America 250

Beginning in the late 1700s, enslaved Africans gathered on Sundays at Congo Square in New Orleans. It became one of the most important cultural sites in American music history, a place where dancing, drumming, and African musical traditions lived on.American composer Henry Gilbert drew on that powerful legacy in The Dance in Place Congo. Hear it tonight on 91.1, 107.5, and our music stream.

With a song from 1759 as a mile marker, pianist Lara Downes and historian Jill Lepore examine what this land was like just before it became the United States.