Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr & The Congo Square Nation

The specific traditions, rituals and cultural expressions of

The Congo Square Nation are unique to New Orleans. Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. and his group retain many aspects of Congo Square's musical and cultural roots and merge them into ground-breaking musical experiences. Congo Square is the only place in the United States where people of African descent openly continued their homeland culture (music, dance, spirituality, language, art, trade) from the 1700s to present day. 

Harrison's most popular record dealing with this template, 1992’s "Indian Blues," created a new music category by merging R&B, soul, funk, and jazz, which can now be streamed on popular platforms such as Spotify.  The story of how Harrison came to create this concept was also chronicled in two characters on David Simon's HBO drama, Treme. In the 1990s, Harrison began adding hip-hop elements to the sound of his culture with his recording, “The New Sounds of Mardi Gras,” and in 2015 composed and recorded the three-movement “Congo Square Suite” with his tribal members, his jazz quartet and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. 

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The group has performed at prestigious venues such as The Hollywood Bowl, New York City’s Central Park, and Chicago’s Millennium Park. But this weekend, they bring their one-of-a-kind live performance for the first time to Long Island’s North Fork here.