Emily Braden’s powerful voice dances over up-tempo beats; it’s another night of jazz at Zinc Bar in Greenwich Village, which has drawn a full crowd on a Monday night. Tall and confident, Braden commands the crowd’s attention through her two-hour act. What did she think of the performance? “It was too quiet for me,” she responds.
She had a gig at Showman’s Bar on West 125th Street a few weeks back, a club where the legendary Sarah Vaughan once performed. Braden loved the energy and atmosphere. She says she’s “all about that uptown thing!”
“There is a little more groove and room for musicians to experience and play regularly,” she says of the Harlem scene. “I wish there were more venues up here.”
There used to be. While New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, Harlem is known as its incubator. Since the Roaring Twenties, commonly called the Jazz Age, Harlem has been a mecca, full of jam sessions and jazz clubs. But the scene has suffered in recent decades, the victim of financial devastation, the crack epidemic and high crime rates. Today, while uptown remains an attraction for tourists and jazz fans, older musicians tell Braden, “Harlem is not what it used to be.”
Read the whole story at: The Uptowner
Read the whole story at: The Uptowner