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The Ultimate Block Party Sixth annual WAM pulls out the stops with music, art and food EVENT PHOTOS BY DAVID ZAITZ PHOTOGRAPHY
The sixth annual Westchester Arts & Music Block Party, which benefits the Emerson Avenue Community Garden, will take place from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 18. By Bridgette M. Redman You’ll be hard-pressed to find a wider variety of local performers than on Sept. 18 at the sixth annual WAM — the Westchester Arts & Music Block Party on Emerson Avenue between 80th Street and West 80th Place. It’s not your typical block party. There are 10 mainstage music performers and four more performance groups ranging from dance and magic to drums that will perform throughout the day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. It’s a different sound every hour, starting with indie/alternative and traveling through blues, surf, gospel, pop/punk, funk/R&B-inspired jam, pop, R&B soul, Americana, and ending with Latin/rock/flamenco. But there isn’t just music and dance. There is also art, community booths, kids’ activities, garden tours, food trucks, and a beer and wine garden. The day-long free event benefits the Emerson Avenue Community Garden. “The music has been a big part of what people are really surprised by in terms of the quality and diversity of the mix of folks we bring in to perform,” said WAM organizer John Sharpe. “It’s not your typical people playing local bars. There are a lot of decent bar bands around — I’m in one,
but these are people at decent stages in their career.” While Sharpe said there are crowds all day listening to the bands, there are three “headliners” this year: Omar Torrez, Rose’s Pawn Shop and Rainne. The full performer line-up is available at wamblockparty.org/ performers-1 with links to each of their music. Omar Torrez returns from Republic of Georgia to close out block party In his first appearance at WAM, Omar Torrez brings his Flamenco rock-pop style guitar playing as the final act of the day-long shows. He’d spent most of the pandemic in the Republic of Georgia where Sharpe said Torrez has a huge following. When Sharpe was hosting live Instagram shows during COVID, Torrez brought in 50 people from Europe who woke up at 3 a.m. just to be a part of it and hear him perform. “I was really impressed with that,” Sharpe said. For his part, Torrez is eager to get back on stage as he said he’s felt like half his life has been missing. “COVID was a complete disaster for music and people playing music,” Torrez said. “I was practicing, and practicing is not the same as playing. You
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feel kind of empty. Then John was doing these Instagram live shows. He reached out to me — I did a few for him and that went really well and I was grateful.” When Sharpe told him he was doing a live show, Torrez jumped at the opportunity, even though he was still living in Georgia. The block party performance will mark 20 months since Torrez has performed a live concert in the United States — the longest he’s gone since he was 6 years old and performing piano recitals. “A huge part of my life was taken away from me with this pandemic,” Torrez said. “This will mark a symbolic and actual restoration of what I do — I play for the people. It is about connection and communication. It is an exchange of energy that goes deeper than words. It is sounds, words, emotions, ideas, all of these things together. “My father taught me when I was young that a musician’s job is like a doctor, but it is a doctor for the soul — to heal people and give them the strength so they can do what they do best.” Torrez, who was always influenced by Flamenco music, described a journey where he started out performing bluesy rock and went through several sounds to get to where he is
now. During his journey, he was hired to play with Tom Waits, which helped mature his music. “Tom is a very transformative person to work for because he has completely his own sound, but he borrows pieces from all kinds of different genres and styles of music,” Torrez said. “He puts them in a big bucket of paint and whiskey and it comes out transformed.” Torrez too became transformed by working with him and he came out of it with a sound that he says is a post-Latin blues, something belonging to the 21st century that is Bohemian, an energetic rock but also old style. He hesitates to pinpoint exactly what his sound is. “It’s a famous cliché that no musical artist likes to describe their sound, but I understand that I must,” Torrez said. “If we accept that talking about music is like dancing about architecture, I would say the following: If you can imagine a mixture of Jimi Hendrix with some Latin, Afro-Cuban music mixed with a bit of Tom Waits. It’s high energy and danceable with a little psychedelic and burning guitar and rhythms.” Rose’s Pawn Shop infuses event with flairs of Americana Rose’s Pawn Shop is making a return appearance at the WAM block party.
“It’s a pretty special community event,” said Paul Givant, the band’s lead vocalist, guitar and banjo player. “They were doing it to bring the community together. There was a gardening project and charities working with it. We had a lot of fun playing there. It had a great crowd. When he asked if we would do it again, we were excited to return to the event.” Rose’s Pawn Shop, which got its name after Givant’s ex-girlfriend stole all their equipment and pawned it, consists of five guys who play music centered on Appalachian and Americana music. The music is authentic and heartfelt, rooted in American folk and bluegrass. “It’s called Americana because it draws from several different musical styles that are American, but are different,” Givant said. “There are elements of folk, elements of bluegrass, elements of rock and elements of country. You have the fiddle and the banjo doing the country and the bluegrass sound, then we have electric guitar and full drums which make it more rock. Then we have tight harmonies between two to four singers and a stand-up bass that gives you folk and rockabilly songs with the way the player will slap the upright bass. All of these different American music styles get put in a blender.”
