Good post, Frank. Way out here in the provinces these discussions don't come up. That they don't is a good thing. The reason they don't--that there isn't enough music being written out here or new music being played out here to engender discussion, much less warring camps--isn't so good.
I would consider myself a St. Matthews/Crescent Hill composer, drawing influences from Wildwood, Shawnee, and Lawrence. Some might say I sound more Germantown or Okolona, but really the distinction lies between whether you are an Etowner or a Jtowner. Some are clearly Downtown/Riverfront, while others are borderline St. James Court and even Southend. No such thing as Northend, unless you live at the bottom of the Ohio, but we do have several New Albanists and Clarksvillians. Don't EVEN get me started on the Westend style.
The point is that the mythical downtown isn't there anymore. The real estate market drove it away. So calling yourself a downtown composer is like calling yourself a Mannheim Court composer after Carl Theodore has moved to Munich. Nobody there cares anymore.
"Uptown "and "Downtown" meant something in 1975 or 1980, but in 2006 they are lazy terms. Describe the musics you care about with clarity, not generalization. What went on in lower Manhattan from around 1960 to around 2000 was much too varied to be characterized so easily. It was not merely minimalism or jazz or rock or world influence, and not multi-metrics. It really was an amazing stew of things happening in near proximity at the same time. People were trying things out. Some of it was lame and some of it was brilliant, but it didn't happen like that anywhere else. Give it some respect. And move on!
Frank, I’d love to chip my thoughts into NewMusicBox, but I’ve passed my threshold in usernames and passwords – I just can’t seem to remember any more.
To me, saying that there is no such thing as Uptown or Downtown is like saying there is no such thing as ars nova and ars antigua. Literally speaking, you’d have a case, but there’s more to the truth than literal definitions.
At some point in the past, certain types of music came to be known as Downtown, while other music was referred to as Uptown. The distinctions, however fuzzy they may have been at the edges, are identifiable, and therefore can be used when more literal distinctions fail us. It’s not helpful to say that everything 1960s to 1980s fit into one of these categories or the other, but it’s also not helpful to say that the categories never existed, or that their existence has had no resonance in our current culture.
The title of your post caught my eye in particular because I was recently sent a poster from a program in UT Texas, Austin, where my music was played. It was me, Fred Lerdahl, and a composer from Texas, Joseph Eidson. The poster read (with these font types):
UPTOWN downtown hometown
FRED LERDAHL judd greenstein Joseph Eidson
This really threw me for a loop, if only because I had never been directly called "downtown" before, and it felt weird to in some sense be representing that scene for someone, somewhere. The piece in question was a work called Folk Music, which is certainly developmental in nature, and not entirely sectional. That said, there are some abrupt sectional breaks, it's tonal, and it has an electric guitar in it, which is why the work was thus tabbed - besides, perhaps, the fact that my bio mentions the fact that I literally grew up in downtown Manhattan!
IMHO, there are way too many cross-interests among too many types of music to create a binary. I think of Wagner and Brahms - there was something of a binary between them in the mid-19th century, but by the end of the century, composers were combining those traditions, and bringing new elements into the mix. While historical legacies are interesting, they shouldn't be overemphasized, as any good composer will contaminate the tradition with things from outside of it that he or she finds interesting.
So I'm happy to be called "downtown", since that's where I'm from, but I don't think it's a label that has much musical weight at this point.
“There is no such thing as Uptown or Downtown music anymore. It seems so obvious to me, yet... I understand, sort of.”
WELL, WHICH ONE IS IT?
Nordschow's article lacks substance and makes a weak (and pointless) argument. His position that Cage solidified the tradition of Charles Ives is uninformed and incorrect. For one thing, Cage dedicated himself to cultivating an ego-less discipline, whereas Ives disdained structure and method. Ives wrote music intended to represent "life in America." Cage was more interested in discovering the fundamental essence of music, without reference to anything outside the sounds themselves.
The article, if I understand it correctly, makes the implication that the definition of Downtown music lies in some characteristic aesthetic identity.
On the contrary. Downtown music is music written by pioneers of a wide range of styles; what separates Downtown music from Uptown music is its iconoclastic relationship to the establishment's idea of musical progress, and thus the establishment dismisses it. Iconoclast is still code for "unprofessional" in the Uptown music world.
The establishment will not change at the same pace of true musical progress because it operates with the assumption that there is one singular trajectory of musical progress, not the empirical multiple trajectories that Downtown music embraces. So Downtown composers will continue to make new and iconoclastic music, and Uptown might find a place for them in its meta-narrative of musical progress, but not until at least 20 years after they've made their mark Downtown.
Just because "mythical downtown isn't there anymore," in terms of affordable housing for today's starving artists, doesn't mean that the people who were involved in making the music eventually called "downtown" are dead and gone and not creating new works that may or may not still qualify to be graced with that moniker. Many of them are still there, alive and well and living in tribeca, some have moved elsewhere, some have passed on. Just because younger generation folks influenced by "downtown" or "uptown" are living in Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond, doesn't mean the aesthetic schism no longer exists. Mr. Gann has been writing some excellent posts on his blog on Metametric music, a term copped in almost-real-time from from Mr. Vriezen commenting on Gann's site. There's always a lag between the coining of terms and their debut in the next edition of Groves, Norton, or Grout, and I'm not sure if 'uptown' and 'downtown' have even made it in there, yet. Whereas 'primitivism,' to me, is a prime candidate for falling by the wayside.
Terms, much like notation, are never as precise as we'd hope them to be. "Classical" and "Romantic" doesn't really tell you anything about the differences between Schubert and Beethoven. When somebody asks, "What does your music sound like," sometimes you just have to grasp at whatever's there. In that sense, I think 'downtown' and 'uptown' have some use still and probably will for a long time to come. Of course, there are "stylistic attributes we can point to in order to define and better understand parallel movements that evolved separately." But that requires more than one word.
In the same way that there are aspects of Schubert's and Beethoven's that fall nicely into both the classical and romantic camps, aspects of the music of many of today's composers also fall nicely into both 'downtown' and 'uptown' aesthetics. That does not render 'downtown' and 'uptown' irrelevant or nonexistent. The problem is not with the terms; it's that people get their panties all bunched up over them.
Lastly, Mr. Osborne in his NMB comments wanted to know what NYC has donated to music in the past 30 years. Hip-hop, yo, hip-hop. And don't even start with the 'that doesn't count' argument.
what separates Downtown music from Uptown music is its iconoclastic relationship to the establishment's idea of musical progress, and thus the establishment dismisses it.
That's fine, so far as it goes; but don't equate "uptown" with lack of regular pulse, detailed notation, writing for "standard" ensembles, chromaticism, or anything like that. That's where the definition starts to fall apart very quickly - in other words, as soon as you use it.
One historical issue that continues to be ignored by those who choose to write about American music history is that of the Internationalist/Global vs. Nationalist/Western composer. Two obvious examples are Hovhaness vs. Copland. More recently one can point to Cage vs. Feldman, Glass vs. Adams and so on. So, for those who like to draw lines (not me!) there are many other lines to be drawn.
"Both very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate for themselves the contest of opposites which the common word "Art" only seems to bridge, until they finally, through a marvelous metaphysical act, seem to pair up with each other and, as this pair, produce Attic tragedy, just as much a Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"The Birth of Tragedy"
This debate's at least 2500 years old. It seems to be here to stay.
That's fine, so far as it goes; but don't equate "uptown" with lack of regular pulse, detailed notation, writing for "standard" ensembles, chromaticism, or anything like that. That's where the definition starts to fall apart very quickly - in other words, as soon as you use it.
–Evan Johnson
uh, hello? he didn't make any of those equations.
You seem to be making your own points for yourself to shoot down.
Makes it easier to win an argument, I guess.
I would like to thank Ricard Wagner for his commentary on the subject: "Describe the musics you care about with clarity, not generalization."
