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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


December Calendar

Thursday, December 3rd
New Views of Everyday Life
On View all of December

Loie Hollowell presents a body of paintings that take a personal, slightly invasive, yet always telling look at everyday live. Hollowell’s subject matter primarily comes from personal experience. Although personal, the characters and settings appeal to a universal viewer, slipping somewhere between the subjective and objective.

Saturday, December 12th, 9pm
Will McEvoy Brings Jazz

Tribes continues. . . . two great groups, late night hang like always
Flin van Hemmen-drums Brad Henkel-trumpet
Kenny Warren- trumpet David Grollman-drums.
Will McEvoy-bass Improvised. Is that a trumpet I hear?

Wide open. No one leader. All support
Play, Drink, Discuss and Hang until Steve kicks us out.
Look forward to it!!
BRING SOMEONE ALONG, we’re sure they’ll have a good time.

December 18th & 19th at 8pm and 20th at 9pm
An Evening with Melba Phelps Belk

Written by James D’Entremont.

With Christine Donnelly, Richard Sheinmel and Nomi TichmanMelba Phelps Belk is a character created by James D’Entremont and embodied by Christine Donnelly. Delivering a lecture in an evangelical church basement, Mrs.Belk gives the audience a comprehensive look at the End of Days, a time of “ earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, mudslides, mass murder, gay weddings, plagues of locusts, explosions, epidemics, piracy at sea, Dust-Buster abortions, nuclear terrorism, condom distribution to pre-school toddlers, and widespread use of pharmaceuticals made in France” Her talk encompasses recipes, celebrity gossip, ecstatic shout-outs in bygone Aramaic tongues, inspirational songs and everything you need to know about the Christian Right. $10

Sunday, December 20th, 4:00 to 6:00 pm.
Reading/Book Party for Appearances Magazine #28

Featuring: Jill Rapaport, Susan Scutti & Ron Kolm and
Hosted by Jim Feast

Writers Bios:

Jill S. Rapaport is a writer of fiction and nonfiction
prose, as well as plays, essays, poems and songs. Her work has been
published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies including
Found Object, Global City Review, Resister, Lungfull!, the St. Marks
Poetry Project Newsletter, Red Shift, the National Poetry Magazine of
the Lower East Side, Milk, IKON, Red Tape, Sensitive Skin, New
Observations, and others. Rapaport has read at St Marks Poetry Project,
the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Teachers and Writers, the Knitting
Factory, the Ear Inn, the Fales Library, ABC No Rio, La Mama, CBGB’s
Gallery, and other places in New York and elsewhere.

Susan Scutti only writes when she feels like it. Despite this lack of … whatever, she has published a collection of short stories, The Renaissance Began with a Muted Shade of Green, two novels, Second Generation, and A Kind of Sleep, and a chapbook, We Are Related. She manages the blog: #http://octoberbabies.wordpress.com.

Ron Kolm is one of the founding members of the Unbearables literary collective, and an editor of several of their anthologies; Crimes of the Beats, Help Yourself! and The Worst Book I Ever Read. He is also the co-author, with Jim Feast, of Neo Phobe, and the author of the Plastic Factory and Welcome to the Barbecue. Kolm’s papers were purchased by the New York University library, where they’ve been catalogued in the Fales Collection as part of the Downtown Writers Group.

These events were made possible by David Hammons, Salon 94, and Capital One Bank