“If I didn’t have my stereo system, then I would feel like something is wrong,” said Kwami Coleman, a musicologist and assistant professor at New York University. “You know, music has the ability to comfort, it has the ability to kind of put us in a mood that might be better than the one that we woke up with.”

Before embarking on 2022, Black people reflected on their music tastes this year, what sparked joy and what was sonically significant. 

“I’m a New Yorker, which means that the kind of rap music I grew up listening to was a very New York base rap style,” Coleman said. “If anything, it was New York, New Jersey and Philly. And because we were in lockdown, and things like that, I had ample time to catch up on ‘Hip-Hop Evolution’.”

 Coleman took time this past year to educate himself about rap—a genre he loves. Through documentaries and podcasts, he dove deep into rap and trap history. 

“It was interesting for me to learn about the roots of trap music in the south, whether it’s like T.I. in Atlanta, or the Memphis sound, Three 6 [Mafia], or what’s happening in Houston,” he said. “I always knew that the waves of rap in the last five to seven years had been influenced by the South. But to hear how particular styles of drum programming—because I love the drums—have influenced so many people has been really interesting.” 

Exploring musical histories reminded Coleman of the impact music dissemination has, how old sounds get reinvented in contemporary contexts and piqued curiosity about the ways that artists experiment.

“Sometimes we don’t think about some of these musical artists, in more popular music, as being experimentalists,” he said. “Experimentation is definitely at the root of a lot of new sounds. In listening to new trends, my question is, was that something that somebody might have arrived at experimentally, then people heard it and kind of latched on to it?”

As artists explore and experiment with their sounds, Coleman was encouraged to do the same in his listening.

“Staying home and being still, I think invited me to explore and really go vast,” Coleman said. 

When recounting the artists that held his attention this year, Coleman cited an interest in Los Angeles producers Iman Omari and Knxwledge for their ability to create a groove and keen eye for samples, respectively. He mentioned another L.A. native, Georgia Anna Muldrow, as one that he sees as a guide for how independent artists of all levels can appeal to their community. Branching out a bit, his Dominican heritage built an interest in bilingual artists, and American rapper BIA is one that Coleman says “is a reminder for us of how vast the Afro-descendant community is.” 

Some of the most popular artists referenced by Black listeners in their twenties were newly formed funk and soul duo Silk Sonic, comprised of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, Doja Cat with her album “Planet Her,” British-breakout star PinkPantheress, who found her start on Tik Tok, rapper Aminé and Adele, who closed out the year with the release of her long-awaited album “30.” Among some of the most praised albums by these listeners was the three-time Grammy-nominated “Heaux Tales,” by Jazmine Sullivan, which Rolling Stone calls “a complete constellation of love and loss.”

Other listeners focused on artists that are slightly less in the mainstream, under indie and alt genres, and pop variations. Avery Reyna, 21, had their attention on releases from The Marías, Faye Webster, Remi Wolf and Men I Trust. These artists, according to Reyna, set the scene for the rest of the decade by melding stylistic influences to “explore their sound without needing to fit into one rigid box.” Reyna also mentioned Spellling—a Black, female artist who creates experimental or art-pop music—thriving, as a significant cultural moment. There’s something to be said about the relationship between a fan and an artist. Through a deep appreciation of an artist and their work, their success becomes a personal win for fans. 

“I think Spellling finally getting her flowers for her role in pushing the boundaries of art-pop with her last album has really caught my eye,” they said. “She is one of the very few Black artists in art-pop and combines so many sounds together that finding projects [to listen to this year] which attempted the same thing she did was actually really hard.” 

Maureen Zeufack, 20, grew up in a household with global music influences and continued to cultivate her interest in non-American artists this year. 

“Music is not just an American thing,” Zeufack said. “It [international music] really just broadens your horizons and makes you a better person, and better a listener.” 

Zeufack took pride in seeing her favorite international artists—particularly Black female artists like Tems, Bree Runway and Lous and the Yakuza—start to gain traction among American audiences.

“Dark-skinned Black women—especially if they’re international—they don’t get that shine that a lot of people are getting,” Zeufack said. “These women deserve every single thing in the world because they are so talented. For Tems, I think her big break was through ‘Essence,’ through WizKid. It was really cool to have her come through and break out into mainstream because as I discovered she is a consummate performer and artist in her own right.” 

Average listeners and musicologists alike, music kept a lot of us sane this year. With 2022 around the corner, Black music fans are looking forward to the future: groundbreaking artistry, the continuing return of live music, more love, life and most important, more listening. 

“The world is a lot smaller when we get to share music and share different vibes and feelings,” said listener Maureen Zeufack. “I don’t know, it’s just a great thing! And I think more people should do it.”

Listen below  to all the artists referenced in the piece and many others recommended by the Black community,

The post Sonic Serenity: A review of the music that carried Black folks through 2021 appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

In her English Honors Thesis class she is the only Black student who made the cut. 

 “It’s so upsetting, because I know there were some other really smart Black students who were interested in writing a thesis too, and like I know the process in very selective and this may not be intentional, but somehow it’s only the white students who were given the chance to be enrolled,” Thompson said. “Like it’s already so disappointing that all my classes are dominated by white people, and this is just like the cherry on top.”

 Thompson is just one of the many Black students at NYU who finds that there is a problem with racial representation, in spite of the fact that NYU claims to have committed itself to building diversity, inclusion and equity. Every year, NYU states that it has exceeded its diversity rate from the previous years, having admitted its most diverse class, with African American students representing 12 percent and Latinx students representing 22 percent of the undergraduate students accepted this year. In spite of this, the largest percent of its students and faculty members remains white, and students like Thompson feel like they aren’t able to experience the diverse and inclusive space that NYU claims to have created.