And to Frank Oteri too: "Might there still be stylistic attributes that we can point to in order to define and better understand (not close our ears to) parallel movements that evolved separately?"
These are the real issue I think. Even with a steady pulse and diatonicism you could be anyone. Iconoclast? maybe when serialism was rampant in universities. but universities are pretendlands - and serialism is no longer in vogue.
I think aesthetics and ways of structuring sound are the ways of understanding and identifying, bringing more clarity to the discussion. And discussion is a good thing! Sometimes I prefer the old, "over a beer" discussions to web forums, but in response to William's question of new ideas coming from NYC, I can only think that the ideas that are being grown are internal to the works and not written up in a manifesto. Perhaps that is the critic's job, or the agent's, or the artist's? I'm not sure, and I'm also not sure if having a broad community based concept of musicial approach helps to clarify or corner the freedom of an artist. I'm not sure and so I'm curious what you all think about this. Downtown is not an "ism" it's a location, and so perhaps that is a beautiful thing that it leaves the preoccupation of the artist's mind to find it's muse.
My favorite artists are the ones who are able to follow their ideas - and these tend to be your iconoclast who break from the pack of imitators, who are usually their own artistic community, not the establishment. But it can be a subtle thing. I wonder if we could say that being a Borough composer means to visit and be in the scene, but not a "scenester"; to be removed and to carve your own way, untethered by the foolish whining of academia and mob mentality. Your borough could be your own apartment in mid-town or oklahoma.
decentralism anyone?
uh, hello? he didn't make any of those equations. You seem to be making your own points for yourself to shoot down.
Makes it easier to win an argument, I guess.
He didn't, but they tend to follow quickly upon the invocation of the terms.
Hope you have a better season next year, Benjie.
I'm from Dallas, and started thinking of myself as a Downtowner while I was living in Chicago. Only people outside the Downtown scene see it as a New York-based phenomenon. It included/includes Carl Stone and Charles Amirkhanian and Laetitia Sonami from San Francisco, Henry Gwiazda from Morehead, MN, Jim Tenney and David Rosenboom and Chris Brown from LA, Peter Gena from Chicago, Gustavo Matamoros from Miami, Phil Bimstein from Utah, Trimpin and Janice Giteck from Seattle, and dozens of others from across the country, plus a smattering of Europeans. What they all had/have in common is that when they played New York in the '80s and '90s, they played at the Kitchen, or Roulette, or Experimental Intermedia rather than at Miller Theater or the Juilliard Focus Festival, and so on. "Downtown" was not where everyone lived (I, for instance, never lived there), but where the spaces in Manhattan were that would program them. We ran into each other all over the world - it was an ongoing joke that you could go to a concert in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo, or Warsaw and see the same people you had last seen at Phill Niblock's loft on Grand Street.
The idea that Downtown/Uptown was an aesthetic battle that only took place in New York and got imposed on the rest of the country is an understandable misconception - but it is completely mistaken.
I've been putting off adding to the discussion, because there's so much to say, and I'm trying to figure out how to say it concisely.
First of all, I never thought of Downtown as a stylistic term, but more of an attitudinal one, a situational one. A lot of it happened Downtown in NYC, because that's where cheap rents were. A lot of people, like me, moved to NYC in the 60s and 70s, because there really wasn't any other place that had a sort of critical mass that could be called a scene. And some of the original Downtowners had studied at Columbia (which is at 116th St, the computer studio at 125th) and they lived Downtown, hence an easy distinction to make.
Downtown was more non-establishment than anti-establishment. It created its own scene and venues - the Mudd Club, TR3 (my favorite), White Columns, Arelene Schloss's, as well as Experimental Intermedia, Roulette, the Kitchen, the Alternative Musem, and some short-lived venues. Today, of course, the scene is fragmented, but at that time there was a lot of cross-polination between art fields, as well as an openness to many styles of music. I've performed with people from Bob Ashley to John Zorn, as well as with video artists, film makers, etc., but that would probably be rare today. Zorn used to make slides to go with his music, from his St. Louis days, but I bet nobody has seen them in public for many years. So it's a pity that not only has the music scene fragmented, but also the healthy interaction between the various art forms (I'm not talking about these artificial collaborations set up by institutions that end up being so deadly).
Yikes, I"m beginning to sound like an old fart. Anyway, the scene wasn't limited to NYC. As Kyle has posted on NMB, there were pockets of people all over the country, as well as overseas. The Feedback Studio in Cologne, Johannes Fritsch, Clarence Barlow, Chris Newman, Walter Zimmerman (who was kind of an honorary American for all of the work he did on behalf of American composers), Paul Panhuysen, Gotfried-Willem Raes, Carles Santos, Kevin Volans, Sten Hanson, Eliane Radigue, Llorenc Barber, Fatima Miranda, Caroline Wilkins, Carola Bauckholt, Stefano Scodanibio, Julius, Horatio Radelescu, Zoltan Jeney, Horst Rickels, Jon Rose, Tibor Szemszo, Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons, well you get the idea, there were a lot of poeple outside NYC as well the the US. One thing that was pretty constant, though, was that most of these people passed at some time through NYC, so you could hear them all in one city. A lot of people would be travelling and have to pass through NYC, anyway. It's also difficult to visit other cities that don't have good public transportation, something most American cities don't have, which was another thing in NYC's favor.
That era has passed, alas. Although the scene has spread out and there are more composers, there is less of a scene, less solidarity. I don't think there's any one place anymore. And NYC *has* gotten pretty provincial - no one can afford to make a mistake, so programming is safe and/or non-existent.
Uptown and Downtown coexisted fairly peacefully for a while - Uptown had the funding and "prestige", while Downtown had the audiences and energy. I think this started to change when things like New Music America began to get funding. Charles Wuorinen, especially, and others began to actively lobby against funding for Downtown music. They could put up with small audiences (and believe, me, they were small), but when they began to "lose" funding to music that they disdained was too much for some of them. I used to faithfully apply to the NEA for grants, because I believed that you shouldn't just cede it to the academic scene. Two years in a row I applied using the same pieces - the first year I didn't make it past the pre-screening panel (which usually was very biased against any kind of experimental music and was where most of the "offensive" pieces were culled out, so that the final, more democratic panel could keep its hands clean), my music having "no intrinsic musical value." The next year I got a fellowship - same music. So perhaps you can understand why some of us still use these labels, because they were very real and were used against us.
One thing that really differentiates Downtown from Uptown is institutional backing. Most of us downtowners have a real problem every time we need to make an application for something that needs referrals (something I consider out-dated and discriminatory). Of course there are people who will write an occasional letter, but they can't in good conscience be asked several times a year, so it puts people like me in a real bind. Besides, in these days, one's music can be documented much better, so you don't need to rely on the word of someone - you can hear it realized. Also funding is still heavily weighted against us. So, no I don't consider people like the Bang on a Can downtowners. Stylistically there are compatabilities, but they all have advanced music degrees from Yale, and lots of institutional funding. In fact, they've kind of elbowed out what had been the real downtown scene. Kudos to them for their marketing savvy.
Another differentiation, and I may be exaggerating here, is that Downtown composers don't have drawers full of unperformed pieces. We tend too write for specific ensembles and/or occasions. Rather than rely on standard groupings, we either perform our own music, form our own group, or have friends/colleagues who have done so.
Finally, I've been part of a group, the DownTown Ensemble, since 1983. Only one of us still lives downtown (Dan Goode). Bill Hellermann and I both live upstate. We've been giving DownTown Upstate concerts for some time now. I've even got my own performance space, where we've performed.
I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that's all I can think of in this tiny box.
That's an interesting point, about funding. I would resist the idea that one cedes one's "downtown-ness" once one gets funding for a project; the question (for me) is whether one designs projects based on their ability to get funding, rather than doing what we do and then seeing what happens (and lobbying like hell to get a broader conception of what's possible in the minds of those who administer the grants, impossible as that may be). No one admits that they might operate under those terms, but of course it happens, and is actually the default condition of any ossified (or "established", if we want to say it nicely) source of funding. I can only assume that this is why the same people, for example, are playing on the BAM Next Wave festival, year after year, going back 20 years.
