Tomorrow Is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies 2013042052, 9780472119264

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Copyright © 2014. University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved.

Tomorrow Is the Question

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Copyright © 2014. University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved. Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Tomorrow Is the Question New Directions in Experimental Music Studies

Edited by

Copyright © 2014. University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved.

Benjamin Piekut

The University of Michigan Press 

  •   

Ann Arbor

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Copyright © by Benjamin Piekut 2014 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-­free paper 2017 2016 2015 2014  4 3 2 1

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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Tomorrow is the question : new directions in experimental music studies / edited by Benjamin Piekut. pages  cm    ISBN 978-­0-­472-­11926-­4 (hardback)—­ISBN 978-­0-­472-­12011-­6 (e-­book) 1. Music—­20th century—­History and criticism.  2. Music—­21st century—­History and criticism.  3. Avant-­garde (Music)  I. Piekut, Benjamin, 1975-­editor of compilation.  ML197.T63  2014 780.9'04—­dc23 2013042052

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Contents Introduction: New Questions for Experimental Music  1 Benjamin Piekut 1. Goodbye 20th Century! Sonic Youth Records John Cage’s “Number Pieces”  15 Elizabeth Ann Lindau 2. John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego  39 Ryan Dohoney

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3. Pluralism, Minor Deviations, and Radical Change: The Challenge to Experimental Music in Downtown New York, 1971–­85  63 Tim Lawrence 4. Benjamin Patterson’s Spiritual Exercises  86 George E. Lewis 5. Challenge to Music: The Music Group’s Sonic Politics  109 William Marotti 6. Balinese Experimentalism and the Intercultural Project  139 Andrew C. M c Graw 7. British Experimental Music after Nyman  159 Virginia Anderson 8. Experimental Music and Revolution: Cuba’s Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC  180 Tamara Levitz 9. Sounds of the Sweatshop: Pauline Oliveros and Maquilapolis 211 Stephanie Jensen-­M oulton

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

10. Imagining Listeners through American Experimental Music: NPR’s RadioVisions 229 Louise E. Chernosky 11. Materialism, Ontology, and Experimental Music Aesthetics  254 Joanna Demers List of Contributors  275

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Index  279

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Introduction New Questions for Experimental Music

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Benjamin Piekut

There is no question more boring or persistent than “What is experimental music?” The most common answer is more of a demurral: “I’m more interested in actually examining the works of these composers,” or “It’s impossible to nail down experimentalism into a closed definition.” But most often, the manner in which the question is framed reveals that the answer is already known, or at least assumed: “Experimentalism is the thing that all these experimental composers do.” Indeed, definitions of experimentalism usually begin with a list of names: experimental music is already known, apparently quite well. It is this list of names and works! The contributors to Tomorrow Is the Question begin with altogether more interesting questions.1 What could experimentalism be? What can we gain by looking beyond the conventional wisdom about the experimental and suspending judgment about what is or isn’t experimental? How can we tease out some common assumptions that have guided research into experimental music and offer historical, ethnographic, and analytical evidence that suggests other possibilities for formulating the category? The goal, to follow Ann Stoler’s suggestion, is to transform experimentalism from a “summary statement,” which precludes further analysis by posing as complete and self-­evident, into a “working concept,” which we use provisionally to track variations and suggest revisions.2 This project is critically important to establishing a useable past for a contemporary experimental music scene that is global, multiethnic, and heterogeneous, drawing on a wider frame of reference than the Cagean tradition that has been the focus of so much important scholarship in the past. John Cage does not disappear entirely from these pages, but the individual essays together indicate

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that moving out from under his shadow can yield valuable new histories of and insights about experimentalism in music. Cynics might view this collection as a kind of “revisionist” project, wherein analyses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are invoked to expose flaws in earlier scholarship and render it obsolete. That is not the case at all. To begin with, several pioneering scholars of experimental music (and its relations) have already examined many of these questions in the course of establishing their topic as a viable and vibrant one.3 Their work has established important chronologies, explained the significance of different compositional practices, and interpreted musical works according to the intentions of their authors. Recent scholarship has extended the inquiry to the generation of artists that followed Cage.4 Other, more critical approaches have emerged in concert with traditional musicological work, including examinations of race,5 nation,6 and sexuality.7 Gender studies continues to be a problematic lacuna for experimental music studies, but several works at least help to fill out a history of this music that has women in it.8 While much scholarship on experimental music has focused on scores and the techniques and aesthetics of composition, many of the contributors here concentrate instead on aspects of performance and recording. This is an important step in accounting for the many ways that experimentalism touches the world; it doesn’t simply exist as a kind of general tendency floating in abstract thought-­space, but is made and remade in specific scenarios (concerts, recording sessions, interviews, lectures) and materialities (printed scores and journals, vinyl records, films, magnetic recording tape, compact discs, hard drives). These events and objects mark out the envelope of actually existing experimentalism, its emergence and elaboration through time and space. As Elizabeth Ann Lindau shows in her essay on Sonic Youth, Cage’s number pieces have touched worlds that were quite alien to the old man himself. (The influential epistemologist Donald Rumsfeld would call that “an unknown unknown.”) In 1999 the rock band released a double album of works from the American experimental tradition, including pieces by Christian Wolff, James Tenney, Takehisa ­Kosugi, Pauline Oliveros, and others. Lindau focuses on the band’s realizations of Cage’s Six and Four6, which evidence an approach that challenged the authority of established contemporary-­music performance practice and exhibit a culturally flexible worldview informed by popular music and practices of improvisation. Sonic Youth’s interpretations involved aesthetic choices that the composer himself might not have made, but they have nevertheless endured and traveled widely as a recording, in the process

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t­aking Cage’s ideas—­ however imperfectly—­ to new audiences. Lindau presents us with a slice of experimental music as it actually exists, complete with misunderstanding, compromise, and invention. Performance is also important to Ryan Dohoney, who bases his discussion of the gay sensibilities of Cage and Julius Eastman around a specific, controversial performance of Song Books given by Eastman in 1975. An African American composer and performer, Eastman presented a post-­ Stonewall gay identity that fit poorly with the more distanced and closeted homosexuality of Cage. Dohoney draws on documentary evidence and his own interviews to explain the ways in which Eastman contributed to a legacy of queer experimental culture that combined musical and sexual practices and highlighted what I have called the “limits” of Cagean experimentalism. His study builds on earlier work that seeks to explain techniques of Foucauldian self-­fashioning in music generally and experimental music in particular.9 Eastman was part of a lively downtown new music community in the 1970s and 1980s. In his contribution to this volume, Tim Lawrence seeks to provide documentation of this scene as a “missing link” between the founding wave of minimalists (La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass) and a later, more diverse generation of experimental music that has been documented in such publications as The Wire. The composers and performers in this later milieu, Lawrence argues, became musically engaged with such popular forms as disco, hip-­hop, and punk, and further challenged the boundary between “experimental” and “commercial” genres by programming acts—­and performing themselves—­in a wide range of concert spaces. Their example leads Lawrence to investigate the political import of cultural pluralism and to argue against Hal Foster’s dismissal of pluralism as a means of producing consent and erasing conflict. Some ten or twenty years before Lawrence’s protagonists were forging affinity groups across ethnic, genre, and commercial borders, Fluxus was coming into existence as a globally situated and socially heterogeneous constellation of artists and performers. And yet, George E. Lewis argues, although champions of Fluxus have often pointed to that community’s ethnic diversity, sustained critical attention to the work of its central African American participant—­the composer, performance artist, and bassist Benjamin Patterson—­has been virtually nonexistent. Lewis therefore contextualizes his critical survey of the artist’s work with reference to the racial discourse of Fluxus and the specific circumstances of an expatriate artist of color who was establishing himself as a leading figure and spokesperson for the movement in Germany. He also finds reason to question the

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e­ xtent of Cage’s influence in this case. While that influence is undeniable in some works (such as Variations for Double Bass), there is little reference to Zen in Patterson’s important collection of text pieces, Methods and Processes, and his overall affinity for intention and improvisation isn’t consistent with Cagean aims. (Along with Dohoney, Lewis confounds the tired expectation that the only experimental tradition that attracted or included African Americans was that of free jazz.) Although the US American context is a crucially important site, Lewis’s subject demonstrates that experimental music has long been a global formation; this formation is uneven, compromised, and particular in all of its geographic manifestations. Amy Beal’s work on the artistic and financial exchanges between the United States and Germany in the postwar period is a particularly good example of scholarship that pays attention to international flows, but studies of global experimentalism have otherwise remained scarce.10 This volume hardly offers a comprehensive survey of these international networks, but several authors give us some indication of what a globally minded, comparative experimental music studies might look like. William Marotti, for example, calls attention to the fundamental matter of translation in his discussion of the origins of Tokyo’s Music group. By consistently rendering the group’s appellation as Group Ongaku, ­Marotti argues, anglophone commentary on this important early 1960s ensemble has linguistically limited the group’s horizons to their nation’s borders, even though its members chose the generic term for music as a self-­ consciously universal intervention into international avant-­garde debates. Like Dohoney and Lindau, Marotti foregrounds the importance of performance, but performances come in many different kinds. By placing too much emphasis on the Music group’s Sōgetsu Hall performance of September 1961, Marotti argues, many accounts subsume the particularities of the Japanese avant-­garde into a larger story about the arrival of Cage’s music on that island. Instead, Marotti looks at the group’s public and private performances in the year before to show how deeply it was involved in both historical and contemporary avant-­garde discourse. The specific experimentalism of the Music group, Marotti explains with copious reference to Japanese-­language texts, was a special mix of free improvisation, surrealism, and ethnomusicology. Andrew C. McGraw likewise researches a non-­Western manifestation of experimentalism, concentrating on intercultural exchanges between Indonesian and American artists and arts foundations. In the specific circumstances of the Indonesian twentieth century, he explains, the western

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ideology of development provided the conditions of possibility for ideas of tradition—­as an essential expression of national culture that must be preserved in the face of creeping westernization—­and its partner, experimentation—­as the Western European/US avant-­garde language necessary to counteract the communist aesthetics of social realism in a nonaligned state. These twin imperatives for cultural politics, McGraw argues, motivated organizations such as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations in their funding efforts before and after the violent installation of a pro-­US government in 1965. After the coup, foundation support fostered educational exchanges for Indonesian and American artists, exchanges that would lead to a host of intercultural collaborations, but McGraw wonders if critical debates over cultural imperialism have changed anything about the persistent power differentials in these intercultural projects. He argues that, despite writing radically innovative works that challenge fundamental structures of traditional composition, the Balinese composers in these collaborations are continually represented through an orientalizing frame, and the economic terms of their interactions with western collaborators underscore their subaltern position. Virginia Anderson returns to Michael Nyman’s influential text on experimental music as a historical document from a specifically British context.11 Far from manifesting a timeless quiddity, experimentalism—­as Anderson describes it—­acquired its particular attributes through historical connections in a national setting. Philosophical and discursive, British experimental music expressed an ironic approach to music history and a love for its “minor” figures, an eagerness to mix art and vernacular registers, and an attraction to games and humor. Anderson traces all of these traits through the 1970s and 1980s in the work of the “Leicester School,” the informal association of Gavin Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, John White, and Dave Smith, centered around Leicester Polytechnic. In addition to filling in the historical picture of this important group of composers and performers, she makes a case for why the distinction between an anglophonic experimentalism and a continental avant-­gardism is still useful. But what about an experimental music institution that is, like the ­examples discussed by Marotti and McGraw, neither anglophonic nor continental? In her essay on the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora (Group for Sound Experimentation, founded in 1969), Tamara Levitz documents the ways in which musicians framed the idea of experimentalism within the context of the Cuban revolution, a markedly different context from the one assumed by most treatments of (North) American experimental music. Domestic debates about the place of culture in a society undergoing radi-

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cal change led the Grupo’s members to combine abstract sonic exploration with clearly referential folk and popular music styles. In detailing these projects, Levitz highlights the differences between a materialist, Marxist position within the rigid framework of a postrevolutionary government transitioning toward communism and the liberal-­leftist position of Cagean experimentalists in Western Europe and North America, where revolution was understood to lie somewhere in the future and individuals enjoyed a measure of free choice about how to get there. In her essay on the soundtrack to Vicki Funari and Sergio De La Torre’s 2006 film Maquilapolis, Stephanie Jensen-­Moulton examines the musical resonances of the relationship between the United States and another southern neighbor, namely, Mexico. The film tells the story of two labor and environmental activists who work in factories along the border, where they are paid a pittance to assemble products for multinational corporations (the film was made after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement). Created by Pauline Oliveros in collaboration with the Tijuana-­based electronic-­music collective Nortec and Argentinean heavy metal band Reynols, the soundtrack combines drones and dance beats with a rumbling, heavy bass. Jensen-­Moulton hears in Oliveros’s philosophy of Deep Listening an analogue to contemporary forms of activism that have been theorized by global feminism and put into practice by the women activists who are the subjects of the film. The simultaneous cultivation of diffuse awareness and focused attention, Deep Listening is expressed in the film through the integration of environmental sounds into the musical interactions of human performers. Jensen-­Moulton’s contribution helps to fill out a picture of experimental music that is enacted through a variety of media—­not simply in scores and onstage. In “Imagining Listeners through American Experimental Music: NPR’s RadioVisions,” Louise E. Chernosky likewise examines a new media context for experimentalism and, in the process, considers one aspect of the music that has previously received little or no attention: its audience.12 National Public Radio aired RadioVisions in fifteen episodes in 1981; the work of over fifty composers was presented, making this one of the most ambitious productions in the history of American experimental music. In her narrative of the program’s production history, Chernosky pays close attention to how NPR constructed experimental music as a product intended to attract elusive “new listeners.” These listeners, she argued, were imagined not only by the choice of which pieces to broadcast but also by the framing discussions, interviews, and introductions that accompanied each episode. As a marginalized, noncommercial musical

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network, experimental music offers few examples in its history of such large-­scale media events. Recording technology and electronically mediated musical experience are likewise the focus of musicologist Joanna Demers’s essay on contemporary sound art. The artists Miki Yui, Celer (Danielle Baquet-­Long and Will Long), Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M, and Kevin Drumm create sound art at the edge of disintegration—­into noise, silence, or flat drones. Their work offers challenging questions for an ontology of sonic experimentation: What is the essence of the sonic work of art—­its material or its concepts? Can sound exist only as an idea, or must it be heard? Demers addresses these questions not through the lens of history, but through the insights of aesthetic philosophy, particularly that of G. W. F. Hegel. Like Chernosky, she is concerned with understanding listening as an important aspect of experimentalism’s envelope. Her analysis provides one of the few philosophically grounded theorizations of experimental music aesthetics, and also brings to scholarly attention the work of several particularly important contemporary sound artists.13 By now readers should get the idea that Tomorrow Is the Question is intended to be suggestive, not comprehensive. If a “critical” study, to gloss Michel Foucault, reflects on its own behavior in order to delimit a part of itself as the object of inquiry, then this book is critical in the most generative sense. It is not intended to fill holes in a canon (or to critique the one we’ve ended up with), but rather to play around with different possibilities for extending the network. Exasperated by the continuing absence of Africa from histories of the musical avant-­garde? Me too. Hopefully, one of these essays will serve as a model for how one might pursue a topic like this one. Critique, then, can be a far more constructive practice than is conventionally understood. The critical studies collected here search for fresh corners of experimental music history, with the hope of turning up new possibilities for formulating the experimental. Another corner that I would like to see further illuminated is that of dis/ ability, and I’ll bring this introduction to a close with a few observations about experimental corporeality. If, among other things, experimentalism intensifies the quotidian, then how has it handled our daily struggles with our own bodies and their environments? Three examples come to mind. It is already well known that one experimental classic—­Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room (1970)—­grows out of the speech impediment of its creator.14 By electronically extending his own marked speech, Lucier buries his voice in a wash of resonant acoustical frequencies; although I’ve heard the composer’s stutter described as the “in-­joke” of this composition, I am more

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inclined to hear I Am Sitting in a Room (as Nyman does) as a poignant expression of a desire we have probably all had at one point or another: to lose the idiosyncrasies of our individual bodies and disappear into a kind of disembodied anonymity. Many of Lucier’s other works support an interpretation of this work as a meditation on corporeality rather than space. The early piece ­Action Music (1962), for example, is more choreography than musical notation, and emphasizes the embodiment of the musician by directing him or her to do this now, on that part of the piano, with that limb. Music for Solo Performer (1965), on the other hand, translates the performing body into a series of transducers controlled directly by brainwaves—­no arms necessary.15 Given Oliveros’s long-­ standing commitment to activism, it should come as no surprise that she has pioneered the use of electronic musical instruments for students with limited mobility and other impairments. In collaboration with the occupational therapist Leaf Miller and a team of programmers and designers gathered under the auspices of the Deep Listening Institute, Oliveros created a software interface called Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (AUMI); the first iteration dates to 2007, but it has been constantly updated and improved in the years since. Using visual tracking software, AUMI enables even severely disabled musicians to participate in musical improvisations by triggering percussion samples and playing scalar melodies on a virtual keyboard. How might this project be viewed as not only a musical venture but an especially experimental one? In addition to the plain fact that more kinds of sounds and sonic combinations are “allowable” in experimental music, there is also the uncertainty, or open-­endedness, of experimental inquiry: Oliveros and her collaborators investigate what music can do, or what kinds of sound communities a musical experiment can produce.16 For the rock improviser Charles Hayward (of This Heat and Massacre, among others), making music in mixed-­ability arts groups necessitates the kind of responsiveness that is associated with free improvisation. Along with bassist John Edwards, Hayward worked in the late 1990s with the group Entelechy, which was organized by fellow improviser Ros Williams and enrolled the participation of children, seniors, and musicians with physical and cognitive impairments. For Hayward the experimental space of improvisation requires one to take every sound in the group seriously; instead of hearing disability as a flubbed attempt to play a straight tune, he interprets every gesture as “absolutely intended material. . . . And people love that because with some of the people with ‘learning disability’ their intelligence is in a different part of the body,” he told an interviewer in 2000.17 As an improviser, Hayward is already primed to suspend disbelief,

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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to accept and work with whatever outcome the sonic situation produces. These all too brief examples from Lucier, Oliveros, and Hayward present a few ways in which one might pursue questions of embodiment in relation to experimental music studies.18 There are surely others that I cannot even imagine, and I for one look forward to reading them. Cage often said that he transformed the responsibility of the composer from making choices to asking questions. Doing so, he promised, led one to embrace the uncertainty of experimental actions, the outcomes of which are unforeseen. One might be skeptical about how far Cage put this program into practice, but it certainly works as a starting point. The authors collected here ask innumerable questions in a Cagean spirit, questions about popular music (Lawrence, Lindau, Levitz), identity (Dohoney, Lewis, Lawrence), politics (Lawrence, Levitz, Marotti, Jensen-­Moulton), media (Chernosky, Jensen-­Moulton, Lindau, Demers, Levitz), aesthetics (Demers), empire (Levitz, Marotti, McGraw, Jensen-­Moulton), and historiography (Lewis, Anderson). They ask these questions in a manner that respects uncertainty: what kind of futures might they hold? Asking new questions leads to researching new materials, new individuals, new historical connections, and, eventually, to the new critical paradigms that are necessary to interpret these new relationships. Tomorrow Is the Question, then, aims to generate future research directions in experimental music studies by way of a productive inquiry that will sustain and elaborate critical conversations rather than simply closing them down by providing “answers.”

Notes 1. The title of the volume is borrowed from Ornette Coleman’s landmark 1959 album. 2. Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 206. 3. David Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, eds., Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); David W. Bernstein, ed., The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-­ Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); William Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996); Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell, Bohemian (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Writings about John Cage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); Gayle Sherwood Magee, Charles Ives Reconsidered (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); Leta E. Miller, “Henry Cowell and John Cage: Intersections and Influences, 1933–­1941,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 1 (2006): 47–­111; Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1890–­1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press, 1990); David Nicholls, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); David Nicholls, John Cage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); David W. Patterson, ed., John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–­1950 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman, eds., John Cage: Composed in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Christopher Shultis, Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998). 4. Jeremy Grimshaw, Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Branden W. Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (New York: Zone Books, 2008). 5. Sally Banes, Greenwich Village, 1963: Avant-­ Garde Performance and the ­Effervescent Body (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1993); Sumanth Gopinath, “Contraband Children: The Politics of Race and Liberation in the Music of Steve Reich, 1965–­1966” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2005); George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); George McKay, Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Jon Panish, The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997); Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Ronald Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Lloyd Whitesell, “White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-­Garde,” American Music 19, no. 2 (2001): 168–­89. 6. Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); David Novak, Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). 7. Michael Hicks, “The Imprisonment of Henry Cowell,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 1 (1991): 92–­119; Thomas S. Hines, “‘Then Not Yet “Cage”’: The Los Angeles Years, 1912–­1938,” in John Cage: Composed in America, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 65–99; Jonathan D. Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse,” in Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art, ed. David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 41–61; Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality (New York: Routledge, 2008). 8. Elizabeth Hinkle-­Turner, Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Dana Reason, “The Myth of Absence: Representation, Reception, and the Music of Experimental Women Improvisors” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2002); Tara Rodgers, Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (New York: Oxford

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University Press, 1997); Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005). 9. See Judith A. Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); and Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise. 10. But see Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Robin D. G. Kelley, “Ahmed Abdul Malik’s Islamic Experimentalism,” in Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 91–­ 119; Luiz Costa Lima Neto, “The Experimental Music of Hermeto Paschoal e Grupo (1981–­93): A Musical System in the Making,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9, no. 1 (2000): 119–­42; Denise Seachrist, The Musical World of Halim El-­Dabh (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003); and An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, 1992–­2008, Sub Rosa SR265, 2009, 4 compact discs. 11. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1974] 1999). 12. But see Lorraine Plourde, “Disciplined Listening in Tokyo: Onkyo and Non-­ intentional Sounds,” Ethnomusicology 52, no. 2 (Spring–­Summer 2008): 270–­95. 13. On aesthetics and experimental music, see Lydia Goehr, “Werktreue: Confirmation and Challenge in Contemporary Movements,” in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 243–­86; and several essays in Lydia Goehr, Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 14. Lucier recorded himself reading a prepared text, then played it back into the room, recording again, and so on, until the voice is lost in a blur of drones pulled out of the resonances in the room. 15. On the wider context of this last example, see Branden W. Joseph, “Biomusic,” Grey Room 45 (October 2011): 128–­50. On Lucier’s works, see Alvin Lucier, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings, 1965–­1994, ed. Gisela Gronemeyer and Reinhard Oehlschlägel (Cologne: Musiktexte, 1995). 16. For more on AUMI, see the Deep Listening website, http://deeplistening. org/site/adaptiveuse. 17. Charles Hayward, “Absolutely Intended Material” (interview with Phil England), Resonance 8, no. 1 (2000): 9. 18. See also Tracy McMullen, “Subject, Object, Improv: John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Eastern (Western) Philosophy in Music,” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 6, no. 2 (2010), www.criticalimprov.com.

Works Cited An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, 1992–­2008. Sub Rosa SR265, 2009, 4 compact discs. Banes, Sally. Greenwich Village, 1963: Avant-­Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Beal, Amy C. New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

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Bernstein, David W., ed. The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-­Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Bernstein, David W., and Christopher Hatch, eds. Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Feld, Steven. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Fetterman, William. John Cage’s Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. Goehr, Lydia. Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Goehr, Lydia. “Werktreue: Confirmation and Challenge in Contemporary Movements.” In The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 243–­86. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gopinath, Sumanth. “Contraband Children: The Politics of Race and Liberation in the Music of Steve Reich, 1965–­1966.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2005. Grimshaw, Jeremy. Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hayward, Charles. “Absolutely Intended Material.” Resonance 8, no. 1 (2000): 8–­9. Interview with Phil England. Hicks, Michael. Henry Cowell, Bohemian. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Hicks, Michael. “The Imprisonment of Henry Cowell.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 1 (1991): 92–­119. Hines, Thomas S. “‘Then Not Yet “Cage”’: The Los Angeles Years, 1912–­1938.” In John Cage: Composed in America, edited by Marjorie Perloff, and Charles Junkerman, 65–­99. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Hinkle-­Turner, Elizabeth. Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Joseph, Branden W. Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. New York: Zone Books, 2008. Joseph, Branden W. “Biomusic.” Grey Room 45 (October 2011): 128–­50. Katz, Jonathan D. “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse.” In Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art, edited by David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, 41–­61. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Kelley, Robin D. G. Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Writings about John Cage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Lucier, Alvin. Reflections: Interview, Scores, Writings, 1965–­1994. Edited by Gisela Gronemeyer and Reinhard Oehlschlägel. Cologne: Musiktexte, 1995. Magee, Gayle Sherwood. Charles Ives Reconsidered. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. McKay, George. Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. McMullen, Tracy. “Subject, Object, Improv: John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and

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Eastern (Western) Philosophy in Music.” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 6, no. 2 (2010). www.criticalimprov.com. Miller, Leta E. “Henry Cowell and John Cage: Intersections and Influences, 1933–­ 1941.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 1 (2006): 47–­111. Miller, Leta E., and Fredric Lieberman. Lou Harrison: Composing a World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mockus, Martha. Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality. New York: Routledge, 2008. Neto, Luiz Costa Lima. “The Experimental Music of Hermeto Paschoal e Grupo (1981–­93): A Musical System in the Making.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9, no. 1 (2000): 119–­42. Nicholls, David. American Experimental Music, 1890–­1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Nicholls, David, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nicholls, David. John Cage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Novak, David. Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1974] 1999. Panish, Jon. The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997. Patterson, David W., ed. John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–­1950. New York: Routledge, 2002. Peraino, Judith A. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Perloff, Marjorie, and Charles Junkerman, eds. John Cage: Composed in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Plourde, Lorraine. “Disciplined Listening in Tokyo: Onkyo and Non-­intentional Sounds.” Ethnomusicology 52, no. 2 (Spring–­Summer 2008): 270–­95. Porter, Eric. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Radano, Ronald. New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Reason, Dana. “The Myth of Absence: Representation, Reception, and the Music of Experimental Women Improvisors.” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2002. Rodgers, Tara. Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Seachrist, Denise. The Musical World of Halim El-­Dabh. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003. Shultis, Christopher. Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

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Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Tick, Judith. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Whitesell, Lloyd. “White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-­Garde.” American Music 19, no. 2 (2001): 168–­89. Yoshimoto, Midori. Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Goodbye 20th Century! Sonic Youth Records John Cage’s “Number Pieces”

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Elizabeth Ann Lindau

Alternative rock band Sonic Youth have been at the forefront of experimentation in rock since their 1981 debut at the East Village’s Noisefest, where they used drumsticks to beat detuned guitars with screwdrivers jammed between their strings. For nearly three decades, the group has distilled punk, hardcore, free jazz, experimental electronica, and mainstream pop into an unmistakable musical language marked by innovations in guitar tuning and technique. In addition to their well-­known roots in US punk and its offshoots, Sonic Youth have a more surprising connection to experimental composition. Perhaps the most obvious example of the band’s interface with “high art” music is the 1999 release Goodbye 20th Century!, a double album consisting not of original songs, but of conceptual, graphic, and indeterminate works of new music performed in collaboration with percussionist William Winant, composers Christian Wolff and Takehisa Kosugi, and sound artist Christian Marclay. Goodbye prominently features works by John Cage, a composer regarded as a father figure by a new generation of experimental musicians in not only “classical,” but also jazz and rock music. This essay examines Goodbye 20th Century!’s popularization of experimental composition and Cagean aesthetics. I am interested in how Sonic Youth have used their renown as an alternative rock band to disseminate what is typically regarded as esoteric music to new audiences. Through analysis of its renditions of Cage’s “number pieces,” I argue that Goodbye demonstrates a compelling new performance practice of indeterminate scores. These scores, which are often portrayed as democratic or open to people 15

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with a range of musical experiences, have nonetheless become the domain of specialists and insiders claiming a personal connection to the composer, reinscribing the very hierarchy of composer-­conductor-­performer that the New York School claimed to disrupt in the 1950s. By drawing on their experience as improvisers and their lush vocabulary of sounds, Sonic Youth and their collaborators offer an alternative to professional new music performances, which tend toward the sonic asceticism of high modernism. Sonic Youth challenge the presumed authority of this beautiful but austere aesthetic and serve as important promoters of Cage’s work. The band that would become Sonic Youth formed in New York City at the end of the 1970s. Connecticut teenager Thurston Moore (b. 1958, guitar, vocal) relocated there in 1976 and quickly became involved in the emerging punk scene. Through performances at clubs and art galleries, Moore met art school graduates Kim Gordon (b. 1953, bass guitar, guitar, vocal) and Lee Ranaldo (b. 1956, guitar, vocal). Soon enough, Moore and Ranaldo were playing in Glenn Branca’s massed guitar ensemble, one significant hub in the emerging network of art and pop collaborations in New York during this period, which also included the short-­lived no wave movement. No wave bands combined the primitivism of punk with the artiness of the avant-­garde and were known for their seriousness; deliberately amateurish guitar playing; refusal of song forms, melodies, and recognizable hooks; and, above all, the use of noise and dissonance. In 1984, after two no wave–­ style albums and a series of drummers, the band finally hired Steve Shelley (b. 1962, drums), completing its familiar “core” lineup. Sonic Youth’s juvenile band name belies their long-­held status as parental figures in the alternative music scene. Although they never achieved mainstream popularity, they are taste makers who are respected by younger musicians. They spent the 1980s “paying their dues”: working day jobs, going on small tours, and recording for independent labels such as SST and Branca’s Neutral Records. Following the release of the double album ­Daydream Nation—­perhaps their most ambitious and critically acclaimed release before or since—­they were signed to the major label Geffen Records in 1989. Two years later (after two albums that did not sell as expected), they convinced the label to sign the then unknown band Nirvana. Their recommendation paid off. After the huge commercial success of Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, Geffen granted Sonic Youth a contract extension, bonus, and cash advance.1 Despite their relatively poor album sales, the label retained Sonic Youth as a sort of magnet band that might attract up-­and-­coming, potentially more successful groups.

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In 1996 Sonic Youth rented and moved into Echo Canyon Studios in New York’s financial district, hiring Wharton Tiers (who had produced their debut album, Confusion Is Sex) as sound engineer. The move dramatically changed their recording process. Previously, they had had to woodshed their songs over weeks or months of rehearsals and live performances before cutting albums in order to take full advantage of limited and expensive studio time. But with the relatively cheap rent at Echo Canyon, they could afford to rehearse in the studio. Instead of carefully working out their songs before entering a recording session, they were able to make recording part of their compositional process. They soon began recording long, unplanned improvisations and mining the results as raw material for their albums. Their 1998 Geffen release A Thousand Leaves reflects this new creative mode. It was recorded at a leisurely pace and features long, gradually unfolding tracks that can sound more like demo tapes than tightly crafted singles. It was also their strangest and most adventurous album to date. Band biographer David Browne remarks that the album’s eleven-­minute processual track “Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)” “had more in common with minimalist composers like Steve Reich than it did with any of Sonic Youth’s punk or no-­wave antecedents.”2 Their experiments reflected both their new recording process and an apparent acceptance that they were never going to break into the mainstream as Nirvana had done. This resignation seemed to free them from any lingering sense of obligation to please Geffen or their audience. During the same year, the band established their own label, Sonic Youth Records (SYR), and used it as a venue for the discarded materials from the Echo Canyon sessions. The first three SYR albums featured extended, feedback-­filled free improvisations that bore little resemblance to the noisy but more or less conventional rock tunes released on Geffen. The label has been described as “a repository for any material that [is] too extreme for Geffen to handle,”3 and Sonic Youth’s “avenue via which to release their most avant waxings.”4 As one reviewer warned the group’s fans, “If you like weird stuff, this is for you.”5 The album SYR3: Invito Al Cielo represents the band’s first recorded collaboration with experimental guitarist Jim O’Rourke, who mixed their 2000 album NYC Ghosts & Flowers at Echo Canyon and subsequently became an official member for their next two albums. Sonic Youth’s history of performing experimental compositions actually predates SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century! In 1997 Kosugi, who had been the musical director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) since 1995, approached Moore about joining his group’s musical ensemble.

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Moore immediately agreed, having taken an interest in both electronic music and the history of modern dance. The previous year, he had attended a performance of the Cunningham/Cage collaboration Ocean (1994). He eagerly described the experience to Time Out New York.

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The music just blew my mind, specifically the electronic music they were processing through the speaker systems. Afterward, I went up and looked at all the gear and was amazed to see that it was actually kind of lo-­fi; it was deceptive because of the high-­mindedness that people attach to the work of Cunningham. You would think that these guys were punk rock.6 After accepting Kosugi’s invitation, Moore accompanied MCDC performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Next Wave Festival in 1997. This also represents one of Sonic Youth’s earliest musical interactions with O’Rourke, who played in the ensemble. Moore, O’Rourke, and Kosugi improvised musical accompaniment for BAMevent, a collage of choreography drawn from preexisting Cunningham pieces. Andrew Russ joined the trio for a performance of Cage’s Four6—­which would later appear on Goodbye—­to accompany Cunningham’s Rondo. (Most chroniclers of Sonic Youth’s career locate Goodbye’s inception at the 1998 Amoeba Music gig with Winant described below, but Moore and O’Rourke’s performances with MCDC show earlier familiarity with this repertoire.)7 In May 1998 Sonic Youth was invited to play at the San Francisco record store Amoeba Music. The first three SYR albums had been released over the previous year, and the musicians wanted to draw on that body of repertoire for their appearance. They engaged virtuoso percussionist and longtime friend Winant to join them. Winant’s list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of innovative musicians in experimental classical, rock, and jazz: Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Pierre Boulez, John Zorn, Iannis Xenakis, and Cage himself, to name a few. (Ranaldo later described him as “Cage’s percussionist in the last decade of his life.”)8 His rock credentials include drumming with the avant-­rock band Mr. Bungle and as part of a trio with Moore and percussionist Tom Surgal. Following the Amoeba performance, Sonic Youth asked Winant to appear as a guest artist on the fourth installment of the SYR series—­another album of free improvisations, band members assumed. But given Sonic Youth’s appreciation of the contemporary composers he often worked with, Winant suggested recording an album of experimental compositions, telling Moore, “You’re probably the only band I know [that has] an affinity for this school of m ­ usic.”9 Along

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with O’Rourke, the band soon became engrossed in the project. Having performed with him accompanying the MCDC, Moore and O’Rourke invited Kosugi to join the project. Composer Christian Wolff and turntable artist Christian Marclay were added to this motley crew of musicians, as well as Gordon and Moore’s five-­year-­old daughter Coco, who would perform Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano (1961). The resulting album, SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century!, was recorded and released in 1999. In order to accommodate the diverse group involved in the recording sessions, Winant chose a repertoire open to many different types of musicians and instruments. Most of the works use images (“graphic scores”) rather than traditional western music notation to convey instructions to the performer. These include Pauline Oliveros’s Six for New Time, commissioned especially for the album, Kosugi’s +–­(1987), an excerpt from Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise (1963–­67), and Wolff’s Edges (1969) and Burdocks (1970–­71). Other pieces on the album ask the performers to carry out a process, such as the dynamic swell in James Tenney’s Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971) or the swinging suspended microphones that gradually come to rest in Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1969). Like the Reich work, Ono’s Voice Piece contains prose instructions, bluntly telling the performer to “Scream. 1. against the wind 2. against the wall 3. against the sky.” The sounds of screaming and feedback are topped only by the band’s performance of George Maciunas’s Piano Piece #13 (“Carpenter’s Piece”) (1962), which instructs the performer to hammer nails into the keys of a piano. Listeners who purchase SYR4 on CD can watch a film of this instrument’s demise by inserting the disc into their computers. Goodbye features performances of graphic works by two composers of the “New York School,” the phrase coined to describe the loose association of experimental composers Cage, Wolff, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor and numerous abstract expressionist painters during the 1950s. These composers pioneered the indeterminate notation featured on Goodbye: pitch, timing, volume, and other sonic parameters were notated relatively using new types of instructions, which were often reinvented for each piece or series of pieces. The resulting music was “indeterminate with respect to its performance,” to use Cage’s words.10 In contrast to the increasingly prescriptive aleatoric and integral serialist works of the mid–­ twentieth century, indeterminacy appeared to hand control of musical parameters over to the performer. In current mainstream practice, performing indeterminate works is not so liberating and open as its notation suggests. The freedoms of indeterminate music are often described as deceptive, or as tests of a performer’s

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discipline and seriousness. Cage’s works are thus susceptible to abuse by negligent performers. His oft-­quoted caution is “Permission granted. But not to do whatever you want.”11 In an interview with Peter Gena, Cage likened following a score to following a recipe: in both situations, it’s important to know which parts of the written instructions can be altered slightly and which are essential to the integrity of the work (or flavor of the dish). “Some may even think that the ingredients listed are not important, and that others can be substituted. And you know that they’ll do it when they look on their shelf and discover that they don’t have the ingredients. On occasion, cooking with other ingredients than those given will result in a discovery, but on other occasions it will simply result in a misunderstanding, or a misrealization.”12 The special challenges indeterminate works pose for musicians have inspired record labels to document, when possible, Cage’s approval of their releases. The Mode Records album of Cage’s orchestral works 101, Ryoanji, and Apartment House 1776 is typical.13 This recording was made at a 1991 festival devoted to the composer with Stephen Drury conducting the New England Conservatory Philharmonia. The liner notes reassure us that “John Cage was in residence throughout the festival, coaching the players and attending performances. These recordings were made under his supervision.” Cage is pictured happily shaking hands with the performers, and the phrase “Composer supervised recordings” is emblazoned on the back cover. Some argue that familiarity with Cage and the extant performance tradition of his works is a prerequisite for attempting his scores. In a 2003 interview, the respected conductor Petr Kotik argued that “correct” performances of Cage’s music could only be achieved by studying recordings of pianist David Tudor and others who worked closely with the composer. The very notion that you can buy the sheet music without knowing anything about it and can read everything out of the notes and instructions is just as nonsensical as the idea that you could learn to play the flute on a correspondence course, by e-­mail. . . . If you want to play Cage well, you obviously have to respect the score, but that doesn’t tell you everything.14 Certainly notation alone is insufficient information for the idiomatic realization of most music. Understanding of written music is deepened by knowledge of performance traditions, whether such knowledge is gained aurally through live performance or recordings or by written accounts. But with this particular repertoire, which purports to be open and spontaneous,

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exhorting performers to steep themselves in past performance traditions seems contradictory. Because Cage often gave performers the opportunity to generate content or choose from a number of options within the context of his compositions, his work frequently draws comparisons to improvisation. Cage, however, consistently protested any resemblance between his work and improvisation, which he viewed as unattractively reliant on stylistic convention and personal habit. Although his works ostensibly call for spontaneous performer decision making, it is within a framework designed to bypass intention and taste. Ideally, Cage’s indeterminate works would lead composer, performer, and listener to chance encounters with new sounds or musical effects, not facilitate the intentional creation of these effects. Sabine Feisst has summarized Cage’s critical stance toward improvisation as follows.

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Cage . . . presupposed discipline and compositional decisions within the framework he designed. Performers were expected to work out all or part of the score ahead of the performance from materials and directions Cage provided. Performers have to strive for impersonality and nonintention and engage in situations with unknown outcome.15 Indeed, Tudor, the preeminent interpreter of the New York School repertoire, meticulously worked out his performances in advance using secondary scores. Benjamin Piekut argues that the composers’ preference for Tudor’s careful planning reveals their ambivalence toward truly “unknown” musical outcomes.16 Several scholars question the claim that indeterminate notation could lead to a “totally abstract sonic adventure” free of taste, memory, and references to familiar musical idioms.17 In his influential essay “Improvised Music after 1950,” George E. Lewis argues that Cage’s insistence on the dissimilarity of indeterminacy and improvisation, as well as the inattention to jazz in accounts of twentieth-­century music disguise Eurological composition’s debt to Afrological music making.18 Rebecca Y. Kim concurs in her study of the political implications of indeterminacy: “It is plausible to conjecture that [Cage] did not so much invent a new mode of performance but rather reinvent an extant practice of improvisation by ‘cloaking’ the latter in scientific and experimental terminology.”19 By asserting that truly innovative music makes no reference to extant musical idioms, Cage dismisses the possibility of “real” creativity in jazz. As Lewis writes, “The

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inescapable conclusion from a Eurological standpoint is that jazz, whose character is ‘known,’ cannot be truly spontaneous or original.”20 Despite the composer’s apparent lack of interest in popular music practices, experimental rock music and culture have drawn on Cage’s music and thought. He has become the unwitting ally of experimental rock music in journalism and fan forums, where he is frequently invoked to confer legitimacy on a style or artist. His name peppered fan and journalistic discourse surrounding Sonic Youth even before SYR4’s release. For example, Rolling Stone contributor and band biographer Alec Foege declared Cage the “patron saint of art rock” and Sonic Youth his primary follower.

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A generation of visual artists, beginning with the likes of Claes Oldenberg and Jasper Johns and culminating with Andy Warhol, were liberated by Cage’s taboo-­testing discovery: There cannot, and ought not, be any line drawn between popular art and high art. Sonic Youth continues that tradition.21 Cage is popularly understood as a liberator of performers and the inspiration for all noise, or anything that sounds vaguely weird. In his chronicle of the 1980s indie rock scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad refers to Sonic Youth’s “John Cage-­detuned guitars,”22 despite the fact that elaborate tuning systems are not among the composer’s innovations. Cage is used to validate rock musicianship, in which players may be skilled at learning music by ear and improvising but do not read conventional music notation. Moore told an interviewer that he was drawn to Cage because he “succeeded in ‘liberating the musician’ whereby no judgment is placed on the musician’s technical abilities.”23 Sonic Youth’s practice of recording jam sessions and mining them later for album-­worthy material is described as “a Cage-­ian kind of songwriting process,”24 linking improvisation to indeterminacy. The band members themselves rather jokingly connected these processes in an interview with Guitar Player magazine: “It’s improvisation within preset limits. It may be a free-­for-­all, but everyone bases their free-­ for-­all around the same thing. . . . Aleatoric . . . is that the proper Cageian term?”25 Sonic Youth and their enthusiasts often find meaning in Cage’s music and thought that he did not intend. While Cage’s practices certainly critique the “Great Tradition,” they did not lead him to the conclusion that all musics are created equal, as Foege suggests. Cage’s apparent reluctance to pass musical value judgments, to simply “let sounds be themselves,” is interpreted, or misinterpreted, here as a postmodern abolition of distinctions

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between “high” and “low” art. Cage’s connection to the visual artists Foege cites is tenuous at best: though he did join Oldenberg, Johns, and Warhol in critiquing the art establishment, Cage’s ultimate goal was not to reframe artifacts from popular culture as high art.26 Some of these comments also disguise Cage’s ambivalence toward improvisation and imply that indeterminate works are “free-­for-­alls” that place no restrictions on performers. The popular conception of Cage as a freewheeling noise artist stands in stark contrast to performances and descriptions of the late works collectively known as the “number pieces.” This nickname comes from the composer’s method of titling the works by their number of performers, then adding a superscript number each time he created a new work using the same number of players. Thus, Four6, which Sonic Youth and their guests perform on Goodbye, is the sixth quartet written in this body of work. In notating these pieces, Cage employed brackets indicating a range of time in which musical events—­usually single pitches or sounds—­must begin and end. Example 1 shows one set of time brackets from a typical number piece part. Two time brackets are printed above each staff. The left bracket indicates the range of possible starting times for the note, while the right bracket indicates the range of possible ending times. Thus, the F-­sharp could be a short sound occurring 45″ into the piece, it could start at the onset of the piece (0′00″) and last 1′15″ (though the flutist would probably have to be a circular breather), or it could be some length in between so long as it began before the 45″ mark and ended sometime after the 30″ mark. In this example, pitch, instrumentation, and duration of the work are determined, while articulation, dynamics, and length of individual events are indeterminate within Cage’s parameters.

Example 1. John Cage, Eight for Winds (1991), excerpt from Flute part. (Copyright © 1991 by Henmar Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of C. F. Peters Corporation.)

With some exceptions, realizations of these pieces by professional new music performers sound calm and peaceful, if a bit ascetic. The time bracket system allows players to remain silent for long stretches of time (twenty-­or thirty-­second-­long silences between events are a common feature of number piece recordings). While dynamic instructions vary, Cage frequently directs performers to play sustained sounds at a soft dynamic

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level, giving only short sounds the potential to be louder. This creates a musical landscape of long, contemplative tones or silences that are occasionally disrupted by short bursts of activity. No doubt inspired by commercially available recordings, scholars and critics almost unanimously describe the number pieces as serene, meditative, and transcendent. Benedict Weisser, for example, characterizes them as “exquisitely wrought works . . . of a radical simplicity.”27 James Pritchett writes that they are “beautiful because they return to John Cage’s compositional strengths: concentration, spaciousness, simplicity. The music is effortless and transparent.”28 The quasi-­spiritual language sometimes used to describe the number pieces has led Rob Haskins to compare their reception to that of Beethoven’s late works.29 This is not to suggest that all number pieces sound alike. As several Cage scholars have written, these works are amazingly diverse despite their apparent uniformity on the page.30 The number pieces’ current performance practices and scholarly reception make them a somewhat unlikely repertoire choice for a rock band looking to “cover” some John Cage. For anyone who has come to appreciate the quiet beauty of many number piece recordings, the SYR4 renditions sound startling. They contain amplified rock instruments, spoken text, sampling of prerecorded music, and distinctive riffs and rhythms. At least some of the divergence from common notions of what these works are like may be attributed to Winant’s programming, which had to accommodate musicians who play guitars and drums and are unaccustomed to reading traditional music notation. Goodbye contains two different takes of the short percussion work Six (see example 2 for a sample page). In applying the time bracket system to percussion, Cage gave each performer a number of sounds to produce without designating specific instruments or musical gestures. Each time bracket, then, contains a number corresponding to a sound prechosen by the performer. Cage describes the sounds as “single tones” in his instructions and requests that long sounds “be played such that individual attacks are not noticeable, [not,] for instance, struck . . . and then simply allowed to vibrate.”31 On Goodbye the performers seem to stray even from these open instructions. Although Six is written for percussion, one of the first sounds heard in their performance is a guitar. “Real” percussion instruments such as sleigh bells, cymbals, and timpani are used, but a purist could argue that the players simply use the rock instruments most convenient to them rather than realize the directions to the letter. Or, to use Cage’s cooking metaphor, they substituted ingredients when the ones called for weren’t on the shelf. But for a rock band—­particularly one known for inserting found

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Example 2. John Cage, Six for Percussion (1991), Percussion 1, page 1. (Copyright © 1991 by Henmar Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of C. F. Peters Corporation.)

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objects between their guitar strings and then beating the instruments with snare drum sticks—­conceiving of the guitar as a percussion instrument isn’t much of a stretch. Nonetheless, some of the guitar gestures sound more like melodies than “single tones” or percussive hits. One prominent guitar gesture in both takes of Six contains three individual pitches spaced in fourths. Although it initially seems a violation of Cage’s “single tones” direction, Sonic Youth’s choice of these guitar sounds offers a thoughtful solution to a challenge specific to the percussion number pieces—­that of sustaining sound while making individual attacks “not noticeable.” The player repeats one note, which is processed by a pitch shifter and a delay pedal creating echoing, harmonizing tones beneath it. Although we perceive three distinct pitches, the player physically repeats just one note. While not one’s first idea of a “single tone,” the sounds generated with the effects unit ingeniously observe Cage’s direction for sustaining tones. The delay pedals obscure the guitarist’s individual plucks, creating one seamless gesture. Despite its arguably liberal interpretation of Cage’s directions, this performance of Six maintains the isolation of sounds common in number piece recordings. More potentially controversial is the album’s rendition of Four6, perhaps the most radical of the number pieces. Instrumentation is typically determined in these works, but Four6 is scored for “any way of producing sounds.” As in Six, the time brackets contain numbers corresponding to sounds chosen by the performer. Winant premiered this work with Joan La Barbara, Leonard Stein, and Cage himself at Summerstage in Central Park in July 1992, an event that seems poignant in retrospect because it was Cage’s last public performance before his death two weeks later. According to Winant, the members of Sonic Youth attended this concert and, like rock fans, went backstage afterward, when Cage obliged Moore by signing several of his album covers. All those involved in the Goodbye recording session were enthusiastic about playing Four6. So that no one would be excluded, two versions with different personnel were recorded. One quartet featured Winant, Kosugi, Moore, and Ranaldo, the other Gordon, Shelley, O’Rourke, and recording engineer Wharton Tiers.32 On the album, the two performances are combined into one track, with one quartet in each channel. As Moore explains: We put each run into the two separate speakers. It ran simultaneously. We were, like, “God this sounds great!” There was some discussion over the validity of doing something like that. What was the proper thing to do? Were we taking liberties with Cage’s score with

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him not being around to say that it was improper? Then there were those who were saying, “No he would have been completely OK with it and would have loved it.” So we decided to go with it.33 Whether Cage really would have “loved it” is debatable. Although he sometimes suggested that different number pieces be performed at once, Four6 contains no such direction.34 But simultaneous performances of two or more pieces are not without precedent in Cage’s output, as the band members were clearly aware. While many scholars have focused on qualities of craftsmanship, delicacy, and transcendence in Cage’s work (particularly in their discussions of the number pieces), rock musicians have focused on his radicalism, Dadaesque prankishness, and defiling of instruments. Sonic Youth seem to conflate the Cage of Black Mountain Event (1952) or HPSCHD (1969) with the Cage of the number pieces in their debate about multitracking. But the fact that there was a discussion shows that the musicians were not merely being “foolish” (to borrow Cage’s adjective for thoughtless performers). On the contrary, they wanted to be “proper” and not “take liberties,” just as much of the discourse on interpretation of this repertoire instructs. Furthermore, listeners can hear one recording at a time by simply turning off one of the channels, which Winant admits is his preference. While he was glad to have included everyone, he finds the two performances “too dense” when heard together.35 While turning a knob might resolve the density issue, the ensemble’s choice of sounds seems, once more, uncharacteristic of the number pieces. Cage asks the performers to choose twelve “sounds with fixed characteristics.”36 This direction could be interpreted very strictly to mean that the performer should produce continuous, uniform sounds—­in effect using the time bracket content of other number pieces as a model. The “proper” interpreter eschews distinctive motives, rhythms, melodies, scales, and familiar quotations, as these were the sorts of antics Cage disliked in performances of other indeterminate works. One might choose to cleanse the sound choices of intention further by randomly assigning sounds to numbers. In his discussion of performing indeterminate music, Philip Thomas advocates the use of chance procedures (I Ching, star charts) to make such decisions, using a quote from Cage to support this suggestion: “When challenged, in 1970, about his request for an ‘ego-­less’ approach to interpretation, Cage responded, ‘The performer can use similar methods to make the determinations that I have left free, and will if he’s in the spirit of the thing. . . . I have tried in my work to free myself from my own head. I would hope that people would take that opportunity to do likewise.’”37 Again, it

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seems paradoxical that one would need to plan responses to a “free” score in order to be “in the spirit of the thing.” Certainly some degree of practice and preparation (in the case of Six or Four6, deciding on sounds and assigning them to numbers) frees a player to focus on other matters during the performance (executing the sounds, interacting with other players, listening, deciding when to begin and end sounds). But simply determining what Cage has left indeterminate would make the outcomes unsurprising, at least for the performer(s). Winant interprets Four6 not as an exercise in self-­restraint, but as an opportunity to use his considerable skills as an improviser. Cage is “really . . . giving a lot of liberty to the performers. . . . It’s . . . the kind of piece that’s perfect for an improviser.” Rather than assuming that the instructions of Four6 are restrictive, he reads them as refreshingly open. In all his performances of the work—­including the Summerstage performance with Cage—­Winant has culled his twelve sounds from “thirty-­five years of . . . experimenting around and playing percussion and improvising.” Over years of performing this piece, he has changed his sounds or reassigned sounds to numbers to keep performances interesting. Although Winant plans and numbers his sounds in advance (it would seem difficult to keep track of all twelve otherwise), it is not done using the I Ching, but according to his own taste and mood.38 Sonic Youth and Jim O’Rourke seem to follow suit, isolating the sorts of sounds and gestures used in the previous SYR releases and assigning them to Cage’s twelve sounds. To Winant “fixed characteristics” means only that sounds should be recognizable to the audience each time they recur. I have partially reconstructed the numbering of sounds in these performances by working between Cage’s score and the SYR4 recording. Sonic Youth’s sounds are rarely uniform single tones, nor are they devoid of personal proclivities. As player 1 in the right channel performance, Kim Gordon repeatedly shouts the phrase “let’s go!,” which seems reminiscent of the Ramones or some similar punk band, as sound 6. In the same channel, player 4 samples the instrumental introduction to Black Sabbath’s “Wheels of Confusion” (Black Sabbath Vol. 4 [1972]) as his sound 4. The popular music practice of sampling is akin to quotation, something Cage disliked in the realization of his indeterminate works. He once complained about the Town Hall recording of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, in which a trombonist quotes Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: “You could look at the part I had given him and you’d never find anything like that in it.”39 Several of the players appear to showcase their “best,” or most distinctive, sounds. Rather than randomly assigning their twelve sounds to Cage’s twelve numbers, they

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assign ­distinctive ostinati or melodic gestures to the numbers that recur frequently. Drummer Steve Shelley (right channel player 2) uses recognizable pop music rhythms for all of his most repetitive sounds. He samples a 2-­bar funk rhythm for sound 10, which repeats six times—­the most of any of his sounds—­and a rock beat played with brushes on rototoms for his sound 6, heard five times. Interviews with the members of Sonic Youth about Goodbye suggest an approach to Cage’s pieces not altogether different from their typical improvised jam sessions. Ranaldo told Classical Pulse magazine that the band stayed primarily within their stylistic comfort zone when recording Goodbye: “I tried to approach the execution of these pieces as naturally as possible, that is, trying not to resort to any ‘New Music’ posturings. I tried, and I think we all did, to adapt the pieces to the way we, as individuals, play. . . . We can each of us only play the way we play, after all.”40 Shortly after the album’s release, Shelley concurred with his band mate, describing the scores to Boston Phoenix’s Jon Garelick as “more like directions or parameters. A lot of these [pieces] were basically improvisations with limitations.”41 These comments are vastly different from Cage’s and Kotik’s descriptions of the proper approach to indeterminate music. Ranaldo and Shelley seem unconcerned with transcending their rock musicianship, and, like Winant, they are not shy to admit that they used their improvising skills when recording SYR4. They seem to shrug their shoulders at the impossible task of overcoming intention. One could interpret this as a failure on their part to understand Cage’s practice, or as an astute acknowledgment of contradictions between his stated goals and actual composition and performance practices. As Piekut summarizes, Cage himself “had his own tastes for certain sounds and often tinkered with his chance-­determined structures to achieve them.”42 Sonic Youth have promoted avant-­garde composition through their live performances as well as their recordings. They performed selections from Goodbye in New York City around the time of its release, and, with Winant in tow, embarked on a seven-­city European tour two years later. These concerts took place in a variety of different venues, including clubs, halls, arenas, and festivals. Performances featured a slew of diverse guest artists, many of whom straddle the boundaries among jazz, popular, classical, and experimental musics in their own work. Lineups changed in each city, featuring, at different points, composer Frederic Rzewski, members of the long-­running Dutch anarcho-­punk band The Ex, free jazz clarinetist and saxophonist Ab Baars, percussionist Han Bennink, Stereolab lead singer Laetitia Sadier, Branca, and former Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson.

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In addition to participating in improvisations or serving as opening acts, guest musicians joined Sonic Youth to perform Four6 as a double quartet. Goodbye repertoire was often programmed alongside songs from the band’s contemporary Geffen release NYC Ghosts & Flowers, other “classical” works, or improvised sets, placing avant-­garde compositions in dialogue with various improvisatory traditions. For example, on evenings when the group performed Maciunas’s Piano Piece, one member of the group would reportedly begin a tune from NYC Ghosts while the others were still hammering. One by one, band members would conclude their destruction of the piano and join in the song, creating a gradual transition.43 The tour brings to mind Wolff’s account of composing Burdocks (one of the other works included on Goodbye). He imagined the piece being performed by “a varied community of musicians (classical, folk, experimental, jazz, et cetera)  .  .  . joined in a populist-­anarchist spirit.”44 With its diverse cast of performers and seamless transitions between musical genres, the Goodbye tour seems to have realized Wolff’s ideal. Reports of the European tour performances suggest mixed audience reactions to Sonic Youth’s experimental set lists. Some were delighted or intrigued by the group’s performances of avant-­garde compositions, while others were disappointed that they didn’t play more (or any) album favorites. Frances Morgan, publisher of the now-­defunct British indie rock magazine Plan B, was in the audience for the band’s sold-­out appearance at London’s Royal Festival Hall: “It was obviously not a typical Sonic Youth gig. A lot of people didn’t enjoy it—­all around me people were shifting uneasily, looking bored or loudly signaling their dissatisfaction. . . . They’ll always get that reception. They’ll always sell out venues when they play such shows, and about half the people there will genuinely like it, and a few will really hate it, and think they’re really pretentious.”45 Moore also recalls particularly rowdy moments of the London concert: “It was like a war in the audience. During the silent parts, like in the Cage piece, you would hear some guy in the back yelling, ‘This is crap!’ and then we’d hear another guy in the front row yelling back, ‘why don’t you go home, mate!’ It was nutty.”46 Despite the occasional group of disgruntled concertgoers, Ranaldo remembered the tour as a generally positive experience that introduced their fans to new music: “At this point, our audience is willing to follow us wherever we might choose to go. . . . That tour . . . allowed us the possibility of going out and playing this music that we find really interesting, putting it into a context that it’s not usually seen in, and exposing a lot of different people to it. We thought the concerts were a great success.”47 Like the tour, Goodbye’s release on the SYR label led many of Sonic

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Youth’s most adventurous fans to Cage’s music and new music in general. Those familiar with the label’s first three releases knew approximately what to expect from the fourth: more “weird stuff.” In this way Goodbye serves as a point of initiation for rock fans into experimental composition. One fan writes, “What the record ultimately said to me was ‘so, you’re interested in experimental music? Okay, here’s a couple of names for you; check them out.’”48 Another described the album as a “gateway drug . . . into the avant-­garde.”49 Wolff noticed an uptick in new music concert attendance following Goodbye’s release: “That’s been one of the nicest things about the last three or four years, is the number of younger people that come to these concerts. I mean I’m astounded, you know, because we’re old fogies here. We’ve been around for years and all of [a] sudden, all these kids turn up! You know, and they seem to like it or at least are interested; they’re willing to check it out which is very nice.”50 Moore concurs: “There’s a whole generation keeping this music alive, keeping these ideas alive by re-­evaluating them, rediscovering them and redefining them in their own terms.”51 George Lipsitz’s idea of “creative misunderstanding” in intercultural musical interactions is germane to Moore’s points about redefinition and reevaluation. Creative misunderstanding occurs when an artist, creator, or performer makes a “mistake” in appropriating a practice from another culture. Such errors, Lipsitz theorizes, can be aesthetically fruitful reinterpretations or innovations that call attention to the constructedness of aesthetic and cultural codes. That is, what sounds like or appears to be an error to a person steeped in one set of norms is “correct,” acceptable, or desirable in another.52 As the Goodbye performances and Sonic Youth’s journalistic reception show, this community’s understanding of Cage differs from that of most new music scholars and enthusiasts, but it raises perceptive questions about the composer’s practice, specifically in the supposed divide between indeterminacy and improvisation. Cage’s critique of improvisation is based on the false assumption that disciplined performers can generate sounds devoid of meaning and referential content. The main difference between the SYR4 performances and those of new music performers is not that Sonic Youth fail to understand Cage’s instructions and realize them faithfully (their inclusion of Wolff, Winant, and Kosugi and their interview comments indicate clear concern for a “proper” realization of the score). It is that the performers draw on their deep knowledge and experiences of a host of American vernacular music idioms: rock, free jazz, funk, punk, no wave, and others.53 Contemporary music specialists are steeped in postwar art music, and thus draw on that soundworld of disconnected, dissonant sounds and extended play-

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ing techniques. Sonic Youth’s “incorrect” realizations of the number pieces expose these sounds as equally contingent on a familiar soundworld. The group follows the procedures described in Cage’s recipe but substitutes some rock ingredients for new music ones. On this occasion, I think the substitution results in a discovery—­a creative misunderstanding—­rather than a misrealization. By incorporating sounds and practices derived from popular music into their renditions of Six and Four6, Sonic Youth draw connections between indeterminate composition and African American improvisation. As Lewis argues, these links have been obscured through composers’ and scholars’ “ongoing narrative of dismissal . . . of the tenets of African-­American improvisative forms.”54 Post-­1950 experimental music absorbed the spontaneity inherent in the performance of jazz and popular music, while dismissing those musics as derivative for their incorporation of extant harmonic progressions, forms, patterns, and stylistic conventions. Sonic Youth’s unabashed use of improvisation to realize indeterminate composition avoids the denials of African American influence on experimental music prevalent among composers and practitioners and places jazz, rock, and classical composition on a more equal footing. Sonic Youth and Winant are representative of a younger generation of artists for whom the barriers between high and low have, if not entirely collapsed, at least eroded somewhat. Cage’s music, and experimental composition in general, is not a separate high art realm, but one component of a diverse experimental music landscape that includes jazz and rock. As indie rockers/improvisers who collaborate with jazz and classical performers, Sonic Youth seem like poster children for a postgeneric experimental music landscape that includes popular as well as art music. This is the conception of “modern music” found in the pages of The Wire magazine—­a diverse scene where practitioners and fans of free jazz, hip-­hop, electronica, ambient, avant-­rock, free folk, and experimental composition interact. But, as Bernard Gendron has written, popular musicians’ forays into the avant-­garde did not cause the predicted destruction of distinctions between high and low after all. Indeed, such actions require at least a tacit boundary over which to cross.55 Sonic Youth and their advocates are not unconcerned with prestige. They use SYR4’s repertoire and guest performers to situate themselves within Cage’s milieu. In many ways, their approach to the number pieces is just as careful as any Mode recording artist’s: they discuss what Cage would have wanted and consult renowned experts. Journalists invoke Cage as a recognized composer to legitimate or aestheticize the band’s practices, a discursive process Gendron has termed

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“cultural accreditation.”56 But Sonic Youth’s engagement with Cage seems to be as much about bringing the composer down to earth as it is about elevating the band members themselves. They knock the composer off of his high art pedestal somewhat with their cheeky interview comments (searching for the “proper Cageian term” to characterize their studio “free-­ for-­alls” or describing the Cunningham Dance Company as “punk rock”). Their inclusion of rock beats, samples, and punk-­style vocals in the delicate soundworld of the number pieces cuts their obvious respect for Cage with a hint of irreverence. Although achieving respect as legitimate performers of experimental music seems important to Sonic Youth, championing some of their high art heroes as “punk rock” seems at least as much so. The Goodbye 20th Century! project calls into question common notions of what constitutes a valid performance of indeterminate works. I have passed many enjoyable hours listening to recordings of number pieces by respected contemporary music performers such as the Arditti String Quartet, Michael Bach, the Barton Workshop, and countless others. Such recordings reflect a rich and beautiful performance tradition, but I am suspicious of the air of definitiveness in their packaging and presentation. The obligatory back cover photographs of the CD’s performers in consultation with Cage over a page of printed music, the anecdotes of working with Cage told in the liner notes, and the generally serious tone combine to suggest that the standard professional practice of these works is the only valid practice. It’s true that the guest performers lend legitimacy to the SYR4 renditions, but there’s something playful in the performance decisions that distinguish this album from “composer-­sanctioned” recordings of Cage’s works. Participants in the Goodbye project were clearly concerned with whether or not Cage would have approved of their decisions, but their goal was not to adopt exactly the sort of approach they imagined the composer himself would have taken. If these recordings sound “wrong,” it is only because their palette of sounds is not derived from the Webern-­like sound world of much postwar art music, but rather from rock and free improvisation. That these recordings are unlike anything else the band has produced, yet obviously theirs, attests to Sonic Youth’s sensitivity as performers as well as the ingenious design of Cage’s pieces.

Notes 1. David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2008), 278–­79. 2. Ibid., 328. 3. David Keenan, “The Primer,” The Wire, March 2002, 46.

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4. Steve Chick, Psychic Confusion: The Sonic Youth Story (New York: Omnibus Press, 2008), 236. 5. Didier Stiers and Vincent Kirsch, “It’s Jurassic Park . . . ,” Mo-­Fo, February 1999, accessed September 15, 2011, http://saucerlike.com/articles.php?x =display&id=7. 6. Gia Kourlas, “Merce Cunningham Joins Forces with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons,” Time Out New York, October 9, 1997, accessed January 31, 2010, http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/dance/76740/merce-­cunningham-­ joins-­forces-­with-­rei-­kawakubo-­of-­comme-­des-­garcons. 7. All four members of Sonic Youth accompanied the MCDC for its performance of Nearly Ninety in the spring season 2009, just three months before Cunningham’s death. Kosugi and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones joined the ensemble. 8. Christoph Cox, “Hello 21st Century,” The Wire, March 2002, 38. 9. Thom Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 242. 10. John Cage, “Composition as Process: Indeterminacy,” in Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 35. 11. John Cage, A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), 28. 12. “After Antiquity: John Cage in Conversation with Peter Gena,” in A John Cage Reader: In Celebration of His 70th Birthday, ed. Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent (New York: Peters, 1982), 172. 13. John Cage, Orchestral Works I, with the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, recorded at the John Cage Festival, Boston, 1991, Mode Records 41, 1994, compact disc. 14. Petr Kotik,“Petr Kotik’s Umbilical Cord,” interview with Tereza Havelkova, Czech Music, January–­February 2003, 9–­11. 15. Sabine Feisst, “John Cage and Improvisation: An Unresolved Relationship,” in Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, ed. Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 42–­43. 16. Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 54–­58. For further discussion of Tudor’s working method, see John Holzaepfel, “Painting by Numbers: The Intersections of Morton Feldman and David Tudor,” in The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, ed. Steven Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 159–­72. 17. Morton Feldman, quoted in David Nicholls, “Getting Rid of the Glue: The Music of the New York School,” in The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, ed. Steven Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 32. 18. George E. Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,” Black Music Research Journal 16, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 91–­122. 19. Rebecca Y. Kim, “In No Uncertain Musical Terms: The Cultural Politics of John Cage’s Indeterminacy” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2008), 219. 20. Lewis, “Improvised Music,” 107.

