Oral histories of Artists in the Village
Our neighborhoods are more than streets and brownstones; they’re a living song. At Village Preservation, we showcase the voices that made that song—the oral histories of the artists, musicians, and activists who turned cobblestones into stages, neighborhood corners into concert halls. These aren’t dusty archives. They are conversations with the people who lived, breathed, resisted, and dreamed here.
Take Richard Barone. He moved to the Village in the late 1970s and stayed. He fronted alt-rock band The Bongos, became a solo artist, teacher, and producer. In his oral history, he remembers Tiny Tim, the folk revival, the DIY spaces, the late‑’60s and ‑’70s music scenes that shaped him. He traces how folk traditions, covers, songwriting practices wove together with the daily pulse of Village life—how every street corner, every cafe had echoes of music.
Then there’s Rob Mason, founder of RPM Studios. In his oral history, he speaks of watching live performances in clubs as a child in the 1950s and ’60s, converting industrial lofts into rehearsal and recording spaces. Rob’s studio saw rock, disco, jazz, hip hop, R&B—all under one roof South of Union Square. He shows how genres collided in unexpected ways, how the Village was both cradle and lab.
David Amram offers another lens. A composer, bandleader, pioneer on the French horn, in his oral history he tells of the Village as refuge, as oasis, home to poets, jazz giants, folk singers. He recalls Tavern scenes, cafes like Café Bohemia, San Remo, Gaslight, the gatherings where ideas and improvisations collided.
In her oral history, Maria Kenny gives us the story behind Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street in the South Village, founded by her father Pat Kenny. This was a place for emerging talent; not for fame, but for voice. Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, the Fugees—names that carry weight—played there. Not because of profit, but because someone believed a musician needed space to grow.
These stories matter. They are not nostalgia. They are blueprints. They teach how to build scenes, how to protect places, how creativity thrives when community, place, and risk converge. Our oral history collection is a tool: for artists finding their voice; for activists trying to preserve more than buildings; for anyone curious what makes a neighborhood sing.
Go read. Go listen. Let the voices of Barone, Mason, Amram, Kenny, and nearly seventy other artists, activists, business owners, and neighborhood leaders leap off the page and into your imagination (you can read or listen to most of our oral histories). Let them remind you of what we lose if we let the music stop.