Tribute to Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage

BAC’s Harborlore Festival resonates with this annual ceremony, now in its 24th year, memorializing enslaved Africans who died at sea in their forced passage to the Americas. Hundreds of New Yorkers attend Tribute annually to drum, pray, remember, wade in the water and leave flowers at the shoreline. See Guyanese master drummer Baba Mpho with additional drummers and singers perform at the ceremony down by the water starting between 4 and 5pm.

Presented by Medger Evers College, People of the Sun Middle Passage Collective with participation from BAC. 

Dr. Mary Umolu (pictured) founded Tribute to Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage in 1989. She is now the Queen Mother Ancestor of the Celebration. Photo: Tony Akeem.

OCEAN MORISSET, FLOWERS FOR YEMAJA, 2012 METALLIC PRINT, 20" X 24."

Since 1989, the People of the Sun Middle Passage Collective has annually organized a memorial ceremony for the African ancestors who died in the crossing of the water during the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Spirited music and dancing play a part in the annual memorial Tribute to Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage on the beach at Coney Island. Photo: Tony Akeem.

Ocean Morisset, Dance for Yemeja, 2012 C-Print 16” x 20”

THIS EVENT IS PRESENTED AS PART OF:

Harborlore Festival
Where the River Meets the Sea in Brooklyn’s Folk Imagination
Dance, Music and Storytelling 

May 10 – June 15, 2013

It’s no secret that Brooklyn is surrounded by over 50 miles of water from Greenpoint to Canarsie, and is also home to thousands of immigrants hailing from coastal locales across the globe—Jamaica, Bangladesh, Italy, Guyana, Egypt—where water is omnipresent. These immigrants, especially the artists among them, have brought cultural traditions to Brooklyn that capture the beauty, meaning and vulnerability of living at water’s edge.  For Harborlore Festival, BAC presents a series of free concerts, panel discussions and performing arts events exploring the role of water in the artistic traditions of Brooklyn’s diverse immigrant and diaspora communities. In post-Sandy New York, Harborlore Festival signals the importance of learning new respect and reverence for the power of water.

SPONSORS

Harborlore is sponsored by TD Bank.

BAC Folk Arts is sponsored by Con Edison.

Promotional Partner: Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. Media partner: WNYC Radio.

Major support for Harborlore is provided by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council. Additional support is provided by New York Council for the Humanities.