As long as there's a system in place for distributing money to people with certain types of credentials and/or artistic styles, there is going to be an insider/outsider dichotomy that's created. Of course, you also get an insider mentality in any "outside" group that forms, pluralistic though those groups' origins may be, so perhaps the only difference is whether there's any money coming through....
Good one Judd... from my experience, the downtown crowd can be just as cliqueish and judgemental as any uptown crowd and to similar effect. No side really innovates any more then the other. Artists innovate not neighborhoods.
I was in NYC through most of the 80's and I never got involved in the downtown music scene for a myriad of reasons, mainly financial; concerts ain't free and because not knowing anybody, all big city scenes are closed until the introduction. And I also found so much of it boring and almost cultish...
We were two of the most famous downtown grafitti/conceptual artists at the time. We even inspired a play by Charles Ludlam, Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde, got written up in the Voice as being 'neo-con vandals' and a myriad of death threats because we made fun of everything. A few of our grafitti slogans:
'Expressionism is for the crazy! Minimalism is for the lazy!'
'Post-Modernism is Kids' Stuff!'
Once I realized that it was totally hopeless uptown or downtown if one didn't perform, and working 9-5 your time spent composing is already at a premium, I decided to focus on my music and forget about all the cliques, introductions, hype, grants and B.S. At least I have a lot of pieces, as Ms. Leach said so kindly, living in my closet. Come out of the closet goddammit! 
Of course neighborhoods innovate, but only if the people who live there choose to get involved, take part and lay it on the line. When that occurs, minds change, the unexpected happens and it can be pretty exciting.
Staying in the closet and carping about how boring everybody else is, well, that is pretty boring.
Yup, that's me Guido. Boring and in the Closet!
I think Guido sums up the downtown attitude as I’ve come to understand it better than anyone else I’ve read so far in this thread. Shortly after arriving in NYC I heard John Zorn speak in an informal setting at Tonic where he told the audience (mostly young composers and musicians) to forget about him and his “scene” (he actually said “F--- US (meaning him) guys!”) and go out and create your own scene.
Every challenge can be turned into an opportunity. You may get turned down for a grant, but someone on the panel who you’ve never met may get turned on to your work and contact you in the future. You might have to work a day-job – but maybe that job (and your paycheck) allows you the freedom to take several weeks off to work on a large-scale project. NYC is a very different world compared to the 70’s and 80’s. I know this from talking to my friends who were there. I am inspired by what these composers, musicians, dancers, improvisers did long before I showed up. They got out there, slugged it out, and showed you can grow as an artist even in seemingly unfriendly territory. In fact, maybe unfriendly territory (be it in a University setting or on the streets) can inspire great work?
jeff you're a deviant! i knew it all along
A few clarifications.
I'm someone who doesn't like categories, so I find it ironic to be in the position to defend "downtown." However, there *was* a downtown scene. I tend to think of it as more a category such as Off-Broadway, which is also a geographical category, but doesn't imply stylistic uniformity. True, it probably has passed, and hopefully other scenes will take its place. Perhaps virtual, rather than geographical. After all, wasn't there a recent post deploring the Sequenza scene, and its narrowness, its exclusivity?
Which brings me to cliques. Of course there will always be little segments that prefer to hang out together, due to similar aesthetics, whatever. However, just as in Sequenza, a lot of the cliques are comprised of no more than the people who choose to participate. If the person who deplored the cliquishness of Sequenza had only chosen to participate more frequently, he would have been part of the clique. What from the outside may seem cliqueish may not be at all. Once you choose to participate, you usually realize that the clique is just people with common experience who work together. Doing, not being. One can't wait (or even expect) to be invited - join, participate.
John Zorn is correct when he urges younger musicians/composers to make their own scene. He certainly did. But then he jettisoned most of the women, like me, who'd participated in his earlier pieces for free, but that's another topic.
I don't know what concerts Jeff (Mr. Harrington?) went to, but Experimental Intermedia charged $3, going to $3.99 a few years ago. Roulette charged $5, then $7, $10 I think now. Interpretations still charges $10. Of course some of it would be boring. I guess if you want your concerts pre-screened for non-boringness, you should go to BAM, which is expensive.
I also didn't mean to imply that the downtown scene never got funded (or that it ceased to exist once it did), but it wasn't as fully subsidized as the uptown scene. Interestingly, a lot of downtown's funding was in multi-media and/or other art forms. It was when it began to get more funding from music programs that the academics began to complain. And I"m not talking about just complaining, I"m talking hositility. I was on a panel a few years ago, in which some of the panelists shouted to me that they would never consider funding Bob Ashely, Meredith Monk, or La Monte Young! And they weren't funded, while some well-crafted, nicely notated but imitative music did. If Ashley, Monk, and Young can't be taken seriously by the academics, what about the less established among us? Like the republicans who shout at you that you're unpatriotic if you disagree with them, some in the academic scene still tend to see things in black and white terms - they're legitimate, you're not. And since there are many styles in "downtown,' it has become a kind of shorthand for non-academic to some. In a way it is the uptown scene that is continuing the distinctions between down and up-towns by refusing to consider seriously that there may be some value to downtown music, upholding that duality.
The problem is not uptown versus downtown, it's the indifferent midtown, indifferent, that is, to anything but awards and stipends and summer camps, and doing lunch at the Russian Tea Room.
The musicians making the music without compromises at boths ends of town always got along pretty well -- Cage and Babbitt (who taught Richard Maxfield, and if not for an unfortunate auto accident, would have taught La Monte Young as well) got along well enough, and even Wuorinen conducted the NY premiere of Feldman's _Neither_.
Mary Jane Leach hits a few moments on the button. By the time of New Music American in LA, the music section of the NEA wasn't giving a penny to the festival but the Interarts program made a substantial contribution. And the Bang On A Can folks posed as downtowners, despite carrying traveling papers from Yale.
The whole uptown-midtown-downtown phenomena seems to replicate itself anytime and everywhere. I grew up in a corner of California Deserta where the nearest professional composers were Karl Kohn (up), Gail Kubik (mid), and Barney Childs (down). Kohn and Childs are strong composers with unique voices, but even though you've probably never heard a note of his music (the film score to Gerald McBoing Boing possibly excluded) you all know which one of the three had the Guggenheim, the Prix de Rome, and was was buried with a Pulitzer in his paws...
If there is anything like a “downtown” scene here in New York you wont find it in Manhattan and you certainly wont read about it in NMB. Id love to read about some of the amazing experimental hip hop going on in Brownsville, or the endless art rock in Greenpoint, or the noise bands in LIC, or the sound installations in Gawanus, the marching bands in Coney Island, etc. etc. etc. Oh, but I forget, they are not composers.
Well, no, Lisa, they're not; which isn't a value judgement, but a fact. There are other venues for discussions of this work, no?
Is it a fact? There are lots of composers (you must be talking about the ones with degrees, evan...) who participate in a myriad of different musical scenarios (not unlike schoenberg or satie working as a cabaret pianist). When does a composer start or stop being a composer? When they do free improv? When they're a hip-hop producer? When the work is longer than 5 minutes (I believe that's the infamous Bob Ashley's quip...)? When they receive grants for a non-classical album (like ASM did for their collaboration with The Gena Rowlands Band)? When they write their music on paper? When they put their music on several different cd tracks for the musicians to transcribe for repeated playing purposes? When they get their doctorate (and that's a PHD, 'cause we all know DMA stands for Doesn't Mean Anything)?
Sure there are venues to discuss music scenes, but not as many venues to discuss what's actually happening in the music. And go ahead, be snarky: say, "Well, there's not much..." True, sometimes there's not. Sometimes there is.
