NJMH Juneteenth Black Music Festival  is an outdoor music and dance celebration rooted in community, movement, and sounds from the Black Diaspora.

This free event will take place from 2-5pm at Jackie Robinson Park in Harlem and is presented in partnership with NYC Parks.

Hosted and Curated by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Sekou McMiller, this year we celebrate Jazz and the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop.  Featured artists include vocalist Charenee Wade, poet, vocalist, musician and designer Tai Allen with his group Sample Sale, and freestyle HipHop dance and music group LayeRhythm.

This show made possible by the West Harlem Development Corporation, The Doctorow Foundation, Coalition of Theaters of Color, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

About Charenee Wade:
Award-winning vocalist, arranger, educator, and composer Charenée Wade has excited audiences all over the world with her ingenuity and vibrancy. A recipient of the 2017 Jazz at Lincoln Center Millennial Swing Award and first runner-up in the 2010 Thelonious Vocal Competition, Wade has worked with artists including Wynton Marsalis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Christian McBride, Winard Harper, Eric Reed, Jacky Terrason, Curtis Lundy, Robert Glasper, and Kyle Abraham. In her early years, Wade was selected as one of four artists for the Dianne Reeves Young Artist Workshop at Carnegie Hall as well as Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Program, where she was mentored by Carmen Lundy and Curtis Fuller and performed her original music at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

An alumna of what is now the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Wade completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music performance at the Manhattan School of Music. Her latest CD, Offering: The Music of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, is a powerful reinterpretation of the poet’s musical library, which features notable artists including Lonnie Plaxico, Marcus Miller, Stefon Harris, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and Christian McBride (spoken word).

Wade has performed at top venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Jazz Standard, and the Apollo, and she has performed at major festivals worldwide including Montreux, Copenhagen, Newport, Istanbul, Spoleto, Princeton, Bern, and Savannah Music, and Jazz En Tete. A passionate educator who has taught master classes and private lessons at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, and University of Texas, among others, Wade has also has taught at clinics and jazz camps all over the world, including in New Orleans, the U.K., Israel, Croatia, Spain, Australia, and Taiwan.

About Tai Allen and Sample Sale Music:
It is difficult to enjoy a modern music without pointing out the influence of its jazz & soul beginnings. We want to examine this energy all year long! The show explores samples that have become central to Black culture and beyond. We rock the samples in their original jazz context and then we transform them into hip-hop tracks the audience knows & loves.

#SampleSaleMusic continues the tradition of re-interpretation – by further spinning these samples into our own art and 21st century reality.

Multi-hyphenate Tai Allen is a poet, performer, vocalist, musician, producer and designer. He has toured domestically and internationally, performing at the Apollo Theater’s Music Café, the National Black Writers Conference, Restoration Rocks, the American Jazz Museum, the Art of Cool Festival and Blue Note, among other venues.

Allen’s 2010 album Easy Readin’ was awarded “Album of The Year” by the National Poetry Awards, he is a member of the National Black Writers Conference Steering Committee, and has also served as the Conference’s Poetry Cafe host. Allen is also creative director for Arts+Crafts, where he curates the annual Tap+Cork Brooklyn Beer & Wine Fest, and creates performance opportunities for emerging artists, deejays and poets.

His poetry collection No Jewels and its official soundtrack were released in 2017. His work has also appeared in magazines such as BOMB and African Voices, and been featured on sites including Okayplayer, CentricTV, SoulTracks and Grown Folks Music. He has coordinated and curated a number of concerts, exhibits, conferences and festivals. Allen loves basketball, Sterling Brown and Oscar Brown; the 2001 Yankees and the 2012 Giants; gelato, not ice cream, and jerk chicken made on a drum. He blogs about technology, sports and politics. He is sitting in the sun, somewhere near a body of water.

About LayeRhythm:
LayeRhythm Productions, Inc. (LPI) highlights freestyle dance and music voices under-recognized in the traditional performing arts landscape while providing entertainment, building community, educating audiences in cultural history, preserving the legacy of street & club dance forms, transforming individuals’ relationship to music & dance and supporting emotional & social well-being. LayeRhythm is dedicated to risk-taking improvisation and interactive audience engagement through performances and events.

“[LayeRhythm is a] brew of partying and performing that unfolds as a series of interactive sessions in which suggestions from the crowd beget songs and steps. Imagine an improv comedy show where dancing, not laughs, is the currency. Then imagine a musicians’ jam session where the band is compelled to keep the dancers’ pace instead of the other way around. […] [W]hat’s distinct about LayeRhythm is the way it bridges the two groups with crowd participation” (The New York Times).

LR is dedicated to serving transformative art experiences to all-age audiences and students in NYC and beyond.

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