"Live From The East": Pharoah Sanders in Brooklyn

Though for most jazz historians Brooklyn remains in the shadow of Manhattan, two previous articles in this journal have documented a robust jazz tradition that can be traced back even as far as performances by The Creole Band at Coney Island in 1915.1 Though often paralleling musical developments across the East River, Brooklyn jazz has also been shaped by the unique dynamic of the borough's ethnic and racial makeup, as well as the very special qualities of its many, often insular, neighborhoods.2

The historically black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in central Brooklyn, or "Bed-Stuy" as it is more commonly referred to, has long been a center of jazz, with its "Golden Age" of the 1940s and 1950s seeing performances by first-tier jazz musicians, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and many others. Though the popular imagination may now see Bed-Stuy primarily as a backdrop for Spike Lee movies, it boasts a black presence that goes far back into the 19th century, with the establishment of communities of freedmen in places such as Weeksville--now part of neighboring Crown Heights. With the construction of the A train in the mid-1930s, which connected Bed-Stuy with Harlem, the neighborhood became a cultural mecca that rivaled Manhattan's larger and more famous African American community.

On 31 December 1969, The East Cultural and Educational Center opened its doors at 10 Claver Place in southwest Bed-Stuy. The enterprise was deeply rooted in the black nationalist movements of the 1960s, and had been founded primarily by educators who had lived through the New York Board of Education crises earlier in the decade, particularly the struggles for community control of schools and curriculum, such as those in Brooklyn's Ocean Hill-Brownsville districts. Over the next ten years this modest three-story building would host meetings, rallies, classes for both adults and youngsters, and, most important here, some of the greatest musicians of the period, beginning with vocalist Leon Thomas, who was featured on opening night.

Some forty years later, in March 2010, Pharoah Sanders, a perennial favorite of The East community (which had dubbed him "The Reverend") returned to play in Brooklyn. Though the building at 10 Claver Place was now an apartment house, and no activity related to The East had taken place there...