Ah, the 'what is a composer and why not X?' discussion.
Can't we simply agree that a lot of musicians practice composition without "being composers" as such - just as you can, say, sometimes fix your toilet without "being a plumber", make a sandwich without "being a cook" or write a diary without "being a writer"?
When I think of a composer, I'm thinking of someone using the compositional stance towards music (which is simply: giving performers instructions) as the focus of musical activity, not as a subsidiary element. So I would call anybody whose primary contribution to a performance is giving musical instructions to the performers a composer.
Wait, I'm confused.... aren't you forgetting about music which isn't performed, i.e. stuff created for electronic media? Eh, what the value in defining modern composition anyway?
Re: Daniel's comment
Mary Jane mentioned that some of the original downtowners studied at Columbia, so why does that make the Bangonacan folks less authentic for having studied at Yale? I'm uncomfortable with the conspiratorial language of BOAC "posing" as if it was a nefarious plot of the ivory tower extension to steal whatever source of funding might have been available for downtowners. It shouldn't be that if you want to inject your music with energy outside of the classical mainstream that you are then encroaching on downtown's artistic property. As has been eluded to in earlier posts, BOAC's sin seems to be that they showed an interest and talent for marketing. That's only contemptible if their music sucks, which I don't think it does.
I don't think this is a good road to go down. Belabored semantic discussions are not too fun and if they're going to happen they should get their own thread so the rest of us can avoid them.
The specific point that I think Lisa is making is that the idea of "Downtown" expands the definition of the term "composer" to include people who are operating at the fringes of ANY scene. "Downtown" becomes a locus for outsiders of all scenes; it's defined by its opposition to the insider forces of "Uptown". So Uptown hip hop is on the radio, Downtown hip hop is not.
I have mixed feelings about this. Certainly, it gets at the insider/outsider point I raised earlier - that once a group of outsiders creates a new scene, as seemed to happen in New York at one time, a new inside emerges. Most new projects of any kind begin with a much broader scope than they wind up having; look at the original Bang on a Can Marathon, which was as much about having Babbitt and Reich next to each other as it was about trying to represent (or "appropriate", as people are accusing) a "pure" Downtown aesthetic. That's certainly not what goes on anymore at that festival.
I would imagine that people are mixed on this - that some people who were involved in the Downtown scene want to see what they were doing as the sort of "open source" project that Lisa is describing, while others might see it as a specific group of people doing specific things. That's not a discussion that I feel comfortable participating in, since I wasn't there.
But certainly, I'm going to disagree with the assertion that there's nothing in the world of notated music (or otherwise "composerly" in its connection to the tradition of that word) that has a "Downtown" vibe in the way that the musics Lisa describes are "Downtown." This isn't in any way a knock on any of that other music, nor is it denying their musical validity (I'm a hip hop producer and have written papers on strictly musical - as opposed to sociological - analysis of rap songs), nor is it attempting to draw lines between that music and what I do when I wear my composer hat. I don't care who considers themselves to be a composer, either.
But - it is absurd to say that there's not stuff going on in the world of notated/composerly music that is analogous to that other work. Many of us here have spent lots of time and money trying to bring new things together - because of the incompatability of those projects with any kind of insider power structure. If "Downtown" is an expansive term that tries to break down boundaries between music, then great - but let's not exclude those of us who put notes on a page from that because of assumptions that some people might want to make.
...and doesn't BOAC foster composers both inside and outside the academy?
I'm not really interested in defining the word "composer." It seems like an exercise in futility. I'm just suggesting that not all musical scenes, styles, genres, creative processes, etc. need be represented by any particular site/publication/whatever. The idea that someone at NMBx is making a value judgement that those other scenes mentioned are not worthy of inclusion because they are inferior, rather than not particularly relevant to AMC's mission, is a bit of a stretch.
But NMBx has covered other fringes of the music scene. I interviewed Deerhoof, wrote about laptop mashers like Duran Duran Duran... There is some coverage of this stuff in NMBx. I'm glad to see folks want more. I'll get to work on it...
Well, no, Lisa, they're not; which isn't a value judgement, but a fact.
Ok...I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don't mean that to be as demeaning and insulting as it sounds, but I can't let a statement like that slide. Do you realize that when you define "composition" as meaning only a particular musical genre you are making an inherent value judgment? Saying, for example, something like "hip-hop is not musical composition" sounds like a euphemism for "hip-hop is not music" to me. Although I'm sure some people reading this forum have no problems agreeing with both statements whole-heartedely. Which I'm sure has nothing whatsoever to do with "classical" composers declining (nonexistant?) cultural relevance.
A while back we were talking about the value of the term "Experimental music" and I put forth the idea of Experimental being a meta-category encompassing the self-conscious outer fringes of all existing as well as not-yet-existing genre designations. I think music that fits this description is extremely relevant to contemporary classical composers, many of whom are musical omnivores (or "genius parasites" as Alex Ross calls us) who are open to using just about any source for inspiration. And yes, there is plenty going on in the NYC boroughs that doesn't get covered by anybody. (although I must confess I wasn't aware of any experimental marching band music at Coney Island.)
really, ian? i'm surprised. i bet you do know about it, but haven't tied it to coney island in your mind. actually, i don't really tie that scene to coney island, either, but several of the punk marching bands (yep, that's right. punk marching bands.) have played the mermaid parade in recent years. the scene is also tied to the gypsy punk scene, since a lot of the bands are inspired by the guggemusik/e. european itinerant bands. and now for the name dropping: hungry march band, rude mechanical orchestra, slavic soul party, guignol...
evan, the 'fringe' elements that lisa is talking about may not be important to you, but all composers are influenced by what's going on around them. those things are going on around brooklyn and they are popping up in the notated musics of the 'composers' living here. that's why we think they're worth discussing, not because we want to define the word 'composer.' we also want to discuss them, not because we're at the center of the musical universe (ooo! ooo! who's getting riled up?!), but maybe others want to report on the fringe/downtown/experimental (let's call it 'shirley') music that are tickling their ears and moving their pencils in their neck of the woods -- in other words, if you were to think of your musical colleagues (whether you know them personally or not) in a downtown/uptown light, just for sh**s and giggles not for the record, where would they fall on the spectrum? where might you fall on the spectrum? you can, of course, dismiss this as a silly exercise, which it is, in part, but sometimes it's good to think about where your aesthetics are at. or how you might model BOAC marketing schemes. or whether punk kids could really dig marching band or chamber music.
oh, and judd: now that i know you produce hip-hop, i've erased you from my composer list. ha!
No, Dan, of course it's not meant as insulting, and of course it has nothing to do with musical quality. It has to do with, generalizing here of course, the nature of the creative process, the role of notation, the composer/performer distinction, etc. etc. There is absolutely no value judgement implied whatsoever, and I'm a bit surprised that you thought there was. Sorry that it came across that way.
Experimental is cool, Ian, but I guess that I (and I doubt I'm alone, here) don't feel like I'm really self-consciously trying to be at the edge of anything - that's just where things seem to insist on being. If a scene is cool, I have no problem being a part of it. But I haven't found a scene that really works for me, so it's necessary to try to make my own, you know? Perhaps that's another way that we can look at BoaC as a model - they definitely have a scene, now, and it's ossified in some ways, but I don't see that as a problem. Others might; that's cool. But maybe those others are Experimental and I'm, I don't know, "conservative" or whatever the opposite is. (Fine with me, as long as no one misreads that as a political label that I'm accepting!)
BTW, Capital M sounds really good.
Oh, and Andrea: thanks, I knew it would catch up to me sooner or later!
What I can't help but notice about Dan's comment to Evan is the implied idea that 'composition' somehow means 'good'. There seems to be more artist mystique attached to the word Composer than to the word, say, Guitar Player. Now if only this mystique made me a little more money...
