It is to revive this memory that the New York Philharmonic Orchestra inaugurates on Saturday the new life of its David Geffen Hall, a 2,200-seat concert hall, glitzy and with renovated acoustics, with "San Juan Hill: a history from New York".

A delicate mise en abyme, because this district of San Juan Hill was precisely razed in the middle of the 20th century to build the Lincoln Center, the gigantic artistic complex where the famous opera, ballet and philharmonic orchestra of the cultural capital perform. American.

Located near Central Park, San Juan Hill was home to thousands of African American and Puerto Rican families, and bustled with small businesses, jazz clubs and dance clubs.

It was at the Jungle Cafe that pianist James P. Johnson made the Charleston popular.

It is also in San Juan Hill that the jazz composer Thelonious Monk grew up, to whom we owe the notoriety of bebop.

Trumpeter Etienne Charles during a rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, October 4, 2022 ANGELA WEISS AFP

But in 1947, the famous urban planner Robert Moses declared the neighborhood a slum, paving the way for its destruction as part of a major "urban renewal" program that transformed New York and is still debated today.

"Future City"

"What happens to this district is what happens to many other districts: it obstructs a certain vision of the future city", explains historian Julia Foulkes, who has worked with Etienne Charles, composer and trumpeter at the head of the Creole Soul group, to write the new show of the philharmonic.

A cornerstone laying ceremony takes place at Lincoln Center in New York City on May 14, 1959, to where the San Juan Hill neighborhood was moved to make way for the Bob Serating Arts Complex, Bob Serating LINCOLN CENTER/AFP

Eighteen city blocks had been razed and thousands of people displaced as the Lincoln Center project was born.

“What has been lost is not just specific buildings and residences, but the very substance of an entire neighborhood,” says New School professor Julia Foulkes.

Etienne Charles' work feeds on ragtime, jazz, calypso, funk and hip-hop, but the multimedia show also presents spoken texts, visual projections and testimonies that document the history of the neighborhood and pay homage to its music and its culture, brought by migrants from the south of the country and the Caribbean.

“We need to start valuing people for more than where they live and the quality of property they own, and start looking at their culture, their lineage, their heritage and the history they are building” , explains the musician originally from Trinidad and Tobago and who himself studied at the Juilliard School, a conservatory at Lincoln Center.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower takes part in a cornerstone-laying ceremony for Lincoln Center in New York on May 14, 1959, years after the predominantly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood that once thrived in the area was razed Bob Serating, Bob Serating LINCOLN CENTER/AFP

"Dominating Narrative"

For Lincoln Center Artistic Director Shanta Thake, the commission is part of a reflection on "what it means to hold the stories of the city -- and what it also means to have interrupted the stories of the city." .

“For a long time, there was a dominant narrative that Lincoln Center was the best thing that could have happened to this neighborhood,” she continues, saying the show helps “unpack that story.”

A view of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center on March 2, 2022 in New York ANGELA WEISS AFP

"San Juan Hill: A New York Story" also helps Lincoln Center deal with criticism over an offering aimed primarily at upper-class, white audiences.

Ticketing starts at $5 and some entries will be free.

© 2022 AFP