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21. Alec Foege, Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 5–­6. 22. Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–­1991 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001), 243. 23. Thurston Moore, “Defining Thurston: Talking with and Listening to Thurston Moore,” interview with Lyn Horton, jazzreview.com, January 29, 2011, accessed September 15, 2011, http://www.jazzreview.com/index.php/reviews/jazz-­ artist-­interviews/item/15608-­. 24. Foege, Confusion is Next, 19. 25. Quoted in Theo Cateforis, “‘Total Trash:’ Analysis and Post Punk Music,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 5, no. 1 (March 1993): 43. 26. See Alastair Williams, “Cage and Postmodernism,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 233. 27. Benedict Weisser, “John Cage: ‘.  .  . The Whole Paper Would Potentially Be Sound’: Time-­Brackets and the Number Pieces (1981–­92),” Perspectives of New Music 41, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 191. 28. James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 204. 29. Rob Haskins, “‘An Anarchic Society of Sounds’: The Number Pieces of John Cage” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2004), 262. 30. See, for example, William Brooks, “Music II: from the late 1960s,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 141–­43; and David Nicholls, John Cage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 107–­8. 31. John Cage, performance instructions, Six (New York: Edition Peters, 1991). 32. The SYR4 liner notes omit Gordon and Tiers, but this is corrected on Sonic Youth’s website. Winant also confirms their participation in William Winant, interview by Monica Monroe, Bananafish 13 (August 1999): 80, which is available on his website, accessed June 7, 2012, http://williamwinant.com/bananafish.html. 33. Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music, 243. 34. One11 and 103 may be performed together, and One8, One9, and Two3 may be performed with 108. 35. William Winant, telephone interview with the author, February 12, 2009. Winant’s idea of listening to one channel at a time seems reminiscent of KNOBS, the instructions included in the original Nonesuch recording of HPSCHD (1969). These instructions invited listeners to interact with the work at home by following directions for the adjustment of volume, treble, and bass. 36. John Cage, performance instructions, Four6 (New York: Henmar Press, 1992). 37. Philip Thomas, “Determining the Indeterminate,” Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 2 (2007): 133–­34. 38. Winant, interview. 39. Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage (New York: Limelight Editions, 1988), 69. Cage refers to The 25-­Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, with the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, recorded at Town Hall, New York, May 15, 1958, Wergo 286 247, 1994, 3 compact discs. The trombonist quotes one of the ostinati from “The Augurs of Spring.”

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40. “In Conversation with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo,” interview with Damon Krukowski, Classical Pulse, February–­March 2000, available at Sonic Youth’s website, accessed September 15, 2011, http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/interviews/ index.html. 41. Jon Garelick, “Space Is the Place: Sonic Youth Are Out of Time,” Boston Phoenix, December 20, 1999. 42. Piekut goes on to argue that Cage “improvised at the mixing board” at the 1964 New York Philharmonic performance of Atlas Eclipticalis. Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise, 47–­48. 43. For a further description of this tour or virtually any Sonic Youth performance, see Chris Lawrence’s Sonic Concert Chronology, accessed February 26, 2010, http://sonicyouth.com/history/con-­set.html. 44. Christian Wolff, Cues: Writings & Conversations (Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998), 496. 45. Quoted in Chick, Psychic Confusion, 246. 46. Cox, “Hello 21st Century,” 38. 47. Ibid. 48. Björn Magnusson to [email protected], December 21, 2004, “Silence—­ Scholarly Discussion of the Music of John Cage” mailing list, accessed July 5, 2012, http://osdir.com/ml/music.john-­cage/2004–­12/msg00040.html. 49. “Sonic Fan Forum,” accessed December 20, 2004, http://www.sonicyouth. com/gossip/index.php. 50. Frank J. Oteri, “A Chance Encounter with Christian Wolff,” NewMusicBox, March 1, 2002, accessed June 7, 2012, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/a-­ chance-­encounter-­with-­christian-­wolff/. 51. Steve Smith and Jason Gross, “American Contraband: Alternative Rock and American Experimental Music—­Sonic Youth,” NewMusicBox, July 1, 2000, accessed June 7, 2012, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/American-­Contraband-­ Alternative-­Rock-­and-­American-­Experimental-­Music/. 52. George Lipsitz, “‘It’s All Wrong, but It’s All Right’: Creative Misunderstanding in Intercultural Communication,” in Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place (London: Verso, 1994). 53. So as not to repeat Cage’s error of denying the influence of Afrological improvisation on contemporary trends in art music, it is important to emphasize that rock music is at its core Afrological, even if Sonic Youth and their rock milieu (punk, no wave) largely abandoned blues-­based rock. 54. Lewis, “Improvised Music,” 92. 55. Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­Garde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 3. Piekut makes a similar point in his work on Iggy Pop, in Experimentalism Otherwise, 196. 56. Bernard Gendron, “The Cultural Accreditation of the Beatles,” in Gendron, Between Montmartre, 161–­224.

Works Cited Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–­1991. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001.

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Brooks, William. “Music II: from the late 1960s.” In The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, edited by David Nicholls, 128–­49. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Browne, David. Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2008. Cage, John. Four6. New York: Henmar Press, 1992. Cage, John. Orchestral Works I. New England Conservatory Philharmonia. Recorded at the John Cage Festival, Boston, 1991. Mode Records 41, 1994, compact disc. Cage, John. Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Cage, John. Six. New York: Edition Peters, 1991. Cage, John. The 25-­Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage. Manhattan Percussion Ensemble. Recorded at Town Hall, New York, May 15, 1958. Wergo 286 247, 1994, 3 compact discs. Cage, John. A Year from Monday. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1963. Cateforis, Theo. “‘Total Trash’: Analysis and Post Punk Music.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 5, no. 1 (March 1993): 39–­57. Chick, Steve. Psychic Confusion: The Sonic Youth Story. New York: Omnibus Press, 2008. Cox, Christoph. “Hello 21st Century.” The Wire, March 2002. Feisst, Sabine. “John Cage and Improvisation: An Unresolved Relationship.” In Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, edited by Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl, 38–­51. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Foege, Alec. Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Garelick, Jon. “Space Is the Place: Sonic Youth Are Out of Time.” Boston Phoenix, December 20, 1999. Gena, Peter, and Jonathan Brent, eds. A John Cage Reader: In Celebration of His 70th Birthday. New York: Peters, 1982. Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Haskins, Rob. “‘An Anarchic Society of Sounds’: The Number Pieces of John Cage.” PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2004. Holmes, Thom. Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002. Holzaepfel, John. “Painting by Numbers: The Intersections of Morton Feldman and David Tudor.” In The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, edited by Stephen Johnson, 159–­72. New York: Routledge, 2002. Johnson, Stephen, ed. The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg. New York: Routledge, 2002. Keenan, David. “The Primer.” The Wire, March 2002. Kim, Rebecca Y. “In No Uncertain Musical Terms: The Cultural Politics of John Cage’s Indeterminacy.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2008. Kostelanetz, Richard. Conversing with Cage. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988. Kotik, Petr. “Petr Kotik’s Umbilical Cord.” Czech Music, January–­February 2003, 9–­11. Interview with Tereza Havelkova. Kourlas, Gia. “Merce Cunningham Joins Forces with Rei Kawakubo of Comme

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des Garçons.” Time Out New York, October 9, 1997. Accessed January 31, 2010. http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/dance/76740/merce-­cunningham-­joins-­ forces-­with-­rei-­kawakubo-­of-­comme-­des-­garcons. Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal 16, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 91–­122. Lipsitz, George. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso, 1994. Moore, Thurston. “Defining Thurston: Talking with and Listening to Thurston Moore.” jazzreview.com, January 29, 2011. Interview with Lyn Horton. Accessed September 15, 2011. http://www.jazzreview.com/index.php/reviews/ jazz-­artist-­interviews/item/15608-­. Nicholls, David, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nicholls, David. “Getting Rid of the Glue: The Music of the New York School.” In The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, edited by Steven Johnson, 17–56. New York: Routledge, 2002. Nicholls, David. John Cage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Oteri, Frank J. “A Chance Encounter with Christian Wolff.” NewMusicBox, March 1, 2002. Accessed June 7, 2012. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/a-­ chance-­encounter-­with-­christian-­wolff/. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Ranaldo, Lee. “In Conversation with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo.” Classical Pulse, February–­March 2000. Interview with Damon Krukowski. Available at Sonic Youth’s website. Accessed September 15, 2011, http://www.sonicyouth.com/ history/interviews/index.html. Smith, Steve, and Jason Gross. “American Contraband: Alternative Rock and American Experimental Music: Sonic Youth.” NewMusicBox, July 1, 2000. Accessed Contraband-­ June 7, 2012. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/American-­ Alternative-­Rock-­and-­American-­Experimental-­Music/. Stiers, Didier, and Vincent Kirsch. “It’s Jurassic Park . . .” Mo-­Fo, February 1999. Accessed September 15, 2011. http://saucerlike.com/articles.php?x=display&id=7. Thomas, Philip. “Determining the Indeterminate.” Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 2 (2007): 129–­40. Weisser, Benedict. “John Cage: ‘.  .  . The Whole Paper Would Potentially Be Sound’: Time-­Brackets and the Number Pieces (1981–­92).” Perspectives of New Music 41, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 176–­225. Williams, Alastair. “Cage and Postmodernism.” In The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, edited by David Nicholls, 227–­41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Winant, William. Interview with Monica Monroe. Bananafish 13 (August 1999): 79–­91. Accessed June 7, 2012. http://williamwinant.com/bananafish.html. Wolff, Christian. Cues: Writings & Conversations. Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998.

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John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego Ryan Dohoney

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1. John Cage composed his mammoth musical anthology Song Books in 1970 for the vocalist-­ composer Cathy Berberian and vocalist Simone Rist. Premiered in Paris at the Theâtre de la Ville that year, Song Books was subsequently taken up by the Buffalo-­based S.E.M. Ensemble, led by composer-­flutist Petr Kotik. The group performed versions of the piece regularly from 1971 to 1975 and again in its complete form in 1982. After a number of well-­received performances, Morton Feldman invited the group to perform Song Books at his first June in Buffalo festival on June 4, 1975. Kyle Gann recalled the performance in a 1988 Village Voice review of writings on Cage. Julius Eastman (a fine composer/performer and a gay activist) used the direction “Give a lecture” as a pretext to undress a male student onstage and gesture sexually. Cage’s reaction was inscrutable, but the next day, the man whom no one could imagine even swatting a fly fumed, in impressively subdued tones, about the difference between liberty and license. Unbelievably, he banged his fist on the piano and shouted (or perhaps only paraphrased) the too-­little-­famous words that appear in caps in his book A Year from Monday: “PERMISSION GRANTED. BUT NOT TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.”1 With some variation, this is how the story circulates. Eastman defied the composer’s instructions, sexualized the Song Books, and provoked the ire of Cage, who uncharacteristically erupted in a fit of rage. The S.E.M. Ensemble’s performance raises important problems for critically approaching the 39 Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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US experimental tradition. I will explore two of them in this essay. First, an immediate question might be, “Who is Julius Eastman?” or, more to the point, “What would it mean to take a minor figure like Eastman seriously as part of the history of U.S. experimentalism?” Eastman is perhaps best known as a vocalist and particularly for his star turn on the first recording of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King.2 Since his death in 1990, he has experienced a small revival and become known as an eclectic and affecting composer, thanks due in large part to composer Mary Jane Leach.3 In order to take Eastman seriously, I’ll reconstruct the events of the S.E.M. Ensemble’s Song Books performance of 1975 and his role in it. In doing so I’ll argue that Eastman gives us a view on a tradition of queer experimental music that affords us an opportunity to reconfigure “experimentalism” as a production of subjectivity that joins the sonic and the erotic. Both Eastman and Cage were part of a network of gay and lesbian experimental musicians going back to the 1930s. Each experimented with sound and sexuality in conflicting ways—­Cage with a so-­called homosexual aesthetic and Eastman with a queer experimentalism. Each composer strategically managed sexuality as part of his practice, and both exemplify historically contingent modes of gay subjectivity performed through music.

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2. Feldman inaugurated his June in Buffalo festival in 1975 and envisioned it in part as a US counterpart to the Darmstadt summer composition courses. At the first June in Buffalo festival, Feldman celebrated his own experimental tradition with a series of concerts devoted to the “New York School,” including the music of Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, and himself. The festival was based at the State University of New York at Buffalo and featured the musicians of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, known colloquially as the Creative Associates. Throughout its history, lasting from 1964 to 1980, the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts was the first major academic home for experimental music in the United States. Given startup funds by the Rockefeller Foundation, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, and given support and performance space by the Albright-­Knox Art Gallery, the Center became renowned its performances and was a space of cultural exchange among Europe, the United States, and Japan. The international character of the Center was maintained through a frequently changing group of US, European, and Asian musicians, and the Center participated in the sort of cultural diplomacy and exercise of soft power

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John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego 

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that characterized much state-­supported cultural production in the latter half of the twentieth century.4 Music in the Center’s concerts both in Buffalo and in New York City’s Carnegie Recital Hall featured a wide range of styles, including music of Charles Ives, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Lejaren Hillier, Sylvano Bussotti, Henri Pousseur, David del Tredici, Joan La Barbara, Jo Kondo, and Feldman—­just to name a few.5 By the 1970s funding for the Center was in decline. Feldman’s arrival in 1972 and subsequent appointment to the Edgard Varèse Chair in Musical Composition in 1975 did little to staunch the flow of resources away from the center, despite the excitement his appointment elicited. Feldman’s founding of June in Buffalo attempted to restore some of the vitality of the Center’s early days and return it to a position of prominence. As with many of Feldman’s activities from the late 1960s on, institutionalization worked to bolster his narrative of experimentalism and his coterie’s place within it. That Feldman devoted the inaugural June in Buffalo festival in 1975 to Cage, Wolff, Brown, and himself was certainly strategic—­legitimating his avant-­garde history and the importance of the New York School. The stakes were high for the festival, and its performances were granted a certain authority and authenticity by Feldman’s imprimatur. Among the performers chosen for the festival was the S.E.M. Ensemble. Petr Kotik joined the Creative Associates in 1969 after emigrating from Czechoslovakia and founded the ensemble in 1970. The early group roster of the S.E.M. was composed largely of Kotik’s fellow Creative Associates—­ Jan Williams (percussionist), Julius Eastman (voice, piano, composer), and Roberto Laneri (a graduate student in clarinet) and later expanded to include Garrett List, Judith Martin, Joseph Kubera, and many others over the years. Unlike the Center’s varied taste in new music, Kotik focused his programming on the New York School, other US experimentalists in that lineage (Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Eastman), and sympathetic Europeans (Cornelius Cardew and Kotik himself). He had taken a strong interest in Cage’s Song Books nearly from its inception and met with Cage during its composition in the summer of 1970. Kotik shared with Cage an interest in the formal ideas developed in Song Books, particularly the nonhierarchical superimposition of unrelated compositional elements. Kotik used such ideas in his own music from around the same time, especially Alley and There Is Singularly Nothing. Julius Eastman’s tenure as a Creative Associate began in 1968, shortly before Kotik’s arrival. Eastman had studied composition and piano at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and came to the attention of Lukas Foss (the Center’s director) after his graduation. Foss invited him to join

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Fig. 1. Members of the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1971–­72: Julius Eastman, Roberto Laneri, Jan Williams, and Petr Kotik. (Photograph by Jim Tuttle. Courtesy of David Tuttle.)

the ­Associates, and Eastman remained a vital part of the Center and the S.E.M. Ensemble until his relocation to New York City in the summer of 1976. Eastman served in both groups as a composer, pianist, and vocalist. As a composer his practice included techniques developed by the postwar avant-­garde, particularly sonic collage, improvisation, electronics, and theatricality. Eastman composed a number of theatrical musical works in the early 1970s ranging from Thruway (for magnetic tape, children’s choir, and ensemble) to Tripod (1973), a piece in which performers cattily gossip and periodically stab one another with toy knives to the accompaniment of live musicians and a prerecorded tape.6 Eastman also composed long-­duration works assembled from repeating melodic cells that required limited improvisation from the players (similar in notational style to Terry Riley’s In C). Stay On It (1973), premiered by the Creative Associates, was one such composition, as were Joy Boy and That Boy, performed at the Kitchen in 1975 by the S.E.M. Ensemble. While later composition titles such as Gay Guerrilla (1979) and Nigger Faggot (1977)

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mark a militant turn in Eastman’s politics in the late 1970s, his titles from earlier in the decade evince a more playful homoeroticism. That Boy, Joy Boy, and the two-­piano piece Touch Him When give indications that same-­ sex intimacy rendered in sound was his going concern. Other works, such as Creation and Macle, are raucous performances in which gay signifiers are part of chaotic electronic and improvisatory sonic assemblages. Eastman’s experimentalism shared some tropes with Cage’s, particularly the juxtaposition of disparate sonic materials, amplification, electronics, and tape music. Creation (ca. 1973) is exemplary in this regard. Eastman composed it for the S.E.M. Ensemble, and it was played by Kotik, Eastman, and Williams on their European tour in the summer of 1973.7 The piece is, like Tripod and Thruway, bifurcated into a prerecorded sound collage and a live acoustic component. Eastman’s tape collage brings together wildly divergent sounds—­vocal drones on an open fifth, sounds of screaming, laughing, crying, and electronic feedback. On the recording Eastman, Williams, and Kotik quote popular songs (“Danny Boy” and “The Girl from Ipanema” stand out). Gay signifiers emerge periodically as well on the tape. Eastman and his fellow performers affect a lisping comic tone of voice while discussing subjects more expected in a John Waters film than in a classical music concert. This tape accompanies live sounds of percussion, flute, and piano that blend repetition, improvisation, and virtuosic displays from the performers. Eastman’s inclusion of queerly surreal material is in line with a long tradition of avant-­garde shock techniques in which abject subject matter is joined to an equally disruptive musical surface or formal conceit. While Creation is certainly a bountiful sound world, its diversity is rather meager in comparison with the plenitude of Cage’s Song Books and its extensive stylistic and compositional variety. Like Cage’s works from the late 1950s, such as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Song Books is an anthology of “solos.” Here they come in four types: “Song,” “Song with Electronics,” “Theater,” or “Theater with Electronics.” Cage composed each of the ninety solos to be either relevant or irrelevant to the theme “We connect Satie with Thoreau,” a line Cage had written in a diary in the late 1960s but left undeveloped until the Song Books commission. The musical and theatrical material was either newly composed or recycled from earlier compositional styles.8 Cage instructed: “Given two or more singers, each should make an independent program, not fitted or related in a predetermined way to anyone else’s program. Any resultant silence in a program is not to be feared. Simply perform as you had decided to, before you knew what would happen.”9 Cage described his ideal performance: “These people all make their

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programs separately, and then they are superimposed so that the whole situation becomes a rich unpredictable field of irrational things not thought out together.”10 As Branden W. Joseph has elaborated, such compositions are “‘field[s]’ or ‘constellation[s]’ . . . that not only potentially surrounded [the audience] but opened onto and interpenetrated with random acoustical occurrences ‘outside’ and therefore beyond any single intentionality.”11 Furthermore, though not stated in the instructions, Cage allowed no rehearsal before performance. Kotik recalls that when he met with Cage during the composition of Song Books, the prohibition of rehearsal was a point of contention between the composer and performers:

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[Cage] made absolutely sure that I understood that this piece must not be rehearsed. All parts must be prepared individually and separately without the regard of other performers preparing their parts. He believed rehearsal might create a situation in which one performer influences the other, which might create a hierarchical situation. . . . He said, “I’m preparing a performance at Carnegie Recital Hall, but the singers [Cathy Berberian and Simone Rist] insist on rehearsing and if they insist on rehearsing I will cancel the plans.” Sure enough the performance never happened. That was another indication for me how serious he was about forbidding rehearsals.12 Beginning in 1971, Kotik and Eastman occasionally performed Cage’s Song Books, once on Joel Chadabe’s “Free Music Store” series at the State University of New York at Albany and again at the Kitchen in New York City three months before June in Buffalo. Kotik recalls that it was on the basis of Eastman’s strong performance that the group was asked to participate in the festival. We did several full evening performances and Julius, being a singer, was always the star. We did it at a festival at the State University at Albany, organized by Joel Chadabe. . . . And after the performance, everyone was totally taken with Julius. Cage and Tudor talked about it. Half a year later, I met Tudor and he still talked about the Song Books performance and what impression Julius made on him, how fantastic it was. So, when Feldman asked me to perform Song Books with S.E.M. on his June in Buffalo festival, I was convinced that the reason was Julius Eastman.13 The S.E.M. Ensemble performed Song Books in the latter half of the second concert of the festival. It was preceded by a performance of Atlas Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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Eclipticalis (1961–­62) realized by Jan Williams and played by the Creative Associates.14 In S.E.M.’s version of Song Books, Judith Martin sang many of the songs with electronics, Williams executed a typewriter solo, and Kotik performed various theatrical actions.15 Eastman realized “Solo for Voice No. 8,” a preexisting work that Cage had composed some years earlier and titled 0′00″ (4′33″ No. 2) (1962). The instructions read, “[I]n a situation with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action. With any interruptions. Fulfilling in whole or part an obligation to others. No attention to be given to the situation (electronic, musical, theatrical).”16 The score evinced Cage’s pursuit of themes already present in his work—­discipline and obligation toward others. This particular “Solo for Voice” appears five separate times in Song Books, suggesting its importance to Cage’s thinking at the time. Cage’s own realization of 0′00″ had emphasized responsibility and sociability. His writing the score and dedication to Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi constituted the “disciplined action” of the first performance. In a 1965 performance Cage wrote letters on an amplified typewriter. Both events prefigured the kinds of theatrical actions required in Song Books. Cage drew attention to the sounds of the ordinary by performing his daily responsibilities while Eastman considered his obligations in different terms. For his realization of 0′00″, Eastman chose to give a lecture in which he outlined “a new system of love” that was given as a mock anatomy lesson using two assistants named Mister Charles and Miss Susiana.17 Kotik remembers the June 4, 1975, performance like this: He took a man and woman and sort of undressed them on stage and acted as if he would be some kind of examiner, presenting these two species to the public. It was hilarious in a sense that it brought the house down. It was not really a scandal as far as the audience was concerned. In fact there was strong applause afterward, but Cage was deeply offended. I looked on the stage during the performance and I thought, “What the hell is going on?” What happened was the girl freaked out and didn’t allow herself to be undressed. So Julius only managed to get the guy naked and being an outspoken homosexual, he was making all sorts of “achs!” and “ahs” as he was pulling his pants down. He was all over the guy while the girl was standing there rather embarrassed. Cage thought that this was some kind of mockery about him. He was scandalized.18 Jeff Simons’s review for the Buffalo Evening News confirms Kotik’s account: “By the time Eastman’s little performance was finished, Mister Charles Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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was completely undressed and Eastman’s leering, libidinous, lecture-­ performance had everyone convulsed with the burlesque broadness of his homoerotic satire.”19 It is unlikely that Cage was the target of the performance; such camping and queer signifying were crucial elements of Eastman’s own practice (as in Creation and Tripod). They were also of a piece with the composer-­performer’s theatrical aesthetic developed during his tenure with the Creative Associates and honed in his nonmusical theatrical performances of the work of Jean Genet.20 Eastman cultivated a distinctly gay experimental practice in nearly all of his performances; as Kotik notes, he was an “outspoken homosexual,” and Gann refers to him as a “gay activist.” Experimentalism was for him as much sexual as it was musical, and it often took the form of critical camp. David M. Halperin’s description of camp aptly describes how artists like Eastman figured their relationship to authority structures.

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Camp, after all, is a form of cultural resistance that is entirely predicated on a shared consciousness of being inescapably situated within a powerful system of social and sexual meanings. Camp resists the power of that system from within by means of parody, exaggeration, amplification, theatricalization, and literalization of normally tacit codes of conduct—­codes whose very authority derives from their privilege of never having to be explicitly articulated, and thus from their customary immunity to critique.21 Eastman’s camp is markedly distinct from Cage’s conception of power relations. Camp performance works amid systems of domination in order to dismantle them; Cagean indeterminacy, however, imagined a line of flight escaping power relations. Eastman’s camp realization of “Solo for Voice, No. 8” took as its target the language of psychoscientific authority. With the American Psychiatric Association’s removal in 1973 of homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and an intensified gay rights movement following the events of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, there was an increased awareness among gay activists of the use of scientific discourse as a means of control, a theme subsequently examined in Michel Foucault’s La Volonté de savoir (History of Sexuality) in 1976. Eastman’s performance displayed just such awareness. He mocked the scientific discourse of sexuality by adopting a therapeutic discourse that theatricalized the production of erotic knowledge through a reversal of agency. A homosexual subject took the initiative to speak on his own behalf with the goal of experimenting with an as yet unknown form of love. As Halperin

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notes, camp consciousness makes a virtue of its minor position within social and sexual power relations, and indeed Eastman’s performance critiqued local targets. With his performances Eastman resisted the social strictures of his community as much as he did general homophobic discourse. Kotik described the environment in Buffalo in the 1970s.

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To think that you could, in the early 1970s, exist in Buffalo and be some kind of a gay activist is absurd. The Buffalo elite, so to speak, Mr. [Seymour] Knox [patron of the Albright-­Knox Gallery] and his friends who supported us [the Creative Associates and the S.E.M. Ensemble] were the most conservative group of people you could imagine. I suspect that they are still that conservative.  .  .  . These people funded all that was going on in the arts in Buffalo. They were very nice people, but they had their own ideas. Now can you imagine someone functioning as an “open homosexual” in this environment? It’s absurd.22 Yet Eastman did, in performance after performance, function as an “open homosexual,” building a gay aesthetic and experimenting with its musical possibilities. Although Cage, as Kotik suggests, may have thought himself the butt of Eastman’s perceived joke, there were other, more pressing targets. Cage, it seems, was collateral damage. Even so, Eastman’s gay aesthetic, once inserted within Song Books’ multiplicity, revealed the limits of Cagean acceptance and the degree to which Cagean freedom was contingent on performers having internalized Cage’s own tastes and preferences.23 3. Cage was not happy with the performance. Following the event, the composer confronted both Eastman and Kotik: “So I said to Julius, ‘Which of the solos were you doing and why did you do one?’ He told me that through performing the work too many times he’s become bored with it. I said, ‘If you are bored with it, why do you do it?’ And he said he thought he wouldn’t do it in the future and I said, ‘I’d be very grateful to you if you wouldn’t.’”24 Cage also directed his anger toward Kotik. In Cage’s view the director had failed in his responsibility for the performance even though Kotik had abided by the rule forbidding rehearsal. Right after the performance, Cage came on stage and said to me, “What was this? What was the meaning of this?” I looked at him

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and said, “I had no idea what was going to happen,” to which Cage answered, “But you are the director,” putting clearly the responsibility for Julius’s act on me. . . . It took me some time to come to terms with what Cage said and in the end, I completely agreed with him. This whole event and the realization of the consequences of what happened shaped my understanding and attitude toward performance for the rest of my life. . . . [O]nce the work leaves the composer’s desk and is given to the performer, it is the musician who has to decide how to go about preparing the best performance. No excuses.25 Cage’s ire at Kotik was based on a perceived failure of leadership, and Kotik later came to feel that Eastman’s performance was “a misunderstanding of the music” even as he felt that Cage’s instructions were of little help in realizing a good performance.26 Cage reserved a different line of criticism for Eastman, one that addressed problems of subjectivity and intention attendant to indeterminacy. The following day, among the assembled student-­ composers and colleagues, Cage gave a lecture dealing with “the question for which there is probably not a solution—­the question being of writing something and it being performed, and the question whether the performance is acceptable or whether something else has happened.” He said that he would also go on to address “the problem of composing and performing . . . in relation to the performers themselves.”27 Cage then disparaged the S.E.M. Ensemble’s performance and described his response to it. Now, last night when the S.E.M. Ensemble performed the Song Books, I regretted that I had composed it. I regret that I have, that my work exists now, as something so widely misunderstood. . . . [I]f we could somehow get everything to be magnificent and good in terms of our intentions and whatnot, we would—­wouldn’t we?—­have to exert pressure. And I, as you know, don’t wish to do this. I wish to make suggestions. I wish even to make those suggestions ambiguous so that people will have some freedom to share, as it were, in the exploration of things beyond their imagination that started me off in the first place.28 By repudiating the performance and rejecting Song Books as his piece, Cage marked the limit of what he considered useful to his “exploration of things beyond [our] imagination.” Eastman’s performance, per Cage’s

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­ nderstanding, forestalled what Joseph has called the “subjective expanu sion” Cage sought through work—­a desire to open up a field of experience that “surpass[es] the capacity of any one subject to take it all in, placing him and her within an infinite totality of which any grasp would be partial and thus distinct . . . from that of any other individual.”29 Cage identifies here the delicate balance of creating a situation over which one has authorial control and in which one does not impinge on freedom. It is a fundamental tension within indeterminacy that reiterates its genealogical link to the nineteenth-­century work concept and the model of authorship related to it. Cage wants authorial control over even the unknown and unforeseen; such an expanded author function is a subjective expansion of a different sort in which all sounds in a given performance are attributable to the composer. Authorship, initially, seems to be the dilemma fueling Cage’s ire.

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When you see that Julius Eastman, from one performance to the next, does the same thing, harps on the same thing . . . and . . . his thing unfortunately has become this one thing of sexuality. . . . Admittedly, he performs beautifully and if it were not for the fact that the performance was connected with my work, I could easily find it enjoyable.30 Cage connected Eastman’s performance to a larger problem with the translation of his music from composition to performance: “I have apparently done my work in such a way that when people do their worst work and throw every consideration to the winds, they connect it with me. When they do the least thing that they can imagine to do, and repeatedly do it, they connect it with me.”31 Bad performances were judged less on their attainment of new sonic awareness and more on the extent to which Cage was willing to authorize the activities done in his name. As a result of Eastman’s confusion of freedom with license and his redefinition of discipline, the limits of Cagean anarchy were exposed.32 As he turned to this topic, Cage returned to an old story first published in the collected writings titled A Year from Monday, in which the themes of authority and race figure prominently. I have told in one of the diaries this touching story. I am, as you know, if a politician at all, an anarchist. And there was a book I wanted to read called Man Against the State. And I thought the man who had written it lived in the neighborhood, or one who had the last copy, someone, either one or the other. Anyways, I got in touch with

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him and drove over. . . . And he had lived alone all his life, and then just recently he had adopted two little black children. And when he brought them back to live with him—­and this was the first time anyone had lived with him, and he had devoted his life to anarchy—­ these children were so happy to be in this house, and away from institutional living, that they jumped up and down on the beds. And he told me—­and this is what was so touching—­that he found it necessary after a whole life devoted to anarchy, he found it necessary to make a rule, and this rule was “no jumping up and down on the beds.”33 The story suggests a need to strategically realign one’s political commitments at moments of conflict to prevent harm. When situated within a lecture whose target was Eastman, most likely one of the few African Americans at the event, this story of white paternalism correcting unruly black youth was not so much touching as it was condescending and troubling with regard to how Cage conceived of his role as compositional rule maker. Even the moral of the story was politically questionable in this situation: one should adjust one’s views to be more authoritarian when the need arises, whether as a corrective to kids messing up the sheets in celebration of their new, noninstitutional setting or a composer-­performer using Cage’s “Solo for Voice, No. 8” to develop an experimental erotics. Cage followed up his story with an amateur psychoanalysis of Eastman. Drawing on lessons from Daisetsu Suzuki, Cage described the ego “as being able to close things in or open them out, to get things flowing or to constrict them, [Suzuki] said Zen wants us to get it flowing.” Cage’s compositional situations also attempted to “get things flowing” by creating happeninglike events of anarchic sonic interpenetration. By way of contrast, Cage interpreted homosexuality as a limit on subjective expansion, and he condemned Eastman for including gay and camp elements within the performance, even as he was misinformed about the S.E.M.’s previous realizations of the Song Books. I was told before I came on this trip that the performance of the S.E.M. was very controversial with respect to my Song Books. I had seen Julius Eastman perform some four or five years ago, or three, or whatever, in Albany and it was a beautiful performance. I had been told that the last time he performed this piece here he made homosexual advances to a young man in the audience and did so under the pretense that it was part of my composition. The piece is written so

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indeterminately that almost anyone, anything that one could think of doing, could be excused, as I will shortly tell you Julius asked me to excuse himself. But again last night, with two other people, the question of homosexuality arises again, and sexuality generally. And it’s particularly not implied in this work, since the basis of this work, if one reads the directions—­one assumes the performer does—­we connect Satie, with Thoreau. Neither Satie nor Thoreau is known to have had any sexual connection with anyone or anything.34 Eastman’s earlier performances had not included homosexual content—­ Kotik refutes this—­and had only been praised by Cage and Tudor. Eastman’s attempt to attach homosexuality to it elicited the composer’s most vehement refusal: Song Books should not include any form of sexuality in the field of experience. To make this prohibition clear, Cage further defined the proper interpretation of Song Books by emphasizing its biographical basis in the life and work of Erik Satie and Henry David Thoreau. Cage stated that the theme that gave rise to the piece—­“we connect Satie, with Thoreau”—­governs all solos and therefore should inflect all performances. Cage seemed to forget that each solo’s connection to the theme had been determined through I Ching operations as either “relevant” or “irrelevant” and the status of each is indicated in the score. Certainly other meanings would of course be part of any performance. Cage expected performers to disavow the chance operations that governed the score and treat the theme as a skeleton key to the work, ensuring a proper performance practice. Going further, homosexuality marks the limit of Cage’s acceptance of Eastman’s performance. Let’s begin now with why I don’t approve. I don’t approve because the ego of Julius Eastman is closed in on the subject of homosexuality. And we know this because he has no other idea to express. In a Zen situation where his mind might open up and flow with something beyond his imagination, he doesn’t know the first step to take. He’s said to be a composer. Why then is he a performer? He’s said to be a performer. Why then doesn’t he try to do the work that he sets out to perform in its spirit? I asked him after it, I said, “Which solo were you doing?” And I was so disturbed by the whole situation that it didn’t even occur to me then that he had turned a solo into a trio. He needed two assistants to make a solo. I had very carefully written the word solo, and neither he nor I last night realized that was his preliminary mistake.35

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Cage faults Eastman for a lack of fidelity to the work; his “preliminary mistake” of using additional performers was the first in a chain of misinterpretations that culminated with the sexualizing of Song Books. Here Cage sharply contrasts forms of subjective expansion. Cage views Zen as a means of opening up unexpected relations while homosexuality initiates psychic blocks and immobilizes the ego. As I argued earlier, Eastman’s gay aesthetic was as much a form of ­experimentalism as his musical practice and it is with this sensibility that a crucial distinction emerges between “gay” performance and “the homosexual” as understood by Cage. Eastman and Cage were both gay men working in the largely straight world of experimental and late modernist music. Unlike Cage, Eastman was also African American and of a younger generation (Cage was born in 1912, Eastman in 1940), meaning that the way each composed his subjectivity, and the manner in which their musical practices participated in that composition, was inflected by differences in historical and social-­cultural position. By invoking a generational distinction between Cage and Eastman I do not wish to map a pre-­or post-­Stonewall distinction onto the two artists or fall into a simplistic notion of identity, with the younger composer representing a supposedly more liberated status of gay men and lesbians in the 1970s. Overt political statements regarding sexual difference were present in experimental music before Stonewall and have a long tradition in experimental music, particularly in the work of Lou Harrison and Pauline Oliveros (who was Eastman’s collaborator in the early 1970s).36 Some scholars have also attributed gay meanings to Cage’s work, particularly that of the early 1950s, in an attempt to recuperate his aesthetics of silence as a distinctly homosexual practice. This reparative strategy, scholars note, was shared with a coterie of gay men with whom Cage associated in the 1950s, namely, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cage’s romantic partner for most of his life, Merce Cunningham. The notion of a homosexual aesthetic in the work of Cage was first articulated by art historian Caroline A. Jones, who framed Cage’s desire for self-­negation as a response to what she called the “Abstract Expressionist Ego,” an ego whose closures and blockages no doubt appalled Cage for its overweening agency and pride in its supposed ability to express a tumultuous, sublime, and (probably) heterosexual interior life.37 She links Cage, Rauschenberg, and Johns through the ways in which each artist figured bodily absence—­the veiled bodies of Johns’s Target with Plaster Casts, the absent bodies of Rauschenberg’s Bed, or the immobile bodies of Cage’s 4′33″. Such obfuscation and silencing evinces a homosexual aesthetic that,

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according to Jones, exists as “a negativity within dominant heterosexist culture.”38 Jones also describes how Cage’s development toward “disembodied practices” extended his resistance to abstract expressionist aesthetics with their faith in the representation of internal affective states. Although Song Books is hardly disembodied—­many songs call for lively actions that are often amplified—­Cage does legislate against bodily interaction, which, while not its exclusive vector, would limit the possibilities of erotic enjoyment. Eastman’s transformation of a solo into a trio violated this stricture in his realization, opening up Song Books to eroticism. It gave Cage grounds for an initial disqualification as it broke down the individuated anarchic environment he hoped to create. Jones’s interpretation of Cage’s silence was grounded in the particular needs of his community—­the resistance he met at the Eighth Street Artists Club, his friendships with Johns and Rauschenberg—­and qualified her description of a homosexual aesthetic as localized, not universalized, practice. A subsequent interpretation by Jonathan D. Katz took a stronger tack and transformed Cagean silence into political resistance to a monolithic, homophobic Cold War culture. Treading again over much of the ground covered by Jones, Katz offers a more psychological and speculative portrait of Cage. For Katz, Cage’s newfound aesthetics of silence was the result of his assumption of a homosexual identity in the 1940s and the attendant personal and political needs that went along with maintaining that identity. Along those lines, Katz links Cage’s embrace of Zen to the social structure of the closet in which the former transfigures the latter, “not as a source of repression or anxiety, but as a means to achieve healing.”39 Cage’s self-­ silencing was not (only) remaining in the closet but a form of resistance to or refusal of the demands of heterosexist culture. Self-­silencing and the avoidance of bodily interaction are models for the preemption of power relations; hierarchical situations (which Cage abhorred) could not come into being if networks of performers were kept apart, if sounds were themselves and not human communication. Resistance was not active but passive, or nonengaging. Katz approvingly cites the following anecdote as an example of Cage’s politics of silent resistance. I said that noises had not been liberated but had been reintegrated into a new kind of harmony and counterpoint. If that were the case, that would mean that we had only changed prisons! My idea is that there should be no more prisons. Take another example: Black Power. If blacks free themselves from the laws whites invented to protect themselves from the blacks, that’s all well and good. But if they in

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turn want to invent laws, that is, to wield power in exactly the same way as whites, what will the difference be? There are only a few blacks who understand that with laws that will protect them from the whites, they will just be new whites. . . . Today, we must identify ourselves with noises instead and not seek laws for the noises, as if we were blacks seeking power!40

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As Katz describes it, silence was a strategic aesthetic historically appropriate for Cold War America; it was not, however, the only option practiced by gay artists, musicians, and poets. Harrison, the poet Frank O’Hara, and the filmmaker Jack Smith, among others, were more open in their lives and art in the same period. Their often surreal camp queerness shares much with Eastman’s own aesthetic. What the Song Book event shows is an end to the strategic usefulness of silence and that by 1975 such silent resistance could be used against other musicians (like Eastman) judged by Cage to be “seeking power” over his compositions. Cage’s homosexual silence, with its reliance on the ambivalent force of the closet, was all too easily transformed from self-­preservation into condemnation of another gay musician. Eastman, like numerous queer artists before him, experimented with other strategies and used his compositions, improvisations, and performances as modes of creating gay life. More than a Cold War–­era model of closeted resistance, Eastman produced experimental assemblages that brought gay subjectivity into relation with formal experimentation, camp resignification, and aural technologies. 4. By the 1970s preexisting gay cultural practices assumed greater prominence in the United States. Dance music culture, sadomasochism (S/M), women’s music, and Eastman’s form of experimental music all offered modes of queer community building.41 Inspired by this emergence, Foucault redefined homosexuality not as a pathologized identity or ego blockage but as a set of possibilities. According to him, the questions that gay men and lesbians should ask are not: “Who am I” and “What is the secret of my desire?” Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, “What relations, through homosexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied, and modulated?” The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but, rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships.

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And that is why homosexuality is not a form of desire but something desirable.42 Cage’s view of “an ego closed upon the subject of homosexuality” aligns with the two questions Foucault poses initially, in that they assume a stable relationship among sexuality, desire, and identity. Foucault makes a crucial move, derived from the various aesthetics of existence gay men developed in the twentieth century, that views sexuality as a set of possibilities for life and relationships, based on what can happen when bodies come together in new and surprising ways (not always erotic, often musical). Eastman engaged in many of the world-­making practices that Foucault himself experienced and discussed in his later interviews. In the 1970s and 1980s Eastman was involved in disco culture, performing with composer-­ producer Arthur Russell in the collective Dinosaur L, and was known for participating in the experimental sexual practices of New York’s S/M scene, such that he was known as “Mr. Mineshaft,” after the sex club in Manhattan’s meatpacking district.43 In my interview with her, Meredith Monk recalled him wearing a leather vest, white t-­shirt, and jeans with keys hanging from the belt—­the gay “clone” uniform.44 It should be of little surprise that Eastman, who identified strongly as both a gay man and an experimental musician, worked out possibilities for gay subjectivity in his compositions, improvisations, and vocal performances.45 A final example will suffice and illustrate how gayness—­conceived of not as a static identity but as a field of possible relations among other constituent elements and subjectivities—­ animated his musical practice. Along with his performances of Cage’s Song Books, Eastman composed a number of theatrical musical works. Macle is one of his most chaotically queer. He composed it in 1971, and the performing score comprises a series of graphic boxes that indicate actions and types of vocalizations to be performed. The Creative Associates programmed it several times in 1972. Eastman was joined in the performance by Kotik, Laneri, and Williams, as well as John R. Adams, who was a Creative Associate that year.46 Similar to Song Books, Macle is full of varied types of sonic events for amplified voices electronically manipulated by Eastman. Unlike Song Books, however, there is significant interaction between the musicians. The performers produce animal noises, recite nonsensical stories, utter sounds of sexual pleasure, give biology lectures, sing pop songs (“My Funny Valentine”), or erupt into Czech folk tunes. As the performers progress, each vocalist in turn begins an anatomical lecture in authoritarian tones, this time on the heart, its qualities and abilities. As in Eastman’s performance of 0′00″, romantic

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love is the topic, and the mock seriousness of the lectures often dissolves into the sounds of sexual pleasure, made by all the men at once, charging the music with a homoeroticism that just as quickly melts into a kitschy jazz standard or shifts to Williams holding forth with a story about a farmer and his cheese. At the piece’s end, Eastman recites something of an origin story for Macle.

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I took a trip to the country with my lover and he got tired and he sat down by a tree and I wandered off into the distance and there I saw a man. He was sitting there and he all of a sudden asked me, “Why are you doing what you’re doing?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know, I mean, well, one must have job.” And he said, “You know, those very wise men always know what they’re doing when they’re doing it, you see, and those who do not, waste time. And the thing of it is, that on the death bed you will then, how can I say, know the true meaning of time.” As he spoke these words I became more disturbed, more distracted, how can I say, I left myself and I seemed to faint and as I fainted, because this was a very strange thing, I began to sink into the ground, but as I sank into the ground I made a very strange noise.47 Here gayness is presented matter-­of-­factly, and this bit of pseudoautobiography draws into focus the suggestive homoerotic soundscapes produced by the all-­male ensemble. Like Creation, gay signifiers are part of an assemblage of zany aural dissociation that equates aesthetic and sexual experimentation. Williams recalls that following the performance one of the Center’s major patrons was “livid.”48 Such reactions also caution against a too sanguine view of Eastman’s experimentalism as a liberating antidote to Cage. Even as Eastman’s performance brought gay signifiers into composition, both he and Cage still relied on the shock value of transgression—­a tried and true strategy of the historical avant-­garde that violates artistic and social norms to achieve its power. It could, on the one hand, yield a comic satire as in Eastman’s version of Song Books, or it could present a field of noisy abject materiality as in Macle. Ideally, Eastman’s performances transgressed norms in order to reconfigure social life as a space of interaction, in contrast to Cage’s individuated and solipsistic aural experience. Writing about the creation of new forms of gay culture, Foucault cautioned against composing distinct queer lives, separate from the world. We have to create culture. We have to realize cultural creations. But, in doing so, we come up against the problem of identity. I don’t Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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know what we would do to form these creations, and I don’t know what forms these creations would take. . . . Yet, I am sure that from the point of departure of our ethical choices, we can create something that will have a certain relationship to gayness. But it must not be a translation of gayness in the field of music or painting or what have you, for I do not think this can happen.49 Eastman does not propose the “translation of gayness in the field of music,” but he offers assemblages in which gay erotics participate in a broader range of aural and affective experience. On a social level, the close-­knit ensemble and friendships uniting Eastman (who was the only gay man in the S.E.M. Ensemble but not in the Creative Associates) with his heterosexual collaborators points to queerness as a mode of life, one useful for experimentation and forging unforeseen associations in performance. Indeed, beyond a closed notion of homosexuality as defined by Cage, Eastman used experimental musicality to forge a queer community among his collaborators. In this essay I’ve been using the word experimental in a broader sense than it is usually considered in the musicological literature. Experimentalism has resonance beyond the musical practices of Euro-­American modernity and opens onto other concerns of sexuality and processes of subjectivity. Attending to the experimental refrains sounded by these two musicians also warns us against treating experimentalism as a necessarily progressive practice (reinscribing a narrative of modernist aesthetic advancement) but suggests that it might be better conceived as a pragmatics that should be continually critiqued and recomposed.50 Julius Eastman’s conflict with John Cage is an event in which musical experimentalism and experimental forms of gay life in the 1970s were drawn close to see what they might become together. Both experimental musicians and gay communities reconfigured intimacies and alliances while seeking new modes of sensibility and sound. In Julius Eastman’s practices they converged.

Notes I would like to thank Tamara Levitz, Bryan Markovitz, and Benjamin Piekut for their comments on this essay. 1. Kyle Gann, Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 168 (emphasis original). 2. Peter Maxwell Davies, Eight Songs for a Mad King, with Julius Eastman and the Fires of London, Unicorn-­Kanchana DPK 9052, 1987, compact disc. 3. Julius Eastman, Unjust Malaise, New World Records 80638, 2005, 3 compact discs. Leach gathered many difficult to find recordings and produced the record.

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4. See Danielle Fossler-­Lussier, “American Cultural Diplomacy and the Mediation of Avant-­Garde Music,” in Sound Commitments: Avant-­Garde Music and the Sixties, ed. Robert Adlington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 232–­53. 5. On the Creative Associates see Renée Levine-­Packer, This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 6. Tom Johnson gives a description of a performance of Tripod in his review, “Sights of the Second Music,” Village Voice, June 15, 1972, 37. 7. A streaming recording of Eastman’s Creation is available online, accessed June 9, 2012, http://www.archive.org/details/CM_1973_08_26. 8. On Cage’s compositional process for Song Books, see James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 166–­73. 9. John Cage, Song Books, vol. 1 (New York: Edition Peters, 1970), 1. 10. Steve Schlegel, “John Cage at June in Buffalo, 1975” (MA thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2008), 32. Schlegel’s thesis includes as an appendix a transcript of Cage’s lecture given on June 5, 1975. Following quotes from Cage’s lecture are taken from his transcript which I have modified in some instances. I am grateful to Peter Schmelz for bringing Schlegel’s work to my attention. 11. Branden W. Joseph, “The Tower and the Line: Toward a Genealogy of Minimalism,” Grey Room 27 (Spring 2007): 58–­81, 61. 12. Petr Kotik, interview with the author, November 14, 2008. I have been unable to verify this anecdote, although there is no record of a performance of Song Books at Carnegie Recital Hall. 13. Ibid. 14. Williams’s realization consisted of his choice of sections of Atlas (flute, violin, three percussion parts, and electronics), as well as the placement of the performers on stage. Williams also remembers coaching performers less familiar with Cage’s music. E-­mail message to author, August 24, 2010. 15. Cage accused Martin of arbitrarily choosing solos as she went along, as discussed below. Williams performed “Solo for Voice 15,” which instructs the performer to type a sentence by Erik Satie with an amplified typewriter thirty-­eight times. 16. Cage, Song Books, vol. 1, 31. 17. Peter Gena’s account suggests that “Miss Susiana” was Eastman’s sister. However, Eastman did not have a sister. “Mister Charles,” however, could likely be Eastman’s boyfriend at the time, known to Eastman’s friends as Chucky. This is to say that Gann’s memory of Eastman stripping a male student is likely incorrect. Ned Sublette, interview with the author, February 18, 2009; Renée Levine-­ Packer, interview with the author, December 12, 2008. Levine-­Packer, Eastman’s close friend and former managing director of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, gives a brief account of the performance—­in terms sympathetic to Cage—­in This Life of Sounds, 146. 18. Kotik, interview with the author. 19. Quoted in Levine-­Packer, This Life of Sounds, 146. 20. Eastman performed the role of the Black Queen in Genet’s The Blacks. See ibid., 92. 21. David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 29.

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22. Kotik, interview with the author. 23. Moira Roth was among the earliest to insist on scholarly attention to Cage’s “cultural focus, tastes, and biases.” See her “Five Stories about St. John, Seven Stories about St. Pauline, Surely There Is Trouble in John Cage Studies Paradise, and Readings from Today’s Headlines in the New York Times,” in Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage, ed. Moira Roth and Jonathan D. Katz (London: Routledge, 1998), 141. 24. Schlegel, “John Cage at June in Buffalo,” 32. 25. Kotik, interview with the author. 26. Ibid. Kotik has continued to modify Cage’s instructions in order to achieve a more harmonious working environment for musicians. He has conducted Cage’s 103 despite the composer’s explicit prohibition. See his recording John Cage: Atlas Eclipticalis & Winter Music/103, with the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, conducted by Petr Kotik, Asphodel ASP 2000, 2000, 4 compact discs. 27. Schlegel, “John Cage at June in Buffalo,” 29. 28. Ibid., 30. 29. Branden W. Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 235. Joseph offers this description of subjective expansion as a point of alliance between Cage and Jack Smith; however, Smith’s use of abjection and transgressive sexuality is at odds with Cage’s sensibility and rejection of the possibilities of subjective expansion worked out by gay artists. Whereas Joseph sees Smith working within a lineage of Cage and Artaud, I find abjection and Cagean discipline incommensurable. 30. Schlegel, “John Cage at June in Buffalo,” 32. 31. Ibid., 30. 32. On other “bad” performances of Cage’s music, see Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 33. The book Cage refers to is James Joseph Martin, Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–­1908 (New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1953). The story was first published in “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1966,” in A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969). There it reads, “I visited an aging anarchist. (He had the remaining copies of Men Against the State.) He introduced me to two Negro children he’d adopted. After they went out to play, he told me what trouble he’d had in deciding finally to draw this line: No jumping up and down on the beds” (59). 34. Schlegel, “John Cage at June in Buffalo,” 31. 35. Ibid., 32. 36. On Oliveros’s “lesbian musicality,” see Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality (London: Routledge, 2008). 37. Caroline A. Jones, “Finishing School: John Cage and the Abstract Expressionist Ego,” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 628–­65. 38. Ibid., 653. 39. Jonathan D. Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse,” in Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art, ed. David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 45.

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40. John Cage, For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 1995), 230–­31, quoted in Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence,” 60–­61. 41. Judith Peraino has described many of these queer musical practices through Foucault’s notion of the “technologies of the self.” See her Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 42. Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, vol. 1, Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 1997), 135–­36. 43. On Eastman’s work with Arthur Russell, see Tim Lawrence, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–­1992 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). On activities in New York’s gay sex clubs, see Joel I. Brodsky, “The Mineshaft: A Retrospective Ethnography,” Journal of Homosexuality 24, no. 3 (1993): 233–­52; and Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 16–­26. 44. Meredith Monk, interview with the author, January 14, 2009. On “clone” culture, see Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York: New York University Press, 1998). 45. My book in progress documents Eastman’s varied communities in New York’s downtown from 1975 to 1990. 46. The performances of Macle in 1972 were given on February 13, 15, 16, and 17 at the Albright-­Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo), Carnegie Recital Hall (New York City), Orange County Community College (Middletown, NY), and State University College at Geneseo. My description of the piece is based on the archival recording of the Buffalo performance in the Music Library at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I am grateful to Mary Jane Leach for providing me with a copy of the recording. 47. Transcription of Eastman’s performance from the archive recording. See note 46. 48. Williams, e-­mail message to author. 49. Michel Foucault, “Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity,” trans. John Johnston, in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, vol. 1, 164 (emphasis original). 50. My understanding of experimental is sympathetic with Isabelle Stengers’s use of the term. See her “Experimenting with Refrains: Subjectivity and the Challenge of Escaping Modern Dualism,” Subjectivity 22, no. 1 (2008): 38–­59.

Works Cited Brodsky, Joel I. “The Mineshaft: A Retrospective Ethnography.” Journal of Homosexuality 24, no. 3 (1993): 233–­52. Cage, John. “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1966.” In A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage, 52–­69. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969. Cage, John. For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. London: Marion Boyars, 1995. Cage, John. Song Books. Vol. 1. New York: Edition Peters, 1970.

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Davies, Peter Maxwell. Eight Songs for a Mad King. Julius Eastman and the Fires of London. Unicorn-­Kanchana DPK 9052, 1987, compact disc. Eastman, Julius. Unjust Malaise. New World Records 80638, 2005, 3 compact discs. Fossler-­Lussier, Danielle. “American Cultural Diplomacy and the Mediation of Avant-­Garde Music.” In Sound Commitments: Avant-­Garde Music and the Sixties, edited by Robert Adlington, 232–­53. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Foucault, Michel. “Friendship as a Way of Life.” In The Essential Works of Michel Foucault. Vol. 1: Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow, 135–­40. New York: New Press, 1997. Foucault, Michel. “Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity.” Translated by John Johnston. In The Essential Works of Michel Foucault. Vol. 1: Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow, 163–­74. New York: New Press, 1997. Gann, Kyle. Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Halperin, David M. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Johnson, Tom. “Sights of the Second Music.” Village Voice, June 15, 1972. Jones, Caroline A. “Finishing School: John Cage and the Abstract Expressionist Ego.” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 4 (1993): 628–­65. Joseph, Branden W. Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. New York: Zone Books, 2008. Joseph, Branden W. “The Tower and the Line: Toward a Genealogy of Minimalism.” Grey Room 27 (2007): 58–­81. Katz, Jonathan D. “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse.” In Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art, edited by David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, 41–­61. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Lawrence, Tim. Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–­1992. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Levine, Martin P. Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Levine-­Packer, Renée. This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Martin, James Joseph. Men against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–­1908. New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1953. Mockus, Martha. Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality. London: Routledge, 2008. Moore, Patrick. Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble. John Cage: Atlas Eclipticalis & Winter Music/103. Conducted by Petr Kotik. Asphodel ASP 2000, 2000, 4 compact discs. Peraino, Judith. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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Roth, Moira. “Five Stories about St. John, Seven Stories about St. Pauline, Surely There Is Trouble in John Cage Studies Paradise, and Readings from Today’s Headlines in the New York Times.” In Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage, edited by Moira Roth and Jonathan D. Katz, 137–­44. London: Routledge, 1998. Schlegel, Steve. “John Cage at June in Buffalo, 1975.” MA thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2008. Stengers, Isabelle. “Experimenting with Refrains: Subjectivity and the Challenge of Escaping Modern Dualism.” Subjectivity 22, no. 1 (2008): 38–­59.

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Pluralism, Minor Deviations, and Radical Change The Challenge to Experimental Music in Downtown New York, 1971–­85

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Tim Lawrence

Beginning in 1970 and continuing through the early 1980s, New York City hosted a series of transformative developments in music culture that have few historical parallels, and also continue to resonate to this day.1 Within dance music, DJing and what became known as disco began to germinate in the city’s downtown lofts and dilapidated discotheques at the very start of the period. A short while later Bronx-­based disc jockeys (DJs) and dancers came together to forge the early contours of hip-­hop. Also dating back to the early 1970s, punk, new wave, and eventually no wave germinated in spots such as Max’s Kansas City, the Mercer Street Arts Center, CBGB, the Mudd Club, Danceteria, and Tier 3. Coinciding with these developments, other musicians took to gathering in nearby loft spaces to explore the outer reaches of jazz, or what became known, somewhat reductively, as “loft jazz,” and across the same period Puerto Rican musicians took Cuban-­inspired salsa music forward in the Nuyorican Poets’ Café and the New Rican Village.2 Meanwhile, in a range of neighboring buildings, a group of young composer-­instrumentalists engaged with the legacy of the first generation of experimental composers, as well as the more recent work of the so-­called minimalist composers, to generate what came to be known as “new music.” Including Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Peter Gordon, Jill Kroesen, George Lewis, Garrett List, Arthur Russell, Ned Sublette, David Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo among its number, this new generation engaged with the music that was unfolding 63

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around them, and through their embrace of popular forms stretched experimentalism and composition to the breaking point. The aesthetic and canonical scope of experimental composition received its most influential outline around the time this new group of composers materialized into an embryonic network, when Michael Nyman published Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond in 1974. Distinguishing experimental music from the avant-­garde tradition, Nyman noted that in contrast to the work of serialists Boulez and Stockhausen, composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff questioned the traditional unities of composing, performing, and listening. In particular they became interested in the notation of sound-­generating ideas rather than exactly repeatable performances and placed a newfound emphasis on chance and indeterminacy; their concern was the uniqueness of the moment, not of a scored idea, and they accordingly sought to create a role for the composer that specified the uniqueness of the realization of their works. This approach contrasted not only with the objectives of avant-­garde composers, who sought to freeze the moment of uniqueness, but also with those of the “minimal” composers with whom Nyman concluded his overview (namely, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass).3 Nyman was hardly in a position to comment on the contribution of the new generation of composers, because their work had only just begun. However, although other writers have enjoyed more opportunities to write about this group, its contribution remains largely uncharted.4 The impression is created that experimental composition stopped with the game-­changing interventions of Young, Riley, Reich, and Glass, so Wim Mertens and Keith Potter have published books dedicated to that group, while in The Rest Is Noise Alex Ross dedicates his penultimate chapter to the minimalists before developing a survey of what has happened since—­ including but a fleeting reference to the “postminimalists,” who, he writes, have “taken cues variously from funk, punk, heavy metal, electronic and DJ music, and hip-­hop.”5 Aside from the imprecision of the “postminimalist” category, which could equally include the more elaborate compositions of Glass (Einstein on the Beach), Reich (Music for 18 Musicians), and Riley (Shri Camel), it has left the post-­Cagean experimental canon looking distinctly male, white, and heterosexual, as well as notably curtailed in terms of its encounters with musical forms that are not grounded in composition.6 If both of these outcomes need to be challenged on cultural and aesthetic grounds, so, too, does the elision of what might be the least articulated but most profound contribution of the postminimalists, who refused to categorize the results

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of their work, and, as will be argued, operated not just as pluralists but as radical pluralists. Their openness to a wide range of music styles and combinations, and, more important, to the principle that music should not be pursued solely through hermetic boundaries that become aligned with institutional and commercial interests, stands as a usable past that informs not only a wide range of musicians but also the outlook of magazines such as The Wire, which refrains from using the word experimental in its “Adventures in Modern Music” motto and has championed the free-­will wanderings of Russell and like-­minded musicians. Gravitating to performance spaces such as the Kitchen and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, along with the Artist’s Space, 10 Beach Street, 98 Greene Street, the Clocktower on Broadway, and 112 Greene Street during the first half of the 1970s, the radical pluralist composers hailed from a range of relatively conventional music schools. Chatham studied serial music at school, joined Morton Subotnick’s Composer’s Workshop at New York University, and then became the founding music director of the Kitchen, an experimental space located in SoHo, where he created the music program and worked as its inaugural director between 1971 and 1973. Russell studied composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and classical Indian music at the Ali Akbar College of Music before enrolling at the Manhattan School of Music in 1973; he gravitated downtown soon after and became music director of the Kitchen for the 1974–­75 season. List attended the Juilliard School of Music, produced the New and Newer Music concerts at Lincoln Center, worked as a freelance trombone player, and succeeded Russell as music director of the Kitchen, where he worked between 1975 and 1977. Eastman joined the Creative Associates at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in 1969, sang baritone on the 1973 Grammy-­nominated recording of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, and moved to New York in 1976. Sublette was briefly enrolled in the PhD program in composition at SUNY Buffalo, where he studied with Feldman (a poor match) and became friends with Eastman, with whom he headed to New York. A classmate of Russell’s, Van Tieghem studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Paul Price, a pioneer of modern percussion, and James Preiss, who played percussion with Reich. Gordon undertook graduate studies in composition at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), before he moved to the more notably open Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College. Lewis studied philosophy at Yale and composition as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) before he, too, headed to New York, where he composed, performed, and also served

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as music director of the Kitchen between 1980 and 1982. Zummo worked with Cage and Alvin Lucier while completing his BA and MA at Wesleyan University. Emerging from perhaps the least orthodox background, Branca studied theater in Boston before he moved to New York and focused on guitar bands and composition. Irrespective of their training, the new crop of composers embodied a level of demographic diversity that was largely absent in earlier generations. Eastman and Lewis boosted the previously negligible presence of African Americans in the compositional strata, while List and Russell engaged explicitly with African American forms, and in so doing introduced a range of African American musicians into the downtown scene. Women were much more prominent than they were in the orchestral establishment thanks to the notable work of composers Kroesen, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Anderson, Joan La Barbara, Mary Jane Leach, Elodie Lauten, Annea Lockwood, and Meredith Monk. Meanwhile Eastman and Russell articulated a more openly queer presence than earlier experimental composers had (aside from Pauline Oliveros).7 Flamboyantly gay, Eastman wrote a series of compositions that bore outré titles and revealed details of his nocturnal visits to sex clubs to anyone within earshot. Inspired by his friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg, himself a forthright gay rights activist, Russell told people about his sexuality when he thought it was appropriate, defended disco when homophobes turned on the culture, and composed a series of explicitly queer twelve-­inch singles (two of which featured Eastman). These and other composers were extending the explorations of earlier experimentalists as well as responding to opportunities presented by the historical conjuncture. Following Cage’s embrace of Asian philosophies, Lou Harrison’s engagement with gamelan, and Henry Cowell’s incorporation of a broad range of global sounds, the minimalists intensified the break with the Eurocentrism of serialism through their exploration of the musical traditions of India, Africa, and Indonesia. Moreover, while Young retained a certain affinity for the rigors of serial technique, Riley, Reich, and Glass were more obviously influenced by the shifting climate of the second half of the 1960s, when the radicalism of the countercultural movement created a milieu that virtually invited them to challenge the more conservative tendencies of the academic establishment. In contrast to the avant-­garde establishment, Riley, Reich, and Glass also made a virtue of writing accessible compositions because it was in the spirit of the times to create music that actually attempted to reach an audience. Glass and Reich formed working ensembles that held exclusive rights to the performance of their music and imbued them with the status of rock band leaders. With

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these freedoms and modes of expression newly established, the radical pluralists wondered if there were further barriers they could tear down and soon started to breach the divide that separated the compositional field from popular culture. Initially skeptical about the value of rock, Russell witnessed the proto-­ punk band the Modern Lovers perform and was struck by the proximity of their “minimalist” aesthetic (which featured two or three chords per song) to what was unfolding in the compositional scene. He was also taken by the group’s visceral performance style, which went far beyond anything that could be heard at the Kitchen. A little later Russell reached a similar conclusion when he went to a downtown private party called the Gallery, one of the incubators of the downtown disco scene, and witnessed dancers scream their loudest when one of the DJ’s selections segued into a break, its most stripped-­down section. A regular at CBGB, Russell took the Gallery DJ Nicky Siano to see Talking Heads perform at the venue, and he also persuaded Van Tieghem to hear the Ramones play at the same spot. Meanwhile Gordon, who was similarly enthralled by the rise of punk, new wave, and disco, took Chatham to hear the same Ramones concert. “While hearing them, I realized that, as a minimalist, I had more in common with this music than I thought,” Chatham wrote later. “I was attracted by the sheer energy and raw power of the sound as well as chord progressions which were not dissimilar to some of the process music I had been hearing at the time.”8 Other composers also came to appreciate the intrinsic value of so-­ called popular music in ways that they found both bemusing and captivating. Sublette remembers liking listening to Roxy Music and David Bowie on the radio during his time in Buffalo and recalls Eastman at that time blithely confessing that he’d lost the ability to distinguish between “new music” and “the music on the radio, which at the moment he was speaking happened to be Earth, Wind & Fire.”9 List, meanwhile, traces his initial break with the hierarchical assumptions of compositional music to the time when he set out to think about Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, only to find himself whistling an Elvis Presley number. “This wild contradiction (or what seemed to be) was the first inkling of what was really happening in my musical mind, and, although it took a couple more years of intense work to make something out of it, this contradiction became, not two forces working against one another, but a kind of unity,” he later wrote.10 Finding Reich’s appropriation of nonwestern forms somewhat imperialistic, List developed a deep-­seated dislike of Drumming and argued instead for the value of collaborating with black (and indeed nonblack) musicians who

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lived in New York. “The atmosphere at the time was very clean, postmodern and definitely not ‘street,’ which is where I was coming from,” comments List. “I preferred Arthur, Rhys, Peter Gordon, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, and, of course, Frederic Rzewski.”11 List adds, “We wanted to go from minimalism into popular language and it was very much in the air at the Kitchen to break down these barriers.”12 Having played in a rock-­jazz fusion band called Sunship while at university, Zummo also found himself drawn into popular contexts. “Some people were more pop-­ minded,” he says. “I was not, but I played like that, so it kept coming up.”13 The radical pluralists were aided by the rise of what came to be known as the downtown scene, an integrated network in which creative workers were able to form interdisciplinary collaborations with relative ease, if not carefree abandon. That had not happened earlier because the pioneers of disco, hip-­hop, punk, new wave, loft jazz, and minimalist music, along with creative workers in other fields, moved downtown and set about their work in fairly discrete communities and spaces. But as the protagonists of these scenes began to bump into each other and check out parallel movements, they stretched out, and as part of the exercise, the would-­be pluralist composers found themselves engaging with new genres. They were almost universally struck by the physical energy of these parallel scenes, as well as the degree of musical innovation that was being forged within them. They also pursued the question raised most insistently by List: why look to the sounds of Africa, India, and elsewhere when experimental collaborations could be forged in a nonexploitative, nonderivative manner with musicians who were living on the same block, around the corner, or a few subway stops away? Why write music from a position of bourgeois detachment and imperial appropriation when work could engage with alternative, visceral practices directly and less clinically? “In New York, you met new people ­every day, from all over the world,” notes Sublette. “It was endlessly stimulating, and the energy of that powered a lot of what we were doing. Black and white culture had been forced to be distinct for so long that, even with the best intentions, it took some time for people on either side of the former color line to become accessible to each other—­even in New York, which provided the densest, most intense ethnic mix of any American city. But the process was under way, and we wanted it to be under way.”14 They went about their work through various means. Having become interested in free jazz and then punk, Chatham joined a couple of bands until he felt he had “got the feeling of the music and its rhythms,” after which he composed Guitar Trio, which became one of the founding pieces of no wave, or the form of experimental postrock music that challenged the