 “I literally enter my classes, and each time I think in my head that where are they all? It’s so problematic and so frustrating,” Thompson said.

 The diversity differs among different schools at NYU, with a higher rate of diversity at Tandon, which makes up 7.14 percent of the 12 percent Black undergraduate students admitted, as compared to the other schools.

 “I have classes at both Tandon and CAS, so I can clearly see the difference. At CAS it’s like a lottery system or a chance meeting if you even find one other Black person in your class, but at Tandon I always find at least one or two other Black students in each class,” Josiah Jones, another Black student at NYU said. “That’s not a lot, but at least it’s something.”

In response, NYU has an entire team in the Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity and Strategic Innovation, that works towards mitigating racism and microaggressions and increasing diversity and inclusion. They set policies against racism, they prepare toolkits and resources on trans-inclusive practices and anti-racism, they have programs on anti-racism education, and they plan social events organized around the aim of achieving diversity and inclusion. 

But for some students it’s not enough.

 “I think NYU wants to be diverse, they are aspiring to be diverse and inclusive, but they just don’t have the right resources to be all of that right now,” Reed said. “It almost feels like they want something but don’t know how to achieve it, they kind of remind me of a naïve child that way.”

 Along with the fact that NYU’s claims about diversity are not reflected in the number of Black students in the classrooms, the environment for Black students is also a point of concern in terms of microaggressions and other inconveniences.

Jones, who previously attended New Kent High School in Connecticut, which is a predominantly white school, said he didn’t expect to come across microaggressions at NYU the way he did at high school. But that’s not what happened.

 “Surprisingly, in terms of being respectful, there wasn’t much of a noticeable difference in the classrooms at NYU and my high school, like I’ve met way too many people here who are just as bad as the people I went to high school with” Jones said. “It’s not really overtly hostile stuff, but some people ask me what made me as a Black guy choose to come here and educate myself, almost like I’m supposed to have some backstory to explain myself, some of them just look at me with this really subtle disgust as if they don’t want to interact with me.”

 Thompson said that she was forced to change her thesis topic about Black authors because she didn’t have enough support from the faculty members.

 “The English department is mainly dominated by white students and professors, and so when I wanted to focus on texts by Black authors in my thesis, I didn’t have enough resources. Like I couldn’t get a Black professor who is invested in the topic to be my thesis advisor,” Thompson said. “Now I’m focusing on Virginia Woolf for my thesis, I don’t have any option.”

 Along with diversity, NYU’s claims about inclusion and integration are also questionable. Renee Reed, another Black student at CAS, said that NYU isn’t helping to facilitate the inclusion and integration among different races that it claims to be committed towards. In fact, Reed said that they are making integration more difficult through a certain arrangement of dorm spaces.

 “I lived in Rubin Hall in my freshman year, which is a low-cost dorm, and almost everyone there was Black or Hispanic, so naturally those are the friends I have today, like I’m not friends with a single white or Asian student. And it almost feels like NYU facilitated this segregation in a way because I know there are low income white students here too, and none of them were put up in Rubin,” Reed said. “Weirdly, now that I’m an RA, I see the same thing repeating with new students too, like people with similar racial backgrounds are usually put in the same room.”

 Jones said he experienced backlash from NYU when he and some other members at the National Society of Black Students Engineering of NYU were trying to facilitate an event for Black students to meet students of other races.

 “There’s literally no cross-racial communication happening, because white students mostly stick with white students, Asian students mostly stick with Asian students, Black students mostly stick with Black or Hispanic students,” Jones said. “And the one time I and some other members at NSBE tried to organize an event to help with this problem, NYU literally gave us so many problems. Like it almost felt like NYU was trying to make integration and inclusion harder for us Black students rather than helping out with it.”

 According to a study by Hallinan and Williams et al, there are major benefits that students receive from interracial friendships, which can’t be received by having only same race friendships. These include greater social competence, higher educational aspirations, improved academic performances, higher cultural awareness and a greater scale of confidence.

 “Like literally, what is a diverse school if you’re not having a shared and inclusive experience, like so much of our learning experience gets stolen from us just by the fact that we’re not bouncing off ideas among interracial friend groups,” Reed said. “And think of it, if we would have an integrated experience as students, it would be so beneficial for us when we would work in different kinds of racial settings later in life.”

The post Despite uptick in diversity numbers, Black students say inclusive spaces are rare appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

 While the racist undertones of mispronouncing of names are usually understated, when it is analyzed within the context of historical and present-day racism, African students, like myself,  find that they are actually subtle daily insults that support a racial and cultural hierarchy of minority inferiority., Enduring these subtle experiences with racism can have a lasting impact on the self-perceptions and worldviews of students. One of these students is Chinenye Nwume, a Nigerian student at the University of Illinois Chicago.

 “I never thought of my name as anything special, but coming here my name became an indicator and reminder of the fact that I’m different,” Nwume said. “I found myself wishing that I had an easy name to pronounce or at least one that would easily have a nickname coined out of it.”

Nwume and several other Africans who migrate to the U.S. are often forced to coin “Americanized” nicknames or change their names entirely. Eventually, a month after she started at college in 2018, Nwume coined a nickname because of the pressure placed by others who couldn’t pronounce her name.

 “I had people call me Chichi and I really hated that name. But the crazy thing is that I told people to call me that because I felt it would help me fit in better but it just made me feel even more out of place,” she said.

 Nwume said that this contributed to her loneliness since she was not able to make friends for several months in college.

 “I ordinarily have a hard time connecting with people, and sometimes I feel my name makes it worse because I have literally felt invisible when people begin to ignore me in a social circle after I introduce myself,” she said. “This isn’t the only effect, but it’s the one that affects me most. I honestly don’t know if this will follow me for the rest of my life, but has followed me long enough for me to believe it will.”