Randy wrote: “But NMBx has covered other fringes of the music scene. I interviewed Deerhoof, wrote about laptop mashers like Duran Duran Duran... There is some coverage of this stuff in NMBx. I'm glad to see folks want more. I'll get to work on it...”
Yes more in this direction please, though it really shows your leaning when you place Deerhoof on the fringes – they have been covered in the NY Times, New Yorker Mag, Rolling Stone, etc. I love them dearly but on the fringes they are not. When I think “fringe” I think of church music in Crown Heights or the hambone/step that is common at most public schools in the city.
Evan Wrote: “The idea that someone at NMBx is making a value judgement that those other scenes mentioned are not worthy of inclusion because they are inferior, rather than not particularly relevant to AMC's mission, is a bit of a stretch.”
Take a look at the AMC’s original mission: “to foster and encourage the composition of contemporary (American) music and to promote its production, publication, distribution and performance in every way possible throughout the Western Hemisphere.” Of course that’s not really their mission, like any organization their mission is to serve its stakeholders, and they are a very small and tight group of musicians. Fine, no one expects the Rude Mechanical Orchestra to commission a string quartet from a Juliard student. But the language that pretends to cast a wide net is offensive. If they really meant “new american music” then we would be hearing about everything - street music, concert music, dance music, bird music, etc. in NMB.
Scelsi had other people write down his music for him...
whew. go, lisa! i must ask, though, what is 'fringey' about church music in crown heights? and what church? what about the synagogues, 'cause there are a bunch of those, too. is the music there wildly different from that in prospect heights, brownsville, or bed-stuy? (actually, that'd be a rather interesting study...) if the folks in those places wanted to be AMC members, i'm sure they'd be welcome -- if they can pay the fee. what they'd get out of it, i can't say.
and is downtown 'the fringe?' (the musical sensibility, not the location...)
put a recall on that last sentence; i wasn't thinking clearly and was interrupted by an unhappy cat.
classical music is viewed as 'the establishment,' but it doesn't really have that position anymore. we're all on the fringe. pop music is the norm. strangely though, classical still holds this weird spot in people's minds as representing 'the man,' the thing to rebel against. the whole thrust of the NMB article and Mr. Oteri's post, as i read it, is, why are we who are on the fringes of socially acceptable music beating each other silly over who's getting more grants, the lincoln center crowd or the roulette crowd, when we're all unloved, underappreciated, underfunded, and ignored by the folks who consider themselves to be the experts on what music should make it to the masses? downtown is not a place, it's an aesthetic named after a loose concept of an area where concerts of music along the lines of that aesthetic were programmed, and you either dig it, dig it somewhat, or you don't dig it at all. ugh. i'm going to bed.
The "fringes" are only the far edges of whatever centers each of us happens to inhabit. Even someone like Elliott Carter is pretty "fringe" in the bigger U.S. musical picture. Then again, so are Stephen Foster and Glenn Miller, now. In a few more years, the influence and draw of Nirvana or Afrika Bambaataa will be close to nil.
Sure, it's "all good"; but "all", in equal measure, in every place and moment? If not, then no matter how big you draw that circle, the circle is there. I don't have any problem drawing my circle, personally; but I'd rather not think I could or should draw someone else's circle, and conversely anyone else drawing my circle for me.
And if, say, I happened to be a freak for Harleys, should our Harley club insist on include and appreciate Yamahas, Hondas... maybe even Cadillacs and Mustangs?
...why are we who are on the fringes of socially acceptable music beating each other silly over who's getting more grants, the lincoln center crowd or the roulette crowd, when we're all unloved, underappreciated, underfunded, and ignored...
The competition is fierce because the resources are so scarce.
In response to Steve:
Right – relative fringe. I guess when I think fringe I think of the musicians who ride the train everyday from places like Brownsville and East NY to do things like cook, clean, drive, and open doors for people like Elliot Carter.
I love some of Elliot Carter’s music, but it is kind of important to understand that his music is made, produced, consumed, and promoted from the comfortable position of extreme power and privilege.
Lisa, while I'm sympathetic to the point you're making, I don't think it actually speaks to the question at hand. You're talking about people who are at the socioeconomic fringes of the society, the "underclass" that is unseen and unheard. Much respect to you for demanding that those voices not be so neglected.
Insofar as you're critiquing the woe-is-me attitude that pervades new music practicioners of all types (and I of course succumb to this at times), great. It's hard to see Carter or any of us who are able to put food on the table as a result of doing what we love to do as "struggling" in the sense that many people struggle in the day-to-day. (Though many of us are in significant debt, some have been displaced from their homes, and we've heard stories of true personal struggle just to get by. I wouldn't assume that everyone is an independently wealthy Carter type.)
But I'm going to agree with your politics and disagree with where you take the point in relation to this discussion. "Fringe" doesn't map equally across culture and socioeconomic standing. People on the margins often listen to the same music, watch the same television, read the same books and magazines as their more comfortable societal peers. If everyone who was struggling actually made art that reflected that struggle, our society would be much improved. But the reality is that most people from all classes plug in to the same cultural feeding tubes as everyone else. When an art form is too entrenched in the underclass, it's taken out of that context and sanitized and redistributed back to the same people who made it. And then the people on the fringes of those scenes are made to feel like outsiders by the very culture that spawned them.
When we're talking about the fringe in the terms of this Seq21 discussion, it seems that the term refers either to the non-market-oriented location of the musical products (true of Uptown and Downtown and most classical music), or the position of being outside of comfortable institutional sources of funding (Downtown, in some people's minds). Or, perhaps, it could refer to a sort of "experimental" tradition that pushes the envelope in some sense.
To say that music is "relative fringe" because of the socioeconomic standing (or perceived socioeconomic standing) of those who make it seems to miss the point. If there's value to the radical virtue of self-expression then it operates beyond class. And I believe that it's a virtue with tremendous value, especially in an age where the dominant cultural products are designed to diminish the capacity for and interest in any kind of individualism.
So the critique of this whole conversation is that it's a luxury to be in a position where these kinds of questions ("where is the fringe?") come up, and people make "art" that is "recognized" instead of the personal, day-to-day art that is neglected because it doesn't fit into any narrative about art in society. In that case, you're really critiquing the idea of "the artist" as distinct from "the individual", and then I'm totally on board. But I don't think that the way to get at that problem is to undermine the very locations where that distinction is made most uncomfortable - one of which, strangely, seems to be on this new music board, where people are welcome regardless of their artistic background or pedigree. Most of the conversations may center around issues that reflect the dominant paradigm - the "classical composer" - but, more than most spaces, I believe that this is one where that paradigm is capable of expansion and dramatic change. And this is what is important, I think, about "the fringe", in general (as long as it is really what it claims to be): because it recognizes individuality as a virtue, it is open to the kinds of change that we desperately need in our society.
evan, the 'fringe' elements that lisa is talking about may not be important to you, but all composers are influenced by what's going on around them.
Andrea: I don't recall every saying that they weren't important to me. I don't know much about them, which is of course my loss - one doesn't have time for everything, unfortunately - but a LOT of value judgement is being read into my comments that simply isn't there.
If they really meant “new american music” then we would be hearing about everything - street music, concert music, dance music, bird music, etc. in NMB.
Lisa:
And this would be an improvement ? I'm not sure I agree. There are differences between those categories - one can place differing values on them however one likes, that's not my concern, but to shove them all under one umbrella and declare some sort of nirvana of all-inclusiveness seems to me to do a disservice to all concerned, unless the idea is simply to get more publicity. In which case, go for it - but to say that NMBx might not be the right venue isn't a judgement, or a condemnation, or a snooty dismissal, but simply a fact.
There are all sorts of venues, publications, groups of individuals and interests where the sort of thing that tends to get the most play on NMBx and by the AMC in general is somewhat irrelevant, and there's no reason to be uncomfortable with that.