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perceived aesthetic limits of punk and the commercialism of new wave.15 Russell introduced drums into his compositional pieces, sang off-­center folk songs, formed a pop group that sought to blend Abba with Fleetwood Mac, and joined the Necessaries, a new wave band. Perhaps most influentially, he recorded a series of twelve-­inch singles that pioneered the sound of mutant disco and featured combinations of amateur percussionists and vocalists who danced at the Loft, new wave guitarists, folk musicians, Philadelphia-­based rhythm section players, a James Brown backing vocalist, a host of DJ remixers, and composer friends such as Eastman, Gordon, Kroesen, and Zummo. Gordon formed the Love of Life Orchestra (LOLO), a downtown dance band that underpinned its performances with a disco beat, recorded and played on a number of twelve-­inch dance tracks, and went on to release albums that combined orchestral and pop music. In between assignments with Russell, LOLO, and the dancer/choreographer Stephanie Woodard, Zummo joined John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, which blended no wave and jazz. He later recalled, “It turned out to be pluralistic, but it was our day-­to-­day at the time.”16 Other composers also felt compelled to pursue pluralist engagements that breached the aesthetic conventions of compositional music. Having started to play in the downtown jazz loft scene, List formed a band that featured the drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, who played with Ornette Coleman; the saxophonist Byard Lancaster, who contributed to the Philly Sound and played with Sun Ra; and Youseff Yancy, a Muslim veteran of the “chitlin’ circuit” who played trumpet and theremin. Occasionally appearing in her own theater works as a male character with a penciled-­on mustache, Kroesen wrote explicitly feminist songs that explored the intersection between rock and composition while working with musicians such as Bill Laswell and Fred Smith. Van Tieghem cofounded LOLO with Gordon and expanded his percussion orchestra to include toys, found objects, and electronics, which culminated in the release of These Things Happen, a 1984 album on Warner Brothers. Pursuing a form of “postmodern multi-­ instrumentalism,” Lewis occupied the fault lines that existed between “putative ‘jazz’” and “pan-­European contemporary music” in collaborations with eclectic musicians such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Douglas Ewart, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, and Richard Teitelbaum.17 Branca formed bands, developed guitar ensembles, and became an influential pioneer in the no wave scene. The logic of the moment virtually required New York–­bound composers to break with their experimental upbringings. “I grew up as a composer in the orbit of Cageans like David Tudor, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, or

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for that matter Morton Feldman and Earle Brown,” recalls Sublette. “I can remember the phrase ‘the Age of Cage’ being used, albeit humorously.”18 Sublette performed a number of Cage’s compositions and came to “flatter myself quite the Cage interpreter,” yet he reconsidered his position after settling downtown.19 “The rock public wanted to be beaten up by sound and was very much in opposition to the Cage thing,” he notes. “John’s music had grown increasingly austere, and its randomized, meditative quality was such as to immobilize the listener, something absolutely contrary to where the New York vibe was going.”20 Joining Sublette in New York, Eastman appeared on a number of Russell’s mutant disco recordings; collaborated with Jeff Lohn of the Theoretical Girls, as well as Gordon; gave incendiary titles to a number of his compositions (“Evil Nigger,” “Crazy Nigger,” “Nigger Faggot,” “Gay Guerrilla”); and introduced a dance/punk energy into his experimental language.21 Gordon, meanwhile, reassessed his relationship with experimentalism around the time the composer and editor of Ear magazine, Beth Anderson, chided him for distancing himself from Cage. “John Cage changed my life,” recalls Gordon, who named one of his pet guinea pigs after the composer. “I was listening to rock and roll and then I read Silence, which was an epiphany. Cage taught us anything can be music, so I started to incorporate the music I loved—­music that had a groove to it. But Cage never embraced jazz, and he didn’t like music that had a regular pulse to it. By the mid-­1970s we were breaking away from Cage consciously because most of the experimental, post-­Cage stuff was unlistenable.”22 From 1974 through to the early 1980s, the radical pluralist composers came to understand that their work was deemed to be experimental because, again, they and others said it was, and not because it was innately more innovative than any other musical form. As Russell told Zummo in an interview for the Soho Weekly News in 1977, “In bubble-­gum music the notion of pure sound is not a philosophy but rather a reality. In this respect, bubble-­gum preceded the avant-­garde. In the works of Philip Glass or La Monte Young, for example, which are clearly pop-­influenced, pure sound became an issue of primary importance, while it had already been a by-­ product of the commercial process in bubble-­gum music.”23 Perhaps most tellingly, they referred to their work as “new music” rather than experimental music, the term being “intentionally open-­ended,” says Sublette, and even stopped worrying about the idea of experimentation.24 “Experimenting was part and parcel of what we were doing, but it wasn’t a major concern,” recalls List. “We played our music in strange places, such as a bar in the not yet named TriBeCa, where NYPD cops hung out, and got them

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dancing to our arrangements of Chuck Berry and Hank Williams. This was clearly experimental, but on a sociological level more than anything else.” List maintains that experimenting for the sake of experimentation is “dry,” and adds, “If we thought about the concept of experimental music at all it was with the intention of breaking away from its meanings and sound. The desire to play ‘popular’ forms was part of this break.”25 Alive to the power arrangements that informed their privileged position, some of the pluralists began to disrupt the institutional boundaries that had become attached to the notions of the high and the popular, and they also began to question the very status of the composer. Russell was one of the first, and also one of the boldest, when it came to upsetting the institutional arrangements that had come to separate composers from other musicians. Russell invited the Modern Lovers to perform at the Kitchen and in the process raised the eyebrows of those who doubted that this kind of music had a place in downtown’s most prestigious venue for experimental music. Russell went on to arrange for Talking Heads to play at the Kitchen during List’s first year as music director, while List invited Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, the Revolutionary Ensemble, and Cecil Taylor to perform at the venue and ended his first season with a twelve-­night series titled the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Concerts. Robert Stearns, then overall director of the Kitchen, maintains that this amounted to “the first true efforts at multicultural programming.”26 When Chatham picked up his old job from List in 1977, he programmed rock outfits and in so doing consolidated the Kitchen’s shift from operating as a venue that showcased compositional experimentalism to one that embraced a broader set of practices. Lewis, the Kitchen’s first black music director, opened the programming still further by booking a wide range of musicians to appear on his program, including Robert Ashley, Derek Bailey, Defunkt, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Douglas Ewart, Diamanda Galás, Julius Hemphill, Rae Imamura, Jamaican Music Festival, Takehisa Kosugi, Joan La Barbara, Jackson Mac Low, Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, Eliane Radigue, Frederic Rzewski, Carlos Santos, Tona Scherchen-­Hsiao, Trans Museq, John Zorn, and others. “Not all the composers were black or jazz-­identified,” he notes of his curatorship. “I was also able to bring a number of ‘new whites’ into the process—­ composers who might well have been excluded for reasons of the intersection of genre, musical methodology, and community membership.”27 Lewis’s engagement within multiculturalism extended to his refusal to embrace the jazz label that was so often attached to the musicians of the AACM and their African American peers, because to have done so would have made him complicit with the idea that their musical scope was

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r­estricted to an identifiable sound. In A Power Stronger Than Itself, Lewis argues that jazz-­identified artists in the 1960s embraced instrumental practices and frameworks to the point where “no sound was seen as alien to the investigations of improvising musicians.”28 The relationships among poetry, theater, and music were also explored, adds Lewis, while improvisers such as John Coltrane began to think of their works as being structurally integrated, and in so doing challenged those who, intentionally or otherwise, worked to “provincialize a musical tradition where exchange of sonic narratives has long been in evidence.”29 The AACM embraced the idea of aesthetic diversity, while Braxton, a prominent figure in the group, refrained from using the word jazz to describe his music. Ronald Radano argues that in the mid-­ 1970s Braxton, maintaining that his work owed as much to Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, and Stockhausen as Charlie Parker and Coltrane, unsuccessfully challenged critics “to come to terms with a creative world that called into question accepted definitions of jazz and the jazz musician.”30 Yet the de facto racialization of musical mobility, which saw critics and institutions grant white musicians total freedom while black musicians were expected to conform to certain aesthetic expectations, was challenged by Lewis, who maintains that his directorship helped “shift the debate around border crossing to a stage where whiteness-­based constructions of American experimentalism were being fundamentally problematized.”31 Composers also upset the institutional framework that governed experimental compositional music by playing in clubs that were previously understood as settings for popular music (even though a great deal of the music included in this classification was in fact quite unpopular). The clubs were employed to play a conscious role in the engagement. A den for postpunk music and fashion, the Mudd Club hosted performances by Branca and Chatham, while owner Steve Mass invited the music critic Tim Page to produce a series of concerts that featured musicians who worked at the intersection of compositional music and rock in 1981. Jim Fouratt, a key figure at the rock-­disco Hurrah before he opened Danceteria with Rudolf Piper, pursued a parallel path, most notably through nights titled “Serious Fun” and “Art Attack,” which aimed to bridge the divide between high and low culture. These nights showcased composers such as Branca, Glass, and Van Tieghem alongside the German electro-­punk band D.A.F., LOLO, and Galás. Chatham, Gordon, Kroesen, Russell, and Van Tieghem quickly came to appreciate that it was easier to attract a large crowd (and also get paid) if they played in a club setting. Joining in, Glass also coproduced two albums for the minimalist rock band Polyrock during 1980 and 1981. “I used to feel in competition with the clubs,” commented Chatham

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in 1980, reflecting on his second stint as music director of the Kitchen. “I wanted to premiere things, to have the first place where Teen Age [sic] Jesus and the Jerks or the Contortions happened. But then I realized that it was impossible for the Kitchen because we don’t have a club format. It doesn’t feel the same.”32 Chatham added that he considered Arto Lindsay from DNA and the musicians working in DNA, Mars, the Contortions, and the Lounge Lizards to be composers, irrespective of their background. He nevertheless remained committed in the first instance to the Kitchen, where he believed that he and his peers could continue to thrive in an environment that explicitly encouraged innovative forms of composition. “I want to give these people [Arto Lindsay, DNA, Mars et al.] an opportunity to expand so they don’t go stale, and so that they can think of themselves in other musical terms besides rock, if they want to,” he commented in a 1980 interview.33 The pluralist composers of the early 1970s also questioned the centrality of the score, which had been reframed but not displaced by Cage. “Cage’s work may have radically undermined the function of the score, but the position of the score in his work was primary,” notes Sublette. “All of Cage’s work was scored, that I can recall. And it was not only scored; the scores were published by C. F. Peters and dutifully purchased by university libraries everywhere, where we bookish young composition students imbibed them.”34 Stockhausen’s work with tape and the studio as a space of sonic exploration could have led to the status of the composer being challenged, but Stockhausen didn’t choose that path. Sublette concludes, “Even things that were obviously tape pieces had impressively bulky scores that were dutifully and expensively published by Universal Edition, who also published, say, Webern, and were thus presented as part of an unbroken line of European music culture that putatively stretched from Schoenberg to Stockhausen. At a time when records were difficult to make and distribute, the big guns of European music culture had their works distributed by subsidized classical-­music labels (Deutsche Grammophone especially) and their scores published, thereby loading down library shelves all over the world.”35 New music composers who worked with synthesizers, tape, and live electronics—­ Ashley, Oliveros, Gordon Mumma, and others—­ jettisoned the score to some extent. But for many of the pluralists, the polyrhythmic funk grooves of James Brown and the studio know-­how that underpinned Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper illustrated the benefits of bypassing the score altogether and recording directly onto multitrack tape. “That was where the action was,” argues Sublette. “None of the previously mentioned composers

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had anything to do whatsoever with grooves. But we listened in fascination as new records came out, and we loved disco, where I saw at least some of the intellectual practices of experimental music being put into practice for a living, breathing public. As the culture of the remix came into existence, it more and more began to resemble the convergence of all of this.”36 Gordon and Russell were among the first to, if not abandon the score, then at least immerse themselves in recording, which enabled them to switch tactics and think of the studio as a compositional tool, as Brian Eno argued in a paper he presented at the Kitchen in June 1979.37 For his part, Sublette decided to focus entirely on songwriting, formed a band that began playing at CBGB in 1982, and in 1985 became a “confirmed salsa-­holic.”38 By 1978 Tom Johnson, a composer and rare reviewer of the downtown compositional scene, was moved to comment that “the experimental music the Kitchen has nurtured has also grown up.” He added, “Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley, and Steve Reich don’t appear in slightly glorified lofts much anymore. Their work now seems more appropriate to, well, to an established museum of new video and music.”39 But although Johnson covered concerts by the likes of Branca, Chatham, and Gordon, his engagement with their embrace of the so-­called popular forms was hesitant, and he gave composers such as Russell virtually no coverage at all. “The Static is an experimental rock trio headed by Glenn Branca,” he wrote in one candid piece published in September 1979. I haven’t heard them in person, although I expect to see them at the Mudd Club September 20, but was fascinated by “My Relationship” and “Don’t Let Me Stop You,” which arrived in the mail recently. This 45 is issued by Theoretical Records, and I understand that the group is an offshoot of Theoretical Girls, another SoHo ensemble. Perhaps that categorizes them as “new wave.” Or would it be “no wave”? As I said, I don’t keep up terribly well.40 Sublette says bluntly, “Tom Johnson didn’t have a clue what our generation was doing.”41 Staged by Chatham at the Kitchen in June 1979, the high-­profile New Music, New York festival confirmed the emergence of a post-­Cagean generation of composers while revealing some of the ongoing challenges they faced. Johnson noted the generational split in his report: “The older group derived much from Cage and almost nothing from popular culture, while the younger group almost reverses these priorities,” he noted in the Village Voice. “While the song form is almost never used by the older composers,

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it occurred several times in works by the younger ones. While the older group tends to play synthesizers, homemade electronic devices, piano, or other standard instruments, the younger group is more likely to be involved with electric guitars or with some of the performance art trend of the ’70s. The influence of Eastern philosophy is far more apt to be felt in the older group, while loud volumes are somewhat more common among the younger.”42 Yet for all the talk of youthful experimentalism, Johnson brushed aside some of the more notable exclusions from the lineup rather casually. With regard to the notably small presence of black musicians, who were scarce compared to their presence during List’s tenure as music director, Johnson argued that they could go instead to the “loft jazz” scene (as if a similar argument couldn’t have been made for the rock-­oriented composers, who had the chance to turn to an even more prolific live rock club network) and added that their exclusion was correct on the grounds that “a truly ecumenical festival of new music in New York would have to include some of the klezmer musicians I wrote about two weeks ago, along with shakuhachi players, khamancheh players, Irish groups, Balkan groups, and so on.”43 Lewis has noted how Johnson invoked the ideas of multiculturalism and diversity not to integrate African American musicians but “as part of his anti-­jazz argument.” At the time, List attempted to highlight the marginalization of African Americans during a panel discussion that included Glass, Gavin Bryars, and John Rockwell but was met with a patronizing put-­down. “I said, ‘You guys are not looking around you!’” recalls List. “‘You’re not really seeing what’s going on!’ They said, ‘OK, we’ve heard all of this before, Garrett. Don’t you have anything else to say?’”44 As for those who were interested in exploring disco, they weren’t invited and their absence wasn’t reported. As a result a limited version of liberal pluralism came to be eulogized at the precise moment the Kitchen shifted from its old “guerrilla unit” status to an establishment that was “administered quite professionally by people who knew how to raise funds” (in the words of Johnson).45 Staged two years later, the Kitchen’s tenth anniversary “Aluminum Nights” celebration, held at the nightclub Bond’s on June 14–­15, 1981, revealed a determination to reengage with a broader conception of pluralism in terms of both aesthetic and multicultural reach. In addition to the recognizable performances led by Glass and Reich, the event featured the experimental guitar work of Branca and Chatham, plus the Bush Tetras, DNA, the Feelies, Lydia Lunch and 1313, the Raybeats, and Red Decade (featuring Lewis on live electronics). The celebration also offered List on trombone; LOLO’s danceable pop; Fab 5 Freddy leading a hip-­hop per-

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formance; Anderson’s experimental pop (“O Superman”); Maryanne Amacher’s sound installations; dance-­music combinations from Laura Dean, Douglas Dunn, and Meredith Monk; poetry; acoustic music; improvised chamber music; and video works by Robert Ashley, Robert Wilson, Nam June Paik, Brian Eno, and Talking Heads. The Kitchen had begun as a video exhibition space, and its name at this point was the Kitchen Center for Video, Music, and Dance, yet the inclusion of these forms revealed not only the breadth of the organization’s programming reach but also the extent to which artists, following the example established by Cage, Merce Cunningham, and a swarm of 1960s experimentalists, were breaking down the definitions of these art forms. Composition, dance, and video could no longer be distinguished from each other in any straightforward manner. “The Kitchen benefits celebrate the 10th anniversary of the performing-­ arts and video center and are designed as a hedge against possible cuts in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts,” commented Rockwell in the New York Times. “But more than that, the benefits serve as metaphors for the very manner in which downtown experimental artists in many mediums routinely work together, influencing one another’s work in a way in which ‘uptown arts,’ sometimes weighed down by the complexity of their traditions, frequently do not.”46 Meanwhile the Kitchen’s new music agenda extended its reach beyond New York when the New Music, New York festival led to the formation of the New Music Alliance, an organization that included a number of low-­ budget, interdisciplinary spaces from other cities along with some more institutional partners. New Music Alliance proceeded to stage New Music America festivals in Minneapolis in 1980, San Francisco in 1981, and Chicago in 1982. Reporting in Perspectives of New Music, Deborah Campana noted that New Music America ’82 received generous municipal support and made efforts to include not only Cage-­inspired music but also avant-­ garde jazz, new wave, no wave, performance art, multimedia, and sound installations.47 “Both regional and national artistic advisory boards were formed to help in the selection process in an attempt to attract an audience possessing wide-­ranging tastes,” commented Campana. “The musical result featured fifty composers in a week-­long festival of new American music.”48 However, while Campana warmed to the AACM’s performance of Douglas Ewart’s Clarinet Quartet, she criticized the performances of LOLO and Kroesen, as well as the appearance of Gordon and Kroesen in Ashley’s Perfect Lives (Private Parts). “Whatever the reason, there was no musical justification for these people to perform on a nationwide showcase,” she railed, offering no insight into their cross-­generic interven-

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tions.49 Campana also argued that Branca’s appearance “dragged on for too long without direction” and was “oppressively pedantic.”50 (Sublette, who played alongside Branca, disagrees, noting that it was “an excruciating auditory experience, though not without direction.”) Later on in the festival, tensions flared when Cage criticized Branca for “abusing sound and repressively forcing it upon the audience,” as well as running his ensemble in a manner that was “reminiscent of a dictatorship.”51 Offering a different response, Carl Stone, also contributing to Perspectives of New Music, maintained that the effect of the Branca performance was “powerful, compelling and totally exhausting—­the experience [was] unlike any I had had in recent times, certainly unlike any at NEW MUSIC AMERICA 1982.”52 Back in New York, the Kitchen was hit by Reagan era cuts to public funding that threatened to create a black hole in an annual budget that had grown from $45,000 a year to more than $250,000 (having started out with a $10,000 grant from the New York State Council for the Arts). Mary ­MacArthur, who began to work as the venue’s overall director in January 1978, instructed the organization’s employees to pursue grant options and think up ways to make enough money to match grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. However, as the institution became increasingly focused on raising money, radical pluralism was sparingly employed when it served the wider financial strategy. More often than not it didn’t. Under the post-­Lewis music directorship of Anne DeMarinis, who had been an early member of Sonic Youth, the Kitchen showcased a joint performance by the drummer Max Roach and the rapper/graffiti artist Fab 5 Freddy along with DJs and breakers on November 15, 1983, as well as performances by bands such as Sonic Youth, the Swans, and the Beastie Boys. Overall, however, critics began to round on the venue, and in 1985 William Harris argued in the Village Voice that under MacArthur the Kitchen had gone from being “an organization run by artists to one top-­heavy with administrators.”53 Harris painted a picture of pluralism mobilized not to support work that explored the interstices of genre but rather to support financial sustainability and, often as a consequence, aesthetic conservatism. In other words, this was a pluralism that purported to be open-­minded, liberal, and tolerant, yet did so by complying with the existing power structures of the status quo. As an anonymous former curator told the Voice, “They [the curators] are creating packages of the Kitchen’s greatest hits.”54 In the same interview, Chatham commented, “They [the curators] lack vision and are pandering to public taste.”55 Gendron adds that, from the middle of 1982 through 1985, the Kitchen came to be “increasingly perceived as mainstream.”56

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Chatham responded by insisting that the whole new music experiment had gone too far and added that he had always considered his own work to be composition, even if it drew on rock and sounded like rock (or its no wave outgrowth). As he explained in a 1990 essay, “We who had worked to tear the walls of the academy down and break with the status quo had created a situation where the ideas associated with our various musical factions were up for grabs. While this had the effect of liberating composers from the ideological frameworks that had previously shackled them, it also led to a great deal of confusion among producers, critics, and composers themselves as to what this new music was actually supposed to be.”57 Chatham maintained that art music, improvised music, and rock converged in the first half of the 1980s not because he and his peers sought to embrace a form of radical pluralism, but because the “formal issues endemic to each” coincided in a unique fashion that proved to be temporary. He added: “Musical pluralism was the direct result of the decimating of boundaries between the genres during the seventies and early eighties, which resulted in much exciting music; but by the late eighties, pluralism was having the effect of clouding the musical issues composers needed to address rather than clarifying them.”58 Chatham delivered his critique within a broader turn against pluralism that included Hal Foster’s searing essay “Against Pluralism” (1985), published at the very moment when the radical pluralist agenda established at the Kitchen became most vulnerable. Focusing his attention on the art world, Foster argued that many practitioners had started to “borrow promiscuously from both historical and modern art, but these references rarely engage the source, let alone the present, deeply.” He added, “The typical artist is often foot-­loose in time, culture and metaphor, a dilettante because he thinks that, as he entertains the past, he is beyond the exigency of the present; a dunce because he assumes a delusion; and a dangling man because historical moment—­our present problematic—­is lost.”59 Assessing the shift to a state of artistic equivalence in which no style of art was dominant and no critical position orthodox, Foster maintained that the shift to pluralism rendered art impotent, allowing for “minor deviation . . . in order to resist radical change.”60 Foster argued that pluralism’s support of choice echoed the underlying ethos of free market capitalism, while its failure to adopt a critical position allowed the traditional values of taste and connoisseurship (including notions of the unique, the visionary, the genius, and the masterpiece) to regain currency. As a result pluralism led “not to a sharpened awareness of difference (social, sexual, artistic, etc.) but to a stagnant condition of indiscrimination.”61

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However, the downtown pluralists didn’t seek to broaden the terms and conditions of the compositional field via a generalizing embrace of all musical practices as somehow equal and equivalent. Instead they engaged with a broader range of sounds and practices in order to generate specific freedoms, and in so doing they challenged the institutional and commercial structures that supported the idea of discrete genres. Robert Morgan would go on to argue in 1992 that “multiple canons” should replace the idea of a single, agreed-­upon canon because “contemporary musical culture is fast becoming not a single relatively focused entity, but a mélange of conflicting subcultures that interact with one another in complex ways while still preserving considerable autonomy.”62 Yet the radical pluralists didn’t accept that genres might be stable in the first place, so instead of proposing some kind of democratic equivalence that supported their separate development, as well as their comfortable existence within the broader cultural and economic status quo, they challenged the very idea of generic coherence and boundedness. As a result their interventions shouldn’t be dismissed as amounting to little more than a “minor deviation” that ultimately propped up existing power interests but instead be seen as seeking to bring about a more radical transformation of the musical order.63 Some believe that Chatham was ultimately so concerned with preserving his status as a composer that he failed to acknowledge fully the true radicalism of the moment, as well as the logic that underpinned his volte-­face. “You have to understand that Rhys constantly lampooned the uptightness of music formalism but was at the same time very sincere about formulating composerly statements in a tone of high seriousness,” says Sublette. “But the pluralism of the time was an inspired response to the complexity of really existing society, a radical critique of the generic marketplace, and an assertion of freedom.”64 Lewis was also skeptical. “A frequently asked question in the community during my years at the Kitchen, even by people like Rhys, whom I was able to discuss the matter with at some length, concerned why I felt the need to curate ‘those people’ because they had ‘so many other places to play,’” Lewis comments. “This wasn’t necessarily a racial designation, but one of genre. As I saw it, however, blunderbuss genre monikers like ‘jazz’ didn’t figure very prominently in my deliberations. Rather, I saw the work of people like Julius Hemphill as congruent with an expanded notion of experimentalism, which in my understanding was the multi-­directional ‘genre’ that the Kitchen was created to support.”65 Lewis maintains that the anniversary event (which appears to have been programmed collectively), along with his sponsorship of diversity, didn’t involve him and the Kitchen embracing a diversity of genres but instead

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amounted to a challenge to the very idea of genre itself. “In Hal Foster’s memorable phrase, pluralism becomes a location where ‘minor deviation is allowed only in order to resist radical change,’” comments Lewis. “The radical change during this period, however, is that a new genre—­‘new music’—­was being created that valorized diversity of musical practice and was trying to learn to valorize diversity of cultural reference.”66 That meant that the radical pluralism practiced by the large number of composers who gathered at the Kitchen—­as well as the work of similarly minded musicians such as Zorn, Lindsay, and others who gravitated to parallel spaces and scenes—­didn’t support the music industry status quo or capitalism’s will to market music according to recognizable categories. Instead it offered an alternative way of playing and appreciating music that began and ended with the everyday practice of generating music. “At the time, canons, genres and the like were unstable and under challenge from without and within,” Lewis adds. “Reality moved beyond the stereotypes.” To some extent the Kitchen’s malaise can be connected to a broader decline in downtown creativity during the early to mid-­1980s. Gendron notes, for example, that the punk/new wave movement lost much of its impetus, while the jazz scene also fell away sharply.67 Both developments can be attributed in very general terms to the gentrification of downtown (which was itself linked to the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the city) and the evacuation of the area by composers, musicians, and other cultural workers who could no longer afford to live there. Yet the downtown art scene didn’t disperse in uniform lines, and Gendron also notes that the Knitting Factory displaced the Kitchen and emerged as “the main arena for musical experimentation, operating on the borders of rock, funk, jazz, and art music”—­and did so, it might be added, as a commercial space that, in contrast to the Kitchen, sold liquor, paid performers from the door, and put on concerts every night.68 Perhaps it was inevitable that the forces of radical pluralism unleashed in the Kitchen would lead to its demise. Once grounded in experimental composition, the venue’s raison d’être became less easy to articulate when it started to occupy the cracks and crevices of music making with ever greater boldness, and after key players moved on, their successors struggled to retain a sense of purpose. Meanwhile a range of alternative clubs came to host significant innovations in dance, hip-­hop, salsa, and rock after 1983, even if real-­estate inflation, combined with the regressive leanings of Mayor Ed Koch, resulted in the network being weaker than it had been during the 1970s and early 1980s.69 Decades later memories of institutional marginalization continue to linger. “When I was at UCSD [Profes-

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sor] Roger Reynolds proudly told me that he had never written a piece for saxophone and never would,” recalls Gordon. “They did not recognize what we were doing as being experimental. But I was trying to avoid being typecast into categories, so that was the experiment.”70 Sublette maintains that on the occasions when journalists deigned to notice what he and his peers were doing, they stereotyped and marginalized the movement as effete, elitist, dilettantish, and solipsistic. “There was so much more to it than that,” he concludes. “In trying to put everything into a box, they didn’t notice we were trying to kick out the sides of the box. Retrospective looks have tended to repeat that tone without taking the trouble to examine what actually happened.” If what happened remains hard to define, that was precisely the point.71

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Notes 1. I’d like to thank Peter Gordon, Benjamin Piekut, Ned Sublette, and Peter Zummo for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Some of the material is drawn from the 97 interviews conducted with 59 individuals by the author along with more than 600 email exchanges during research for Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–­92. This article develops and theorizes aspects of the downtown compositional scene not developed in the book, returning to interviews with composers Rhys Chatham, Philip Glass, Peter Gordon, Jill Kroesen, George Lewis, Garrett List, Ned Sublette, David Van Tieghem and Peter Zummo, as well as introducing post-book exchanges. Interviews and emails are cited when quoted directly. 2. George Lewis of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) argues that many of the musicians “deeply resented the reduction of the diversity of their approaches to the term ‘loft jazz.’” George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 351. 3. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 139–­71. These composers would each resist the “minimalist” label. Glass, for example, maintains that his work up to and including the first eleven parts of Music in 12 Parts (1971–­74) was minimalist, but he maintains that the final part of that piece marked his break with minimalism. See Tim Page, “Music in 12 Parts,” in Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (Berkeley: University of California Press, [1997] 1999), 98. 4. But see the important work of Bernard Gendron in Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­Garde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Bernard Gendron, “The Downtown Music Scene,” in The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–­1984, ed. Marvin J. Taylor, 41–­65 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Tom Johnson, The Voice of New Music: New York City, 1972–­1982—­A Collection of Articles Originally Published by the Village Voice (Eindhoven, Holland: Apollohuis, 1989); and Kyle Gann, Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

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5. Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (London: Harper Perennial, 2009), 568. See also Wim Mertens, American Minimal Music: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, ed. and trans. J. Hautekiet (London: Kahn & Averill, 1983); Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 6. Paul Hillier notes that by the middle of the 1970s Reich and other minimalists were in fact “beginning to produce works of such size and stature” that the label of “minimalism” was beginning to look “mean-­spirited and, worse, misguided.” Paul Hillier, introduction to Steve Reich, Writings on Music, 1965–­2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4. 7. See Jonathan D. Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 2(1999): 231–­ 52; and Ryan Dohoney, “John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego,” in this volume. 8. Rhys Chatham, “Composer’s Notebook 1990: Toward a Musical Agenda for the Nineties,” liner notes to An Angel Moves Too Fast to See: Selected Works, 1971–­89, Table of the Elements TOE-­CD-­802, 2003, compact disc. 9. Ned Sublette, telephone interview with author, 20 November 2004. 10. Garrett List, “Twenty Years Is a Long Time,” in The Kitchen Turns Twenty: A Retrospective Anthology, ed. Lee Morrissey (New York: Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature, 1992), 24. 11. Garrett List, email communication with author, 4 January 2006. 12. Garrett List, telephone interview with author, 23 October 2006. 13. Peter Zummo, interview with author, New York City, 31 March 2005. 14. Ned Sublette, email communication with author, 2 September 2011. 15. Chatham, “Composer’s Notebook.” 16. Peter Zummo, email communication with author, 6 September 2011. 17. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 343, 369. 18. Ned Sublette, email communication with author, 20 July 2011. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. I’m grateful to Dohoney, who writes on Julius Eastman elsewhere in this volume, for the insight into Eastman’s embrace of dance/punk energy. 22. Peter Gordon, email communication with author, 20 July 2011. 23. Peter Zummo, “Eclectic Bubble Gum,” Soho Weekly News, March 17, 1977, 39. 24. Sublette, telephone interview with author, 20 November 2004. 25. Garrett List, email communication with author, 19 July 2011. 26. Robert Stearns, email communication with author, 11 September 2006. 27. George Lewis, email communication with author, 21 April 2008. 28. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 37. 29. Ibid., 41. 30. Ronald M. Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1. 31. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 384. 32. Jan Westervelt, “Rhys Chatham Interview,” East Village Eye, February 1980, 19.

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33. Ibid. 34. Ned Sublette, email communication with author, 25 January 2008. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Brian Eno “The Recording Studio as Compositional Tool,” lecture delivered at the Kitchen, New York City, June 1979, accessed May 23, 2012, http:// music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/downbeat79.htm. 38. Ned Sublette, email communication with author, 31 May 2006. 39. Tom Johnson, “New Music New York New Institution,” Village Voice, July 2, 1979. 40. Tom Johnson, “Contradictions and Glenn Branca’s Static,” Village Voice, September 24, 1979. 41. Ned Sublette, email communication with author, 21 August 2007. 42. Johnson, “New Music New York New Institution.” 43. Ibid. 44. Garrett List, email communication with author, 4 January 2006. 45. Johnson, “New Music New York New Institution.” 46. John Rockwell, “Avant-­Gardists in Midtown for Benefit,” New York Times, June 13, 1981. 47. Deborah Campana, “New Music America 1982, Chicago, July 5–­11, 1982,” Perspectives of New Music 20, nos. 1–­2 (Autumn 1981–­Summer 1982): 609. 48. Ibid., 609–­10. 49. Ibid., 611. 50. Ibid., 613. 51. Ibid., 613–­14. 52. Carl Stone, “Report from New Music America 1982, Chicago, July 5–­11, 1982,” Perspectives of New Music 20, nos. 1–­2 (Autumn 1981–­Summer 1982): 621. 53. William Harris “Slouching toward Broome Street: Can the Kitchen Survive?,” Village Voice, March 5, 1985, 45. 54. Quoted in ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Gendron “The Downtown Music Scene,” 63. 57. Rhys Chatham, “Composer’s Notebook.” 58. Ibid. 59. Hal Foster, “Against Pluralism,” in Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1985), 16. 60. Ibid., 13. 61. Ibid., 31. 62. Robert Morgan, “Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-­tonal Age,” in Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons, ed. Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 57. 63. My distinction between liberal pluralism and radical pluralism draws on work that differentiates between liberal and radical multiculturalism. See Stuart Hall, “The Multicultural Question,” in Un/Settled Multiculturalisms, ed. Barnor Hesse , 209–­41 (London: Zed, 2000); and Sanjay Sharma, Multicultural Encounters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 3–­21. 64. Sublette, email communication with author, 2 September 2001.

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65. George Lewis, email communication with author, 21 April 2008. 66. George Lewis, email communication with author, 26 April 2008. 67. Gendron, “The Downtown Music Scene.” 68. Ibid. 69. For more on this subject, see Tim Lawrence, “Big Business, Real Estate Determinism, and Dance Culture in New York, 1980–­88,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 23, no. 3 (September 2011): 288–­306. 70. Peter Gordon, email communication with author, 23 August 2011. 71. Sublette, email communication with author, 2 September 2011.

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Works Cited Campana, Deborah. “New Music America 1982, Chicago, July 5–­11, 1982.” Perspectives of New Music 20, nos. 1–­2 (Autumn 1981–­Summer 1982): 609–­14. Chatham, Rhys. “Composer’s Notebook 1990: Toward a Musical Agenda for the Nineties.” Liner notes to An Angel Moves Too Fast to See: Selected Works, 1971–­89. Table of the Elements TOE-­CD-­802, 2003, compact disc. Dohoney, Ryan. “John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego.” In this volume. Eno, Brian. “The Recording Studio as Compositional Tool.” Lecture delivered at the Kitchen, New York City, June 1979. Accessed May 23, 2012. http://music. hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/downbeat79.htm. Foster, Hal. “Against Pluralism.” In Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, 13–­32. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1985. Gann, Kyle. Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Gendron, Bernard. “The Downtown Music Scene.” In The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–­1984, edited by Marvin J. Taylor, 41–­65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Hall, Stuart. “The Multicultural Question.” In Un/Settled Multiculturalisms, edited by Barnor Hesse, 209–­41. London: Zed, 2000. Harris, William. “Slouching toward Broome Street: Can the Kitchen Survive?” Village Voice, March 5, 1985. Hillier, Paul. “Introduction.” In Steve Reich, Writings on Music, 1965–­2000, edited by Paul Hillier, 3–­18. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Johnson, Tom. “Contradictions and Glenn Branca’s Static.” Village Voice, September 24, 1979. Johnson, Tom. “New Music New York New Institution.” Village Voice, July 2, 1979. Johnson, Tom. The Voice of New Music: New York City, 1972–­1982—­A Collection of Articles Originally Published by the Village Voice. Eindhoven, Holland: Apollohuis, 1989. Katz, Jonathan D. “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 2 (1999): 231–­52. Lawrence, Tim. “Big Business, Real Estate Determinism, and Dance Culture in

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New York, 1980–­88.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 23, no. 3 (September 2011): 288–­306. Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. List, Garrett. “Twenty Years Is a Long Time.” In The Kitchen Turns Twenty: A Retrospective Anthology, edited by Lee Morrissey, 23–­27. New York: Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature, 1992. Mertens, Wim. American Minimal Music: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Edited and translated by J. Hautekiet. London: Kahn & Averill, 1983. Morgan, Robert. “Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-­ tonal Age.” In Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons, edited by Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman, 95–­115. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Page, Tim. “Music in 12 Parts.” In Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism, edited by Richard Kostelanetz, 98–­101. Berkeley: University of California Press, [1997] 1999. Potter, Keith. Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Radano, Ronald M. New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Rockwell, John. “Avant-­Gardists in Midtown for Benefit.” New York Times, June 13, 1981. Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. London: Harper Perennial, 2009. Sharma, Sanjay. Multicultural Encounters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Stone, Carl. “Report from New Music America 1982, Chicago, July 5–­11, 1982.” Perspectives of New Music 20, nos. 1–­2 (Autumn 1981–­Summer 1982): 615–­22. Taylor, Marvin J., ed. The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–­1984. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Westervelt, Jan. “Rhys Chatham Interview.” East Village Eye, February 1980. Zummo, Peter. “Eclectic Bubble Gum.” Soho Weekly News, March 17, 1977.

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Benjamin Patterson’s Spiritual Exercises

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George E. Lewis

The Lithuanian-­b orn artist-­curator George Maciunas is widely recognized as the catalyst for the creation of Fluxus, the now highly influential yet utterly amorphous art initiative that emerged in the early 1960s. Maciunas’s early attempts to publish a magazine called Fluxus in New York provided the movement with its durable name, but before the first issue could be published Maciunas moved to Europe, where he took a job with the US Air Force in Wiesbaden, Germany.1 He began to gather contacts with artists he had heard about, including Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Emmett Williams, and others who would later become part of the movement. By 1962, Maciunas had developed the idea of combining the magazine with a “FLUXUS festival of new music,” which ultimately turned into the signal event that announced the name Fluxus to the larger worlds of art and music: the Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, held in Wiesbaden over a three-­week period in September 1962.2 Among the many artists Maciunas met was the young African American composer, performer, and visual artist Benjamin Patterson, who had moved to Cologne in 1960 to study electronic music.3 Patterson was performing as a contrabassist with the Seventh Army’s Symphony Orchestra, and also becoming an integral part of a contingent of young radical artists who were crisscrossing Europe. Born in 1934, as a child Patterson listened assiduously to classical music, particularly opera, and pursued postsecondary music study in composition and double bass performance at the University of Michigan, where he was a classmate of the composer Gordon Mumma.4 After Patterson graduated from college in 1956, according to his own account, “I also embarked on a crusade—­to be the first black to ‘break the color barrier’ [and play] in an American symphony orchestra. . . . But in the 86

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end, even though such a famous conductor as Leopold Stokowski fought strongly on my behalf, America was not yet ready for a black symphony musician, and so I went to Canada.”5 During his initial brush with expatriate life, Patterson performed as a contrabassist with the Halifax Symphony Orchestra and the Ottawa Philharmonic Orchestra, and also became involved with electronic music, working in Ottawa with Canadian pioneer Hugh Le Caine and performing his own experiments.6 In Germany Patterson was developing new ways of making music. He worked briefly with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and met people like Paik and Williams. Moving to Paris in 1961, he collaborated with Robert Filliou and Daniel Spoerri, who encouraged him to self-­publish his important 1962 collection of early text pieces, Methods and Processes.7 Filliou’s mobile Galerie Legitime became the space for Patterson’s early “puzzle-­poems,” small text/object collages that the two artists exhibited in 1962 in a unique traveling exhibition that took place literally under Filliou’s hat.8 During this period, which Fluxus historian Owen Smith calls “proto-­ Fluxus,” a rising tide of radical artists and activities was forming: the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, where Cage had taught seminars; the scene in Cologne around Stockhausen; the events at the studio of Mary Bauermeister, the visual artist who was then associated with Stockhausen; and the performances at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, not far from Cologne. Maciunas heard about the Bauermeister studio events from Patterson, who premiered Cage’s Cartridge Music there with the composer, Paik, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff as the other performers.9 Patterson also met La Monte Young and George Brecht at this Fluxus equivalent of Minton’s Playhouse, experiencing a moment of self-­realization that one might compare with Charlie Parker’s legendary chili house epiphany: “Even now I still have a vivid memory of telling myself . . . that this is the music that I had been hearing in my head for years but had never thought possible to realize.”10 Maciunas and Patterson began organizing festivals and performances in Germany, and by the time of the Wiesbaden festival, Patterson had become a central part of the radical new music scene.11 A 1964 letter from Maciunas to Wolf Vostell presented a “List of Fluxus people (inner core): George Brecht, Ay-­O (Takao Iijima), Willem de Ridder, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Joe Jones, Shigeko Kubota, Takehisa Kosugi, George Maciunas, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young.”12 However, a curious tandem of display and erasure marks Patterson’s presence in subsequent histories of the Fluxus movement. While he is invariably mentioned in

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nearly every prominent account of the movement, his work is seldom centered. Charles Dreyfus notices this erasure. C.D.: It’s a bit confusing: in Mary Bauermeister’s book you are not

mentioned, but Nam June saw you playing Poem for Chair, Tables . . . with Kagel in Mary’s studio. . . . Who did you meet first? Nam June? Wolf? Emmett? B.P.: Yes, I performed at the request of John Cage in various works at the studio of Mary Bauermeister. I met Nam June first, then Wolf Vostell and later Emmett.13

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If many critics had somehow forgotten Patterson’s position at the movement’s origins, Williams’s ironic preview of the 1962 Wiesbaden festival provides a powerful reminder. Published in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, the article functions as both promotion of the festival and a clever sendup of journalism, satirizing the pretense of objectivity and the too often abused stance of “Everyman,” where the public is portrayed as naive and ignorant. Here both the author and Patterson, his interviewee, are shills, and Williams manages to combine a tongue firmly planted in his cheek with a direct, unadorned presentation of Fluxus materials and aesthetics. “Are there scores for this sort of music, Mr. Patterson?” “Certainly. I myself use texts which explain the action in detail, how to produce such and such an effect, and so forth. Others use ticker tape, string, telephone books, the imperfections in cheap paper, photographs of ants, things that look more or less like traditional scores, the footprints of wild beasts . . .” “Did you say wild beasts?” “Yes. Elephants, for example.” “You mean you can make music from the bare footprint of an elephant?” “Can you tell me what the footprint of an elephant sounds like?” “I’d like to ask you the same question, Mr. Patterson.” “Well, it’s something a performer has to discover for himself . . . and has to discover it afresh each time.” “You wouldn’t be surprised, then, if the audience contributed a few rotten tomatoes at the performance?” “Nor would I be surprised, considering the nature of the festival, if the performers turn the tables and throw tomatoes at the audience.”14

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Given the centrality of Patterson’s work to the movement, it is particularly odd that so few critical or historical articles on Patterson’s work have been published. Perhaps the most extensive and diverse edited collection of his early works to be published in the twentieth century may be found in Jon Hendricks’s Fluxus Codex (1988). A comparatively substantial review of his later works, including color reproductions of his objects and installations, can be found in a volume published in Brazil in 2002. In 2010, a major Patterson retrospective, Born in the State of FLUX/us, appeared at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; the show’s catalogue was published in 2012.15 Black music scholar Dominique-­René de Lerma noticed that Eileen Southern’s now canonical survey text, The Music of Black Americans, does not mention Patterson,16 an oversight that also marks the Oxford African American Studies Center (“the Online authority on the African American experience”), Oxford Music Online, and Oxford Art Online. Even more oddly, although Fluxus is mentioned in at least one of the major surveys on African American art, its sole black exponent and prime mover, Benjamin Patterson, is somehow overlooked there.17 Such omissions and erasures are far from uncommon. As I wrote in 2008, “[B]lack classical composers [constitute] an important group of creative music-­makers who . . . have been all but ignored by the major black cultural critics and public intellectuals who have come to prominence since 1980,” composers like Tania León, Hale Smith, T. J. Anderson, and Alvin Singleton, who, like Patterson, pursued more or less conventional western classical music training.18 Modern scholarship on sociomusical movements should properly cast a critical contextualizing eye upon the frequent discrepancies between both scholarly and popular histories of experimentalism and what artists actually experienced in and around those experimental art worlds. This isn’t a matter of reading a history of the period and simply complaining, “That’s not the way it happened.” Rather, what is of concern here is an analysis of mediation, critically examining differences between what James Scott would call “public” and “hidden” transcripts.19 Benjamin Piekut’s important volume, Experimentalism Otherwise, poses significant extensions and challenges to this remit. Critiquing the notion of counterhistory, Piekut maintains: The idea of counterhistories or lost narratives . . . derives from the belief that experimental music studies has been mistaken in its research object. The counterhistorian might say, “You have said that

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experimentalism was this, but it was actually that.” I think, to the contrary, that experimentalism is exactly what scholars have said it was during the twentieth century, but not for the reasons they gave. That is, the “tradition” wasn’t something that magically coalesced around shared qualities of indeterminacy and rugged individualism. It was a network, arranged and fabricated through the hard work of composers, critics, scholars, performers, audiences, students, and a host of other elements including texts, scores, articles, curricula, patronage systems, and discourses of race, gender, class, and nation.20 Indeed so, and I share Piekut’s impatience with attempts to “set the record straight.” Quite often these kinds of reclamation projects proceed from the noble motive of writing back into history some of those whom cultural histories have written out. In this sense we continue to examine and critique the work being done by the various constituencies Piekut identifies (including our own work), as well as contesting and revising the results. The salient questions, as always, concern how the network is built and portrayed, and by and for whom. Fluxus artists were inordinately fond of including themselves on taxonomically articulated lists and genealogies. Patterson’s own list, Constellations of the First Magnitude (2002), is rendered as an appropriation of Renaissance visual cosmology, complete with astrological signs.21 Some of the artists listed, such as Cage, could be considered revered ancestors. Others were undoubtedly present at the creation of Fluxus, in either the United States or Europe, even if they were not on Maciunas’s 1964 list: Eric Andersen, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Geoff Hendricks, Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri, and Philip Corner. Other important figures included Alice Hutchins, Joseph Beuys, Yasunao Tone, and Ken Friedman. Like many African American artists working in whiteness-­imbued art worlds, Patterson may well have realized that works such as these provided opportunities to write himself back into his own history—­to become a counterhistorian of himself, contesting the narrative around the network. This essay is intended to aid in that project. Born from the Spirit of Music The immediate prehistory of Fluxus is generally traced to Cage’s famous composition course at the New School for Social Research in 1958, and for Andreas Huyssen, “The link to Cage is significant because, for the first time in the twentieth century, music played the leading part in an avant-­

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garde movement that encompassed a variety of artistic media and strategies.”22 But this link, while necessary, is insufficient to account for music’s leading role. In addition Fluxus artists used music’s most vital and traditional attribute—­its immateriality—­to explore the interstices between art forms. As Patterson maintained in a 2002 interview, “Many of these artists were trained musicians, and so their sense of art and development came from music.” But as Patterson remembers it, one’s originary discipline was now to be simply a point of departure—­where one had been was not necessarily where one was going.

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Once [Daniel Spoerri] said something like, “Ben, we were lucky. I started as a classical ballet dancer, you as a classical musician. Both of us learned the discipline of art elsewhere, and now, since we’ve both changed our medium, we’re free to create without dragging around the historical ballast from our first artform.”23 Disengaging from “historical ballast” seemed not only a modernist conceit, but also a peculiarly American way of viewing the world, reminiscent of the “frontier thesis” of Frederick Jackson Turner, who, according to William Appleman Williams, welcomed the frontier as a “gate of escape from the bondage of the past.”24 This new permeability of medium led to Higgins’s 1966 coinage of the term intermedia; as Higgins declared, “[T]he media have broken down in their traditional forms, and have become merely puristic points of reference. A composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world.”25 The musical provenance of this view is clearly indicated by Higgins’s reference to the dilemma of “a composer.” Cage, his New School students, and even those who, like Patterson, did not study with Cage, could use music’s amorphousness to invade nonmusical practices, which in turn allowed visual artists to engage with sound. Moreover, music’s very lack of rigidity became a lens through which new sociopolitical viewpoints could be envisioned, as Patterson later noted. [W]e, as young idealists who wanted to change the world, thought . . . the purpose of art was to change the way people think or to open their thinking, and the buying and selling of works of art didn’t fit that pattern. You can only buy and sell something which has material, physical presence, so an important part of Fluxus—­early Fluxus, let’s say—­was that the manifestation of the art should be immaterial. That’s why it became music or performance or events, or—­ “happenings” were a bit suspicious, but events were clear there. So

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it was something that you experience, and that was it. You couldn’t take it away.26 This music-­driven immateriality and immediacy renders the boundaries of Fluxus as porous today as they were hotly contested in the 1960s. Fluxus resisted easy categorization, and this appears as a zealous articulation of mobility that contemporary artists seek to draw on as a matter of course. Nonetheless, Fluxus work was somehow particular, somehow identifiable, as Patterson recalled in the 2002 interview. There was one little corner where people dripped water from a ladder into a bucket, or banged on a piano 566 times, or tore up paper. The critics didn’t understand what the name of this thing was. They knew what Boulez and Nono and Stockhausen was; that was serial music, and here was Pierre Schaffer with musique concrète. But—­ what’s this strange stuff here? That has to be Fluxus.27

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Early Works Patterson’s early works in Europe were marked by an intense preoccupation with sound. In 1991 he observed that “during this period I thought of myself as some sort of a composer/performer (the term performance artist hadn’t been invented yet), and most of my work was presented in the context of a Fluxus festival or concert. These works—­if not exactly music—­ were still based primarily in time and activity, not space and color.”28 A typical example is his famous Paper Piece, in which performers create a variety of sounds using paper materials. As Patterson related in a 2011 interview videotaped at Columbia University, the work was created in reaction to the premiere of Stockhausen’s Kontakte (1960), the version for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion. I was in Cologne for that. David Tudor was the pianist, and he told me afterwards that they had something like 120 hours of rehearsal for this piece to get it all together. I just couldn’t believe that something had to be rehearsed that much and would leave me sort of, let’s say, so underwhelmed. I literally was very disturbed, and I lay in bed for two days trying to think, there must be some other way to create a work that could have a certain amount of acoustic complexity, but could be performed by practically anyone with a sensitive ear at least, and without thirty years of study of piano,

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violin or whatever. Suddenly, out of the darkness of the night or whatever, the idea to use paper came up. It was a material that was readily available anywhere, everywhere in the world, and came in all sizes, shapes, and dimensions, and had great variety of acoustic possibilities.29 “It was fairly closely structured in the first version, for five players,” Patterson explained. The score specifies the sizes, color, and quality of paper to be used; the exact number of sheets of paper; the durations for each segment of the piece; and the nature of the sounds to be produced. 7 sheets of paper will be performed “shake” “break”—­opposite edges of the sheet are grasped firmly and sharply jerked apart “tear”—­each sheet is reduced to particles less than 1/10 size of the original Approx. 1 minute per sheet

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5 sheets of paper will be performed “Crumple” “Rumple” “Bumple”—­the sheet of paper is bumped together between the hands of the performer Approx. 30 seconds per sheet30 “Most of the performances started out more or less like that,” Patterson recalled, [b]ut then they quickly took on their own character, which was just fine with me, which is what should happen. So it became improvised work, in a sense. Second, which I hadn’t planned, but that happened at the very first performance—­and then, without trying to do it in every performance after that—­paper drifted off into the audience off the stage by accident, and everybody joined in. So now it’s the big audience piece in which everybody participates, even though it may start on the stage.31 Both Patterson and critic Philip Auslander emphasize the relationship of Patterson’s 1961 classic, Variations for a Double Bass, to Cage’s prepared piano works.32 As Patterson explains:

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I remember that when I started composing this piece, my initial preoccupations were on the exploration of the possibilities of a “prepared” double bass (like John Cage’s prepared piano). So, the first variations were to change the “timbre” (sound quality) . . . by placing clothespins, paper clips, etc., on the strings.33

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The piece went well beyond any previous notion of extended technique then in force in the world of contemporary classical music. Among the seventeen variations in the score are several oriented toward extracting unheard-­of sonorities from the instrument. Variation II asks the performer to use “four different toy whistles, animal, or bird imitators or calls, etc. tune strings of bass as well as possible.” For Variation IV, the performer is to “place a number of wooden and plastic spring-­type clothespins on strings several inches above bridge in such a manner that they rattle and/or produce odd tones, arc: tremolo, trills, and/or long tones.”34 Variations expresses an interesting and productive tension between the sound-­oriented elements in his earlier, acoustic-­centered work (such as Paper Piece and Duo for Voice and a String Instrument), and more conceptual sections that presaged his later work. This tension apparently emerged during the composition of the piece. After a few days, I began to consider the instrument in itself, as an object or a medium that could be handled in a theatrical way to broaden the range of audio and visual “image-­effects.” After having discovered this possibility, the rest came quickly and easily . . . and I got my passport for the “country of wild artistic freedom.”35 For instance, Variation V presents an intermedia-­like, sound-­image combination, directing the performer to weave strips of gold-­face paper through strings in space between bridge and fingerboard. fasten four colorful plastic butterflies to strings over gold paper, performing normal, “bartok” and/or “fingernail” pizzicati, catapult butterflies from strings.”36 The first and last variations, I and XVII, present a combination of the visually performative and the conceptual. Variation I asks the performer to “unfold world map on floor, circle with pen, pencil, etc., city in which performance is being given. locate end pin of bass in circle.” Variation XVII directs the contrabassist to “address, write message (reading aloud)

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and stamp picture postcard, post in f-­hole.”37 In fact, these two variations complement each other and appear to be opening and concluding gestures for the piece as a whole, suggesting (in the absence of directions to the contrary) that in order to present the conception of geographic situatedness, each of the variations was to be performed in numerical order, from beginning to end. When Auslander maintains that Variations was satirical and parodic of both classical music and the avant-­garde, perhaps he was referring to Variations I and XVII, among others of their type in the work. “The musician seems to be preparing the bass, but never playing it,” Auslander maintains. “Some of the ‘preparations,’ such as posting a letter through the hole, are comic bits with no specifically musical significance. . . . Patterson emphasizes the performative (visual) side of Cage’s approach at the expense of its musical (aural) aspect.”38 In this way, Auslander links Variations with such contemporaneous works as Paik’s One for Solo Violin, in which, after raising the violin very slowly over the head, the performer brings it crashing down on a table, splintering it to pieces.39 For Patterson, however, Variations represented less of a dialogue with the traditions of classical music than a new, more holistic view of his work. Variations for Double Bass was my first big leap beyond the “primitive” tape music that I realized in Ottawa. With this work, for the first time, I went from a single medium (acoustic) to a form of multimedia in which the visual elements of theater assumed the same importance as the acoustic elements.40 Methods and Processes Patterson’s 1962 collection, Methods and Processes, presents a set of text pieces that have historically been grouped under the heading of “event scores,” said to be pioneered in the early 1960s, in particular by La Monte Young, Yoko Ono, and George Brecht, whose Fluxus work is thought to be emblematic of the early possibilities of the medium.41 Critic Liz Kotz tells us: This alternate poetics, of deeply prosaic everyday statements, comprised of short, simple, vernacular words, presented in the quasi-­ instrumental forms of lists and instructions, emerges in the postwar era as a counter-­model to the earlier avant-­garde practices of asyntacticality, musicality, and semiotic disruption.42

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Indeed so—­but unlike Brecht’s work, Patterson’s scores do not necessarily valorize the everyday, nor do they situate events at a threshold point between performance and its environment. Rather, some of these works perform a more traditional role of asking performers to locate themselves in interaction with experience. The well-­known “bakery” piece from Methods and Processes presents a salient example.

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enter bakery smell leave enter second bakery smell leave enter third bakery smell leave continue until appetite is obtained43 Ben Vautier has stressed that Fluxus would not exist “without Cage who, I would like to say, has done two brainwashings. The first, at the level of contemporary music by the notion of indeterminateness, the other, by his teaching through the spirit of Zen and his will to depersonalize art.”44 In contrast, what I want to argue once again is that the links with Cage and Brecht, while necessary, are insufficient to account for Patterson’s work in Methods and Processes. In particular, Patterson’s emphasis on intentionality and improvisation differentiates his work from that of a Cage–­New School graduate like Brecht. Moreover, Patterson did not seem to be terribly influenced by Zen, or at least not the conception of Zen espoused by Brecht and Cage. I would say that George’s work was more Zen Buddhist than mine [chuckles]. I think the intention there was really stasis. . . . Part of the difference between George’s work and some of mine is that my work tends to move through time . . . whereas I think that most of his works, even something like Drip Music, it’s very static.45 Nonetheless, Patterson’s works in Methods and Processes could also be seen as forms of “spiritual exercise” recalling not only Zen but ancient European philosophy as well. Seen through the eyes of philosopher Pierre Hadot, quoting Georges Friedmann’s 1972 book La Puissance et la Sagesse,

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Stoic philosophy in particular consists in a spiritual exercise centered on “concentration on the present moment.”

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Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the people who are present here and now, and to apply rules of discernment to your present representations, so that nothing slips in that is not objective.46 As Patterson related in the Columbia lecture, the pieces from Methods and Processes “were intended to be sort of little things that you could do in your head by yourself. Some of them would be actions where you had to use tools or devices, but they were intended as action poems, you might say, for you to perform yourself, for yourself.”47 In this way the scores function as spiritual exercises in precisely the sense Hadot intends, by promoting “a relationship of the self to the self, which constitutes the foundation of every spiritual exercise. To know oneself means, among other things, to know oneself qua non-­sage, that is, not as a sophos but as a philo-­sophos, someone on the way toward wisdom.”48 As Hadot sees it, “[T]he same thing happens in every spiritual exercise: we must let ourselves be changed, in our point of view, attitudes, and convictions. This means that we must dialogue with ourselves, and hence we must do battle with ourselves.”49 Or, as Patterson notes, “My pieces, as they appear on paper, have neither material nor abstract value. . . . [T]hey can only achieve value in performance, and then only the personal value that the participant himself perceives about his own behavior and/or that of the society during and/or after the experience. (In fact, any piece is just this: a person, who, consciously, does this or that. Everybody can do it.)”50 Race and Gender in Flux Although one author invokes Patterson to corroborate the claim that “there were probably more women and artists of color associated with Fluxus than with any other previous grouping of artists in Western art history,”51 Fluxus historians seem unclear as to how Patterson’s race is to be treated. As Piekut observed in his discussions of the work of Henry Flynt, both art historians and artists have found it difficult to engage issues of “race, imperialism, collective struggle, and the role of expressive culture.”52 While imputations of racism would be simplistic and unwarranted, to pre-

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tend that issues of race do not invade historiographies and personal narratives of experimentalism would be needlessly (or willfully) naive. Although Patterson’s background was superficially similar to those of many white experimentalists whose crucial formative years spanned the 1950s and 1960s, to the extent that race does matter, it stands to reason that Patterson’s expatriate experiences would diverge substantially from the normative white experimentalist biography: “Some of us Americans, who have lived, worked and died over there for forty years or more, found European culture more easygoing. In my case, the reasons were obvious: segregation, racial discrimination in the U.S.”53 Owen Smith observes that “[t]he artists who participated with Fluxus were from a variety of backgrounds and countries, including the United States, Japan, Germany, Korea, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. This international makeup was related to the opposition within the Fluxus group to nationalistic divisiveness.”54 Patterson’s view recapitulates Smith’s theme, but with a Gatesian signal difference.

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Fluxus was, one, the first truly international art movement, spanning from southeast Asia, northeast Asia, through the United States, through all of Western Europe and so forth, and also one of the first movements where women’s rights were up there. One could also say (I’m black!), the first time a man of color is an important cultural figure, even in Germany.55 Dick Higgins once wrote that Patterson “did not want to be a ‘negro artist’ but just one Hell of a good one.”56 Nonetheless, to the extent that simply being “a negro” automatically announced race in a whiteness-­valorizing art world, one could reasonably expect that race and its naturalizations would come dangerously close to overdetermining the responses of critics, audiences, and even colleagues. Thus, even Higgins felt able to declare publicly in 1964 that, before meeting Patterson, he suspected that he was black, apparently just from reading Methods and Processes: “Actually Patterson’s way of using periodic repeats and the blues feeling that this produced being so ingrained and natural struck me so much that when he first sent me a copy of methods and processes I wrote to him and guessed he was a negro.”57 The possibility that Patterson was uninterested in having the reception of his work overdetermined by race may have accounted for his embrace of Europe, as with so many other nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century African American artists. This is not to say, however, that Patterson avoided con-

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frontation with race in his work. In a 1991 self-­interview, Patterson notes that humor “often provides the path of least suspicion/resistance for the implanting of subversive ideas”:

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This is best exemplified in one of my works, titled Educating White Folks. In this piece I quote a black folk story, which goes like this: “The appropriation for the Negro school was used for the white school. The superintendent explained this to the Negro principal, who of course couldn’t make a direct protest. So he said, ‘The one thing we need most of all is educated white folks.’” So that is where I come from.58 Typically, Patterson performs this historiographic function with a certain modesty and self-­effacement that, alternatively, could be viewed as a strategy of masking. In 2001 he noted the relation between a certain whimsy and playfulness that his work evoked and “the old saying that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, which has something to do with the African American that I am. . . . [T]he standard Amos and Andy situation of getting through difficult situations with humor with more smile [sic] on your face is one of the things I learned as a survival technique.”59 The comment seems to add new dimensions to the context within which Fluxus humor has been presented. Gender, race, and American history also intersect in one of Patterson’s most notorious works, the Licking Piece. Included in the Methods and Processes collection, the score is simple, direct, and whimsical. cover shapely female with whipped cream lick . . . topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional Although Patterson has commented that “the performances of my ‘Licking Piece’ were more humorous than erotic,”60 critics have emphasized the work’s sensuality, and some have suggested sexist overtones.61 These overtones, as I see it, emerge in large measure from the famous photograph of the 1964 performance of Licking Piece at the Fluxhall/Fluxshop in New York City, an image that shows Patterson, fellow Fluxus artist Robert Watts, and others spraying whipped cream on a woman’s apparently nude body. A 2008 reminiscence/analysis by Letty Lou Eisenhauer, the performer pictured in the photo, provides a heretofore poorly documented perspective

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on that performance. Eisenhauer had already garnered considerable experience in Fluxus and neo-­Dada performance, including nude performance in pieces by Watts, but Patterson’s piece presented particular challenges.

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Lick was presented on a very hot summer (or spring) day. My naked body was sprayed with whipped cream and the audience was invited to “lick” it off. The cream curdled or melted and ran in disgusting rivulets off my steamy body. My embarrassment and fear that some stranger might actually lick me probably also contributed to my overheated state.62 Writing in 1964, Patterson himself declared, “I demanded of an experiencer (not a passive viewer or listener) to act in the position of performer, interpreter and even as creator in the event.”63 But such demands had their limits, as Eisenhauer recalled: “I don’t think anyone in the audience volunteered to lick the cream off. Ben and Bob [Watts] demonstrated, but neither of them pursued the task with vigor.”64 Moreover, commentators decrying the “sexism” of Licking Piece did not seem to consider the implications of the fact that the gender of the performer is indeterminate with respect to the score. Would the relationship to historical gender domination still obtain if the person(s) doing the covering and licking were also female? The racial aspect of the performative transgression in Licking Piece is absent from both Eisenhauer’s participant account and existing critical accounts. Particularly at this time, however, in many parts of the United States, including the Greenwich Village of the late 1950s, the act that Patterson performed with/on Eisenhauer could have earned him an Emmett Till–­style lynching. It is difficult to imagine that this thought did not cross Patterson’s mind at the time, and it seems even odder that this possibility did not occur to either contemporaneous critics or later generations of Fluxus critics and historians. However, a Houston-­based journalist, writing about the 2010–­11 Patterson retrospective, got the point: “The civil rights climate in the U.S. at the time, and the fact that anti-­miscegenation laws were on the books until 1967, gave an additional subversive element to the performance, which featured a white female.”65 Flux to the Future By his own account, Patterson was active in Fluxus from 1962 to 1967, and “semi-­active after that.” A 1990 autobiographical note lists Patterson as working at the New York Public Library in 1963, getting a master’s degree

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in library science at Columbia University in 1967, and “retiring as an artist in the late 1960s to pursue an ‘ordinary life.’”66 Patterson returned to active Fluxduty in 1988, around the time of a general recrudescence of interest in Fluxus. The renewed attention to Patterson’s work culminated in his one-­person show from 2010 to 2011, Born in the State of FLUX/us, at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston. This exhibition demonstrated that alongside his important sound and music works, he is also a printmaker, sculptor, and painter who has created works ranging from the ubiquitous Flux-­box form to his own puzzle-­poems to room-­sized installations. In 2012 the show was reprised at the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, where Patterson now makes his home, and where he was honored with the 2012 Culture Prize of the City of Wiesbaden; the jury’s narrative credited Patterson with being a “co-­founder” of Fluxus.67 The organizers of the very first meeting that resulted in the formation of the now nearly half-­century-­old Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965 attracted meeting attendees with the promise of an organization devoted to an amorphous concept: “original music.”68 These African American artists, as with Fluxus, were both responding to the breakdown of genre definitions and asserting a mobility of practice and cultural reference. Both “movements” have exercised enormous international impact, while managing to maintain resistance to codification. Since so many artists were inspired by Fluxus, it stands to reason that some of them might have been eager to “join” the movement. But how was this to be done? As Brecht put it, “For me, Fluxus was a group of people who got along with each other and who were interested in each other’s work and personality.”69 Defining the movement on a basis of sociality, however, is not without difficulties. Unlike the AACM, and despite the efforts of Maciunas, Fluxus never succeeded in sustaining a collective with defined borders of membership. Since both movements were opposed to single-­genre dogma, it is tempting to attribute the AACM’s success in this regard to racial solidarity and nondiversity relative to Fluxus. In both cases it is clear that the strategies by which young artists negotiated the complex, diverse, and unstable environment of musical experimentalism were not always successful, even if one could be clear on what “success” would look like. For Emmett Williams, “The miracle was not that these artists of different nationalities, cultural backgrounds, artistic temperaments and status in the world of art worked so well together, but that they were able to work together at all. There was no aesthetic to unite them in a common cause.”70 A performance of Paper Piece on the first evening of the Festum Fluxo-

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rum Fluxus at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1962 exemplified the dynamic that rendered “Fluxus collectivity” as a species of cat herding. Academy faculty member and festival organizer Joseph Beuys had requested that some kind of manifesto regarding Fluxus be presented at the festival. Such manifestoes had long been a traditional move to establish new movements in the arts, but, as gallery director Jean-­Pierre Wilhelm observed in his opening statement, “Should a manifesto be launched today? It would be too beautiful, too easy. The heroic epoch of manifestos—­Dada, Surrealists and others, even individuals, is well past. . . . It is no longer a matter of yelling, it’s a matter of mattering. But how to matter?”71 Shortly afterward, the sounds of crumpling and tearing announced the commencement of a performance of Paper Piece. At some point sheets of paper were dumped onto the heads of the audience, with a text reading:

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Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, “intellectual,” professional & commercialised culture, PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art,—­ PURGE THE WORLD OF “EUROPANISM!” [sic].  .  . PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, Promote living art, anti-­art, promote NON-­ART REALITY to be fully [sic] grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals . . . FUSE the cadres of cultural, social & political revolutionaries into united front & action.72 The authorship of this text was later attributed to Maciunas and became known as “The Fluxus Manifesto.” In Smith’s account and others, the performance ended “as the paper screen was gradually torn to shreds, leaving a paper-­strewn stage.”73 One likes to imagine that, given the resistance of Fluxus artists to unified dogmas, at least some of the manifesto copies themselves ended up as material for the procedures of the piece—­crumpled, rumpled, and bumpled. Moreover, the performance rendered literally palpable the differences between Paper Piece and its negative image, Kontakte. Any work that required 120 hours of rehearsal was clearly not intended to be consigned to the dustbin of history; rather, the composer of Kontakte and so many other composers of works from this era drew on the traditions of Werktreue in the hope that their creations would one day enter the museum of musical works, which in this moment, before the philosophy of Lydia Goehr, had not yet become imaginary.74 In the sharpest contrast to this aesthetic, as Patterson told his Columbia audience in 2011, “there is no definitive version” of Paper Piece.75

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If, in the words widely if apocryphally attributed to former US president George W. Bush, his country’s Constitution is just “a goddamned piece of paper,” rendering the Fluxus Manifesto itself ephemeral, after the condition of music, constituted a conceptual move that directly exemplified the spirit of Fluxus. As Smith notes, the “Fluxus Manifesto” was just one of many short-­term responses to an immediate need. . . . [R]eality—­that Fluxus arose out of circumstances rather than as the product of a predetermined strategy—­is part of the reason why many have rejected and continue to reject the idea that Fluxus was a movement at all.76

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As Williams saw it, “It’s closer to the bull’s-­eye to call it a United Front. The United Front provided them a forum, free from the entanglements of the art establishment, in which to perform their own works, and the works of kindred spirits.”77 Thus, one could not “join” Fluxus by doing “Fluxus-­ like art” in a form of preemptive self-­stereotyping. As Patterson explained: What is the Fluxus aesthetic? I can show you that many catalogues and books, and people are still trying to nail it down, and it can’t be. There’s a sort of joint spirit or friendship, and general understanding of how you go about making art, but in terms of, we only use red, or only straight lines, Cubism or pop figures—­that doesn’t exist. So then, “What is Fluxus?” became a big problem for a so-­called second generation—­am I a Fluxus artist or not? “I am a Fluxus artist because I do this [laughs], or I am a Fluxus artist because I do that.”78 In this aesthetic environment, the observation of AACM cofounder Muhal Richard Abrams regarding that composers’ collective is pertinent: “There’s nothing that can go wrong, because there’re nothing to compare it with.”79 Thus, the only real way to become a Fluxus artist was to join Fluxus in spirit—­to commit yourself to finding ways to add to the collective spiritual exercise of creativity. What that ultimately means is that to join Fluxus, one would need to transcend Fluxus by finding one’s own path toward creativity. While you are doing that, the originary Fluxus people, the ones for whom there was no “Fluxus movement” to join, will simply continue on. “As long as myself and Emmett Williams [died 2007] and George Brecht [died 2008] and Alison Knowles and Eric Andersen are still alive,” Benjamin Patterson declared in 2002, “we’re going to make our art, and that will be called Fluxus art. That’s the way it goes.”80

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Notes 1. Owen Smith, Fluxus: The History of an Attitude (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 1998), 40. 2. Ibid., 71. 3. Benjamin Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” interview with Charles Dreyfus, Inter:art actuel, no. 103 (2009): 90. 4. Benjamin Patterson, “Ben Patterson in Los Angeles: A Flux-­Interview,” interview with Judith A. Hoffberg, Umbrella, no. 24 (2001): 79. 5. Ben Patterson, “Ich bin froh, daß Sie mir diese Frage gestellt haben,” Kunstforum International, no. 115 (September–­October 1991): 170, translation by the author. 6. Ibid. Also see Patterson, “Ben Patterson in Los Angeles,” 79. 7. Benjamin Patterson, Methods and Processes (Paris: Privately printed, 1962). Patterson acknowledges Spoerri’s encouragement in a 2009 interview. See Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 92. 8. Smith, Fluxus, 64–­65. Also see Patterson, “Ich bin froh,” 167. 9. Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 119–­22. 10. Benjamin Patterson, “Ben Patterson in Los Angeles: A Flux-­Interview,” interview with Judith A. Hoffberg, Umbrella 24 (2001): 79. 11. See especially Smith, Fluxus, 43–­65. 12. Emmett Williams and Ann Noel, Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas, 1931–­1978 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), 42. 13. Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 90–­91, translation by the author. 14. Emmett Williams, “Way Way Way Out,” Stars and Stripes, August 30, 1962, 12. 15. Jon Hendricks, ed., Fluxus Codex (Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation, 1988). Also see Jon Hendricks, ed., O que é Fluxus? O que não é! O porquê? (Rio de Janeiro and Detroit: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation, 2002), and Valerie Cassel Oliver, ed., Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2012). 16. Dominique-­René de Lerma, review of The Music of Black Americans: A History, by Eileen Southern, Notes, no. 28 (September 1971): 44. 17. See Sharon F. Patton, African-­American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Richard J. Powell’s compact history mentions performance art but not Fluxus, while Samella Lewis’s 2003 survey mentions neither. See Richard J. Powell, Black Art: A Cultural History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002); and Samella Lewis, African American Art and Artists, 3rd ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). Also see George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). A recent computer search found no article mentioning Patterson (or, for that matter, Anderson, Wilson, Smith, or Singleton) in the journals Callaloo or Black Music Research Journal, including my own article in the latter.

