Amateur Night has run since 1934 and launched Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and Lauryn Hill. The audience still boos people off, and that is the point.
Whites only, until it wasn’t
The building opened in 1914 as Hurtig and Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater and did not admit Black patrons. It closed under Mayor La Guardia’s crackdown on burlesque, reopened in 1934 under new management as the Apollo, and opened its doors to a Harlem audience.
What followed is a substantial chunk of twentieth-century American music. Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, Diana Ross. James Brown recorded Live at the Apollo here in 1962 with his own money after his label refused to fund it; it stayed on the charts for over a year and changed what a live album could be.
Amateur Night
Started in 1934 and still running, most Wednesdays in season. Anyone can enter. The audience votes with noise, and if they do not like you they boo, and if the booing holds, the Executioner — a character in costume — comes on and dances you off the stage.
This is not a gimmick added for tourists. It is how it has always worked, and the crowd on a Wednesday is largely local and entirely serious about it. Ella Fitzgerald won it in 1934 at seventeen; she had intended to dance and changed her mind on stage. Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo all went through it.
It is one of the best-value nights out in New York and one of the very few genuinely unmediated experiences left in a heavily curated city.
The Tree of Hope
A stump of elm mounted on a plinth at stage left. The original tree stood on Seventh Avenue outside the Lafayette Theatre, where out-of-work Black performers gathered hoping for a booking, and touching it was said to bring luck. When the avenue was widened in 1934 the tree came down, and a section was brought inside. Every performer on Amateur Night rubs it before going on.
The rest of the programme
The Apollo runs a full year-round schedule — music, comedy, spoken word, the annual Apollo Comedy Club, and a substantial education programme. The historic theatre seats about 1,500. A second stage opened nearby in 2024.
While you are in Harlem
125th Street is the main artery. The Studio Museum in Harlem is a short walk east. Sylvia’s on Lenox Avenue has been serving soul food since 1962. Minton’s Playhouse on 118th is where bebop was worked out in the early 1940s.
More Theatre & Music
Broadway Theatre District
Forty-one theatres between 41st and 54th, only four of which are actually on Broadway. Here is how the tickets work and where the cheap ones are.
Carnegie Hall
Opened in 1891 with Tchaikovsky conducting, nearly demolished in 1960, and saved by a violinist. The acoustics are the reason it still matters.
Lincoln Center
Sixteen acres of performing arts built on the cleared remains of the neighbourhood that West Side Story was filmed in. The plaza and the fountain are free.