Throughout the year, Atwood Magazine invites members of the music industry to participate in a series of essays reflecting on art, identity, culture, inclusion, and more.
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In observance of Black Music Month, Abrons Arts Center’s VP of Visual and Performing Arts, Ali Rosa-Salas, reflects on the institution’s 50-year history and ongoing commitment to the New York arts ecosystem.
Ali Rosa-Salas is a curator whose approach is rooted in the belief that curatorial practice must serve the public good. She finds inspiration from the cultural ecosystems of New York City, where she was born and raised.
For over a decade, Ali has served New York City arts and culture primarily through curatorial projects in live performance. Currently, Ali is the Vice President of Visual and Performing Arts of Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, the only cultural organization in New York City that is part of a social services agency. From 2020-2023, she served as an Associate Curator of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. As an independent curator, she has produced exhibitions, performances, and public programs with AFROPUNK, Danspace Project, Discwoman, Knockdown Center, MoCADA, Weeksville Heritage Center, and more. She has also organized discursive events as an Alumnae Fellow at the Barnard Center for Research on Women and as the Associate Curator of the 2017 American Realness Festival.
Ali received a BA from Barnard College in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and an MA from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.
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HOPE IS LOCAL
by Ali Rosa-Salas
Music is the brain of New York City.
From hip hop’s Bronx origins in the 1970s to the emergence of our local manifestation of drill, New York City’s Black artists continue to define the course of contemporary music worldwide.
For 50 years, Abrons Arts Center has served as a creative incubator, performance space, and educational hub in New York City’s Lower East Side, welcoming musicians to engage in ideation and collaboration within our galleries, classrooms, and studios. Across this history, our Playhouse has seen performances by Dizzy Gillespie, and keiyaA, who premiered their latest body of work, milk thot, on our stage in January.
Abrons, in service of our mission, is especially invested in supporting artists who are at the early stages of their careers. Our Performance AIRspace Residency supports performing artists in the development and production of original new works. Likewise, our Arts Education program engages aspiring musicians of all ages with lessons in singing, songwriting, and digital music production.
I, like many New Yorkers, cherish my memories of summers nourished by free arts programming like Celebrate Brooklyn and Summer Stage.These formative experiences and their values of accessibility and collectivity have fundamentally informed my approach to music programming at Abrons.
I first came across MIKE’s music via word of mouth, gravitating towards the introspective nature of songs like “God’s With Me.” MIKE reflected a sense of earnestness and self-assuredness well beyond his then-teenage years. We share a deep love for New York City, hip hop, and supporting our city’s artistic community, which led to our first collaboration onYoung World, MIKE’s free, annual festival which has since featured Noname, Earl Sweatshirt, and more.
Our curatorial partnership continued with Sound, Sun, Pleasure, a free concert and community event in 2023.
On June 7, Abrons and MIKE hosted the second edition of the festival, celebrating the prism of Black art and music with free workshops, visual artist open studios, and performances. From house and vogue classes to bossa nova ballads performed by Alici, guests were invited to experience the multiplicity of Black creative production.
Across each of these projects, the core objective remains honoring the vision and integrity of artists. Along with a commission fee and budget, the Performance AIRspace Residency provides artists space and time for ideation and development, an often under resourced aspect of the creative process. The evolution of these residency projects, from initial brainstorming to fully realized productions like keiyaA’s milk thot, is a testament to the necessity of investment in creative process. Community is formed in our studios and preserved on our stages.
Hope is local.
Even as support for arts and culture is under persistent threat, New York City artists continue to define and defy the capacities of our imaginations. I look to the practices of Cleo Reed and Symara Sarai, our 2025-2026 Performance AIRspace residents, and the New York-bred instincts of MIKE and SALIMATA as inspiration for how boundless we can be.
Black Music Month is every month. Today and everyday, we must recognize and support Black artists as stewards of our creative ecology and architects of our culture. – Ali Rosa-Salas
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