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18. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, xlv. 19. See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 20. Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 18–­19. 21. Hendricks, O que é Fluxus?, 162. 22. Andreas Huyssen, “Back to the Future: Fluxus in Context,” in Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1994), 198. 23. Patterson, “Ich bin froh,” 171–­72, translation by the author. 24. William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966), 377. 25. Dick Higgins, “Statement on Intermedia,” 1966, accessed June 7, 2012, http://www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html. 26. Ben Patterson, Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories (from 1962 to 2002), ? Records 7, 2002, compact disc. 27. Ibid. 28. Patterson, “Ich bin froh,” 169, translation by the author. 29. Benjamin Patterson, lecture at Columbia University, March 20, 2011, video recording, collection of George E. Lewis. 30. Benjamin Patterson, “Paper Piece” (1960), in Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us, ed. Valerie Cassel Oliver (Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2012), 135. 31. Patterson, lecture at Columbia University. 32. Philip Auslander, “Fluxus Art-­Amusement: The Music of the Future?,” in Contours of the Theatrical Avant-­Garde: Performance and Textuality, ed. James Harding (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 117. 33. Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 90, translation by the author. 34. Benjamin Patterson, “Variations for a Double Bass,” in Fluxus Scores and Instructions: The Transformative Years—­“Make a Salad.”—­Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Detroit, ed. Jon Hendricks, with Marianne Bech and Media Farzin (Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2008), 124. 35. Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 90, translation by the author. 36. Patterson, “Variations for a Double Bass,” 124. 37. Ibid, 124, 127. 38. Auslander, “Fluxus Art-­Amusement,” 118. 39. Ibid. 40. Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 90, translation by the author. 41. Liz Kotz, “Post-­Cagean Aesthetics and the ‘Event’ Score,” October, no. 95 (Winter 2001): 55–­89. 42. Ibid., 61. 43. Patterson, Methods and Processes. 44. Smith, Fluxus, 20–­21. 45. Patterson, lecture at Columbia University. 46. Pierre Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises,” in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Malden: Wiley-­Blackwell, 1995), 84.

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47. Patterson, lecture at Columbia University. 48. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises,” 90. 49. Ibid., 91. 50. Benjamin Patterson, “Bekenntnis,” in Happenings, Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme: Eine Dokumentation, ed. Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1965), 241, translation by the author. 51. Kathy O’Dell, “Fluxus Feminus,” TDR/The Drama Review 41, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 43. 52. Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise, 101. 53. Patterson, “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson,” 93, translation by the author. 54. Smith, Fluxus, 228. 55. Patterson, Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories. 56. Quoted in Sally Banes, Greenwich Village, 1963: Avant-­Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 206. 57. Quoted in ibid. 58. Patterson, “Ich bin froh,” 176, translation by the author. 59. Patterson, “Ben Patterson in Los Angeles,” 81. 60. Patterson, “Ich bin froh,” 176, translation by the author. 61. Ibid. On Licking Piece’s sensuality, see Susan Leigh Foster, Dances That Describe Themselves: The Improvised Choreography of Richard Bull (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 59. On sexism, see Kristine Stiles, “Between Water and Stone: Fluxus Performance, a Metaphysics of Acts,” in In the Spirit of Fluxus, ed. Elizabeth Armstrong and Joan Rothfuss (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1993), 84; and Kelly Klaasmeyer, “Half a Century Late: Benjamin Patterson Gets His Due as Houston Goes Avant-­Garde,” Houston Press, January 20, 2011, accessed June 8, 2012, http://www.houstonpress.com/content/printVersion/2176931/. 62. Letty Lou Eisenhauer, “A Version of Trace in 2008: An Interpretation of Scores,” in Fluxus Scores and Instructions: The Transformative Years—­“Make a Salad.”—­ Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Detroit, ed. Jon Hendricks, with Marianne Bech and Media Farzin (Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2008), 35. 63. Patterson, “Bekenntnis,” 241, translation by the author. 64. Eisenhauer, “A Version of Trace in 2008,” 35. 65. Klaasmeyer, “Half a Century Late.” 66. Achille Bonito Oliva, ed., Ubi Fluxus ibi motus, 1990–­1962 (Milan: Mazzotta, 1990), 245. 67. “Ben Patterson—­Fluxus Pioneer Receives 2012 Culture Prize of the City of Wiesbaden,” accessed June 8, 2012, http://doctorsea.blogspot.com/2012/05/ben-­ patterson-­fluxus-­pioneer-­receives.html. 68. See Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself. 69. Quoted in Owen Smith, “Developing A Fluxable Forum: Early Performance and Publishing,” in The Fluxus Reader, ed. Ken Friedman (West Sussex: Academy Editions, 1998), 6. 70. Smith, Fluxus, 225. 71. Quoted in Smith, “Developing A Fluxable Forum,” 3. 72. The manifesto can be viewed at http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/ gmaciunas-­manifesto.html, accessed September 6, 2013. 73. Smith, “Developing A Fluxable Forum,”, 4.

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74. The reference is to the discussion of Werktreue in Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 2nd ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 75. Patterson, lecture at Columbia University. 76. Smith, “Developing A Fluxable Forum,” 6. 77. Smith, Fluxus, 225. 78. Patterson, Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories. 79. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself, 514. 80. Patterson, Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories.

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Works Cited Auslander, Philip. “Fluxus Art-­Amusement: The Music of the Future?” In Contours of the Theatrical Avant-­Garde: Performance and Textuality, edited by James Harding, 110–­29. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Banes, Sally. Greenwich Village, 1963: Avant-­Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Beal, Amy C. New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. “Ben Patterson—­Fluxus Pioneer Receives 2012 Culture Prize of the City of Wiesbaden.” Accessed June 8, 2012. http://doctorsea.blogspot.com/2012/05/ben-­ patterson-­fluxus-­pioneer-­receives.html. Eisenhauer, Letty Lou. “A Version of Trace in 2008: An Interpretation of Scores.” In Fluxus Scores and Instructions: The Transformative Years—­“Make a Salad”—­Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Detroit, edited by Jon Hendricks, with Marianne Bech and Media Farzin, 33–­36. Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2008. Foster, Susan Leigh. Dances That Describe Themselves: The Improvised Choreography of Richard Bull. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hadot, Pierre. “Spiritual Exercises.” In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, edited by Arnold I. Davidson, 81–­125. Malden: Wiley-­ Blackwell, 1995. Hendricks, Jon, ed. Fluxus Codex. Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation, 1988. Hendricks, Jon, ed. O Que É Fluxus? O Que Não É! O Porquê? Rio de Janeiro and Detroit: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation, 2002. Higgins, Dick. “Statement on Intermedia.” 1966. Accessed June 7, 2012. http:// www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html. Huyssen, Andreas. “Back to the Future: Fluxus in Context.” In Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, 191–­208. New York: Routledge, 1994. Klaasmeyer, Kelly. “Half a Century Late: Benjamin Patterson Gets His Due as Houston Goes Avant-­Garde.” Houston Press, January 20, 2011. Accessed June 8, 2012. http://www.houstonpress.com/content/printVersion/2176931/. Kotz, Liz. “Post-­Cagean Aesthetics and the ‘Event’ Score.” October, no. 95 (Winter 2001): 55–­89.

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Lerma, Dominique-­René de. Review of The Music of Black Americans: A History, by Eileen Southern. Notes, no. 28 (September 1971): 43–­44. Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Lewis, Samella. African American Art and Artists. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. O’Dell, Kathy. “Fluxus Feminus.” TDR/The Drama Review 41, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 43–­60. Oliva, Achille Bonito, ed. Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus, 1990–­1962. Milan: Mazzotta, 1990. Patterson, Benjamin. “Bekenntnis.” In Happenings, Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme: Eine Dokumentation, edited by Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell, 241. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1965. Patterson, Benjamin. “Ben Patterson in Los Angeles: A Flux-­Interview.” Umbrella, no. 24 (2001): 79–­81. Interview with Judith A. Hoffberg. Patterson, Benjamin. Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories (from 1962 to 2002). ? Records 7, 2002, compact disc. Patterson, Benjamin. “Ich Bin Froh, Daß Sie Mir Diese Frage Gestellt Haben.” Kunstforum International, no. 115 (September–­October 1991): 166–­77. Patterson, Benjamin. Lecture at Columbia University. March 20, 2011.Video recording. Collection of George E. Lewis. Patterson, Benjamin. Methods and Processes. Paris: Privately printed, 1962. Patterson, Benjamin. “Paper Piece” (1960). In Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us, edited by Valerie Cassel Oliver, 135. Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2012. Patterson, Benjamin. “Rencontre avec Ben Patterson.” Inter:art actuel, no. 103 (2009): 89–­93. Interview with Charles Dreyfus. Accessed June 7, 2012. http:// id.erudit.org/iderudit/59354ac. Patton, Sharon F. African-­American Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Powell, Richard J. Black Art: A Cultural History. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Smith, Owen. “Developing a Fluxable Forum: Early Performance and Publishing.” In The Fluxus Reader, edited by Ken Friedman, 3–­21. West Sussex: Academy Editions, 1998. Smith, Owen. Fluxus: The History of an Attitude. San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 1998. Stiles, Kristine. “Between Water and Stone: Fluxus Performance, a Metaphysics of Acts.” In In the Spirit of Fluxus, edited by Elizabeth Armstrong and Joan Rothfuss, 62–­99. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1993. Williams, Emmett. “Way Way Way Out.” Stars and Stripes, August 30, 1962. Williams, Emmett, and Ann Noel. Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas, 1931–­1978. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998. Williams, William Appleman. The Contours of American History. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966.

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Challenge to Music The Music Group’s Sonic Politics

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William Marotti

The careers of several notable Japanese experimental musicians—­Kosugi Takehisa, Tone Yasunao, Shiomi Mieko (b. Chieko), Mizuno Shūkō—­ began with their participation in an improvisational collective formed in the late 1950s.1 The group was active as a formal collective for barely more than a year (1960–­61), marking a momentary but intense confluence of the members’ diverse theoretical and performance concerns and binding them together as improvisers determined to free music itself from its abstract and ossified form. Could there be a more “experimental” music? Yet this formative moment is occluded from the outset by the common half translation, half transliteration of their name. By rendering the appellation 「グループ音楽」 as “Group Ongaku,” rather than “the Music group,” the group’s very name becomes symptomatic of both a continuing resistance to its claims and practice and a contributory self-­exoticization.2 If the history of this foundational group is to contribute fully to a reconsideration of both “experiment” and “music,” and if we are to understand properly the stakes behind its actions, the issue of nomenclature must be settled from the start. The problem is at once historical and conceptual. In arguing for the common rendering, an unattributed editor wrote in 2005 that “Group Ongaku represents a hybrid name combining the English ‘group’ (pronounced gurūpu in Japanese) and the Japanese ‘ongaku’ (music); like Gutai, if translated, the distinct linguistic tonality of the name would be lost.”3 The double insistence here on the distinctiveness of utterance gives a hint of the specific variety of nominalism in play: an effectively neonativist notion of cultural identity predicated on the sound of the Japanese language, 109

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one that blocks a possible universality of reference in order to highlight a local “distinctiveness” within the linguistic bounds of an always primary national community. Rendered as “Group Ongaku,” the name intimates a reassuring particularism both by the capital G and the refusal to translate ongaku into “music.” The published CD edition of the group’s 1960 works, music of group ONGAKU, at least abandons the capital, but it still refuses to translate the name fully.4 The price such efforts pay in attempting linguistically to reserve the group’s provenance for Japan is in the consequent reduction of its horizons to the nation’s border—­thus subtracting it from an international, tumultuous moment in music, except as a possible exotic footnote. Staking a claim of irreducible distinctiveness on utterance alone misguidedly seeks to guarantee particularity against a general category of “music” justifiably suspect as bearing Euro-­American-­centric cultural assumptions. But through this translation refusal, the group suffers exactly what such efforts would like to forestall: the reduction of its work to an exoticized, indigenous eastern particular to a western experimental universal, one unable to communicate its claims beyond its immediate national linguistic horizons. Such language claims defer the question of the Music group’s distinctiveness to either tautology (difference because of difference) or nativism and surrender the possibility of actual engagement within its historical moment. Rendering it instead as the Music group modestly acknowledges that cultural production coming from Japan, one of the most powerful twentieth-­century nation-­states, should be evaluated on its own merits as a coeval participant in the globalized discourses and practices of capitalist modernity, in which differentiation is itself produced as part of these global interactions.5 In other words, analysis needs to avoid the dead end of either reductivist culturalism or indefensible notions of (American) originals and local copies, where we acclaim the first for its creative cross-­cultural and cross-­ field synthesis and reduce the latter to borrowings from elsewhere. Instead, the Music group should be credited for its own particular contribution to a global discourse and recognized for its local significance on that basis, as much as for its imbrication in more immediate debates. The Music group brought together a diversity of points of reference in constituting its distinctive experimental approach to the problem of “music,” including an engagement with both ethnomusicological research and the historical and contemporary avant-­garde, both domestic and international. The latter perspective is in fact announced in its choice of name itself (as I detail below), a fact that further demands its translation as the Music group. If we take this claim seriously, explicating the full scope of

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the group’s particular response to the problem of “music” around 1960 can in turn provide a distinctive historical response to the very question of what experimentalism could be—­with a distinctiveness located in neither geography nor language but in the work itself.

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Narrative Stakes and Two Performances One of the ironies of the Music group is that its notoriety was out of phase with the period of actual, intense “group” activity, that is, the time in which the members were primarily focused on and engaged with the possibilities of group performance together. The performance identified by many as their debut, and which attracted attention to the group, in fact marked the end of their productivity as an ensemble (for a summary of the Music group’s performances discussed herein, see table 1). As Mizuno Shūkō recalls, incorrectly but perhaps symptomatically, the group’s debut single-­billing concert at Sōgetsu Hall on September 15, 1961, was the last performance by the complete group (comprising the aforementioned Mizuno, Shiomi, Tone, and Kosugi, together with Tojima Mikio and Tsuge Gen’ichi).6 By the time of this performance, the Music group had largely abandoned the productive, improvisational sessions that had created the ensemble in the first place and had reached a point where the members’ divergent interests were creating a “group” of linked solo artists. Yet, because of the measure of fame it achieved, “the Music group” was incorporated in concerts and events with Ichiyanagi Toshi, Yoko Ono, Hijikata Tatsumi, and others and received new opportunities for solo performance (as well as, by request from one of the major papers, performing on a pier by Tokyo Bay for a newsreel).7 A reading of the performers’ writings in the program accompanying the Sōgetsu concert reveals significant divergences in their approaches—­divergences present from the group’s beginnings but now manifest in a program whose entire first half was devoted to solo works by individual members, prior to a single, ensemble piece: the finale, “Metaplasm 9–­15.”8 The “One Man Show” by Tone the following February at the Minami Gallery inverted this trend, belying its own title by incorporating overlapping performances by group members (and Takahashi Yūji), including a penultimate ensemble performance together with Ichiyanagi, the Silly Symphony.9 Focus on the September Sōgetsu Hall performance also sets up a chronology that would strongly associate the group’s approach with those of John Cage and a constellation of New York composers. Identifying the September performance as its debut, and thus as a kind of beginning, lo-

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TABLE 1. Referenced Performances by the Music Group and Its Associates, 1960–62

Date

Event

Location

Participants

Sept. 26, 1960

Dance and Music: Their Improvisational Combination

Kuni Chiya Dance Institute, Tokyo

Includes Mizuno, Shiomi, Tone, Kosugi performing as the Music group

Jan. 28, 1961

Recent Works of Wakamatsu Miki (recital)

Sōgetsu Hall, Tokyo

Includes Mizuno, Shiomi, Tone, Kosugi performing as the Music group

Aug. 25–27, 1961 Fourth Contemporary Midō Kaikan, Osaka Music Festival (Institute for Twentieth Century Music)

Includes Ichiyanagi (performing Cage, Feldman, Brown, Wolfe, and others)

Sept. 15, 1961

The Music group: Sōgetsu Hall, Tokyo Concert of Improvisational Music and Sonic Objets

Mizuno, Shiomi, Tone, Kosugi, Tojima Mikio, Tsuge Gen’ichi performing as the Music group

Oct. 30, 1961

Takahashi Yūji Piano Recital I: Piano Distance

Sōgetsu Hall, Tokyo

Takahashi (performing Cage, Ichiyanagi, Takemitsu, Young, and Satō Keijirō)

Nov. 30, 1961

Festival of the Works of Ichiyanagi Toshi

Sōgetsu Hall, Tokyo

Ichiyanagi, Shiomi, Kosugi, Tone, Mizuno, Takemitsu, Takahashi, Mayuzumi, Aoki, Ōno

Feb. 3, 1962

One Man Show

Minami Gallery, Tokyo

Mizuno, Shiomi, Tone, Kosugi

Oct. 1962

Cage and Tudor tour

Japan (various locations)

Cage and Tudor

Oct. 1962

Kosugi and Tone Asbestos Hall, Tokyo improvise with Hijikata Tatsumi and dancers for Cage/Tudor

Kosugi, Tone, Hijikata, others

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cates the Music group immediately after the ostensible “arrival” of New York experimentalism via both an iconic performance and Ichiyanagi’s return to Japan. Less than a month before the Music group’s September performance, the August 25–­27, 1961, festival in Osaka hosted by the Institute for Twentieth Century Music had featured on its opening day works by contemporary experimental artists in America, including Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, and Ichiyanagi himself.10 Ichiyanagi had returned to Japan after years of extensive involvement in the New York avant-­garde scene, a fact that has invited overascription of Cagean transmission and an overassociation of this complex artist with Cage alone.11 But this is to substitute a convenient, reductive account of linear transmission for a complex, intertextual actuality. Cage was already sufficiently well known to make a Cagecentric festival day attractive to the audience in Osaka, and to organizers and sponsors such as the Mainichi Newspaper. In his review of the event, institute head Yoshida Hidekazu notes a personal encounter with Cage in Europe in 1954 (at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in Germany); fellow member Mayuzumi Toshirō, too, had written a pair of introductory essays on Cage in the widely ­read journal Music Arts (Ongaku geijutsu) in 1959 (thus well in advance of an introductory article in the same publication by Ichiyanagi in February 1961).12 The Experimental Workshop (Jikken Kōbō) as well had, in the course of its events, performed works by Cage and, in the case of member Akiyama Kuniharu, even conducted a direct correspondence with him as early as 1952.13 And, indeed, Yoshida’s comparison of Cage and Takemitsu in his review of the event, prefacing a declaration of the superiority of the Japanese composers’ works to those of the “Americans,” suggests that the intent of the first day’s program might have been to garner initial interest (and perhaps funding) through their notoriety in order to ultimately highlight their inferiority to the “Japanese” works by Takemitsu Tōru, Irino Yoshirō, Mayuzumi, and Moroi Makoto debuting on the second day of the festival.14 Onstage less than a month after the Osaka event, the Music group’s Sōgetsu Hall performance was followed by two iconic performances: first, Takahashi Yūji’s October 30 piano recital, performing works by Cage (Water Music), Ichiyanagi (Music for Piano No. 2), Takemitsu (Piano Distance), La Monte Young (Studies I and III), and Satō Keijirō (Calligraphy for Piano); and, second, Ichiyanagi’s own recital, the “Festival of the Works of Ichiyanagi Toshi,” on November 30, in which members of the Music group (Shiomi, Kosugi, Tone, and Mizuno) performed, together with Takemitsu, Takahashi, Mayuzumi, shakuhachi player Aoki Shizuo (Aoki Reibo II, des-

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ignated a Living National Treasure in 1999), and gagaku musician Ōno Tadamaro. Placed between the Osaka festival in August, the October Takahashi recital, and the November Ichiyanagi performance (in which it participated), the particular experimentalism of the Music group is thus subordinated to, and subsumed by, a story about Cage and New York, becoming a footnote anticipating the climactic Cage/Tudor Tokyo performances in October of the following year, which critics have associated with Japanese “Cage shock.”15 Yet this account is fundamentally in error, even chronologically. Even just considering Sōgetsu Hall, the group had appeared on January 28, 1961, providing a striking musical accompaniment for avant-­garde dancer Wakamatsu Miki’s performance at the hall. A more accurate account of the Music group might credibly identify its concert debut as having occurred a year earlier, in the 1960 event “Dance and Music: Their Improvisational Combination” on September 26, 1960, at the Kuni Chiya Dance Institute in Komaba, Tokyo. This event also culminated an intensive period of discovery and improvisation in which the Music group adopted its name and issued (in the journal of the sponsoring Twentieth Century Dance Association) a collection of theoretical statements by Mizuno, Kosugi, Tone, and Shiomi. Thus this 1960 performance not only marks an actual debut but also indexes the point of maximal “group” practice and coherence in the project marked by its distinctive name. Understood in a less concertcentric manner, then, the performance itself should be recognized as ­secondary to the experiments that yielded the minimally coherent group vision realized in text, name, and practice. Naming the New I: Improvisational Formation As an alternative to these sorts of chronological, reductive accounts, I propose to turn to this formative moment in 1960 to examine the stakes of the Music group’s engagement with the very problem of “music,” stakes at once provocatively asserted by the adoption of its distinctive name. The members of the group as such came together through a multiyear series of improvisational encounters, through which they searched for a musical practice that matched their shared critical visions. Kosugi and Mizuno, students at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, or Geidai, began improvising together in a “kind of dialog on violin and cello,” sharing a mutual antipathy toward the dullness of formal composition.16 In 1958 Mizuno introduced Kosugi to Tone, a former classmate from Chiba National University with a background in domestic and

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European surrealist and Dada literature. Though initially just an observer of their improvisations, Tone was soon invited by Kosugi to participate in their sessions, despite Tone’s utter lack of musical training, realizing in practice a profoundly democratic, leveling impulse against hierarchical ideas of fixed technique, training, and means that both subscribed to theoretically. Tone bought a saxophone from Kosugi and an open reel tape recorder and began to participate on a nearly nightly basis.17 Mizuno credits Tone as a kind of “opinion leader” and points to Tone’s influence in making “group unconscious” a central aspect of their practice.18 The sequence for the other members joining is a bit unclear. A fellow student in Mizuno and Kosugi’s year at Geidai, in the musicology program, Shiomi joined the group early, soon bringing in her friend, Geidai vocal music program member Tanno Yumiko. Tojima Mikio (musicology) joined in time to be a participant in the improvisations at Mizuno’s house in late spring of 1960; Tsuge Gen’ichi joined sometime thereafter.19 Geidai itself was a locus at the time of a variety of experimentalisms, providing a context that facilitated the explorations of the group members. The school provided instruction in science and, with the part-­time hiring of young ethnomusicologist Koizumi Fumio in September 1959 (on his return from research in India), a wide variety of performance traditions.20 Koizumi’s work would prove crucial for the group in two respects: first, in the long-­term influence on Kosugi of Koizumi’s argument for the primacy of improvisation in Indian music; and, second, in Koizumi’s making the ethnomusicology studio at Geidai, and its instrument collection, available to group members for their improvisation sessions. The musicians found the contrast between different performance traditions embodied in the instruments to be reciprocally freeing for even European instruments; their sessions ranged across the available instruments, cross-­applying techniques and exploring new sonic capabilities. Kosugi’s approach to violin, combining techniques from other stringed instrument traditions, and his willingness to explore the sonic capabilities of all parts of the instrument (including the wooden ones), date from this period.21 But the improvisational approach of the group also registered the stakes of an experimentalism broader than that of music alone: Tone was deeply involved in contemporary and historical avant-­garde debates in art and literature; and he and Kosugi found Jackson Pollock’s “action painting” to enact a kind of improvisational practice that might be freeing if brought into music.22 Shiomi was close to some of the fine arts students in the Geidai dormitory and experimented with drawing, collage, and a kind of action painting.23 Conversely, beyond his knowledge of other fields of art

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and culture, Tone’s lack of formal training contributed an approach rather different from those of the other players, who, in the words of Shiomi, “were unable to free ourselves of the musical aesthetic consciousness of the past.”24 The members’ familiarity, and dissatisfaction, with contemporary practices of musique concrète, however, led to their own group practices of tape experimentalism, and ultimately to their sense of having achieved a breakthrough discovery worthy of “group” status.25 Shiomi recalls their tape experiments both within Geidai’s studios and outside in nearby Ueno Park, where on one occasion they dangled a nearly ten-­kilogram reel-­to-­reel deck in an infrequently used tunnel in order to record reverberating footsteps and other sounds. In addition Mizuno’s home became a frequent site for group improvisation. After such sessions, the group would listen to the recordings and discuss the results.26 The players ultimately identified themselves formally as a “group” to mark the point in mid-­1960 when these sessions achieved a breakthrough, a “new” approach to improvisation. Despite each member’s own distinctive conceptualizations of this practice, they all shared a belief in its transformative potential. It was with this in mind that the members acceded to Tone’s suggestion that the group adopt the name “Music” (with Tone adding “group” to the title to avoid confusion) as a move analogous to the adoption of Littérature as the title of the magazine founded in the spring of 1919 by coeditors Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Phillipe Soupault.27 Littérature had published the first three chapters of Soupault and Breton’s “Les Champs magnétiques” (The Magnetic Fields), relevant to the newly named “Music group” both as the first example of automatic writing (to which their practice aspired), itself a product of daily improvisational practices, and for the title’s appealing, though coincidental, appropriateness for their magnetic-­tape-­assisted composition and recording.28 The magazine had also hosted both surrealist and Dadaist writings avant la lettre and thus encompassed a legacy of the interconnection of two historical avant-­gardes whose interpretation was central to contemporaneous disputes in art and literature (with which Tone himself was particularly familiar). But it was the tremendous claim inherent in the name itself that most appealed to the group. Littérature had aspired to nothing less than a radical demotion and reconstruction of literature itself, in one moment publishing the inadequate responses of authors to the editors’ ingenuous question “Why do you write?” and in the next introducing new writing practices and topics central to the developing avant-­garde.29 Tone had translated Maurice Blanchot’s “Reflections on Surrealism” some years earlier, the essay in

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which Blanchot highlighted the central importance both of the journal’s name as a nonironic truth claim and of automatic writing as “a proud aspiration toward a way of knowledge.”30 For Blanchot it was through the latter practice that the surrealists remained committed to a freedom in which words, freed of prior determinations, might, beyond and through literature, lead to human liberation.31 It is worth remembering that, for the historical avant-­garde as much as for a contemporary avant-­garde in Japan, artistic means were harnessed in the service of the goal of social transformation.32 The adoption of the name “the Music group” thus signaled an equivalent aspiration, occasioned by its breakthrough: what Tone described as its chance encounter in May 1960 with “an absolutely new music . . . an improvisational work of musique concrète done collectively.” Having discovered this method by accident, the group “decided to continue such experiments intentionally,” and realized its second work, “Automatism No. 1,” a title that references “The Magnetic Fields” in its claim of automatism, while obliquely punning over its recording on magnetic tape.33 The members’ adoption of “Music” for their group name thus points to their shared commitment to an automatic writing process for music, whereby music could not only be rescued from its attenuated state but also might lead in turn to political liberation. The members’ excitement over these developments is conveyed by the enthusiastic submissions of manifesto-like statements by Mizuno, Kosugi, Tone, and Shiomi to the fifth issue of Twentieth Century Dance, the house organ of the dancers and critics of the Twentieth Century Dance Association. As coeditor Yamano Hakudai remarked in the afterword, “[W]e were putting together this issue on ‘dance and music,’ but the manuscripts from the Music group came in one after the other, and in the end we seem to have been taken advantage of a bit.”34 Coming from a period of intense theorization following the practical breakthroughs that occasioned the adoption of the group’s distinctive name, a closer look at these diverse statements provides the best sense of the specific conceptualizations and shared concerns governing the practice of the group members in their formative moment. Naming the New II: Theorizing Practice In their written statements for the special issue (called “Dance and Music’: Introducing the ‘Music’ Group”), commentators and performers alike joined in intimating their shared sense that the Music group’s debut

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marked something new and portentous—­even to the extent of relegating one half of the performers, the dancers, to a secondary, responsive position. Despite editorial complaints about being “taken advantage of,” the four Music group statements are prefaced by a substantial introduction by association member Ikemiya Nobuo, a testimony to the journal’s sense of the project’s worth. Ikemiya darkly introduces their actions as a dissimulation for a rebellious act; the very name of the group is “argot” (ingo) for a “cabal” (totō) who have “hoisted the signboard of ‘music’ to cover up their true colors. Are they really musicians? Their cabal has come bearing improvisation. . . . [T]he Music group has come to steal the space.”35 He discusses their joint attempts to find the right words to encompass this fugitive encounter between dance and this new “music,” recounting some of the terms each proposed—­a conflict (Ikemiya’s term), a kiss, a sacrifice (suggested by a Music group member), a chance meeting (Yamano Hakudai’s suggestion)—­before rejecting them all and settling on improvisation: “And the connection between those who come to improvise, and those who urgently await it, is itself also an improvisation” (7). For Ikemiya such efforts reach toward a reality beyond the formalist constraints of contemporary life—­a life constricted by the reductivism of formal logic and the innumerable fixed procedures that define human custom in every arena, “procedures for the sake of procedures” (8). Pathetic humanity. Aesthetics tied in a row and put on a conveyer, with a fixed space and fixed acceleration. Art that can’t even manage to croak out a gasp, with its fixed watchwords and fixed expressions to win another’s heart. A pathetic mood for a pathetic humanity. Pathetic music. Pathetic dance. Pathetic criticism. So farewell. You play, I’ll dance. You sing, full of space; I’ll dance into your space and speak to you. Next to me, is me; beside you, you. We fill the space with innumerable me’s and you’s. And then the space spreads like a cloud, flows, glimmers, and nearby to our frozen skin, we watch the sun washed with rain. . . . Liberating the relationship of music and dance from all types of musical and dance styles, holding fast against all of the antihuman procedures, we take our blows, wound, abuse, and reject each other, and to what end? I don’t know. And there’s no need to know. (8–­9) Ikemiya looks forward to this momentous and unpredictable conjunction with the hope and expectation that such improvisation will escape all restrictive determinations and lead to an unknowable, liberatory future.

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Mizuno’s is the first of the printed Music group comments; he sets forth his sense of the “two clear propositions from what we’ve done thus far, and their precise connection” in enthusiastically existentialist terms.36 As he sets forth in his first section, “Musical Mechanism—­Existence—­Individuality,” musique concrète approximates “the search for an acoustic world of infinite rhythm and antidodecaphony (infinite interval)” yet lacks an essential, “dialectical” component within its “human musical act” (ningen no ongaku kōi)—the musical performance, understood as the locus of a Sartrean existential freedom: “This act, replete with the experience of existence (jitsuzonkan), is absent in musique concrète” (10). For Mizuno it is the existential act of performance that is key; in its absence, nothing worthwhile remains: “[P]reserving a masterpiece is done for nothing but for the sake of a pathetic act called aesthetic appreciation (kanshō)” (10). Mizuno understands their accomplishment as one of process, embracing the existential freedom “within the experience of existence, producing sound [or a sonic world, onkyōsekai]” within a group performance that melds individualities together, “becoming a new individuality” (10).37 This experience he describes as acting within the freedom and singularity of “fugitive being,” a scoreless and hence time-­indeterminate performance epitomized by the unrepeatability of clouds in nature (10). For an image of hyperfocused, present action within the transient moment, however, Mizuno somewhat contradictorily invokes the intensity of calligraphy, an art form not amenable to group performance: “Just as calligraphers stake their all as they pull the brush through the stroke to its conclusion, once we begin to bring forth sound, and until the ending, we, too, know what it is to create within this instability and tension” (10). Like calligraphy, their sound offers an indeterminate form “that may be grasped through the repetition of practice without reliance on a score” (11). Considering their method of group improvisation via “experiments in automatism” allows Mizuno to shift away from such invocations of highly individualized performance and back to his weather metaphor: this indeterminacy “has an individuality and pattern, from the personality of the practitioners,” and manifests itself together under given “musical climate conditions” like the advent of cumulonimbus clouds (11). As Mizuno explains in his second section, “My Personal Perspective on the Method of Automatism,” “[T]he essence of the automatism aesthetic is as something that is touched off from within an undifferentiated unconsciousness that absorbs the act’s subjectivity and objectivity as consciousness recedes” (11). In keeping with the importance Mizuno gives to action, however, he explicitly rejects unconscious creation as a possibility, demonstrating early strains in

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the group’s collective approach to improvisation. Mizuno theorizes instead a kind of additive process for a group consciousness transcending subject/ object distinctions, and closes with an expression of hopeful expectation that a method and a new genre within practice can make this quest a reality. Kosugi’s essay, “Notes for the Creation of Improvisational Music,” locates the Music group’s approach within a more theoretically sophisticated and broader contemporary musicological, phenomenological, and artistic framework centered on the act of improvisation.38 For Kosugi improvisation manifests the experience of fugitive existence as an act of freedom and risk.

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The act that is staked on time’s singularity (ikkaisei) is always replete with the risk attendant on chance and unpredictability (igaisei). The improviser attempts expression within the instant of time’s flow. It is a declaration of mistrust of determined objects (kakutei sareta kyakutai) and a materialization of [the performer’s] life within time. As its result, some forme may perchance be preserved as unaltered actuality (via recording, etc.). In this forme chance and unconsciousness beyond impassioned thought may be objectified. However, in improvisational practice, even if the vestiges of forme are preserved, it is the act within flowing existence that is the purpose; improvisational music’s meaning is in the experience through sound of the rather multilayered (and essentially uncertain) aspect of reality. (12) In other words, improvisation at base has meaning within the moment of the now, as an existential experience of a kind of freeing indeterminacy, realized through an action that partakes of both chance and the unconscious. Kosugi’s essay goes on to support this bold declaration by outlining a constellation of related musical and artistic practices, both contemporary and traditional, implicitly locating the Music group as succeeding to a range of historical and contemporary approaches to improvisation and art. Anticipating his lifelong engagement with modes of Indian musical theory and performance, Kosugi first cites the analysis of Geidai ethnomusicologist Koizumi Fumio to assert the primacy given to improvisation within “contemporary Indian traditional music.” This [improvised] music is called manodharma sangita (music of the Way of imagination); music is tied to some notion of metaphysics, which is that it changes its aspect with the passage of time, and the player grasps an aspect of the cosmic metaphysical regularities with-

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in the flow of time. In contrast to this, already prepared (composed) music is called kalpita sangita, a term meaning not just already “prepared” but also “counterfeit” (nisemono); such work is thought of as a “shadow” in contrast to “the thing itself” (hontai). (12)39 After relating the achievements of Indian improvisation to those of jazz, and jazz to both Kerouac and African music, Kosugi next turns to Dada, asserting that its foundational avant-­garde gesture, by contrast, “returns art to its primitive (purimichibu) ancestry.”40 For Kosugi, the existentially significant act of negation within Dada is simultaneously a freeing return to an original nondetermination prior to “art.”

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Negating fixed objects, with an originary breath from within the flow of time, [Dada] tries to impel a rereading of the meaning of all being. With this automatism, it flings out words, it touches off all manner of sounds indiscriminately . . . [and] with every method it seeks to confirm moment by moment being. These anti-­art acts are bound to improvisation’s anti-­art qualities.” (13) This engagement with Dada, and its associated term anti-­art, marks the Music group’s work as part of the broad, genre-­crossing, contemporary investigation of the Dada legacy in Japan and abroad. As Peter Osborne has argued, this contemporary reappropriation would also rewrite this legacy, effectively creating “Duchamp” (the originator of the anti-­art term) as “largely a retrospective effect of the 1960s,” even as that effort was understood as a rediscovery.41 But as anti-­art and associated terms were gaining currency, critic Takiguchi Shūzō cautioned against reducing this productivity to such labels alone, arguing instead for recognition of the explosive energy in thought and expression. In April 1960 he wrote: Here I’d like to be restrained in speaking of things as bound to such contemporary fashionable catchwords as Neo Dada or “anti-­art.” I, too, probably can’t avoid saying something about “anti-­art,” but rather than defining this ready-­made term, we really must instead frankly recognize the tempestuous energy of the thought and expression emanating from this group of artists.42 Thus, while the citations to the avant-­garde legacy bore the risk of reductive labeling, they could simultaneously signal a kind of shared, free

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e­ xploration across genres, giving terms like objet sonore particular resonance via the broader artistic investigation of objet. In time, such contemporary, shared efforts would come to be understood as a kind of growing community with particular local configurations, as well as simultaneous connections to an international art world, all mobilizing the avant-­garde legacy.43 It is within this return to Dada, then, that Kosugi locates Cage: “An American, John Cage, who is considered part of this tendency, put two radios on a stage, and turned the dials. One had a woman in a drama changing from a sob to a laugh; the other, news, and a weather report: ‘it may have poured.’ And thus one aspect of being at that time was materialized” (13). (In the recorded improvisations that led to the naming of the Music group, snatches of radio broadcasts in English and Japanese can indeed be recognized in the mix, testifying to the regard the group had for this technique for “materializing” being.) With but this single performance anecdote, however, Kosugi abandons the subject of Cage to turn instead to a brief account of the “improvisational materialization” (sokkyōteki taigen) in his Duet for Violin and Cello, a formative improvised work. Though likely accomplished with Mizuno, Kosugi’s first-­person narrative of the piece does not name his companion—­and is indeed identifiable as his own voice only by inference. He narrates the two-­ person experience of echo, variation, entwinement, expectation, and resonance as a kind of musical dialogue and encounter—­implicitly contrasted with Cage’s dual radio dialogue as a pure chance operation (14). Kosugi’s final point compares musique concrète’s objet sonore (glossed as “acoustic object,” onkyōbutsu) with improvisational experience and “the improvisation and chance production given to music by surrealism and Dadaism” (14). The objet sonore is considered within the legacy of automatism, which Kosugi associates with the “automatic method such as frottage and collage in painting, or montage in film” (14). For Kosugi, the potentials and limitations of this procedure arise through its relation to improvisation. [B]y transforming sounds (onkyō) through electronic control (tape recorders, etc.), [musique concrète’s method] tries to present an aspect of the unpredictability and chance replete in existence. This does not have the sense of a proper improvisational “act,” but rather of an attempt at objetification. While it is consistent with the concept of composed music, we should note that this objet is nonetheless on a completely different level than that of the aesthetic consciousness of all previous works. Further, this objet, as an aspect of existence, and of chance freed from thought, is a thing that appears beyond the

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limitations of subjectivity, and on this point we can say it is consonant with improvised presentation. The objet is revealed as an aspect of being’s multiplicity through the unpredictability of form. (14) In other words, Kosugi argues that being might be engaged either through improvisational acts, at the risk of egoism, or through objets, with the loss of the existential act proper. Here Kosugi’s eight-­point presentation leaves off, having set the stage for Tone to argue for the supremacy of the Music group’s achievement in combining the powerful potentials of both musique concrète (and the sonic objet) and the existential, improvisational musical act. In so doing, Tone hints at the significance of the group’s adoption of its distinctive name (at his suggestion) to commemorate this discovery: it is part of a larger claim to being the proper musical heirs to the core mission of the historical avant-­garde. The first line of Tone’s essay, “On Improvised Music as Automatism,” boldly declares, “In May 1960 the members of our group chanced to encounter an experiment concerning an absolutely new music. It was an improvisational work of musique concrète done collectively” (15). What follows is a narrative and explication of this momentous experiment—­its preparations, the experience itself, the discoveries, and their significance—­in an account that polemically describes an unintentional, spontaneous encounter between the improvising group and a world of things that, as objets, impress their full materiality on the members and unconsciously lead them to their great discovery, a new form of automatism. Tone describes how the stage was set for their “discovery.” The musicians readied a variety of materials in preparation for recording musique concrète. Numerous items such as drum cans, washtubs, water jugs, forks, plates, hangers, metal and wood dolls, a vacuum, “Go” stones, cups, radios, gardening reference books, a wall clock, cello, a rubber ball, an alto saxophone, prepared piano, etc., were readied as sound sources. Once we began recording, the innumerable sound materials arranged before us strangely and intensely impressed us with a sonic image (onkyōteki imāju). Our improvisational performance then began completely spontaneously. And so, these innumerable sounds (onkyō) that in everyday life go unnoticed, or are emitted according only to necessity, made us feel as if we had set our identities aside amid the movement and collision of the materials themselves, and been able to grasp their materialized unconscious breath. (15)

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Tone’s list of “sound materials” asserts the group’s fundamental, radical disregard for formal distinctions at the level of objects, much as Kosugi’s invitation to Tone years before had radically disregarded the distinctions of formal musical training at the level of practice. This serial equation of all items as potential sound sources rendered possible a kind of unconscious impression and communication, according to Tone, freeing the group from egoism to engage in a truly open dialogue with an insistent world of things beyond necessity and routine. For Tone the specific politics of their achievement came from its ­simultaneous potential to realize the goals of automatism: an ego-­free communication with the world of objects, freed of restrictive determinations, which might lead to a similar liberation for humans as well—­and hence the insistence on spontaneity, on being impressed by the objects themselves, in a manner that thereby reprised the original surrealist act of automatism. In this manner our first experimental work was completed, but we at once noticed that it was an analogous method to that defined in the first Manifesto of Surrealism: “[Surrealism, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—­] verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner, the actual functioning of thought.  .  .  . Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”44 We were excited by this discovery, and decided to continue such experiments intentionally. And so our second work, Automatisme No. 1, was completed. (15)45 Tone explains how their six-­ person spontaneous, collaborative works ­reflected an intent analogous to that of the very first experiment in automatism. [J]ust as the first work of automatism, Les champs magnétiques [The Magnetic Fields], was a collaborative work by [Philippe] Soupault and [André] Breton, since even the unconscious of the individual retains egotistic, individual features and conventions of thought, and thus risks retaining the dregs of humanism, the act of collaboration could be said to seek the universality of automatism. (16) Here Tone expresses his deep appreciation for the collaborative nature of the group’s project—­one echoed in the other members’ essays and enshrined in their prior, joint adoption of their distinctive name after this

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experimental breakthrough—­while also underscoring his role in theorizing “group unconscious” and automatism as central aspects of the group’s practice.46 Tone insists on the particular, grounded quality of their improvisational encounter captured without subsequent mechanical processing on tape.

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Our pure spontaneous method was not mere improvised performance, but rather a practical and pragmatic (sokubutsuteki na) improvisational performance based on musique concrète, concrete sounds (gutaiteki na onkyō). This was something that could respond to [critic] Tōno Yoshiaki’s comment that, “for example, in Miro’s pure spontaneous method the odor of egoism was strong; it had the weak point of a pure spontaneous method, which often too easily degenerated to mere ornamental design with little rapport with its physical materials.” (16) Echoing Kosugi both in his concern with overcoming egoism in improvisation and in identifying the objet sonore as an “acoustical object,” Tone’s gloss of musique concrète as “concrete sounds” again asserts the primacy of this nonhierarchical sonic world of materiality in enabling the group’s free, unmediated improvisational encounter. The unconscious egoism-­ world of things speaks directly to the group’s collective unconscious, potentially leading to momentous disclosures for performer and listener: “It is our wish that, after hearing this music, you will see the true form of the objet sonore in which degrees of transparency and opacity, and wetness and hardness [yin and yang], resound within the tempest of directness (chokusetsusei no arashi), a force beside which the concrète works of [Pierre] Schaeffer and [Pierre] Henry will pale by comparison” (16). In its extensive claims and polemical narrative of their “experiment,” Tone’s essay perhaps best captures the full implications of the musicians’ adoption of the name Music group following their sessions at Mizuno’s home in the late spring of 1960. For Tone they had achieved an unprecedented disclosure of actuality through grounded improvisation, incorporating and yet transcending prior experimental practice (and indeed the entirety of music) in a sonic act worthy of the legacy of automatism, now transposed to music. What could be more appropriate, then, than adopting a name parallel to Littérature, in which “Les Champs magnétiques” had originally appeared? Just as this formative journal for nascent Dadaist and surrealist writing was to replace all prior literature with a practice adequate to the post–­Great War world, the Music group would open new

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possibilities for a transcendent sonic practice of investigation and communication, dragging “music” out from its many constraints and making it adequate to an expansive, shared cultural politics recuperating the legacy of the historical avant-­garde. Tone perhaps made this relation clearest in his essay for the Sōgetsu program the following year: “We might best refer to musique concrète in a word, as a collage of estranged (dépaysed, depeize sareta) sound. And just as Aragon, arguing from the standpoint of collage, called all of surrealist painting a ‘challenge to painting’ [‘La Peinture au défi’], we might call it a ‘challenge to music.’”47 Shiomi’s essay contribution, “The Improvisational Collage of Sound Objects: A Dialog of Sound,” similarly looks to appropriate the concepts of objet and collage from art, repurposing both in a personal aesthetic that demonstrates tensions and commonalities in her approach to the group’s work.48 Echoing Tone’s account, she begins by describing how a “long-­ slumbering vision” within her was “awakened by a chance encounter with a number of objets, and in turn discovered a new experience of objets” (17). But instead of speaking of any group experience, Shiomi then goes on to describe her own particular approach to practice occasioned by this discovery: “sonic collage.” In contrast to the cumulative nature of collage in painting, Shiomi explains, in sonic collage, “as soon as we paste something up, it disappears, remaining as but a faint trace in our impressions; with each subsequently laid objet, the impressions of the prior ones become ever fainter” (17). “[By collage] I am referring to the act itself of merely pasting up (haritsukeru) a single sound (hitotsu no onkyō) within a blank space of time” (23). Yet through these “accumulated objets . . . we yearn for new objets while also desiring to experience objets that accord with our own prior vision. . . . [I]n contradistinction to the fragility of the sound objet’s disappearance in an instant, we are given the existential delights and endless possibilities of continuous collaging” (17). Despite overlaps in her conceptual vocabulary with the other members’ essays, Shiomi presents a distinctively idiosyncratic and personal “playful method,” one without any discussion of collaboration or group performance. Uniquely among the group’s members, too, Shiomi introduces a brief set of scored figures as part of her exposition, a two-­page set of sample “objets.” As she indicates, “[T]hese sounds by no means constitute an improvisational work; neither are they written music for presentation. They are nothing but examples scored in an attempt to simplify understanding of my aesthetic stance toward sound, and of my essayed method” (17–­18). Shiomi explains her distinctive conceptualization of this term, objet, via her own sense of surrealism.

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For example, take a rock, worn down by waves. Now, if the consciousness of a human who looks at it simply deals with it physically, mechanistically, that is, realistically (genjitsuteki ni), it cannot become an objet. But if that rock’s form and being were to lose its reality, and an ambiguous vision begin within ourselves, with the rock and that vision commencing a mysterious confluence, then the concept, objet, is established. In this sense I am using a certain special sense of “objet,” in the same manner as the sur-­realist [sic] painters. Therefore the sound objet I refer to also is a thing in this state. I think of it as in a formless condition (without becoming a sound in reality [genjitsu]) with its being in limitless space, and through our unconsciousness, contacting our vague visions (aimai naru bijon). (21–­22)

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The origins of such objets for Shiomi come not from an external sonic world so much as from contact with her own visions and memories. In the case of her scored examples: From time to time, on the piano keyboard, I’ve found any number of sound objets that give rise to thoughts not of things in my present, but of long-­distant, faint memories. By layering these objets together, I am able to discover the limitless pleasures of somehow wandering about in the world of these unrecoverable, mysterious memories. . . . Concretely, my discovery, selection, and compilation of these objets is accomplished completely freely and unconsciously (in a spontaneous condition bound to a deep desire, evading formal consciousness and cognizance of aesthetics). And therefore it is possible for such a collage to be accomplished through a single objet. (17, 21) The balance among memory, the unconscious, intention, and personal vision is thus left somewhat underspecified, but in any event, it appears to leave the encounter a much more inward-­looking one than in any of Shiomi’s compatriots’ accounts. Existential Freedom, Political Consequences Shiomi’s account most accords with the rest of the Music group in its temporal focus on the existential charge of the present moment. Thus, while she notes that her scored examples, with their open durations and unspecified dynamics, register, pedaling, sequence, and the like, superficially

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r­ esemble the score for Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Piano Piece XI, her method differs fundamentally.

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[F]irst, in contrast to Stockhausen’s method, which is aimed at a nonconscious indeterminacy limited within a fixed framework, my method is halfway to collage and based completely on unconscious improvisation. . . . Second, in the case of Stockhausen, that goal is a temporal continuum, as music, whereas my aim is in the moment by moment existence (jitsuzon) in which we experience the objet; it thus exceeds the consciousness of a sonic temporal continuum. (22–­23) Thus, even if Shiomi’s understanding of objet remained essentially personal, her aesthetic focus on the unbounded experience of the instant resonated with a group approach that valorized the existential freedom and openness of the improvisational moment and proclaimed its radical break with restrictive forms of art, routine, and thought—­sufficient to declare their ractical unity as the Music group, going beyond antiphrasis to reclaim an avant-­garde legacy and recast the very relation of sound, practice, and society embodied in “music.” The group members differed in their own distinctive understandings of the nature of the break they were accomplishing, ranging from Mizuno’s existentialism and rejection of unconscious creation, Shiomi’s dialogue between memory and its objets, and Kosugi’s multiple improvisational and practical reference points to Tone’s unconscious dialogue with a liberated and liberatory sonic world of objects. Even so, the coherence of the project reflected in their choice of name, and the group’s commitment to continued improvisational activity, was sufficient to impress an observer such as Ikemiya as a cabal-­like conspiracy of promising political potentials. Similarly, their performance a year later at Sōgetsu Hall, and accompanying writings, triggered hostile dissent and a denunciation from Takahashi Yūji in the Sōgetsu Art Center journal the next month. [I]t is impossible through improvisation to realize “an act replete with one’s life force.” For example, wasn’t the performance of the “Music” group, too, just an infantile fit? In the instant of selection, will not someone be influenced by that which already exists? One can only select from but an extremely small range [of possibilities]. It surely remains within an inner naturalism. Group Music’s slogan, “restore the unjustly curtailed meaning of music,” too, perpetrates a related sort of error. That is, ultimately, the suggestion that people

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can be restored to freedom by music. This point of view is reactionary, and nothing but idealism. It cannot make possible the impossible task of realizing internal freedom cut free from everyday life through a materialization from free consciousness.49 While Takahashi could hardly have been more contemptuous, his rejoinder underscores the shared contemporary sense of the potent political conflict in music—­and the fraught scene within which the Music group, Ichiyanagi, and Cage were being addressed in Japan by the fall of 1961. If the group’s own productivity as a group had nearly vanished by the time of such debates, its legacy remained bound to a contentious, politicized practice of experimental music that articulated local, domestic, international, and historical developments in avant-­garde discourse and practice. Yet its breadth of reference occurred simultaneously with its microscale: artists excitedly making preparations in apartments and improvised spaces in preparation for exhibition, hatching improbable plans in small groups, erupting in late-­night shouted arguments, and launching whiskey-­fueled impromptu performances for their sole benefit. The Music group’s activities similarly should be recognized less for the formal performances and more for the unheralded, serial sessions of improvisation, indoors and out, that marked both its formative period and its subsequent year or so of minimally coherent group unity.

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Coda: John Cage As evidenced by the Music group members’ writings immediately subsequent to their self-­constitution as a group, their practice was in conversation with a wide range of art and performance: on the one hand, the contemporary addressing of the avant-­garde legacy of surrealism and Dada, and the possibilities of innovations such as musique concrète; and, on the other, an appreciation for alternative conceptions and traditions of performance and their consequences for a restrictively conceived, and theoretically impoverished, “music.” And, while Cage does receive brief mention, he falls short of the preeminent status that subsequent recollection would retrospectively assign, appearing more as an influential fellow traveler in the enlargement of these legacies and concepts. Yet the encounter between group members and Cage the following year, in the fall of 1962, does seem to have made an impression—­one that perhaps merits further reflection. Cage himself commented about his six weeks in Japan during a lecture in Hawaii in early 1963, crediting him-

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self, through Ichiyanagi (“who spent some six to seven years in New York and in my classes at the New School”) for having inspired “most of these experimental composers [in Japan] . . . to go in these new directions.” He in fact spoke of the work of a Music group member, Tone (unnamed but recognizable in the text), who is credited with creating a work somehow anticipatory of one of Cage’s planned, but as of then unannounced and unfulfilled, compositional ideas.

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I was delighted to discover that a composition which I have not yet written is in the area in which he is working, namely to discover some way to use maps of the earth’s surface in order to yield directions for the performance of music. . . . A most extraordinary music that some people might not call music at all, consisting of wide spaces of silence with only a few (and to many ears very unsatisfactory) sounds dropped into these spaces of silence.50 Cage’s backhanded comments reference a set of improvisational performances done in his and David Tudor’s honor at Hijikata Tatsumi’s “Asbestos Hall” (Asubesutokan) by Kosugi and Tone, with Hijikata and his dancers, in October 1962. Indeed, though beyond the scope of this essay, one might potentially reverse the common Cage-­centrism, and imagine Cage himself as the one whose practice was momentously transformed by such encounters with an energetic, extensive, and wildly insurgent avant-­garde: in his classic study, James Pritchett identifies Cage’s 0′00″, originating at the October 24, 1962, Tokyo performance (following two weeks of tour engagements in Japan), as marking a stark stylistic shift: “[I]t stands apart from all that Cage composed before it. . . . [T]here is no score to speak of here at all, and there is no sense of an objective sound world to be apprehended. Instead, there exists a totally subjective situation, in which the performer acts in a deliberate and personal fashion.”51 While it would be merely reversing the original error to subsume such conjunctures to another account of “influence,” heading in an opposite direction, a broader appreciation of the Music group within a recognition of the global dimensions of the experimental scene can at least allow for the possibility of conceiving of such communication.

Notes 1. Following convention, Japanese names appear surname first, with the exception of those writers publishing extensively in English. Translations of Japanese sources are by the author unless otherwise noted.

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2. In fact, in the first announcement of the group’s name in September 1960 (for the fifth issue of Twentieth Century Dance [Nijisseiki buyō]), the name is given as グループ「音楽」 or “the ‘music’ group.” The capitalization on the CD release of its work in 1996 reflects this distinction as well (see note 4). 3. “Notes to the Reader,” in “1960s Japan: Art Outside the Box,” ed. Reiko Tomii, special issue, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17 (December 2005): vii. The “notes” may be by guest editor Tomii, but they are unattributed in the otherwise specific index. 4. group ONGAKU, music of group ONGAKU, recorded May 8, 1960, and September 15, 1961, HEAR sound art library, HEAR-­002, 1996, compact disc. One might readily compare the overdetermined retention of Ongaku in the Music group’s name to that analyzed by David Novak in the genre of onkyō. Originating in a general critique of music indexed by the “unspecific” and “abstract” term onkyō (sound), this approach was then reversed in the subsequent identification of an onkyō genre, whose alleged “untranslatability” would putatively index its cultural specificity and locality. Novak also discusses the investment in a particularlist aesthetic of ma as a signifier for essential difference in part as a reaction to Cage and his formulation of “silence.” David Novak, “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyō,” Asian Music: Journal of the Society for Asian Music 41, no. 1 (Winter–­Spring 2010): 36–­59. 5. On Japan’s coeval modernity, see Harry D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), xvi. 6. The same ensemble performed at Tone’s “One Man Show” the following February (see note 7); moreover, though featured on the 1960 recordings at Mizuno’s home, vocalist Tanno Yumiko had already departed the group well before the time of the Sōgetsu Hall performance, even by the time of the group’s earlier Sōgetsu appearance as accompaniment to Wakamatsu Miki’s dance works on January 28, 1961. See Sōgetsu to sono jidai, 1945–­1970, exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan and Chiba-­shi Bijutsukan (Tokyo: Sōgetsu to Sono Jidaiten Jikkō Iinkai, 1998), 214–­15; see also group ONGAKU, music of group ONGAKU, for the 1960 recordings. A fellow participant at the performance at Sōgetsu Hall, Takeda Akimichi, noted that by the time he had thus transitioned from assistant to actual group member, the Music group personnel had already reached a point of divergence in method and thinking, and barely functioned as a group. Takeda Akimichi, interview with Kawasaki Kōji, in Kawasaki Kōji, Nihon no denshi ongaku (Tokyo: Aiikusha, 2006), 216. 7. Mizuno Shūkō, interview with Kawasaki Kōji, in Kawasaki Kōji, Nihon no denshi ongaku (Tokyo: Aiikusha, 2006), 147. Here Mizuno specifically notes the February 7, 1962, performance with Ichiyanagi at Fugetsudō, as well as Tone’s solo performance on February 3, 1962, at the Minami Gallery in Tokyo. He characterizes their involvement in the Yoko Ono recital (May 24, 1962) at Sōgetsu Hall as “light,” interesting but essentially consisting of individually enacting her instruction pieces. The pier performance Tone recalls as a re-­creation of a prior, unrecorded event. Tone Yasunao, telephone interview with the author, January 17, 2006. Years later, as Sally Kawamura notes, three members of the group, Kosugi, Shiomi, and Tone, were asked by organizer Akiyama Kuniharu to perform as the Music group for the

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Tokyo Cross Talk Intermedia festival in February 1969 but were unable to agree on a joint work and in the end performed solo pieces. Sally Kawamura, “Appreciating the Incidental: Mieko Shiomi’s ‘Events,’” Women and Performance 19, no. 3 (November 2009): 329–­30. 8. Recording available on group ONGAKU, music of group ONGAKU. 9. As mapped out on the one-­page program, performance of the pieces began at 5:30 p.m. and ended at 10:30 p.m., with overlaps and occasional simultaneous starts; after Silly Symphony (the fourteenth piece on the program), the event closed with MĀLIKA, Kosugi’s work, featuring a “dance” by Tone to Kosugi’s sitar playing. Tone Yasunao, “Tone Yasunao One Man Show,” Minami Gallery, Tokyo, February 3, 1962, handbill (courtesy of Tone); see also Tone Yasunao, interview with Michel Henritzi, Revue et Corrigée, no. 46 (December 2000): 8. 10. Ichiyanagi in fact mistakenly recalled that the Music group members had attended the Osaka performance. Ichiyanagi Toshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, November 23, 1997. Tone, by contrast, states that no member of the Music group was in attendance, although each had a substantial sense of the event via excerpts broadcast on television and the performance’s “consecration” in the newspapers. Tone, interview with Henritzi, 8. 11. To note but a few connections, during his time at Juilliard and the New School for Social Research, Ichiyanagi had also studied with Stefan Wolpe and Henry Cowell (attending his groundbreaking world music course); his classmates and acquaintances had included Allan Kaprow (one of the many artists outnumbering musicians in Cage’s classes), Richard Maxfield (a student in Cage’s classes in 1958 and an instructor in 1959), Jackson Mac Low, David Tudor (they performed together at the Living Theatre in 1960), and Merce Cunningham (who introduced him to Cage). And of course Ichiyanagi was further connected to the art and performance scene by his then wife, Yoko Ono; the two hosted a variety of events and performances in their loft space, whose guests included Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim. Ichiyanagi Toshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, November 6, 1997. See also Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 80–­102. 12. Mayuzumi Toshirō, “Jon Kēji-­san 1,” Ongaku geijutsu 16, no. 12 (December 1958): 19–­23; Mayuzumi Toshirō, “Jon Kēji-­san 2,” Ongaku geijutsu 17, no. 1 (1959): 101–­5; Ichiyanagi Toshi, “Jon Kēji,” Ongaku geijutsu 19, no. 2 (February 1961): 10–­15; Yoshida Hidekazu, “Suijun takai sakkyoku, ensō: ‘Gendai ongakusai’ o kaerimite,” Yomiuri Shinbun, September 5, 1961 (evening ed.). Cage speaks of his conversation with Yoshida on Zen in 1954 in John Cage, “How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run,” in A Year from Monday (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 137. Yoshida is also the “Japanese friend” Cage identifies as guiding his haiku understanding for Atlas Elipticalis; see John Cage and Daniel Charles, For the Birds (Boston: Marion Boyars, 1981), 211, 232. 13. Akiyama had written Cage directly in 1952 to ask for scores, a strategy the group also employed with Arnold Schoenberg and Olivier Messiaen. Akiyama Kuniharu, “Akiyama Kuniharu,” in Dai jūikkai omāju Takiguchi Shūzō ten: Jikken Kōbō to Takiguchi Shūzō, ed. Fukuzumi Haruo, published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the Satani Gallery in Tokyo (Tokyo: Satani Gallery, 1991), 84–­85 (translated on p. 94). On the Experimental Workshop’s musi-

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cal works, see Akiyama Kuniharu, “‘Jikken Kōbō’ ni yoru ongaku no henkaku to kakuchō,” in Fukuzumi, Dai jūikkai omāju Takiguchi Shūzō ten, 30–­37 (with side-­ by-­side translation). By contrast, for example, in the comprehensive catalog for the Sōgetsu Kaikan exhibition in 1998, curator Yamamoto speaks of the Osaka show, and Ichiyanagi’s performance there, as the first “full-­blown introduction to [Cage’s] work,” as a preface to identifying a “John Cage shock” that followed Cage and David Tudor’s October 1962, performances at Sōgetsu Kaikan Hall in Tokyo. Yamamoto Atsuo, “Jon Kēji shokku,” in Sōgetsu to sono jidai, 1945–­1970 (Tokyo: Sōgetsu to Sono Jidaiten Jikkō Iinkai, 1998), 221. 14. Yoshida, “Suijun takai sakkyoku, ensō.” Judith Ann Herd has cataloged much of the explicit neonationalism and pan-­Asianism of many of the 1950s Japanese composers such as Mayuzumi. See Judith Ann Herd, “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music,” Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 118–­63. 15. The “Cage shock” phrase used to describe this visit is Yoshida Hidekazu’s. While it initially referred to the explosion in critical responses to the performance by an already broadly engaged and informed musical community, in subsequent years the phrase has tended to reduce this interaction to an arrival-­dissemination model. See Sōgetsu to sono jidai, 1945–­1970, 253–­54 and 220, for some of the critical reactions. 16. The phrase is Tone’s. See William Marotti, “Sounding the Everyday: the Music Group and Yasunao Tone’s Early Work,” in Yasunao Tone: Noise, Media, Language, ed. Brandon LaBelle (Los Angeles and Copenhagen: Errant Bodies Press, 2007), 19. On the rejection of composition, see Mizuno Shūkō, “Jon Kēji ga yatteru koto wa mezurashiku mo nantomo nai” [What John Cage is doing is nothing new], in Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku (Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai, 2002), 162. 17. Mizuno, interview, in Kawasaki, Nihon no denshi ongaku, 145. 18. Ibid. Mizuno describes this as “unintended sounds,” a kind of “nonconsciousness,” in contrast to a jazz style of improvisation in the groove. 19. Liner notes on the music of group ONGAKU CD list Tsuge as participating in the September 1960 performance, as well as in the January 1961 Wakamatsu Miki recital; Mizuno only recollected his participation at Sōgetsu Hall in September 1961. Ibid., 146. Shiomi, by contrast, recalls Tsuge and Tojima as present from the beginning and Tanno as departing fairly quickly. Shiomi Mieko, Furukusasu to wa nani ka? Nichijō to āto o musubitsuketa hitotachi (Tokyo: Film Art, 2005), 60–­61. 20. Koizumi became full-­time at Geidai in April 1960. Takeda talks of Kosugi and his sessions at his home, where Kosugi took advantage of Takeda’s high-­quality tape machine. Takeda, interview, in Kawasaki, Nihon no denshi ongaku, 216; see also Mizuno, interview, in Kawasaki, Nihon no denshi ongaku, 146, for his recollection of other sessions; and Shiomi, Furukusasu to wa nani ka?, 56–­59. 21. Koizumi Fumio, “Indo ongaku ni okeru sokkyōsei,” Bigaku 11, no. 1 (July 1960): 25–­46. Kosugi speaks of Koizumi’s influence in Kosugi Takehisa, “Paiku ga piano o kowashita!,” in Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku (Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai, 2002), 159–­61. 22. Kosugi, “Paiku ga piano o kowashita!” 159. 23. Shiomi, Fukukusasu to wa nani ka?, 60.