Judd wrote: “’Fringe’ doesn't map equally across culture and socioeconomic standing. People on the margins often listen to the same music, watch the same television, read the same books and magazines as their more comfortable societal peers. If everyone who was struggling actually made art that reflected that struggle, our society would be much improved.”
Well ”fringe” might not map equally – though Im not sure what that means – but certainly the forces that aim to exclude people from jobs, education, housing, etc. are very similar to the forces that keep some of the very best composers of “new American music” driving Elliot Carter’s cab and not competing for grants, tenure, or commissions.
Also, most people who are struggling actually do make art that reflects that struggle! It’s strange to even read you statement. I can only suggest that you spend more time with struggling people.
But other then that Im right there with you - right on!
Lisa, can you give us some names of actual artists we should be looking out for, instead of just the neighborhoods where they live?
what
Downtown, downtown, downtown…please indulge my inserting a bit of history. I happened to be around for what might be considered the seminal years of Downtown.
A while back, on another thread, I think I kind of bristled when Kyle made reference to some technique I brought up as having an inherent quality of Downtown. After having been away from the city for a number of years, I hadn’t heard the D-word appended to my music for a while, and was at first taken aback. Now, as I reflect, I have decided to accept and embrace that appellation, and in doing so, perhaps shed a little light on the work we were doing a number years back.
Downtown was not a happenstance function of geography – though it was certainly enhanced by the nature of the neighborhood – but it was a the result of the mindful and dedicated passion of a number of groups of individuals, in different scenes, working concurrently.
I moved Downtown in 1975. Others were already here. I can share my own experience, I am sure others recollect differently, and with equal validity.
SoHo was comprised of many empty lofts – raw industrial spaces - no stores, much less boutiques, no fancy lobbies, one bar. But SoHo spaces were large and rents were high – at least $300 or so per month – so, I rented a railroad apartment on East 5th Street for $150. The East Village was was poor, cockroach infested and dangerous. The city was broke and filthy. Homeless filled the streets. (Gamers – it all looked sort of like “The Warriors”.)
We arrived with a passion, coming from all over the country. Some of us came from California, others from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, the Midwest or Ohio. A few, such as Rhys Chatham, were born New Yorkers (while I’m a born New Yorker, I grew up in Europe and studied at UCSD and Mills). No one had grants, no one had teaching positions. Some of us had college education, many had played in rock bands. The economy sucked. We worked at whatever jobs we could – playing in bands or shows, plumbing, carpentry, proofreading, bartending, cutting tape, dancing.
Our music was engaged with a variety of issues and concepts. Concerts were like the news, and might address any of number of topics: war and politics, gender and sexual identity, language and syntax, psycho-acoustics, performance and self-revelation, de-objectification, the role of pop and the vernacular, spirituality and non-Western culture. We wrote manifestos, we engaged in dialogues in print and at the coffee shops on Second Avenue.
We found venues on our own – an artist’s loft, a church, a bar or club on a slow night, a gym, an abandoned theater. We put up our own posters with wheat-paste, found printers who would make cheap postcards. There were a couple of funded venues - every other year or so you could do a show at The Kitchen - maybe – or, perhaps. a Monday night at St. Marks, but for the most part, we had to be resourceful. There were ad-hoc jams. On Sunday evenings Pooh Kaye would have open dance parties, and folks would just show up and play. Robert Wilson’s Byrd Hoffman loft also had open dance events, and we would show up and jam with the dancers. Phil Niblock featured generous programming at his loft.
People played in each other’s concerts and shared tasks– sometimes money changed hands, other times there was an extended net of favors. Some of the musicians were quite proficient but patient, others were self-taught visual artists or poets, or came from a non-literate (rock) tradition. And there were many different scenes, and different pockets of activity, sometimes overlapping. There was not a homogenous music.
Philip Glass was a big influence for some - perhaps less so musically, but more due to the fact that he had a regular performing ensemble, an economic unit, dedicated to his music. But Glass’s and Reich’ modular styles (as well as Riley for those of us from the West Coast), were part of the common practice, a lingua franca. LaMonte Young had a number of folk whom he inspired, and sometimes employed, so awareness of tuning and overtones was important. Others found inspiration in the the Sonic Arts Union and its precursor, the ONCE Festival of Ann Arbor; or the earlier and still concurrent Fluxus movement in New York. While the scene was deliberately non-academic, many of us were informed in the language of contemporary composition performance practice through undergraduate and graduate training prior to arriving Downtown. Instrumentalists were versed in extended performance techniques and varied methods of notation. Vocalists had extended vocabularies, electronic processing was prevalent, and often the music was amplified.
Punk rock was in the nascent stages, and was literally just around the corner, at CBGB and other clubs. The punk aesthetic (not unrelated to minimalism) extended to the visual artists and writers, as well as composers. I took Rhys Chatham to see the Ramones in 1976, and he never was the same. Brian Eno showed up in 1978, and handpicked a few bands for his No New York anthology, garnering attention for a certain scene of noise bands, Talking Heads first appeared as a trio at St Marks Church parish hall, and David Byrne recorded with Arthur Russell as well as me. Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca wrote ringing guitar pieces, with their influence extending to Sonic Youth. Some folks made their own instruments, others found connections with the loft-jazz scene. Disco and dance music was in its heyday – Arthur wrote underground dance hits with the legendary DJ Larry Levan. Downtown music was noisy but disciplined. Ned Sublette, Peter Zummo and Julius Eastman, among others, helped maintain a quality control across a number of scenes.
Rhys Chatham produced the New Music, New York Festival at the Kitchen in 1979. This helped to focus issues, coalesce attention, and led to the national franchise which became New Music America. Some of us had music released on indie labels, and interest in our music spread to Europe and Japan.
The Eighties came. Some Downtowners became famous or almost-famous – Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, The Beastie Boys, Philip Glass, Sonic Youth, Keith Haring, Eric Bogosian... The alternative-space became more formalized, and managerial and curatorial staffs began to expand. Composer-oriented concerts and ad-hoc events began to give way to larger curatorial concepts. The national funding organizations mandated larger staffing for the organizations, with paid development consultants. Budgets grew, with more commissioning funding available, but not much, and with more stipulations. For some reason, the NEA Music panels would never touch anything Downtown, but, as Mary Jane pointed out, Inter-Arts was a source of funding for multi-media and collaborative work. After the free-speech episodes of the “NEA Four”, however, there was a cutback of individual fellowships, and funded projects had to be affiliated with sponsor organizations and a consortium. Things began to get more cumbersome, and official.
By the late Eighties, real estate became expensive. The community began to disperse. Those empty Soho lofts became coops, affordable only by the gainfully employed. The cheap rehearsal rooms and galleries disappeared. Those with commercial leases were sunk. Some of us moved to Brooklyn or other parts of town. Nonetheless, work continued, though often on a larger scale and in other settings.
Our scene saw great losses due to AIDS. Like a generation during wartime, we lost not only composers and musicians, dancers and arts administrators, but also, a large part of our audience and collective memory.
Nobody ever really thought about “Uptown” much. Some of us had consciously abandoned academic music once we left college - others were just oblivious to it. We lived in a musical landscape laid out by Glass, Reich, Riley, Cage, Partch, Paik, Ashley, Feldman, Young --- as well as Moondog, Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Velvet Underground, Mingus, Sun Ra, Pandit Prah Nath, the NY Dolls, Iggy Pop… No one really had much time for what Philip Glass once referred to as “that creepy music” of the musical establishment of the time. I guess, as Cheney has said, we had other priorities.
But does the scene go on? Is the term applicable? Downtown, Fringe? Not necessarily in the same places or by the same folks, but I hear energy out there – by the young and also by us stalwarts - in the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, neighboring regions, cities around the world – and in cyberspace. I am hearing fascinating new music in theater productions, at clubs, and in dance performances. There is still passion out there, and when there is passion, there will always be new music. I can feel it.
