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2002 HONOREES
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Rudy
King
The steel pan, some
claim, is the only widely played instrument to be invented in the 20th
century. During World War II, when Trinidad's noted carnival was banned,
the first rudimentary steel pans with one or two notes were invented.
It started with one musician who hit the pan so hard he made a dent. Musicians
discovered that dents made notes, then scales, and in each successive
year, pan makers devised ways to add new sounds to the drums. "Everybody
took part in improving the pan," Rudy says, "so everybody can
claim they had a role in its invention."
Rudy was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and took part in carnival and
steel band music as a youngster. He moved to New York in 1949, anxious
to pursue his music and teach New Yorkers about this new instrument. He
heard about some large empty metal drums at a Brooklyn hospital, and in
a friend's van swiped several. Hammering dents in one of the pans in his
Harlem apartment, he was doused with water from a window. When he moved
to a park where he lit a fire inside the drum to temper the metal, a policeman
threatened to arrest him. But the drum got made and Rudy proudly pioneered
the pan in New York in the 1950 Harlem West Indian Carnival parade, which
ran along 7th Avenue. Rudy became the first pan maker in the city, and
the first pan player accepted into the musician's union, Local 802. He
traveled all over the U.S. with calypso bands, and is a beloved figure
in the West Indian Carnival community.
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The
Ross Family
"If you eat a good bialy with butter, you'll never eat another bagel,"
says Steve Ross of Coney Island Bialys, the oldest bialy business in the
city. It was Steve's grandfather, Morris, who started the business in
East New York in the early 20th century. He baked Bialystocks (or bialys
as they are now called), the traditional bread of his former city, Bialystock,
Poland. Like so many immigrants, he used the cuisine of the old country
to fashion a new future. In the 1940s, Grandpa Morris moved the bakery
to Coney Island. Booming business prompted one more move, to its present
location at 2359 Coney Island Avenue, between Avenues T and U in Brooklyn.
Steve grew up in the business, as did his father, Donald, and has fond
memories of climbing-and even falling asleep-on the flour sacks.
The Ross Family still makes the bialys and bagels by hand. Bagels were
added in the 1970s. A brief experiment with a bagel machine was abandoned
when Steve was unhappy with the quality. Sometimes accompanied by his
children, Bryan and Heather, Steve's work day starts well before dawn.
The dough needs to be baked the same day because, unlike bagels, bialy
dough doesn't keep. Key ingredients are fresh onions-about 200 pounds
per week-and, of course, New York City water. In 2001, the Smithsonian's
Folklife Festival brought the Ross family to the Mall in Washington, DC.
To recreate his famous bialys and bagels, Steve requested New York City
water, which was ceremoniously shipped down to him in containers by the
city's Department of Environmental Protection.
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Peter
Schumann
Peter Schumann moved
to the U.S. in 1961 from the Silesia region of Poland. He founded the
Bread & Puppet Theater in 1963 on New York's Lower East Side, creating
a unique blend of puppetry and political protest. In 1970 the Theater
moved to Vermont, first as theater-in-residence at Goddard College, then
to Glover, Vermont, where it also started a museum. Bread & Puppet
does massive spectacles in the U.S., Europe and Latin America that address
social, political, and environmental issues, or simply the common urgencies
of our lives. Although no longer in New York, Bread & Puppet's inspiration
is visible in the Halloween and the Mermaid Parades, at large political
protests, and in the work of Jim Henson and Julie Taymor (The Lion King).
City Lore friend Tom Goodrich nominated Bread & Puppet "For the
integrity of their alternative vision to the corporate American Dream;
for composing awesome, archetypal imagery from sweat, imagination and
cardboard in this age of high tech special effects; for living in community
and for hatching dreams collectively; for remembering the land and our
dependence upon our Earth Mother; for charging almost nothing for most
of their performances; for the fecundity and accessibility of their "cheap
art"; for accompanying their heady creations with black sour dough
bread; for making puppets which pull our strings and provoke thought;
for running us into the circus and for evoking laughter which quickens
the human soul even in the darkest of times; for using volunteers and
challenging all in the audience to become the show."
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Rosa
Elena Egipciaco
The art of bobbin
lace has long been associated with luxury and elegance, with Spanish royalty
and elite fashion. But in Puerto Rico, where it is known as mundillo,
it is a hobby and art form for young girls. Rosa Elena is from Moca, Puerto
Rico, a small town in the northwestern part of the Island that is known
as the capital of mundillo. Rosa Elena learned the tradition from her
mother when she was just four years old. As she grew up, the tradition
became part of her courtship years. "When I was a child (many decades
ago) I used to make lace in the company of friends, and we would hide
love notes from admirers in the back of our looms."
Rosa Elena is now a master lace maker in the mundillo tradition. She was
President of the El Centro Cultural Mocano in Moca, which is part
of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, from 1971 to
1973. During this time she traveled throughout the island giving lectures
on mundillo. Rosa Elena has also been a certified artesana (folk
artist) at the Registro de Artesanos del Instituto de Cultura Puertorrqueña
since 1978. She moved to New York City in 1986. She teaches mundillo
classes at City Lore and is a professor/facilitator at Boricua College—the
first post-secondary educational institution in the U.S. designed to meet
the educational needs of Puerto Ricans and other Spanish-speaking people.
Her lace has been exhibited at New York and Columbia Universities, the
American Museum of Natural History, and El Museo del Barrio, among many
other venues. Rosa Elena's dream is to "build a mundillo museum in
my hometown and donate all my designs and laces to that piece of land
I love so much."
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CBGB
CBGB stands for Country,
Bluegrass, Blues. But country did not work at CBGB when proprietor Hilly
Kristal first opened the club in the same building as the dilapidated
Palace Hotel, one of the most notorious flophouses on the Bowery in 1973.
Recognizing that his establishment was desperate for money, and that rock
musicians were desperate to be heard, he introduced rock. The result was
a democratic stage where a long line of rockers cut their teeth and were
discovered: Television, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Ramones,
and the Dead Boys. Later, such bands as Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins,
The Police, and the B-52's, had their first gigs in New York City at CBGB's.
"When they are here they are not famous," Hilly told us. When
they are famous some of them come back."
CBGB features 5, 6 or 7 bands a night—every night of the week. Generations
of young bands have screamed their hearts out to generations of young
punk and underground rock fans. "All I did was give a people a chance
to say whatever it was they wanted to say," Hilly told us. For nearly
30 years, the beer-soaked, dark-wood club, plastered and replastered with
generations of flyers and clippings, feels as venerable as an old church.
When Joey Ramone died, a shrine appeared spontaneously outside of CBGB,
taking over the sidewalk and reminding passers-by that CBGB's is the mecca
for youth culture and the cauldron for whatever styles of rock are bubbling
up.
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