 Fegor Imieye, 21, a Nigerian student, changed her name to something she hated because several people kept discriminating against her because of her name.

 “I feel very irritated because my name is two syllables and very easy to pronounce but at this point, I am used to it,” Imieye said. “I just started introducing myself as ‘Faye’ instead.”

 Ebubechukwu Nwafor, a Nigerian native, shortened her name to “Bubae” which is easier for Americans to pronounce. She too claims that after so many people kept mispronouncing her name for so many years, now she is mostly immune to it. However, her name is still so important to her.

 “My name means ‘miracle of God’ and although it’s a common name in Nigeria, it makes me feel special,” she said.

 Nwume believes that the way people in America make her and other Africans feel about their names is yet another form of racist micro-aggressions.

 “While I feel there are harsher ways of discriminating, this is one of those harmful things that just eat you up slowly and make guys like yourself into believing it’s not a big deal, even though it is,” she said. “This experience is not common to a lot of Americans so a lot of them can’t empathize with us because it is such a specific experience to us.

 Nwafor too has experienced microaggressions from several people especially in Georgia Tech where she attends college.

 “Professors would save my name for last on roll call, or sometimes not even say it at all, even when it was obvious they skipped me,” she said. “Same goes for asking or answering questions. I would get ignored sometimes.”

 Imieye said because her name is African she has experienced blatantly racist assumptions.

“My school sent an email to African international students during winter saying that we should get clothes and coats from a shelter because they think we are all poor,” she said.

 Then there are people like Oluwademilade Ayeye who don’t give anyone the chance to mispronounce their names.

 “When people mispronounce my name it irritates the living daylight out of me, so I don’t even give anyone that opportunity and I just go by ‘Demi’,” she said.

 Before Ayeye came to the U.S. in 2018 to attend NYU, she came prepared to introduce herself to people with her shortened name so that people would not butcher it since her first name—which means “God has crowned me”—is extremely important to her.

 “My name is a signifier of all that I am, all that I want to be, and all that I am expected to be. It holds the hopes that my parents held for who I will become but in growing up, it now holds the hope of who I wish to become,” Ayeye said.

 When people don’t make an attempt to pronounce her name properly, oftentimes, Ayeye does not educate them because she doesn’t believe it’s her job to open the minds of small-minded people.

 “I think it has something to do with how they subconsciously see me as ‘the other’ and more often than not, the other is met with much less empathy,” she said.

 Imieye believes that because Americans view Africa and Africans as exotic and far away, they already have a mindset that African names are complicated.

 “I feel it is damaging because our names are a huge part of our identity and when the pronunciations are trivialized, it leads to a loss of representation and feelings of isolation,” she said. “Also having to even use short nicknames results in Africans feeling like they have to Westernize themselves to fit in or be more palatable.”

 Ayeye believes this is not just harmful but intentionally racist.

 “It’s not a harmless mistake to mispronounce African names. It’s ignorant behavior,” she said. “They’ve managed to pronounce Tchaikovsky and other complicated non-African names so why can’t they pronounce ours?” 

The post African students says mispronouncing their names is a form of racism appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Growing up half Nigerian in Tokyo, Japan, Esther Chinwuko, was constantly bullied in class because of her dark skin and curly hair. This made her start to think there was indeed something wrong with the way she looked. When her dad found out about this, he moved his family to Sikeston, Missouri when she was 15 years old. Now, Chinwuko is grateful that her identity was forged in the U.S.

Esther Chinwuko

“Coming to America, seeing people with different backgrounds and different ethnicities, I started to have more confidence in identity,” she said, adding: “I got to meet a lot of African friends in the U.S. You know, identity confidence as a Black woman in the U.S., those kinds of things made me change a lot.”

Chinwuko, who grew up watching a lot of American TV series, also admits that this experience in America was different from her expectations.

“Growing up in Japan, thinking about America, I watched ‘High School Musical’, ‘Sweet Life’ (of Zack and Cody) all that stuff and everything was amazing. I thought that there would be no racism. Actually no, it was worse than where I’m from,” said Chinwuko, recalling the first few years she moved to America. “I thought that being adults, they know basic things, but I met people who don’t know how to respect even younger kids. And so, seeing that through my eyes, I realized that education is very important coming into the U.S.” 

Chinwuko earned a college diploma two years ago and she currently works at Verizon as a network engineer. She  said that thriving as a first-generation immigrant is a feeling of  constantly being under  pressure.

“I had so much pressure, especially from my parents,” she said. “And we all moved here because of the education and what if I mess it up, you know? Still, I do have a pressure of how to take care of my family, so I think being an immigrant, first generation, that pressure will never disappear.”

The number of Black immigrants and their contributions to the country are increasing, according to Pew Research Center: There are more than four million Black immigrants in the U.S. More than a quarter of Black immigrants have college degrees and 74 percent of them are fluent in English, 24 percent higher than all immigrants. 

Despite such performances, Black immigrants have the second-lowest average income in the U.S following Black Americans and are least likely to be homeowners, due to longstanding racial inequality. 

Reacting to such racial inequalities before the Black Lives Matter movement was on the rise, Chinwuko posted a video on her YouTube channel that talks about her identity and calls for social justice.

“When Black Lives Matter happened, I got so many views on my video and a lot of Japanese people commented,” Chinwuko said. “It is true that it’s happening not only in the U.S. but in Asia, so I think I was able to have an opportunity for Japanese people to understand what Black Lives Matter is like and what is being Black and living in an Asian country.”

Nina Oforji, a 25-year-old Nigerian immigrant also  experienced racial disparities when she immigrated from  Nigeria to the U.S.

Nina Oforji

“I thought that America was more fun in a sense, but then when you grow older, reality hits and you realize that there are a lot of things in America that need to be worked on,” said Oforji. “It was just because of the racial issues in America that made people more hostile to Black people and that was like a reality check because in Nigeria we don’t have that.”