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24. Ibid., 63. 25. On the considerable presence of musique concrète in Japan in the 1950s, see Yuasa Jōji, “Gendai ongaku ni kōken shite kureta onkyō gishi,” in Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku (Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai, 2002), 151. 26. Shiomi, Fukukusasu to wa nani ka?, 63. 27. Tone, telephone interview with author; also see Tone, unpublished interview by Takashima Naoyuki and Shimazaki Tsutomu, Oiso, 1991. 28. A product of Soupault and Breton’s marathon writing sessions, the piece was the first surrealist work according to André Breton, Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York: Marlowe, 1993), 33. 29. According to Breton, the title originated in Valéry’s citation of a line from Verlaine’s “Art poétique”: “And all the rest is literature.” Ibid., 34. 30. Maurice Blanchot, “Reflections on Surrealism,” in The Work of Fire, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 86. 31. In a related example, Robin D. G. Kelley has argued for the African diaspora’s deep engagement, coeval participation, and even centrality within the surrealist legacy and the continuing productivity of its particular political openness. See Robin D. G. Kelley, “Keepin’ It (Sur)real: Dreams of the Marvelous,” in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Books, 2002), 157–­94. 32. For a sustained examination of the politics and engagements of this avant-­ garde activity in Japan circa 1960, and its creation of a radical artistic critique of the everyday world, see William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). 33. Tone Yasunao, “Ōtomatisumu to shite no sokkyō ongaku ni tsuite,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 15. Both referenced works are preserved on music of group ONGAKU. 34. Coeditor Urawa Makoto (the pen name of Ichikawa Akira) remarked that they had all benefited from the stimulation of “the Music group’s fight” but begged for their readers’ understanding for the consequent delay of the following issue after the editorial overburdening. Yamano Hakudai and Urawa Makoto, “Afterword,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 40. 35. Ikemiya Nobuo, “Sokkyō no dokyumento: Kūki no yō na ushirosugata,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 6. 36. Mizuno Shukō, “Futeikeiteki ongaku ni kansuru mondaiten,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 10. 37. This is the term, onkyō (typically rendered as “sound”), that identifies the new genre of electronic music emerging in Tokyo and spreading worldwide. See Novak, “Playing Off Site.” 38. Kosugi Takehisa, “Sokkyōteki ongaku sōzō no tame no nōto,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 12–­14. 39. Kosugi cites Koizumi Fumio, “Indo ongaku ni okeru sokkyōsei” [Improvisation in Indian music], Bigaku 41 (July 1960): 25–­46. This interest was perhaps most famously manifested in the droning jams of Kosugi’s Taj Mahal Travellers group, circa 1969–­75, but it arguably informs all of Kosugi’s subsequent work to some degree. 40. In Kosugi’s argument, the “contemporary” nature of his ethnomusicologi-

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cal referents contrasts provocatively with the “primitive” return inscribed in the historical European avant-­garde. 41. Peter Osborne, Philosophy in Cultural Theory (New York: Routledge, 2000), 87. 42. Takiguchi Shūzō, “Hitotsu no sōwa,” Geijutsu Shinchō 11, no. 4 (April 1960): 117, discussing artists of the Yomiuri Indépendant, where Tone and Kosugi would subsequently submit works. 43. On this broad interplay, see again Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, as well as the encyclopedic account of events in KuroDalaiJee [Kuroda Raiji], Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960-­nendai nihon bijutsu ni okeru pafōmansu no chika suimyaku [Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan] (Tokyo: grambooks, 2010). 44. On Tone’s particular background in Japanese and European surrealism, as well as (via Blanchot’s La Part du feu) his preeminent regard for automatism as the core of the avant-­garde’s revolutionary politics, see Marotti, “Sounding the Everyday,” 24–­28; and Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines. 45. Both recorded works are available on music of group ONGAKU. 46. Maurice Nadeau stresses how the collaborative piece was “offered as an experiment, in the scientific sense of the term, not as a new piece of ‘avant-­garde’ literature”; Tone’s essay for the Sōgetsu program the next year would similarly adopt a vocabulary from the experimental sciences in explaining their approach to sonic production, and its connection to this legacy. Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, trans. Richard Howard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 80. 47. Tone Yasunao, “Han’ongaku no hō e,” in Gurūpu ongaku I (concert program), Sōgetsu Kaikan Hall, September 15, 1961, 2. 48. Shiomi Chieko [Mieko], “Onkyō no obuje no sokkyōteki korāju: Onkyō to no taiwa,” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 17–­23. 49. Takahashi Yūji, “Face the Music,” SAC jānaru 19 (October 1961), reprinted in Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku (Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai, 2002), 288–­90. 50. John Cage, “Contemporary Japanese Music: A Lecture by John Cage,” ed. Fredric Lieberman, in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 196 (emphasis added), 197. On Cage’s “conceptual Orientalism,” and the related “contemporary chinoiserie” (as well as the “neo-­Orientalism” of composers like Takemitsu), see John Corbett, “Experimental Oriental,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 163–­86. 51. James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 139–­40. Pritchett accounts for such stylistic shifts within Cage’s internal artistic development in conjunction with his sudden fame.

Works Cited Akiyama Kuniharu. “Akiyama Kuniharu.” In Dai jūikkai omāju Takiguchi Shūzō ten: Jikken Kōbō to Takiguchi Shūzō, edited by Fukuzumi Haruo, 84–­85 (translated

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on p. 94). Tokyo: Satani Gallery, 1991. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the Satani Gallery in Tokyo. Blanchot, Maurice. “Reflections on Surrealism.” In The Work of Fire. Translated by Charlotte Mandell, 85–­97. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Breton, André. Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism. Translated by Mark Polizzotti. New York: Marlowe, 1993. Cage, John. “Contemporary Japanese Music: A Lecture by John Cage,” edited by Fredric Lieberman. In Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, edited by Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau, 193–­98. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Cage, John. “How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run.” In A Year from Monday. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967. Cage, John, and Daniel Charles. For the Birds. Boston: Marion Boyars, 1981. Corbett, John. “Experimental Oriental.” In Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, 163–­86. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. group ONGAKU and Takehisa Kosugi. music of group ONGAKU. Recorded May 8, 1960, and September 15, 1961. HEAR sound art library HEAR-­002, 1996, compact disc. Harootunian, Harry D. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Herd, Judith Ann. “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music.” Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 118–­63. Ichiyanagi Toshi. “Jon Kēji.” Ongaku geijutsu 19, no. 2 (February 1961): 10–­15. Ikemiya Nobuo. “Sokkyō no dokyumento: Kūki no yō na ushirosugata.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 6–­9. Kankō Iinkai. Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku. Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai, 2002. Kawamura, Sally. “Appreciating the Incidental: Mieko Shiomi’s ‘Events.’” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no. 3 (November 2009): 311–­36. Kawasaki Kōji. Nihon no denshi ongaku. Tokyo: Aiikusha, 2006. Kelley, Robin D. G. “Keepin’ It (Sur)real: Dreams of the Marvelous.” In Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, 157–­94. Boston: Beacon Books, 2002. Koizumi Fumio. “Indo ongaku ni okeru sokkyōsei.” Bigaku 11, no. 1 (July 1960): 25–­46. Kosugi Takehisa. “Paiku ga piano o kowashita!” In Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku, 159–­61. Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai. Kosugi Takehisa. “Sokkyōteki ongaku sōzō no tame no nōto.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 12–­14. KuroDalaiJee [Kuroda Raiji]. Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960-­nendai nihon bijutsu ni okeru pafōmansu no chika suimyaku [Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan]. Tokyo: grambooks, 2010. Marotti, William. Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Marotti, William. “Sounding the Everyday: The Music Group and Yasunao Tone’s

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Early Work.” In Yasunao Tone: Noise, Media, Language, edited by Brandon LaBelle, 13–­33. Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2007. Mayuzumi Toshirō. “Jon Kēji-­san 1.” Ongaku geijutsu 16, no. 12 (December 1958): 19–­23. Mayuzumi Toshirō. “Jon Kēji-­san 2.” Ongaku geijutsu 17, no. 1 (January 1959): 101–­ 5. Mizuno Shūkō. “Futeikeiteki ongaku ni kansuru mondaiten.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 10–­11. Mizuno Shūkō. Interview with Kawasaki Kōji. In Kawasaki, Nihon no denshi ongaku, 142–­59. Mizuno Shūkō. “Jon Kēji ga yatteru koto wa mezurashiku mo nantomo nai.” In Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku, 162–­63. Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai. Nadeau, Maurice. The History of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Howard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Novak, David. “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyō.” Asian Music 41, no. 1 (Winter–­Spring 2010): 36–­59. Osborne, Peter. Philosophy in Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Shiomi Chieko [Mieko]. “Onkyō no obuje no sokkyōteki korāju: Onkyō to no taiwa.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 17–­23. Shiomi Mieko. Furukusasu to wa nani ka? Nichijō to āto o musubitsuketa hitotachi. Tokyo: Film Art, 2005. Sōgetsu to sono jidai, 1945–­1970. Tokyo: Sōgetsu to Sono Jidaiten Jikkō Iinkai, 1998. Exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan and Chiba-­shi Bijutsukan. Takahashi Yūji. “Face the Music.” SAC jānaru 19 (October 1961). Reprinted in Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku, 288–­90. Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai. Takeda Akimichi. Interview with Kawasaki Kōji. In Kawasaki Kōji, Nihon no denshi ongaku, 215–­21. Tokyo: Aiikusha, 2006. Takiguchi Shūzō. “Hitotsu no sōwa.” Geijutsu Shinchō 11, no. 4 (April 1960): 116–­ 18. Tomii Reiko, ed. “1960s Japan: Art Outside the Box.” Special issue, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17 (December 2005). Tone Yasunao. “Han’ongaku no hō e.” In Gurūpu ongaku I. Sōgetsu Kaikan Hall, Tokyo, September 15, 1961, 2–­3. Concert program. Tone Yasunao. Interview with Michel Henritzi. Revue et Corrigée, no. 46 (December 2000): 6–­15. Tone Yasunao. “Ōtomatisumu to shite no sokkyō ongaku ni tsuite.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 15–­16. Tone Yasunao. “Tone Yasunao One Man Show.” Minami Gallery, Tokyo, February 3, 1962. Handbill. Yamamoto Atsuo. “Jon Kēji shokku.” In Sōgetsu to sono jidai, 1945–­1970, 221. Tokyo: Sōgetsu to Sono Jidaiten Jikkō Iinkai, 1998.

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Yamano Hakudai and Urawa Makoto. “Afterword.” Nijisseiki buyō 5 (September 1, 1960): 40. Yoshida Hidekazu. “Suijun takai sakkyoku, ensō: ‘Gendai ongakusai’ o kaerimite.” Yomiuri Shinbun, September 5, 1961 (evening ed.). Yoshimoto, Midori. Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Yuasa Jōji. “Gendai ongaku ni kōken shite kureta onkyō gishi.” In Kankō Iinkai, Kagayake 60-­nendai: Sogetsu Āto Sentā no zenkiroku, 150–­51. Tokyo: “Sogetsu Āto Sentā no Kiroku” Kankō Iinkai.

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Balinese Experimentalism and the Intercultural Project

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Andrew C. M c Graw

This essay is intended to enrich and problematize the theorization of experimental music through an ethnographic analysis of the scene in Bali, Indonesia. Balinese characterizations of what experimentalism is, its materials and relationship to broader cultural context, allow us to move beyond some of the common assumptions that have guided prior research in experimental music; Indonesian experimental music, or musik kontemporer, and therefore leads to a broader thinking of the category “experimental.” In this essay I am primarily concerned with the political and intercultural conditions that make experimentalism possible in Bali. Experimental music in Indonesia, and especially in Bali, is intimately linked to a history of complex intercultural encounters and state-­sponsored efforts to preserve and “upgrade” traditions first identified as such by the colonizing Dutch. Experimentalism and tradition, while often imagined as antagonistic opposites, are, in the Indonesian case, the obverses of the same coin: development. Development is figured as an effort to achieve modernity, a state partly characterized by the engineering of art as an apparently autonomous institution. Western ethnography has typically equated contemporary Balinese with their ostensibly ritualistic, premodern history, an image of the integrated praxis dreamt of by the historical avant-­garde,1 but one that obscures the view of contemporary experimental expressions, such as musik kontemporer (contemporary music), that self-­consciously proclaim their status as autonomous art.2 In this essay I outline the complex role of US cultural agencies in underwriting aesthetic development in postcolonial Indonesia. During Sukarno’s procommunist government (1949–­65), foreign support of experimentalism in Indonesia was based in a faith in the universality of modernity’s rational139

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ity, and was often encouraged “from the bottom up” by local artists and administrators. Following the violent installation of Suharto’s pro-­American New Order regime (1965–­98), foreign institutions moved energetically to revive symbols of traditional cultural particularity in order to resist the appearance of rampant westernization. During the New Order and the subsequent era of reform (reformasi), direct intercultural encounters facilitated by increased diplomatic and economic relations between Indonesia and the West have catalyzed local aesthetic experimentation. Recalling western characterizations of experimentalism, Indonesian composers identify its hallmark in a nebulous “freedom” (kebebasan). While this freedom sometimes appears as a manifestation of the artist’s independent will, it is just as often figured as a kind of commodity given, achieved, or bestowed through the intercultural encounter. Intercultural experimentalism, especially in the Indonesian scene, therefore remains a site of highly asymmetrical relations, raising questions regarding the exact nature of this freedom and of the ethics of this kind of international exchange. Many of the collaborations that serve as important catalysts for contemporary Balinese musik kontemporer reproduce relations of inequity through cultural relativism even as they appeal to a discourse of equitable interaction.

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Balinese Musik Kontemporer, a Brief Introduction Georgina Born refers to the “now global Cageian experimental movement” as a frame through which to understand experimentalism globally.3 Although many western observers have described Balinese experimentalism using Cagean keywords, most Balinese composers do not know who John Cage was. The emergence of self-­consciously experimental Indonesian music, musik kontemporer, in the late 1970s outlines a series of fleeting encounters with and local transformations of western radical aesthetics. Balinese composers’ comparative marginality within the well-­worn global circuits of modernism,4 the avant-­garde, and experimentalism (following the old routes of empire) suggests a frame for experimentalism wider than we have heretofore considered. Musik kontemporer emerged in the 1970s primarily at state-­sponsored institutions in Jakarta, Central Java, and Bali. Through a series of workshops, seminars, and courses sponsored by performers, composers, and administrators, many of whom had tangential links to western aesthetic networks, musik kontemporer was fostered first to represent the possibility of a truly national high art music. In practice, however, musik kontemporer composers more often referenced local rather than national aesthetic

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concerns. Balinese musik kontemporer was pioneered in the late 1970s by the composers I Wayan Sadra and Pande Madé Sukerta, both working in Central Java; they were followed in Bali by I Wayan Yudane, Dewa Ketut Alit, I Madé Subandi, I Madé Arnawa, Sang Nyoman Arsawijaya, Ida Bagus Gede Widnyana, and I Wayan Sudirana, among many others. Practically all of the composers associated with musik kontemporer are also expert performers and composers of more “traditional” (tradisi) and “neotraditional” (kreasi baru, lit. “new creations”) forms. Balinese experimentalism is, like prior forms, a primarily oral practice. There are practically no scores to refer to, nor is there the clearly defined ontological division between the “work” and the “performance” that has characterized the analysis of western music. By 2005 musik kontemporer had become both a sign of official, institutional modernity, as it emerged first in the state conservatory, and a rather antagonistic expression by conservatory graduates interested in critiquing the institution’s ossified aesthetics.

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Terminology The Indonesian term avant-­garde (sometimes garde depan) may refer to anything new or out of the ordinary, regardless of a creator’s intention. The Javanese composer Sapto Raharjo (1955–­2009) used avant-­garde and musik kontemporer interchangeably, suggesting that their aesthetic and ideological implications are aligned: “Musik kontemporer is a movement concerned with change—­an expression of struggle.”5 But this explicitly politicized view is not a widely held conception of musik kontemporer throughout Indonesia, and Raharjo’s characterization marks a philosophical and aesthetic division between various groups of kontemporer composers.6 While the western avant-­garde emerged to critique the institutional status of “art,” recognizing its tautological function as a space of presentation where, in the words of Jacques Rancière, “things of art are identified as such,” Balinese composers often use the term avant-­garde to describe both projects that seek to reify art as an institution and those that question it.7 If some Balinese musik kontemporer composers do not explicitly proclaim a mission of questioning the first assumptions of Balinese aesthetics and cultural institutions, their iconoclasms nevertheless often reveal the highly conventionalized nature of traditional composition. Through the rapid juxtaposition of disparate elements of different cultural worlds—­ quotations of contemporary and ancient local musics alongside references to West African, Japanese, and Brazilian styles—­musik kontemporer recalls the primitivisms of surrealism and Dada by encouraging audiences

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to ­reflect on cultural norms of beauty, truth, form, balance, and reality as possibly artificial arrangements. Some composers engaged with musik kontemporer have sought to shock audiences through unusual, if entertaining, means, as in Sadra’s use of live animals or Pande Madé Sukerta’s use of musicians hidden among the audience. Many Indonesian composers have defined musik kontemporer as that which lay audiences find to be “weird, unusual, confused and . . . not entertaining.”8 However, most Balinese composers are concerned to foster their audiences and to make their works intelligible to the public, in contrast to the stereotyped image of the western avant-­gardist, willing to accept posthumous appreciation. The Sumatran musik kontemporer composer Ben Pasaribu (1956–­2010) associated musik kontemporer with musik eksperimental (experimental music), suggesting that experimental describes “the style of music which combines Indonesian traditional instruments and Western musical instruments, including modification of traditional instruments to the possibility of playing the western scale . . . on gamelan instruments.”9 In Bali the term eksperimen (experiment, experimental) implies a particular approach within musik kontemporer, one evoking more direct associations with intercultural exchange. The young Balinese composer Sang Nyoman Arsawijaya (b. 1980), for example, comments, “The term has been borrowed from English because its international connotations are more appropriate [than local alternatives]; [eksperimen] encourages transfer between musics. It suggests [better than other terms] a new concept: the development of . . . composition.”10 The composer Ida Bagus Gede Widnyana (b. 1978) holds that eksperimen describes, better than indigenous terms, compositions that are sometimes less determined, and certainly less conventionalized, than previous genres. Widnyana traces these compositional methods to intercultural contact: “We have a term for experiment in Indonesian (percobaan) and in Balinese (mategar) but in traditional contexts musicians rarely use them because they actually don’t make music that is, in fact, ‘experimental’! Composers generally wait until their compositions are complete [settled, fully determined] before giving them to musicians. Ekspiremen [sic] first emerged among academic musicians who graduated from foreign institutions.”11 Widnyana further observes that experimental compositions (komposisi bereksperimen) should not be completely determined; musicians should be allowed greater improvisational license, aleatoric techniques might be involved, or, minimally, the work might involve such radical techniques that audience reaction cannot be predicted. Older, more conservative composers, including I Ketut Gede Asnawa (b. 1955), have avoided the outright adoption of the foreign-­derived eksperimen, offering instead poetic neolo-

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gisms such as reracikan anyar or kekawian anyar,12 which similarly suggest intercultural mixtures and new modes of composition.

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The Development of Experimentalism and Tradition The discourse of development (pengembangan) is what allows the Balinese to recognize tradisi and eksperimen expressions as such. Cultural expressions and artifacts identified as “traditional” are associated with a specific array of spatial and temporal attributes: local, rural, past. The traditional and experimental emerge as twins; the second term completes the dichotomies implied by the first. The experimental becomes global, cosmopolitan, urban, and future oriented, while tradisi is consistently associated with a sense of stasis, even if discourse allows it some degree of flexibility and change; eksperimen, then, embodies dynamism, even if cultural conservatives identify it as threatening. Prior to the teleological, historicist ideology of development, neither tradisi nor eksperimen existed as explicit, dichotomous categories of thought in Bali. In the discourse of the colonial era polemik kebudayaan (cultural polemic) of the 1930s, an elite class of highly educated Indonesians described “traditional” customs in sometimes negative terms; backward practices were to be erased through the adoption of modern, rational thinking imagined as universal (but western in origin). This apparently extreme view emerged in part as a negative reaction to colonial policies of reifying and imposing a depoliticized “tradition” on native populations as a way to defang nationalist movements.13 Several thinkers of the polemik kebudayaan argued that an emergent national musical culture should be developed through, in the words of the group’s intellectual leader, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, experimentation in the “laboratories” of national conservatories.14 The meanings of development changed significantly between the era of the polemik kebudayaan and the later period of economic globalization that characterized Suharto’s New Order. In the first case development was imagined to be a positive, internal means of self-­betterment, even if its inspirations were sometimes drawn from a “universal” modernity. In the second it was conceived as an imposed force from without that increasingly took on negative connotations as a means of neocolonial exploitation, an attempt to raise the “third world” to the level of “first world” rates of consumption and production through the increased penetration of western capital and media. In both instances development was based on a notion of cultural evolutionism (long abandoned in anthropology) as an ideology of progress.

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During the New Order both tradisi and eksperimen cultural expressions became the targets of successive, heavy-­handed, five-­year governmental development programs (replita). While the performative and material aspects of tradition were developed and “upgraded” for tourist economies and the exigencies of governmental identity politics, eksperimen forms were developed to be both a potentially national form of “high art” and a mode of expression intelligible and competitive within a global aesthetic and economic arena. State conservatories, national workshops, village fieldwork, and urban lecture series served as the laboratories for these projects. While tradisi was proper to the lower classes during the era of the polemik kebudayaan, during the New Order it increasingly became viewed as a resource for experimental expressions, and certain signs of tradisi merged with aspects of high-­class identity (ethnic chic). Experimentalism, on the other hand, could never be low-­class; it was automatically the product of the effete, even if their class status was based on a capital more cultural than economic. As it intersected with class, development (and the “taste” that distinguished “low” tradition from “high” experimentalism) was not simply a unilateral imposition from the first world but a manifestation of class divisions within local cultural groups themselves. During my fieldwork, experimentation was considered a self-­evident sign of the moderen and served as proof of composers’ solidly middle-­class, upwardly mobile, and cosmopolitan status.

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Global Politics/Local Experiments Although the intercultural character of much contemporary Indonesian experimentalism may appear novel—­a manifestation of the digitally interconnected new millennium—­the development of radical aesthetics in postcolonial Indonesia has long been associated with foreign interaction. For much of the twentieth century aesthetic development in Indonesia was a recurrent interest of foreign, primarily American, foundations. Prior to and following the violent instatement of the US-­aligned New Order in 1965, Indonesia was a major battlefield of the cultural Cold War, one in which both US and Soviet imperia struggled for artists’ imaginations. Following World War II, the US government coordinated its foreign cultural relations through an extensive and unprecedented state-­private network of official governmental agencies and private organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Asia Society.15 Asia held the attention of this network following the “loss” of China to Mao’s communists, North Korea to Stalin’s proxies, and Vietnam to Ho

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Chi Minh. The Soviet Union appeared to be on the edge of snatching up Asia along with its global population majority and strategic resources. With or without the help of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Sukarno was ousted from power on September 30, 1965, in an abortive coup in which his army general Suharto took control of the capital. Suharto promptly alleged Communist Party responsibility for the murder of six top generals and inaugurated a pogrom against all communists, their trade unions, and village organizations. American-­made weapons flowed freely between the army and village youths, precipitating one of the bloodiest massacres of the twentieth century. Between six hundred thousand and one million Indonesians were killed in less than five months, including up to 15 percent of the population in Bali.16 Against this backdrop, well-­funded American foundations—­Rockefeller prior to the 1965 regime change and Ford following it—­handled many of the interactions between Indonesian and American artists and cultures. Rockefeller was centrally concerned with “updating” the Indonesian arts by advocating an experimental, abstract expressionism in opposition to the perceived influence of Soviet realism. Beginning in 1949 the Foundation sponsored the “avant-­garde” artists they associated with the nationalistic angkatan ’45 (class of 1945) literary circle, as well as experimental theater groups, painters, filmmakers, composers, and choreographers aligned against Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (LEKRA), the cultural wing of Indonesia’s communist party.17 Rockefeller supported numerous Indonesian artists for study at top universities in Europe, Asia, and the United States, often providing generous per diems. In Indonesia the foundation stocked local university libraries, provided materials to painters, and supplied recording equipment and recordings to musicians. Unable to find abstract painting in Indonesia, Rockefeller officers investigating developments in 1957 suggested that local artists were “far behind the West in technique” but could take the “next logical step” with foundation support: “[Indonesian] painting has great vigor and there is much natural talent but the reliance on [realism] is too strong and no real emancipation can occur until these artists have completely absorbed everything the West has to offer, whereupon they can begin to develop their own styles with more sureness and independence.”18 Rockefeller officers characterized the western avant-­garde as “required reading” and the basis on which local experiments should occur. Similar rhetoric surrounds the foundation’s notes regarding its sponsorship of the Javanese choreographers Bagong Kussudiardjo and Wisnu Surjodiningrat, whose study in the United States and Europe in 1957 was understood by Rockefeller to “improve their leftist views” and

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“set free their imaginations.”19 Bagong’s own foundation would later help lay the groundwork for kontemporer dance and music in Java. Aesthetic valuation and guidance by US foundations continued a tradition of cultural arbitration in which the colonial power was invested with more authority than the colony to comment on its own cultural practices, an asymmetry that had been internalized by many Indonesians. Responding in 1957 to a request by the Balinese composer Tjokorda Agung Mas for support to study western music in the United States, Rockefeller sought advice from a former grantee, the Philippine composer José Maceda: “What would the effects of such a visit be—­would it be constructive for the subsequent development of Balinese music, or might it actually detract from [Mas’s] ability to contribute further to musical development in his indigenous situation?” Maceda responded:

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I feel that his formal education in Western music would enhance rather than detract from the development of Balinese music. Anyway, Balinese music has changed since the recordings of Hornbostel many years ago, and [pointing out that Mas played guitar and had a working understanding of western music theory] Western influence is bound to seep in. Perhaps, after more studies of Eastern and Western music are made by musicians from both hemispheres, a new universal musical expression may evolve from the music of Schoenberg, Debussy and other contemporaries.”20 Although Rockefeller apparently encouraged Balinese artists’ aesthetic imaginations inward—­in line with their ethnographic image as a distinctly ritualistic people—­the institution’s sponsorship of aesthetic experimentation in Java would later prove to have profound ramifications for the later development of Balinese musik kontemporer. The case of the Javanese dancer Gendhon Humardani, a Rockefeller grantee of 1961, provides the most salient example of the historicization of musik kontemporer. Trained in London as an anatomist, Humardani was granted Rockefeller support to study dance in New York under Martha Graham. Humardani was chosen over other candidates partly based on his interest in developing Indonesian national forms and his sponsorship of performances in Java that competed for audiences with leftist forms of theater.21 On his return to Central Java in 1971, Humardani became actively involved in experimental arts at the influential Center for Javanese Arts in Solo (Pusat Kesenian Jawa Tengah, PKJT). He assumed the directorship of the state conservatory there in 1975 and shifted its focus from preservation to bold experimentation. If

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Rockefeller sometimes encouraged Balinese artists to fulfill their classic ethnographic role as members of a traditional, ethnic community—­as in the case of Agung Mas—­its activities in supporting Javanese experimentation had the possible unintended effect of catalyzing (albeit somewhat later) the emergence of Balinese experimentalism. Humardani’s most adventurous students included a class of prolific Balinese composers, among them I Wayan Sadra and I Madé Pande Sukerta, who would then inspire composers working in Bali. If the Rockefeller Foundation, as an extension of America’s Cold War cultural policy, had the effect of encouraging Indonesian artists toward American radical aesthetics, the Ford Foundation sought to rein in the cultural forces its predecessor had helped to unleash.22 Many communist performing artists in Bali and Java had been slaughtered during the 1965–­ 66 regime change.23 With the cultural war won, Ford invested heavily in cultural revitalization through its Traditional Arts Project, a $100,000 program conducted between 1973 and 1980—­just as musik kontemporer began to emerge—­in which traditional performing arts in several villages were revitalized and documented. John Bresnan, director of the Ford office in Jakarta in the early 1970s, remarks that he “hesitated to step into a field that so deeply touched Indonesians’ sense of their own identity, [instead proposing] an all-­Indonesian committee to select [arts] projects we would support.”24 This concern to avoid the appearance of western interference in Indonesian cultural identity is ironic considering the foundation’s widely visible impact on the economic, governmental, and social organization of the nation, and it attests to the symbolic power of the performing arts in curating Indonesia’s image globally. Only occasionally sponsoring experimental projects, between 1988 and 2005 the foundation provided an additional $1.6 million for the continued “study and preservation of Indonesian performing arts,” while also subsidizing programs at the national conservatories, occasionally hiring Americans to train local faculty in ethnomusicology in order to document and analyze traditional forms.25 A peculiar catch-­22 emerged during the Cold War: US institutions encouraged radical experimentation to contest perceived Soviet competition in the cultural realm while Washington simultaneously fomented violent political and cultural clashes to encourage regime change. With the fires of social strife stoked beyond control, the mass slaughter of 1965–­66 endangered the very existence of symbols of cultural particularity needed to resist images of rampant westernization in Indonesia during the subsequent era of intense economic globalization.26 As an extension of US cultural, economic, and military influence, Ford’s preservation of traditional per-

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forming arts helped to counteract the appearance of increasing westernization during the New Order, aligned with the regime’s own obsessions with origins and tradition, and reflected western anxieties over cultural loss globally.27 After the fall of the Soviet Union, private organizations in the United States responded to the persistent defunding of cultural diplomacy through new granting programs. Ford continued to conduct programs primarily devoted to preserving tradisi in Indonesia while Rockefeller focused on exchange programs that brought Indonesian artists to the United States. Universities strove to close the gap in international communications by facilitating cultural exchanges on campus. By the 1980s increasingly inexpensive international travel assured a regular flow of primarily middle-­class US avant-­gardists to Indonesia, catalyzing a flurry of intercultural experimentalism. Following September 11, 2001, the US government scrambled to ­account for the failings of American public diplomacy. Agencies began to invest more heavily in the struggle for “hearts and minds,” often through heavy-­handed forms of propaganda. “Public (or ‘soft’) diplomacy” became a form of management for the contemporary neoliberal empire, geographically bounded not by the Cold War notion of a “free” versus “communist” world but by the nebulous distribution of “freedom” itself.28 Following the attacks, freedom became increasingly abstract and deterritorialized until it was a “signifier of American imperialism, . . . a harbinger of the ‘empire for liberty’ which combined the reinstantiation of the national security state with the pursuit of ‘virtuous war.’”29 Recalling the West’s Cold War focus on abstract expressionism against Soviet realism, a vague notion of “artistic freedom” would again become a keyword of America’s sprawling, post­9/11 “Enduring Freedom” campaign. In composition workshops in Indonesia following 9/11, the Balinese musik kontemporer composer I Wayan Sadra cited the difficulty of working with “ineffectual and corrupt” local state institutions and recommended that experimental composers appeal directly to increasingly well-­funded foreign organizations interested in supporting the arts in the “world’s largest ‘Muslim nation.’”30 Between 2002 and 2010 Balinese experimentalists increasingly sought sponsorship from foreign-­funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the Kelola Foundation and Arts Network Asia, both supported by the (Rockefeller-­funded) Asian Cultural Council in New York. Following America’s return to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2004, the foundation was able to more substantially underwrite international artistic col-

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laborations and activities on the island. Many Indonesian artists believed that foreign funding and intercultural collaboration allowed the creation of “freer” forms of experimentation.31

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The Intercultural Project Intercultural experimentalism in postcolonial Indonesia emerged first during the Cold War, supported by state and educational institutions.32 Funded by the State Department’s United States Information Service (USIS) in 1960, the US jazz clarinetist Tony Scott and the Carnegie Hall conductor Wheeler Becket both composed works in Indonesia combining Javanese, Balinese, and western instruments.33 By 1959 Indonesian artists supported by Rockefeller began collaborating with students of gamelan at the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), also funded by Rockefeller. Balinese artists became regular participants in the American Society for Eastern Arts (ASEA, later the World Music Institute) summer classes on the US West Coast beginning in 1963, where later their students would include minimalist composers such as Steve Reich. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Bali residencies of a number of western theater students, including Julie Taymor, John Emigh, Kathy Foley, and Larry Reid, coincided with the establishment of local experimental theater projects, such as I Kadek Suardana’s Sanggar Putih in Bali in 1976 and the Javanese choreographer Suprapto Suryodarmo’s Wayang Buddha experiments in 1974, both of which catalyzed early musik kontemporer.34 The founding in 1980 of Gamelan Sekar Jaya in San Francisco and later Gamelan Sekar Jepun in Tokyo further intensified intercultural interactions. While such interculturalism is often touted by its western practitioners as a site of equitable exchange,35 and recent Deleuzian-­Bourriaudian interpretations have foregrounded the nonhierarchic, rhizomatic play of “radicants” in intercultural aesthetics,36 we cannot yet completely dispose of a center-­periphery model in the case of most intercultural projects involving Indonesians. Recent projects engaging Balinese performers have included Evan Ziporyn’s A House in Bali (2009–­11), Cudamani’s Odalan Bali (2006–­9), Paul Grabowsky and I Wayan Yudane’s Theft of Sita (1999–­2003), I Madé Sidia’s Bali Agung (2010), and Robert Wilson’s colossal I La Galigo (2002–­6) among a number of other, smaller collaborations performed in Bali and abroad. A short analysis of A House in Bali, the smartest and most ethically self-­reflexive among these projects, reveals the ambivalence of the aesthetic freedoms available in intercultural experimentalism and demon-

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strates the complexities of representation and asymmetrical power relations that catch up so many intercultural experimentalists. A House in Bali combined the New York–­based Bang on a Can All-­ Stars chamber ensemble, western opera singers, four Balinese actors, and a fifteen-­member Balinese gamelan ensemble directed by the musik kontemporer composer Dewa Ketut Alit for performances in Indonesia and the United States between 2008 and 2010. The experimental opera was conceived and managed by the US composer Evan Ziporyn in collaboration with the director Jay Scheib and librettist Paul Schick. The production took its name from a 1944 memoir by the Canadian composer and ethnomusicologist of Bali Colin McPhee, who becomes the production’s protagonist. Musik kontemporer composers and performers closely followed the work’s rehearsals and premiere performance in Bali, seeking in it inspiration for their own experiments. Although it was composed by Ziporyn, authored by Schick, and directed by Scheib, many Balinese understood it to be an equitable collaboration (kolaborasi) between Alit and Ziporyn. The image of collaboration appeared widespread as well among audiences during later performances in the United States, despite detailed explanations in the program. While roughly half of the performers were Balinese, they contributed minimally to the shape of the production and served primarily as a labor force. The inequity of the intercultural encounter was exposed within the narrative of the opera itself but also, significantly, in the processes of its own production. Although its creators critically ruminated on the complexities, paradoxes, and inequities that determined McPhee’s earlier encounter with the Balinese, A House in Bali recalled the anti-­imperialist ironies of Joseph Conrad by reproducing the ideologies and conditions it appeared to critique. In the opera McPhee appears as a deeply troubled and problematic character. He was only able to fund his trips and lifestyle on the island with the help of his wealthy wife, Jane Belo, who is absent in the opera (and in McPhee’s memoir), allowing the creators to focus more squarely on McPhee’s interest in Balinese boys: the rumored relationship between McPhee and the child dancer Sampih dominates the opera, and pederasty is paradoxically mobilized to gestate the narrative’s formative growth. Their gender suggests that it will all end badly, or is at least incapable of producing cultural fruit. McPhee hopes communication has taken place between his music and that of the Balinese, between himself and Sampih. But Ziporyn’s A House in Bali answers that it was all miscommunication. McPhee’s representations of the Balinese were only a self-­projection of

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his own deepest fantasies; he revealed the interpreter rather than the interpreted. A House in Bali is thus a metarepresentation, a problematization of McPhee’s representation of and encounters with Bali and the Balinese. In the opera McPhee ogles the boy sexually as western culture ogles the Balinese from within the teleological ideology of modernity. To the McPhee character, the Balinese are like cherubs in a state of innocent premodernity—­as liberated as the western infant before society intervenes. Sampih stands for Bali, McPhee for the West, and their age differential serves as a metaphor for the then persistent theory of cultural evolutionism: Bali is “younger” than the West. But to the audience of A House in Bali this flattening is counteracted by the appearance of adult characters (Sampih’s parents) and by villagers protesting the exploitation of their land and labor at the hands of McPhee and his western coterie, an apparently self-­conscious reference to the very conditions that allow the production itself to emerge. Through his deep engagement with gamelan, Ziporyn, like McPhee, has earned the distinction of fluency in the cultural capital of others whose expressions retain auratic qualities. But the path of possibility offered to the western artist through intercultural experimentalism is laid with booby traps: temptations of appropriation, accusations of exploitation, dangers of rejection, and crises of identity. A House in Bali channels the unsettling anxiety of Conrad, E. M. Forster, and T. H. Lawrence, in which “the triumphalist experience of imperialism [is fragmented] into the extremes of self-­consciousness, discontinuity, self-­referentiality, and corrosive irony.”37 The project appears to be Ziporyn’s autobiographical, cautionary tale of overcoming the black hole of aesthetic identity to which his predecessor fell victim. The work appears to claim that real connection and identification with the other is impossible; intercultural experimentalism attests to the immemorial alienation that pulverizes each utopian possibility of full understanding. To the question of our ability to truly know the other, the production appears to proclaim, “No, not yet. . . . No, not there,” reinforcing the gulf of difference suggested by the philosophy of cultural relativism that emerged in the ethnography of McPhee’s era. Gusti Komin Darta, a Balinese musician involved in the production, appears to echo the same sentiment in his description of musical interaction between Bang on a Can and the gamelan. When one [musical ensemble] emerged (hidup, lit. “lived”) the other fell back (mati, lit. “died”). Because we are different, we didn’t become one. For example, even in sections in which we were

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supposed to play together, they [Bang on a Can] would perform with a stable tempo, but we would naturally raise and lower our tempo. But if we wanted to play with them, we needed to play with a stable tempo, to follow them, but this makes us feel as if our music has died. I felt that way. McGraw: Certainly this was on purpose? A metaphor, perhaps? No, I don’t think so. This would be a real collaboration: If we made an attempt to understand them, and to follow them and they made an attempt to understand us, to follow us. Maybe we were trying to make this happen, but it didn’t work, or maybe we weren’t trying to make this happen. I don’t know.38 Darta’s comments point to the different meanings interculturalists take from their representations. Emerging through collaboration, such signs are nevertheless often “enunciatively different,” sometimes producing radically different meanings for different performers and audiences.39 Although the western producers clearly anticipated the complex reactions the opera would elicit, they also knew that the audience might interpret the opera in ways that they did not intend and could never control.40 The wide interpretive gap opened through narrative ambiguity and combined with an orientalist visual feast—­the Balinese appear in premodern dress—­allows uncritical viewers to fall into the old grooves of imperialist nostalgia. Each observer must answer a series of questions. By mobilizing asymmetrical intercultural expressions to parody the modernism that conditioned McPhee’s encounter, does A House in Bali not inevitably reinscribe the images it apparently seeks to subvert? Can we hold producers responsible if audiences take their representation at face value rather than as a metarepresentation? Should they be blamed if the performance works to reinforce relations of inequity? Exploitation? Until now I have neglected the material base that underwrites many contemporary intercultural experiments and partly determines their processes. Intercultural projects often insulate themselves against accusations of exploitation by defending asymmetrical wages as a kind of charity, one that is no doubt useful to otherwise unemployed “third-­world” musicians but remains a dubious substitute for social justice. A complex system of geopolitical relations works against groups such as the Balinese and gives western interculturalists credit for, as Ziporyn rightly says, “simply  .  .  . showing

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up.”41 Western interculturalists can enter Indonesia with a $25 tourist visa, need not register with any government agencies, and can easily round up a large group of musicians and pay them third-­world wages. In contrast, Indonesian musicians must undertake a lengthy visa application process (often as single, young men from a majority Muslim nation), pay to travel far from home for a visa interview on another island, pay the $320 fee for a P3 visa, and pay another $250 fee (fiskal) simply to leave the country. Of course Indonesian performers rarely have the means, and so these fees, and their substantial airfare, are covered by the western partner, engendering a structure of indebtedness and sentiment of subservience.42 When Balinese musicians’ notes are determined by a western score, when Balinese dancers’ bodies are set in motion by western directors, we are reminded of Said’s point that the orientalist works like a ventriloquist to make the Orient speak. In such contexts, the Balinese appear too transparently as the “self’s shadow.”43 By not engaging the Balinese as the producers of fully articulated texts in the intercultural encounter, such projects fail Gayatri Spivak’s requirement of “ethical responding,” by which the western interculturalist would engage agency in others to move beyond a simple recognition of their otherness. In an ethical response the other is not a mere voice, or “object of investigation,” but an equitable, creative agent.44 Through their appearance on the western stage under the direction of western managers, lay audiences may be led to believe that Balinese experimentalists cannot yet make “readable” contemporary art inside global aesthetic networks without foreign direction. Is it outside of musicology’s mandate to ask of intercultural experimentalists whether theirs’ is a culturally responsible art? Can we hope for anything more than that such projects be honestly self-­diagnostic, the unusual achievement of A House in Bali? What are the responsibilities of the intercultural experimentalist? How is it that conscientious intercultural artists often allow relations of inequity to persist in their projects? I contend that interculturalists have bought too fully into the notion of their interlocutors’ otherness. Reacting against the racism of cultural evolutionism, anthropologists following Franz Boas proposed a relativistic universe. The problematic effect of this model, however, was to impose a cognitive apartheid between cultural groups, as if to say, “If we cannot be superior in the same world, let each people live in its own.”45 Relativism amplifies difference. At its most mundane, cultural relativism functions to deny coevalness by making others’ way of doing things merely pretty. At its most extreme, the thought produces the same effects as cultural evolutionism; if we allow that others are different from ourselves in profound cultural ways, then it becomes difficult to imagine

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them as residing in the same moral universe. The difference implied by cultural relativism makes easier the practice of offering differential wages, creative rights, and authorial and managerial control, circumscribing the freedoms necessary for truly experimental practice.46 Richard Rorty rejects notions of justice, human rights, and freedom as particular, historical, (western) cultural notions that cannot serve as a basis of a universal ethics.47 He replaces these with an expanded notion of loyalty: “There has to be some sense that he or she is ‘one of us’ before we start being tormented by the question of whether we did the right thing.”48 Ironically, the cultural relativism that has guided modern ethnography—­for which “the Balinese” have long served as a favored trope—­has partly conditioned the persistently inequitable relations of intercultural performance by suggesting that our interlocutor is not truly one of us.

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Notes 1. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-­Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 2. The literature on experimental and popular music in Bali is dwarfed by the overwhelming ethnographic focus on traditional performing arts. On prior treatments of musik kontemporer see Andrew McGraw, “Radical Tradition: Balinese Music Kontemporer,” Ethnomusicology 53, no. 1 (2008): 115–­41. On popular music in Bali, see Emma Baulch, Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 3. Georgina Born, “Musical Modernism, Postmodernism, and Others,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 20. 4. Indonesia, and especially Bali, never experienced the kind of exhaustive domestication of Euro-­American musical modernism that occurred in other areas of Asia such as Japan, South Korea, and China. Balinese composers’ practice is primarily oral and for local gamelan instruments, and so their presence in such organizations as the Asian Composers League has been decidedly marginal. 5. Personal communication with the author, July 12, 2003. 6. Raharjo is referring to the experimental, shocking, or absurd works of young performance artists in Yogyakarta, including Marzuki, who composed a work for screams, as it were, by having his body shocked by hundred-­volt electric cables. In his dissertation on musik kontemporer in Jakarta, Franki Suryadarma Notosudirdjo-­Raden theorizes it as a form of national music; see Franki Suryadarma Notosudirdjo-­Raden, “Music, Politics, and the Problems of National Identity in Indonesia” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–­Madison, 2001). The Sumatran composer Ben Pasaribu similarly aligned musik kontemporer with “experimental music in the USA or avant-­garde music in Europe”; see Ben Pasaribu, “Between East and West: A Collection of Compositions” (MA thesis, Wesleyan University, 1990), 13.

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7. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. Steven Corcoran (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 23. 8. Pasaribu, “Between East and West,” 12. 9. Ibid., 13. 10. Sang Nyoman Arsawijaya, e-­mail message to the author, August 3, 2010, my translation. 11. Ida Bagus Gede Widnyana, e-­mail message to the author, August 3, 2010, my translation. 12. Personal communication with the author, July 15, 2011. Anyar is Balinese for new. Racik suggests mixture; kawi suggests creativity. 13. See, for instance, the Balinese author Wirjasutha’s 1939 critique of caste in Henk Schulte Nordholt, “Localizing Modernity in Colonial Bali during the 1930s,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (2000): 101–­14. See also Pasaribu’s revolutionary era calls for the adoption of western rather than indigenous forms as a model for Indonesian national music in Amir Pasaribu, Analisis Musik Indonesia (Jakarta: Pantja Simpati, 1986). 14. Sumarsam, Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 15. Liam Kennedy and Scott Lucas, “Enduring Freedom: Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreign Policy,” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 309–­33. 16. John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 17. Indonesian artists often played the Soviets off of the Americans to consolidate their financial base. According to a Rockefeller interview with Carl Anton Wirth, a composer supported by the American State Department who worked with the Indonesian State Radio Station in 1961, “Despite vigorous opposition and sniping by the Communists in the radio station and orchestra, I was able to weld the musicians into an effective group which gave a series of well received concerts in Djakarta, the final one being in the [Senayan] Sports Pavilion constructed by the Russians for the Asian Games. The [Rockefeller] instruments have arrived and are being well used except for the harp which was seized by [LEKRA] as a symbol of Capitalism. No one would learn to play it.” Boyd Compton, interview with Carl Anton Wirth, September 27, 1963, folder 54, box 4, Record Group (RG) 1.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. 18. Robert W. July, diary excerpt, May 24, 1957, folder 453, box 68, series 600, RG 1.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. 19. Boyd Compton, diary excerpts, June 26 and October 3, 1958, folder 62, box 5, series 652, RG 1.2 Rockefeller Foundation Archives. 20. José Maceda to Fahs, August 25, 1957, folder 449, box 88, series 600, RG 1.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. 21. Multiple documents, 1961, folder 48, box 4, series 652, RG 1.2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. 22. Ford had been providing grants in Indonesia since 1953, primarily financing technical assistance, instituting (western capitalist) economic theory, and supporting agricultural research and family planning. Only in the early 1970s did Ford begin to support local social science research and projects in the humanities. 23. Considering that many large performance troupes in Bali were politically

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polarized and often performed at propagandistic events, it is likely that performing artists represented a disproportionate number of the victims. 24. John Bresnan, At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, 1953–­1973 (Jakarta: Equinox, 2006), 175. 25. Nonetheless, Ford underwrote costs for Sardono Kusumo’s 1979 experimental choreography Meta-­ekologi ($1,213.88) as well as the seventh annual composers’ week in Jakarta in 1987 ($3,500). 26. Ford sponsored the training in America of a “modernizing elite” of Indonesians that managed the New Order’s development programs and opened the nation to increased American investment. 27. For more on the New Order government’s obsession with origins, see John Pemberton, On the Subject of Java (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). 28. Kennedy and Lucas, “Enduring Freedom,” 325. The Global War on Terrorism was described as a “war of ideas” in a report entitled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the White House, Washington, DC, September 17, 2002. 29. Kennedy and Lucas, “Enduring Freedom,” 325. 30. Comments made at a July 2003 workshop in Yogyakarta. Being nominally Hindu, and working with mostly nominally Muslim Javanese musicians, Sadra winked as he uttered the phrase “Muslim nation” (negara Muslim), to which the young audience chuckled. 31. Joko S. Gombloh, “I Wayan Sadra, Kita Tidak Memikirkan Kebudayaan Batin,” Gong 17 (2001): 8–­9. 32. This movement was prefigured by Artaud’s conception of “Oriental Theater” and his development of the “Theater of Cruelty” following his experience of Balinese performance at the 1931 World Exposition in Paris. During the same era a cadre of American and European dancers with little or no training in Indonesian traditions performed imagined versions of Javanese and Balinese dance for audiences willing to accept dubious claims of authenticity. See Matthew Isaac Cohen, “Dancing the Subject of ‘Java’: International Modernism and Traditional Performance, 1899–­1952,” Indonesia and the Malay World 35, no. 101 (2007): 9–­29. 33. The USIS, the foreign branch of the United States Information Agency, closed in 1999. 34. On Western theater students in Bali, see Stephen Snow, “Intercultural Performance: The Balinese-­American Model,” Asian Theater Journal 3, no. 2 (1986): 204–­32; and Matthew Isaac Cohen, “Contemporary Wayang in Global Contexts,” Asian Theatre Journal 24, no. 2 (2007): 338–­69. On Balinese experimental theater, see Mari Nabeshima and Laura Noszlopy, “Kadek Suardana: An Independent Artist in Urban Bali,” Seleh Notes 13, no. 2 (2006): 14–­16. 35. See Judy Mitoma, Narrative/Performance: Cross-­Cultural Encounters at APPEX (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, 2004). 36. See Rossella Ferrari, “Journey(s) to the East: Travels, Trajectories, and Transnational Chinese Theatre(s),” Postcolonial Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 351–­66. 37. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 188. 38. Gusti Komin Darta, personal communication with the author, March 24, 2012, my translation.

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39. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Vintage, 1972), 143. 40. Evan Ziporyn, personal communication with the author, September 20, 2011. 41. Evan Ziporyn, “Essays after an Opera,” September 30, 2009, accessed August 2012, www.nothing2saybutitsok.com. 42. The P3 visa, unlike educational visas, is not bound by any labor law; it enforces no minimum wage. 43. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 35. 44. Sally A. Ness, “Originality in the Postcolony: Choreographing the Neoethnic Body of Philippine Ballet,” Cultural Anthropology 12, no. 1 (1997): 69. 45. Dan Sperber, “Apparently Irrational Beliefs,” in Rationality and Relativism, ed. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 179. 46. I do not intend to fall back into a Platonic notion of freedom here but to suggest that the particular freedoms that must underpin any intercultural experimentalism must be arrived at through interactions on as equitable a ground as possible. 47. Richard Rorty, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty,” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 45. 48. Ibid.

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Works Cited Baulch, Emma. Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Born, Georgina. “Musical Modernism, Postmodernism, and Others.” In Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, 12–­21. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Bresnan, John. At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, 1953–­ 1973. Jakarta: Equinox, 2006. Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-­Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Cohen, Matthew Isaac. “Contemporary Wayang in Global Contexts.” Asian Theatre Journal 24, no. 2 (2007): 338–­69. Cohen, Matthew Isaac. “Dancing the Subject of ‘Java’: International Modernism and Traditional Performance, 1899–­1952.” Indonesia and the Malay World 35, no. 101 (2007): 9–­29. Ferrari, Rossella. “Journey(s) to the East: Travels, Trajectories, and Transnational Chinese Theatre(s).” Postcolonial Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 351–­66. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Vintage, 1972. Frederick, William. “Dreams of Freedom, Moments of Despair: Armijn Pane and

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the Imagining of Modern Indonesian Culture.” In Imagining Indonesia: Cultural Politics and Political Culture, edited by James William Schiller and Barbara Martin-­Schiller, 54–­89. Dayton: Ohio University Press, 1997. Gombloh, Joko S. “I Wayan Sadra, Kita Tidak Memikirkan Kebudayaan Batin.” Gong 17 (2001): 8–­9. Kennedy, Liam, and Scott Lucas. “Enduring Freedom: Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreign Policy.” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 309–­33. Liem, Maya H. T. “The Turning Wheel of Time: Modernity and Writing in Bali, 1900–­1970.” PhD diss., WSD Leiden, 2003. McGraw, Andrew. “Radical Tradition: Balinese Music Kontemporer.” Ethnomusicology 53, no. 1 (2009): 115–­41. Mitoma, Judy. Narrative/Performance: Cross-­Cultural Encounters at APPEX. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, 2004. Nabeshima, Mari, and Laura Noszlopy. “Kadek Suardana: An Independent Artist in Urban Bali.” Seleh Notes 13, no. 2 (2006): 14–­16. Ness, Sally A. “Originality in the Postcolony: Choreographing the Neoethnic Body of Philippine Ballet.” Cultural Anthropology 12, no. 1 (1997): 64–­108. Notosudirdjo-­Raden, Franki Suryadarma [Franki Raden]. “Music, Politics, and the Problems of National Identity in Indonesia.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–­Madison, 2001. Pasaribu, Amir. Analisis Musik Indonesia. Jakarta: Pantja Simpati, 1986. Pasaribu, Ben. “Between East and West: A Collection of Compositions.” MA thesis, Wesleyan University, 1990. Pemberton, John. On the Subject of Java. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Rancière, Jacques. Aesthetics and Its Discontents. Translated by Steven Corcoran. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009. Rockefeller Foundation Archives. Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Roosa, John. Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Rorty, Richard. “Justice as a Larger Loyalty.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 45–­58. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993. Schulte Nordholt, Henk. “Localizing Modernity in Colonial Bali during the 1930s.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (2000): 101–­14. Snow, Stephen. “Intercultural Performance: The Balinese-­American Model.” Asian Theater Journal 3, no. 2 (1986): 204–­32. Sperber, Dan. “Apparently Irrational Beliefs.” In Rationality and Relativism, edited by Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, 149–­80. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind C. Morris, 21–­78. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Sumarsam. Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. White House. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, DC, September 17, 2002.

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British Experimental Music after Nyman

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Virginia Anderson

In the last twenty years or so, the features that constitute an understanding of “experimental music” have been shifted from those delineated by Michael Nyman in Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond to include the work of continental avant-­garde composers.1 Nyman had primarily defined experimental music in opposition to “the music of such avant-­garde composers as Boulez, Kagel, Xenakis, Birtwistle, Berio, Stockhausen, Bussotti, which is conceived and executed along the well-­trodden but sanctified path of the post-­Renaissance tradition.”2 Yet Bjorn Heile calls Nyman’s definition “anti-­European”;3 Christopher Fox castigates the book for “[its] central thesis, that a music called ‘experimental’ existed in a directly oppositional relationship to another music called ‘avant-­garde’”;4 David Ryan calls Nyman’s separation of the experimental and avant-­garde movements a “segregation”;5 and James Saunders claims that “the distinctions made by Nyman between experimental and avant-­garde music seem less clear with time.”6 This shift in understanding complicates what was already a muddle of multiple, contradictory definitions of what “experimental music” is. In the early 1950s, experimental referred both to the (mostly acoustic) indeterminacy of the Cage group and to the (mostly avant-­garde, even serial) work of the early European electronic studios. More recently examples have become so varied in social context and compositional technique that Joanna Demers could only define experimental music as “anything that has departed significantly from the norms of the time,”7 and the term lacks an entry in the present Grove dictionary. By now Experimental Music is not only a history of the experimental movement but also a historical document in that same movement; in other words, we can read Nyman’s text as evidence of how experimentalists in the 159

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1960s and 1970s conceptualized their practice. Although his taxonomy emphasized the “purely musical issues” of indeterminacy, notation, and musical structure, he also defined experimental music on more social grounds: “[I]t would be foolish to try and separate sound from the aesthetic, conceptual, philosophical and ethical considerations that the music enshrines.”8 The more recent trend toward conceiving a larger European “experimentalism” concentrates only on technical elements based in an “avant-­garde” canonic lineage and thus seems to cast aside important evidence of how experimentalism took shape historically.9 In the following essay, I shall examine aspects of Nyman’s taxonomy as it reflected the attitudes of Cornelius Cardew and other musicians in the English experimental movement, focusing in particular on the work of four “Leicester School” composers. The name Leicester School is the jocular invention of the composer John White, ironic because it confers associations of “lineage” on four composers (White, Christopher Hobbs, Gavin Bryars, and Dave Smith) who question the whole idea of traditional lineage to begin with. Even though they now write music that may sound to some ears as “unexperimental” as possible—­perhaps indicating to these more recent writers that they no longer belong in conversations about experimental music—­I will show that the Leicester School composers continue and extend many of the traits and tendencies that Nyman and his contemporaries used to define experimentalism in the first place. These composers’ indeterminate music in the 1960s and early 1970s was, in a social and philosophical sense, recognizably “experimental”; their more consonant music after 1975 is also “experimental” on the same grounds. In taking this approach, I follow the example of recent writers on experimentalism who understand elements of musical style to be part of a larger ensemble of social associations forged by historical actors. David Nicholls, for example, calls attention to the economic institutionalization of different networks: “[V]ery generally, avant-­garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it. The distinction may appear slight, but when applied to such areas as institutional support, ‘official’ recognition, and financial reward, the avant-­garde’s links with tradition—­however tenuous—­can carry enormous weight.”10 More recently Benjamin Piekut adapted Bruno Latour’s actor network theory (ANT) to the New York experimental scene in 1964.11 Latour proposed a “sociology of associations,” cautioning that “it is no longer enough to limit actors to the role of informers offering cases of some well-­known types. . . . Using a slogan from ANT, you have ‘to follow the actors themselves,’ that is try to catch up with their often wild innova-

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tions in order to learn from them.”12 Another example of such an approach can be found in Gavin Bryars’s foreword to a recent volume on experimental music, where he focuses on participants in experimental music as a social group rather than in terms of their lineage or techniques.13 He explains how the influence of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, and Young on Cardew planted “the seeds of a new and peculiarly English music.”14 Bryars also notes the impact of visual arts and Fluxus on the graphic scores and text compositions of the Scratch Orchestra and the impact of visual arts schools, not only on members of the Scratch Orchestra but also on British minimalist composers (who, inspired by the systems art group, wrote systems music). Bryars extends the story of English experimentalism beyond Experimental Music through the 1970s to include a week devoted to English experimental music at the Europalia in Brussels in 1973, Brian Eno’s Obscure label series, the Experimental Music Catalogue (a non-­profit publisher), and other endeavors. Bryars’s account of experimental music is not only movement based; it is also actor oriented, built from the personal interaction of its participants. People met, heard each other’s music, and exchanged ideas. Fluxus members attended Cage’s New School for Social Research classes; Cardew met Cage, Tudor, Wolff, and the pianist John Tilbury; Hobbs, White, and Bryars worked with Cardew, but they also met George Brecht (who lived in London in the late 1960s) and worked with the British systems artists. While noting an “aesthetic kinship” between minimalist artists and composers in New York, Bryars stresses that in England, “people [were] actually working together.”15 Such collaborations resulted in what some writers, such as Keith Potter, have analyzed as the shared beliefs and intangible values held by British experimental musicians.16 The following description of English experimental music culture ­relies on all aspects of these musicians’ behavior, including their stated frame of mind and other elements of their shared ethos. I will show that the cultural activities of the Leicester School remain largely the same—­ “experimental”—­even though their stylistic changes over the years are the most radical of the English experimental group. The British Experimental Ethos The Leicester School shares the same basic values as earlier English experimentalists, particularly from the late 1960s onward. From his compositions Autumn 60 through the final version of his 193-­page graphic score Treatise (1963–­67), Cardew’s philosophical ideas supported his compositional techniques using indeterminate—­ mostly graphic—­ notation.

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These early compositions allowed performers liberties within rules that are primarily musical. As these rules ask for (or imply) the use of conductors or preperformance agreements, most performers try to intuit the intention of the composer and formulate entirely musical interpretations.17 Toward the mid-­1960s, however, during the prepublication performances of Treatise, Cardew worked increasingly with improvising musicians (he became a member of the free improvisation group AMM). He also became interested in Fluxus (through indirect contact with Young through John Cale and direct contact with Yoko Ono).18 After 1967 Cardew expressed his philosophical ideas within the pieces themselves using text, instructions, or “verbal” notation. These compositions gave rules only to describe a performance situation and anticipate and prevent undesired interpretations. These later pieces thus depended less on the composer and more on the performance group to collaborate (or not) as a social unit in real time. Original performances, which might not be purely musical, were highly valued. This emphasis on discourse over musical technique can be found in the activities of the Leicester School composers, as we shall see. Cardew’s musical change was not a precedent for his later conversion to communism; it was in accord with the ethos of the experimentalism around him. Bryars, who had studied philosophy, not music, at university, had abandoned improvisation to study with Cage in Illinois. His text pieces feature interactions between performers and present music as a social activity. The Scratch Orchestra, founded by Howard Skempton, Michael Parsons, and Cardew in 1969 (and including White, Hobbs, and later Smith), could be seen as an alternative, “hippie-­ish” society.19 In the tradition of Fluxus, the Scratch Orchestra used both mixed media and intermedia; its members were composer-­performers (testing the nature of composition and performance in the process).20 These and other late 1960s indeterminate ensembles exhibit many traits that are still common to the Leicester School today. The first trait is an ironic approach to music history and the “great composer” lineage. For example, the “Beethoven Today” concert at the Purcell Room on September 25, 1970, commemorated the Beethoven bicentennial with arrangements and paraphrases of Beethoven’s music played by the Scratch Orchestra, the Portsmouth Sinfonia (of which Bryars was a founding member), and other ensembles and soloists. Almost every piece on this program was satirical, but Beethoven himself was not the target; instead, these performers satirized the idolatry of Beethoven. For example, White played selections from Beethoven’s piano sonatas on the bass tuba.21 For the interval, Hobbs and Bryars created a tape of four or five

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simultaneous recordings of the Eroica Symphony, which, as Bryars joked, resulted in “the kind of thing Beethoven might have done had Steve Reich not got there first.”22 These performers did not demolish music history; they democratized it. One category of musical activity in the Scratch Orchestra Draft Constitution, “Popular Classics,” focused not on greatness but on familiarity. Scratch Orchestra Popular Classics were pieces that most or all members knew well enough to improvise, which included pops concert favorites, “masterworks,” and experimental pieces. While Pierrot Lunaire and the William Tell Overture were listed as Popular Classics in the Draft Constitution, Riley’s In C and Hobbs’s Voicepiece were later added to the pantheon.23 The Portsmouth Sinfonia, a group of students from Portsmouth Arts College, where Bryars and Parsons taught, specialized in playing concert classics, including the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, and William Tell,24 on instruments in which they were not proficient. Some Portsmouth Sinfonia players, being musically illiterate, played their parts as indeterminate graphic scores.25 The second trait is an attraction to so-­called minor composers. Just as American experimentalists used nonwestern, especially Asian, music, the English experimentalists employed a large range of influences. These included noncanonized composers of art and popular music, Edwardiana, literature, visual arts, and nonwestern thought. The experimentalists tended only to lampoon music in the western art-­music canon that they liked. They rarely referenced British concert music (e.g., Elgar or Britten) or music in the central late romantic and early modernist tradition (from Brahms and Schoenberg through the Darmstadt School). The Leicester School composers, in particular, could not stand Brahms. In a lighthearted survey conducted by the Independent newspaper asking what cultural artifacts should be blown up to celebrate the New Year, 1995, Bryars offered the works of Brahms on the basis that it would free up time in the BBC schedules for the music of other Romantic composers. “It would also rid the world of a phenomenon which John White used to call ‘that development noise,’ which can be heard both in and out of the development sections of the symphonies, a study of which has sent too many composers down a blind alley.”26 Mahler, however, seems to have escaped their disdain because his music is not so doggedly developmental.27 His Sixth Symphony represented the brain (as the most “cerebral” piece) in the Scratch Orchestra’s Fantastic Voyage concert, “Pilgrimage from Scattered Points on the Surface of the Body to the Heart, the Stomach, and the Inner Ear,” at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on November 23, 1970. (The symphony was

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performed solely by Hobbs, who played the bassoon part.) On the one hand, Bryars liked the music of Mahler, Wolf, and the early Zemlinsky and Schoenberg because of its internal contradictions: “It has that quality of being dangerously tonal. It tries to go somewhere else, while trying to stay rooted.”28 On the other, the Scratch Orchestra and other groups, such as the Promenade Theatre Orchestra (or PTO), celebrated the music of Albert Ketèlbey, a composer of early-­twentieth-­century light classical music. The interests of these composers were, even in the 1960s, too eclectic to explain through the western “masterwork” tradition. The bulk of their influences comes from compositions by these “minor” composers, pop and folk music, and nonmusical sources. Bryars said that in a duo concert with John White in Rome in the early 1970s, “We did duets of John’s, some of my things, but we did Lord Berners’ Valses bourgeoises, Grainger’s English Waltz, Rachmaninov. . . . All those composers, like Satie, have been viewed as being marginal, as minor composers.”29 Berners is best known as the “English Satie” and is, with Grainger and other composers, part of a kind of eclectic “background,” or alternative canon, for Bryars. White also claims to have a connection with a changing roster of these “minor” composers (including Alkan, Medtner, Scriabin, and others) in “almost a spiritual sense.”30 Yet the PTO, a composer-­performer quartet founded by White in 1969, also referenced music lying completely outside the canon (salon pieces, folk, and music hall songs). Members of this group played their own minimalist compositions, but they did so, quite seriously, on toy pianos and reed organs. The PTO also arranged Edwardian popular songs (Shrapnel’s Carolina Moon) and wrote their own pastiches (Hobbs’s Oxford Street Walk). This mix of “serious” and “light” music and orchestration is a peculiarly British experimental trait; it also reflects late experimental eclecticism. At a Scratch Orchestra performance at the Munich Olympic Festival in 1972, Carole Finer realized an instruction in Christian Wolff’s Burdocks (1970)—­ the number seven—­by playing seven folk songs on her banjo. Cage, Feldman, and Tudor, who were in attendance, denounced Finer’s performance because they considered the “7” to mean seven individual sounds, not seven tonal pieces. Richard Ascough, who liaised between the Americans and the Scratch Orchestra, said, “They seemed to think that the performance was a sort of pastiche avant-­garde, which could be found anywhere around Europe. . . . They thought the whole thing was sort of relaxed.”31 Wolff, who was not in Munich, has since said, “[G]iven the nature of that particular group, . . . it would have been very beautiful,” and he attended a performance of Burdocks in 1994, in which Finer repeated her performance.32 The

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PTO and the Scratch Orchestra thus treated high art, neglected art, and so-­called low art with equal admiration and equal humor, quite differently from the “secondary aesthetic practices” that Bernard Gendron noticed in the use of popular music by the historical avant garde.33 Generally, the English experimentalists tend to integrate their sources at a compositional level rather than standing aside and placing them within musical frames and quotation marks. These composers use these sources in the same way that Duchamp used everyday items, as integral components of their art. This is a practical, even domestic, mode of music making that is closely connected with the visual arts, which leads to a third trait of experimentalism in England: its affiliation with visual arts and graphic scores. Like Fluxus, the Scratch Orchestra benefited from the membership of a number of visual artists, including Stella Cardew, Tom Phillips, Carole Finer, Stephan Szcelkun, Judith Euren, and David Jackman. Another Scratch Orchestra member, Keith Rowe, who is better known as the guitarist of AMM, was also a pop artist. Experimental musicians taught in such arts colleges as Bath, Winchester, and especially Portsmouth. Bryars and Parsons worked at Portsmouth Arts College; White, Hobbs, Tilbury, and Cardew gave guest lectures. Their contact with Portsmouth systems artists (Jeffrey Steele, Dave Saunders, and others) inspired White, Hobbs, and Parsons to create systems music, the first original process minimalism in Britain. Artists also accounted for the founding of the Scratch Orchestra and dominated its first mailing list. The Scratch Orchestra had an extraordinarily large female membership (at one point, almost 30 percent) for a composer-­performer ensemble.34 Most of these women were artists. Ilona Halberstadt was one of the few nonartists. A contemporary of Cardew’s who invited Cage and Tudor to her Oxford college in 1958, and had a significant early effect on Cardew’s philosophical thinking, Halberstadt lectured in politics and philosophy.35 Under her married name, Phombeah, both Halberstadt and her children took part in Scratch Orchestra activities. Finer, a lecturer at the London School of Printing, wrote five Improvisation Rites for the first Scratch Orchestra publication, Nature Study Notes, all of which use quotidian items (such as a deck of cards) and employ game play to speculate cogently on the limits and nature of composition (“Improvisation Rites” was the generic name for this kind of text piece, which were written by all members of the orchestra).36 Her other work is, however, purely graphic, often employing patterns that are seemingly inspired by textiles. The artist members may be given less space in Scratch Orchestra research because of their notation and media. Finer designed graphic scores

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that are not symbolic—­there is no specific correlation between shapes and musical symbols—­so they are difficult to analyze. Catherine Williams appears to have presented more performance art than written compositions (her contribution to “Beethoven Today” was to move around the hall blindfolded, with a stick, on the basis that Beethoven was blind).37 Because Williams’s work is physical rather than sonic, it escapes notice. After the breakup of the Scratch Orchestra, these artists moved away from music, so they simply became harder to contact than the (male) composers.38 The disparity seems to have affected all artists—­Tim Mitchell, whose graphic works use patterns and explore map directions, is as neglected as Finer or Williams—­but gender cannot be ruled out as a factor in their neglect. The Scratch Orchestra became increasingly political between 1971 and 1972, and the members who did not follow revolutionary Maoism had largely dropped out by 1973. In a way the music of the political groups that followed was postmodern (if not antimodern), but the artists abandoned much of the humor, game play, and invention that characterized British experimental music in the late 1960s, at least until the end of their Maoist phase. Composers who were musically trained turned to traditionally notated music rather than text notation, to minimalist systems rather than indeterminacy. However, we can still see evidence of these original experimental traits in the work of these composers, especially in the educational programs and compositions of the Leicester School.

