Roger Wareham: I'm from Harlem [laughs]... People from New York City will know, when you say you're from Harlem you don't deal with  Brooklyn;  Brooklyn was like you needed a passport to come to  Brooklyn back in the day. My experience in  Brooklyn was extremely vicarious. There were artists whose music I liked who performed in  Brooklyn that I didn't know how they were connected to  Brooklyn, I listened to Randy [ Randy Weston], listened to  Freddie Hubbard, but I never thought of them as  Brooklyn artists, they were just jazz artists that I liked. So when we came here… our first music director was  Carlos Garnett, and certainly with [current Sistas Place music director] Ahmed [ Ahmed Abdullah], I became aware about the places, and when the musicians started coming in and talking about the older places, like  The Blue Coronet and the different spots where people used to play [in  Brooklyn], I became much more aware of the history [of jazz in  Brooklyn]. 

I don't know it chapter and verse, but I understand the richness of  Brooklyn's contribution to jazz and maybe more so than Harlem because a lot of folks who played there weren't indigenous to Harlem, whereas a lot of folks emerged out of  Brooklyn, our first spot [ Sistas Place] was on the corner of Jefferson and Nostrand, Jefferson begins at Claver Place, and Claver Place is where  The East was, at 10 Claver Place. So you just walked from  The East right up to  Sistas Place, so its almost a geographic and physical part of that [East] legacy. 

Many of the artists who have played here talk about the atmosphere when they play here, that they feel so comfortable they just enjoy playing. The artists [who play Sistas Place] are treated like royalty, they're not background music for people's discussions, people come here to hear the music. I remember when I was in college and I went to visit Cornell for some reason and we heard Don Lee [ Haki Madhubuti] — he hadn't become  Haki Madhubuti yet, reading. I remember during his reading he had to stop at one point and tell them they had to shut up and listen because people were talking, it was disrespectful, and that was the first time I thought about that. People ought to respect the art, and so that's what we do at  Sistas Place is the most important thing we have are the artists. We don't always have the resources to pay them what they're worth, but we always make sure we pay then what they agree to. Over time there have been a few grants that have helped out, but it's really what walks in the doors that pay the artists.