Oforji’s family moved to the U.S. hoping to find different opportunities when she was five years old. She said  her mom felt stifled in Nigeria, unable to be independent due to conservative gender norms.

“I can make my own mold because I have the opportunity to make money and also be in control of my own life and not have to fit the standard of what it means to be like a woman,” said Oforji.

 But Oforji had a lot to learn about America  and  she had no help as a first generation immigrant who grew up in America. She had passed what she learned to her siblings.

“ I’m the oldest out of my family, so it was really hard because there was no one there that could tell me how to navigate the world,” she said. “I basically had to learn everything by myself.” 

When she came to America, Oforji noticed a subtle tension between African immigrants and African Americans arising from history and culture that frustrated her.

“I was aware of the feud, and it was about ‘oh you’re African, so you’re not Black,’ or ‘you’re Black, you’re not African,’ it was just a weird identity reflection on myself when I came to the U.S. that not many people got to experience unless you’re African,” she said. “There’s this elephant in the room that nobody wants to speak about sometimes and we just want to leave it alone because we want to keep the peace.”

 Oforji said the movie “Black Panther”  resonates with the tension. “Black Panther “is Marvel Studios’ superhero movie of which the main story is about crowning T’Challa as king of Wakanda after his father’s death that is challenged by Killmonger who grew up in America and aspires to reform policies and revolutionize the country.

“The perfect description of this dynamic is ‘Black Panther’ because they are basically talking about Africans versus African Americans,” said Oforji.

Despite the feud within the Black community, police brutality and social injustice that put the Black community in misery became an impetus for Black people to come together, she said.

“I think it just made it clearer that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, they all see you the same,” Oforji said. “I think the Black Lives Matter Movement reminded all of us to forget the complexity of our differences and realize that we’re the same in the humane aspect.”

 Oforji said  that she hopes to see improvement in how immigrants are viewed and treated.

“One thing I would like to see America do better in is how they treat immigrants,” she said. “The circumstances that someone is born into shouldn’t define the amount of humanity they deserve. Ut’s important to treat everyone with the utmost compassion and care especially those in the margins because at the end of the day anyone can end up on the reverse side of their circumstances.”

The post Young adult Black immigrants forge new lives and battle racial inequalities appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“‘Where the f–k are we going?’” Lynch asked the driver, before settling into the car. “‘You’ll see,’ they told me.”

A few minutes later, they arrived at what used to be his local Chinese restaurant, just up the block from where he grew up in the Lower East side, now permanently closed. At the gate, everything clicked for Lynch.

“No one in the neighborhood knew what was going on, but I knew,” said Lynch, who had grown up with the owners, and been queued in on what might be happening inside. 

“So we get to the spot, right there, and they open the gate, “ said Lynch. “And it’s just tons and tons of coffee beans. Just a bunch of beans.”

The mound of beans that night had been imported by Lynch’s longtime neighbors, a Chinese-Guatemalan family that owns much of the block on which Lynch’s coffeeshop now stands. They had closed their old restaurant, invested in a turkish coffee roaster, imported the beans from their farm in Guatemala, and after witnessing Lynch’s previously successful entrepreneurial efforts, asked him to head the brand.

“I basically tripped and fell onto a coffeeshop,” said Lynch.

And so, after years of jobs including being a Rabbi’s personal driver, selling socks out of his car, and spending a decade as an artist manager, Lynch saw the makings of “DOWNTOWN,” a Black-owned brand that he originated in the Lower East Side, and which would become a major part of his identity. Like all business owners, he just had to build it first.

Aaron Lynch queues some music. Photo by Austin Barron

At the time, the music management industry, which Lynch had grown up in, was becoming too saturated for his taste, and he wanted out.

“What I did was I took all my connections from the music industry and I introduced them to coffee,” said Lynch. “I hit up my boy Juju one day, who was working at 300 Studios as a manager, and presented the idea of me doing a coffee tasting. Producers, label execs, it was the weirdest thing ever, we were all just in a music studio drinking coffee. It blew their minds.”

The tasting was a success, and now they had the investors they needed.

“I was supposed to handle the brand, and they were gonna handle all the coffee and management,” said Lynch, referring to the family who had presented him with the opportunity. “All the roasting, the blending, everything. I didn’t care about coffee.”

The team got to work. Lynch decided to design the store front to be a contrast to most coffeeshops: vibrant, almost-neon paint covers the walls, and music is always blasting. 

“Every coffeeshop is just brown, and really quiet, and not fun at all,” said Lynch. “How the fuck do you get inspiration there? You go into a place to create….”

In February of 2020, after building the store front with his father, and only a few weeks before COVID, Lynch and the family finally opened Downtown Coffeehouse in the Lower East Side. Two weeks into being open, the people in charge of roasting the beans flew to Honduras to work a quick job, planning on returning promptly. What they didn’t foresee was the swift and devastating impact of the pandemic.

“Airlines shut down, no in or out,” said Lynch. “They were stuck in Honduras.”

The back of the store had blended and roasted enough beans to last at least a few weeks, more than enough for the duration of their intended absence, but not nearly enough to last until their  unforeseeable return.

“Month one, month two, and I’m running out of coffee,” said Lynch. “I’m asking my girl, Blue, ‘What the f–k are we gonna do?’ So, I called them, and learned how to roast over facetime.”

Nailah “Blue” Berkeley  makes a cortado. Photo by Austin Barron

For Lynch and his business, the pandemic was a turning point to a more independent future. At that point, he had already brought his girlfriend, Nailah “Blue” Berkeley, onboard as a barista. Together, they were working around the clock to keep things running. 

“I taught him how to make coffee,” said Berkeley, laughing. “And I had to learn how to build credit, and manage my money.”

