Live Music in New York

Few cities can claim to have originated as many distinct genres as New York. Hip-hop took shape on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, bebop and disco were born here, and the punk rock scene that emerged from CBGB and the Bowery clubs in the 1970s launched the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Blondie onto the world stage. That history is not just preserved in museums; it plays out nightly across an extraordinary range of venues, from the Village Vanguard and Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village to the three-floor Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen and the grand sweep of Madison Square Garden. Artists raised in these five boroughs, from Jay-Z in Brooklyn to Alicia Keys in Hell's Kitchen to Wu-Tang Clan on Staten Island, reflect a city that has never drawn its musical identity from a single source.