Downtown – it is still there if you want it, wherever you are, and whatever you want to call it – you can make it happen. Just don’t wait for permission – for any of the powers-that-be for approval - whether academic, or civic, or grant panels or the market or whoever happens to think they are too cool. Just find like-minded folks and some unexploited venue – real or virtual – and make your stand. And do it with passion.
And is it easy? No.
Ian wrote: “can you give us some names of actual artists we should be looking out for, instead of just the neighborhoods where they live?”
A list of names wont help, they don’t have web pages or artist statements or MP3s. I’m not talking about “underground” or “independent” artists or anything like that, Im talking about composers of new American music who’s creative lives are so outside both popular and official culture that they usually don’t consider themselves artists.
For me one of the most exciting forms of this is the “stepping” that almost every kid participates in, especially girls, in the mostly segregated public schools in the outer boroughs here in NY. Sometimes they have guest artists that come in and work with them. But often times it’s just passed down. New compositions are rehearsed and performed and then woven into the tradition to be passed on again.
No “meet the composer” grants to bring these composers to you, you’ll have to go out and find them.
Come one Peter, there were at least 4 bars in Soho in 1975. The Spring Street bar, the Broome Street bar, the Ear Inn and that Italian place across Lafayette. But I agree with everything else. Glad to hear from you.
Hi Beth and Peter. Finelli's was on Prince, an old blue collar bar. Great to read Peter's history. I should add that some of us who moved to NYC (me in 1977), started out by focussing on other art forms, or mingling them. I did mostly performance art, rebelling against my music and theatre training, until I got frustrated with that - I was involved with the part of performance art that arose from the visual arts where "performance" was an ironic term. Since I was trained in theatre I found that too frustrating, so moved more into the multi-media (intermedia) and free improv scenes, finally focussing mostly on "just" music.
Glenn Branca was also a theatre person before getting into music. Phill Niblock was a photographer and then film maker before getting into music (to accompany his films).
There was also the Judson Church scene of dance and movement. Niblock started in music by playing the organ there with Meredith Monk. Experimental Intermedia was started by Elaine Summers, a dancer, which Niblock joined later.
The only reason I mention this is to show how fluid everything was at that time. Not only were there few borders in music, all of the arts were involved and people moved freely between them. Downtown is a convenient term, but it covers a lot of territory (and a lot of that territory was literally scary - a lot of us rode bikes so that we could get through the creepy parts quickly, or at least I did, when I lived on E. 10th St.).
So whether or not Downtown is still valid, who cares, most of us have moved on physically and otherwise, but it certainly did exist for a while. I'm sure other things have taken its place, but I doubt that they will ever have that intensity, due primarily to economics and geographic dispersion. If you want to equate "downtown" as an attitude, it will never disappear.
I guess the question that still remains is: are those students of Kyle's at Bard who write Downtown-sounding music, by definition, Downtown composers? I.e., is it enough to want to be part of the club or do you have to have lived the life?
It seems like to me, that the attitudes and conventions of downtown (white note music, repetition, tunes, ecstatic use of drones) have become clearly integrated into indie rock now. This obviates it's use as an 'art form' and makes it a little dangerous for guys in academic circles to practice.
Seems like groups, like Sigur Ros, Magnetic Fields, et al, have taken the NYC downtown scene to heart, and innovated while, in art music scenes, downtown conventions have become academicized and frozen. This is a traditional digestion of revolutionary process. That's not to say that there's not some cool music being written, (like our own Toub's approach to minimalism and Ms. Leach's drones), but I tend to think that scenes die not just when they become addicted to money, but when startling innovation goes the way of all things.
I agree with Mary Jane that as an attitude, downtown is here to stay. I think "downtown" is wherever you are, so long as you are not part of the academic elite scene (you know, the guys who sneer at anything without a lot of markings on it, as if notational complexity is proportional to quality).
I remember Steve Reich's loft near City Hall, and going to hear The Well-Tuned Piano at La Monte Young's and Marian Zazeela's performance space in TriBeCa. Miss those days when a lot of music was novel, in your face, and decidedly noncommercial. The old recordings of Reich and Glass had an intensity that I'm not sure they have matched since. Back then I could play their stuff along with works by Lucier, Ashley, Monk, Riley, Young, Spiegel and others on a 10-watt college radio station on Chicago's South Side and get death threats. Yes, those were the days my friend, those were the days...
Integration - not to mention Willie Nelson's cover of Ned Sublette's Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly, which was written in 1981, and was released this week on itunes, and is the #1 country download - I even saw a mention of it on Keith Olberman's show.
For fear of veering this conversation off-topic, I just want to point out that despite most of the galleries and loft concert spaces emigrating out of SoHo, Fanelli's at Prince and Mercer Streets is still very much around—they have been since 1872, not since their own false claim of 1847—even though they no longer have Spaten Dark on tap. Alas, scenes do in fact change 
Peter,
Great post. Nothing like real life to lay waste to the notion that it simply didn't happen. And I think that one of the most important aspects of the discussion is the illuminating of the attitudinal concept, which is certainly why some of the composers cited as influences (especially Partch, who pre-dated all this and only spent a few days in NY many decades before) are important as touchstones.
So, hello from the Left Coast and your old friend Robboy, who is basking in Sublette's new-found fame... 
Cheers,
This is all interesting, and the stories are good to hear, but none of it answers to the question of what "downtown music" is TODAY, in a musical sense, if the term even means anything anymore.
Comments like this:
I think "downtown" is wherever you are, so long as you are not part of the academic elite scene (you know, the guys who sneer at anything without a lot of markings on it, as if notational complexity is proportional to quality).
make me think that people who continue to insist on drawing this down/up dichotomy as something living, applicable to today's young composers ("academic elite" or otherwise), are radically oversimplifying things.
I will go out on a limb here and make a blanket statement that I believe very strongly to be true: Nobody in the world thinks that "notational complexity is proportional to quality." Nobody. Not Charles Wuorinen, not John Corigliano, not Elliott Carter, not Brian Ferneyhough, nobody.
Well, maybe a couple people I can think of - but they're German, and kind of weird. Basically, nobody.
Maybe what you meant to say, David, is that there are people who think that scores that notably lack a certain notational complexity are lacking in something - rigor, whatever - but you will find, I assure you, that these same people will say that a surfeit of notational complexity is equally suspect.
People in "power", like all people, tend to favor those most like themselves - and even this truism is fading in the younger generations. as it has been for some time.
Good points all,
Beth and Mary Jane - greetings!
I should point out that Ear Magazine, which Beth edited and published in the '70s, first in San Francisco and then New York, was an important and vital presence on the scene.
And while I'm giving props - I must say that when I heard about the advocacy Mary Jane has doing with regard to Julius Eastman' music, tears came to my eyes.
Ian - student work is student work. You don't have to "live the life", but you have to live a life. There is no club - we are musical gnostics without clergy. It is a way of seeing things, a way of accepting seemingly unconvential material into one's work, a way of being open to the whole diverse world of music and ideas out there, and a willingness to risk failure just to see if an idea works or not. All with an awareness of the zeitgeist, whether or not one's personal music actually fits in at any given time.
Hopefully, those students will find their own voices, and whether its eventually called Downtown, Neo-Downtown, or X is a moot point. From an educational standpoint, however, I don't know what they are learning up at Bard, but for all my downtown funkiness, I am a firm believer in learning strict compositional diligence, I am grateful that I had a fairly rigorous training in post-serial composition, as well as classical European common-practice theory (which I had to fight for at UCSD back in those days!)
Yes, fluidity was the key - the migration among the different art forms and different taverns fed a widely diverse pool of expression. (No Spaten Dark anymore - damn!)
