Puerto rican festivals: Annual Festivals and Events in Puerto Rico

152nd St. Cultural Festival

parade highlights

• The 2022 celebration will feature a special TV broadcast to air on June 12, hosted by WABC-TV anchors Joe Torres and David Novarro, along with Sunny Hostin, co-host of “The View.”

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152nd Street Cultural Festival

Set in The Bronx, “El Condado de la Salsa,” The National Puerto Rican Day Parade has hosted this annual cultural event since 1995 where we welcome all families to join us in celebrating the Puerto Rican culture.

This is a family-friendly, fun-filled event that offers a variety of activities and entertainment for people of all ages. The day features live musical performances, dancing, celebrity appearances and a children’s pavilion scheduled with storytelling, face painting, arts & crafts, and other fun surprises!

Kiosks line the street with corporate and local vendors selling comida típica (traditional food), artisans displaying and selling their art and many free giveaways.

 The 152nd Street Cultural Festival is the kick-off celebration leading up to the Parade on 5th Avenue.

Month

• 28
  Sat

  152nd Street Fest – May 28

• 5
  Sun

  Mass at St Patrick’s – June 5

• 11
  Fri

  Gala fundraiser – June 11

• 12
  Sun

  65th Annual Parade – June 12

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One Nation, Many Voices
Un Pueblo, Muchas Voces

The National Puerto Rican Day Parade’s theme Un Pueblo, Muchas Voces (One Nation, Many Voices) celebrates the creativity and diversity of thought in Puerto Rico and across the diaspora.

Festival Sponsors
patrocinadores del evento

We thank the sponsors for helping us make the 152nd Street Cultural Festival the Bronx’s most anticipated kick-off celebration to the National Puerto Rican Parade.

Stay Connected
Mantente conectado

Stay Connected With Your Community.  Share our pages, pictures from the parade & events, Tweet Us out using #PRParade.

Puerto Rican Parades and Festivals: An Educational Platform In The Making

Centro Staff

Puerto Rican parades and festivals have long played an integral role in engaging our communities across the United States. They also help to establish our presence and promote our shared cultural identity. Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans: Parades and Festivals is a conference hosted by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies that will the explore the potential for using cultural programming as an educational platform. (Registration is free, you can RSVP and sign up for more updates by clicking here).

Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans: Parades and Festivals will take place on December 3rd, 2016 at the Silberman School of Social Work in East Harlem (The full program of events is available here). An array of speakers will discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by cultural organizations sponsoring and organizing parades and festivals in places such as Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Springfield, Orlando, and more. The overall conversation will focus on topics such as the celebration of Puerto Rican heritage, cultural and organizational sustainability, commercialization, social engagement, and year-round educational programs.

“This is an opportunity to connect with Puerto Rican organizations across the United States that promote the Puerto Rican culture and heritage through parades and festivals, and connect our community with social and political issues of great importance such as the crisis in Puerto Rico and its impact in stateside communities,” says Dr. Edwin Meléndez, Executive Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. “We want educators, organizers, and community leaders to build relationships with one another. For Centro, that means serving as conveners and providing educational resources, which is why we’re excited to introduce our new Cultural Ambassadors program.”

Following the panel discussions and plenary roundtables will be the launch of Centro’s aforementioned “Cultural Ambassadors” program, which will be presented by Dr. Raquel Ortiz. The Puerto Rican Cultural Ambassadors Program is a national partnership of youth, cultural and educational institutions and community leaders devoted to promote and support teaching and learning about Puerto Rican culture and history. More information on the project will be available soon. Afterwards, there will be an Action Fair event focused on networking and community-building among the various cultural organizations and attendees present at the conference.

This is the fourth in a series of diaspora summits hosted by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, which have included an LGBT Ricans Summit, a New England Summit in Hartford, CT, and the inaugural summit held earlier this past April in response to the ongoing crisis in Puerto Rico. Top scholars and leaders have come together on each occasion to explore solutions to the critical problems facing our community through a simple mantra: Learn. Connect. Act.

Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans: Parades and Festivals is part of an ongoing look at the scale and impact of the Puerto Rican crisis on the stateside community and the rest of the nation, and to assess strategies to launch more concerted efforts in response to such challenges. We very much look forward to seeing you there. RSVP today!

