147 Bleecker St. (bet. Thompson & LaGuardia), NYC 10012 • Map & Directions
About the Performance
Experimental Blues pairs artists of juxtaposing styles in intimate concerts to create, highlight, and explore the intersection of Blues with other Black American music and musical genres—such as Negro spirituals, gospel, jazz, R&B, soul, hip hop, and more.
This season’s three Experimental Blues concerts begin with the pairing of two blues powerhouses: Vienna Caroll and Melody Angel. Together, these celebrated women of the blues will escort audiences through a musical journey of catharsis and revitalization that is sure to soothe your soul and energize your body.
Join Vienna Carroll & The Folk for an evening of Seneca Village-era Afro-Future Roots music.
With proof of a New York State residency (NY driver’s license/ID card; IDNYC; current bill or statement with a NY address, NY student ID, NY library card) any sized donation. Read more.
Come on out and sing Afro-Future Roots music with us: the classic Spirituals and work songs you know and love, through a modern lens. Celebrate your pride at Black History Month.
– ANTEBELLUM FREEDOM AGENTS AND SEA SHANTEY SINGERS
In the 1800’s Black men, both free and enslaved, comprised 22% of those who worked on the water, the primary way to move goods at that time. They traveled from northern to southern ports, throughout the Caribbean, to Europe, Australasia and Japan and returned to their communities with stories of life outside the slaveocracy of the U.S.
Sailors wrote the first six autobiographies of Black Americans. Active agents on the Underground Railroad, their freedom messages were so stirring that after the rebellion led by sailor, Denmark Vesey, South Carolina enacted the 1822 Quarantine Laws/Negro Seaman Acts, jailing these men when they came to port.
Phyrrus Concer, a Black Long Island Whaler at the opening of Japan 1845
The grave marker for Edmund Moody, a US Black sailor who died in Mangonui, North Island, New Zealand, 1864
Dalyce Newby – Black Sailor in the Civil War
My play Shallow Brown: Thessalonia and the Free Sailor tells of the love, family, suffering and ultimately triumph of these brave yet unsung freedom fighters and how they helped us free ourselves.
Please enjoy a bibliography about our Black sailor heroes I put together for you, for more information.
We all had a fantastic time at the Album Release Party on Friday, March 6, 2020, at the American Folk Art Museum. Vienna Carroll and The Folk played songs from their new album, Harlem Field Recordings, plus older crowd folk favorites. Enjoy the photos and videos!
“What a voice!
This evening, awesome Vienna Carroll gave a free concert at the American Folk Art Museum. Accompanied by 2 guitarists [Keith Johnson and Stanley Banks] and a washboard percussionist [Newman Taylor], she got everyone singing folk, gospel, spiritual, call & response, and prison labor songs, and deftly wove in stories of resistance to a range of oppressions (slavery, racist police violence, distortions of history). She gave a shout-out to social media as a tool to expose injustice. Her rendition of the lament-lullaby “Hush Little Baby” was beyond heartbreaking. Intense, informative, inspiring.”
– Review by Pam McAllister
Quakers helped. Mostly, Black people Freed Ourselves through the "Slave Grapevine." Watch the story of African Queens kidnapped, enslaved and resisting. Plus, U.S. Colored Troops and the Slave Grapevine in the Black freedom struggle in the U.S.
Read a brief history of slavery and African rebellions in America freeing ourselves.