Surfacing

The #BestNYAccent challenge on Instagram brought out the sound of an unflappable city.

For a city whose residents have been cooped inside for weeks, taking to pot-and-pan clanging, conch-shell blowing and clapping out of windows to express themselves publicly, the arrival last week of the #BestNYAccent challenge on Instagram was a chance for catharsis.

Here were oodles of videos of born-and-bred New Yorkers talking to the camera — it hardly mattered what they were saying, only how they were saying it. The casual disregard for pointy syllables. The pacing, which vacillated between dramatically drawn-out words and tight firework-syllable clusters. The occasional “yeeerrrrrrrr,” a herald trumpet announcing the arrival of royalty.

What we think of as the distinctive New York accent is really a pool of accents, a stew that draws liberally from various communities: Italian, Jewish, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Irish and many more. Slang might come from Yiddish, or it might come from hip-hop.

But what was most striking watching the videos en masse — from every borough, from children and senior citizens, from dozens of ethnic and racial backgrounds — was just how much of what we think of as the New York accent is not about sonic specifics at all.

The New York accent, as it were, is both music and ideology, instantly recognizable as sound and almost physically palpable, too. It’s about the delivery, usually offered by someone leaning in to the conversation, some combination of excitement and bristly attitude. Sometimes it’s about the liberal sprinkling of sounds and catchphrases, the salt and pepper on a conversation that actually becomes the dominant flavor. Sometimes it’s the fluent cursing.

There’s a baseline indignation to the talk, as if the speaker can’t quite believe there’s even a need to have the conversation. That comes with a splash of defensiveness — the desire to protect this unavoidable, immutable and generally unselfconscious presentation that signals a whole way of life.

The #BestNYAccent challenge was initiated by Nicolas Heller, a director of short films and a sort of unofficial liaison to New York City’s ample pool of eccentrics. In January, he posted on Instagram a list of the 100 best New York accents of all time, a mix of the legitimately famous and around-the-way favorites: Nas, Rhea Perlman, Cardi B, Luis Guzmán and so on. While recently sidelined with Covid-19-like symptoms, Heller decided to turn his preoccupation with the sound of New York into a social media challenge.

The contest received several hundred submissions and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Celebrities, trapped at home like everyone else, tapped in: Debi Mazar, Chazz Palminteri, The Kid Mero, Kathrine Narducci, John Joseph from the Cro-Mags and more. (No Rosie Perez, sadly.) Notionally, there was a winner: Charlie da Wolf, a foulmouthed septuagenarian from Williamsburg. But the robustness of the entries as a whole was revivifying.

Of the well-known, Mazar’s video was the most casually controlled — seconds in, she apologized for her “dog chewing on a bone” though what you really heard was “awww ooh oahhh,” just pure vowel massage. When @yoitsfrench said “Bronx,” the word deflated like a cartoon balloon or a trumpet just as its player’s embouchure loosens. Some videos were highly performed and nimble: @_._patria_._ switched accents seamlessly, speaking in raucous Spanish one minute and proclaiming, “Carole Zabar is dead my cousin,” the next.

The Brooklyn entries tended to be a little tougher, the ones from the Bronx a little more exuberant. But even still, drawing a throughline within any one borough’s sound was difficult — people move between boroughs, communities immigrate and emigrate, the Williamsburg of the ’60s wasn’t the same as of the ’90s.

Bluster was universal, though.

“I won already fair and square,” cooed @sexxystaceface.

“I’ll wait here for you to call me,” said @dawnmarieferrara.

“Even my inside voice, the voice in my head, has a New York accent,” barked @tfeightnyc. He was not impressed with his fellow competitors: “You people sound like you’re from Schenectady!”

Many entries included a little profanity; some consisted almost wholly of it — the poetry of how it’s strung together is particularly New York. Countless videos begin with a why-would-I-even-do-this disclaimer, setting a tone of exasperated pique. Almost as many insisted that their New York accents weren’t accents at all. “People tell me I have a Brooklyn accent; I don’t know what they’re tawkin’ about,” said @juliehershk’s mother. “I just tawk.”

It would be impolitic to say that the New York accent is the signature American accent. You could argue, though, that the New York accent is the accent of the current crisis. It’s there in the burly roundness of the words coming out of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mouth, or the acidity in the tone of Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the way President Trump scrapes all of his syllables together. (Senator Bernie Sanders’s howling woof counts here, too.)

For New Yorkers, that’s made the conversation around the coronavirus feel as local as the pandemic’s actual impact. Watching the news can feel like watching quarrels between grouchy neighbors.

In this climate, the #BestNYAccent challenge was even more reassuring. A reminder of local resilience and stubbornness in the face of global trauma. A monument to history and place standing firm against titanic winds. A middle finger to life’s cruel dice roll.

Videos by Noah Throop and Shane O’Neill.

Edited by Caryn Ganz. Surfacing is a bi-weekly column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli, Jolie Ruben and Josephine Sedgwick.