African, Puerto Rican, Taiwanese festivals and a walk in the rose garden

This weekend in New York – a vibrant variety of different national festivals. And besides this – the Week of the Fleet and the science festival. For those who dream of silence and connection with nature, a quiet walk through a garden full of roses is suitable. Choose what you like.

From May 22 to May 28, Fleet Week is taking place in New York. Take ship tours, listen to bands, watch demonstrations and military displays during Fleet Week. On the weekends, you can board different military cruisers, watch divers dive in Times Square, listen to live music in different parts of New York. The full list of events can be found here.

From May 22 to June 2, the New York Science Festival takes place. Attend dozens of world-class lectures, films, and science and innovation events during the World Science Festival. In May 2019, mankind celebrates the 100th anniversary of astronomical observations, which confirmed Albert Einstein’s new concept of space, time and gravity – his general theory of relativity. Therefore, this year’s festival is largely dedicated to this event. The full list of festival events can be seen here.

From May 23 to June 9, the African Film Festival takes place in New York. The New York African Film Festival showcases both new and classic African cinema, with a particular focus on intergenerational discourse, featuring the work of women and the younger generation. In addition, from May 24 to May 26, you can drop by DanceAfrica, a festival dedicated to the dance, music and culture of Africa. It will take place at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. The theme for 2019 is Rwanda.

On May 25, the 152nd Street Cultural Festival will host a celebration of Puerto Rican culture with live music, dance, comedy, art and local food, celebrity performances and a children’s pavilion with fairy tales, face painting and crafts. The celebration will take place on 152nd Street (Jackson Ave. to Union Ave.). Participation is free.

And another national festival this week is the Taiwan Festival. It will take place on May 26th. The festival will feature ‘little snacks’, stage performances, craft demonstrations and various family activities. The celebration will take place in the northern part of Union Square Park. Participation is free.

And if you prefer Latin American culture, then on the same day, May 26, go to The Loisaida Festival. This is a family friendly event with music, shows and performances on Losaida Avenue. The festival will start with a parade at 11 am. Participation is free.

LaGuardia Corner Community Garden, which is located near Washington square, invites everyone to admire the roses blooming in the garden. The Rose Walk is a free self-guided tour where you can see over fifty different rose bushes. The entrance to the garden is open to everyone from May 18 and for 2 weeks – while the roses are blooming. Read more about the promotion here.

Summer Jazz Festivals 2009

DS: – Your DS and your Jazz Time are at the microphone of the all-pervading Freedom. Today is the second part of the story about jazz festivals.
If the first jazz festivals in their current sense started after the Second World War, then by the end of the 80s of the last century there were more than eight hundred of them! Reputation, hierarchy, popularity of festivals were not established immediately.
Parisian festival, festivals of the Côte d’Azur, Newport, Montreal, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Californian in Monterey, Swiss in Montreux… Present in Moscow and even September in… Koktebel!
Before we return to Newport ’57, let’s take a look at Rhode Island, but in ’58.

Horace Silver – Senor Blues

DS: – Senor Blues, Horace Silver, he is the leader, he is also at the piano. Louis Smith – trumpet Junior Cook – tenor saxophone Gene Taylor – double bass Louis Hayes – drums
Horace Silver, having created, together with drummer Art Blakey, not even a group (the composition was always changing), but almost a movement (“Heralds of Jazz”), soon left, and worked as a sideman for a long time, continuing to compose music. In November 56, he put together a new line-up for the Blue Note: with Donald Byrd on trumpet; Hank Mowbley on tenor; Doug Watkins on double bass and Louis Hayes on drums. The quintet recorded the disc “Six pieces of silver” or “Six pieces of Silver” – “Six pieces of Silver” on the Blue Note.
Blue Note producer Alfred Lyon instantly recognized Silver’s masterpiece, Senor Blues, and cut down the LP version to release Senor Blues, a forty-five that literally sounded across the country. Silver has always had a strong craving not only for blues and gospel music, but also for Latin American rhythms and motives. He often went to the Birdland Club to listen to Tito Puente’s Puerto Rican Orchestra. Yes, and Horace’s father was a native of the Cape Verde Islands.
Senor Blues – overnight turned Horace Silver into a star and he already collected new combos without any problems. Unfortunately, the great trumpeter Louis Smith, in the tradition of Fats Novarro and Clifford Brown, left his third quintet in ’57: he returned to teaching. This often happened to jazzmen who chose between family life and “life on the road”, ie. endless tours. But by the start of the ’58 Newport Summer Festival, Louis Smith had temporarily returned to the quintet.
Horace Silver’s combo was such a huge success that the director of the ’58 festival, producer George Avakyan (“Uncle Zhora Avakyan”, as they said in Moscow) gave the quintet not 20 minutes, but as much as 40 . ..

