• Search

  • 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.

  • Events Calendar

    SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
     123456
    78910111213
    14151617181920
    21222324252627
    28293031 
  • 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

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 […]


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 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


The Worst Book I Ever Read. By the Unbearables. Reviewed by Kevin Riordan

worst-book-tribes.jpg

Welcome to the Labyrinth of multiple negatives. Books so bad they’re
perfect to pillory populate the latest Unbearables anthology, a
lavish production whose reach tries strenuously to exceed its grasp; but
nobody grasps like an Unbearable. The world is their oyster and it isn’t
easily digestible.
Even without counting graphic artists such as David Sandlin, Kaz, and
Ken Brown, over 70 contributors take pot shots at the books that bother
them, and they don’t waste time on trash. Each takes a tangent off the
concept and few look back, that’s not how they roll. Some state their
premise clearly like a survey response or an assignment, others go after
imaginary titles (Jerome Sala) or their own work (Ron Kolm). The work is
at its most enjoyable when core members wallow in self-mythologizing,
inventing characters out of each other. bart plantenga turns in a
novelesque tale of proofreaders driven too far, Mike Randall paints the
Unbearable Big Fish as “relentlessly cruising the shallow water for
talent that will cough up some ‘edgy’ material for less than scale.”
Tribulations of the writer’s life are the one keen constant.
Despite some targets being hit more than once, like the Bible, James
Joyce, and the Chicago Manual of Style, no two entries are alike. Some
of the Beats are back for another drubbing, along with their parasitic
hangers-on, taken out by Gerald Nicosia and Mike Golden, while Henry
Darger and Barbie hide behind Gertrude Stein. Lit pop-stars like Sedaris
and Chabon, icons like Ballard, Borges, Mailer and Calvino are roasted
as well, more for being distracting or disappointing than execrable.
By digging into the books that have riled them up, this pack of
writer/proles has levitated a pungent Pentagon of provoking prose out of
a hole greater than some of its parts.

Published by Autonomedia, paper, 16.95$