Tag Archives: Washington Heights

Word Up: Rising in the Heights with artists Randy Mason & Jamell Ogbanna

Hip-hop artist Randy Mason and keyboardist Jamell Ogbanna join Leadlights Ensemble for a hopeful afternoon of hip hop, rhyme, and string music, featuring Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman.

Free copies of the book will be available.

Rising in the Heights is a festival of free outdoor public arts performances curated by Leadlights Ensemble in partnership with Word Up Community Bookshop. The festival celebrates the rich artistic contributions of Latinx and Black cultures and promotes children’s literacy through music and bilingual storytelling.

Randy Mason is a Bronx hip hop artist, songwriter, cajón percussionist, educator, pastor, and family man whose life and art reflect the heartbeat of faith, rhythm, and community. Fusing the raw energy of New York City hip hop with the rich traditions of Afro-Peruvian percussion, Randy creates a one-of-a-kind sound that inspires, educates, and uplifts.​

​Born and raised in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip hop, Randy’s music embodies his Puerto Rican and African American heritage. His performances blend storytelling, live instrumentation, and lyrical depth — a celebration of culture, creativity, and hope. Whether performing on stage, teaching in classrooms, or preaching from the pulpit, Randy brings the same message.

​As a hip hop educator and founder of R.H.Y.M.E. (Rhymes Help Young Minds Excel), Randy uses rap, writing, and rhythm to mentor youth throughout New York City. His innovative programs help students discover their voices, develop confidence, and dream beyond their circumstances.

Beyond the mic, Randy is a devoted husband, father, and arts and mentoring program director committed to empowering communities through creativity. With every beat, rhyme, and classroom moment, Randy Mason continues to prove that hip hop is more than music — it’s ministry, mentorship, and movement.

Word Up Recirculation: Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s DAYLIGHT COME

Word Up welcomes Publisher’s Weekly Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss his new book Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made (Significations), a vibrant, revealing portrait of the “King of Calypso,” whose extraordinary performing career and activism helped remake America through the civil rights era and beyond.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 100 attendees. Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK  Even three years after his death, Harry Belafonte is everywhere. You can’t go to a wedding, or to a sports arena, without hearing “Day-O,” “Jump in the Line,” or “Jamaica Farewell.” The Harlem-born son of Caribbean immigrants, Belafonte turned the folk music of the islands into American pop—and shaped the fantasy of Caribbean life that endures as an ideal and as a multibillion-dollar tourist industry. Belafonte released the first million-selling LP in history. He was America’s first Black movie star, the first Black person to produce a prime-time special on network TV, and the first to win an Emmy Award. He was once the highest-paid Black performer of all time, beloved by Black and white fans alike, even under segregation. His artistic career helped create the pop culture of the twentieth century—and his political activism reshaped the course of American history.

In this sparkling new biography, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro brings Belafonte’s personality and music vibrantly to life, following him from rags to riches and from Harlem to Jamaica to the March on Washington. Jelly-Schapiro takes us inside Belafonte’s lifelong brotherhood with Sidney Poitier, his friendship with Fidel Castro, his collaboration with Nelson Mandela, and the sometimes shocking therapeutic relationships his difficult upbringing necessitated. At the heart of the story is Belafonte’s bond with Martin Luther King Jr., whose cause Belafonte would champion for the rest of his life. That commitment to the greater good would sustain him and benefit untold numbers—and would come at a cost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose books include Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names; Island People: The Caribbean and the World; and, with Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. His work appears regularly in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. Jelly-Schapiro teaches journalism at New York University and is director of publishing at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, where he hosts the popular Author Talks series and is coeditor in chief of Pioneer Works Broadcast.

Five Flies Coffee & BMA: Washington Heights Community Poetry Reading

Broadway Mall Association (BMA)in collaboration with Five Flies Coffee proudly announces a community poetry reading in connection with the art exhibition, Pablo Caviedes: The Unknown Way. This exhibition showcases 20 of the artist’s original works from his CRANIUM series, displayed along the Broadway malls from 150th  to 158th Street last year to commemorate the Day of the Dead.

Pablo Caviedes’ CRANIUM series is a powerful meditation on identity, migration, and mortality. Through intricately rendered skulls layered with maps, indigenous symbols, and human visages, Caviedes uses a universal symbol of death to represent an exploration of cultural memory. Merging Western memento mori traditions with Latin American iconography, his work blurs boundaries between life and death, homeland and exile, and the physical and the digital. Each skull is a visual archive of the immigrant experience: fragmented yet resilient, rooted yet in motion. CRANIUM invites viewers to confront the fluidity of identity and to question what it means to belong in an ever-shifting world.

Poets from around New York City have been invited to interpret these works. The poets include Diogenese Abreu, Omar Ballardares, Eric Baker, Alan Britt, Karla Coreas, Jenna Jenkins, Alex Lima, Azekiwe Providence. Each will dynamically integrate the unique black and white skull images with the written and spoken word. This unique program reflects the Broadway Mall Association’s mission to create meaningful cultural programming in multimedia ways in the communities that it serves. Five Flies Coffee is a community institution and small business that provides delicious beverages and locally-sourced food to the Washington Heights neighborhood. It also supports local artists through these type of event and the collaboration with BMA and Pablo Caviedes is the perfect marriage of art and local business development.

Washington Heights Library: Poetry Workshop with Adá Limón & Juan Felipe Herrera

Read & Write Poetry with Us for Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month
We will be reading a few select poems by U.S. Poet Laureates Adá Limón and Juan Felipe Herrera. Never heard of them? That’s ok! Join us and get an introduction to their work!

There is no need to prepare or read anything beforehand. We will also have time at the end to write our own poems. This will be an inclusive space where people of all experience levels can feel welcome.

Optional RSVP.