The New York Music Map Matches 450 Artists With a Special Spot in the City
From Bob Dylan to Run DMC to MGMT, the number of musicians who have called New York home is astounding. In an effort to visualize the city’s musical pulse, the London-based creative communications firm Kingdom Collective teamed up with music writer Frank Broughton and illustrator Adam Hayes to create the New York Music Map (h/t CityLab), which plots 450 artists as points on a map of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and a piece of New Jersey (sorry, Staten Island). The map is available as an interactive online platform, as well as a decorative print for sale.
Though it took Hayes 30 hours to draw the map, the entire team spent a great deal of time determining which artists to include (“Some names will be there for all time; some may fade away as their novelty recedes,” they say) and where to position them. For example, the Notorious B.I.G. is prominent in Bed-Stuy, and Jay Z stands in for the Williamsburg Bridge, as it’s rumored that he created his moniker from the J and Z subway lines that run over it. Others were more difficult. Take Lady Gaga, who grew up on the Upper West Side, but went to school on the Upper East Side, and therefore was placed in between the two neighborhoods. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs came together at NYU, but since there are so many artists who got their start in the Village, the group ended up in Queens. Kingdom Collective director Nick Griffiths told CityLab, “There are always new stories the city has to tell…. [the map is] a new way at looking at them.”
Purchase your own print for $120 and explore the digital version HERE >>
[Via CityLab]
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