Nuyorican Poets Café
Encyclopedia
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
in Alphabet City
Alphabet City, Manhattan
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the Lower East Side and East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is also known as Loisaida, a Spanglish adaptation of 'Lower East Side'. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter...
, Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement
Nuyorican Movement
The Nuyorican Movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and has become a forum for poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
, comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
.
History
Founded circa 1973, the NuyoricanNuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York State especially the New York City metropolitan area, or of their descendants...
Poets Café began operating in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
apartment of writer, poet, and Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
professor Miguel Algarín
Miguel Algarín
Miguel Algarín , is a Puerto Rican poet, writer, co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, and retired Rutgers University professor of English.-Early years:...
with assistance from co-founders Miguel Piñero
Miguel Piñero
Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican playwright, actor, and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement.-Early years:...
, Bimbo Rivas, and Lucky Cienfuegos.
By 1975, the number of poets involved with the venture outgrew that space, so Algarín rented an Irish
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
pub, the Sunshine Café on East 6th Street, and they christened it "The Nuyorican Poets Café". Some of the featured poets at this time included, founders Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero and Lucky Cienfuegos. Also poets, Jorge Brandon aka El Coco que Habla, Sandra María Esteves
Sandra María Esteves
Sandra María Esteves is an American poet, playwright, and graphic artist. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and is one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement. She has published numerous collections of poetry and has conducted literary programs at organizations including the...
, Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri , was a Nuyorican poet and playwright who co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement.-Early years :...
, Bimbo Rivas, Victor Hernández Cruz
Victor Hernández Cruz
Victor Hernández Cruz is a Puerto Rican poet.-Life:He moved to New York in 1954. He began writing at fifteen, and published his first collections of poetry in the late 1960s....
, Tato Laviera
Tato Laviera
Tato Laviera is a Nuyorican poet. Born in Puerto Rico, he moved to New York City with his family in 1960.Laviera's poetry, which is written sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, more often in Spanglish, addresses language, cultural identity, race, and memory, particularly as it affects the...
, Piri Thomas
Piri Thomas
Piri Thomas was a writer and poet whose autobiography Down These Mean Streets became a best-seller.-Early years:...
, Jesus Papoleto Meléndez, and José Angel Figueroa were some of the poets featured during the mid to late 1970s. By 1980, the overflow of audiences led them to purchase their current building at 236 East 3rd Street so as to expand their activities and programs. During this time the second wave of Nuyorican Poets, featured at the café, emerged including Nancy Mercado
Nancy Mercado
Nancy Mercado is a poet, editor and educator whose work focuses on environmental issues, on various kinds of injustice and on the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States...
and Martín Espada
Martín Espada
Martín Espada is a Latino poet, and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.- Life and career :Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York...
.
In explaining the philosophy of the venture, co-founder Algarín said:
We must listen to one another. We must respect one another's habits and we must share the truth and the integrity that the voice of the poet so generously provides.
Poets
Bob Holman
Bob Holman is a poet and poetry activist in the United States.- Career :After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, Bob Holman founded, with Sara Miles and Susie Timmons, the NYC Poetry Calendar, a free monthly publication with all the readings and poets "on the same page"...
, Saul Williams
Saul Williams
Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...
, Sarah Jones, and Beau Sia
Beau Sia
-Biography:Sia was born in Ohio. He is of Chinese-Filipino descent. Raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Sia discovered spoken word poetry on MTV as a teenager...
as former slammasters.
In the 1990s a new group of Nuyorican poets and performing artists emerged to read at the café. Some of these artists include Willie Perdomo
Willie Perdomo
-Overview:Willie Perdomo is a prize-winning Nuyorican poet and children's book author. He is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime , Postcards of El Barrio , and Smoking Lovely , which received a PEN American Center Beyond Margins Award...
, Edwin Torres
Edwin Torres (poet)
Edwin Torres is a "Nuyorican" poet.-Early years:Torres's parents moved from Puerto Rico and settled in the borough of The Bronx in New York City. His father died when he was young and he was then raised by his mother and her brother Martin. Martin provided comfort and family support...
, Caridad de la Luz
Caridad de la Luz
Caridad De la Luz , a.k.a. "La Bruja" , is a poet, actress and activist.-Early years:De la Luz, whose parents moved to New York City from Puerto Rico, was born and raised in the South Bronx. There she also received her primary and secondary education...
aka La Bruja, Mariposa (María Teresa Fernández) and Shaggy Flores
Shaggy Flores
"Shaggy Flores" is a Nuyorican poet, writer and African Diaspora scholar who forms part of the Nuyorical literary movement.-Early years:...