And Jeff, yes, this musical energy still is alive in more public musics - in electronica and club music. As well, much of the mannerisms have been absorbed in advertising and film and television. I read articles in ReMix Magazine or Electronic Musician, geared toward pop musicians and djs, which might have been topics for graduate theses at UCSD 20 years ago. My friend Lawrence Weiner once explained to me that it is the role of the avant-garde artist to create innovations which are then provided for society's general use. The market uses those ideas which are viable for public consumption. At the same time, the academy codifies these same, as well as other, ideas, This can provide for deeper examination and reflection, but it might lose some of the spark and excitement in the process.
Hey Jon -
Go Ned Sublette - on CBS Evening News, even.
What I do find vaguely disingenuous and I've posted about this before on other forums is that both Reich and Glass and others made a big deal of practically denying the very real influence that just plain old rock music and R&B had on early minimalism. They also made it all seem like a freakin' ethnomusicology dissertation. In fact to read their early writings, it almost seems purtitanical, all the abstractions. When in fact the usual musical result was ecstatic and (heh) almost rocking.
I remember listening to North Star in college and going, jeez this is like a bad Iron Butterfly organ solo, what a ripoff! One of the reasons I found much of the downtown scene sooo very boring in the 80's was that the punk/nowave/new wave scene was just so high energy and absurd and cool, to ask somebody to sit in a room and listen to somebody (for lack of a better term) noodling - like many generic concerts were - was asking a lot! Were you guys just stoned all the time?
And for the record, I do in fact equate notational complexity with quality. I won't even listen to a rock record until I've closely examined the score for p's, mp's and f's.
Hey Jeff...
Glass might have been oblivious to his rock roots (? and the Mysterians, anybody?) - and from what I could tell, he actually DIDN'T listen to pop music at all, he was a classical music guy - but it was public knowledge that many of his band members were deeply rooted in R&B and Cajun music - in particular Dickie Landry and Richard Peck. Just listen to Glass and Clifton Chenier back-to-back. Landry was later instrumental in introducing Paul Simon to Cajun musicians. And Glass' sound designer and co-producer, Kurt Munkacsi, was an unreformed metal-head with roots in John Lennon's band. As for early Minimalism, one can't ignore James Brown. Whether Glass and Reich admit it or not, or even recognize it - that's another question. I'm sure Terry would. And one could stretch a point and say they've just been reworking "In The Mood" over and over again. But then Stravinsky did deny his own folkloric influences in Le Sacre, after all.
As for the noodling - please. I think you were probably just there for one of those week-long homages to Dutch free jazz. Or maybe it was one of Zorn's gigs. Were you stoned at the time? Couldn't have been me - I was the one doing that annoying Coplandesque stuff.
But one person's noodle is another person's pasta... And another's soba.
{Uptown Music - Applied - An anecdote:
Rhys Chatham was bartender for a while at a place on the Bowery called Sobossek's. Rhys would book different "new music" acts - myself, Garret List, Joel Forrester - and they had a fine grand piano.. On certain evenings, though, Rhys wanted to leave early, so he would invite me in to perform my definitively Uptown-inspired "Atonal Variations". We timed it, once I was able to empty the bar in five minutes. Only recently did I learn that the real reason he was so eager to close was in order to go across the street to participate in certain "music and life-drawing art jam sessions" with nude dancer/models.
Noodling, indeed....]
pardon the anonymity, that was me.
Evan, I think we're both saying the same thing:
"I think "downtown" is wherever you are, so long as you are not part of the academic elite scene (you know, the guys who sneer at anything without a lot of markings on it, as if notational complexity is proportional to quality)."
"Maybe what you meant to say, David, is that there are people who think that scores that notably lack a certain notational complexity are lacking in something - rigor, whatever "
Jeff, while Glass (and Reich et al) certainly had a rigorous classical music training (although I believe he majored in math at my alma mater), I don't think he was at all oblivious to the world of rock. Remember to whom both Reich and Glass were writing to: the general classical music audience. I suspect they both wanted to get some validation there, and point out that their work (which was dismissed by the classical world in general as simplistic---someone once told me with a sneer "Well, it's nice to dance to") was anything but simplistic and actually had a theory of sorts behind it, be it African drumming or Indian talas. And that none of this was "chinoiserie" (like Colin McPhee); in fact, Reich once indicated as much to me in an interview. And while Glass also insisted that no one should hold out for the rock version of Einstein, he did produce a (crappy) rock album by PolyRock (two tracks of which were cribbed from Glass's work). The entire concept of mixing flutes, saxes, voices and keyboards and making Kurt Munkacsi an integral part of the Ensemble is clearly based on what was going on in the world of rock at the time. And the first time I ever heard the Ensemble in concert and met Glass was at a rock club in Chicago. If anything, Reich struck me more of a traditionalist classical composer than did Glass.
Right, but they never ever ever mentioned the fact that minimalism had definite and traceable precursors in R&B and R&R. Those phase rhythms utilized in that manner can probably most accurately be traced to the New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair (and of course African/Caribbean influences, but he put it together into present day R&R&B in the very early 50's).
Instead, they made it seem practically that it was Indian, which I frankly, never got. I think they were playing a 'purist' game, which after all, was the hype behind the art scene. Peter, thanks, for reminding me about Glasss' crew; that just makes it seem all the more weird.
It always seemed to me to be a real uptown gambit, is what I'm so ineloquently trying to put it. Academic cred through ethnomusicological B.S.
Number one, never believe the hype.
The additive rhythmic processes in Glass's music are purely Indian in structure. (3+3+2, 3+3+4. 3+3+5. etc). This was first laid out in "Music in Fifths" and "Music in Contrary Motion", and elaborated upon in "Music in Twelve Parts". Harmonically, Glass reveals himself as a student of Nadia Boulanger. The monolithic sculptures of Richard Serra - a friend and contemporary of Glass - are clues to the inspiration for the sound mass evoked by the highly-amplified timbrally rich figures. The extended non-linearity of time is informed by lifelong Buddhist practice.
While the timbral similarities exist, and the hypnotic and repetitive saxophone riffs do suggest R&B, I wouldn't make too much of this. What you see is what you see.
That said, the New Orleans sound, and by extension, Afro-Cuban music, is the main story in American music, certainly since the days of Louis Gottschalk, whether acknowledged or not.
In other words, when performed by his own ensemble, Glass's music has more groove and pocket than exists on the score.
Two things to remember are 1) that Reich and Glass are 70 and 69 (or will be this year) - they would have been out of high school by the time Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show - and 2) music schools at that time were incredibly hermetic in terms of musical styles exposed to (to say nothing of exposure to most pop influences). Couple those tidbits with the ironic fact that you can live in a smaller circle of influences in cities than in small places, since you can hang out with people of similar interests, which you don't have the luxury of doing in small towns or cities, since there aren't enough people (or at least until the internet made these acquaintances possible).
And Peter's on to something - the performers would bring a certain rock and roll to pieces that hadn't been anticipated on paper.
It's always seductive to think that everyone has the same influences as you, but that isn't always realistic or possible. There were, of course, minimalists that were influenced by popular American music, but not Glass and Reich. And it's interesting when you remember that La Monte Young played jazz sax, but unless I'm missing something, it'd be hard to find that influence in his music.
All that still seems like rationalizations to counter my suggestion that it wasn't acceptable back then to say your music was influenced by R&R AND be art music too. That's what I'm getting at.
They played an uptown game by attempting to position themselves as ethno and now it's moot. But really who cares, I'm just making fun of this 'golden age of downtown' stuff.
IT'S SENILE. And it wasn't all THAT.
I think today's more chaotic, less holy, more eclectic and poorer scene is a lot more interesting. And thanks to the downtown crowd, anybody can use repetition now without embarassment. Even a gnarlie!
Steve Reich has repeatedely claimed the influence of the jazz music of Coltrane and Parker as major influences on his music, and I believe he played drums in a jazz band as a teenager. So, maybe he wasn't into rock, but I think many aspects of his language (repetition, groove, harmonic language, etc.) can be derived from that, and I think he's always been open about that influence.
I don't know as much about Glass, but I would imagine jazz was a big influence to him as well?