In 1958, Art D'Lugoff opened The Village Gate in the basement of a flophouse for transient men on Bleecker and Thompson St in the area of New York City called Greenwich Village. With D’Lugoff's savvy, the Gate became an important gathering point for underground cultural movements and the avant-garde.

The Gate presented numerous folk musicians, including Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan who wrote his famous song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" in the basement there. Eventually, the club showcased jazz artists, and many seminal live recordings were made there in the ‘60s and ‘70s. An incredible roster of jazz legends played at the Gate, including Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.

"(The Gate) was used for many things, for gatherings of all sorts, debates, discussions," D'Lugoff was quoted in a 2005 article by writer Aileen Torres. "It was not a one-type of place. Kept it interesting, kept it alive. We were able to function on many levels. As it went on, in the sixties, it got more and more involved in jazz. We pretty much were one of the most important jazz clubs in the world. We’ve done a lot of great things. We would put Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane on one bill for $4. We became the most important jazz bookers, and probably one of the most important jazz clubs in the world, because we had the artists right here in New York City. Although, we did book artists that came in from other cities, even from Europe. Something was always happening there. We did over 50 albums.”

The "Salsa Meets Jazz at The Village Gate" series was started in the ‘60s by famed disc jockey Symphony Sid Torin and music entrepreneur Jack Hooke. Every Monday night, they presented straight Latin music performances. But soon, the Village Gate became a hotspot for a movement sweeping the New York Latin music scene: the descarga. The form brought together old and new school Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans who "were essentially a product of the jazz-oriented tastes of the first generation of New York-born musicians." Pivotal in the movement were the Alegre All-Stars -- under the musical directorship of the talented and innovative pianist Charlie Palmieri.

In late 1965, a historic jam session at The Village Gate brought together another ensemble -- the Tico All-Stars -- and a number of legendary musicians, including Israel Cachao Lopez, Ray Barretto, Johnny Pacheco, Cándido Camero, Joe Cuba, Jose Feliciano, and the Palmieri brothers (Charlie and Eddie), to name a few. That meeting produced "one of the most famous Latin jam session albums ever..." -- Descargas Live at the Village Gate, Vol. 1, Tico All-Stars and later Vol. 2 and Vol. 3. The new-school jazz-infused “loosened” tipico sound of the afrocuban-derived descarga form became a regular feature at the Village Gate, for a time.

After "being deluged with calls from jazz musicians to play with the great Latin musicians," Torin and Hooke widened the series scope by including more non-Latino musicians. The change made "Salsa Meets Jazz at The Village Gate" a premier event within New York City's live-music club scene. World-renowned stars like Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Eddie Palmieri, Machito, and dozens more were often paired up with prominent jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner and others.

As Robert Palmer wrote in the NY Times, "When salsa meets jazz at the Village Gate, it's usually a coming-together of disparate points of view, however sympathetic and compatible." To many of the Latin and Jazz musicians who had performed throughout the series, the Village Gate event became a proving ground, a place where their respective technical and creative abilities were always put to task before tough New York audiences.

For more than 30 years (though there was a reported hiatus between 1970-1980), "Salsa Meets Jazz at The Village Gate" was the pre-eminent series in New York City and probably in the United States that celebrated and paid homage to Latin music. In 1993, the series came to an abrupt end, sadly, as the Village Gate closed its doors forever. According to one source, "the club closed for reasons related to its lease."

The place where the Legends of Latin and Jazz hung tough and tall is now a CVS Pharmacy and mini-mall.

SOURCES:
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Latin Tinge (John Storm Roberts)
The New York Times
Latin Beat Magazine
Downtown Express

The Mamboso Nuyotopia Archives: Salsa Meets Jazz Project is an internet-based tribute to the famous long-running series "Salsa Meets Jazz at The Village Gate." The recordings and photographs included in this module are from the archives of independent media-artist Francisco Reyes II.

Most of the audio excerpts from the recorded performances were edited together with relevant interviews and such conducted during the course of the 1991 season, or used in conjunction with pre-recorded reports and updates. The edited versions were featured as segments of a music radio program titled "Mamboso Nuyotopia" that aired weekly over WHRW-FM in Binghamton, NY -- a non-commercial college broadcast radio station. The original air tapes were lost; however, most of the raw audio-cassette field tapes were salvaged.

Sincerest thanks and appreciation goes out to series co-founder and promoter the late Jack Hooke. Very special thanks and appreciation also goes out to the illustrious Ralph Mercado, and promoter Harriet Wasser. All three lent their support and influence whenever possible in events that permitted this small project to become what can only be described as a unique record of a New York City musical legacy. My undaunting appreciation goes out to all of the talented artists living and deceased whose creative performances, images, and insights comprise the substance of this homage to creativity and the language that binds us all: music.

From the beginning when this project was launched, an important stipulation was that permission to "broadcast" these recordings must be obtained from the respective band leaders and guest soloists, as well as from those individual artists whose performing together at the Gate was unique ( e.g., the VILLAGE GATE ALL-STARS).

All of the band/orchestra leaders and soloists were contacted via telephone or face-to-face prior to their performances. Most of the band leaders signed standard releases; others were unable to sign any release because of what they cited as existing contractual obligations. However, ALL of the band/orchestra leaders (except one) and the guest soloists did OK the use and broadcast of clips or excerpts from their performances at the Village Gate by MAMBOSO NUYOTOPIA PRESENTS...

Another stipulation was that the actual recording process during these performances would be limited to the area where the Gate's main sound-mixer board was located. No equipment or sound-recording devices would be setup on-stage with the performers.

As producer of MAMBOSO NUYOTOPIA PRESENTS..., my objective was to end up with a "broadcast-quality" recording that would bring the "live-music, NYC club experience" to the Latino and general listener-ship of the non-commercial, college radio station WHRW-FM in Upstate New York. The station's department of Latin and Afro-Caribbean music, RADIO PATRIA, was an outlet for a number of my productions as an area broadcast engineer and as an independent media-artist. Special funding for this project was non-existent. So, essentially, production was "low-budget, low-tech, fast, and dirty." Quite frankly, the project would not have happened if it were otherwise.

Given the resources available at the time, to achieve the "live-music, NYC club experience," a direct patch from the house mixer board was fed to one channel of a SONY TCD-5M Audio Cassette Recorder, and the other channel was fed by a Sennheiser PA microphone dangling from the sound booth, just above the rear of the main audience area. Maxell metal-alloy tape was used for the recordings which probably accounts for their lack of degradation after sixteen years.
The results of the "blend" varied from disastrous to exciting, with or without post. The clips featured here represent those instances when technology and artistic expression came together to form what I regard to be vindicating moments about this project.

For the purposes of this archive, the excerpts were remixed using Audacity (an open-source audio editing application) and then exported to mp3 format.

The Village Gate series was a defining period in the history of Latin Music in New York City; a period, in my opinion, comparable to that of the Palladium Era. My hope is that this "on-line" tribute will become a permanent archive or part of a larger collection celebrating Afro-Cuban rhythms, Jazz music, the Puerto Rican / Nuyorican community in New York, and Latino music in-general.

Francisco Reyes II
MAMBOSO.NET