MUSIC THROUGH MY OFFICE WINDOW

A look back at a year curated by the cars and delivery men of Brooklyn

KEYON HARROLD

A regular reader asked recently why I didn’t post a top ten list of albums, music, and concerts for 2023. I had to tell him my days of weighing in at the end of any year on the trends and currents in popular music via a list are long gone. I still listen to new music, but not with the same critical ear as in my music critic prime. I go on various websites (OkayPlayer, Afro-Punk, Jazz is Dead) and click on Spotify and Apple playlists more out of curiosity than passion. There are quite a few working performers I admire, from singers Madison McFerrin, Maxwell, and H.E.R. to instrumentalists Kenyon Harrold, Shabaka, and Marcus Miller, but trying to keep up with every new “bop” is a losing proposition for me. A lot of what I do know comes through my office window.

MADISON MCFERRIN

I live on a busy boulevard in Brooklyn. Buses, trucks, scooters, elementary school kids, men from the nearby shelter, and hipsters on their way to Bushwick’s night life, fill my office with the typical NYC cacophony. It makes me a cultural easedropper even when I have my window shut tight. So much of my understanding of current music comes from the passing parade on my street. A few observations based on that very specific data base.

Except for a few years in Los Angeles and Queens, I’ve lived my whole life in Brooklyn. So when I say in 2023, I heard the fewest hip-hop records coming from cars and boom boxes since the early ‘80s, that’s based on “the streets.” It was hip hop’s so called 50th anniversary year, yet it no longer ruled the city’s sonic landscape. Even at the peak of the summer, I didn’t hear the sounds of block rocking beats I was accustomed to. Hip hop is now mainstream pop. It hasn’t been a alternative music with an oppositional stance in quite some time. As such its now as likely to be sonic wallpaper as an intrusive sound that demands attention.

The number one genre that penetrated my window was Afro-Beats, its lithe rhythms and cheery melodies, amplified by the big audio dynamic of topless cars and motor bike. Not far behind was reggaeton of the Bad Bunny variety and classic R&B (Al Green remains love.) Unlike so many previous BK summers, I didn’t hear a unifying, undeniable street anthem that dominated from passing cars to local bodegas. Maybe that’s a reflection that one or two urban radio stations no longer dominate the market. Maybe the musical taste of 21st century Brooklynites is now too fragmented for any one record to rise up. The streets of my once 90% black neighborhood are now the stomping grounds of white college age folks, Latino families and delivery men, and a sprinkling of West Africans. This is only “Do the Right Thing” Brooklyn on some, no longer all, blocks.

GARY BARTZ

For the record my favorite music moments (outside my office) in 2023 were the Jazz Night shows curated by Stetch Armstrong at the Nine Orchard Hotel (sax legend Gary Bartz, in particular, was magic in May), attending a flameco performance in Barcelona in June, the all New York MCs hip hop 50th show at Radio City hosted by DJ Cassidy in July (Milk is still chillin’), my friend DJ Belinda Becker spinning in Lincoln Center plaza after an outdoor screening of ‘Flower’in July, and seeing Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium on my birthday in September. All very different musical experiences and all deeply satisfying.