After a decade of fires in the Bronx, 24 theaters, nightclubs, and music halls crucial to the borough’s unique musical and cultural landscape were lost. Save for the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1980, the two dozen venues for the performing arts were shuttered — abandoned, burned, or failed. No new performing arts center was built for decades.
More than 50 years later, the Women’s Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco), a nonprofit affordable housing developer, changed that on Oct. 18 when they opened the Bronx Music Hall.
Integral to the identity of their third and largest affordable housing development, the Bronx Commons, the Bronx Music Hall welcomed the public with three days of musical and dance festivities. The opening brought names like MC Sha-Rock, credited with being the first woman rapper; Ghanian dance group Wuza Wuza Ensemble; woodwind and brass band the Individuals for Peace; and Grammy-nominated percussionist and South Bronx native Bobby Sanabria.
The completion of the Bronx Music Hall was especially close to Sanabria’s heart. As co-director of WHEDco’s pet project, the Bronx Music Heritage Center, Sanabria told reporters during a press tour on Oct. 17 that the musical legacy — apart from its invention of hip-hop — would have nearly been forgotten had it not been for the tremendous efforts of grassroots groups like WHEDco.
The Bronx Music Heritage Center, which was originally housed in another WHEDco development, provides free and low-cost dance and musical classes for housing and neighboring residents. Now, it will be headquartered and continue to grow its programming from the Bronx Music Hall.
“We’re going to be continuing that, but on a grander scale,” said Sanabria.
“Grander” is the right word: The affordable housing development itself has 305 units, 26,500 square feet of retail space, and 150-seat 3-K and pre-K schools. The music hall itself was a $15.4 million project that takes up 14,000 square feet and features a 250-capacity theater, dance studio, green room, recording facilities, and backstage dressing room for performers. Rooms at the music hall will also be available for rent to the public.
Sanabria wants to bring more types of music, dance, and acting classes to the hall, including plans for a well-trained youth orchestra. The public-facing programming will continue the mission of the heritage center, which will help keep a nearly forgotten cultural history alive and in the neighborhood.
“All of that’s available now to the community. They don’t have to go to Manhattan — they can come here and feel comfortable, and do it in a world-class setting,” Sanabria said. “There’s so much talent here in this borough that doesn’t get an opportunity to shine, and we’re going to allow it to shine here at the Bronx Music Hall.”
The Bronx Commons would not have existed without the Bronx Music Hall. Upon winning the bid, WHEDco wanted to go beyond the basic needs of the Melrose neighborhood. Research guided by Fordham University academics and archives focusing on Black history, and community surveys, heavily informed the resources and businesses WHEDco wanted to support and attract.
“I don’t think we would have won this city [request for proposal]without [the performance arts]being central to what we were bringing, because everybody does housing,” WHEDco President Davon Russell told the AmNews. “This is why this all made sense to us, again, given the history.”
The nonprofit’s exploration into the neighborhood also revealed that longtime residents longed for communal areas and were nostalgic for places to observe or participate in the diverse cultures found in the neighborhood. WHEDco Vice President of Community Development Kerry McLean said the music hall will help current and future South Bronx residents.
“Music just happened organically where people gathered,” said McLean. “That’s what we heard from people and corroborated. Now, here is a space where all of that history, and all of that hope, too, for that music to pass on to the next generation, or for the next generation to refine and take it to the next level.”
Like this:
Like Loading…
