Dancing in the Streets
There was dancing in the Cambridge streets yesterday night. (Mass Ave, in fact, in front of Cambridge City Hall.) Wow! People of all ages; kids running everywhere; the kind of unspoiled cross-generational fun cities do best. There were 20-somethings breakdancing on the grass in front of city hall, kids running everywhere, people from the senior center across the street boogieing to ’50s songs… and a great selection of music from decades past.
With a little more effort (this event was amazingly under-advertised and -reported), a live band and better light-techs — perhaps even extending an invitation to and sharing costs with a few surrounding townships — they could easily extend the social diversity to match the age diversity, cordon off a couple more blocks of Mass Ave (they didn’t use half of the blocks they *did* cordon off), and make this yearly event a night of city-wide excitement on a scale normally found only in, say, New Orleans.
David J Edery
June 25, 2003 @ 12:05 am
Speaking of 50’s songs… check out http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/vote/list100.html; NPR’s “The 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century” list. I found it quite educational. It seems to have a heavy bent towards Jazz.