“Benjy Melendez bounds down a staircase at the entrance to the Prospect Avenue elevated subway station in the South Bronx, looks around at the buildings dotting the intersection and sweeps his left arm for emphasis as he declares, ‘This used to be paradise for The Ghetto Brothers!’ These days, the 60-year-old Melendez lives in Harlem, but as the 60s rolled over into the 70s, the South Bronx area he’s revisiting became the setting for a drama that saw a member of Melendez’s gang, The Ghetto Brothers, brutally bludgeoned and then stabbed to death – a loss that kick-started a peace-treaty between Bronx gangs and reinforced Melendez’s conviction to reposition his crew as a force for local good, shunting drug dealers out of the area and organising food and clothing drives. This broad redemption story also happened to play out against a curious musical backdrop of intermingling local Latin rhythms and…
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