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  • A Gathering of the Tribes

    A Gathering of the Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective. Located on the Lower East Side of New York City, Tribes has been in existence since 1991.


  • A Gathering of the Tribes, 285 East 3rd St, 2nd Floor (between Avenues C and D)
    Phone: 212-674-3778
    Fax: 212-674-5776
    Email: Info@tribes.org


  • Tribes is a member of Chamber Music of America, Poets & Writers, Poets Society of America, St. Marks Poetry Project. We are Funded by NYC DCA, NYSCA & The Andy Warhol Foundation among others. All contributions are tax deductible.

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  • The 16th Annual Charlie Parker Festival

    Throughout the forties, Charlie Parker revolutionized jazz and immortalized the Lower East Side by capturing its combustive atmosphere and translating it into music. It is no wonder that every year the Lower East Side returns a little bit of the favor by celebrating Charlie Parker, his life and his legacy, as well as his deep rooted relationship with this neighborhood, through A Gathering of the Tribes' Charlie Parker Festival.
    This year, A Gathering of the Tribes is please to present the 16th Annual Charlie Parker Festival, entitled "BIRD LIVES," from August 2 - August 29. More information about this year's festival can be found here

Latest Reviews

Patti Smith’s Just Kids reviewed by Bonny Finberg

JUST KIDS –Patti Smith
Harper Collins, New York, 2010
279 pps.
Reviewed by Bonny Finberg
     Patti Smith has kept her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe to tell their story. By doing so through the lens of a generation of artists in New York at that time, she’s written our story as well. Her book […]


THE NYC LATTE COMPOSER FOR THOUGHT

by Phaedra Pinkston
Staten Island, New York vocalist/guitarist Dorian Spencer can be seen performing live around New York City making the commutes around town a little bit more relaxing for the always-on-the-go New Yorker.
Originally born in Puerto Rico, the self taught musician was greatly impacted by musical legend Jimi Hendrix additionally, all of Spencer’s songs are […]


The Highway Doom, Of the Memory, Of the Grace by Christopher Heffernan

Sam Shepard’s new book of stories, Day Out of Days, is a romp through the highways of America, through the personal history of the narrators, as well as through the historical past of the many areas of the States that the highways touch and pass through, that is often as brutal […]


Frances Chung: A Chinese American Woman’s Plight. By: Susan Yung

the winter wind sits in the living room
so we huddle in the kitchenin our winter coats looking silly
and too cold to do anything
but light a candle eat melon seeds
as I wonder
what do we wear when we go outside?
— poem by Frances Chung, p. 25, 1970
from “Crazy Melon & Green Apples”
On November 8, 2009, I picked […]


“This Neighborhood is Too Dangerous”: Fela Kuti on Broadway By: Brian Boyles

What is the relationship between the scorched drawers of a Nigerian bourgeois teenager and a hot Broadway musical dedicated to a Nigerian revolutionary musician? How did America evolve to a point where we cower at the potential of the former while warmly embracing the latter? Are we really simultaneously safer and more in danger than […]



Latest Poetry

Armory & Accessories

An extremely long and image-dense New York art fair report by Janet Bruesselbach
Everything I shot from Wednesday to Sunday is here.
FIRST COURSE: The Armory Show
I registered as press in advance for this and showed up about ten minutes after the press conference to pick up my badge. I briefly glanced at Pier 92, where […]


January Calendar

Current Show: Language Paintings
Philip J. Hardy / Michael Gibson:
Closing Party January 27th 6:30 pm
Two one-room exhibitions of painters who engage with words without including them in the image. Hard uses an illustrative style that frustrates meaning, taking on the colloquial and making referentless parables. Gibson deconstructs visual semiotics, combining collage with observational painting.

Potluck Birthday Bash […]



Latest Essays

Miles Davis, Supercontinents, Mega-Oceans, and Human Prehistory

 by Patrick Kosiewicz
From 1972-1975 Miles Davis and a band of warrior musicians
took audiences back to the furthest reaches
of human and earth history
with their elemental, organic, universal, and utterly spontaneous sound.

It began as a return to Africa,
site of the first human revolution,
radiated to the Indus Valley and the jungles of South America,
and then went further back […]


IN THE GAP BETWEEN PARADES: Ray Nagin on Mardi Gras Day 2010

 By: Brian Boyles

“Rex is on his way.”
On the grandstand in front of Gallier Hall, we watch the tail of the Zulu parade pass and the lieutenants of the Krewe of Rex approach. Mayor Ray Nagin speaks into a thin microphone perched over St. Charles Avenue, greeting the citizens who wait and re-fill during the […]



Latest Fiction

Armory & Accessories

An extremely long and image-dense New York art fair report by Janet Bruesselbach
Everything I shot from Wednesday to Sunday is here.
FIRST COURSE: The Armory Show
I registered as press in advance for this and showed up about ten minutes after the press conference to pick up my badge. I briefly glanced at Pier 92, where […]


Patti Smith’s Just Kids reviewed by Bonny Finberg

JUST KIDS –Patti Smith
Harper Collins, New York, 2010
279 pps.
Reviewed by Bonny Finberg
     Patti Smith has kept her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe to tell their story. By doing so through the lens of a generation of artists in New York at that time, she’s written our story as well. Her book […]



Latest Videos

Steve Cannon for President!

www.News3Online.com


Obama’s speech on race

NPR link


(In Memory Of) Lester Afflick 10/1/00 by Bob Holman

uddling poets inside dark perfect sunday fall warm

day outside beauty we gather inside lester late the late

lester in the middle a poem that doesn’t quite start

is scratched out xxxs doesn’t quite end what you

thought what you taught what you suspired

stood for your ground some soaring rarely — cynic

died of poverty died of overdose of love died

of loneliness camaraderie red wine too

too much poetry not enough vegetables

always thought lester one of the smartest guys

I know always loved between him and ferris

cannon the crew something about us snapped

into place into focus even high today he’d be

here wouldn’t be anywhere else cept dying young

afflick a fleck ash afflicted with life in the middle

xxxxs to get it write it keeps it going for you lester

for all of us here huddling poets inside dark perfect

 

Bob Holman