Decibelists are an experimental pop band founded by native New Yorkers Emma Alabaster and Leo Ferguson.
They're sharing their new music video for “Galapagos” here (the East Village makes a few cameos).
Here's the band with more about it:
This video features born-and-raised New Yorkers who have experienced loss in some way brought on by gentrification. With powerful visuals, it shows the ways that People of Color, low-income New Yorkers, queer folks and artists experience displacement, loss of community spaces, and heartbreak as more and more neighborhoods gentrify.
The video was created through an interactive process of community engagement in which born-and-raised New Yorkers were invited to tell their “displacement stories” and create short narratives for the video. The song was written and performed by decibelists and uses rising tides and extinction as a metaphor for this displacement.
The video is a mix of dreamy cityscapes and ocean surf, real estate signs, construction sites and yuppie douchebags, set against the stories of real, very pissed-off New Yorkers.
And here it is...
On March 1, the band is hosting a fundraiser for grassroots anti-gentrification organizations featuring local artists and performers at Starr Bar in Bushwick. Find more details here.
3 comments:
Nice name, since the Galapagos are threatened by invasive species. There has been some success in fighting back, but it's a continual struggle.
Like the video and the message, don't like the song.
If only there was a new Clash.
https://impunitycity.wordpress.com/
Gentrification can be a natural thing, right. Artists, young people and people who don’t work traditional 9-5 jobs move into neighborhoods in search of chap housing. Then bars, restaurants, venues, galleries, etc. pop up and the neighborhood becomes trendy. The real estate industry is on their tail.
The city, for the past 20 years, has put in policies that promote gentrification and displacement. Art galleries and institutions are part of the problem. They are not innocent catalysts, but vicious players in the game.
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