Viola Plummer, the jazz warrior queen who consolidated jazz and politics into a community affair at Sista’s Place and whose motto reiterated her philosophy of “Where Jazz: A Music of the Spirit Lives and Culture is Our Weapon,” died on January 15, 2024, at Franklin General Hospital in Queens. She was 86.
“The passing of our beloved Viola Plummer is a devastating loss to the Black Liberation movement, the culture, music, family, and community,” said saxophonist Rene McLean. “My first memories of her were at my father’s (JMac) gigs at Club Coronet in Brooklyn and Club 845 in the Bronx during the late ’50s and ’60s.”
Plummer was a veteran political strategist, educator, and businesswoman, who felt culture and politics were inseparable. Under her leadership over the past 29 years, Sista’s Place has become not only a jazz club but an international cultural institution, an oasis in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant community. Their programming has included some of the most influential jazz musicians over the last 25 years, curated by trumpeter, composer, and author Ahmed Abdullah.
“Viola, the people’s Plummer, always keeping the pipelines of liberation flowing and flowing and flowing,” said composer and trombonist Craig Harris, who often played the New Year’s Eve celebration at Sista’s Place.
For Plummer, the Bed-Stuy community was a communal family and Sista’s Place was the cultural gathering place to experience music and exchange ideas. As chair and co-founder of the December 12th Movement, she noted during our interview for the AmNews (2017), “The organization was a way for us to say to the people that struggle is for liberation and there is no struggle for struggle’s sake. People have heard our politics better as a result of the music from Africa, to Brooklyn, to Harlem, to Goshen.”
The New York State legislature granted Sista’s Place honorary landmark status in 2015 for its longstanding commitment to the people of Bed-Stuy. Two years later, the Jazz Journalists Association, while not endorsing her political stance, presented Plummer with their Jazz Hero Award for her tenacity and activism in the Brooklyn jazz community.
Years before founding Sista’s Place, Plummer realized the importance of jazz musicians performing in the Black community and started a Harlem series called “Jazz Comes to Fight Back.” Plummer was assisted on this project and all those to follow by her good friend and colleague Colette Pean. Their first performer, presented at the old Music & Art High School, was Wynton Marsalis, and saxophonist Bill Saxton was also one of the early performers. They held monthly shows at Small’s Paradise and presented concerts in Jamaica, Queens, at Bernice Johnson’s Dance Studio and summers at Roy Wilkins Park, where Randy Weston and Eli Fountain performed regularly.
“Viola was a soldier to the end always involved in the community,” said pianist Rodney Kendrick. “For over 40 years she was one of the captains’ of the ship and true to it.”
After constantly changing venues through no fault of her own, Plummer founded Sista’s Place in the heart of Brooklyn’s Black community, in 1995. It started out as a coffee shop and became a beehive for political minds, jazz enthusiasts, and cultural and community advocates to network and exchange ideas.
“One day, Carlos Garnett dropped by and told us we needed some music in the place,” said Pean. “And right on the spot, he became our music director.” The saxophonist booked Gary Bartz and the rising teenage trumpeter Keyon Harrod.
Sista’s Place was the venue for fashion shows and photo exhibits presented by the late Pan African photographer Kwame Braithwaite and his brother Elombe Brath. Brenda Bunson Bey held artist collective shows.
“Viola is an irreplaceable nurturer of Black pride and political and social justice for Black people,” said trumpeter Charles Tolliver. “I will forever hold dear the devotion and love she so selflessly gave to our artform.”
For many years, Sista’s Place was home to the revolutionary poet Louis Reyes Rivera; it is where he ran a four-hour writing workshop on first and third Saturdays, as well as “Jazzoetry” and open mic sessions on the first and third Sundays. During a Jazzoetry session, Plummer saw Ahmed Abdullah’s performance and offered him the position as music director.
“I started booking in 1998 and retired in 2023,” said Abdullah. “Sista’s Place is a laboratory for what our music is supposed to represent. Thanks to Viola, during my extensive tenure, I wrote a book and a thesis, ‘Jazz Music of the Spirit,’which is a documentation of how to move forward with this music into the future for generations to acknowledge and follow.”
Plummer, along with Dean Applin and Torie McCartney, co-founded the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium (CBJC). Its mission was to bring all the small jazz clubs together and offer a space for emerging and established artists. Just last year, the CBJC celebrated its 23rd anniversary.
Plummer was an ardent supporter of jazz musicians. While being attentive to her own club, she found time to attend their NYC performances, whether it was Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall, Betty Carter, Pharoah Sanders, or Tolliver.
“Viola was one of a kind,” said Bill Saxton, owner of Bill’s Place. “One night, she and folks from Sista’s Place came to see me at my place since I couldn’t go to her. I am lucky to have lived in her lifetime.”
Plummer was born Viola Holloway on February 16, 1937, in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y., to Carrie (Parker) and Mack Holloway. They lived in the Queensbridge Houses. She graduated from CCNY and became a teacher for the NYC Department of Education. As a young freedom fighter, Plummer worked for a host of NYC programs, including HRA, and eventually found the perfect position as chief of staff to Brooklyn Assemblymember and City Councilmember Charles Barron. (Last week’s online AmNews edition contained another Plummer obituary describing the many contributions she made as a civil rights activist and community organizer.)
Sista’s Place was a communal jazz experience. From the moment customers stepped in the door, greeted by Pean’s smiling face, they became instant family. Customers may have bumped into Plummer coming in as she offered warm greetings or maybe served a drink or two. Sit at any table and there is immediate conversation. The family familiarity was contagious; the music tabasco spicy, hard-swinging Black music straight up, no chaser, the way Plummer liked it.
In my experience, there was not one band that didn’t receive standing ovations, shouts, hollas, yells, that call-and-response thing from the cotton fields to the Baptist preacher’s pulpit: that was the music at Sista’s Place, always straight-ahead, always jazz with intention roaring like the A train from Harlem to Brooklyn. The elder impresario and jazz publication pioneer Jim Harrison holding court on any given Saturday night at his special table.
This was the magic of Sista’s Place as owned by Plummer, one of the very few Black women in America to own a jazz club. And now at the end of her journey, we proudly shout, “Amen, sister Viola Plummer—thank you for a job well done!”
Plummer was preceded in transition by her daughter Lisa Taylor Carr and her son Robert Taylor, and survived by her daughters Karen and Michele Plummer; 11 grandchildren; and loving nephews, nieces, and cousins.
The viewing and wake will take place on January 26 (4 p.m.–7 p.m.) at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home (179-24 Linden Blvd., St. Albans, Queens).
Funeral services will be held on January 27 (5 p.m.–8 p.m.) at House of the Lord Church (415 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn).
GodI bless her for the work she did and the struggles she fought.Unfortuntely I didn’t know much about her but a mutual friend informed me of her and her work.II was unaware she was the founder of sistas place in Bed Sty.Such an amazing sister.Her memory will remain in all of our minds for the tireless work that she did.