With the team gone, Lynch and Berkeley were forced to gain business, management, and roaster experience, and as a result, Lynch finally fell in love with the coffee he was creating.

“With all the flavors you can get, it’s like a science and a culture,” said Lynch. “Remember in the early pandemic? No one knew how to act. They were opening doors with elbows, feet, and immediately sprayed things down when they arrived. ‘Did you see that guy cough!?’ But people always came in, because they needed their damn coffee.”

Eventually, Lynch and Berkeley were able to confidently run the entire business on their own, and after some brief tension with the employees upon their return from Honduras, that’s exactly what they did.

“They warned me,” said Lynch. “‘The overhead, the running a business all alone, it’s a lot. Are you sure you can do it on your own?’ And I’m so ‘Yep!’ that I’ll say yes regardless, even if I have no idea how I’m gonna figure it out. I’ll take on the bills, I’ll stand my ground, f–k it. Something happened, where I really started loving the coffee.”

So, Lynch and Berkeley inhereted the full weight and control of Downtown Coffeehouse, and it worked.

“So much has changed,” said Berkeley. “I had to go from doing a nine-to-five online sales job in SOHO, to being a partial independent business owner. I needed an out for so long, and it took a pandemic for it to happen.”

Berkeley and Lynch can’t say exactly when they met, but they know it was somewhere in New York’s underground party scene, many, many years ago. 

“Yeah, hell no, we can’t do that anymore,” said Lynch. “Running a business, there’s no time for the party scene.”

Before they were co-owners, Berkeley and Lynch were good friends, and then romantic partners. Lynch, an early-riser, is usually the first to get to the coffeeshop, around five or six in the morning. And, after some extra hours of slumber, Berkeley will arrive around 10 to relieve Lynch of his shift. He knows her to be an attentive, logistical thinker: someone who loves to lay in bed. She knows him to be determined and creative, if not occasionally forgetful.

“All the art and design is his, but right now we’re about to run out of small cups,” said a smiling Berkeley. “We’re a tag team. We compliment each other.”

According to Lynch and Berkeley, their business is like their child: no matter what ends up happening between them, it will always come first.

“Trust each other, and just because things are not so good on one side of the equation doesn’t mean that it has to affect the other side,” said Berkeley. “It can be challenging, but if you keep that in mind, it can help.”

Lynch spent a large portion of his childhood on Cherry street, just a block down from the location of his coffeeshop. He says he’s seen businesses die and the neighborhood change. According to him, on one hand it has become more gentrified, and on the other, it has been populated with alcoholics, drug addicts, and homeless people. All of which he wants to feel welcome in his shop.

“Nate!” yelled Lynch, suddenly calling out for a man by the entrance. “Nate. I look out for you?”

To which Nate, who met Lynch on a construction job many years back, with a furrowed brow and nod of his head, quietly responded to a reporter, “Look. I’m a homeless guy. If I’m ever cold, or hungry, or I need a dollar or something, he’ll always be my help,” before pointing directly at the coffee shop owner.

Lynch’s own family has struggled with homelessness and drug addiction, and many of his friends in the music industry have histories of homelessness. In fact, much of the artwork that lines the walls of the coffeeshop was made by, and purchased from, the homeless people that Lynch knows on the street.

“A lot of times, we’re not raised to think about security, or having money to have just in case,” said Lynch. “I was not raised like that. Drug addicts, or family dies, and they have nowhere to go; for some people, it really is just their story. I’ve had to buy dollar slices plenty of times.”

If you walk up to Downtown Coffeehouse once the steady stream of customers has slowed down, you’re likely to see Lynch sitting on the wooden bench outside, talking, and probably smoking, with what looks to be a friend. This person could be one of his neighbors, who Lynch has caught in a friendly, conversational trap. Or, it could be Shon, his mother’s old friend who works as a bouncer on the weekends, and spends much of his time at the coffee shop.

“The first time I got his phone number, he got tight because I saved his number as ‘My Mother’s Friend,’” recounted Lynch. “He said ‘C’mon man! C’mon man! My name is Shon, man. Bet you don’t know how to spell it!’”

To which Shon, wearing a Canada Goose beanie and a necklace with a large, gold medallion on it, continued, “His mother used to hang out with my sister in junior high. So you’re talking about 40 years there. Now, I work in a hospital’s billing department.”

“Speaking of which, you didn’t pay for those coffees this morning,” said Lynch, an allegation that Shon promptly denied.

More than a year and a half after they first opened, Lynch and Berkeley decided to move the coffeeshop from it’s original location, two doors down, to its current location on the corner of Henry and Jefferson. Outside, spray painted on the pitch black exterior walls, is a fresh, giant, colorful globe, covered in bright orange letters spelling “DOWNTOWN.”

“This place is a blessing,” said Lynch. “And I’m happy now, I’ll tell you that. This is me now: me on a wall. But this is just step one, and there’s way more to go.”

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Known by his stage name MetalPillow, Jo has been seriously aspiring to make it in music ever since starting college at the University of the Arts  in Philadelphia. He picked up the bass guitar in 2020, and set out to teach the instrument to himself. Only recently discovering the Afrobeat genre with the likes of performers like New York based singer Kaléta, Jo is determined to finally record his debut album in the next two years, move to New York to explore that music scene, and put the wildly underappreciated instrument at its forefront. 

Jo Moore

“No one is really thinking about bass. It’s a background instrument. But I look at guys like Thundercat and Mano Neon who really make bass the focus of their pieces. because it really is an underappreciated lead instrument,” said Jo.

In his mind, the expectations of his college curriculum are the sole major obstacle on his musical journey. But after next year’s graduation, Jo hopes to move up to Brooklyn, and immerse himself fully in the diverse music scene of that Borough to highlight black stories.

