Trolley Tour Celebrates Music History in the Bronx

On Saturday, Fordham University professor Mark Naison in partnership with the Bronx Music Heritage Center will lead a trolley tour in the South Bronx. 

Two neighborhoods, Morrisania and Hunts Point, are the focus of the tour. Naison says 5 or 6 different types of music were born from a mix of African American, West Indian, and Latin Carribean culture in the 1940s-70s.

“Today it’s hard to see live music anywhere outside of Manhattan,” he says, “In those years there were scores of little music clubs in the Bronx.”

Those places will be covered on the tour and include the Tropicana Club and Sylvia’s Blue Morocco, where Nancy Wilson was discovered.

But by the late 1970s, the clubs had disappeared. As a result, hip-hop was born right in the streets of the Bronx.

Naison says most people are probably not aware of the South Bronx’s rich music history.

“I think there’s no place in the United States that has produced more varieties of popular music than these two little neighborhoods,” he says.

Naison’s trolley tour will end at the Bronx Music Heritage Center Lab with an indoor festival.

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