Opening Reception

& City Lore Holiday Party

Thursday, December 19th, 2024

7 PM – 9 PM

City Lore Gallery: 56 E 1st Street, New York, NY 10003

Exhibit run: December 19th, 2024 – February 14th, 2025

Rumba Entre Puentes is a community-based multimedia exhibition that shares and interprets the Cuban rumba tradition as performed in New York City over the past three decades through ethnographic research, musical performance, and original cultural documentation. The title is both a symbolic nod to NYC (a city between bridges) and the musical community’s intergenerational resilience, as they sustain the rumba tradition across time and place.

In New York City in particular, rumba represents a unique space where Cubans from various generations and walks of life, have come together over the years, to also share cross-culturally with other groups such as Nuyorican, Dominican, African Americans and in recent years a large South American presence (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Chilean etc.) throughout the city.. Beginning with the storied Central Park Sunday rumba, which has been going strong for more than six decades, these musical manifestations are at once sites of cultural maintenance and incredibly rich melting pots of diasporic percussionists who find refuge in the communal practice. The past decade has seen significant revitalization to this grassroots musical landscape with new rumbas cropping up from Prospect Park, Brooklyn to the Lower East Side in various venues (5C Cultural Cafe, Zinc Bar, Mi Salsa Kitchen etc) and private homes.

This exhibition, which defies the traditional presentation in a four-walled gallery, will share documentary photographs by celebrated Cuban Rumba photographer Juan Caballero, and pay homage to the past, present and future of this tradition in NYC. In addition to approximately 25 still images documenting the various manifestations of Cuban Rumba in and around NYC, the exhibition will feature a video loop from Caballero’s personal archive and sound bites from participating musicians. The show will be regularly activated via live performance and public programming (bi-monthly open Rumba & 2 panel discussions/film screenings to be confirmed).

Often described as an expert observer and a participant storyteller, Caballero’s photographic work captures everyone from the most revered drummers, singers and dancers to those community members who contribute to the rumba scene by means of making food and simply being present. His self-proclaimed personal mission is to put this documentation back in the hands of those who make these musical stories come alive through exhibitions like this one.

Learn more about the exhibition HERE