There's a long sordid history of white musicians aping on black authenticity for karma points, and this seems to fit right in. On moving to New York, I found it hilarious all the euphemisms people use to avoid the word "Harlem"; it's "uptown" or "upper manhattan" or "central park north". Anything but that dreaded word. No no, nothing good could ever come from there. But package it up with a nice clean smile and a heartfelt college essay anecdote, and you'll get your face on the cover of the Village Voice.

Thanks for posting this. While craziness may reign in various places, parts of the world go on healing itself, one human effort at a time, and faster when more than one do so together...

> I almost never went near 125th Street, the unofficial boundary of Harlem

With my obnoxious local hat on: Harlem starts at 110th street and runs to roughly 155th street, narrowing on the West Side with each of the long parks (Morningside, St. Nicholas, Jackie Robinson).

125th street would be the "heart" of Harlem, not the boundary. This would have been even more obvious in the 1980s, when the racial divisions between Bloomingdale, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Spanish Harlem were even more stark.

Amazingly heartfelt and well written. Feels like a portal into a different world.

I’m glad the author kept a journal and went to the trouble of writing this up. Makes you wonder what amazing things pass, becoming part of history, unremarked upon.

There's also the Netflix documentary Satan and Adam which follows their trajectory: https://www.netflix.com/title/81077539