All service was stopped and the employees would stand still and silent. The room was darkened and a single spot lit Holiday’s face. At the end of the song, the lights went out and Holiday left the stage.
The purpose was to raise awareness of the violence of whites against blacks in the heart of New York City!
Listen to "Strange Fruit" recorded inside the Café Society!
Café Society entrance in 1939
picture exists on public domain
Scene from the movie "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" (2021)
video exists on public domain
Billie Holiday recording "Strange Fruit" in 1939
picture exists on public domain
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to suck
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
Songwriter: Lewis Allan/ Abel Meeropol
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picture exists on public domain
Sentimental Love Songs in Café Society
Angela Davis writes that Holiday’s musical performances inside the Café Society were marked by an “ironic edge”, whether she was performing sentimental love songs or political protest songs. Holiday indeed used the urban space of New York’s night-clubs in order to sing about loss, love and injustice, but also to praise the city and its multifaceted identity.
In “Autumn in New York” Holiday sings of New York as a city that feels like home. A New York autumn is “often mingled with pain” but the lyrics insist that “it’s good to live it”. Vernon Duke’s 1934 song found its perfect expression in Billie Holiday’s yearning version. Duke’s moody music and poetic lyrics, such as “Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel”, are an invitation to fall in love.
Yet, the city and the song abound in antithesis!
“Dreamers with empty hands” and “lovers that bless the dark”
and
“Jaded roués and gay divorcees
Who lunch at the Ritz”
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Autumn In New York
Autumn in New York
Why does it seem so inviting?
Autumn in New York
It spells the thrill of first-nighting
Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds
In canyons of steel
They're making me feel
I'm home
It's autumn in New York
That brings the promise of new love
Autumn in New York
Is often mingled with pain
Dreamers with empty hands
May sigh for exotic lands
It's autumn in New York
It's good to live it again
Autumn in New York
The gleaming rooftops at sundown
Autumn in New York
It lifts you up when you're let down
Jaded roués and gay divorcees
Who lunch at the Ritz
Will tell you that it's
Divine
It's autumn in New York
Transforms the slums into Mayfair
Autumn in New York
You'll need no castle in Spain
Lovers that bless the dark
On benches in Central Park
Greet autumn in New York
It's good to live it again
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 1913
In her 1952 song “Autumn in New York” Billie Holiday sang of Manhatannites who are enjoying themselves by dining in hotels and on the other hand “lovers that bless the dark/ on benches in Central Park”. The song points out that both rich people and common people can have a good time in Manhattan and they certainly can enjoy love the way they want to.
“Jaded roués and gay divorcees
Who lunch at the Ritz”
Indeed, the Ritz Hotel used to be a meeting point for the rich and famous of Manhattan.
The hotel was located at 46th Street and Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.
When the hotel was being built, Madison Avenue was a suburban wasteland.
However, for nearly 40 years, the Ritz-Carlton became a symbol of luxury and fashion, a meeting place for royalty and those of fabulous fortunes, a monument in honor of the fine art of living.
The hotel was demolished in 1951 and re-opened after extensive renovation of another building, in 2002 as a luxury hotel and condominium complex called the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park.
Steel Canyons, Tom Shropshire, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas,
Saatchi Art
canyons of steel, picture from the web
picture exists on public domain
picture exists on public domain
video exists on public domain
picture exists on public domain
Today, a night at the Ritz, in Central Park, costs more than 900$.
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The old Ritz
picture exists on public domain
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Central Park, 2006
picture exists on public domain
Central Park
Since Central Park first opened, the spirit of love has been coursing through its 843 acres. Countless romantic gestures take place here every day, from proposals to first dates to bench dedications. So, how much romance can be found in this urban oasis?
Over 10,000 benches are scattered throughout the Park and more than 4,400 of them have been adopted, which means that these benches display plaques with inscribed dedications.
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Picture of a Central Park bench, 1988
picture exists on public domain
Music spaces in Lower Manhattan and Jazz songs shaped the identity of NYC. Billie Holiday`s perfomance in Café Society grabbed Manhattannites from the shoulder. It reminded them that black people in the South were still being lynched during the 1930`s and the 1940`s. In a way, Holiday`s music raised awareness regarding social justice and equality issues not only in New York City urban space, but she brought a bigger change for the U.S.A in general.
Selected online sources and bibliography
CARVALHO, JOHN M. “‘Strange Fruit’: Music between Violence and Death.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 71, no. 1, [Wiley, The American Society for Aesthetics], 2013, pp. 111–19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23597541.
Hobson, Janell. “Everybody’s Protest Song: Music as Social Protest in the Performances of Marian Anderson and Billie Holiday.” Signs, vol. 33, no. 2, The University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 443–48, https://doi.org/10.1086/521057.
Johnson, E. Patrick. “Strange Fruit: A Performance about Identity Politics.” TDR (1988-), vol. 47, no. 2, The MIT Press, 2003, pp. 88–116, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1147012.
Stowe, David W. “The Politics of Cafe Society.” The Journal of American History, vol. 84, no. 4, [Oxford University Press, Organization of American Historians], 1998, pp. 1384–406, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568086.