By Judayah Murray | October 5, 2018

In a crowd of middle-aged black folks dancing and sweating vigorously to keep up with the electronically synthesized rhythms pounding through the gravel, there’s a tall, muscular gentleman with dreads down his back. He tosses his head side to side carelessly, then forward and backward to let his hair fly free while he prances around. A woman behind him lifts her arms up and tilts her head back to face the sky before closing her eyes. She twirls around and around in her flowy, long, orange skirt until the DJ switches songs, and she adjusts her body’s movements to match the new tone.

While some black residents struggle with displacement in the face of gentrification in the historically black neighborhood of Fort Greene, others cope by holding fast to anything that preserves their culture and traditions–like house music and an event called Soul Summit.

“This is a house event full of free spirits. Everyone just comes out to do what they do best–dance,” Peko Williams, a resident of Fort Greene, says.

Soul Summit is a music festival held every summer during 3-8pm on Sundays. It is open to anyone who wants to have a good time. Williams says she has been attending these parties in the park, collectively called Soul Summit, for about 30 years.

“We used to do it at Greene and Fulton in Cuyler Gore Park, but the gentrifiers kicked us out,” says Kimberly ‘Matrix’ Smith, an 8-year attendee of Soul Summit.

Just a year ago, the Brooklyn Paper reported outrage from black residents who claimed they were excluded from a 7-million-dollar proposal vote to re-design Fort Greene Park and blamed it on gentrification. Now, they spend every summer’s Sundays dancing away their inhibitions in that exact park with the very neighbors some of them would consider to be “gentrifiers” from 3-8pm.

“‘Half of us black folks didn’t even know that you had a meeting in November — I certainly didn’t,’ said one local from the Whitman Houses at the February gathering,” the report reads.

It continues, “‘This plan appears to address some anticipated new residents to the neighborhood, without regard for the long-term residents who already have been using the park,’ said neighbor Enid Braun.”

Historically, Fort Greene is known as one of the blacker neighborhoods in Brooklyn District 2. Many who live in public housing have complained about the influx of newcomers pushing them out of their homes in the projects to force them into upper scale condos in order to “beautify the ghetto” for years.

Director Spike Lee, who grew up in Fort Greene, spoke about this in 2014 at a black history event in the Pratt Institute: “You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now sh-t gotta change because you’re here? Get the f–k outta here.”

Fort Greene isn’t the only place where a certain genre of music serves as a bonding agent for the black community to identify with, defend, and use for unity. Washington, D.C., what used to be called ‘Chocolate City’, has Go-Go music. Though D.C.’s black population dropped by 50% in 2011, Go-Go music, a distinctly black genre of music, still blares from store speakers onto the streets. It helps the people feel like their culture isn’t being stripped away.

And although the party is very clearly designed for the consumption and enjoyment of the older black neighbors, the party-goers choose not to discriminate. There were hispanics, caucasians, asians, trans people, tourists, passers-by and children welcomed just as equally onto the dance floor.

William Jelani Cobb, the Ira A. Lipman professor at Columbia University and a seasoned journalist who specializes in topics on race and culture, says he may have an explanation for the positive coping mechanisms a part of the community seem to be using: “This is not a new process. There have been battles over gentrification of Fort Greene dating back to the late 90s and early 2000s. If people don’t convey outrage it may be because it may be wrong, but it is no longer shocking.”

“We’re brothers in house,” says a cannabis-infused beverage vendor who asked to go by the name Uncle B, “We hug each other instead of shoot each other.”