On Tuesday, The Shadow League was in the house at Opus in the trendy Meatpacking District of New York City to interview Revolt TV’s vice president of communications Kai Wright, and to witness one of the most happening charitable networking series of the entire summer first hand. Here’s the lowdown on a series that is meant to provide funds for music and the arts for a population of children who have been increasingly underserved from an extracurricular standpoint by the public schools of New York City over the past two decades.
“Hello Harlem is a 10-week summer networking series created by Revolt TV and the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem, specifically,” said Wright. “All of the funds we raise goes towards the club for arts and music programming that they will use during the summer and during the academic year and it serves students that are between 6 years old and 17 years old across the Harlem community.”
For the entire summer, many of the hottest celebrities, musicians and athletes have made it their business to stop by these events, most of which have taken place in Harlem, New York, to witness Revolt style hospitality first hand.
“We started off somewhere iconic, which was the Studio Museum in Harlem. That kicked off in June. Every Monday since then we’ve had an event at a different location. We’ve had six different Harlem locations. Park 112 was the first restaurant that we did. We had a personal connection with Park 112. The owner, Lee Tucker, used to be the president of Bad Boy Records. So, he evolved from the entertainment industry into the restaurant business.”
Not only have the events include some very recognizable names among its patronage, but industry insiders and behind the scenes movers and shakers have made it their business to stop by as well. Wright said the move was necessary to bring the message of Hello Harlem to other parts of the city.
“We’ve had between 200 and 400 people show up for each event. It’s summer time. So, we’ve also looked for places that were outside so you could kind of get that feeling of indoor, outdoor atmosphere. The reason we took uptown to downtown is because we’re on an awareness campaign and there are a lot of individuals downtown that work in midtown, that work on wall street, so we wanted to have at least one opportunity for them to see what the boys and girls club of Harlem was up to and to experience a revolt event and to enjoy some of the great music that we have provided through our partnership with Sony Music Masterworks. So, our downtown experience that we’re having is more accessible than someone having to go all the way up to Harlem. Our hope is that we convince them that it’s worthwhile going all the way up to Harlem.”
“We thought it would be a good idea to use the Revolt brand to bring awareness to all of the great things that are happening in Harlem,” he continued. “What’s often forgotten about are the youth and Revolt is a youth network. We are a youth company. We don’t exist unless young adults, teenagers love us and the Boys and Girls Club works with those individuals. Music is a great escape, it’s a great expression and an avenue of empowerment. Our aims are to make sure that youth in Harlem have access to become as great as the individuals that we bring to the Hello Harlem events to perform. The Sony-signed artists and the unsigned artists.”
From the Harlem Tavern, to the Corner Social, Mamajuana and other hot nightspots, Hello Harlem’s networking events have been some of the most talked about affairs of the summer with live music provided by such up and comers as Luke James, Somi (Sony Music), Theo Crocker, Liam Bailey and others, the mood is lively yet intimate, energized yet relaxed. Seeing as though the Hello Harlem series is about to come to an end, you may want to log on to www.helloharlem.com and see what all the fuss is about.