“I will take blame in that I really never focused in on that aspect of myself being black, but it never really dawned upon me. I was like, wait, why am I not emphasizing my own people, my own skin, because in the end it’s simple; black, of course is beautiful,” said Jo.

 Already living in Brooklyn, a rare performer to cross a major division in Nigerian music, and in the States, Leon Ligan-Majek originally from the West African town of Porto Novo, better known by his stage name Kaleta, fronted many bands on his way to bringing a culturally unifying sense of music. Always inspiring new artists to pick up their passion, Kaleta is looking out for performers just like MetalPillow. 

“My music is Afrofunk and Afrobeat and It is just a reunion of music I listened to as a kid coupled with my own interpretations. If it is your calling, just do it and do it right. Practice as hard as you can,” said Kaleta.

Amongst the most successful of Kaletas bands were Kaleta Jaa, Akoya Afrobeat, Zozo Afrobeat, and eventually his current group of likeminded music lovers, the Super Yamba Band. Both Moore and Kaleta perform their instrumentals at various Brooklyn venues on an irregular basis, taking stock of how far black music has integrated itself into the pop scene today. 

Kaleta and Wild Birds in Brooklyn. Photo by Kirill Bykanov

“Being black in music I never thought about the color difference but I do know that music and playing is universal and still growing,” Kaleta said. “This genre is about Africa and the various types of music being played by all countries therein.”

Two venues that both performers are looking at to promote their art are Wild Birds, and Bowery Electric in Brooklyn. Both venues stand for diversifying their music scene, highlighting small artists and groups, and to not discriminate when it comes to art on stage. 

“Even if this music thing only lasts a couple more years, even if I never blow up and get famous, it’s worth it because to a couple of people for a short period of time what I made meant something,” said Columbia College senior and singer Eva Westphal about the vibe at Bowery Electric in an interview with Columbia Spectator. 

With his already existing EP’s, but even more so during shows at Bowery Electric, MetalPillow aims to invite his audience to simply dance and experience music and culture through his lens. Likewise, Kaleta is motivated to bring people together on the dance floor. Though decades apart, born into different worlds, both Kaleta, and Moore carry on a legacy of black music and pride themselves in bringing a unique narrative to the industry, as well as their respective instrumentals, that no one else can do justice.

“I don’t want to keep dropping singles without a story, without my peoples’ story. I want to show people I’m actually serious and what’s more serious than an actual album? That’s what I want to give to people,” Moore said. 

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“‘You need to know who you are, and what you’re capable of,’” Hart recalled her saying. “‘You are so powerful,’ she told me. And that stuck.”

Through his photoshoots with Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and New York Magazine, and while working with artists such as Spike Lee and Flo Milli, he’s kept those words close to him.

“It was one of the first things ever that I really feel changed my way of looking at life,” said Hart, with a smile.

Hart is a 21 year old artist, and a senior at NYU. He’s gained recognition in the past two years as a strong, blossoming photographer, so far as to receive a hand-written note from Beyonce thanking him for his work.

“She’s everything,” said Hart. “And so to be recognized by her was just amazing.”

Drip2_EricHartJr.: Drip 2 by Eric Hart Jr.

A decade before Beyonce’s shoutout, Hart got his start in Macon, Georgia, taking photographs with an iPod touch. Out of boredom, he would capture moments in the life of his cat, or just things in his yard. And it was also on that iPod that he found inspiration. In addition to enjoying clips from the show Glee, Hart also began binge watching music videos.

“That was my first introduction into like, real art,” said Hart. “Even now, on my senior thesis, I made a playlist of songs that feel like they’re images. A lot of the shots I take are what I imagine to be the music video for a certain song.”

For Hart growing up, Black representation in art usually meant Tyler Perry movies. But to him, those stories were always missing something.

“When I think about Blackness, what I’m looking for there is also that element of queerness,” said Hart. “A lot of the times when I’m taking photographs, I’m speaking to the child who wanted to see himself. The child that couldn’t find his own stride. For me, that’s self love.”

Hart has previously said that being queer is something he thoroughly enjoys. But loving himself, he says, is something he had to learn.

Eric_Hart_Jr_12: Photograph courtesy of Eric Hart Jr.

“I was taught religiously, socially, being from Southern America, in Macon, Georgia, ‘You can’t be this. You are not supposed to act this way, you are not supposed to love this way,’” said Hart. “When you get to the place where you can finally say, ‘I love this. I love this element of myself. I love this part of me,’ it really is something that inspires me to create.”

Looking at Hart’s photography, it only takes a moment to see that self-love often manifests itself as confidence in front of his camera. His models hold their heads high, often looking down the barrel of the lens, their faces stoic, powerful. This confidence is something he searches for in his subjects. 

“Once I walked out of the train, it was kind of windy,” said Olajide Adeleke, describing the summer day on which he modeled for Hart. “It blew away the sweat, whatever beads I had. But it wasn’t from being anxious, it was the heat.”

Adeleke, who would describe himself as quiet, cool, and outgoing when he needs to be, modeled for Hart’s Unravel series. Even before collaborating with him, Adeleke had been an admirer of Hart’s photography for a while.

“It’s real dramatic.” regarded Adeleke about Hart’s work. “The way he captures people, they never shy away from the reality of being seen. He’s really able to capture the essence of an individual.”

SUITGROUP+115: Photograph from Unravel by Eric Hart Jr.

Unravel, like much of Hart’s work, is centered around the study of masculinity as a form of power. It is that essence of masculinity that Hart wants to capture within queer bodies, trans bodies, and Black men.

“I think he wants to approach it as a way to reclaim Black bodies,” said Adeleke. “You can go to a museum, and see how Black bodies have been beaten and treated like nothing. But to see power in the photos that he’s taken, life in the power of Black bodies, and the power in Black bodies owning the life that they have, knowing that they’re there without having to be hurt? That’s what’s up. That’s for real.”

