[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Throughout April, Lincoln Center will celebrate New York City venues of yesteryear in their concert series "American Songbook: A Place You Belong". Tonight's Show is dedicated to the legendary downtown venue Cafe Society. Cafe Society was one of the very first integrated nightclubs in New York City, where Billie Holiday first performed Strange Fruit and where you would find folks like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, as well as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and more elite New Yorkers and artists.

Through performances and dance, the series will also celebrate the legacies of three other historic spots--Harlem Savoy Ballroom, Midtown Palladium Ballroom, and SoHo's Paradise Garage, which some of you may remember. Among the artists who will be hitting the stage--R&B roots singer Nathaniel Rateliff, Raye Zaragoza, who has been a guest on this show, and someone who will be our guest in the next hour, Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose.

Joining me now to discuss all of this is Lincoln Center Chief Artistic Officer, Shanta Thake. Hi, Shanta.

Shanta Thake: Hi.

Alison Stewart: George C. Wolfe, the accomplished theater and film director who helped conceive the series. So nice to see you in person.

George C. Wolfe: Good to see you, too.

Alison Stewart: Shanta, this songbook series has been going on for the last couple of decades. Each year has a different theme. When you think about the overarching goal of the entire series, not just this particular one, what is the goal of the American Songbook series?

Shanta Thake: Well, the goal is always to expand who we think about when we think about the American Songbook, whose voices belong in the canon, and what performers are we excited about right now that are creating the work right now that we're going to see in our continuing canon. We've approached that in a variety of ways. I think since I've been at Lincoln Center, we've tried to take out entirely new themes, which has been a lot of fun.

Last year, we did all voices of immigrant populations in New York City. Not just expanding who's in the songbook, but what it means to be American. Then this year, we've had the pleasure of working with George on really thinking about the history of what it means to create the canon of American Songbook.

Alison Stewart: Yes. George, how did you come aboard? What were your initial thoughts?

George C. Wolfe: Well, Shanta asked me and so I said, "Okay. Yes, absolutely. I'm waiting here doing nothing." It's interesting. I have this fantasy. When I first moved to New York, 9,000 years ago, I had this dream about, I wish I could have been there when. I wish I could have been at the Palladium the first time Tito Puente played. I wish I could have been at Bon Soir, the first time 19-year-old Barbra Streisand played and sang.

I had this fantasy of time traveling and venturing to all these places. I did go to the Paradise Garage. Just to be in those moments, and what's really fascinating to me is the city has such power and command and you want to belong, and when you arrive, you don't belong. What you end up doing is you end up finding people like you who are looking to belong, and then a space evolves, and then a culture evolves, and then the sound evolves. I wanted to celebrate that phenomenon of how everybody comes to the city and claims it and owns it their way.

Alison Stewart: Shanta, tell us about the four different venues. You could have gone on and on, but you obviously had time limitations. These four venues, how did you decide on Cafe Society, Paradise Garage, Savoy Ballroom, and Palladium Ballroom? Not to be confused with the Palladium that we all danced our butts off on the streets. [laughs]

Shanta Thake: That's right. This is really in the conversation with George of how do we really celebrate not just these clubs, but what these clubs meant at the time, what communities were being celebrated, and how do we hold these histories so that we remember that these same things are happening right now? I think holding these clubs, some of them dingy, low-ceilinged venues, and bringing that into a Lincoln Center environment and saying, "Actually, these stories really belong on these stages. They couldn't have existed without these amazing clubs at the time."

It was really a mix of thinking about who are the communities that we want to bring in, how do we make sure they feel at home at Lincoln Center right now, and what was the seed of that. We really could have gone to 20 different clubs, but this is where we landed.

Alison Stewart: George, how did you develop programming that would honor each of the spaces? Did you think about artists first? Do you think about the music, the history?

George C. Wolfe: I was thinking about the people, the people who went there, and why they went there. That's what the idea of looking for a place to belong. The music and the fact that the Cafe Society existed just off of Sheridan Square, and it was this inclusive energy but also if they decided that somebody wasn't politically savvy, they would kick them out. It was a place where Zero Mostel could perform and then Billie Holiday, and this warm embrace but a standard of being in the moment and honoring the future and honoring the direction that the country and the city should be going in. I was just really very, very, very, very fascinated by that.

Then I would turn to Shanta and her team of people and go, "Who are the parallel? What's the parallel version of that? How is that existing now? What's happening in little corners and cracks and crevices and in clubs where the people are going to define the rhythms and the thoughts and the ideas for this generation and the ones to follow?" Not trafficking in nostalgia, and not trafficking in what was but just exploring and celebrating the combustion of that which is new.

Alison Stewart: Honoring.

George C. Wolfe: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Honoring what they were. [crosstalk]

George C. Wolfe: Honoring it by infusing it with an energy that honors what's happening now. It's once again, nostalgia is nostalgia boo boo boo, we don't let this out there.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Shanta, I was thinking about the series that you had. It was a little bit bittersweet, and that so many venues had to close during the pandemic. There's this sense of, we all came to understand how important community is and how important it is to come together, and how important it is to support these locations. There's not really a question there, but I just thought about that, as I was thinking about, "Gosh, these places of yesteryear. There were places that were terrific, that I went to that five years ago, that aren't here now."

