The sound of horns and percussion permeated Harlem, causing neighbors to poke their heads out of windows to listen to the colorful sounds of jazz.
It was Thursday night — Juneteenth — and the sun was shining after a brief downpour. The Big Band Jubilee, an annual live music celebration, had been delayed for a bit by the weather. But now it was in full swing, and musicians and dancers had taken to the streets.
Ava Johnson, 62, rocked to the rhythm of the music next to her sister, Peggy Salano, and a sea of people. Before the event, Mrs. Johnson had stood in the rain under a covering for an hour, anticipating a night of jazz in a historic Manhattan neighborhood.
“This is where it all started,” Mrs. Johnson said. “This is where our ancestors Dizzy, Louis, Ella and all of them, I’m sure, walked through this neighborhood and played their music. So it’s like coming back home to be here and to celebrate our history on this day.”
Marija Abney, the founder and executive director of the Soapbox Presents, the event’s host, said she had established the organization in 2020 to provide Black people relief from the coronavirus pandemic and from the anger touched off by the police killing of George Floyd that year.
Her goal with the Big Band Jubilee was to create an event that embodied Black joy and that would stand as her own personal love letter to the Harlem Renaissance, an era when musicians gathered on brownstone stoops, turning them into impromptu stages for jam sessions and the exchange of ideas.
Ms. Abney said she also wanted to reclaim some of what Harlem had lost to gentrification.
“It is a way of saying, ‘No, this is our home, too,’” she said. “We have as much rights to practice our culture as anybody else does.”
The Big Band Jubilee is an ode to jazz, a style born in New Orleans and brought to New York and other major U.S. cities by Black Americans moving north and west in search of better lives during the Great Migration.
Harlem alone added nearly 175,000 new Black residents in the 1920s, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The influx set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance, a rich period of Black artistry when jazz styles like Harlem stride piano and swing flourished.
Bebop followed, in the 1940s, with Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem serving as a key venue. In those days, extravagant crowds would gather to dance at the Savoy Ballroom, known as the “home of happy feet.”
With the Big Band Jubilee, Ms. Abney wants to bring jazz back to its Harlem roots. Aaron Flagg, the chair and associate director of jazz studies at the Juilliard School, applauded the effort.
“That connection with the people, that stoop experience, where it’s just in the neighborhood,” Mr. Flagg said, “it’s lost.”
At the jubilee, Suleika Abdourazak, 24, posed for a picture with her friends in front of an image of a Black fist painted in red, green and black and the letters “B.L.M.,” for Black Lives Matter.
“As someone who is a Black Muslim woman who grew up in white spaces, it’s really beautiful to see Black excellence in such a swath of people,” said Ms. Abdourazak, a recent New York University graduate from Allentown, Pa. “You don’t get to see that outside of big cities like New York.”
Saladinn McGhee, 44, brought his 12-year-old son, Matthew, from North Carolina to experience the culture in Harlem. Although Juneteenth is a day to celebrate freedom from slavery, Mr. McGhee said it also allowed the community to embrace the history of the Harlem Renaissance.
“Before I Let Go,” by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, rang out in the air as Ms. Abdourazak smiled and talked with her friends.
“I think it’s just about joy,” she said, reflecting on the meaning of Juneteenth, “and how joy can be an act of resistance.”
Samantha Latson is a Times reporter covering New York City and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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