Horace Silver – Tippin’

DS : – Tippin’ – this little thing Horace Silver wrote for the second side of the famous forty-five. Let me remind you of the line-up that played at the Newport Festival in 1958: Louis Smith – trumpet; Junior Cook – tenor saxophone Horace Silver – piano; Gene Taylor – double bass Louis Hayes – drums

Many thanks to Mikhail Rogozhin, who sent a quote from the speech of the First Lady, the wife of the President of the United States, Michelle Obama. Here is what she said on her first birthday in the White House:
“…Jazz is a unique way of individual expression and at the same time, perhaps, the best model of democracy…”.
To be honest, this was the basis from the very beginning of the programs “49 Minutes of Jazz”; this was the ideology of jazz at “Freedom”. If you like, “living democracy without words.”
At the microphone in Paris Dmitry Savitsky, on the air and on the website svobodanews.ru weekly Jazz Time.
Here is for you, Michael, a bit of democracy with words. International Jazz Festival 64 on the Côte d’Azur in Juan Les Pans: “The First Lady (this time) – Jazz” – Ella Fitzgerald …

Ella Fitzgerald – The Lady Is A Tramp

DC: – The Lady Is A Tramp, a classic by Rodgers and Hart… Ella Fitzgerald – vocals; Roy Eldridge – trumpet Tommy Flanagan – piano; Bill Yancey – double bass Gus Johnson – drums. The Fifth International Festival in Antibes, Juan-Les Pans, July ’64…
The idea of ​​jazz festivals was born in France liberated from the occupiers. “Music of the degenerates” was banned by the Nazis. If on the Crown Islands no one yearned for jazz, which sounded, perhaps, even more often than before the war, especially before throwing across the English Channel, since the Americans not only sent the famous “Victory Disks” – “V-Disks” to all fronts – “Victory Disks”, but also sent jazz bands with the troops.
There were plenty of jazz lovers and connoisseurs in France even before the war, but after the harsh diet of the occupation, jazz was a welcome gift.
Another reason for the explosion of jazzmania in France is the reaction of African-American jazzmen in military uniform, who either settled in the country after the war, or stayed for a few months, and then returned for a few years, because they were still treated better in Europe, than at home in the USA… Paris was the most attractive city for American jazzmen, followed by Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm…

Ahmad Jamal – Papillon

DS: – Papillon, “Butterfly”, composition by Ahmad Jamal. His magnificent latest CD It’s Magic! The right decision: only a rhythm group. James Cammack – double bass Idris Mohammed – drums Manolo Badrena – percussion…
Jamal hasn’t had a CD of such quality for a long time! To be honest, he just upset fans for a whole decade. But the beloved pianist Miles Davis finally decided to take a break from saxophonist George Coleman (so that he would not be offended) and what (as they say in our village) – HIGH!
Since the 80s, Ahmad Jamal has been a regular participant in two dozen festivals. Where to catch him in this 2009? Especially with this lineup?
Last week he played at the Jazz Festival in Umbria and moved to Pescara – still in Italy. On August 5, he performs at one of the most prestigious French festivals (which overshadowed Juan-le-Pan) – in Mariac. August 8 – in Strasbourg. From 11 to 16 August in the American town of Seattle. September 6th in Chicago. September 10 in Barranquia, Colombia. September 13 in La Villette, that is, in Paris; from 17 to 19September in Boston at the Regatta Bar; and September 25-27 in Los Angeles at the Nat Holden Performing Art Center.
At the same time, it is worth recalling that Ahmad Jamal is 79 years old! Bravo, maestro!

