Brooklyn
Brooklyn appears in 5 Songsheets issues: Afrobeat, Bloghouse and Indie Sleaze, Detroit Techno, Reggaeton and New York Disco. 4 artists in the archive came from here, including Antibalas, Kevin Saunderson and Vico C.
Brooklyn's vibrant African diaspora community in the 1970s provides an early American audience for Afrobeat imports, with Caribbean sound systems and African record shops creating networks that bring Lagos sounds to New York's streets. The borough's pan-African cultural spaces become crucial nodes for disseminating Afrobeat beyond Nigeria, connecting West African immigrants, Black American activists, and Caribbean communities through Fela's revolutionary grooves. This groundwork establishes Brooklyn as a key site for Afrobeat's eventual American resurgence decades later.
Scenes
Artists from Brooklyn
- Antibalas
Antibalas formed in Brooklyn in the late 1990s, a collective of musicians who treated Fela's catalog less as a museum piece than as a living instruction manual.
- Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson was born in Brooklyn in 1964, and by thirteen he was sneaking into the Loft and the Paradise Garage with his older brothers, absorbing New York's club culture years before Detroit techno had a name.
- Vico C
Luis Armando Lozada Cruz was born in Brooklyn, raised in San Juan, and became the first to prove Spanish-language rap could stand on its own.
- Larry Levan
Larry Levan took the booth at Paradise Garage in 1977, before the club was finished, and held it for the next decade, turning Saturday nights into a ritual regulars called Saturday Mass.