. Around the same time, 1996, Emanuel Xavier
Emanuel Xavier
In 2005, Suspect Thoughts Press published Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry, a collection Emanuel Xavier edited. The anthology featured the work of thirteen openly queer spoken word artists and new work by the editor himself including: "Legendary", "Outside" and "A Simple Poem." The...
also emerged from the neo-Nuyorican poetry movement. Others who at one time or another have performed at the Café include, Esmeralda Santiago
Esmeralda Santiago
Esmeralda Santiago is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.-Early life:Santiago was born on 17 May 1948 in the San Juan district of Villa Palmeras, Santurce, Puerto Rico. In 1961, she came to the continental United States when she was thirteen years old, the...
, Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
, Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange born October 18, 1948, is an American playwright, and poet. As a self proclaimed black feminist, much of the content of her work addresses issues relating to race and feminism....
, Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
, Zoraida Santiago
Zoraida Santiago
Dr. Zoraida Santiago is a noted composer and singer of Puerto Rican cultural themes.-Early years:Santiago was born and educated in Santurce, Puerto Rico where she developed an interest in musical instruments at a very young age. Her parents had her take piano lessons as a child. She also took...
, Keven Powell and Daniel Dumile
Daniel Dumile
Daniel Dumile is a hip hop artist who has taken on several stage names in his career, most notably MF DOOM, where the "MF" stands for metal face, and for tracks he has produced, metal fingers...
.
Some Nuyorican
Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York State especially the New York City metropolitan area, or of their descendants...
poets who continue to read and perform at the café include, Sandra María Esteves, Tato Laviera, Jesús Papoleto Melendez, Nancy Mercado, Edwin Torres, Lemon Andersen, Bonafide Rojas, Caridad de la Luz aka La Bruja, Mariposa, and Jack Castillo. In June 2002, Nuevo Flamenco guitarists Val Ramos
Val Ramos
Val Ramos is a native of New York City and is considered to be one of the best Nuevo Flamenco guitarists in the United States. Val has toured the United States and Spain with his ensemble which includes his brother Jose Ramon Ramos. At the early age of 14, he studied Flamenco guitar with Spanish ...
opened for three-time Puerto Rican Grammy nominee Danny Rivera
Danny Rivera
Danny Rivera is a Puerto Rican singer and songwriter who was born in San Juan whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is well-known in Puerto Rico for his political activism.-Musical career:...
at the Nuyorican Poets Café. Algarín, now retired from Rutgers, remains a board member of the Nuyorican Poets Café.
Visual Artists
Visual artists which exhibited their work at the café include interrnational documentary photographer Manuel Rivera-OrtizManuel Rivera-Ortiz
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz is an American documentary photographer of Puerto Rican descent, the author of several photographic collections and the recipient of a number of awards. He is best known for his documentary photographs of people's living conditions in less developed countries...
.
Documentaries
In 1994, Nuyorican Poets Café was the subject of a 14-minute documentary entitled Nuyorican Poets Café. Directed, produced and edited by Ray Santisteban, the documentary features founder Miguel Algarin along with Willie Perdomo, Ed Morales, Pedro Pietri, and Carmen Bardeguez Brown. Nuyorican Poets Café won "Best Documentary" at the 1995 New Latino Filmmaker's Festival in Los AngelesLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
In 1996, the Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Slam Team was the subject of a feature length documentary entitled SlamNation
SlamNation
SlamNation is a documentary film by director Paul Devlin. The film follows the National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon.It follows the 1996 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, OR...
. Directed by Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin (filmmaker)
Paul Josiah Devlin is a sports editor and documentary filmmaker.A five-time Emmy winner for his work on NBC's Olympics and CBS's Tour de France, Paul Devlin's films include Power Trip, which screened in 60 countries, theatrically across the United States and on PBS's Independent Lens, was nominated...
, the documentary follows Nuyorican Poetry Slam founder Bob Holman and the poets of the 1996 Nuyorican team (Saul Williams
Saul Williams
Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...
, Beau Sia, Jessica Care Moore and muMs) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, OR. The documentary also features performances by Marc Smith, Taylor Mali
Taylor Mali
Taylor Mali is an American slam poet, humorist, teacher, and voiceover artist.-Life:A 10th-generation native of New York City, Taylor Mali graduated from the Collegiate School, a private school for boys, in 1983. He received a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College in 1987 and an M.A. in...
, Patricia Smith, among others.