Shanta Thake: It's true. That's the way New York always works. Certainly, we got to fast forward there. I think that is part of the energy of saying, New York is always born again. There's always a community that's finding a space, whether it was the space that it was yesterday is almost not important. A new space is being created right now. There are artists flocking to the city today.

I moved to New York in 2002, and I had the great pleasure of working for George C. Wolfe. It was at the Public Theater right after 9/11 when you would think, "Wow, what a hard time to move to New York." Instead, it was this incredible. What I came into was this cultural explosion. It was all around, and it felt like I just couldn't get enough but it was all around, and artists had new stories to tell, new narratives, new people coming in into this very traumatic time, but also bringing this new energy, a new life to the city. I see that happening right now. It's important for us to know that culture doesn't stop culture is all around us. If we can just shine a light in these corners and bring them into the center, I think that's our job, and it's a joy to do it.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Lincoln Center's series "American Songbook: A Place You Belong" with chief artistic director of Lincoln Center, Shanta Thake, and theater director George C. Wolfe. The Harlem Savoy Ballroom, George, it's a classic. They had the Savoy Lindy Hoppers. What did you want to explore about that swing environment for this event? What did you want to your point honor, but also move forward when we think about the Savoy?

George C. Wolfe: It's very interesting. At one point, there was a riot that happened in Harlem, and the police had recently shut down the Savoy because Black and white couples started to dance together. Social culture is believed, and thinkers believe that one of the reasons why the riot happened is because the Savoy was closed down, that that wasn't an expression, that expression, that release, that potency could happen. The idea that music and dance and performance is crucial to the spiritual, emotional, and mental well-being of a community is such an incredible idea. It's so completely and wonderfully true.

There would be two stages of band on one end and another band on the other, and they'd be going at it, and then the dancers in the middle would be going at it. It's the idea that there is this energy of competitiveness, which cultivates not boundaries, but culture and sharing and exploring and discovery, and so that the combustible nature of it was happening inside of this building, that was also crucial. Crucial to the Harlem community at that time. Crucial to have that released, to have that sense of belonging, to have that unbelievable sense of community.

Alison Stewart: Joy.

George C. Wolfe: Joy. Exactly. Absolutely. Well, you can't have a community without joy.

Alison Stewart: The Palladium Ballroom in Midtown was known as a home to mambo, an important venue in Latin music. The event site features the performer Tito Rodriguez, Jr., a timbales player and bandleader, son of Puerto Rican singer and bandleader Tito Rodriguez, who used to play at the Palladium. Let's hear a little bit of Rodriguez Junior's work.

[music]

Alison Stewart: I can keep listening to this, but I have more questions. [laughs]. Shanta, why did he seem like the right choice?

Shanta Thake: For obvious reasons, he's really holding the legacy of his father and pushing it forward. I think this is also part of our via series. We do an ongoing series that celebrates salsa, and, of course, these forms that are coming out of New York all the time and evolving and changing. The lines around the block. These are all free also at the Palladium, the Paradise Garage Night and the Savoy Night are all free to the public. Our ongoing salsa series features artists like Tito, and the lines are around the block. People love to just come and dance, and have this experience of being together, and I think now more than ever, but Tito's obviously just a legend in a making.

George C. Wolfe: One interesting thing is, at one point, I directed Eartha Kitt. Eartha Kitt said to me, George Abbott, who had directed 857 Broadway musicals, she said, George Abbott and I used to go to the Palladium and dance the mambo. [laughs]. Just the idea of Eartha Kitt and George Abbott dancing the mambo at the Palladium, I have never gotten that image out of my head. [laughs].

Shanta Thake: It should never leave one's head.

[laughter]

George C. Wolfe: It's happening right now as I speak. I'm seeing them in my head. That was just the idea. This was on 53rd at Broadway.

Alison Stewart: Paradise Garage used to be right around the corner from where we are right now at 84 King Street. It is the one that was operated into the '80s, probably people listening right now who maybe went to Paradise Garage. The concert is being curated by a Bed-Stuy venue, C'Mon Everybody.

Shanta Thake: C'Mon Everybody, which is a queer BIPOC-centered venue and owned. They do incredible dance parties. They're a real home for the community in Bed-Stuy and have really cultivated this community. We thought we want to do this in partnership. Everything we do really wants to be in partnership with the city around us. They've brought us an incredible couple of duos, the Dragon Sisters, and the Illustrious Black. It's going to be an insane night on the dance floor for that one, too.

Alison Stewart: We've got Ariana DeBose who's going to perform this Saturday in a concert called "Authenticity". She's going to be in the studio in just a few minutes. George, what would you want to say about this performance?

George C. Wolfe: It's so exciting and thrilling when you love something, when you love theater, when you love performance. Well, whatever it is that you love, that somebody comes along, and then walking embodiment of the next phase of that thing, which you love.

Alison Stewart: The name of the series is ''American Songbook: A Place You Belong''. It is at Lincoln Center. I've been speaking with Shanta Thake, Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center, and Theater Director George C. Wolfe. Let's go out in a little bit of music from someone you'll hear in the series, Nathaniel Rateliff. This is Everybody's Talkin.

[music]

There's more All Of It on the way. Ariana DeBose will be our guest right after the news.

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