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The Leicester School Although White, Bryars, Hobbs, and Smith (who joined the Scratch ­ rchestra after its 1971 politicization) no longer used indeterminacy as O their main compositional technique after 1973, their later work extended the tendencies we have already identified, including alternative historical influences, an indifference to high and low culture, and the composition of practical, day-­to-­day music. The name Leicester School only appeared in the mid-­1980s after Bryars had established music in the performing arts department of Leicester Polytechnic; it was a compositional and ideological “school” based at a physical school. This department, like the Scratch Orchestra and systems music, had a strong connection to the visual arts. Bryars began teaching at Leicester Polytechnic in 1971, in the fine arts department (the school had a policy under which performing artists were “embedded” in other departments). The range of technique and media in fine arts had greatly expanded in the postwar era, so Bryars supervised sound art projects. “Clearly in fine art there were some people who would

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be making tapes and doing performance on videos, and someone who had gone to the Royal College and studied painting in the 1950s wasn’t going to necessarily be the best tutor for them. So they would have a fine art tutor, but I would also co-­tutor them so they would have this other point of view and be reassured that they were not quite so far out on a limb as they thought they were,” he explained.39 The polytechnic system in Britain burgeoned in the 1960s as part of a trend to democratize education. ­Until 1992 polytechnic colleges focused on applied education, mostly in science and technology. Leicester Polytechnic, however, focused on fine and practical arts, including fashion (clothing, shoes, and corsetry), ceramics, glassware, and jewelry.40 This large art department embedded performing artists in practical arts, as well as fine arts groups, throughout the early 1970s. For instance, theater lecturers worked in the fashion design department and other areas that used staged displays. One of these lecturers, Noel Witts, instigated the development of a separate performing arts department, which opened in 1978 in a former education college in Scraptoft, a village outside Leicester. The Leicester Polytechnic performing arts department curriculum, which included dance, drama, music, and arts administration, was designed to be as practical as the fine arts program. From the beginning, students were allowed to try all disciplines and work with other performers; arts administration covered the business of performance so that graduates could survive as artists.41 Bryars wrote a curriculum that was different from music college or music department offerings, exploring “the things that made me the musician that I was.”42 He recruited musicians who he knew could deliver his program, including Smith, White, and later Hobbs. Since Bryars performed with these composers throughout the 1970s, he knew their musical ideas and strengths very well. Thus the compositional Leicester School implemented a practical application of its ideas through this curriculum. Bryars designed two streams of music history, pre–­twentieth century and twentieth century, to be run in tandem through the first two years of study, because he wished the students to know something of recent music from their first year.43 This double stream was unusual for a higher education history sequence in the late 1970s. Beyond these general streams, White felt that the curriculum was free: “Gavin . . . gave me (and Dave and Chris) complete freedom to teach whatever we felt like. No ‘Course Document’ to strangle oneself with! If country & western piano had seemed appropriate we could have taught it. Or In a Persian Market (Ketèlbey). We were basically trusted to get on with what we believed in.”44 The composers brought their practical work experience to composition

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and other courses. White worked in theater and television music, Hobbs also worked in theater, and Smith worked as an arranger, performer, and musical director for various groups, including Bryars’s and White’s ensembles, plus large political choirs and bands. Students were allowed to compose in a wide range of styles, but serialism was not formally offered as a compositional procedure. Bryars wrote, “We did not do classic serial analysis. Within the music history course there was a lecture on Schoenberg in which the principles of 12-­note composition were explained and I think there was a kind of viva in which students had to ‘spot the row.’”45 In effect Bryars relegated serialism to history only a few years after many (notoriously conservative) British programs had begun to accept it as a current compositional style. The curriculum was premodular, meaning that courses were not restricted to semester or term lengths. Lecturers could offer extended courses or short study sessions as they saw fit. This flexibility enhanced performance, composition, and research. White, Bryars, Hobbs, and Smith were all performers who regularly formed and played in each other’s groups, so performance took a central place in the department. Bryars hired specialists in modern music (e.g., the clarinetist Ian Mitchell) and early music (the lutenist Matthew Spring). Bryars had been an improvising bass player in the 1960s in the group Joseph Holbrooke with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley, but he subsequently rejected improvisation, worrying that the performer becomes identified too closely with his or her improvisations.46 Despite these reservations, Bryars included improvisation in the curriculum, with such teachers as Evan Parker and Paul Rutherford. Partly due to this decision, Bryars occasionally returned to improvised music making, performing in Joseph Holbrooke reunions. The Leicester Polytechnic jazz program also differed radically from that of other contemporary universities. Its big band was named the Leicester Bley Band, because it mostly played music by the alternative big-­band director Carla Bley, whose music possesses a combination of modern jazz, politics, eclecticism, and humor similar to the Leicester School style. Bley supported the band and its training group, Baby Bley, by sending her manuscripts to Smith to arrange for the groups, and she invited the Leicester Bley Band to open for her own at the Camden Jazz Festival. The premodular course system also allowed the lecturers to schedule large stand-­alone projects. Smith, for example, transcribed Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which the students rehearsed over the course of a year. At the time there was no complete score, as Reich worked this piece out with members of his ensemble in rehearsal. Using only Reich’s partial draft,

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which he obtained from Boosey & Hawkes, and the recording, Smith created the only complete performing score of this work that existed until 1998, when Marc Mellits was commissioned by Boosey & Hawkes to produce a full score. Smith’s score (only a dozen or so pages of A3 paper) is both practical and “experimental” in its rationalization of Reich’s manuscript. Rather than a conductor, the vibraphone player in Smith’s version leads the other musicians, who shift their downbeat patterns and sectional changes in response to this part.47 Students also performed in a mandatory mallet percussion ensemble throughout their study, no matter what primary instrument they played. Their repertoire emphasized transcriptions from the music of such alternative composers as Khachaturian, Liszt, Grainger, and Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique. The Polytechnic library had significant gaps in its holdings, but also unique inclusions. When he began teaching piano at Leicester, Hobbs was surprised to find that the library, while holding practically every piece by Liszt and Alkan available, did not have a single copy of Chopin’s piano music.48 Instead a library visitor would find rare copies of experimental music and other publications. The department itself boasted what may have been the best collection of music by Percy Grainger outside the Grainger Museum in Melbourne. Bryars put together the Leicester Grainger Archive with music donated by John Bird, Grainger’s biographer, and the Australian pianist Leslie Howard. The Grainger Museum then gave Bryars everything it had with permission to copy anything at will.49 Alongside the establishment of the institutional basis for their branch of English experimentalism, the Leicester composers created a body of work, often in an extended tonal postmodernist style, that emphasized “verbal” content. Thus Erik Satie is perhaps a more proximal musical model for these composers than Cage or Cardew. One of Bryars’s first performances at Leicester Polytechnic was on March 16, 1971, when he and Hobbs performed Satie’s Vexations at Fletcher Hall as part of a series entitled “The Invention of Problems.” Satie’s score famously includes the indication “Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se préparer au préalable, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses.” This indication is conditional: if one were to play the piece 840 times, one must prepare with silence and “serious immobility.” Although Vexations could be performed once as a miniature, it is more often presented 840 times as a test of stamina. Teams of pianists often take shifts for either a certain number of hours or a certain number of repetitions. Bryars and Hobbs performed Vexations, however, as a piece of music. They decided on a duo performance: solo performances were too strenuous and prone to errors, and team interpre-

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tations were too variable. Their performance, lasting fourteen and a half hours, observed the terms of Satie’s score rigorously, and Bryars’s report on the performance, as well as a history of other performances, is one of the best accounts of Vexations and its performance practice.50 Although British experimentalists and the Leicester School composers opposed the western canon, they formulated an alternative canon of Satie, Medtner, Alkan, Cage, Cardew, and others, with John White as its central current figure. Satie influenced the concision of White’s piano sonatas and other music. Bryars considers White to be perhaps more important than Cardew, using Satie as a parallel: “One might almost see a kind of parallel between the flow and ebb of the working relationship of Satie and Debussy and that of White and Cardew. Indeed, the extent to which the public, musical and otherwise, erroneously identifies the latter partner of each pair as being the more important and influential partially confirms the analogy.”51 There is a Satiean element in the miniatures, jokes, and puns that these four composers use—­these jokes are often titular and applied to music of a more serious affect. Like Satie, these composers accord as much weight to satire, irony, and jokes as they do to more hefty topics. The wordplay in these pieces could be thought provoking rather than humorous. Bryars, in particular, writes music that is thoughtful and meditative, and so he has designed thoughtful, multilayered titles. Cross-­Channel Ferry refers to a method of travel and the ’pataphysical writer Jean Ferry. The physical performance can also reflect the musical idea: in Bryars’s Ponukelian Melody (1975), based on Satie’s Pantin dansant and the Rose + Croix notebooks, the ends of pages rather conveniently determine the placement of silences to allow page turns, as well as to act as structural signposts. The toy pianos of the PTO and the battery-­operated synthesizers and amplifiers in Hobbs’s and White’s Live Batts! duo performances of the early 1990s are also physical symbols of their musical ethos. These composers do not evolve gradually from one compositional technique to another; instead they can make radical changes while retaining fundamental characteristics. In only a few years, White moved from the extreme minimalism of Sonata 43 (1969), in which single notes and sonorities are held for at least five seconds, to Sonata 95 (1977), a delicate and virtuosic waltz. Reflecting on this period, White describes the effects this change had on his appearance at the Europalia at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels in 1973. Having spent about 10 years doing kind-­of performance-­art pieces with Cardew and then repetitive minimalist (Brit-­style, not as mech-

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anistic as Riley, Glass and Reich) and musique trouvée stuff with the PTO, I found myself contributing music that had themes, harmonic strategy, and narrative content to a festival of contemporary music. Could this be interpreted as a backwards step? Not as far as I was concerned! If I remember rightly, there were people like Alvin Lucier there, doing well-­established modern-­type things with live electrics, and I just didn’t want to “join in the chorus.”52 Sonata 95 does not represent a “conversion” to accessible music for White; rather it represents one of a number of stylistic approaches that he adopts from piece to piece. Sonata 95 certainly presents no sounds to scare conservative audiences, but its features, such as a concluding whole-­tone scale and other eccentricities, link this short piece to Satie rather than the salon. Bryars has related the fast section of his Out of Zaleski’s Gazebo (1977) to the obsessive repetition of Satie’s Relâche, but this piece also has associations with Karg-­Elert, Berners, and Grainger. These associations remain, despite Bryars’s interest in other references over the years, perhaps most recently in his Grainger-­inspired piano variations Ramble on Cortona (2010). Just as the Scratch Orchestra’s and Duchamp’s readymade objets trouvé troubled the distinction between art and everyday life, the work of the Leicester School composers often expresses themes of the mundane. For example, White represented the samurai as a normal salaryman in The Merry Samurai’s Return from Work (1987), and he arranged the best-­known themes from Stravinsky’s Russian ballets as the playing sounds in a video game in Down at the Arcade with Igor (1982). This impulse can also be found in the treatment of musical “classics” and other types of found material. Pretty Tough Cookie is one of Hobbs’s many “readymade” pieces, based around an almost unnoticed horn ostinato in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. Hobbs’s other musical readymade and text sources include newspaper puzzles, knitting patterns, and soap opera guides.53 White’s electronic music, which he has been creating since the early 1980s, often includes novelty noises (dog barks, ray guns, farts, and belches). In Pagina tres puella (1985), he translated the captions of page 3 topless model pictures in The Sun newspaper into schoolboy “dog” Latin. Bryars takes pains to insist that his work Serenely Beaming and Leaning on a Five-­Barred Gate (1970) is not a satire of its source, Patience Strong (née Winifred Emma May, 1907–­90), who wrote sentimental and religious songs and poetry for The Daily Mirror and This England: “The piece is in no sense a ‘guying’ of Miss Strong’s work, for which I have a profound admiration and I recall, with pleasure, an enlightening hour spent over coffee with Miss Strong at

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the Charing Cross Hotel, London, one winter morning in 1970, when we discussed, among many other things, the piece here described.”54 Bryars treats Strong as respectfully as he does other sources, which include the recording of an old man singing in Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1972), English football (offered as a possible structure for Serenely Beaming), detective fiction (numerous examples), and eyewitness accounts in The Sinking of the Titanic (1972). Bryars’s stance is typical: although these composers often ridicule “great art” idolatry—­see, for example, Smith’s piano miniatures “The Mozart Defect” and “Postromantic Strauss Disorder”—­they show little aggression toward those who, like Strong, are considered “kitsch.” The Leicester School activities often reflect recreation, entertainment, and a bon vivant outlook. White creates punning names for groups—­the Garden Furniture Music Ensemble (a pun on Satie’s musique d’ameublement or “furniture music”) and the Farewell Symphony Orchestra (after Haydn)—­and pieces (e.g., Grieg Takeaway, a pun on “Greek takeaway”). His central message is one of bonhomie: “My ‘concert’ pieces are composed in the spirit of a person at a party, emboldened by drink, free to say things trivial, emotionally charged, quaintly old-­fashioned, placatory, thoughtfully constructed, contentious, profound (do what?), rabble-­rousing, commonplace, or plain silly, as the moment suggests.”55 Even here White summarizes his artistic purpose and makes light of it at the same time. His comment “do what?” refers to an English humor genre, Essex jokes (similar to the Valley Girl jokes in America in the 1980s). His ensemble piece Not WUT again! (no way, Shitface!) (1988), uses multilayered references in the title. It refers, first, to a musical direction in the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (mit Wut, or “with rage”). It is also an Essex joke (with WUT pronounced as the dialect word “wot”) and a play in meaning between “not-­WUT again” (the second piece of Not-­WUT, a category of White’s music that was less energetic than his WUT pieces) and “Not WUT again!” (meaning, “oh, no, not another WUT piece!”).56 And yet the title of Not WUT again! (no way, Shitface!) reveals nothing of the piece itself, any more than Satie’s Trois morceaux en forme de poire are actually pear shaped. Overt self-­promotion is a breach of etiquette for these composers. Although he is the best known of these four composers, Bryars took pains to declare in his interview that he had never sought promotion himself but was approached by agents who wished to represent him. He thinks that White is even less assertive: “John is not a pushy person. . . . I think John’s career path has been personal and absolutely honest, with fantastic personal integrity. He hasn’t ever, as far as I can think, gone for the main

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chance to make a buck and get his name in the papers.”57 Bryars wrote that because “English experimental music was noticeably without any official support . . . the music was able to develop without composers seeking an external approval and there was no real interest in self-­publicity.”58 This disconnect between the Leicester School and the mainstream contemporary music community has led to some odd commentaries. In a review of White’s fiftieth birthday concert, Paul Griffiths wrote, “[M]aybe it is some incentive to cultivate an esoteric personality if one has so blank a name as ‘John White.’ . . . White’s simplicity opens up a great conceptual hole into which one shovels approaches and arguments, and gets nowhere.” However, there is an equally clear indication that Griffiths was lost without the certainties of the post-­Renaissance tradition: “Boulez, though, is so much easier to understand.”59 English experimental music is, as Bryars wrote, “still little known,” despite its importance, but he added, “[O]f course, this is not ultimately something that would cause any distress to any of these composers.”60 White placed the work of the Leicester Polytechnic composers outside both mainstream and avant-­garde traditions: “The ‘Scraptoft Group’ was a lot of fun to be in touch with, in that we were able to share a wide range of musical discoveries with each other (and the students) without the threat of being laughed off the platform for not being totally under the spell of either Stockhausen or Malcolm Arnold. Bread rolls at dawn!”61 White’s call for bread rolls alludes to P. G. Wodehouse’s fictional Drones’ Club, whose members fritter away their time devising indoor cricket matches using bread rolls instead of balls. White’s reference, at the same time recreational, funny, and mundane, is typical of the Leicester School’s way of thinking. As we have seen, these composers share an attitude and overall approach to music making that is consonant with some of the ways Nyman talks about experimentalism, and exemplified by various groups in the 1960s and 1970s.62 Space precludes an exploration of anomalies in the Leicester School, most of which—­but not all—­arise from the activities of composers too young to have taken part in the experimental music about which Nyman writes. Some composers leave the experimental ethos temporarily. Hugh Shrapnel became concerned with political music in the 1970s, only to return to “experimental” compositional activity in the 1980s. They can leave permanently, as did Benedict Mason, a former composer-­performer with the Garden Furniture Music Ensemble. Of the younger composers, John Lely (b. 1976) works both with White in the LelyWhite Ensemble (a pun on the

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sporting goods clothiers Lillywhites) and with Nyman critics Saunders and Fox. Contact between experimental composers and other musicians, such as Bryars’s collaborations with the Hilliard Ensemble or Lawrence Crane’s emulation of Howard Skempton’s musical style, does not necessarily mean that Crane or the Hilliard Ensemble have adopted the experimental ethos. However, these later anomalies do not mean that we should ignore the importance of nonmusical factors when understanding English experimental music in its historical context. When we define this movement through its actors and their traits, the core of a unified experimental ethos begins to appear. The Leicester School, in retaining much of the same actors and attitude despite a radical change of technique, demonstrates just how important ethos has been to experimental music in England.

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Notes 1. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 2. Ibid., 2. 3. Bjorn Heile, “Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism,” Twentieth-­Century Music 1, no. 2 (2004): 174. 4. Christopher Fox, “Why Experimental? Why Me?,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, ed. James Saunders (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 8. 5. David Ryan, “Dal Niente Projects,” Research @ Chelsea 2 (January 2001): 11. 6. James Saunders, introduction to The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, ed. James Saunders (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 1. 7. Joanna Demers, Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 7. 8. Nyman, Experimental Music, 2. 9. Even the harshest contemporary critics of Nyman’s book acknowledged the more intangible facets of attitude and philosophy as defining features of experimental music. For instance, in his 1975 review of the text, Richard Middleton accepted these “‘abstract’ questions” as proof that experimental music was “a rather amateurish branch of philosophy and comparative religion.” Richard Middleton, review of Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, by Michael Nyman, Music & Letters 56, no. 1 (January 1975): 86. 10. David Nicholls, “Avant-­Garde and Experimental Music,” in The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 518. 11. Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 8. 12. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-­Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 11–­12. 13. Gavin Bryars, foreword to The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, ed. James Saunders (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), xiii–­xvi. 14. Ibid.

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15. Ibid., xiv. It would be natural to assume that since this is a foreword, the composers Bryars mentions would appear in the book that follows. Instead, they are hardly mentioned: White appears as a performer in a concert with Bryars and Dave Smith, another composer on the post-­Experimental Music scene (7); two pieces by Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, are mentioned briefly (23–­24, 303); Nyman’s Experimental Music is mentioned, albeit not always in a positive way; and Hobbs, whose Voicepiece is the first musical example in the original edition of Experimental Music, and who features prominently in Bryars’s foreword, is never mentioned again. 16. See, for instance, Keith Potter, “Some Aspects of an Experimental Attitude: An Interview with Michael Parsons,” Contact 8 (Spring 1974): 20–­25; and Keith Potter, “Some Aspects of a Political Attitude: Cornelius Cardew Interviewed,” Contact 10 (Winter 1974–­75): 22–­27. 17. Mauricio Kagel played in the first prepublication performance of Treatise, in Florence in 1964. Cardew complained of Kagel’s performance in Treatise Handbook (London: Edition Peters, 1971), ix, and there was little if any musical contact between the two composers other than this one event. 18. Cornelius Cardew, “One Sound: La Monte Young,” Musical Times 107, no. 1485 (November 1966): 960; John Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished (Matching Tye, Essex: Copula, 2008), 218. 19. I examine these politics in “1968 and the Experimental Revolution in Britain,” in Music and Protest in 1968, ed. Beate Kutschke and Barley Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 171–87. 20. Mixed media indicates the simultaneous use of different arts or artistic media; intermedia refers to a single artistic event that contains elements of different media. For example, Young’s Poem for chairs, tables, benches, etc. (1960) contains elements of music, dance, theater, and poetry. See Dick Higgins, “Intermedia,” Leonardo 34, no. 1 (2001): 49–­54. 21. “Beethoven Today,” concert program, Purcell Room, London, September 25, 1970. 22. Gavin Bryars, e-­mail message to the author, January 10, 2012. 23. Cornelius Cardew, “A Scratch Orchestra: Draft Constitution,” Musical Times 110, no. 1516 (June 1969): 617, 619. 24. Portsmouth Sinfonia, The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics, ­Columbia KC 33049, 1974, long-­playing record. 25. a.d.r., “Portsmouth Sinfonia,” in Source: Music of the Avant-­Garde, 1966–­ 1973, ed. Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 338–­39. 26. Gavin Bryars, quoted in David Benedict, “They’ll None of Them Be Missed,” Independent, January 2, 1995, accessed June 6, 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-­entertainment/theyll-­none-­of-­them-­be-­missed-­1566378.html. In 2003 I conducted a survey of composers whose works should be essential, important, or unimportant, either for study or personally, comparing it to a control group of musicologists, composers, and theorists from the American Musicological Society e-­mail list. Of the control group, 100 percent of the respondents considered Brahms an essential composer, both for study and personally; of the experimental group, none considered him essential. Of the Leicester School composers who responded, 100 percent considered Brahms unimportant.

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27. Christopher Hobbs, e-­mail message to the author, January 13, 2012. 28. Gavin Bryars, “An Interview with Gavin Bryars,” Klassiknet, n.d., accessed June 6, 2012, http://www.culturekiosque.com/klassik/intervie/e_bryars.htm. 29. Gavin Bryars, in discussion with the author, Billesdon, Leicestershire, September 7, 2011. 30. John White, in discussion with the author, London, March 7, 1983. 31. Richard Ascough, “Comment on Burdocks,” unreleased recorded interview, Munich, August 1972. 32. “Twenty-­Five Years from Scratch,” program, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1994; Christian Wolff, Cues/Hinwein (Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998), 256. 33. Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­garde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 18. 34. This information was gathered from Scratch Orchestra address lists. For more on this, see Virginia Anderson, “Aspects of British Experimental Music as a Separate Art-­Music Culture” (PhD diss., Royal Holloway, University of London, 2004), 327–­45. 35. Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew, 58. 36. In Nature Study Notes, ed. Cornelius Cardew (London: Experimental Music Catalogue, 1969), 13. Finer is spelled throughout as Fyner. 37. Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew, 420. Tilbury explains this as a translation of Beethoven’s disability as a musician to a similar disability for a visual artist like herself, but it could also have been a joke. 38. This was a problem for me in 1983, when I first interviewed Scratch Orchestra members, many of whom had long since moved on to other pursuits. In 2003, however, Internet searches revealed artists who had performed only once or twice. 39. Bryars, discussion with the author. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. John White, e-­mail message to the author, September 17, 2011. 45. Gavin Bryars, e-­mail message to the author, November 1, 2011. 46. Bryars stated, “My position, through the study of Zen and Cage, is to stand apart from one’s creation. Distancing yourself from what you are doing. Now that becomes impossible with improvisation.” Gavin Bryars, quoted in Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982), 136. 47. Dave Smith, telephone conversation with the author, March 3, 2012. 48. Christopher Hobbs, e-­mail message to the author, January 2, 2012. 49. Gavin Bryars, e-­mail message to the author, November 1, 2011. 50. Gavin Bryars, “Vexations and Its Performers,” Contact 26 (Spring 1983): 12–­20. 51. Gavin Bryars, “Satie and the British,” Contact 25 (Autumn 1982): 10. 52. John White, e-­mail message to the author, September 17, 2011. 53. I have written about Hobbs’s readymades at length in “Systems and Other

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Minimalism in Britain,” in the Ashgate Recent Researches in Minimalist Music, ed. Pwyll ap Siôn and Keith Potter (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013). 54. Gavin Bryars, Serenely Beaming and Leaning on a Five-­Barred Gate, in Verbal Anthology (London: Experimental Music Catalogue, 1972), 17. 55. John White, email message to the author, September 19, 2011. 56. “No way, Shitface” refers to a conversation about American slang between White and this author. 57. Bryars, discussion with the author. 58. Ibid. 59. Paul Griffiths, review of John White’s fiftieth birthday concert, The Times (London), October 31, 1985. 60. Bryars, foreword to The Ashgate Research Companion, xvi. 61. John White, e-­mail message to the author, September 19, 2011. 62. One could also find this experimental ethos in the activities of other contemporary English experimental composers such as Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton, who worked together as a duo throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Skempton’s work is particularly Satiean in its simplicity, repetition, and nondirectionality. Similarly modest, Parsons’s exploration of processes occurs on a microscopic, nonbombastic level. Both composers also compose music in an alternative tradition: for instance, Skempton’s “sweet” songs and tunes for accordions or Parsons’s rags and Macedonian pieces.

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Works Cited a.d.r. “Portsmouth Sinfonia.” In Source: Music of the Avant-­Garde, 1966–­1973, edited by Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn, 338–­39. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Anderson, Virginia. “Aspects of British Experimental Music as a Separate Art-­Music Culture.” PhD diss., Royal Holloway, University of London, 2004. Anderson, Virginia. “1968 and the Experimental Revolution in Britain.” In Music and Protest in 1968, edited by Beate Kutschke and Barley Norton, 171–­87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Anderson, Virginia. “Systems and Other Minimalism in Britain.” In Ashgate Recent Researches in Minimalist Music, edited by Pwyll ap Siôn and Keith Potter, 87–­ 106. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013. Ascough, Richard. “Comment on Burdocks.” Unreleased recorded interview, Munich, August 1972. Bailey, Derek. Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982. “Beethoven Today.” Concert program. Purcell Room, London, September 25, 1970. Benedict, David. “They’ll None of Them Be Missed.” Independent, January 2, 1995. entertainment/ Accessed June 6, 2012. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-­ theyll-­none-­of-­them-­be-­missed-­1566378.html. Bryars, Gavin. Foreword to The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, edited by James Saunders, xiii–­xvi. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

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Bryars, Gavin. “An Interview with Gavin Bryars.” Klassiknet (n.d.). Accessed June 6, 2012. http://www.culturekiosque.com/klassik/intervie/e_bryars.htm. Bryars, Gavin. “Satie and the British.” Contact 25 (Autumn 1982): 4–­14. Reprinted in the Journal of Experimental Music Studies. Uploaded December 25, 2010. http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk/emc/Jems.html. Bryars, Gavin. Serenely Beaming and Leaning on a Five-­Barred Gate. In Verbal Anthology, 16–­17. London: Experimental Music Catalogue, 1972. Bryars, Gavin. “Vexations and Its Performers.” Contact 26 (Spring 1983): 12–­20. Reprinted in the Journal of Experimental Music Studies. Uploaded March 17, 2004. http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk/emc/Jems.html. Cardew, Cornelius, ed. Nature Study Notes. London: Experimental Music Catalogue, 1969. Cardew, Cornelius. “One Sound: La Monte Young.” Musical Times 107, no. 1485 (November 1966): 959–­60. Cardew, Cornelius. Treatise Handbook. London: Edition Peters, 1971. Cardew, Cornelius. “A Scratch Orchestra: Draft Constitution.” Musical Times 110, no. 1516 (June 1969): 617–­19. Demers, Joanna. Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Fox, Christopher. “Why Experimental? Why Me?” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, edited by James Saunders, 7–­26. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-­Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Griffiths, Paul. Review of John White’s fiftieth birthday concert. The Times (London), October 31, 1985. Heile, Bjorn. “Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism.” Twentieth-­Century Music 1, no. 2 (2004): 161–­78. Higgins, Dick. “Intermedia.” Leonardo 34, no. 1 (2001): 49–­54. First published in 1965. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-­Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Middleton, Richard. Review of Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, by Michael Nyman. Music & Letters 56, no. 1 (January 1975): 85–­86. Nicholls, David. “Avant-­Garde and Experimental Music.” In The Cambridge History of American Music, edited by David Nicholls, 517–­34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. First published in 1974 by Studio Vista. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Portsmouth Sinfonia. The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics. Columbia KC 33049, 1974, long-­playing record. Potter, Keith. “Some Aspects of an Experimental Attitude: An Interview with Michael Parsons.” Contact 8 (Spring 1974): 20–­25. Potter, Keith. “Some Aspects of a Political Attitude: Cornelius Cardew Interviewed,” Contact 10 (Winter 1974–­75): 22–­27.

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Ryan, David. “Dal Niente Projects.” Research @ Chelsea 2 (January 2001): 12–­17. Saunders, James. Introduction to The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, ed. James Saunders, 1–­4. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Saunders, James, ed. The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Tilbury, John. Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished. Matching Tye, Essex: Copula, 2008. “Twenty-­Five Years from Scratch.” Program. Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1994. Wolff, Christian. Cues/Hinwein. Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998.

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Experimental Music and Revolution Cuba’s Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC

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Tamara Levitz

In 1969 Alfred Guevara—­director of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC, Institute for Cinematographic Arts and Industries)—­met with guitarist-­composer Leo Brouwer to discuss the formation of the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora (GESI, Group for Sound Experimentation)—­a collective that would compose music for films, documentaries, and newscasts produced by the ICAIC. Guevara hoped with this project to establish in Cuban cinema the type of experimental musical tradition he had witnessed in the Tropicália movement on a recent trip funded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to a conference, Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (New Latin American Cinema), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.1 Brouwer cast his net widely in forming the GESI: he asked for help from his friend Sergio Vitier—­a composer-­guitarist and member of the Cuban government’s official jazz ensemble, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna—­who gathered together a crew of excellent jazz musicians that included bass player Eduardo Ramos, flautist Genaro García Caturla, and saxophonist, flugelhornist, and recorder player Leonardo Acosta. The latter brought with him drummer Leoginaldo Pimentel and jazz pianist Emiliano Salvador, both of whom had played together in a rock group at the Escuela Nacional de Arte with the electric guitarist Pablo Menéndez—­a teenager from the United States who also soon joined the GESI.2 Haydée Santamaría from the Casa de las Américas provided a further link to singer-­songwriters Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, and Noel Nicola. During his three years 180

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as leader of the group, Brouwer offered these diverse musicians intensive music classes and organized jam sessions during which they composed for dozens of documentaries, films, and newscasts. Between 1972 and 1974 a series of events that included the founding of the Movimiento de la Nueva Trova (Movement of New Song), Brouwer’s departure, Eduardo Ramos’s assumption of the directorship, and the arrival of Sara González and other new musicians led the GESI in many new directions.3 They reunited for a celebrated concert at the Teatro Amadeo Roldán in Havana in 1976, only to disband in 1978.4 Guevara formed the GESI at a moment of extreme tension in the global history of experimental music. Mao Tse-­tung had launched his Cultural Revolution in May 1966, and a student revolt and general strikes had taken place in France two years later, in May 1968—­preceded and followed by protests, strikes, and uprisings around the world. That year Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in the United States, the Viet Cong had launched the Tet Offensive against South Vietnamese and US forces, and Alexander Dubček had initiated a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia that lasted until Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded in August. These events had contributed to a resurgence of vigorous debate about cultural politics in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Although experimental musicians in these regions had operated discursively within the context of Cold War politics since the late 1940s, the events of 1968 heightened their sense that they would have to take a stance on the divisive political crises.5 In spite of the tremendous relevance of Cuban music within the global Cold War context of the 1960s, the GESI has received no attention in the English-­speaking musicological world and is rarely if ever mentioned in most histories of experimental music published in North America and the United Kingdom. This neglect may have to do with the fact that scholars and concert promoters have tended to associate experimentalism with traditions specific to the United States, leading to the invention of the popular but possibly misleading notion of an “American experimental tradition.”6 Following Michael Nyman, scholars traditionally have identified experimentalism rather narrowly with the work of John Cage and defined it in opposition to the European avant-­garde.7 North American scholars who may have wanted to explore the GESI within this narrowly circumscribed intellectual context have faced the practical difficulties of obtaining recordings, films, and information. But even when these obstacles are not present, Cuban classical, avant-­garde, and experimental music traditions have remained off the radar in North American musicology.

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Music before Revolution By introducing the GESI into a North American academic context and setting it up in contrast to the example of Cage, I hope to shed light on the politics of what came to be known as “experimental music” in the late 1960s. Methodologically, I follow the examples of Eric Drott, George E. Lewis, and Benjamin Piekut. In a classic article, Lewis argued that Cage’s experimentation had been influenced by Charlie Parker’s improvisation, but that Cage had racially denied that influence and contributed to the scholarly classification of jazz as epistemologically other to the experimental tradition. Lewis notes key differences between “Eurological” and “Afrological” belief systems about improvisation: whereas African American improvisers constructed sonic symbolism with a view to social instrumentality, as well as form, European American experimentalists sought to challenge the premises of western classical music through indeterminate, aleatoric, and chance operations that suggested “freedom,” but they did not connect that freedom “to any kind of struggle that might be required in order to obtain it.”8 Lewis redressed these musicological abuses and explored the strategies that had historically disconnected African American artists from experimentalism in his monumental history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).9 Recently, Drott and Piekut have drawn on Lewis’s foundation to create new methodological frameworks for the study of experimental music and music in the 1960s. In his monograph on musical production during the “elusive” May 1968 revolution in France, Drott rejects the materialist practice of determining the politics of genre based on form or musical characteristics alone in favor of a historical approach that takes into account “the myriad ways in which genre mediates political expression.”10 Drott explores audience expectations, market categories, habits of consumption, associations that bind genres and social groups, and the correlations of certain patterns of taste with communities that give rise to idealizations about the social identity of genre. “Distinctions based on musical style, performance practices, modes of production and distribution, performance venue, institutional frameworks, and funding sources structure the space in which debates about music’s political utility take place,” he concludes.11 Drott also looks past cultural hierarchies by comparing musical genres from pop to free jazz and contemporary music. Piekut likewise rejects the idea of experimentalism as a static musical object with specific characteristics. He encourages scholars to move away from such ontological approaches—­which necessarily create arbitrary boundaries like those

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between experimentalism and avant-­garde music—­and toward performative means of defining the genre. Like Drott, Piekut sees genre as “fabricated” through “a network of discourses, practices, and institutions.”12 By situating his story of experimentalism somewhat arbitrarily in New York in the year 1964, Piekut opens up the possibility of exploring casual or overlooked connections between a range of experimental composers, performers, and critics in jazz, avant-­garde, and popular music. This strategy allows him to correct the misguided musicological tendency to distinguish hierarchically between genres and cultural traditions. Drott, Lewis, and Piekut leave readers with the impression that both African American and European experimentalism emerged in the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s in tandem with the political ideology of western liberalism. Piekut explicitly makes this point in his analysis of the work of Cage, whose practice of rigidly separating personal and public (or representational) spheres led in these years to what Piekut brilliantly analyzes as a dichotomous attitude of “mirroring liberalism” in his actions while “modeling anarchism” in his compositions and performances.13 Cage’s aesthetics were rooted in the liberal principle of individual free choice. In two foundational essays from the late 1950s, he defined experimental music in terms of a composer’s individual choice to “give up controlling sounds and rather discover means to let sounds be themselves.” The revolution of magnetic tape had changed the way music could be composed and heard in the western tradition, Cage argued, and opened up the possibility of “total soundscapes” that left the limited sonic experience of traditional compositional procedures far behind. Composers of experimental music had to approach this new sound world with empty minds, he warned, and abandon any attempt at authorial control in favor of passive observation. Cage’s aesthetic project resembles that of the Dadaists in the way it breaks with tradition and metaphorically evokes anarchism—­a connection he encouraged. But it inspires a passivity entirely at odds with the goals of social revolution. He displays his attachment to liberal thought and individual freedom by confessing that he uses the word experimental to “describe all the music that especially interests me and to which I am devoted” and by concluding that experimental music necessarily leads to theater—­that is, to public, aesthetic display rather than social involvement.14 Cage’s liberal ideas about experimental music caused a sensation in avant-­garde circles in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s and played a key role in establishing there the idea that experimentalists by their very nature opposed tradition and the status quo and were thus on the left of the political spectrum. Cage’s aesthetic ideas about anarchism resonated

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deceptively with musicologists Heinz-­ Klaus Metzger’s and Hans G. Helms’s Adornian-­influenced theories about class struggle, negative aesthetics, and avant-­garde music.15 The slipperiness of their dialogue is evident in an interview Cage recorded with Helms for the album Music before Revolution in 1968, in which Cage agreed to let Helms co-­opt his music for his Marxist critical project while also undermining Helms’s political intentions in every breath. Cage speaks in a bemused fashion about Mao Tse-­ tung, whom he praises for having found a solution to the division between rich and poor that allows people to “work together to solve the problems as they see them.” He argues that Mao didn’t understand “the complexities of modern music,” however. Cage also disparages the educational system in the United States and mocks what he calls the “stupid” listening habits of “average people,” whose ignorance leads him to the wary conclusion that perhaps “our proper business [as composers] is revolution” after all. When Helms asked him if he would want a “nonviolent revolution,” Cage hesitantly responds “I think so,” but then adds that this is “wishful thinking”—­a comment that causes both of them to laugh.16 The interview reveals Cage’s liberal politics, aesthetic rather than political priorities, and elitist rejection of popular taste. It also offered substantial support for the idea that the liberal Cage may have preferred to flirt with revolution in conversation rather than deal with its material reality. The example of Cage and the monographs by Piekut, Drott, and Lewis lead me to the hypothesis that there were many commonalities but also profound differences between the genre cultures of experimental music in the United States, Germany, France, and Cuba in the late 1960s, and also between the politics of musicians and composers in different socioeconomic, gender, and racial contexts working within these national frameworks.17 Composers of experimental music differed most in how they understood and temporally located the notion of “revolution.” In France and the United States, composers generally understood revolution as occurring in the future as the consequence of acts of protest or subversion against an existing order, as Drott’s study explicitly demonstrates (although experimental music is not his focus). Texts by Amiri Baraka and Frank Kofsky led many to associate African American experimentalism more precisely with the protest for civil rights, black nationalism, and black power.18 Cubans, in contrast, interpreted revolution from a Marxist and materialist perspective as having taken place in their own country in 1959, resulting in a transitional stage in which the country was transforming itself toward communism. In their struggle for national autonomy, they identified strongly with the African Americans’

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struggle for civil rights, however. Whereas in France and the United States experimentalists chose freely as individuals whether to embrace one political movement or party over the other, in Cuba they operated within a rigid framework dictated by the government from above.19 Finally, whereas in France, Germany, and the United States some musicians and composers identified romantically with the workers and condemned cultural elites, aesthetics, and the absolute work of art, the members of the GESI in Cuba thought of themselves as an elite that would lead the revolution by educating the people and protecting the autonomy of art.20 The GESI’s elitism differed from Cage’s, however, in that its members did not believe they had to teach the “stupid” masses to appreciate their individual ideas, but rather that it was their duty to manifest the will of the people through their dialectical interaction with them. The GESI thus offers a model of collective cultural production that challenges the liberalism of European and North American experimentalism. Its members captured Cuba’s transformation to communism in their music by replacing genre, racial, gender, and class distinctions with radical acts of fusion.

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Revolution In 1969, the year in which Guevara founded the GESI, the Cuban revolution was a mere ten years old. Fidel’s young government had neither established all of its cultural institutions nor set all of its ideological priorities. During this period, Andrei Zhdanov’s Soviet doctrine of socialist realism had remained something of an “invisible man” in Cuban cultural politics, in that Castro had somewhat supported it but never explicitly set it into practice, thus allowing it to control discourse in an elusive and ominous manner.21 It was a subject that divided intellectuals. At the beginning of the decade, for example, composer José Ardévol had warned that artists could not be neutral but rather had to align themselves with revolutionary ideology, and that composers had to resist devastating foreign influences and return to an authentic national style.22 In his controversial speech of 1961, “Palabras a los intelectuales” (Words to the Intellectuals), Castro suggested a more ambiguous cultural policy. Responding to the outcry over Sabas Cabrera’s film P.M., which displayed images of Cubans partying in clubs, Castro had cracked down on bourgeois entertainment by suggesting that he would support artistic freedom but only as long as it served the cause of the revolution. Revolutionary artists, he warned, “possessed full rights within the revolution but none outside of it.”23 Two years later Blas Roca (Francisco Calderio), secretary general of the Partido Socialista Popular

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(PSP), had criticized the politics of the ICAIC, disputing the value for the revolution of “decadent” bourgeois films—­including Lautaro Murúa’s Alias Gardelito, Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador, Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone—­and emphasizing cinema’s role in educating the people to revolution. Guevara had taken the upper hand in this debate by retorting that Roca’s plan for cinema in the revolution was reductive and underestimated Cuban audiences.24 All the while, Castro’s government was stepping up its control by nationalizing the press and the music industry with the founding, for example, of the Instituto Cubano de Radiodifusión (ICR, 1962) and Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales (EGREM, 1964). Throughout the “transitional” period of the 1960s, national revolutionary intellectuals who cherished artistic and formal freedom and communist revolutionary intellectuals more attached to party doctrine vigorously debated the cultural politics of their country.25 Che Guevara significantly influenced these debates through his essay “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba” (Socialism and Man in Cuba), which achieved mythical status after his assassination in 1967. Che rejected the idea that the individual had ceased to exist after the revolution (as critics of Marxism claimed) and argued in contrast that “advanced” individuals were needed to lead and teach the masses in new institutions. These individuals differed from Cage’s liberals, however, in how they were dialectically and emotionally connected to their people, and in how they sought to transform revolutionary consciousness rather than aesthetic taste. Che spoke of a new consciousness in Cuba that would lead to the emergence of a “new man”—­a revolutionary subject who embraced “a dual existence as a unique being and as a member of a community.” Playing into the generational divide that characterized Cuban political debate in these years, Che controversially rejected the older generation of intellectuals by describing them as being guilty of the “original sin” of not having a revolutionary consciousness—­a flaw he thought would be corrected in the first generations educated within the revolution. Che specifically addressed cultural production, rejecting art that served only as entertainment, art that was too simplified, “decadent” art associated with the past and capitalism, and the rigid doctrine of socialist realism. A new type of artist would emerge, he claimed, who would not be a mere state bureaucrat but rather would express the authentic voice of the people in the new society of postrevolutionary Cuba. With statements like this, Che strengthened Castro’s populist tone by emphasizing art’s necessary connection to the people, yet he also gave artists the impression of creative and formal freedom.26

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Following Che, a new, young generation of musicians and intellectuals came to see the revolution as being in a state of “permanent transformation.” A group of young writers took up Che’s call in a polarizing manifesto, “Nos pronunciamos” (We Pronounce), which was published in the first issue of El Caimán Barbudo—­a journal that would soon become a leading vehicle for polemical debates about art.27 The young writers who signed this manifesto expressed their fervent desire to fight for the revolution and to reflect in their works its complex social themes. Although they championed creative freedom, they condemned as “bad” any poetry that “repeated weak and worn formulas” or was “impregnated with a secondhand metaphysic to situate man outside of his circumstances.”28 El Caimán did not include many articles on music in these years, yet a year after the publication of “Nos pronunciamos” its editorial team arranged for Silvio Rodríguez’s first concert at the Museo de Belles Artes, thereby cementing the bond between new revolutionary poetry and singer-­songwriters, or what came to be known as nueva trova (new song). Musical developments in the 1960s profited from Castro’s two-­pronged strategy of consolidating the revolution simultaneously outward toward the world and inward toward his own people. Throughout the mid-­1960s he had played cat and mouse with the Soviet Union while also aligning himself with Mao’s China and increasingly with Latin America. Castro knew he had the eye of the world on him and the sympathy of many intellectuals in Europe and the Americas in the 1960s. This led him to walk a tightrope between the conflicting aims of his cultural politics: he supported internationally recognized Cuban artists and deeply rooted Cuban musical traditions, including the bolero, son, trova, danzón, and guaracha, even though he knew they had emerged from capitalist means of music production before 1959, yet evaded the question of their bourgeois decadence by appealing to their national character and historic resistance to the North American market.29 Further, although Castro adopted a policy of opposition to US imperialism, especially after the United States strengthened its economic embargo in February 1962, he allowed ambiguous relations with leftists living there. At the same time, the Cuban government put considerable energy into strengthening its political and cultural ties with countries across Latin America; Cuban musicians performed acts of political solidarity with Latin American allies in popular festivals staged throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1967, for example, the first Encuentro Internacional de la Canción Protesta (International meeting of protest song) took place at the Casa de las Américas—­an organization founded shortly after the revolution in 1959 to strengthen international relations and promote Latin America

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and the Caribbean culture. In 1968 Pablo Milanés, Rodríguez, and Noel Nicola—­three young songwriters who would later join the GESI—­were invited to participate in the recently founded Centro de la Canción Protesta (Center for Protest Song) at the Casa, which soon became a place of “authorized refuge” for Cuban musicians and has played a key role in international exchange to the present day. Castro’s loose and conflicted cultural politics and dramatically shifting relationship with the Soviet Union led to intense political contradictions in Cuba by the late 1960s. Pressured to form political and economic alliances with the Soviets or Chinese, Castro pursued a solitary path by launching the “radical experiment” of communism in the three chosen towns of San Andrés de Caiguanabo, Banao, and Gran Tierra in 1967, and by snubbing Soviet cultural ideologues by inviting the Parisian Salon de Mai to Havana the same year. Tensions between Cuba and the United States were rising during this period as a consequence of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act on November 2, 1966, which opened the door to massive Cuban emigration to the United States. And yet at the same time many leftists in the United States and around the world, enchanted by the widely marketed, legendary image of the murdered revolutionary hero Che Guevara, believed that Castro’s goals overlapped their own.30 Castro strengthened this impression by organizing the Congreso Cultural de la Habana in January 1968—­an event that brought together an international group of over four hundred Marxists, surrealists, Trotskyists, Catholics, and other intellectuals to debate the cultural revolution. In the speech he gave at this congress, Castro critiqued the Soviet Union and praised intellectual workers around the world who had joined Cuba in resisting US imperialist aggression in Vietnam and the economic blockade. His illustrious international guests subsequently signed a declaration of their common, unified aims.31 Three years later, at the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura in Havana, Castro shocked foreign guests, however, by expressing dramatic intolerance toward artists who did not serve the goals of the revolution, and by insisting that ideology trumped all aesthetic interests.32 Castro directed his venom particularly at leftist intellectuals in Europe and the Americas—­former allies whom he now accused of cultural imperialism. In the declaration published at the end of the conference, Castro cemented his long-­standing policy of persecuting homosexuals by stating that “the cultural media cannot serve as a framework for the proliferation for false intellectuals who claim to convert snobbism, extravagance, homosexuality, and other social aberrations into expressions of revolutionary art.”33 A few days after these comments

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appeared, writers across Europe and the Americas expressed their dissatisfaction with Castro’s turn in an open letter published in the New York Review of Books.34 These dramatic events of 1971 isolated Cuba and consolidated Castro’s malleable attitude of tolerated diversity within an intolerant governmental framework. The disjunction between policy and practice in evidence here has characterized Cuban cultural politics to widely varying degrees ever since.

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Music after Revolution The GESI functioned as a crucible for these opposing currents in Cuba in the late 1960s. Founded in the wake of what Brouwer describes as the “crisis” that followed the Congreso Cultural of 1968, the GESI walked a thin line between supporting and defying Castro’s increasingly rigid policy and maintained its neutrality by conveying an ambivalent impression of revolutionary commitment, youthful protest, and aesthetically motivated political disinterest. Its members worked within both a staunchly national and an expansively international context, and they overlapped liberal ideas of protest with the ideology of communist revolution by writing anti-­ imperialist protest music while following Castro in fighting for the revolution and remaining silent about the need for protest at home. They blurred seemingly irreconcilable differences between genre cultures and bypassed to a certain degree the nationalized music industry in Cuba by disseminating their music on cassettes and in live concerts. This capacity to live in a permanent state of transition between conflicting cultural policies and ideologies distinguished their musical practice from those of contemporary experimental musicians in France and the United States. The politics of the GESI’s members ranged widely from the emphatic revolutionary fervor of Sara González and the oppositional allegiance of Rodríguez to the expansive political subtlety and insight of Leonardo Acosta.35 As a group, they both suffered and profited from the factionalism in Cuban intellectual life caused by the government’s polarizing cultural policies: whereas orthodox party-­liners and champions of Soviet socialist realism viewed them with suspicion, at least in the first year of their existence, more liberal national revolutionary intellectuals, including Haydée Santamaría, Alfredo Guevara, and Quinto Pino Machado, offered them staunch support.36 Brouwer remembered 1969 as a year of “probation” during which the group was not permitted to perform on state television or the radio, Rodríguez dwells frequently on the sustained repression he experienced, and Acosta recalls that official organizations rejected GESI’s

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members as “hippies” and considered them “amateurs.”37 The combination of simultaneous acceptance and rejection caused the group to take on a “clandestine,” “underground” character that contributed to its later mythical status within Cuban culture. “Although everybody [in the group] was a revolutionary,” Vitier concludes, “the distance from official art was also evident.”38 The racial, gender, and sexual politics of the GESI reflected Castro’s policy of promoting equality for all Cubans while discriminating against homosexuals. The GESI’s members never commented on the interracial dynamics of the group.39 Sara González’s presence in the GESI also pointed toward an elusive gender equality: although she consistently tried to convince interviewers that there was utter equality in the group, between the lines her comments give the impression of a woman who felt inferior to her illustrious peers and was supported primarily by Pablo Menéndez—­who, in her words, “was the feminist of the group because his mother, Barbara Dane, was a singer.”40 Vitier remembered fondly that he had not realized what Sara could become and that he wished they would have hired the virtuoso trumpet player Elpidio Chapottin instead of González.41 This attitude resonates with Che Guevara’s machismo image of the “new man” and is also reflected in the lyrics of many songs produced by the GESI—­ especially in those by Rodríguez (who emblematically set Che’s manifesto to music in “Un hombre se levanta”). Although Milanés was allegedly presumed to be homosexual and was drafted in 1967 into the Unidades Militares para la Ayuda de Producción (Military Units to Aid Production), the group remains silent on this history.42 The GESI’s members were able to break down the boundaries between musical genres and political ideologies because they came from diverse musical and social backgrounds and were thus forced to converse across genre, class, and racial boundaries on a daily basis in their communal jam sessions. Their coming together represented a feat of cultural and genre fusion that Acosta saw as characteristic of the “Kafkaesque” nature of the times.43 The tremendous mixture of genre cultures within the GESI was not unusual in Cuban musical culture: Fernando Ortiz and other intellectuals had theorized the shedding, acquiring, and synthesizing of multiple cultures in Cuba (transculturation) and the racial, genre, ethnic, and social diversity at the root of the “mixture” (mestizaje) that characterized the “stew” (ajiaco) of Cuban national identity since the 1920s.44 Cuban cultural hierarchies differed from those in the United States and Europe, and slippage or blurring of boundaries between genres was hardly unknown. But even within this context, the Grupo’s members displayed remarkable

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genre flexibility. Several of them had started their musical educations and careers before the revolution and had become proficient in “bourgeois” genres ostensibly called into question by the revolution; they did not speak about this history but rather left their styles “unmarked” to remain under the government’s radar. Brouwer had a firm rooting in classical music, jazz, modernism, the avant-­garde, and film music. He had studied with Stefan Wolpe at Juilliard in the 1940s, attended the Warsaw Autumn International Festivals for Contemporary Music in the early 1960s, and befriended Luigi Nono, Peter Schat, and Hans Werner Henze.45 Acosta, on the other hand, had studied jazz before the revolution with Swiss trombonist José Raphel, and had traveled to New York City in 1955 to experience the music of his heroes. In 1958 he had founded the Club Cubano de Jazz, and in 1959 he had become a critic for the Prensa Latina. Later he became an eloquent historian of Latin Jazz and the GESI.46 Pablo Menéndez, in contrast, was the son of Barbara Danes, who had sent him to Cuba in 1965 at the age of seventeen to receive an education. Menéndez traveled regularly to the United States in the late 1960s and was deeply rooted in the rhythm and blues, psychedelic rock, San Francisco counterculture, and blues traditions there; he remembers teaching his colleagues in the GESI about Motown and the African American roots of popular rock and roll.47 Other members of the GESI were rooted in Latin American and Cuban traditions. González had studied viola at the Instituto de Marianao and the Conservatorio Amadeo Roldán and pursued a career in Cuban trova. Milanés grew up in Bayamo before the revolution and remembers listening to the music of Teresita Vera, Miguelito Cuní, and Barbarita Díaz, as well as North American Negro spirituals as a child. He shared with Eduardo Ramos a love of filin and a connection to jazz and Brazilian music. Brouwer set the tone for how the GESI defined itself as an experimental group, taking his cue from Castro’s and Che’s landmark speeches and declarations of the 1960s, yet enriching them with his experience of North American and European modernist and avant-­garde traditions. In an interview with Jaime Sarusky in 1971, Brouwer argued, echoing Che, that language and culture had changed in Cuba during his generation as a result of the revolution, and that music had to situate itself to reflect those changes. He lamented that Cuban music had stood still since before the revolution and become weighted down by its traditions; it needed to “become mobile” (constituirse en móviles) in order to transform itself in the new revolutionary context.48 Like the writers who signed “Nos pronunciamos” in 1966, Brouwer rejected the simplicity, bad poetry, and weak melodies of Cuban popular music of the past. And yet he did not think these weak-

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nesses could be overcome with Soviet-­style socialist realism. Finding refuge in the ideology of modernism, he encouraged his students to attain the highest possible level of technical advancement in their work as a way to mirror the reality of advanced social process in the Cuban revolution. In an unprecedented reversal of modernist teachings, however, Brouwer proposed applying the “experimental” principles of aleatoric and avant-­ garde music to popular music.49 By undertaking with his students a rigid, refined, self-­critical, and analytical study of a wide range of repertoires, and by systematically applying what he had learned to improving lyrics and inventing new compositional approaches to popular song, Brouwer hoped to resuscitate stagnant Cuban traditions and build a bridge between the musical tastes of pre-­and post-revolutionary generations of Cuban listeners.50 In contrast to Cage, who asked composers to experiment with aesthetic experience by giving up control over the outcome of their compositions, Brouwer asked composers to exert more control over their work with the goal of creating a historically and musically informed, learned rather than intuitive, and perfectly executed “new” popular Cuban song (nueva trova) adequate to the high ideals of the social project of the revolution. Mirroring the government’s emphasis on education, Brouwer offered members of the GESI courses in music history, aesthetics, counterpoint, fugue, musical forms, arranging, and composition taught by himself, as well as lessons in harmony, instrumentation, and orchestration with the North American–­born arranger Federico Smith, acoustics with the sound engineer Jerónimo Labrada, and solfège with Juan Elósegui, the first violist of the Orquesta Sinfónica.51 During Brouwer’s class students listened to a broad range of repertoire and analyzed it rigorously, and they ruthlessly critiqued their own work. Their repertoire included music by Sindo Garay; Manuel Corona; Gilberto Gil; Edu Lobo; Caetano Veloso; Chico Buarque; Herbie Hancock; John Coltrane; Miles Davis; King Crimson; Frank Zappa; Jimi Hendrix; Blood, Sweat, and Tears; the Beatles; Palestrina; Bach; Beethoven; Satie; Schönberg; Stravinsky; Webern; and Xenakis, among others. They also examined the films of Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa and dissected individual films such as Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud with music by Davis.52 And they performed with singer-­songwriters of nueva canción, especially Víctor Jara, Daniel Viglietti, and Violeta and Isabel Parra.53 Pablo Menéndez remembered that Brouwer taught music history from a Marxist perspective by speaking about it as a material manifestation of sociopolitical change and by bringing the group to visit a sugar factory to experience directly the means of production that

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financed their creative work.54 Brouwer felt that such academic study of a wide range of musical genres would lead musicians to experiment with those genres’ inherent characteristics and develop them to their fullest degree.55 He assured Sarusky that such experimentation with genre would not lead to the unnatural overlapping of incompatible styles as people feared, but rather to a fusion that reflected the abolition of class difference in Cuban society after the revolution and was evident in such great Cuban classics as José Fernández Diaz’s “Guantanamera.”56 Brouwer’s pluralistic pedagogical concept reflected his experiences as an internationally recognized Cuban artist who had studied at Juilliard and was deeply involved in global musical developments yet also felt a strong allegiance to the national revolution at home. He identified politically with Castro’s revolution and the international counterculture, which he had come into contact with during his visits to the Montréal Expo in 1967 and on his tours to Germany and elsewhere. Brouwer taught members of the GESI to aspire to the high technical and artistic level of the Tropicália movement and the Beatles.57 The latter played an exceptional role in Cuba, where they were both allegedly forbidden and outrageously idolized in the late 1960s and 1970s.58 Brouwer admired the Beatles’ progressive harmonies, daring songwriting, experimentation with “found sound objects,” collaborative compositional practices, and innovative recording techniques. Brouwer and his students faced thorny ideological contradictions in formulating their aesthetic theory in light of this broad educational program. How could they respect Cuba’s national traditions of popular song—­one of the alleged official focuses of their work together—­while acknowledging those traditions’ complicity with bourgeois ideologies in place in Cuba before the revolution? And how could they fuse Cuban trova with international popular, modern, and avant-­garde musical influences without appearing to succumb to imperial, capitalist interests? Members of the GESI responded to these challenges by supporting governmental policy in their public interviews while giving themselves free rein to experiment freely as musicians with a vast range of international genres and techniques behind the scenes. Like many of his Cuban peers, Brouwer evaded the problem of how to introduce international trends into Cuba by arguing that Cubans needed to open themselves up to the world to overcome decades of imperial and colonial domination. In a 1971 interview, Rodríguez likewise parroted the government in supporting continuity between Cuban music of the past and present; just as the revolution had found inspiration in the noble battles of the past, he argued, Cuban music of the present needed to

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remain rooted in a dignified tradition if it was to combat western imperialism successfully.59 A few years later, Nicola developed this idea into a more substantial theory about the relationship between nueva and alta trova in an influential article, “¿Por qué nueva trova?” (Why Nueva Trova?), in which he argued that “traditional” and “new” songs were historically linked in their use of the guitar—­an instrument of proletariats and office workers—­ but distinguished in their musical language. Nueva trova abandoned the romanticism of traditional trova and the sentiment of filin in favor of progressive and modal harmony, contrapuntal guitar lines, and less subjective, educational texts that manifested collective consciousness and mirrored the social psychology of working Cubans in a society in transformation after the revolution.60 Members of the GESI remained ambivalent about their relationship to modernism and the vanguard, however, in large part because of their shared belief that experimentalism was a prerogative of all Cubans engaged in the revolutionary transformation of their society. In an interview in 1971, Vitier, Rodríguez, and Menéndez expressed anxiety about resolving the contradictions between serving the revolution and creating autonomous art in the modernist tradition. Vitier worried that music was becoming too scholastic or “vacuous” but then evoked José Marti to remind his friends that art should serve its own ends and fulfill its own inner technical and aesthetic goals. Menéndez, the psychedelic rock buff in the group, responded that music should be spontaneous and was not meant to last, but Vitier corrected him to say that music had to be spontaneous and transcend the moment by providing a step in the path of Cuban culture, thereby evincing aesthetic and technical quality while also fulfilling its function in the revolution. Yes, Rodríguez agreed, music would never survive because of its technical achievements alone but rather should always mean something in history. They reflected back on Castro’s “Palabras a los intelectuales” by insisting that relevant art could also take place in bars or in the form of entertainment (pace Castro). Vitier concluded that members of the GESI shared a general sense of what it meant to “experiment” with Cuban music, but that they realized their intentions in different ways. Their experimentation departed from “experiential and organic feelings” to follow the paths of “renewal and transformation of the roots of Cuban culture.”61 In an interview almost thirty years later, Vitier, Ramos, and Nicola still resisted the term avant-­garde; Nicola tried to juggle the impossible aesthetic contradictions posed by the GESI’s music by describing the group as unique (distinto) rather than ahead of others (adelante or a la vanguardia).62 The conflict between modernist and nationalist ideals within the GESI

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crystallized in the teachings of Brouwer, who created considerable controversy by arguing that elements of Cuban music could be taken out of their original context and manipulated in new ways (as Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla had done in the 1920s). Rather than using classic components of Cuban music like the clave rhythm in a “clichéd” fashion (his word), as they had always been used, he preferred to discover the more complex semiotic “essences” of such gestures and extract them into musical cells—­or what he called a “styleme” (estilemo) in reference to Umberto Eco.63 Similarly, Brouwer enjoyed the idea of imitating or evoking Cuban instruments and using them creatively, rather than adhering to standard practice.64 This led to a painful dispute with Acosta over the role of Cuban percussion instruments in the GESI’s compositions: whereas Brouwer wanted to transcend traditional sounds by evoking them by other means or experimenting with instruments of other cultures, Acosta felt the group specifically needed somebody to play the conga (tumbadora).65 This “dispute over percussion” is mentioned in all the literature on the GESI, perhaps because it crystallizes so perfectly the national-­transnational space in which the music of the GESI unfolded in the late 1960s. The Janus-­faced nature of the GESI’s music is evident on the dozen albums it issued over the course of its existence, which also give evidence of the group’s liminal position within the music industry. These albums hint at the slippery cultural context in which the GESI operated simultaneously as a popular nueva trova rock band, respected Latin jazz ensemble, and secretive experimental film music collective. Members liked to think of the group as noncommercial—­a stance summed up in Vitier’s statement that music can’t be “managed or sold” and has to come from the people.66 They insisted that only a fraction of their enormous output had ever been recorded, and that they distributed the bulk of their music through the noncapitalist means of underground cassettes and live performance.67 For a time they operated independent of the nationalized Cuban recording industry and apart from the international record market (a position made possible by their privileged status within the ICAIC), but after 1971 Menéndez recognized the historic importance of the GESI’s project and thus took it into his own hands to help EGREM in organizing the way the GESI’s music would be recorded for posterity.68 The GESI’s record catalog offers interesting evidence of how the nationalized Cuban recording industry memorialized the group years after it had ceased its creative activity and devolved into a forum for soloists Rodríguez and Milanés (and to a lesser extent Nicola)—­who had all by that time become stars of the nueva trova movement.