At the beginning of 1948, the first jazz festival organized by the Hot Club de France took place in Nice. The star of this festival was the Louis Armstrong All Stars orchestra, followed by the French stars: Claude Luther, Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhard. and from the radio station website: svobodanews. ru. At the microphone in Lutetia – your DC …

Michel Petrucciani & Stephane Grappelli – I Got Rhythm

DS: – I Got Rhythm, “I Got the Rhythm” by George and Ira Gershwin. Stefan Grappeli – violin and Michel Petruchinani – piano; George Mraz – double bass and Louis Hynes – drums; April 97.
Paris was not going to lag behind the Cote d’Azur and Charles Delaunay, a music critic and one of the founders of the Hot Club de France (by the way, the son of Sonia Delaunay from Odessa), organized in the spring of the same 48 year in the Parisian theater “Marigny” “The first jazz festival in Paris”. Among the guests were: Coleman Hawkins, Errol Garner and Howard McGee …
Behind the Marigny theater in the prestigious Pleyel concert hall, a new festival with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis started… Pleyel, which by the way was located almost opposite the editorial office of the Russkaya Mysl newspaper, became the center of Parisian jazz festivals for many years. Only the Olympia concert hall could compete with him, where French pop stars most often performed. Here is Miles Davis’ first and perfect quintet at the ’60 Paris Olympia:

Miles Davis – Walkin’

DC: – Walkin’, Red Carpenter’s “Walking”; Miles Davis – trumpet John Coltrane – tenor saxophone Wynton Kelly – piano; Paul Chambers – bass and Jimmy Cobb – drums. March 20, 60. As the luminaries say: getting to a concert was harder than getting an appointment with the president…

There is no doubt that the first festivals in Europe were nothing like the modern festival industry, seasonally convenient time. Post-war Europe has not yet lost the idealism of the era. Hence, not only jazz, but also philosophy, literature, cinema … But total commercialization enveloped our ball pretty quickly. We have experienced and continue to experience the density of this veil in these last months.
Partially French festivals in 2009 either reduced the number of invitees or curtailed programs.
You can follow some of the French festivals live by listening to the TSF radio station on the web. In the evenings, not always with permission, TSF broadcasts live concerts from the newest summer jazz centers like Vienne or Mariac.
Opens the Mariac Festival on Friday 31 July – Sunny Rollins; followed by the Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis as leader; Jan Garbarek; a new quartet by Charles Lloyd; the Jackie Terrason trio; Ahmad Jamal, of course, and this saxophonist.

Joshua Redman – Summertime

DC: Wonderful improvisation on the Gershwin theme of “Summertime”, Summertime, by Joshua Redman (tenor saxophone).
Played with him: Brad Meldo – piano; Larry Grenadier – double bass and Brian Blade – drums. Recorded 11 years ago, when Joshua was 29 and Brad Maldo was 28…
Marcus Roberts and Wynton Marsalis (already without an orchestra, with his combo) also perform in Mariac. Of the Brazilians, who are becoming more and more numerous at the festivals, I will note Milton Nasicmento and the Latin Giants group. The Mariac Festival will last until August 16…
Let’s go back to the 40s and 50s. After “Marigny”, “Pleyel” and “Olympia”, the Parisian jazz festivals reached the Parisian “House of Chemistry”, but by this time the American Newport Festival had already started. Behind him opened the Belgian in Comblain-la-Tour, Cannes, finally, Antibes, another American in Tanglewood, which, in theory, invited only musicians of the classical school, but jazzmen broke into this holy of holies too ….
By the end of the 80s, as I said, more than eight hundred festivals a year were swinging in the world! In Denmark, Argentina, Yugoslavia, India, USSR, Japan, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Turkey.
Here (since I happened to mention) Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra:

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra – Acknowledgment

DC: – Acknowledgment, “Acknowledgment”, an excerpt from an 11-minute improvisation by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on the John Coltrane Suite ” Love Supreme” (Suprem)….
Today’s Jazz Time will be closed by Train’s student and follower Wayne Shorter, who performs at the Monterey Festival September 18-20 with Dave Brubeck, DD Bridgewater, Randy Brecker, Wynton Marsalis, Joe Lovano, Kenny Barron, Regina Carter , John Schofield, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Quartet and Lew Tabakin, to name just a few of the members at the top of this stunning jazz poster.