Brooklyn celebrates Fourth
THE PEOPLE’S PYROTECHNICS: Coney Island had its own celebration of America’s birthday. Photo by Trey Pentecost
INSIDE
Fantastic Negrito to bring ‘blunk’ to free festival
By Kevin Duggan It will be a fantastic show!
A Californian roots singer will bring
his soulful songs to a free afternoon
festival hosted by the Brooklyn Academy of
Music at MetroTech Commons on July 18.
Oakland-based Fantastic Negrito will
perform his powerful blend of blues, punk,
funk, soul, and gospel — or “blunk,” as he
calls it — and he said that the show will be
a spiritual experience for the audience in
America’s Downtown.
“They can expect a whole lot of church
without the religion,” said the musician,
who goes by Xavier Dphrepaulezz offstage.
Dphrepaulezz grew up in Massachusetts,
the son of a Somali immigrant dad and
a mother from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the
eighth of 14 kids. The family moved to
Oakland, California when he was 12,
where he discovered a wide range of
musical and artistic influences, including
the painter Basquiat, the band Parliament
Funkadelic, and David Bowie, Little
Richard, and Prince.
“When I was a young kid and saw
Prince dressed in a trench coat and garters
— while I wouldn’t necessarily wear that, it
was pretty impressive to see that,” he said.
The artist began playing straight funk
in the 1990s, but a serious car crash in
1999 put him on a different path. He
joined the burgeoning Afro-Punk movement
in the early 2000s under the moniker
Blood Sugar X, and in the 2010s
he took on the name Fantastic Negrito,
gaining attention by winning NPR’s Tiny
Desk contest, and delivering a powerful
performance at the public radio station’s
A blue
funk
cramped venue in 2015.
He has since released two full-length
albums — each of which won a Grammy
for Best Contemporary Blues Album —
and he released a music video earlier this
month for the track “The Suit that Won’t
Come Off” from his 2018 record “Please
Don’t Be Dead.”
The song and the record are part of this
fight against the current political turmoil
by trying to create unity through music,
according to the artist.
“People are trying to make it normal
to be a Nazi — I’m not accepting that,”
he said. “One thing music does, it unites
people, even people that have differences.
Music can give them a reason to come
together — it’s a great ice breaker.”
The Bay Area songster will sing at the
Downtown space as part of the Academy’s
R&B Festival, which has free concerts
every Thursday through Aug. 15.
He will share the bill with Brooklyn
United Evolution Drumline, a Kings
County group of school-age drummers.
Their performances will be separate,
but at the suggestion of this reporter,
Dphrepaulezz said he may join forces with
them on stage.
“You never know, we used to do that
all the time in the streets. I came from
the streets doing busking, and we used to
always meet up with people in Oakland
playing drums,” he said. “You just planted
the idea, so we’ll see.”
Fantastic Negrito at MetroTech
Commons Myrtle Avenue between
Lawrence and Bridge streets Downtown,
(718) 636-4100, www.bam.org. July 18 at
noon. Free.
Your entertainment
guide Page 47
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Letters .................................... 26
Opinion ................................... 27
The Right View ....................28
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BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Brooklyn had a blast!
Patriots traveled far and
wide to take in the nation’s
largest fi reworks
display in Kings
County, which one
Big Apple resident
admitted had the best
views in the city.
“I wanted to see
the fi reworks up close
and personal,” said Alex
Blue, who watched the
pyrotechnic display from
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s
Pier 1 with his friends.
The 43rd Annual
Macy’s Fourth of July
Fireworks erupted from
the Brooklyn Bridge
and nearby barges in a
half-hour pyrotechnic
bonanza beginning at 9:20
p.m., stunning thousands
of onlookers around Brooklyn
Heights and Dumbo.
All-in-all, the department
store launched a whopping
70,000 shells from the 136-
year-old span and barges,
proclaiming it the largest
Independence Day fi reworks
show in the nation.
The Macy’s show has
delighted Brooklynites for
generations, and Blue, who
has been a fan of the July 4
fi reworks show
since the 80s, said this latest
display didn’t disappoint.
“I like to celebrate the
United States’ birthday,” he
said. “I was born and raised
here, and I like to represent.”
For those who didn’t want to
shoulder their way through
hundreds of thousands of
July 4 revelers, Coney Island
offered a more modest beachfront
pyrotechnics display,
which proved the perfect
capstone to a day of fun in the
sun, according to
one Bay Ridgite.
“Macy’s is
more of a hassle
with small kids
and the crowds, with
Coney Island, you
can have a beach day,
sit on your blanket and
watch the fi reworks,”
said Paul Blackwell, who
drove down to the People’s
Playground with his wife
Julie and boys Ellis, 5, and
August, 2, both of whom
had a great time building
sandcastles during the day
and taking in the spectacular
celebration after the sun set.
“Ellis and August love the
beach, so the fi reworks were
just like a bonus on top of
that,” Blackwell said. “They
were mesmerized, they were
staring at the sky gobsmacked
and didn’t want it to end.”
RED, WHITE, AND BLUE: Winston Allen, left, and Rick Latouche show off
their patriotic colors ahead of Macy’s fi reworks show in Brooklyn Bridge
Park. Photo by Caroline Ourso
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