Adeleke remembers Hart as someone who greets people with open arms, someone who will smile warmly at you, and hear you out when you’re speaking. If you ask Hart what his happy place is, he’ll tell you it’s listening to Beyonce, or eating his grandma’s spaghetti. He, of course, has ruts of self-doubt, and dreads the idea of succumbing to being average. But, when he finds himself in those moments of despair, his solution is simple:

“I just create more,” said Hart. “When I’m creating, that’s where I feel at peace, that’s where I feel comfortable, and that’s where I get that sense of connection to what I’m doing. That’s what always brings me back to ‘This is who I am and this is what I’m capable of doing.’ And so I keep going.”

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“Living together in that way is a part of my culture because it’s customary for parents and their children to live together well past adulthood,” said Ramjohn, who left Queens at age nine. “When my family moved, we lived in a suburb of New Jersey where I struggled to find anyone that I truly related to. At this point, my culture played a more confusing role for me. It was not something I took pride in the way I do now.” 

Pride came easily for Ramjohn in Queens, where Guyanese Americans make up the second-largest immigrant population and Indo-Caribbean culture, in particular, is salient. After her parents immigrated from Guyana to the U.S., her family planted roots in a somewhat demographically homogenous community. When they left, Ramjohn was suddenly among unfamiliar faces and races, searching for a sense of pride again. Knowing herself was never an issue, but promoting understanding among others was. 

“My culture consists of Indian culture, African culture and European culture,” said Ramjohnn, who is also Muslim. “Not many people outside of the Caribbean know what Guyana is unless they are from a part of the U.S. that is heavily populated by Caribbean people. When this [misunderstanding] happens, I have to run through my country’s history so they can understand where I’m from and why I look the way I do.”

Understanding the history of nations with large Indo-Caribbean populations like Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad means understanding the coerced labor that shaped their diverse demographics according to Aisha Khan, an anthropology professor at New York University. 

“The people who were already there were indigenous peoples,” said Khan, who also works within NYU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. “The Europeans, Africans and Asians who have had called Guyana home for over 300 years, came with the systems of slavery and indenture, forced labor systems that populated much of, if not all, the Caribbean region.” 

Khan added that Middle-Eastern populations arrived in the Caribbean by the mid-19th century, primarily as merchants.This same forced labor is what brought variegated religions to the Caribbean too.

  “In the mid-19th century, you have the indentured people from India that the British bring over,” said Khan. “A minority of those indentured people were Muslim, the majority were Hindu. So it’s a really fascinating set of historical streams.” 

The presence of Indo-Caribbean culture is commonplace for someone like Khan who has studied the topic, and those of Caribbean descent. For those who don’t interact with the community, Indo-Caribbeans may remain an anomaly.

“It doesn’t make much of a difference if no one knows what it means to be Indo-Caribbean,” Ramjohn said. “This ignorance and lack of representation can be attributed to several factors, namely demographics and history of divide enforced by colonization. 

“It’s partly a demographic issue because the Caribbean is by far more populated by peoples of African heritage,”  said Khan. “The political angle would be that it is much to the benefit of colonizers to create a kind of divide and rule strategy, and often the differences among groups are couched in racial or cultural terms. This is ideology and a strategy on the part of colonizers, but it does influence post-independence societies in the Caribbean.”

Ambivalence to Indo-Caribbean culture is reflected in systems of racial identification, as seen on the census or official U.S. documents, that have historically reduced racial and ethnic identities to a matter of boxes and labels. If you don’t choose to label yourself by the options provided, your only other choice is typically “other”. Being the “other” sends negative messages about the value of those who select it. The label echoes the seemingly innocuous, “what are you really” inquiry that non-white people often get. For many Indo-Caribbeans, it’s a moot question.

“There’s no perfect ‘Indo-Caribbean’ spot to check off,” said Alyssa Harrynanan, 21, who is Indo-Trinidadian and Hindu. “I’ve typically checked off Asian, but that didn’t feel right to me. In fact, I remember a teacher in high school telling me that was wrong, that it was like lying. Recently once or twice, I’ve seen ‘Caribbean’ on forms that I’ve filled out, which feels so good because it actually feels like I’m represented. Even though it should technically be Indo-Caribbean.” 

Both Harrynanan and Ramjohn attend Union College in Schenectady, New York, where they embrace their culture through their school’s Caribbean Students Association and the town’s considerable Indo-Caribbean population. Despite facing continued ignorance, they celebrate. From Bollywood to dance hall, their expansive culture provides joy that a few checked boxes can never encompass. 

“There’s so much that I love about my culture,” Harrynanan said. “I love the positive atmosphere that is created, one that promotes just living life and having a good time. I love Caribbean music, dancing, the food, visiting Trinidad, my family, speaking with a Trinidadian accent. I’m very grateful that I’m able to embrace it so wholeheartedly.”

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 “You are really good at this,” she said. “Have you ever considered engineering?”

 Unfortunately for Jones, her school did not offer any classes to prepare her for an engineering or science career.   

“In lower-income neighborhoods, there is almost a negative amount of STEM education,” said Jones, now 20, of Bridgeport, Connecticut. “It’s one of the hardest things to teach, so they just don’t. They usually don’t have the resources. When I was in middle school, we had a workbook, and that was it.”  

To have the opportunity of getting into a college science program, Jones attended high school in an affluent White neighborhood 20 miles out of her city. She initially concentrated on chemistry, but was put off by her teacher, who seemed incapable of comprehending how someone can do well academically and be Black. 

“At the time I was applying for colleges, I told him that my dream school was MIT,” said Jones, “After that, every time he passed me, he would turn to someone and be like, ‘Guess what, did you know she’s applying to MIT?”  