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1. Cuba Va! Songs of the New Generation of Revolutionary Cuba (Paredon, 1971) 2. Canciones del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (Areito, 1973) 3. Grupo Experimental Sonora del ICAIC/Cuba (Areito, 1974) 4. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora/ICAIC 2 (Areito/EGREM, 1975) 5. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora/ICAIC 3 (Areito/EGREM, 1975) 6. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora/ICAIC 4 (EGREM, 1975) 7. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora: El hombre de Maisinicú (EGREM, 1975) 8. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (EGREM, 1975) 9. La Nueva Trova Cubana en Vivo (EGREM, 1976) 10. XX aniversario de la cinematografía cubana (EGREM, 1979) 11. 25 Años Cine Cubano Revolución, 3 vols. (EGREM 1984) 12. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC, four-­volume compilation (EGREM, 1997)69 The GESI’s first album was not released in Cuba but rather by Paredon in the US—­a label Barbara Dane had created with Irwin Silber in 1970, in part inspired by her experience at the Encuentro Internacional de la Canción Protesta in Havana in 1967, to record the music of leftist and liberation movements around the world. It gives excellent evidence of the group’s integration into the international counterculture. In his program notes for Cuba Va!, Silber framed the album in terms of Cuba’s national struggle for liberation from western imperialism. The GESI had rejected the false folk identity imposed on Cuba for decades by colonial powers, Silber wrote, in favor of a revolutionary music that expressed the Cubans’ “true national personality” and “non-­subservient relationship to world culture.” In the program notes that he wrote on behalf of the group, Menéndez likewise argued that the revolutionary Cuban artist had to examine his own roots and “all outside influences” to create “a fusion suitable to the new demands of a collective society based on entirely new values.” The GESI members felt “unrestricted in technique and style” and considered their music making not as the final word but rather as part of a continuing process.70 Menéndez criticized the Beatles’ music and other “world music” of the imperialist class for its “empty and negative content.” The GESI’s members, in contrast, operated without instruments and equipment because of the blockade; they identified with working Cubans, overcame

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their disadvantages through collective effort, and labored intensively in the fulfillment of their aims. The songs on Cuba Va! fuse elements of Cuban music, progressive rock, Beatles tunes, jazz, avant-­garde music, and nueva canción. On this album three singer-­songwriters in the group (Milanés, Nicola, and Rodríguez) realize Brouwer’s dreams of reinventing Cuban trova by composing songs distinguished for their sophisticated jazz arrangements, their progressive harmonies, and the revolutionary fervor of their lyrics. The title song, “Cuba Va,” (Cuba Moves Forward)—­originally composed for Felix Green’s film of the same name—­opens with Nicola’s rhythm guitar and a fuzzed guitar solo from Menéndez that echoes psychedelia and Hendrix. Nicola remembered that Eduardo Ramos used a makeshift bass made of a stick wound with telephone cords, Leoginaldo assembled a percussion set out of random parts, and he used a Cuban tres for this song.71 Milanés, Rodríguez, and Nicola joined forces to sing a love anthem that performs and markets the utopian possibilities of the Cuban revolution in a catchy rhythm. This song and others give credence to Susan Sontag’s theory that Cuban revolutionary art necessarily became an object of consumption for leftist tourists once it left Cuba.72 Nicola’s ironic “Reza el Cartel Allí” (“The Sign Says Here,” a critique of bureaucracy) starts with a much more disconcerting dissonance, disjunctive counterpoint, and mixture of styles. Nicola’s “Muros Transparentes” (Transparent Walls) returns to the psychedelic comfort of “Cuba Va,” augmented with whispering sounds, multitracked vocals painstakingly recorded on old machines (as Menéndez emphasizes in his program notes), Menéndez’s funk guitar, and recorded sound objects (including a metallic sound that evokes the cencerro) that resemble those on Sgt. Pepper’s. The Beatles’ influence is evident everywhere on the album, especially in the “baroque trumpet” solo of “Los Años Mozos” (The Young Years)—­created by recording a flugelhorn and speeding up the tape. Other songs, including “Su Nombre, Ho Chi Minh” (His Name, Ho Chi Minh), evoke the traditions of Cuban son and trova. Milanés’s “Eternamente Yolanda” (Eternally Yolanda) combined Genaro García Caturla’s iconic flute playing with luscious vocal harmony, contrapuntal guitar and tres patterns, and Milanés’s sincere singing style. Menéndez felt it expressed “what depths are possible in individual love once the whole society becomes unalienated”—­a message in line with Che’s teachings about the dialectic between the individual and the collective in the revolution. This song became one of their first hits. The ten subsequent GESI albums issued in Cuba and Spain (minus their four-­CD compilation set of 1997) offer a different impression of the

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group. Nueva trova still dominates on these albums, but the songs draw more heavily on Cuban traditions and Latin American nueva canción, suggesting that the GESI may have more strongly promoted its project of reinventing Cuban and Latin American national traditions when operating within Cuba.73 (More likely, however, it was EGREM that chose the nueva trova, Cuban focus on these albums). The live album from 1976 was taped in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona in July 1976 and documents the powerful countercultural mood in Spain one year after Franco’s death. Engineers at EGREM edited the album to include snippets of members of the GESI introducing certain songs, creating a concept album of sorts that performs a stirring history of some of the mythic moments of the Cuban revolution ritually memorialized in aesthetic forms. Although the GESI for all intents and purposes had ceased to exist at this point, the group’s performances here still exude the energy and sincerity of a youth movement captivated by the utopian possibilities of its country’s young revolution. The close miking, improvised arrangements, combative lyrics, and passionate singing give the impression that the GESI’s members felt they could bring about revolutionary change through the sheer power of their voices and collaborative music making alone. Their collective spirit comes to the fore in the extended Latin jazz number “Ekue,” in which they perform national liberation through Coltrane-­influenced improvisation, echoing the ideology of free jazz.74 González leads the ensemble, and the intensity of her performances and excerpts of ecstatic clapping that follow them again convey a strong feeling of communal love—­an affect championed by Che and rarely associated with the sound of the experimental music produced in Cage’s circle. The album Grupo Experimental Sonora del ICAIC/Cuba (1974) disrupts the impression that the GESI was just a nueva trova band, however. Almost all the songs on this album are instrumental and stylistically heterogeneous and conflate characteristics of avant-­garde, jazz, and popular music. The GESI members indulge here in much greater experimentation than in their nueva trova classics and give stronger evidence of the improvisatory process through which they collaboratively composed their songs. Their approach resembled that of Davis on Bitches Brew or the Rolling Stones composing “Sympathy for the Devil” in Jean-Luc Godard’s film of the same name, and consisted of engaging through open-minded improvisation and experimentation in the revolutionary process of moving toward a new social order (or completed song). The first song on this album, “Granma” (1971)—­a tribute to the yacht that launched the revolution—­has an unusual form uncannily reminiscent of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” especially in the dra-

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matic breaks between the contrasting solos by the GESI’s two major stars, Rodríguez and Milanés. The song opens with Vitier’s exploration of the boundaries between instrumental sounds and noise with manipulations inside the piano, improvisation on electric guitars, flute, and cymbals, and an eerie use of electronic sound that resolves into Milanés singing a strophic nueva trova anthem to the power of death that ends with a joyous, wordless verse sung by the whole band. The music then ebbs back into experimentation with instrumental and electronic sounds, but this section leads quickly to Rodríguez’s militant insistence that something more than memorials are needed to remember—­a message he conveys in a repetitive chorus sung in an ominous crescendo that reaches a deafening pitch. The GESI members were deeply proud of this song, which grew out of a collective effort, integrated all that they felt they had learned in their lessons with Brouwer, and originally lasted over twenty minutes.75 Their experimentation continues on Vitier’s brilliantly abstract “Danzaria,” which at first evokes Xenakis and Stockhausen in its dissonant counterpoint and layering of ostinatos but makes a curious left turn with the introduction of Menéndez’s fuzz pedal guitar and Vitier himself burping, grunting, and otherwise emitting nonsensical sounds. The album lurches back from this brink in the next song “La contradanza”—­Emiliano Salvador’s jazz improvisation on the Cuban genre of the contradanza—­a piece that distantly echoed Hermeto Pascoal, Astor Piazzolla, and Gerardo Gandini.76 This is followed by Rodríguez’s classic trova song “La oveja negra” (The Black Sheep), augmented by a Stravinskyian accompaniment of overlapping musical cells. After this point it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the genres of the songs that follow: Eduardo Ramos brings the group back to jazz-­inflected progressive rock with “Canción con todos” (Song with Everyone) before Menéndez ends with the psychedelic jazz adventure “Grifo, animal mitológico” (Griffen, Mythological Animal). The instrumental numbers included in Grupo Experimental Sonora del ICAIC/Cuba (1974) and the compilations of film music released after the demise of the group give a small sense of the music the GESI composed for film. Recall that Guevara had formed the GESI to compose music for films of the ICAIC, and although this remained the primary focus of the members’ activities as long as Brouwer functioned as their director (and until the nueva trova movement overshadowed them), their work in this medium remains entirely in the dark.77 Their official catalog contains two dozen documentary film scores, but their actual output is probably much larger, especially taking into account the music they contributed to Salvador Álvarez’s newscasts.78 These films are impossible to obtain in North America

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but occasionally available on YouTube. The music for the cartoon Mocho vs Cianuro Pirata Pirateado (1972) offers one example of the GESI’s eclectic approach. Group members draw on their vast range of musical references to create a patchwork of sonic symbols to match actions in the cartoon. Their sounds draw attention to themselves with playful abandon and often overwhelm the animated images.79 According to all members of the GESI, the “magic” occurred during the rehearsals for these films, in which they realized their wildest, youthful dreams of collective musical experimentation. Acosta remembers how Santiago Álvarez, perhaps “suffering from the same insanity that we were,” would ask them for music for a two-­hour film the night before it was to be premiered at some European festival, for example, and that “they would stay up all night composing it.”80 Like the Beatles, GESI members established in these jam sessions affective and musical bonds so powerful that their followers for decades contemplated their utopic potential. These undocumented sessions left no sonic trace, however. In the brutal years of hardship following the Cuban revolution’s deceptive summer of love, the GESI artists sustained hope by keeping their true experimentation a secret. It is difficult in an essay of this length to convey the excitement of Cuba’s Grupo de Experimentación Sonora. At every turn, its music topples expectations about experimentalism, disrupts entrenched listening habits, and confuses the boundaries between stylistic or genre canons. The members’ political clarity provides a welcome antidote to Cage’s cynicism, and their playfulness respite from experimentalism’s occasional heavy-­ handedness. The delicacy of their political situation puts into relief the discourse on music and politics in North America and offers perspective on the complex dynamics of experimentalism during the Cold War. The practices they developed for walking the tightrope between performing allegiance to the revolution and participating in an international countercultural protest movement would be replicated by many musicians in Cuba afterward, especially by Cuban hip-­hop artists operating after the “special period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union.81 It gives food for thought that Castro’s revolution created an ideal of fusion that broke down the hierarchies that haunted experimentalism in North America and Europe, and that it found one of its most adequate representations in an album produced in New York of music that resembled Sgt. Pepper’s. It is also astonishing that the profound political differences between the GESI and Cage did not prevent these artists from participating in the shared project of what they called “experimental music.” In fact, as the story I tell in this essay reveals, experimental music in the 1960s required interaction with

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political cultures of the Cold War but left the nature of those politics open. The musical outcome of such political engagement remained as arbitrary as the politics themselves, the function of experimentalism having been fulfilled in the sheer act of intersection itself.

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Notes 1. See Leonardo Acosta and Silvio Rodríguez, interviews with Jaime Sarusky, in Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC: Mito y Realidad (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2005), 65 and 85 (henceforth GES del ICAIC). This book includes an interview with members of the GESI from 1971, which had remained unpublished at the time, as well as interviews from 2000 that Sarusky conducted for the journal Revolución y Cultura. 2. Eduardo Ramos, Pablo Menéndez, and Leonardo Acosta, interviews with Jaime Sarusky, in GES del ICAIC, 47, 51 and 67–­68. 3. Ramos in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 46–­47. For details on other GESI participants, see Isabelle Hernández, “Hablar del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC: Más que la historia contada—­cuarenta años después . . . ,” in “50 Aniversario ICAIC, 1959–­2009,” special issue, Revista Cine Cubano On Line 13 (2009), accessed September 13, 2012, http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/revistacinecubano/digital13/cap10.htm; and Leonardo Acosta, Cubano Be Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba, trans. Daniel S. Whitesell (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 207–­8. 4. On the history of the GESI, see Leonardo Acosta, “¿Cómo y por qué surgió el GESI?” Special Dossier on the GESI, La Jiribilla 13 (2002), accessed March 2, 2012, http://www.lajiribilla.cubaweb.cu/2001/n13_julio/362_13.html; Leonardo Acosta, Del Tambor al Sintetizador (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1983); and Leonardo Acosta, “Soundtrack Experimentation in Cuban Cinema,” in Cubano Be Cubano Bop, 206–­10. See also Leo Brouwer, La Música, lo cubano, la innovación (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1989); Clara Díaz, Sobre la guitarra, la voz (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1994); and especially Sarusky, GES del ICAIC. 5. For insight into how deeply Cold War politics shaped the ideologies and practices of experimental and avant-­garde music in this period, see Ulrich Dibelius and Frank Schneider, eds., Neue Musik im geteilten Deutschland, 3 vols. (Berlin: Henschel, 1993–­95); and Lisa Jakelski, “The Changing Seasons of the Warsaw Autumn: Contemporary Music in Poland, 1960–­1990” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2009). 6. See David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1890–­1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Michael Broyles, Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). The tradition of associating “experimental music” with composers in the United States goes back in part to Wolfgang Edward Rebner’s “Amerikanische Experimentalmusik,” reprinted in vol. 3 of Im Zenit der Moderne: Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Bänden—­Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, 1946–­1966, ed. Gianmario Borio and Herman Danuser (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1997), 178–­89 (originally published in 1954).

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7. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 8. George E. Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,” Black Music Research Journal, supplement, “Best of BMRJ,” 22 (2002): 215–­46; see especially 216–­18, 222. 9. George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 10. Eric Drott, Music and the Elusive Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 5. 11. Ibid., 6–­7. 12. Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 19. 13. See Benjamin Piekut, “When Orchestras Attack! John Cage meets the New York Philharmonic,” in Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 20–­64. 14. John Cage, “Experimental Music,” in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 7–­12 (originally published in 1957–­58); and John Cage, “Experimental Music: Doctrine,” in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 13–­17 (originally published in 1955, entitled “Experimental Music”). See also, in the same volume, John Cage, “History of Experimental Music in the United States,” 67–­75 (originally published in 1959). 15. Amy Beal outlines a crucial phase in the history of these ideological formations in West Germany and the role Heinz-­Klaus Metzger played in establishing Cage as an experimental outsider and revolutionary in New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 16. See “Conversations with John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Hans G. Helms,” Music before Revolution, EMI 1 C 165–­28 954/57 Y, 1972, 4 LPs, transcribed and translated into German in the accompanying notes. See also Metzger’s provocative essay “Versuch über prärevolutionäre Musik” (Essay on Prerevolutionary Music), which is also included in this boxed set. For a more detailed analysis of the politics of avant-­garde music in Germany, see Beate Kutschke, Neue Linke/Neue Musik: Kulturtheorien und künstlerische Avantgarde in den 1960er und 70er Jahren (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2007). 17. For a broader analysis of the interaction of “avant-­garde” musics and politics around the world, see Robert Adlington, ed., Sound Commitments: Avant-­Garde Music and the Sixties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), especially the bibliography offered in his introduction, 3–­14. 18. See Drott, Music and the Elusive Revolution, 111–­53. 19. Susan Sontag describes well the difference between the individualism of the New Left’s cultural revolution in North America and the collective spirit of the Cuban political revolution in “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts (April 1969): 6–­19. 20. Compare Drott, Music and the Elusive Revolution, 40–­49. 21. The reception of socialist realism doctrine in Cuba has been the subject of much scholarly investigation. See Arturo Arango, “Con tantos palos que te dio la

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vida’: Poesía, censura y persistencia,” Criterios, accessed September 14, 2012, http:// www.criterios.es/cicloquinqueniogris.htm. See also Emilio J. Gallardo Saborido, “Un apócrifo: El realismo socialista,” in El martillo y el espejo: Directrices de la política cultural cubana (1959–­1976) (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 2009), 51–­56. Mariana Martins Villaça contextualizes these debates in relation to the GESI in Polifonia Tropical: Experimentalismo e engajamento na música popular (Brasil e Cuba, 1967–­1972) (São Paulo, Brazil: Universidade de São Paulo, 2004), chapter 2.1, “O realismo socialista cubano,” 50–­63. 22. See José Ardévol, “La música y su orientación en el presente cubano,” in Música y Revolución (Havana: Ediciones Unión/UNEAC, 1966), 128 (originally published in 1960); and José Ardévol, “Música y revolución,” in Música y Revolución (Havana: Ediciones Unión/UNEAC, 1966), 201 (originally published in 1961). 23. Fidel Castro, “Palabras a los intelectuales,” Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Cuba, 1961, accessed September 14, 2012, http://www.min.cult.cu/ loader.php?sec=historia&cont=palabrasalosintelectuales. Translations of Spanish-­ language sources are by the author unless otherwise noted. 24. Blas Roca (Francisco Calderio) launched the debate in “Aclaraciones,” Hoy, December 12, 1963. Roca’s and Guevara’s subsequent responses to each other are collected in Periódico Hoy: Aclaraciones, 2 vols. (Havana: Editora Política, 1964–­65); and Guevara’s Revolución es lucidez (Havana: Ediciones ICAIC, 1998), respectively. See also “Conclusiones de un debate entre cineastas cubanos,” La Gaceta de Cuba 23 (August 3, 1963): 8–­9; and Julio César Guanche Zaldívar, “Tensiones históricas del campo político-­cultural: La polémica Alfredo Guevara-­Blas Roca,” Perfiles de la cultura cubana 3 (May–­August 2009): 1–­8. 25. See Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego: Revolución, disidencia, y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 196–­97; and José Antonio Portuondo, Itinerario estético de la Revolución Cubana (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubana, 1979). 26. Che Guevara, El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba (Havana: Ediciones Revolución, 1965). See also Miguel Martinez-­Saenz, “Che Guevara’s New Man: Embodying a Communitarian Attitude,” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 6 (November 2004): 15–­30. 27. See Saborido, El martillo y el espejo, 97–­106. Liliana Martínez Pérez explores the intellectual debates that took place in this journal in Los hijos de Saturno: Intelectuales y revolución en Cuba (Mexico City: Flacso, 2006). 28. “Nos pronunciamos,” El Caimán Barbudo, March 1966, accessed September 15, 2012, http://mequedariaconlapoesia.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/el-­ primer-­ numero-­del-­caiman-­dio-­a-­conocer-­el-­manifiesto-­nos-­pronunciamos. 29. Robin Moore offers an apologetically North American perspective on the musical politics of this period in Cuban history in Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 88–­96. See also Villaça, Polifonia Tropical, 50–­51. 30. Rafael Hernández, “El año rojo: Política, sociedad, y cultura en 1968,” ­Revista de estudios sociales 33 (August 2009): 44–­54. 31. See “Llamamiento de la Habana” and “Declaración general” in the dossier on the Congreso Cultural de la Habana in Vida Universitaria 209 (1968, Año del guerrillero heroico): 25, 26–­30. 32. Fidel Castro, “Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz,

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Primer Secretario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba y Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario, en la clausura del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura,” Teatro de la CTC, April 31, 1971, accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f300471e.html. 33. “Documento 15: Declaración del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura (fragmento),” Casa de las Américas 65–­66 (1971): 111–­12. This essay was translated as “Declaration by the first National Congress on Education and Culture,” Granma Weekly Review (May 9, 1971): 4–­5. See also Saborido, El martillo y el espejo, 106–­9; and Brad Epps, “Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Homosexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6, no. 2 (October 1995): 231–­83. 34. “An Open Letter to Fidel Castro,” New York Review of Books, May 6, 1971. 35. Yoani Sánchez describes well the feeling of compromised political engagement that surrounds musicians like Rodríguez, who represent protest outside of Cuba but privilege within, in “Querido Pablo,” El País, August 27, 2011. 36. Sergio Vitier recalls that Quinto Pino Machado arranged for members of the GESI to tour schools in the province of Oriente in 1972, at a time when they were otherwise prohibited from performing. See Sergio Vitier, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 40, 48. 37. Brouwer, Acosta, and Rodríguez quoted in ibid., 33, 63–­64, 70–­71, 83–­94. Acosta remembers how difficult it was to hear music at all in Cuba in 1969. In that year Castro closed all 955 bars and cabarets in Havana as part of a revolutionary objective of clamping down on dissenters (64–­65). 38. Vitier, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 40. 39. Only fairly recently have scholars begun to debate issues of race and identity in Cuba after the revolution. A good starting point for investigating this topic are the resources on www.afrocubaweb.com/raceident.htm. 40. González, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 76. When Jaime Sarusky asks González if she felt discrimination in the GESI as the only woman along with oboist Ana Besa, she replied, “I felt, more than anything, protection” (79). (One might wonder why González felt she needed protection.) González composed a song, “Qué dice Usted,” for women while she was with the GESI and later released two collections of women’s songs entitled Cantos de mujer. 41. Vitier, quoted in ibid., 39. 42. Milanés subsequently advanced the cause of gay rights in Cuba with the song “El pecado original” (1996). Amaury Pérez, who performed with the GESI, had earlier penned a song that became something of a gay anthem, “Amor difícil” (1987), and later came out of the closet. And González spent her later life with her partner Diana Balboa, whom Castro publically recognized after Sara died on February 2, 2012. On the topic of the taboo of speaking about homosexuality in nueva trova, see Yosvel Hernández Alén, “El (gayo) pecado original,” El Caimán Barbudo, September 15, 2011. 43. Acosta, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 64, 67. 44. Fernando Ortiz’s important essays “Del fenómeno social de la transculturación y de su importancia en Cuba” (1940) and “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad (1940) continue to be the subject of vigorous debate. See Rafael Rojas,

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“Fernando Ortiz: Transculturation and Nationalism,” in Essays in Cuban Intellectual History (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 43–­64. 45. See Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 29; and Villaça, Polifonia Tropical, 195–­97. 46. Raúl A. Fernández and Daniel Whitesell, “Introducing Leonardo Acosta, Music and Literary Critic,” Contracorriente: Una revista de historia social y literatura de América Latina/A Journal of Social History and Literature in Latin America 5, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 95–­121. 47. Menéndez, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 51–­61, and especially 53–­54. Menéndez also remembers taping hundreds of his mother’s vinyl records and “all the rock albums [he] could get [his] hands on” in the United States and sharing them with fellow students at the Escuela as a teenager. See Eric Zolov, “Cuban Rock and the Revolution, Part II,” National Public Radio, March 3, 2011, accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.npr.org/blogs/altlatino/2011/03/17/133870882/ from-­the-­vault-­cuban-­rock-­and-­the-­revolution-­part-­2. Menéndez may be exaggerating his influence, given how young and inexperienced he was in comparison to his fellow musicians in the GESI. 48. Brouwer, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 26. 49. Ibid., 22. 50. Ibid., 12. 51. Ricardo Iztueta, José Borrás, Juan Demósthenes, and Germinal Hernández also assisted with recording. See Hernández, “Hablar del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC.” 52. Brouwer in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 34; Hernández, “Hablar del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC.” 53. The GESI participated in the Encuentro de música latinoamericana at the Casa de las Américas in September 1972, and released on EGREM an album of its collaborations in this concert with these and other artists from Uruguay, Haiti, Chile, and Cuba. 54. Menéndez, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 59. 55. In an article published in 1971, he encouraged a synthesis of improvisatory and aleatoric practices. See Brouwer, “La improvisación aleatoria,” in Gajes del oficio (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2004), 69–­76 (originally published in 1971). 56. Brouwer, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 14. 57. But not everybody in the GESI liked the Beatles or saw them as a model. See Vitier’s comments in ibid., 38. 58. In 1968, Rodríguez abruptly lost his job moderating on the television show Mientras tantos for showing a clip of people kissing and for claiming on the air that he liked the Beatles. See Villaça, Polifonia Tropical, 96–­97; and Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 84–­85. On the reception of the Beatles in Cuba, see Ernesto Juan Castellanos, ed., Los Beatles en Cuba: Un viaje mágico y misterioso (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1997). 59. Rodríguez, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 15. 60. Noel Nicola, “¿Por qué nueva trova?,” in Panorama de la música popular ­cubana, ed. Radamés Giro (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1995), 333–­41. 61. Vitier, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 17–­23; see especially 23. 62. See Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 44–­45. Nicola likewise rejected the idea that

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nueva trova is “modern”—­a term he associated with rock music and western imperialism. See Nicola, “¿Por qué nueva trova?,” 339. 63. Brouwer, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 36. 64. See Brouwer, La Música, lo cubano, la innovación. 65. See Brouwer’s, Vitier’s, and Acosta’s comments in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 35, 38–­39, 64. 66. Vitier, quoted in ibid., 25. 67. Vitier and Menéndez, quoted in ibid., 40, 55. 68. Menéndez, quoted in ibid., 60–­61. Menéndez cared deeply about the cover art and concepts of the albums and regretted that neither was respected when EGREM reorganized the records to be reissued as a four-­CD set in 1997. 69. This discography does not include extended plays (EPs) and the GESI’s extensive collaborations with other artists. For a more complete list, see “Discografía de Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC,” Cancioneros, accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.cancioneros.com/cc/33/0/discografia-­de-­grupo-­ de-­experimentacion-­sonora-­del-­icaic. 70. “Experimental Sound Collective of ICAIC,” program notes for Cuba Va! Songs of the New Generation of Revolutionary Cuba, Paredon Records PAR01010, 1971. The album and liner notes are available at http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=2240. Menéndez discusses this album in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 52. 71. Noel, quoted without a source in “Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC,” Cancioneros, accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.cancioneros.com/ ct/33/0/grupo-­de-­experimentacion-­sonora-­del-­icaic. 72. Susan Sontag, introduction to The Art of Revolution: Castro’s Cuba, 1959–­70, by Dugald Stermer (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1970), vii–­xxiii. 73. The GESI’s first Cuban album of 1973 consisted of songs commissioned by the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas as a gift for the Seminario Latinoamericano de la Mujer in Chile in September 1972. The EGREM label planned this as a double album that would include nueva trova by Rodríguez, Milanés, and Nicola on one disc and collective recordings of the GESI on the other. In the end it produced only one disc, which included solo work by Rodríguez and Milanés and one song by Nicola. For this reason Menéndez considered Grupo Experimental Sonora del ICAIC/ Cuba (1974) to be the group’s first real album. See Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 60. 74. Menéndez spoke of jazz as an expression of collective liberty in ibid., 53. 75. Silvio Rodríguez, interview with Isabelle Hernández, January 16, 1999, quoted in Hernández, “Hablar del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC.” On the original LP, this song is listed as a “collective work” (obra colectiva). 76. This single sentence cannot do justice to the artistry of Emiliano Salvador, whom Acosta rightly sees as an essential link between two generations of Cuban jazz. See Leonardo Acosta, “Emiliano Salvador: The Essential Link,” in Cubano Be Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba, trans. Daniel S. Whitesell (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 231–­34. 77. I know of no scholarly work on the GESI’s music for these films, although Mariana Martins Villaça provides an overview of their work in relation to Brazilian cinema in Polifonia Tropical, 81–­92. 78. A rudimentary list of the films for which the GESI provided music is avail-

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able at Cubacine, accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/musicos/sonora.htm?Pelicula=%A1Viva%20la%20Rep%FAblica. See also the list in Villaça, Polifonia Tropical, 250–­52. 79. Villaça draws a connection between the GESI’s stylistic mixture in these film scores and the Tropicália’s aesthetic of alegoria or “collage.” See Polifonia Tropical, 91–­92. 80. Acosta, quoted in Sarusky, GES del ICAIC, 68. 81. See Geoffrey Baker, Buena Vista in the Club: Rap, Reggaetón, and Revolution in Havana (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

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Works Cited Acosta, Leonardo. “¿Cómo y por qué surgió el GESI?” Special Dossier on the GESI. La Jiribilla 13 (2002). Accessed March 2, 2012. http://www.lajiribilla. cubaweb.cu/2001/n13_julio/362_13.html. Website no longer available. Acosta, Leonardo. Cubano Be Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba. Translated by Daniel S. Whitesell. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003. Acosta, Leonardo. Del Tambor al Sintetizador. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1983. Adlington, Robert, ed. Sound Commitments: Avant-­ Garde Music and the Sixties. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Alén, Yosvel Hernández. “El (gayo) pecado original.” El Caimán Barbudo, September 15, 2011. Arango, Arturo. “‘Con tantos palos que te dio la vida’: Poesía, censura y persistencia.” Criterios. Accessed September 14, 2012. http://www.criterios.es/cicloquinqueniogris.htm. Ardévol, José. “Música y revolución.” In Música y Revolución, 204–­8. Havana: Ediciones Unión/UNEAC, 1966. Originally published in 1961. Ardévol, José. “La música y su orientación en el presente cubano.” In Música y Revolución, 125–­28. Havana: Ediciones Unión/UNEAC, 1966. Originally published in 1960. Baker, Geoffrey. Buena Vista in the Club: Rap, Reggaetón, and Revolution in Havana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Beal, Amy. New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Brouwer, Leo. “La improvisación aleatoria.” In Gajes del oficio, 69–­76. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2004. Originally published in 1971. Brouwer, Leo. La Música, lo cubano, la innovación. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1989. Broyles, Michael. Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Cage, John. “Experimental Music.” In Silence: Lectures and Writings, 7–­12. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Originally published in 1957–­58. Cage, John. “Experimental Music: Doctrine.” In Silence: Lectures and Writings, 13–­ 17. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Originally published in 1955, entitled “Experimental Music.” Cage, John. “History of Experimental Music in the United States.” In Silence:

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­Lectures and Writings, 67–­75. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Originally published in 1959. Cancioneros. “Discografía de Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC.” Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.cancioneros.com/cc/33/0/discografia-­ de-­grupo-­de-­experimentacion-­sonora-­del-­icaic. Cancioneros. “Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC.” Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.cancioneros.com/ct/33/0/grupo-­de-­experimentacion-­ sonora-­del-­icaic. Castellanos, Ernesto Juan, ed. Los Beatles en Cuba: Un viaje mágico y misterioso. Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1997. Castro, Fidel. “Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Secretario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba y Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario, en la clausura del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura.” Teatro de la CTC, April 31, 1971. Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f300471e.html. Castro, Fidel. “Documento 15: Declaración del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura (fragmento).” Casa de las Américas 65–­66 (1971): 111–­12. Castro, Fidel. “Palabras a los Intelectuales.” Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Cuba. 1961. Accessed September 14, 2012. http://www.min.cult.cu/loader. php?sec=historia&cont=palabrasalosintelectuales. “Conclusiones de un debate entre cineastas cubanos.” La Gaceta de Cuba 23 (August 3, 1963): 8-­9. “Conversations with John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Hans G. Helms.” Music before Revolution. EMI 1 C 165–­28 954/57 Y, 1972, 4 LPs. Cubacine. Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/musicos/sonora.htm?Pelicula=%A1Viva%20la%20Rep%FAblica. “Declaración general.” Congreso Cultural de la Habana. Vida Universitaria 209 (1968, Año del Guerrillero Heroico): 26–­30. Díaz, Clara. Sobre la guitarra, la voz. Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1994. Dibelius, Ulrich, and Frank Schneider, eds. Neue Musik im geteilten Deutschland. 3 vols. Berlin: Henschel, 1993–­95. Drott, Eric. Music and the Elusive Revolution: Cultural Politics and Political Culture in France, 1968–1981. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Epps, Brad. “Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Homosexuality.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6, no. 2 (October 1995): 231–­ 83. “Experimental Sound Collective of ICAIC.” Program notes to Cuba Va! Songs of the New Generation of Revolutionary Cuba. Paredon Records PAR01010, 1971. Fernández, Raúl A., and Daniel Whitesell. “Introducing Leonardo Acosta, Music and Literary Critic.” Contracorriente: Una revista de historia social y literatura de América Latina/A Journal of Social History and Literature in Latin America 5, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 95–­121. Guanche Zaldívar, Julio César. “Tensiones históricas del campo político-­cultural: La polémica Alfredo Guevara-­Blas Roca.” Perfiles de la cultura cubana 3 (May–­ August 2009): 1–­8. Guevara, Alfredo. Revolución es lucidez. Havana: Ediciones ICAIC, 1998.

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Guevara, Che. El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba. Havana: Ediciones Revolución, 1965. Hernández, Isabelle. “Hablar del Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC: Más que la historia contada—­cuarenta años después  .  .  .” In “50 Aniversario ICAIC, 1959–­2009.” Special issue, Revista Cine Cubano On Line 13 (2009). Accessed September 13, 2012. http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/revistacinecubano/ digital13/cap10.htm. Hernández, Rafael. “El año rojo: Política, sociedad y cultura en 1968.” Revista de Estudios Sociales 33 (August 2009): 44–­54. Jakelski, Lisa. “The Changing Seasons of the Warsaw Autumn: Contemporary Music in Poland, 1960–­1990.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2009. Kutschke, Beate. Neue Linke/Neue Musik: Kulturtheorien und künstlerische Avantgarde in den 1960er und 70er Jahren. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2007. Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal, supplement, “Best of BMRJ,” 22 (2002): 215–­46. Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. “Llamamiento de la Habana.” Congreso Cultural de la Habana. Vida Universitaria 209 (1968, Año del Guerrillero Heroico): 25. Martinez-­Saenz, Miguel. “Che Guevara’s New Man: Embodying a Communitarian Attitude.” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 6 (November 2004): 15–­30. Metzger, Heinz-­Klaus. “Versuch über prärevolutionäre Musik.” Liner notes to Music before Revolution. EMI 1 C 165–­28 954/57 Y, 1972, 4 LPs. Moore, Robin. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Nicholls, David. American Experimental Music, 1890–­1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Nicola, Noel. “¿Por qué nueva trova?” In Panorama de la música popular cubana, ed. Radamés Giro, 333–­41. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1995. First published in 1975. “Nos pronunciamos.” El Caimán Barbudo, March 1966. Accessed September 15, 2012. http://mequedariaconlapoesia.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/el-­primer­nu mero-­del-­caiman-­dio-­a-­conocer-­el-­manifiesto-­nos-­pronunciamos. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. “An Open Letter to Fidel Castro.” New York Review of Books, May 6, 1971. Pérez, Liliana Martínez. Los hijos de Saturno: Intelectuales y revolución en Cuba. Mexico City: Flacso, 2006. Periódico Hoy: Aclaraciones. 2 vols. Havana: Editora Política, 1964–­65. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Portuondo, José Antonio. Itinerario estético de la Revolución Cubana. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubana, 1979. Rebner, Wolfgang Edward. “Amerikanische Experimentalmusik.” In vol. 3 of Die Im Zenit der Moderne: Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Bänden—­

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Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, 1946–­1966, edited by Gianmario Borio and Herman Danuser, 178–­89. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1997. Originally published in 1954. Roca, Blas [Francisco Calderio]. “Aclaraciones.” Hoy, December 12, 1963. Rojas, Rafael. “Fernando Ortiz: Transculturation and Nationalism.” In Essays in Cuban Intellectual History, 43–­64. New York: Palgrave, 2008. Rojas, Rafael. Tumbas sin sosiego: Revolución, disidencia, y exilio del intelectual cubano. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006. Saborido, Emilio J. Gallardo. El martillo y el espejo: Directrices de la política cultural cubana (1959–­1976). Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 2009. Sánchez, Yoani. “Querido Pablo.” El País, August 27, 2011. Sarusky, Jaime. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC: Mito y Realidad. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2005. Sontag, Susan. Introduction to The Art of Revolution: Castro’s Cuba, 1959–­70, by Dugald Stermer, vii–­xxiii. New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1970. Sontag, Susan. “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution.” Ramparts (April 1969): 6–­19. Villaça, Mariana Martins. Polifonia tropical: Experimentalismo e engajamento na música popular (Brasil e Cuba, 1967–­1972). São Paulo, Brazil: Universidade de São Paulo, 2004. Zolov, Eric. “Cuban Rock and the Revolution, Part II.” National Public Radio, March 3, 2011. Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.npr.org/blogs/ altlatino/2011/03/17/133870882/from-­t he-­v ault-­c uban-­r ock-­a nd-­t he-­ revolution-­part-­2.

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Sounds of the Sweatshop Pauline Oliveros and Maquilapolis

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Stephanie Jensen-­M oulton

In their 2006 film Maquilapolis: City of Factories, Vicki Funari and Sergio De La Torre chronicle the extraordinary results of activism by two female factory workers, or maquilas, in Tijuana. In this essay I examine the original music for Maquilapolis, composed by Pauline Oliveros and several collaborators, through the lens of transnational feminist praxis as articulated by Chandra Talpade Mohanty. A recent report by the Border Committee of Women Workers on factory conditions since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) also informs my analysis. The compositional techniques Oliveros applies to the original score of Maquilapolis render her music for the film as politically relevant as the documentary itself. While the soundtrack subversively contributes to the toppling of economic and social structures of power crucial to the subjugation of Mexican women workers, the sound editors have rendered Oliveros’s work secondary in the film, having secured previously r­ ecorded tracks by Bang on a Can, among others, for additional material. Much of Oliveros’s original work was left on the cutting room floor, in favor of more rhythmic sounds that bear greater resemblance to those of Tijuana’s popular music scene. In the end the directors used Oliveros as a feminist name to headline a soundtrack filled with Oliveros’s own collaborators—­members of the Nortec collective and the Argentine band Reynols—­as well as other musicians unaffiliated with her work. Oliveros, however, emerges as a protagonist in this narrative because of the nature of the film itself, and because of the chronology of the soundtrack’s evolution as a finished product: the search for music to underscore Maquilapolis all began with Oliveros and her philosophy. 211

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Oliveros has articulated her ways of listening as feminist ways of knowing, leading directly to her use of “Deep Listening” as the primary compositional practice for Maquilapolis, among other works. According to Oliveros, Deep Listening requires the practitioner to differentiate between the concept of global listening and that of individual listening, while acknowledging both. Similarly, global feminism calls for activist collectives comprising individuals who often speak from plural standpoints. For the soundtrack of Maquilapolis, Oliveros emphasizes interaction between human performers over a tape of sampled environmental noises heard by workers during the course of their daily shifts. Through her manipulation of these everyday sounds, Oliveros transforms oppressive factory noises into powerful, consciousness-­raising music that complicates issues of gender, nationality, and global economics. Transnational feminism, though well established in the academy, has been completely absent from music scholarship pertaining to experimental music, and even from scholarship on noted feminist composers and performers of experimental music such as Laurie Anderson, Pamela Z, and Oliveros. Although feminist approaches to music criticism certainly exist, within the area of experimental music they are only beginning to emerge, with one notable example being Martha Mockus’s biographical work on Oliveros, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality.1 Feminist histories are often linked to activist histories, but this area, too, has remained largely absent from music criticism in general and histories of experimental music in particular. This study engages the questions of nation, woman, worker, and activist within the framework of norteño musical experimentalism. Alejandro Madrid’s study Nor-­tec Rifa! has addressed issues of nationality with regard to electronic musics, but without noting the particular impact on women of Tijuana’s proximity to the United States.2 I aim to link norteño musics and transnational feminism through an examination of Nortec’s collaboration with Oliveros, a long-­distance collaboration that Oliveros eventually reworked into parts of her original score for Maquilapolis. Feminist Film Scoring Maquilapolis represents a continuation of feminist and activist film scoring by Oliveros. Vicky Funari, a producer and director of Maquilapolis, first contacted the composer about creating a musical soundscape for the 1998 documentary Paulina. Funari’s first film—­which she wrote and directed—­ documents the tragic life of Paulina Suarez, whose parents traded her at age thirteen to a village man in exchange for land rights. The director’s

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feminist approach to Paulina incorporates experimental film techniques, including fragmentation of the narrative line and melodramatic reenactments of Paulina’s memories; these reflect Paulina’s thought process and differing accounts of events that have emerged from different individuals involved directly in the events depicted in the film. This feminist, nonlinear approach to narration reflects the confused worldview of a young teenager sold into sexual slavery. Paulina also represented a personal journey for Funari because Paulina Suarez was her childhood housekeeper, divided from Funari by the class structures that inevitably separate servant from employer. In many ways Funari’s mode of woman-­centered filmmaking, a style that she pioneered in this first film, parallels Oliveros’s established Deep Listening practices,3 which may be one reason for Funari’s strong adherence to the composer as headliner for her film’s soundscape. Oliveros writes that Deep Listening is “listening in every possible way to everything possible—­this means one hears all sounds, no matter what one is doing. Such intense listening includes hearing the sounds of daily life, of nature, and of one’s own thoughts, as well as musical sounds.”4 Just as Funari takes into account all possible aspects of Paulina’s memory, Oliveros’s approach to music leaves no sound “un-­listened-­to.” Even in her general approach to music making and composition, Oliveros seeks to give voices to marginalized groups, in whatever form those voices may take. As Mockus writes, Oliveros “creates pieces committed to challenging sexism and classism in western classical music and democratizing music making for women of all abilities.”5 Specific to the practice of Deep Listening, Oliveros acknowledges the global perspective prized by her philosophy in the mission statement for the Deep Listening Institute. Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. fosters a unique approach to music, literature, art, and meditation, and promotes innovation among artists and audiences in creating, performing, recording, and educating with a global perspective.6 Acknowledgment of and concern about globalization are embedded within the very drive behind Oliveros’s compositional practice, linking musical creation to politics. Maquilapolis also alternates deftly between global and local concerns, creating a transnational feminist text that employs elements of performance art, documentary, and biography, all conceived in collaboration with the women in the film. In fact the workers themselves learned how to use

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video cameras, and thus contributed much of the documentary and biographical footage. In their introduction to Scattered Hegemonies, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan argue that feminism “has been expressed in the West primarily as an aesthetic or cultural debate rather than a political one. Such debates ignore radical changes in global economic structures.”7 While this exploration of music and film is indeed a cultural debate, it is grounded within an acknowledgment of the transnational global economy and the crucial role women workers play in scaffolding it.

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“All audio both ways”: Oliveros and Nortec Originally, when Funari described the Maquilapolis project, Oliveros had agreed to collaborate with a Tijuana musicians collective called Nortec for some of the film’s music.8 In a conversation with Mockus, the composer mentioned, “Nortec is going to be remixing my stuff for the film, so I’m excited about that.”9 When I asked Oliveros about Nortec, she noted that Funari had set up the whole collaboration and that there was “no written material” but “all audio both ways.”10 The musicians in Nortec have become an increasingly important force in electronic dance music, combining sounds from their native Mexico with beats, both sampled and improvised. As Madrid states, “Nortec began in Tijuana in 1999 as a musical manifestation that sampled traditional sounds from the north of Mexico (norteña music and banda sinaloense or tambora), transforming and reorganizing them with the help of the computer technology used in European and American electronic dance music (EDM).”11 Nortec’s remixes of Oliveros’s prerecorded tracks form the basis of much of the original music for the film (with the exception of production and mixing by John Blue, who, according to Funari, was brought in as the film was nearing completion).12 Collective members Bostich and Fussible added their personal production signatures to the audio tracks they received from Oliveros to bring her music—­primarily based in an electro-­ acoustic art music aesthetic—­into line with their Tijuana club sound. In the same way that the Nortec collective believed that a Mexican band should not sound like a band from Europe,13 Bostich and Fussible transformed Oliveros’s accordion drones and ambient chirps into pieces with regular, discernible beats, heavy bass, and local Tijuana rhythmic color in the form of particular dance patterns such as cumbia, which will be discussed more below. Thus, the electronic dance music standard that pervades much of the Tijuana popular music scene also serves as the most prominent soundscape for the film.

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Oliveros and Nortec share some musical and sonic roots in that Nortec’s sound features accordion prominently and Oliveros is known for her compositions and development of extended techniques for that instrument. Beginning her study at age nine and playing professional gigs as a teenager, Oliveros thinks of the accordion as her first instrumental love. While for Oliveros the accordion has formed her sound world of “double tones,” “entries,” “exits,” and “delays,”14 for Nortec the accordion represents northern Mexico and the traditional norteño sound. Because of these timbral similarities, the connections are fairly seamless between Nortec’s previous work and the music Oliveros sent to the collective via Funari for production. This collaboration—­typical of Oliveros’s compositional style, replete with performative and aleatoric elements—­begins to deconstruct the western notion of an original film score composed by one person alone.15 Again, Funari’s feminist mission would espouse this kind of antihegemonic agenda, where Oliveros receives billing as the composer of the original score yet leads a group of other artists who have been labeled as collaborators. Funari lists the musicians who contributed to the film as follows.16 original score Pauline Oliveros with Bostich and Fussible, Nortec Collective and John Blue additional musicians Lisa Bernard Reynols Although much of the music provided by Oliveros does not appear in the final version of the film, Funari’s specific selection of Oliveros as the primary musical force behind the film’s sound shaped the way other pieces found their way into the project. Nortec producer Bostich lists Oliveros as a collaborator on his website, along with other celebrated art music ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet and the Baja California Orchestra,17 indicating that Nortec may have been even more keen to take on the project if it meant working with Oliveros. The same can be said of Reynols, who had worked with Oliveros in the past. The Nortec Collective was not the only contributor to the film’s music

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to send Funari prerecorded tracks. Oliveros had sent Funari sound files of two previously recorded projects, one of an Internet-­based collaboration with an Argentine group called Reynols and the other a recording of a workshop she had given with twenty women in Berlin.18 In addition, Funari used three other sources for music in the film: “Clip” by Noel Murphy and Tom Hill features prominently, being used for the introductory credits and later for the DVD menu; John Blue contributed his own music for the end of the film, in addition to producing some of Oliveros’s work; and Funari also selected moments from Michael Gordon’s ten-­minute composition “Industry” for transitions between the two primary narratives in the film.19 Nortec’s “Polaris” is the most prominent example of the collective’s prerecorded work, as it was made prior to the tracks designed specifically for Maquilapolis. In video clip 1, we can hear the distinct style of Nortec producer Bostich in his piece, “Polaris,” which begins with a percussion riff straight out of cumbia and then continues its rhythmic accordion inflections at a medium tempo, with a beat regular enough for dance music.20 As Madrid notes, Bostich is the Nortec producer who “seems to have developed the most personal and heterogeneous style. . . . His is a unique, crude, and experimental down-­tempo type of techno that often finds its groove with the use of cumbia-­driven percussion rhythmic patterns.”21 Although Bostich’s “Polaris” represents one of only four previously composed tracks utilized in the film, Funari foregrounds the piece by using it to underscore part of the film that has no spoken dialogue from onscreen individuals; “Polaris” accompanies stop-­time video of a maquiladora’s construction, along with voice-­overs of maquilas, who simply list exactly what they assemble every day at work. Funari’s choice of track communicates the feelings of hope that come with the construction of a new factory, which will undoubtedly provide more jobs, but also the relentless progress of technology and the speed of capital. But Bostich’s repetitive patterns, though ideal for dance music, also symbolize the oppressively repetitive tasks performed by the factory workers in the maquiladoras. Oliveros and Reynols: Distance, NetCast, Hole in Space The connection between Nortec and Maquilapolis is, of course, Tijuana, and Funari’s selection of members of the collective as producers for the film’s music makes sense. But another unusual group of musicians plays a significant role in the sound world of the film: the Buenos Aires heavy metal band Reynols. Although Reynols did not actively produce or record

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Fig. 1. Director Vicki Funari’s staging of Carmen Duràn (center) and other factory workers holding the items they manufacture during the majority of their waking hours. (Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre, Maquilapolis: City of Factories, 2006.)

any music specifically for Maquilapolis, Oliveros sent to Funari a sound file of her collaboration with the band as a major part of the materials that would form the basis of her film score. The beginning of Oliveros’s relationship with the members of Reynols was somewhat rocky but eventually resulted in three different collaborative recordings.22 In 1992 Oliveros traveled to Argentina in order to conduct one of her Deep Listening seminars. As she writes: Among the varied group of people in the seminar were a couple of intense and punkish looking young men—­Alan Courtis and Robert Conlazo. They seemed somewhat skeptical and a bit defiant with their questions and comments. I was not sure that they were getting my drift.23 Courtis and Conlazo are two members of a three-­man band named for the American actor Burt Reynolds. (The group had accidentally dropped the d in Reynolds, but the name stuck.) The other member of the band is Miguel Tomasin, a cognitively disabled poet, percussionist, and composer. Courtis

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and Conlazo met Tomasin when they were working as music therapists with disabled individuals; at the beginning of his first drum lesson, Tomasin had announced, “I am the greatest drummer in the world.”24 Courtis and Conlazo were hooked, and took on Tomasin as their spiritual leader, adopting his alternate way of viewing the universe and learning from his phenomenal abilities as an improviser. The other members of Reynols do not view Tomasin as a separate individual with Down’s syndrome; as they told an interviewer in 2003, “We are three Miguels. We always say we have Downs [sic] syndrome too. We’re all Downs. We’re all British, we’re all Turkish, we’re all a big oneness but sometimes we only recognize part of it.”25 Their first release, based on Tomasin’s concept, was a “dematerialized CD”—­an empty jewel box case. The idea was that everyone in the world, even before the invention of CDs, could have heard this record, from Gandhi to Liberace, from Jim Morrison to Oliveros.26 It was this type of philosophy that brought the group out of Argentina, where they did not experience great success—­perhaps the result of plugging their guitars into pumpkins instead of amps—­and into the international networks of experimental music. Despite the very mixed first impression that Courtis and Conlazo made on Oliveros, they were active and interested participants in her Deep Listening seminars. On the final day of her week in Buenos Aires, when Oliveros gave a solo accordion concert in the wonderfully resonant Biblioteca National, the members of Reynols sat excitedly in the very front row of the performance, unabashedly making a pirate recording of the concert.27 About a year later, Courtis contacted Oliveros to ask if they could remix the music from her accordion concert, using their own guitar-­heavy style along with vocals by Tomasin. Oliveros writes: First they wanted to call it Deep Heavy Metal Listening or Heavy Deep Listening Metal—­Alan and Roberto are accomplished electric guitar players. Finally they hit upon a title: Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols. I accepted with delight. The first edition of 100 CDs included individual hand painted covers, a cassette version and a tiny bag of colored sand to represent the grittiness of the music. Cream Gardens of Amsterdam produced the second release of the CD with Roberto’s drawings.28 The bags of sand represented the grittiness of Reynols’ electric guitar sound, but also the possibility that if someone purchased all one hundred CDs that person could make a beach in his or her own house.29

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By the time Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols was released, the composer understood that Reynols had something unique to offer the experimental music community, and she became interested in additional collaborations. Oliveros had long been fascinated with sound delays, and distance collaboration via the Internet provided not only the opportunity to collaborate with distant friends through a “hole in space,”30 but also the chance to improvise and create during the many seconds of delay experienced within this medium. In 1996 Oliveros invited Reynols to participate in a transcontinental Internet performance, but that collaboration initially took a different form due to the failure of an Internet connection in Buenos Aires. Both artists nevertheless recorded their respective performances, and the mix of those performances was released in 1999 as NetCast. Oliveros feistily turns the tables on Reynols by stating, “Now I am pirating and mixing tracks from NetCast into a film score that I am making with Vicky Funari on the Maquiladores [sic], the factories of Tijuana Mexico. Those tracks will be remixed by the Nortek [sic] Collective of Tijuana!”31 Thus, at the root of Oliveros’s selections for the original score of Maquilapolis lie her collaborations with Reynols, whose members have themselves rewritten the script on marginalization in many ways.

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The Maquila Mandala: Individuals within Collectives As Oliveros noted in an interview with Mockus, the material with Reynols was “more industrial stuff, which fit with the factories. . . . [Funari] asked me for more material that would be more reflective of the women and their concerns.”32 Seeking to emphasize the film’s woman-­centered objective, Funari called on Oliveros to create a new, introspective sound world for these workers. It is in this capacity that the music functions as most subversive and most directly related to the established, contemplative practice of composition about which Oliveros herself has written so extensively. The music that Funari chose to underlay the moments when these maquilas take charge of their lives and engage with their own potential for making change aligns most directly with Oliveros’s principles of Deep Listening. In her 1976 essay “On Sonic Meditation,” Oliveros includes a drawing of a simple mandala, in this case, a circle with a dot in the center, signifying “the proper relationship of attention and awareness.” She continues: The dot represents attention, and the circle, awareness. In these respective positions, each is centered in relation to the other. . . . Attention can be focused as fine as possible in any direction, and can

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probe all aspects of awareness without losing its balanced relationship to awareness.33 For the music specifically conceived for Maquilapolis, Oliveros “suggested that Vicky [Funari] record the sounds in Tijuana,” thinking it “important to include the sounds of the environments and to mix them into the music.”34 The environmental sounds recorded from the factories in Tijuana engender awareness of the maquilas’ exterior situation and geographic location, while the resonant accordion tones that Oliveros mixes with these factory sounds focus the listener’s attention on the women as individuals with unique standpoints and dynamic personal journeys. The mixture of awareness and attention characteristic of sonic meditation enables us, as listeners, to understand these women as important figures in both the local and global spheres. While they can be lumped together as “sweatshop workers” on one of the lowest rungs of the global economic ladder, they are also highly important at the local level in their own unique, activist ways. The film centers on two women who work in the maquiladoras, Carmen Duràn and Lourdes Lujàn.35 Duràn began working in the factories when she was thirteen and has since worked in nine different plants. She is a single mother who works the graveyard shift to support her three children on six dollars a day. Several years prior to the filming of Maquilapolis, Duràn filed a labor claim against the multinational electronics company Sanyo and subsequently became a volunteer promotora with Grupo Factor X. (Promotoras advocate for better housing and working conditions.) Now she teaches classes about labor rights to her fellow maquilas. Duràn and her children live in a house she built out of recycled garage doors brought from California. But, as Funari notes, “Carmen is not a victim. She is a dynamic young woman making a life for herself and her children.”36 In video clip 2, a fellow maquila films Duràn inside the maquiladora, and we hear the repetitive sounds of the machinery that she hears daily. In a voice-­over, Duràn details the beginning of her history, closing her remarks with a statement that, although she was alone in Tijuana, she decided to stay. The factory scene shifts immediately to striking helicopter cinematography outlining the US-­Mexico border, introducing a geographic context for Maquilapolis, while the rhythmic sampling of industrial sounds in Hill and Murphy’s preexistent work “Clip” provides a clear aural landscape of experimental sound at the start of the film. Hill and Murphy make a beat out of random mechanical samples, to which they add triads on an electronic keyboard. Situated within the geographic and economic contexts set up by Funari for

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the initial moments of the documentary, the chords have a poignant effect, designed to elicit empathy on the part of the viewer. In video clip 3, Funari’s unique filmmaking style is apparent through three basic visual styles: large, geographic shots at faster-­than-­life speeds; stylized, posed shots—­filmed in stop-­time—­of the factory workers wearing smocks and makeup; and footage shot by the workers themselves using small, portable cameras, which provide a contrasting view of the everyday. First, as we hear an original Bostich creation, Funari unceremoniously films the border crossing from California into Tijuana. Gradually, an accordion drone becomes louder over Bostich’s beat, while a stylized image of Duràn appears. She is holding a flyback, the TV component she assembles twelve hours per day. Though dressed in a blue work smock, she wears makeup and sits upright in a poised position of power. As this image fades to one of Duràn in her everyday garb at home, Oliveros’s accordion drone shifts pitch upward by the interval of a perfect fourth before dying out, as though to give Duràn the full attention of the viewer. Duràn then describes the horrific conditions of her workplace environment while the camera lingers on the visual backdrop of the home she has constructed for herself. The lack of music underscores her description of life as a maquila and signifies the stark reality of her situation. Fellow factory worker Lourdes Lujàn has always lived in the Chilpancingo area of Tijuana and works across town from Duràn in another maquiladora. Directly downhill and downstream from the maquiladoras, Chilpancingo receives incredible amounts of pollution through the air and water, and children in her neighborhood are routinely born with severe birth defects. Lujàn herself suffers from the effects of lead poisoning and devastating pollution. Frustrated with the state of her environment, she has formed a coalition of women who are attempting to fight the Mexican government’s ignorance of an abandoned lead recycling plant and car battery factory just uphill from their homes.37 In video clip 4, Lujàn describes the toxic mess caused by the closing of the factory Metales y Derivados, based in the United States. Although a warrant for the arrest of the company’s owner has been issued in Mexico, he has fled to Los Angeles, where that warrant is not valid. As Lujàn’s voice grows in strength, the birdcalls and environmental sounds shift to a mix of factory sounds, signaled by the strident, alert sound of a repeated ascending minor third. A mix of these factory sounds and Oliveros’s reworking of Reynols’ music gently overtakes the bare alert. The sound transition is apt, given that the accordion seems to mimic the alert but at a higher pitch level, while irregular interjections

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of industrial noise punctuate the sustained accordion line. Eventually all environmental sound cuts out, leaving us to contemplate stunning aerial views of huge conglomerate buildings in Tijuana to the barely audible high pitches of the accordion drone. Duràn and Lujàn are but two of the thousands of Mexican women workers who spend innumerable hours working in the maquiladoras. Women and children continue to stand front and center on the global economic stage because of their value as cheap labor. As feminist labor analyst Delia Aguilar notes, “Qualities presumed to be inherently female—­docility, nimble fingers, patience—­spring to the lips of many a manager, no matter his race, when asked why the preference for women workers.”38 Although sweatshops exist all over the world, the proximity of the Tijuana maquiladoras to the United States—­literally just a stone’s throw from California—­ reinforces the notion that, because of the globalization of manufacturing and finance, national borders still have tremendous economic and social power, especially for those at the bottom of the global economy. Because of their role in both the productive and reproductive spheres, women from developing countries are particularly prone to migrant factory work, which quickly debilitates their physical and mental health. Yet, despite the fact that women make up more than 70 percent of the work force in the maquiladoras, their voices seldom find amplification among the many articles and books about labor in Mexico since NAFTA’s inception in 1994.39 In 1999 members of the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (The Mexican Border Committee of Women Workers) themselves wrote a report detailing work conditions in the maquiladoras six years after NAFTA, publishing the surprising conclusion that, despite workplace accidents and chemical contamination, the most pressing health problem for maquilas is stress. The Comité’s report notes that since NAFTA the labor process has changed in significant ways, to include—­but conceal—­compulsory pregnancy testing of workers, production speedups, longer workdays enforced by locked factory doors, and “labor flexibility” (otherwise known as constantly shifting work hours), resulting in maquilas’ inability to obtain or maintain adequate child care, not to mention sleep.40 In one horrific example of abuse inflicted on women workers, “Luz Elena Corona suffered a miscarriage when supervisors refused to allow her to rest after she complained of pain and exhaustion. They told her that she was the plant’s fastest worker and insisted that she was needed on the production line.”41 In addition to reports of poor conditions and inhumane treatment of workers, the Comité’s report notes that exposure to repetitive noise at high decibel levels causes workers to have chronic headaches and hearing loss.42

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The workplace sound environment and its effects are primary to the daily experience of the maquilas. Although these workers can perceive certain symptoms, repetitive industrial noise also has pervasive and imperceptible psychological and physiological effects that can contribute significantly to the maquilas’ overwhelming sense of powerlessness and loss of general well-­being. In their study of noise and stress, Jack Westman and James Walters assert that “the auditory apparatus is not prepared to cope with commonly encountered urban and industrial noise. Consequently, we find ourselves in sound environments that overload the auditory system.”43 Significantly, one coping technique that can help regulate sound overstimulation is activism. Labor ethnographer Mary Beth Mills asserts that “women’s labor activism not only articulates explicit demands for tangible, material remedies to exploitative workplace conditions, but also asserts implicit claims to new forms of autonomy and agency.”44 As women begin to collaborate and gain power over the oppressive forces in their work environment, the physical and social world begins to shift for them. According to Westman and Walters, “Unappreciated is the fact the citizen initiatives, community organization, labor union bargaining, consumer demand, and personal efforts can create a climate in which an attitude of mastery over noise rather than helplessness can be achieved.”45 In other words, when workers begin to feel that they have some control over their workplace conditions, the negative effects of those conditions begin to abate. Thus, a reclaiming of the maquiladora sound world can have real, as well as symbolic, effects on its workers. Through her recording and reworking of factory noise from Tijuana, Oliveros initiates an aural renegotiation of power that aligns with Funari’s feminist vision for the film. In turn Oliveros’s sound idea for the film spurred the subversive and celebratory original efforts of Nortec and Reynols. In video clip 5, Funari employs the same stop-­time video technique that she had used previously for the rapid assembly of a maquiladora, but in this sequence she foregrounds the women who work in those factories. In spite of the many and sudden changes that happen around them, the maquilas stand tall, firm in their conviction that, through their persistence and activism as promotoras, conditions will improve for them, and hopefully for their children. As they describe the importance and responsibility of being promotoras, Oliveros’s extended accordion tones are at their most prominent. While these women say that they are beginning to “see things differently,” through Oliveros’s acoustical world, we, as viewers and listeners, also begin to hear things differently: what may have been industrial noise a moment ago might now be perceived as music.

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Transnational feminism is a movement that seeks to understand the positions of women from all nationalities and races within the global economy. Specifically, transnational feminist writers are concerned with the imbalances of power between the first and third worlds, and the ways in which nation and gender align to oppress women both as individuals at the local level and as larger groups. As Mohanty writes, “Feminist work which blurs the distinction [between woman and women] . . . eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of ‘third world women’ by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices, on the one hand, and their general discursive representations, on the other.”46 By this definition, Funari’s film certainly falls under the rubric of a transnational feminist text. In particular her envoicing of the women workers through the practice of giving them their own video cameras helps to deconstruct the general conception of maquiladora workers as helpless victims, all the same, without individual identity. Yet each victory for the maquilas adds to their frustration as they return to their inadequate housing and jobs with few rights and unequal pay. In video clip 6, Lujàn describes with satisfaction her group’s victory in the Metales y Derivados case, which would result in the cleanup of the car battery plant site just up the hill from her home in Chilpancingo. Yet the music—­joyous accordion strains remixed by Nortec’s Fussible to an irregular, unreliable beat—­is overtaken by the minor third alert sound of the maquiladora heard earlier in the film. As Lujàn crosses a rickety bridge across polluted sludge in order to reach home, the factory sounds remind us that her victory is but a transient one. She must report back to work tomorrow, when she will savor her good work as a promotora while assembling countless videocassettes. The final sequence of Maquilapolis is also hopeful in tone, from the perspective of both sound and image. Composer and sound designer Blue employs his characteristic ambient percussion sound to particularly striking effect in video clip 7, as Carmen Duràn revisits an abandoned factory where she used to work. The percussion beats hit in time with visual changes, lending a jarring quality to Duràn’s experience of seeing this ghostly, abandoned site. As the scene shifts to one of Funari’s performative sequences featuring the maquilas in their smocks lined up at the future site of another factory, the percussion instruments fade to reveal women’s voices, an airy, eerie sound in comparison with the previous metallic strikes. An older, lower voice interweaves with a younger-­sounding female voice of higher timbre, symbolizing the passing from old to young of the responsibility for making change. Blue’s mix of Oliveros’s Berlin

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workshop tracks adds some irregular electronic pulses to the background, signifying the constant unrest of Tijuana women workers’ plight. Oliveros and her collaborators navigate the multiple standpoints of the maquilas as Woman and women through her compositional practice of sound events on local and global, interior and exterior levels. When I asked Oliveros if she would agree that her music for the film performed this feminist function, she wrote, in her wonderfully straightforward way, “Well, I do hope so. . . . Maquilapolis is a brilliant work.”47 While we, as viewer-­listeners, do not have access to the performative aspects of any of the music for the film, Funari’s style of filmmaking reflects the maquilas’ collective and individual understanding that they are essentially performers on the global economic stage. Their costumes are their smocks, and their props the components they fabricate in the maquiladoras, but their soundtrack reflects not only the environment in which they work but also who they are as individuals, mothers, activists, and citizens of Mexico.

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Notes 1. Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality (New York: Routledge, 2008). 2. Alejandro L. Madrid, Nor-­tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 3. Oliveros maintains a website devoted exclusively to Deep Listening and the activities of the Deep Listening Institute, accessed August 30, 2011, http:// deeplistening.org/site/. 4. Pauline Oliveros, “Acoustic and Virtual Space as a Dynamic Element of Music,” Leonardo Music Journal 5 (1995): 19. 5. Mockus, Sounding Out, 2. 6. Deep Listening Institute home page. 7. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3. 8. Madrid, Nor-­tec Rifa!, 9. Although Madrid uses the hyphenated form “Nor-­ tec” throughout his book, the group itself seems to use Nortec for its publicity materials and website. Oliveros and Funari also refer to Nortec without a hyphen, so in this essay I will not use it. 9. Mockus, Sounding Out, 171. 10. Pauline Oliveros, e-­mail message to the author, January 28, 2009. 11. Madrid, Nor-­tec Rifa!, 4. Banda sinaloense is a style of music loosely combining polka of German or Polish derivation and Mexican brass music, including cumbias. Nortec has also innovated within the banda style with its particular version of the narcocorrido, a modern-­day storytelling style that tells tales of the Mexican drug wars. See the Nortec website, accessed August 29, 2011, http://www.nor-­tec. org/narcocorrido.

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12. Vicky Funari, e-­mail message to the author, August 29, 2011. 13. Madrid, Nor-­tec Rifa!, 45. 14. Mockus, Sounding Out, 29. 15. In reality, the idea of one composer for a film score is a construction of western society, masking the myriad assistant composers and interns that contribute to many film scores. For example, the celebrated film composer Shirley Walker (1945–­2006) composed large sections of film scores under the names of more famous male composers (Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer) before deciding to wait for a job that would recognize her for her own work. As a result she was unemployed for almost two years but eventually received the credit she deserved for her own contributions. Michael Schelle, “Shirley Walker,” interview with Michael Schelle, in The Score: Interviews with Film Composers (Los Angeles: Silman-­James Press, 1999), 359–­80. 16. Maquilapolis music credits, accessed June 14, 2012, http://www.maquilapolis. com/team2_eng.htm. 17. Ramon Amezcùa, Bostich website, accessed June 15, 2012, http://www. bostich.org/. 18. Pauline Oliveros, e-­mail message to the author, January 28, 2009. 19. Michael Gordon, Industry, with Maya Beiser (cello) and the Bang on a Can ensemble, Cantaloupe 21010, 2002, compact disc. 20. All the video clips discussed in this essay can be viewed at http://www. youtube.com/user/sjensenmoulton. Although this percussion riff is cut from the beginning of the video clip, it occurs again at the end of the excerpt. 21. Madrid, Nor-­tec Rifa!, 9. 22. Pauline Oliveros, “Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols: A Collaboration,” in “Unyazi,” special issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac 15, nos. 1–­2 (January 2007): 1–­7. 23. Ibid., 1. 24. Alan Courtis and Roberto Conlazo, interview with Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic, March 12, 2003, accessed August 30, 2011, http://www.paristransat lantic.com/magazine/interviews/reynols.html. 25. Ibid. This universalist statement is figurative; Tomasin is neither British nor Turkish. 26. Other significant Reynols contributions to experimental music are their series of amplified Blank Tapes, released by Trente Oiseaux in 2000, and the 10,000 Chickens Symphony, released on seven-­inch vinyl by Drone Records in Germany. Of this piece Roberto Conlazo says, “This is the only record in the world where all the participants were killed and eaten afterward. Imagine 10,000 Miles Davises, 10,000 trumpeters, all dead. And eaten.” Ibid. 27. This was not the end of the group’s interaction with Oliveros, however. After the concert, as Oliveros writes, “Alan, Roberto and a few others of their group showed up to play a serenade for me. They had all brought brass instruments and none of them knew how to play them. They improvised an outrageous serenade for me that was wonderful, hilarious and full of soul. Later Alan asked me if it was possible to learn about new music in a University. I left Buenos Aires with good feelings about Roberto and Alan and all of the good people I met during my seminar.” Oliveros, “Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols,” 1.

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28. Ibid. 29. Courtis and Conlazo, interview. 30. Hole in Space is the title of a 1980 public communication sculpture that connected people in Lincoln Center with those on the opposite coast, in Los Angeles. Despite a time delay, the communications between East and West coasters was authentic and meaningful. Oliveros, “Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols: A Collaboration,” 3. 31. Ibid., 4. 32. Mockus, Sounding Out, 171. 33. Pauline Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” in Software for People: Collected Writings, 1963–­1980 (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984), 141. 34. Pauline Oliveros, e-­mail message to the author, January 28, 2009. 35. Unless otherwise noted, all information about the women represented in Maquilapolis has been gleaned from the content of the film itself. Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre, Maquilapolis: City of Factories, directed by Vicky Funari (Vallejo, CA: California Newsreel, 2006), DVD. 36. Vicky Funari, synopsis of Maquilapolis, accessed March 3, 2009, http://www. maquilapolis.com/project_eng.htm. 37. Funari and De La Torre, Maquilapolis. 38. Delia D. Aguilar, introduction to Women and Globalization, ed. Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lacsamana (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004), 16–­17. 39. David Bacon, The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 62. 40. Rachael Kamel, “Six Years of NAFTA: A View from Inside the Maquiladoras,” in Women and Globalization, ed. Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lacsamana (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004), 93. 41. Bacon, Children of NAFTA, 63. 42. Ibid., 108–­9. 43. Jack Westman and James R. Walters, “Noise and Stress: A Comprehensive Approach,” Environmental Health Perspectives 41 (October 1981): 291. 44. Mary Beth Mills, “Claiming Space: Navigating Landscapes of Power and Citizenship in Thai Labor Activism,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 37, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 93. 45. Westman and Walters, “Noise and Stress,” 299. 46. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ana Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 69. 47. Pauline Oliveros, e-­mail message to the author, January 28, 2009.