Despite the obstacles, she succeeded and now Jones is one of only two Black female undergraduate students studying physics at New York University. The department doesn’t have a single Black woman as a faculty member and only 2 percent of practicing scientists and engineers in the U.S. are Black women.

“The route of Black women going into higher degrees in STEM is not traveled almost at all,” she said. “So, knowing that you gonna have to go through the trouble of paving your road is kind of daunting.” 

Esther Bioh, 20, of the Bronx, New York, is the other Black woman in the NYU undergraduate physics program. She said she has had a similar experience.

“Feeling supported, feeling like there are people like you, who know what you’re going through, is very important,” said Bioh. “I have a friend who dropped out of the Binghamton University’s biomedical engineering program last year due to the lack of support.”  

The need for mentorship persists in the higher levels of education. Barbara Akum, 50, of Bamenda, Cameroon, teaches biology at NYU.

“When I was doing my Masters, I was the only Black female in my cohort,” she said. “When I was doing my Ph.D., I was again the only Black female in that cohort and then every job I had, I was again the only Black person in there.” 

Akum said there is a gap  between her students who come from a background that enabled them to develop the skills necessary for a scientific degree and those who did not.

“You have students who did not have biology in their high school,” she said. “So even if they want to study it, they’re at a much lower level than every other student. Which means they have to work hard just to catch up, and then work harder to understand the material that is being taught. As a result, many end up changing their majors.  

Nia Asemota, 21, of Yonkers, New York, is a technical instructor at “Black Girls CODE,”  She said she sees her role as a living example that Black girls can grow up and work in STEM despite the obstacles. 

 “As a society, I sometimes think that we don’t often acknowledge the psychological strength and resiliency it takes for a woman of color to succeed in spaces that are predominantly filled with men,” said Asemota.

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Black bookstore owners like Yvonne Blake, owner of Hakim’s Bookstore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania experienced the boom.

 “When the pandemic hit, we were closed for a little over three months, but after George Floyd got murdered, people were so alarmed and horrified that they decided to start reading,” Blake said. “Therefore, we noticed that uptick in our online sales, especially race-conscious books.”

 On the day George Floyd was murdered—May 25, 2020—there weren’t any books exclusively tackling white privilege or anti-Blackness on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list. “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo was the only book to break through the week of May 31, but by June 21, almost 70% of the Times’ Best Seller list confronted race.

Blake admits that this surge in sales came as a saving grace for the bookstore since they had been struggling even before the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, they had to close and Blake moved the bookstore into her house.

“I had the books shipped to my home then I was shipping books out of my dining room and going to the post office and standing in a very, very long line,” she said. “Because we were hit all of a sudden, initially, we didn’t even have a website until we got one developed. The volume increased so much: almost like day one after he was murdered, that we had to put some operations in place.”

When sales became overwhelming, Blake had her family members help out including her daughter, granddaughter, and sister. Family collaboration is nothing new for the bookstore, which has been family-owned and operated since Blake’s father founded it in 1969 making it the first and oldest African American bookstore in Philadelphia. This historical significance played a significant role in increasing the bookstore’s exposure.

 “We started making friends and acquaintances around the United States and I was even shipping books over to Europe,” Blake said.

 La’Nae Robinson, owner of Bliss Books and Wine in Kansas City,  Missouri, experienced this wide exposure as well.

 “We saw that initially, the surge was for antiracist literature and specific titles and authors. However, customers were also attending online events and signing up for our newsletters,” Robinson said. “The exposure even landed us a feature in an article about Black-owned bookstores across the United States in The Oprah Magazine.” 

 Since then, a lot of things have changed.

“As things stand now, the surge of orders has drastically died down,” Robinson said. “We still have a steady stream of orders, but they are not nearly as overwhelming as they were during the summer of 2020 so they have plateaued to what is probably the normal rate for an independent bookstore.”

 Blake also said that online sales of Hakim’s Bookstore have gone back to what they were before 2020. However, as a result of the exposure, the foot traffic has increased as well as their relationships with educational institutions.

 “It was just kind of amazing to me that, you know, we’ve been trying to teach this history. And now there’s more of a push to get all children educated in critical race theory,” she said.

 VaLinda Miller, the owner of Turning Pages, a Black-owned bookstore in Goose Creek, South Carolina,  said many customers were trying to educate themselves.

 “These books opened many people’s eyes on the history and it helped to bring back Black authors from the 1940s to now,” she said.

 Robinson said she is not surprised at the drastic decrease in orders after the protests died down.

 “I did think the excitement over Black-owned establishments and antiracist literature would be short-lived,” she said. “In fact, I am honestly surprised when I see those popular titles from that time still show up in orders.”

Seeing this, Robinson encourages people who have stopped buying from Black-owned bookstores and reading antiracist literature to continue.

 “This is a movement, not a moment,” said Robinson. “Continue the dialogue and continue the journey. We have not solved the issues addressed in those readings and there is still work to be done.”

When asked if this short-lived surge made her consider the possibility that people were just being performative in their purchases, Blake said she can tell who is being performative and those who truly want to be educated by the types of books they want to read.

 “They might want to read a ton of Ta-Nehisi Coates books but if I try to introduce them to a book that actually deals with true African American history, like a John Henrik Clark book, they’re not so much interested in that,” she said.

 Many who got caught up in the Black Lives Movement during summer 2020, bought one or two books from Black-owned bookstores, and then never went back.

To these people, Blake wants them to ask themselves some tough questions.

 “Do some soul searching and ask yourselves, ‘did I just do this because it was the thing to do at the moment to make myself feel better and to feel that I was part of the movement?’ or ‘do I really have an honest interest in trying to establish racial equality and respect among the races,’”  she said.

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