Works Cited Aguilar, Delia D. Introduction to Women and Globalization, edited by Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lacsamana, 11–­24. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. Aguilar, Delia D., and Anne E. Lacsamana, eds. Women and Globalization. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004.

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Amezcùa, Ramon. Official “Bostich” website. Accessed June 14, 2012. http://www. bostich.org. Bacon, David. The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Courtis, Alan, and Roberto Conlazo. Interview with Dan Warburton. Paris Transatlantic, March 12, 2003. Accessed August 30, 2011. http://www.paristransatlan tic.com/magazine/interviews/reynols.html. Deep Listening Institute home page. Accessed June 1, 2012. http://deeplistening. org/site/. Funari, Vicky. “Synopsis of Maquilapolis.” Accessed August 30, 2011. http://www. maquilapolis.com/project_eng.htm. Funari, Vicky, and Sergio De La Torre. Maquilapolis: City of Factories. Directed by Vicky Funari. Vallejo, CA: California Newsreel, 2006. DVD, 68 min. Gordon, Michael. Industry. With Maya Beiser (cello) and the Bang on a Can ensemble. Cantaloupe 21010, 2002, compact disc. Grewal, Inderpal, and Caren Kaplan. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Kamel, Rachael. “Six Years of NAFTA: A View from Inside the Maquiladoras.” In Women and Globalization, edited by Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lacsamana, 90–­119. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. Madrid, Alejandro L. Nor-­tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Maquilapolis music credits. Accessed June 14, 2012. http://www.maquilapolis.com/ team2_eng.htm. Mills, Mary Beth. “Claiming Space: Navigating Landscapes of Power and Citizenship in Thai Labor Activism.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 37, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 89–­128. Mockus, Martha. Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality. New York: Routledge, 2008. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ana Russo, and Lourdes Torres, 51–­80. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Nortec Collective. “Narco-­corrido.” Accessed June 12, 2012. http://www.nor-­tec. org/narcocorrido. Oliveros, Pauline. “Acoustic and Virtual Space as a Dynamic Element of Music.” Leonardo Music Journal 5 (1995): 19–­22. Oliveros, Pauline. “Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols: A Collaboration.” In “Unyazi,” special issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac 15, nos. 1–­2 (January 2007): 1–­7. Oliveros, Pauline. “On Sonic Meditation.” In Software for People: Collected Writings, 1963–­1980, 138–­57. Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984. Walker, Shirley. Interview with Michael Schelle. In The Score: Interviews with Film Composers, 359–­80. Los Angeles: Silman-­James Press, 1999. Westman, Jack, and James R. Walters. “Noise and Stress: A Comprehensive Approach.” Environmental Health Perspectives 41 (October 1981): 291–­309.

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Imagining Listeners through American Experimental Music NPR’s RadioVisions

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Louise E. Chernosky

In the fall of 1981, National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast RadioVisions, a series of weekly shows covering new music. RadioVisions was a relatively large-­scale nonnews production for NPR.1 The producers’ ambitious goals for RadioVisions included overcoming “the barriers between new music and the general listener,” as well as “pushing back the walls of conventional radio presentation” to “open new spaces to experiment.”2 RadioVisions was not only intended to include radio documentary about new music; the program was intended to include radio documentary that could itself be heard as new music. The resulting parade of new music was led on air by Gunther Schuller, who acted as host for each of the hour-­long programs. Schuller’s narration was intended to help listeners draw connections between broadcasts and to make sense of the potentially unfamiliar sounds in each segment. For further guidance, the programs also incorporated recorded interviews with composers, performers, and music scholars, and occasionally even family members and colleagues of the featured musicians. The interviews and commentary spackling the segments together ensured that the sounds of RadioVisions were heavily curated. Each episode came packaged with a ready-­made context in which the listener could place the music. For the most part, the music was characterized as innovative, unconventional, nonacademic, and distinctly American yet influenced by nonwestern cultures—­a type of music that many historians and journalists have labeled “experimental.”3 The archival records reveal that an emphasis on “American experimentalism” as such was not part of the original plan for the 229

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series. In fact the earliest proposal for RadioVisions was strategically vague, because the producers would later circulate an open call for submissions to generate content. The structure and culture of NPR helped shape RadioVisions into a musical product that was crafted to attract coveted new listeners. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, NPR’s cultural programming was often justified by the (financial) response it might elicit from listeners, as well as its potential to draw new listeners. Frank Mankiewicz (NPR’s president from 1977 to 1983) celebrated the network’s substantially expanded audience in his introduction to the 1981 Annual Report, crediting programming for the boom.

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Two million new listeners discovered National Public Radio between spring 1980 and spring 1981. . . . This surge in listenership is even more significant because it did not result from increase in signal capacity, technological innovation, or entry into new markets—­ factors which usually precede and effect radio audience growth. Our astonishing audience gain resulted from the ability of NPR and member stations to meet the needs of the American public by providing a wealth of quality programming unavailable elsewhere.4 Accordingly, NPR employed focus groups and extensive audience research to quantify and evaluate listener responses to its programming. Yet, in the drive for program-­driven expansion, NPR’s “listeners”—­and especially the as of yet unknown “new listeners”—­were also projected through the programming designed for them. The network’s potential audience haunted the structure of the institution, giving purpose to its programming, validating funding choices, and guiding its growth. This essay examines the “American experimentalism” of RadioVisions within the context of NPR and its imagined listeners. I first recount RadioVisions’ production history, with special emphasis on glimpsing the ghostly listeners guiding the project and tracing the ways in which the series came to focus on American experimentalism. I then turn to the way in which RadioVisions overtly projected “new listeners” on air, focusing on the opening segment, titled “The Challenge.” Finally, I conclude that RadioVisions’ version of musical experimentalism was related to its identity as an NPR product. RadioVisions’ experimentalism allowed NPR to present a distinctly American, diverse, and innovative music while making space for listeners who would value such programming. This case study shows that the cat-

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egory of “experimental music” has been molded, in part, by mainstream radio broadcasts and thus challenges the all too common exclusion of popular culture from scholarship on experimental music. RadioVisions: Production History and Composition

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RadioVisions’ executive producer, Steve Rathe, began planning a radio series featuring new music in 1979. In May 2009 Rathe remembered the creative freedom he felt at NPR thirty years earlier: “If you had a good and interesting idea, the answer, more often than not, was, ‘why not?’”5 The NPR of 1979 was smaller and less established than today’s, but it was growing quickly. This was the year in which the still popular Morning Edition made its debut. The institution was gaining momentum under the leadership and charisma of its well-­connected president, and it was only beginning to rack up the debilitating debt that threatened to destroy it in 1984.6 The next step toward getting RadioVisions on air was drafting a proposal that would attract funding to the project. Production would require a significant amount of money—­“enough to get in trouble with”—­as Rathe put it.7 The grant proposal began by defining the goals of the show in relation to its intended audience. [RadioVisions] is a series of 14 hour-­long programs designed to open up the appeal of new music and audio art for a broad general audience. It will bring together some of the foremost contemporary composers and performers as well as outstanding radio producers to present new music in a setting that will delight the understanding as well as the ear, and persuade general listeners to stay tuned.8 This “broad” and “general” audience would need no prior knowledge of new music. Ideally, these inexperienced listeners would enjoy the new sounds of RadioVisions, appreciate being educated through listening, and therefore “stay tuned” to their local public radio station. RadioVisions’ listeners were conjured up in the first paragraph of the proposal and would quietly inhabit the entire production process. The proposal also played up the means of distribution to the listeners in that broad, general audience. Before 1979, NPR sent its programming to member stations over telephone lines. But its new satellite system (WESTAR) would greatly improve the quality of transmission, and RadioVisions was directly connected to the upgrade.

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RadioVisions would represent a celebration of the high fidelity stereo sound the satellite will make possible. The subtleties of new music and audio art will receive the most advanced state-­of-­the-­art radio transmission when RadioVisions goes on the air. RadioVisions could tap an unprecedented audience for new music, not only because of the crafted framing of the music in an appealing manner, but because a delivery system technically capable of high fidelity transmission and reception will be in place for the first time.9 Thus, members of the RadioVisions staff wisely introduced the series as a project that fit NPR. They showcased the program’s wide range of timbres and dynamics, the edifying commentary that would make it accessible to listeners, and its suitability for NPR’s distribution system. By presenting the show as a “celebration” of the new satellite’s sound, they also argued that RadioVisions had potential as a publicity piece for NPR.10 The connection between NPR’s distribution system and its potential for musical experiment had a precedent: in 1977 Max Neuhaus had devised a nationwide piece for listener participation called Radio Net, which turned NPR’s old system of connected phone lines into a sound transformation circuit. For Rathe (who had also worked as executive producer for Radio Net) Neuhaus’s piece was a model for the potential marriage between radio and musical experimentalism that he hoped to achieve in RadioVisions. He included a summary of the Neuhaus event in the grant proposal in a section labeled “History,” as well as attaching newspaper articles on the success of the event as supporting materials.11 RadioVisions—­while not linked to NPR’s distribution system so literally—­was related to this earlier piece through the proposal and its conception as a radio project. Rathe assembled an advisory panel comprising John Duffy, Richard Felciano, Ulysses Kay, Ilhan Mimaroglu, David Stock, and Joan Tower, later adding Steve Reich to bring the membership to seven.12 RadioVisions’ production team then sent a call to radio producers soliciting submissions on any topic in new music. Together the panel and the RadioVisions staff members (Rathe, Doug Levy of WXXI-­FM, and Greg Shifrin of ZBS Media) would judge and select submissions. Although the call was open, the advisory panel reserved the right to “develop” the programs to make them part of a coherent series. The advisory panel also made the case for supporting new American music: “Regarding the emphasis on the work of American composers, we strongly felt that the series should be limited to composers in this country who, unlike their brethren in Europe, have enjoyed little institutional

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support.”13 This perception was widespread; the ZBS Foundation cited the lack of institutional support for composers in America in its initial materials for the show: “Many artists working in these fields have never had national exposure due not to their lack of appeal to large audiences but to the extremely restrictive and confined formats of radio stations and record companies in America.”14 Likewise, David Stock (conductor of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble at the time and featured artist in one RadioVisions segment) told Rathe that “every European country has its state-­run radio to encourage and promulgate its own music. We have no equivalent here—­but NPR, as the closest parallel, can be of great service to audiences, composers, performers, and the whole development of our American musical culture.”15 This desire for increased institutional support for US composers and enthusiasm for NPR’s production of RadioVisions translated to a nationalist characterization of the new music in the finished series. The language of the request for proposals encouraged submissions presenting experimental music, stating, “RadioVisions is concerned with that body of contemporary work dealing in the creative use of sound.” Although the request did mention traditional concert music as a suitable topic, the following notable trends in new music were listed as possible topics: the “unconventional” use of instruments, “composer-­invented instruments,” “instruments from other cultures,” “common household gadgets,” “recordings of concrete sounds,” music that is “‘scored’ using graphs, illustrations, or verbal instructions which convey the composer’s concept,” and “music without notation” or “composition in real time.”16 These topics, which were indeed central to many of the RadioVisions segments, were also elements that had informed historical constructions of American experimentalism. For example, the “unconventional use of instruments” and “composer-­invented instruments” are familiar early-­twentieth-­century innovations lauded in the work of Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, and Conlon Nancarrow. The mention of cultural borrowing—­evident in the suggested topic “instruments from other cultures”—­is a familiar and problematic aspect of experimentalism, where musical ideas from nonwestern cultures have sometimes been absorbed into a supposedly uniquely American sound.17 By listing “recordings of concrete sounds” and encouraging the use of “common household gadgets,” the call for proposals invoked a Cagean focus on ambient sound. Compositional considerations such as the use of graphic scores, improvisation, and the composer’s written instructions are core components of form-­based definitions of experimental music.18 The advisory panel emphasized the sonic overlap between some

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experimental music and radio art, “calling upon producers to come up with proposals which treat the realm of new music with creativity, imagination, a knowledge of radio techniques, and understanding of radio audiences, and an appreciation of the richness of available material.”19 The advisory panel “recognized that in a sense the producer is like a composer” and distributed the request for proposals to “all NPR member stations, all NFCB [National Federation of Community Broadcasters] member stations, all Pacifica stations, known independent producers (from lists provided by Audio Independents, New Music America attendees, and other sources), some specific commercial stations, some commercial record producers,” and “subscribers to the Journal of Exploratory Radio.”20 This list revealed a commitment to soliciting experimental proposals in the categories of radio art and new music. After sifting through what Rathe remembers as approximately one hundred proposals, the panel chose thirteen for inclusion in RadioVisions.21 Almost all of the winning producers were already regulars in new music circles. For example, Charles Amirkhanian, who produced two segments, is a composer in his own right and had already worked extensively with new music on air for KPFA (Pacifica) in Berkeley. There was also a contingent of artists who were active in downtown New York City, including Peter Gordon, Tom Johnson, Roma Baran, Steve Cellum, Ev Grimes, Laurie Anderson, and John Giorno. Thus, producers who were already active in new music scenes submitted proposals on music they were passionate about, and most of it could be classified as experimental. In a letter to the staff and advisory panel from 1980, Rathe began the process of choosing a host and outlined a limited role: “Try to keep in mind that our host voice will appear only at the end of the show, for about two minutes, with an explanation/description of the next show; perhaps some notion of how what we will hear relates to what we have just heard.”22 According to the summary of the first advisory panel meeting, there were concerns about what having a host would mean for the series. In defining the host’s role we need to keep in mind the best use of the medium. . . . On the subject of having a host at all, it was recognized from a marketing point of view as desirable to have one, although some producers may find it undesirable to use one.  .  .  . [I]t is a conventional radio production technique: do we want to use such a traditional device in a series that we hope will be anything but traditional and conventional? One obvious problem with using the host would be the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the host voice,

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and, say, a text-­sound piece. Admittedly it is risky not to use a host, although a series that is successful sans host could be very exciting.23 The discussion revealed deliberations on the medium of radio as more than simply a vehicle for distribution, and the panel related the role of a host to the norms of radio broadcasting. The special mention of text-­sound composition showed an early commitment to including experimental elements. The use of a host was also related to the series’ intended wider appeal to its audience (marketing, identification). The panel concluded that the host should provide “a presence which will be a reassuring mediator for the audience.”24 Schuller agreed to host and write his own commentary for the show. Rathe, in a letter to Schuller, hoped that his comments would “be spoken in a purposeful but casual way, as they might if each of our listeners was lucky enough to have Gunther Schuller there in the car or living room or kitchen during the broadcast.”25 Schuller’s very presence, as well as his mode of performance, was planned with the series’ “listeners” in mind. His reputable position in the classical music world meant that he would likely be known by classical music lovers and could serve as an authoritative guide. The sum of Schuller’s commentary, the segments’ subjects, and the various narrative content within segments offered a distinctly American version of experimentalism. Table 1 lists each of the segments in RadioVisions, the producer(s) of each segment, and their descriptions from NPR publicity materials. RadioVisions presented a now familiar grouping of experimentalists, beginning with early-­twentieth-­century “pioneers” and establishing historical precedent for the music that would follow. The early programs spotlighted the “founding fathers” of American music, including Henry Cowell, Ernst Bacon, Otto Luening, Leo Ornstein, Dane Rudhyar, Nicholas Slonimsky, Virgil Thomson, Conlon Nancarrow, Lou Harrison, and Harry Partch. The series characterized all of these composers as “pioneers,” “mavericks,” and “innovators” who crafted (or championed, in the case of Slonimsky) an American music that broke away from European influence. The Cowell program was not composed for RadioVisions—­it was an older piece commissioned by Rathe. Created by Grimes and Cellum for NPR in 1978, it won the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s award for Best Cultural Documentary that year. It was also the program that most directly inspired the RadioVisions series. Rathe distributed it to the advisory panel and explained, “It is included as an example of the kind of creative approach to new music programming I hope to see throughout RadioVi-

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

TABLE 1. RadioVisions Segments, Descriptions, and Producers

Segment Title

Executive producer Steve Rathe introduces the series with a look at public radio and its traditional role in offering a platform for American artists. The program examines the challenge of presenting the experimental, the unusual, and the avant-garde, all a central part of the series. Henry Cowell: the This Corporation for Public Broadcasting award-winning Gentle Pioneer documentary, which provided the inspiration for the series, focuses on the life and work of the late Henry Cowell, one of America’s most innovative composers. The program evokes Cowell’s unique aural world and incorporates the comments of many of his students and colleagues. (Produced by Steve Cellum and Ev Grimes) The Elder Statesmen: Audio portraits of six octogenarian composers are presented, all of whom began their careers at a time when no recognizErnst Bacon, Otto able American “classical” music was being written. (ProLuening, Leo Ornduced by Charles Amirkhanian) stein, Dane Rudhyar, Nicholas Slonimsky, Virgil Thomson Keyboard Innovations This program traces the radical changes in compositional approach, acoustics, and construction of the familiar keyboard instrument—the piano. Featured are the works of Conlon Nancarrow, author of the pioneering “Studies for Player Piano,” and composers Lou Harrison, John Cage, and David Rosenboom. (Produced by Eva Soltes) Shoptalk An extraordinary composition for radio is presented by composer/arranger/instrumentalist Peter Gordon. This audio collage of conversations among several New York composers is interwoven with examples of their music. (Produced by Peter Gordon) Details at Eleven: The manipulation of sound, texture, and rhythm which we call John Giorno and music can often include the spoken word, as do the works of Laurie Anderson poet John Giorno, and violinist/composer Laurie Anderson. Audio vignettes from the lives of these two artists are juxtaposed with their works. (Produced by Roma Baron and ZBS Media) The Oldest Instrument Joan La Barbara, singer/composer/musicologist, leads listeners through the entire range of new ways the voice, the world’s oldest instrument, is being used by modern composers. Featured is the world premiere of a work by George Costinesco commissioned especially for the program. (Produced by Linda Blythe, WQED-FM/Pittsburgh) The Composer as The interaction between composing and conducting is Conductor revealed in portraits of the creative lives of four prominent American musicians—Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Gunther Schuller. The program includes commentary by four of their distinguished colleagues, Leonard Slatkin, Tania León, Karel Husa, and H. Wiley Hitchcock. (Produced Steve Cellum andUniversity Ev Grimes) Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies,by edited by Benjamin Piekut, of Michigan

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The Challenge: An Introduction

Description and Producer(s)

TABLE 1. —Continued

Segment Title Music in Reaction: The New Consonance Composition in Real Time

Notes from the Steel City

Symmetries

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Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake by John Cage

High Tech Etude Where Do We Go from Here?

Description and Producer(s) This program illuminates the move from dissonance to consonance by many new music composers over the last two decades. Presented are the words and comments of some of those musicians, including Steve Reich, Harold Budd, and Lou Harrison. (Produced by Charles Amirkhanian) The process and product of improvisational music is examined, including jazz, “creative music,” and other related forms. The program features artists Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, and Leo Smith. (Produced by Ray Gallon) Daniel Lentz, William Thomas McKinley, and David Stock are all Pittsburgh-based composers who share a generation, neoclassical backgrounds, and several mentors. Through music and interviews, this program focuses on their diverse works, in the “mainstream” of contemporary classical composition. (Produced by Mark Yacavonne, WQED-FM/Pittsburgh) The universal search for order and balance in everyday life is the theme of Tom Johnson’s “Symmetries,” 24 short works for eight violas. The pieces are intermixed with poetry, palindromes, and insights from individuals as diverse as a disco patron and a nuclear physicist. (Produced by Tom Johnson and Steve Cellum) The American premiere of Cage’s acclaimed polyphonic oratorio is presented. The work comprises more than 5,000 sounds evoked in James Joyce’s masterpiece Finnegans Wake. The sounds were taped on location throughout the work, layered into more than 60 tracks, and mixed with a text adapted from words in the book, written and spoken by Cage himself. John Cage is recognized worldwide as a leader and guiding spirit of contemporary music. (Radio setting produced by Ev Grimes; “Roaratorio” realized by John Cage and John Fulleman for Westdeutscher Rundfunk.) This radio collage from Cincinnati features its poets, artists, writers, musicians, composers, and the sounds of their city. (Produced by Douglas Smith) Examples of the breadth of 20th century American music accompany the reflections of composer/conductor and series host Gunther Schuller. He appraises the state of contemporary music, its precedents, and the challenge of being a composer as we approach the end of the century.

Source: Publicity Poster, 1981, UMD Public Broadcasting Archives, Archives of NPR, Unprocessed Materials, Box 123.

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sions. This program also served as a demo for both the NEA and NYSCA of what we want to inspire with RadioVisions.”26 The piece artfully combined Cowell’s compositions with interviews (including several with his wife Sydney Cowell and historians Vivian Perlis and H. Wiley Hitchcock), ambient sounds, and field recordings of music that had formed part of Cowell’s musical soundscape. The composer’s own voice could be heard in the program, courtesy of recordings made by Rita Mead and Hitchcock in 1962. The commentary in “The Gentle Pioneer” also set up some of the standard tropes of American experimentalism: listeners learned that Cowell was a West Coast composer, free of European influence, and that he had composed distinctly American music that was informed by nonwestern musical styles. This characterization of Cowell was amplified after the show was incorporated into RadioVisions, when Schuller added that “Cowell suffered quite a bit for his audacious experiments. He was one of the first of our twentieth-­century loners, an American original.”27 This historical narrative continued in the second segment, called “The Elder Statesmen.” Schuller introduced the program with the following. When these composers were beginning to write, America’s reliance on Germany and France for musical inspiration was at its height, to the extent that composing in America almost exclusively represented simple emulation of the European masters. Today, American composers are trendsetters more than followers. . . . Their dedication, their vision, and their creative talent produced for younger generations the first role models of an independent American composer.28 When speaking about the early twentieth century, Schuller referred to people who were “composing in America.” But once these composers became trendsetters, they earned the title of “American composers.” In this introduction, the composer’s very nationality (at least evidenced through music) was related to eschewing emulation. After the first few programs, the series was organized by musical topic rather than chronologically, yet composers, producers, and narrators continued to construct national identity and “experimentalism” through their commentary. A trio of shows—­“Shoptalk,” “Details at Eleven,” and “The Oldest Instrument”—­centered on the use of the voice in new music, especially text-­sound compositions, electronically modified voices in music, and the use of extended and nonwestern vocal techniques. RadioVisions’ third segment on the voice—­ “The Oldest Instrument”—­ included significant historical guidance from producer-­composer Joan La Barbara. La

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Barbara completely bypassed European history while linking her new music to primal origins. Schuller amplified her narrative by introducing the episode with the following pitch: “From the first grunts and cries of the prehistoric human animal, to the vocal usages of today, the voice has been our most intimate instrument, constantly ready for instantaneous use. . . . Next week, singer and composer Joan La Barbara takes us on a guided tour of some latter day experiments with new vocal techniques, as well as using the oldest instrument in some new ways and new contexts.”29 RadioVisions continued with segments on minimalism and consonance, improvisation, and electronic music. In “Music in Reaction,” producer Charles Amirkhanian used Schoenberg’s music as a point of departure, emphasizing that his music was rooted in a European tradition. Amirkhanian then identified “academia” as the extension of this European tradition. Minimalism thus became a populist and authentic break from the hegemony of the academic and European avant-­gardes. But all the while, on another front, the real wave of the future was gathering force. Composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, all living in San Francisco in the early 1960s, and all exposed to the great variety of world music from traditions other than those of Europe exclusively, hit upon a form of escape from the harsh, dissonant music of Schoenberg’s school. Their common interest in the classical music of India, the musics of the Orient, Indonesia, and Africa, and American jazz opened their minds to certain musical possibilities, which hadn’t been extensively explored yet in Western music.30 Nonwestern musics inspired composers to make new music, “the real wave of the future.” The music featured in “Music in Reaction,” perhaps not surprisingly given its popular appeal, was prominently featured in the promotional audio materials for RadioVisions. “Composition in Real Time” focused on improvisation as an experimental art. Musicians featured included Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Derek Bailey (an example of how this improvisation had “taken hold in Europe”), Japanese composer Takehisa Kosugi (mentioning his work with Merce Cunningham), and Pauline Oliveros. While presenting exciting music, the segment also unfortunately served to cordon off the music of black artists under the trope of “improvisation,” part of a larger historiographic trend in the construction of experimentalism where discourses of race and

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ethnicity help to construct ostensibly purely musical categories.31 The promotional materials cited Lewis, who (in the words of the press release) “suggest[ed] that the distinctions between structured composition and spontaneous composition (improvisation) ‘are increasingly artificial.’”32 While the musical material of the program may have respected Lewis’s comment, the segment’s position in the series performed the same exclusion that Lewis has exposed in his scholarship, allowing the musical term improvisation to effectively perform the sometimes racially influenced boundaries of experimentalism. Two previously composed pieces received dedicated segments on RadioVisions: Symmetries by Tom Johnson and Roaratorio by John Cage. Roaratorio received its American premiere on RadioVisions, though only half of it was included. The last commissioned regular segment of the series, “High Tech Etude,” closely responded to RadioVisions’ request for proposals in its approach to sound. Douglas Smith explained at the beginning of the program: Radio can be the means for transmitting earlier art forms in a new way. Radio can also be another raw material or new art, such as that anticipated by Luigi Russolo in his “The Art of Noise,” wherein all sound can be combined and manipulated to create works that are touching, laughable, evocative, or profound into art. We’ve sought out artists in our city who are working in an audio framework, the high-­tech recording environment. And we’ve asked them for works from their unique sensibilities that take the sound mass around us as their palette. The results range from the extremes of six simple notes to the sounds made as our city [Cincinnati] lives. The next fifty-­five minutes is a response from thirty-­six different people to the silence they have found.33 Notice the way that radio itself was approached as an instrument, as more than simply a delivery system. Smith referred to Russolo’s “Art of Noise,” an influential text from the early twentieth century, and invoked “silence” at the end of the quote as a shout out to Cage. Finally, “The Composer as Conductor” and “Notes from the Steel City” offered departures from the overall characterization of experimentalism in RadioVisions. The program description explained that the music of “Notes from the Steel City” was “in the ‘mainstream’ of contemporary classical composition,” obliquely suggesting that there was an “outside position” that the other programs in RadioVisions occupied. The series concluded

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with an episode called “Where Do We Go from Here?” in which Schuller reviewed the music presented in RadioVisions. His survey was relatively traditional and included a substantial dose of European musical history. But he specifically noted that the “renegade tradition” in America was well represented in the series, adding that America was a place where “revolutionary spirits and iconoclasts can flourish.”34 “Experimentalism” was presented as a rupture from tradition in Schuller’s narrative, and as a distinctly American development. Publicity and Press Coverage

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RadioVisions had ample money for publicity (an anomalous situation for NPR’s music programming in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to Rathe), and thus the producers were able to promote RadioVisions extensively.35 Member stations received a letter boasting that “RadioVisions is one of the most adventurous and forward thinking series National Public Radio has ever presented.”36 Because of the novelty of the series, NPR offered program descriptions, biographies of musicians involved, photos, flyers, and two audio samplers (one twenty-­five minutes, and another thirteen minutes long), as well as a thirty-­second video featuring Schuller that was offered on public television. When the publicity materials for RadioVisions were distributed, the suggested spot copy sent to stations announced the sort of music that could be heard. Notice the way that the music’s innovation became a selling point in the advertisement. RadioVisions.. . . Audio visions of new music, electronic art, the bold creative use of sound. Join RadioVisions each week as host Gunther Schuller takes you on an intriguing sound journey to hear the human voice, musical instruments, and the spoken word in ways you’ve never heard them before. From Henry Cowell, to John Cage, and beyond, RadioVisions spotlights a new partnership in music and audio art. Join the adventure of RadioVisions, from National Public Radio, each (day) at (time) here on (station/frequency).37 In addition to the adventure metaphors that hyped the newness of the music (even though some of it was actually half a century old), only two composers were named: Cowell and Cage. Their names evoked the experimental tradition that promised such tantalizing new auditory experiences. While attending the 1981 New Music America festival in Minneapolis, Rathe solicited additional press coverage for the series.

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At the same time—­this was around the same time as New Music America beginning—­and John Rockwell and I were out at Minneapolis at the New Music America festival, and I was like, you know we’re doing this series, you know, if you really want to support these musicians, you could do something about this. And sure enough, [Michael Anthony]  .  .  . called me up and said I’ve been commissioned by John Rockwell to do a piece on RadioVisions for the Sunday [New York] Times, and damned if they didn’t do . . . the better part—­two thirds of a page!—­about RadioVisions as a new music series. And NPR hardly ever got that kind of notice for stuff they were doing before.38 Anthony’s publicity piece in the New York Times extended the construction of experimentalism presented in the show. He drew attention to the composers who were omitted and included Rathe’s response.

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[C]onspicuously absent are the so-­called academic composers, the serialists, the esthetic descendants of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. . . . Says Mr. Rathe, “I would admit . . . that we focus largely on the people who have gone beyond serialism. We focus on composers who have in fact begun to garner large and enthusiastic audiences well beyond the new-­music community.”39 It is notable that Rathe’s answer came back to the listeners: he explained that the composers featured in RadioVisions had “begun to garner large and enthusiastic audiences well beyond the new-­music community.” If these composers had attracted audiences beyond their ardent followers, and in American cities other than New York, perhaps their music could do the same for NPR. The contrast between “academic composers,” or “serialists,” and more popular composers of new music mentioned by Rathe was related to the ascendance of New York’s thriving downtown as a musical force in the early 1980s. Increasingly, serialism and the academy were viewed as the oppressive, “uptown” establishment, with the populist experimentalism of downtown cast in opposition.40 The “new music” of RadioVisions was similar to that presented in the New Music America festivals held in various cities each year from 1980 to 1990—­a festival that grew out of musical activity in downtown New York (called “New Music New York” in 1979). Writing in the New Music America catalog in 1980, Rockwell promoted the festival as “a protest against the cerebral, intellectualized style of

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music-­making favored not only by Pierre Boulez and the post-­Webernian ‘total Serialists’ of Europe, but by their academic acolytes in the America Northeast.”41 And, continuing this characterization, Kent Devereaux stated that “in many ways New Music America was seen as vindication for an entire tradition of American ‘experimentalist’ composers and their disciples who had been shut out of the concert hall.”42 Thus RadioVisions reflected broader perceptions of music in the early 1980s and shared some of the anti­establishment characterization of “experimentalism” that fueled the New Music America festivals. The show’s focus on American experimentalism was the result of the musical passions of the individuals involved with the project; the shared sonic ideals of experimental music and radio; the show’s historical circumstances (especially in relation to the first New Music America festival in Minneapolis); and the series’ production at NPR, its radio distribution, and its marketability. It is this last trio of NPR influences I would like to explore in the remainder of this essay. The network’s imaginary listeners were essential during RadioVisions’ planning phase: in the conception of the show, the grant proposal, and the show’s structure. To further explore the relationship between American musical experimentalism and an imagined public radio audience, I turn to the imaginary listeners haunting RadioVisions’ first segment, “The Challenge.”

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Projecting Listeners on Air: “The Challenge” “The Challenge”—­a hyperreflexive, half-­hour prelude to RadioVisions that focused on public radio and “experimental, unusual, and avant-­ garde” music—­offered an assessment of the state of contemporary music on public radio stations. It was built around a sampling of interviews from radio hosts across the country and identified “the listeners” as the ultimate determining factor for contemporary music programming. The first sound heard in “The Challenge” jarringly called attention to its creative medium; it began by imitating the swirling search of a radio tuner. A burst of fuzzy static told the listener that the sounds they heard were about radio. And from the very first moment of static, that radio had a listener—­a listener who was trying to locate a particular frequency. Eventually the imaginary swirler of the dial settled on a pianist playing Rachmaninoff, presumably choosing a public radio station that was dedicated primarily to classical music. The music receded and an interview with an anonymous public radio host began. The host’s curt assertions allowed a listener to imagine an audience that had very conservative musical tastes, which constructed a

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backdrop against which more progressive listeners could be positioned. The host introduced one of the central conundrums of the program: the problem of attracting listeners with potentially unattractive sounds. The listener then learned that public radio had—­ at times contradictory—­ responsibilities to program according to listeners’ preferences, to invest in and support “the arts,” and to educate its audience. Enter the theme music/ audio logo for RadioVisions, composed by John Ramo and Zenon Slawinsky. Synthesizer, prepared piano, and prepared guitar played a consonant, repeating pattern that evoked minimalism, while sweeping glissandi recalled Cowell’s “Aeolian Harp.” Gunther Schuller’s voice announced the logo calmly and authoritatively: “This is RadioVisions.” There was no question among the speakers interviewed in “The Challenge” that public radio had a responsibility to support new music. The problem in presenting it was “the listener,” and there were two types, according to speakers in “The Challenge.” The first type was uninitiated, but curious and grateful. One radio host insisted, “[P]eople are definitely interested. And they, in fact, have told us in the letters that they appreciate the opportunity to actually have a chance to listen to this.”43 Another radio host mentioned glowing phrases from his listeners such as “I didn’t know I would like this kind of music”; “Thank you for shaking up my preconceived notions of what contemporary music is like”; “It’s not all ‘bloop bleep,’ thank god”; and “I haven’t tried [new music] before, but you’ve got me hooked. I’m willing to try more.” (It is unclear whether these were actual quotations from listeners or whether they were creatively embellished recollections from the radio hosts.) The other type of listener in “The Challenge” was presented as a belligerent caricature: unwilling to try the new listening experience, and angry about being asked to do so. One host complained of receiving “letters that violently assault you,” and of “brickbats.” Because only these two types of listeners were described in “The Challenge,” the program seemed to be targeting the listener who was new to contemporary music. There was no mention of listeners who were themselves experts or fans of new music in “The Challenge.” Interestingly, the show’s advisory panel had insisted that the producers’ program submissions should appeal to both the “newcomer” and the “aficionado” of new music. In actuality, the shows were likely successful in this regard. But the “aficionado” never became part of NPR’s pitch for RadioVisions. In “The Challenge,” the ideal listeners were those who would benefit from the curation of sound provided by RadioVisions, learning from the commentary that made the unknown music less intimidating.

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The last part of “The Challenge” turned to NPR specifically, quoting its statement of purposes and presenting RadioVisions as a product that dealt directly with the problem of contemporary music on public radio. After a brief etude on NPR’s mission statement, where the phrases were layered into a text-­sound composition, Rathe announced: In the fall of 1979, National Public Radio, aware of the problems and the possibilities that contemporary music has offered to public broadcasters, and cognizant of the variety of new works which have never been heard on the air, entered into a partnership with ZBS Media and WXXI-­FM to develop RadioVisions—­thirteen programs designed to apply all the creativity that public radio producers could offer.44 Presenting the series in this manner, after excerpts from the mission statement, tied RadioVisions closely to NPR and the ideals of its founders. It also marked the series as an NPR product. “The Challenge” projected an audience for the upcoming RadioVisions shows comprising open-­minded, uninitiated, and curious individuals. These were the sought-­after “new listeners” to whom the grant proposal referred.

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Imagined Listeners: New to Experimental Music or New to Public Radio? RadioVisions did not consistently use the term experimental as I have here; rather, the show used the words innovative, avant-­garde, new, and experimental interchangeably to highlight the special qualities of the new music presented. I am homing in on the word experimental in order to show how the curation of RadioVisions can be mapped onto musicological and journalistic writing on “American experimentalism.” The term experimentalism has most often been used to collect a canon tinged with rebellion, placing a premium on innovation, unconventionality, and exploration. The gold standard for measuring those qualities has long been the weight of the European musical tradition. Many writers have shown how this characterization is not simply retroactive; it could be heard in Cowell’s writing on Ives, and in Ives’s own blustery pronouncements about the birth of American music (and its masculine nature).45 Other writers have astutely deconstructed the language that has hemmed in the borders of American experimental music, finding that the barriers to inclusion have often been linked to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.46 Nonetheless, the image of the

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rugged, individualist, maverick composer (with corresponding adjectives attached to his—­and, rarely, her—­musical idioms) in American experimental music has persisted. During the 1960s the overlapping of experimental music, theater, and performance art further emphasized experimental music’s affiliations with an oppositional and political art rooted in innovation. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, associations in downtown New York City between post-­Cagean experimental music, punk, new wave, and loft jazz did the same. These connections, combined with reiterated and fossilized rhetoric from the early twentieth century and the social/aesthetic affiliations of many contemporary composers, contributed to the continued characterization of experimental music as a practice that is opposed to a dominant structure. The network could benefit from this “experimentalism” because there was a slippery double meaning for “new listeners” during RadioVisions’ production and promotion: in “The Challenge” the target listeners were new to experimental music; and in the NPR proposal materials, the target listeners were new to public radio. It is significant that these two types of new listeners could be so easily interchanged, and their conflation points to several ways in which experimentalism was useful for projecting a larger NPR audience. First, listeners who might appreciate experimentalism’s supposed position “outside” the mainstream might also appreciate the way that public radio was presented as an alternative to commercial stations. More specifically, public radio’s anticommercial position is similar to the anticommercialism prevalent in new music circles, as both composers and public radio producers made products for which monetary value was not the prime indicator of success. For Pierre Bourdieu, artistic value is assumed by a specific “position-­taking”: denying economic success in the short term in the hopes of accumulating cultural capital (aesthetic value), which will then transform into increased economic success in the long term.47 Bourdieu’s sophisticated analysis of the business of art cannot be mapped onto the world of public radio in any one-­to-­one relationship. There are notable differences, including public radio broadcasts’ immediacy (as opposed to the appreciation of value for a painting or musical score accumulating over time) and less concern with resale of programming. Yet it is possible to locate a modified “economy of disavowal” structuring the value of NPR’s programming through the institution’s antagonistic relationship with commercialism. Although NPR’s pledge drives and “underwriting” might suggest otherwise, its self-­adopted social position of an “alternative to com-

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mercial radio” is part of its emphasis on programming and content rather than profit-­maximizing market strategies. The (noncommercial) prestige of new music could be conferred to the (noncommercial) programming of NPR. RadioVisions’ emphasis on progressive listening (understanding and appreciating the unpopular) and the avant-­garde qualities of the music served as advertising sells that emphasized the institution’s commitment to offering an alternative to commercial and mainstream stations. Second, the unconventional and creative use of sound that has been central to musical experimentalism was also a key part of NPR’s original statement of purposes. The “Purposes” emphasized both the aesthetic experience of sound and the importance of radiophonic experimentation: “In its cultural mode, National Public Radio will preserve and transmit the cultural past, will encourage and broadcast the work of contemporary artists and provide listeners with an aural esthetic experience which enriches and gives meaning to the human spirit.”48 RadioVisions honored the sonic idealism in the mission statement through musical experimentalism’s nuanced sound world. Finally, the strong national identity projected in RadioVisions’ version of experimentalism was often constructed through multicultural borrowing. The show (through the rhetoric of its composers and producers) paradoxically presented nonwestern musics as the building blocks of American music in an effort to find non-­European sources for a new national music. The network was concerned with a similar difficulty in its quest for national relevance: appealing to a large national audience, yet maintaining diverse programs that would appeal to the special interests of diverse smaller groups (a local diversity often abandoned by commercial networks). This goal continued to guide programming and became what Thomas McCourt called “the central paradox of public broadcasting”: the need for “universality of appeal versus representation of diversity.”49 Ralph Engelman has explained that, ideally, “the airwaves of public radio could provide recognition and legitimacy for the aspirations of ethnic and racial minorities.  .  .  . NPR’s public affairs and cultural programming could, at once, highlight American pluralism and help reintegrate a fragmented society.”50 The network’s “Purposes” had proposed that “a sense of the cultural diversity [in the United States] could be achieved by programs featuring the music of the different ethnic groups across the country.”51 RadioVisions, however, did more than simply “feature musics of different ethnic groups”: it assimilated nonwestern musics into a new “American” music. The version of musical experimentalism presented in RadioVisions—­with its strong

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construction of American identity and its sonic representations of multicultural influences—­could magically and successfully (even if problematically and very temporarily) solve this paradox.

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RadioVisions’ Resonance RadioVisions was distributed to NPR’s 264 member stations in the fall of 1981. The final report to the NEA deemed the project a success, citing “excellent member-­station carriage of the series.” Yet of the 157 stations that responded to NPR’s programming survey in the fall of 1981, only half had carried RadioVisions. The majority of those stations felt that the series was “above average programming,” but only 11 percent noted any extra audience response—­positive or negative (the survey did not specify). Several stations did report emphatically negative responses, and one station explained that it had declined to carry the series because listeners had complained about contemporary music programming in the past. Experimental music was not used on a large scale as part of a strategy to build an audience for NPR. Certainly, the audience response data indicated that new music was not the best way to achieve that goal. The bulk of NPR’s energy was devoted to the news programming that had attracted national attention and helped establish a distinctive on-­air identity for the institution. But experimentalism’s potential for imagining an NPR audience influenced the development of RadioVisions and facilitated its broadcast. This potential also allowed “new music” to become “American experimental music” as the RadioVisions project moved through the infrastructure of NPR. RadioVisions’ experimentalism offered NPR an American individualistic—­yet simultaneously diverse and populist—­music as a product, projecting new listeners who would value the sounds of American experimentalism and the sounds of NPR.

Notes Previous versions of this essay were presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in 2009, and as part of the “Music in Polycultural America” Series at Brooklyn College in 2010. I am grateful to Karen King for providing access to RadioVisions documents buried in the University of Maryland’s unprocessed archival materials, and to Steve Rathe for supplying recordings of numerous segments. Many thanks to Ellie Hisama, George Lewis, Benjamin Piekut, Daniel Callahan, Ryan Dohoney, and Sara Shumway for their helpful comments on drafts. 1. RadioVisions, with a total budget of almost $78,000, received National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant no. 02-­3442-­301 for $28,000, $7,500 from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and $10,513 from the Mel-

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lon Foundation and WXXI-­FM in Rochester, New York. “Final Revised Budgets,” University of Maryland Public Broadcasting Archives, Archives of NPR, unprocessed materials (hereafter cited as “UMD NPR unprocessed”), box 123. 2. “Proposal to NEA—­RadioVisions,” UMD NPR unprocessed, box 8. 3. See Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Catherine Cameron, Dialectics in the Arts: The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996); Joaquim Benitez, “Avant-­Garde or Experimental? Classifying Contemporary Music,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 9, no. 1 (1978): 53–­77; David Nicholls, “Avant-­Garde and Experimental Music,” in The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls, 517–­34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth and Thomson Learning, 1997). 4. Frank Mankiewicz, “President’s Letter,” in Annual Report, National Public Radio, 1981, 2. 5. Steve Rathe, interview with the author, May 26, 2009, New York City. 6. See Irvin Molotsky, “What Went Wrong at National Public Radio?,” New York Times, June 12, 1983; Jack W. Mitchell, Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 93–­117; and Michael P. McCauley, NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 37–­77. 7. Rathe, interview with the author. 8. “Proposal to NEA—­RadioVisions.” 9. Ibid. 10. The program was intended to provide promotional material for WESTAR: “NPR plans to pilot two RadioVisions programs to coincide with its major public awareness campaign, scheduled for October or November, 1980.” Ibid. 11. Attachments to the RadioVisions grant proposal included Arnold Dibble, “Listeners Whistle a ‘Classic’ Tune,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 4, 1977; Norma Adams Wade, “Whistlers Stage Big Blowout,” Dallas Morning News, January 3, 1977; Daniel Henninger, “Next, a Musical Tweet: Just Whistle and He’ll Put You on the Air—­Live,” National Observer, December 26, 1976; and John Rockwell, “Whistle While You Tune In to Avant-­Garde Radio,” New York Times, January 2, 1977. 12. Reich’s name was first included in Steve Rathe to RadioVisions Music Advisory Panel, letter, November 24, 1980, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 13. “Summary of First RadioVisions Advisory Panel Meeting,” UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 14. “RadioVisions,” September 17, 1979, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 8. 15. Stock to Rathe, letter, November 1, 1979, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 8. 16. “Request for Proposals,” UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 17. See John Corbett, “Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 163–­86; Martin Scherzinger, “‘Art’ Music in a Cross-­Cultural Context: The Case of Africa,” in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-­Century Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004),

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584–­613; and Barry Shank, “Productive Orientalisms: Imagining Noise and Silence across the Pacific, 1957–­1967,” in Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario, ed. Ignacio Corona and Alejandro Madrid (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 45–­61. 18. Specific elements in Nyman’s Experimental Music that overlap with RadioVisions’ request for proposals include a “radical shift in the methods and functions of notation” (3) and composers “outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action” (4, italics in original). 19. “Summary of First RadioVisions Advisory Panel Meeting.” 20. Ibid. 21. Rathe, interview with the author. 22. Rathe to RadioVisions Music Advisory Panel. 23. “Summary of First RadioVisions Advisory Panel Meeting.” 24. Ibid. (italics in original). 25. Rathe to Schuller, March 9, 1981, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 26. Rathe to RadioVisions Music Advisory Panel. 27. Schuller, in “The Gentle Pioneer,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1981 (my transcription). 28. Schuller, in “The Elder Statesmen,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1981 (my transcription). 29. Schuller, in “The Oldest Voice,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1981 (my transcription). 30. Charles Amirkhanian, in “Music in Reaction: The New Consonance,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1981 (my transcription). 31. See George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); and “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,” Black Music Research Journal 22 (2002): 215–­46. 32. “‘Composition in Real Time’ Explores the Impact of Musical Improvisation,” RadioVisions press release, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 33. Douglas Smith, in “High Tech Etude,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1982 (my transcription). 34. “RadioVisions Schedule,” program description, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 35. See Joan La Barbara, “‘RadioVisions’—­NPR’s Exploration of the World of Sound,” High Fidelity/Musical America, December 1981, 13–­14; Gretchen McNeese, “Radio,” Playboy, November 1981, 40; “Music: New Airwaves,” Horizon: The Magazine of the Arts, October 1981; Greg Sandow, “Voice Centerfold” Village Voice, October 28–­November 3, 1981; and Gerald Gold, “Joyce-­Cage ‘Finnegan’ on Air,” New York Times, December 31, 1981. 36. “Letter from Sarah Carlston,” RadioVisions press release, September 3, 1981, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 37. Suggested Spot Copy, RadioVisions press release, UMD NPR unprocessed, box 123. 38. Rathe, interview with the author. 39. Michael Anthony, “A New NPR Series Tunes in New Music,” New York Times, October 11, 1981.

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40. See Kyle Gann, “The Importance of Being Downtown,” in Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 1–­15. 41. John Rockwell, quoted in Kent Devereaux, “The Twin Cities—­Twelve Years After,” in New Music across America, ed. Iris Brooks (Valencia: California Institute of the Arts in conjunction with High Performance Books, 1992), 12. 42. Ibid., 14. 43. Unidentified public radio host, quoted in “The Challenge,” RadioVisions, radio broadcast, 1981 (my transcription). 44. Rathe, in “The Challenge,” 1981 (my transcription). 45. See Judith Tick, “Charles Ives and Gender Ideology,” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 83–­106; Henry Cowell, “Charles Ives,” in American Composers on American Music (1933), reprinted in Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music, 1921–­1964, ed. Dick Higgins (Kingston, NY: Documentext, 2001), 51; and Michael Broyles, Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 46. See Ellie M. Hisama, Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Carol J. Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself; Nadine Hubbs, The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Jonathan Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence, or How to Avoid Making Matters Worse,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 2 (1999): 232–­51. For more on the problems of defining experimentalism, see Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), especially 1–­19. 47. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 29–­73. 48. William H. Siemering, “National Public Radio Purposes,” National Public Broadcasting Archives, UMD, Elizabeth Young Papers, box 1, folder 11. 49. Thomas Michael McCourt, “National Public Radio and the Rationalization of the Public” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1996), vi. 50. Ralph Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996), 91. 51. Siemering, “National Public Radio Purposes.”

Works Cited Anthony, Michael. “A New NPR Series Tunes in New Music.” New York Times, October 11, 1981. Benitez, Joaquim. “Avant-­Garde or Experimental? Classifying Contemporary Music.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 9, no. 1 (1978): 53–­77. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. Edited by Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

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Broyles, Michael. Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Cameron, Catherine. Dialectics in the Arts: The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. “The Challenge.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. Corbett, John. “Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others.” In Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, 163–­86. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Cowell, Henry. “Charles Ives.” In American Composers on American Music (1933). Reprinted in Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music 1921–­1964, edited by Dick Higgins, 128–­45. Kingston, NY: Documentext, 2001. Devereaux, Kent. “The Twin Cities—­Twelve Years After.” In New Music across America, edited by Iris Brooks, 12–­15. Valencia: California Institute of the Arts in conjunction with High Performance Books, 1992. Dibble, Arnold. “Listeners Whistle a ‘Classic’ Tune.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 4, 1977. “The Elder Statesman.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. Engelman, Ralph. Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996. Gann, Kyle. American Music in the Twentieth Century. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth and Thomson Learning, 1997. Gann, Kyle. “The Importance of Being Downtown.” In Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. “The Gentle Pioneer.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. Gold, Gerald. “Joyce-­Cage ‘Finnegan’ on Air.” New York Times, December 31, 1981. Henninger, Daniel. “Next, a Musical Tweet: Just Whistle and He’ll Put You on the Air—­Live.” National Observer, December 26, 1976. “High Tech Etude.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. Hisama, Ellie M. Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Hubbs, Nadine. The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Katz, Jonathan. “John Cage’s Queer Silence, or How to Avoid Making Matters Worse.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 2 (1999): 232–­51. La Barbara, Joan. “‘RadioVisions’—­NPR’s Exploration of the World of Sound.” High Fidelity/Musical America, December 1981, 13–­14. Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal 22 (2002): 215–­46. Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Mankiewicz, Frank. “President’s Letter.” In Annual Report, National Public Radio, 1981. McCauley, Michael P. NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. McCourt, Thomas Michael. “National Public Radio and the Rationalization of the Public.” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1996.

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McNeese, Gretchen. “Radio.” Playboy, November 1981. Mitchell, Jack W. Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Molotsky, Irvin. “What Went Wrong at National Public Radio?” New York Times, June 12, 1983. “Music in Reaction: The New Consonance.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. “Music: New Airwaves.” Horizon: The Magazine of the Arts, October 1981. Nicholls, David. “Avant-­Garde and Experimental Music.” In The Cambridge History of American Music, edited by David Nicholls, 517–­34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. NPR Archives. Unprocessed materials. University of Maryland Public Broadcasting Archives. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Oja, Carol J. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. “The Oldest Voice.” RadioVisions. Radio broadcast. Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Rockwell, John. “Whistle While You Tune In to Avant-­Garde Radio.” New York Times, January 2, 1977. Russolo, Luigi. “The Art of Noise.” Translated by Robert Filliou. New York: Something Else Press, 1967 [1913]. Accessed September 8, 2013, http://www.artype. de/Sammlung/pdf/russolo_noise.pdf. Sandow, Greg. “Voice Centerfold.” Village Voice, October 28–­November 3, 1981. Scherzinger, Martin. “‘Art’ Music in a Cross-­Cultural Context: The Case of Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Twentieth-­Century Music, edited by Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople, 584–­613. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Shank, Barry. “Productive Orientalisms: Imagining Noise and Silence across the Pacific, 1957–­1967.” In Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario, edited by Ignacio Corona and Alejandro Madrid, 45–­61. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. Siemering, William H. “National Public Radio Purposes.” Elizabeth Young Papers, University of Maryland Public Broadcasting Archives. Tick, Judith. “Charles Ives and Gender Ideology.” In Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, edited by Ruth A. Solie, 83–­106. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Wade, Norma Adams. “Whistlers Stage Big Blowout.” Dallas Morning News, January 3, 1977.

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Materialism, Ontology, and Experimental Music Aesthetics

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Joanna Demers

How do we talk about music? Inevitably, through metaphors and signs. This piece sounds tragic, that one violent. These sounds make me think of death, of trees, or of childhood. And that is how it should be; music’s attraction has always been its practiced scrimmaging with signification. It intimates but rarely (arguably, never) states explicitly. It is, to quote Jankélévitch and his partisans, ineffable.1 All this we already know. And we also know that music reflects social practice, culture, and history, that it no more springs from a void than does any other human activity. Music is meaningful. We come to understand music by understanding the stories of the people who make and listen to it; conversely, we may begin to understand people by understanding their music.2 These have the air of well-­worn truisms. But with experimental music that is posttonal, postserial, music that operates according to no particular codes, what and how does music signify? In sound that seems not to indicate meaning, how do we talk about what we hear? Is it possible to hear sound without attributing to it some meaning? Can we engage with artistic materials without interpreting them as signs? These questions are especially pertinent because many forms of recent art and music are abstract: they no longer operate according to codes (for music, tonality; for painting, perspective) that audiences and artists used to agree conveyed meaning. Abstraction poses formidable challenges to our understanding of contemporary art aesthetics as a whole and experimental music aesthetics in particular. I’ll therefore draw from both aesthetic theory and music to explore what about art (if anything) communicates and signifies. Specifically, I want to interrogate how we can fruitfully work with the traditional ontological definition of art—­a combination of content and material—­amid competing 254

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claims that either content or material has grown irrelevant. These claims are neither trivial nor academic; as we will see, each in its own fashion carries considerable weight in theory and practice. In this essay I’ll consider four examples of recent experimental music for which artists and listeners have proposed interpretations emphasizing either the music’s content or its material, to the exclusion of the other. These interpretations are legitimate, but they sometimes fly in the face of experience, since we may alternate between listening to material and content, and can even listen to both simultaneously.3 Is there a better way to verbalize our experiences of experimental music? I suggest returning to Hegel, whose ontology of art states that content and material are linked not arbitrarily but through some affinity. I propose that we apply an integrated ontology to our understanding of experimental music, one that relieves us of the imperative to separate content from form, or to exclude either from the artwork. An integrated ontology does not entail adopting a new listening strategy—­just the opposite. Through acknowledging the indispensability of both content and material, and their interchangeability, an integrated approach to ontology permits us to listen to experimental music in a manner that comes naturally. And this license in turn allows us to make some pragmatic observations about experimental aesthetics. To give a sense of the difficulties in determining an ontology of experimental music, let me begin with a preliminary example. Miki Yui has offered the concept of “small sounds” to describe her work. Small sounds can be drawn from field recordings or original material and occur at extremely quiet volumes. Yui’s work always sounds polished, as if she has taken great care in deliberating every detail. The music, especially in Lupe Lupe Peul Epul (2001) and Magina (2011), is beguiling; portions seem abstract or inscrutable, while other moments seem vaguely referential. But what I find most exciting about this music is the manner in which Yui’s peers discuss it. I can only assume that such statements reflect at least in part Yui’s own thoughts about her work. The inside cover for Magina contains several blurbs; one by Anthony Moore states: Miki Yui’s work seems to inhabit an etherous forest full of movement. And for me the extraordinary quality her sounds have is that they seem to take on the materiality of living creatures, almost solid but, paradoxically, without weight and therefore airborne. The only gravity they obey is determined by the exceptional sensitivity to sonic space that permeates all of her work.4

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Another blurb from Noi Sawaragi reads: These pieces leave a strange sensation behind. Yes  .  .  . a physical sensation. Make no mistake, it’s certainly sound that you are hearing. But rather than some abstract acoustic vibration, it’s more like that brief vivid touch on the skin you experience when a breeze whistles in through a gap in the window, or from flower seeds being whirled into the sky by the wind.5

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Further on, Minoru Hatanaka writes, “They are both imaginary, marginal sounds that float in suspension, but also magical sounds that permeate our bodies and act upon us internally.”6 These comments cast Yui’s music as a touch, a tactile, physical effect. Sounds occupy space and can float and touch the listener; they are materials that possess agency. What is refreshing about this writing is that it doesn’t seek to focus on sounds to the exclusion of surroundings, nor does it insist on any particular narrative or emotional message. Sounds seem to be suspended in air, occupy space, act like animals . . . and yet, of course, they don’t. These are metaphors, and yet they contain some truth as well, for if such metaphors were simply arbitrary and relative, they would not resemble one another so closely. The consensus amid these blurbs points to something about the convergence of content and material in Yui’s music, a convergence that, as we’ll see below, does not square with assertions for either the irrelevance or supremacy of material within experimental music. Antimaterialism The first claim I want to confront pervades experimental music studies, but it also plagues contemporary art and aesthetic theory in general. In its most basic iteration, the claim reads as follows: material in art is no longer important. By “material,” I refer to anything that our physical senses perceive. Material is the stuff with which visual artists paint, sculpt, or construct. Material can also pertain to more ephemeral phenomena like sound in a piece of music or sound art, or images in a film or video work, as well as things whose qualities are challenging to describe, such as texture in clothing, the look of a particular typeface, the idiosyncrasies of a soup or salad dressing. The continued relevance of material today might seem self-­evident; certainly all art needs to have some material component in order to exist! Yet antimaterialism quickly emerges as a formidable issue if we take into account Hegel’s aesthetics, particularly his ideas concerning the “end of art.”

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Hegel’s aesthetic philosophy derives much of its content from his more well-­known ideas on history, politics, and spirituality. His aesthetics are available to us almost exclusively via a series of lecture notes taken during the 1820s when Hegel taught in Berlin. Hegel’s student Heinrich Gustav Hotho compiled these notes, which are overgrown with flowery language that obscures what are already complex thoughts.7 Still, we should return to Hegel’s ontology of art not only to clarify materiality’s role in art but also because he raises questions that are especially pertinent to twentieth-­ and twenty-­first-­century art. What, for Hegel, is the definition of art? He describes it in terms reminiscent of Plato’s “Theory of Forms,” as a combination of idealized concept and physical form: art “has as its basis the unity of meaning and shape.”8 For Hegel (and for many others dating back to Aristotle), material is manipulated and configured into forms. So in music the material of sound is organized into notes, which are then put in order according to recognizable structures, like a sonata.9 Art’s purpose is to unveil the “truth.”10 At some points in the lectures, Hegel describes this truth as pointing toward the “Divine,” which is synonymous with absolute self-­consciousness: the realization that, in general, each subject and object are distinct, yet unified.11 At other times, Hegel depicts the “truth” more neutrally as a universal that manifests through corporeal particulars. For the Concept is the universal which maintains itself in its particularizations, overreaches itself and its opposite, and so it is also the power and activity of canceling again the estrangement in which it gets involved. Thus the work of art too, in which thought expresses itself, belongs to the sphere of conceptual thinking, and the spirit, by subjecting it to philosophic treatment, is thereby merely satisfying the need of the spirit’s inmost nature. For since thinking is the essence and Concept of spirit, the spirit in the last resort is only satisfied when it has permeated all products of its activity with thought too and so only then has made them genuinely its own. But art, far removed, as we shall see more definitely later, from being the highest form of spirit, acquires its real ratification only in philosophy.12 The Concept or essential idea of art, in other words, is the sublation of universals and particulars. The work of art belongs to conceptual thinking because it satisfies spirit’s need for thought, and does so through a material form. The dialectic of art, as the coupling of idea and material form, itself enters into a dialectical relationship with spirit, at once contemplating uni-

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versals through the limits of particulars. Hegel leaves us with a tease: art is by no means the highest form of spirit, unless it becomes philosophy. But it is art’s status as an amalgam of idea (content) with material (form) that is of central concern here. Material form and idea are not arbitrarily linked in art; beauty must be paired to specific content (not vague or abstract ideas) for an artwork to be successful.13 And, although the work of art lends itself to sensuous apprehension, nevertheless it

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is not merely for sensuous apprehension; its standing is of such a kind that, though sensuous, it is essentially at the same time for spiritual apprehension; the spirit is meant to be affected by it and to find some satisfaction in it.14 Again, a dialectic between inner content and outer form: the beautiful in art consists of “something inward, a content, and something outward which signifies that content; the inner shines in the outer and makes itself known through the outer, since the outer points away from itself to the inner.”15 Hegel is more widely known for his theory of the development of spirit or self-­consciousness, a trajectory that begins with an insular focus on the self, followed by the dawning recognition of the consciousness of other beings, and culminating with the realization that spirit unites all beings, that difference exists within sameness.16 For Hegel the history of art followed a similar development. He defines three eras of artistic production (symbolic, classical, and romantic) according to the evolving relationship between content and form. Symbolic art featured ideas that were still abstract and indeterminate but were “seeking” expression in a physical form.17 Classical art, that is, ancient Greek art, achieved a harmonious balance between ideas and physical form.18 Romantic art initiated a withdrawal from that balance, retreating from particular, external form as it gravitated toward universal content.19 When Hegel delivered his lectures in the 1820s, he believed that the romantic era of art was coming to a close, and that art was in the process of becoming obsolete. This obsolescence was due to two factors. First, art since the Reformation had become increasingly secularized, thus humanity’s need for reverence was to be met elsewhere, particularly in religion and philosophy: “Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art.”20 Second, art had always been handicapped by its dependence on material form, which effectively limited it to “specific content” rather than more universal concepts.21 So far, so good—­these are all passages frequently quoted in end-­of-­art exegesis. But what is less discussed these days

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is that Hegel felt that humanity had outgrown its need for art and replaced it with a higher enterprise, Christianity. The Christian view of truth is of this kind, and, above all, the spirit of our world today, or, more particularly, of our religion and the development of our reason, appears as beyond the stage at which art is the supreme mode of our knowledge of the Absolute.22

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In other words, Hegel does not feel that postromantic art is dematerializing—­ far from it! It is precisely art’s status as a materially contingent phenomenon that limits it. Hegel concludes not that postromantic art (were we to have any need for such a thing) would be completely ephemeral and without material form. Rather, he suggests that the modern desire for truth compels us to look beyond art, in ideas liberated from materiality. Hegel suggests the integration of the conceptual with the physical in cautionary terms verging on the Platonic: “For the sensuous aspect of the work of art has a right to existence only in as far as it exists for man’s mind, but not in as far as qua sensuous thing it has separate existence by itself.”23 So why is it commonly assumed that Hegel foretold the vanishing of material form in art? Granted, one passage might suggest that Hegel did in fact desire art’s dematerialization. The spirit only occupies itself with objects so long as there is something secret, not revealed, in them. This is the case so long as the material is identical with the substance of our own being. But if the essential world-­views implicit in the concept of art, and the range of the content belonging to these, are in every respect revealed by art, then art has got rid of this content which on every occasion was determinate for a particular people, a particular age, and the true need to resume it again is awakened only with the need to turn against the content that was alone valid hitherto.24 But taken within the context of Hegel’s historicization of art, this passage reads differently. Art’s perfection, its golden age, took place during the classical period of ancient Greece. At this point, material form most perfectly represented content—­so perfectly, in fact, that the synapse between content and form was obliterated. This state of perfection was predictably temporary, for as soon as “the perfect content has been perfectly revealed in artistic shapes,” then the spirit rejects these “shapes” and turns “back into its inner self.”25 The withdrawal to the inner self characterized Hegel’s

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romantic era, an era that he viewed as already drawing to a close. Once the withdrawal to the inner self in art was complete, spirit would have no further need of art, and would turn to the more unambiguously inward pursuits of religion and philosophy. Hegel’s views on the end of art seem to presage antimaterialist statements on the part of many subsequent critics and philosophers—­although it’s not exactly clear how closely some of these writers and artists have read Hegel, or whether Hegel is important to these recent discourses. In order to generalize about aesthetics without placing excessive importance on Hegel alone, I’ll dwell instead on shifting views regarding material, whether informed by Hegel or not; these views concern aesthetic theory in general, with particular emphasis on conceptualism. One source for the belief that materiality has gone by the wayside can be found in recent glosses on Hegel’s end-­of-­art theory, especially as it pertains to contemporary art. For instance, Arthur Danto argues that recent art dispenses with “manifestos,” aesthetic platforms devised by artists and critics to define good and bad art, because all historical styles, all methods, all media, and all materials are now equally legitimate and in current usage in today’s art world.26 Danto draws heavily from the art historian Hans Belting, who writes that style has historically served as a standard according to which individual artworks could be judged. The simultaneity of diverse styles, or the absence of a single characteristic style in the present era forces artists to explain and theorize their own work within the artwork itself; this theorization often overshadows material, and in some instances becomes the very material of the artwork.27 Along similar lines, Gianni Vattimo regards the death of art as the moment when critical interpretation and “demythologization” of art render the art object irrelevant.28 Peter Bürger argues that avant-­garde art critiques institutions, such as museums and galleries, rather than past art, meaning that the subject of avant-­garde art has become politics rather than aesthetics.29 These theorists agree that art is dying because it is eschewing materiality for critique. Taking a different tack, J. M. Bernstein argues (incorrectly, in my opinion) that Hegel regarded artistic materials as “dead.”30 A second source for the disappearance of material from philosophical accounts of contemporary art can be discerned in recent descriptions of the history of aesthetic thought. I cite two in particular, by Alain Badiou and Vattimo, who, each in his own fashion, condense aesthetics into a canon of writings by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger.31 Both Badiou and Vattimo credit Hegel with utterly changing the tenor of aesthetics, for he is the first to provide a systematic, ontological treatment of art objects into ideas reflected through material form. A third source for the reputed disap-

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pearance of material from aesthetic discourse is the rise of artistic practices, since the 1960s, in which concepts trump material. Lucy Lippard, among the first critics to write about conceptual art, defines that practice as “work in which the idea is paramount and the material is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized.’”32 And ideas, at least in the examples Lippard cites, often have to do with politics and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s—­thus, ideas that seemed ill-­suited to the anesthetizing confines of the museum and gallery. One of the most famous works of conceptual art is Joseph Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” (1965), an installation piece featuring three items: a real chair, a photograph of said chair, and a poster listing a blown-­up photocopy of a dictionary definition of the word “chair.” Another recent artistic practice that downplays the importance of material is “relational art,” art that deals with networks of human relations and social contexts; Rirkrit Tiravanija’s installations containing freshly prepared food, sofas, and places to listen to relaxing music are a good example of this. Nicolas Bourriaud defines relational art, and by extension all art, as “an activity consisting in producing relationships with the world with the help of signs, forms, actions and objects.”33 Note that this definition mentions objects last, and only after identifying the true being of art as an “activity” that relies on “signs, forms,” and “actions.” Conceptualism and relational aesthetics do indeed give us a provocative glimpse of a dematerialized artworld, or rather, a world in which art ceases to occupy space, have an appearance, or generate sound. But, to belabor the obvious, even the most conceptual works do leave some physical trace.34 Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” is utterly contingent on its first two exemplars of chairness, the real chair and the photograph. Even the third exemplar, the dictionary definition written on a sheet of paper, is displayed for us to see. And while dematerialization does occasionally enter into artistic practice, whether in the form of silence and infinitesimally small and quiet sounds of experimental music or empty canvases, orchestrated social situations, or blank film, examples of truly absent material, artworks truly bereft of anything that can be sensed are quite rare, even in recent years. Hypermaterialism The second claim I want to address is one that could be dubbed hypermaterialism. This claim asserts that the qualities of material itself, as opposed to ideas or transcendental qualities, are all that matter in art. I have written elsewhere about the precedents for hypermaterialism in twentieth-­century music, so I present here a summary of these opinions.35 Georges Bataille

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introduced “base materialism,” a privileging of taboo materials like excrement and blood, as a way of resisting what he perceived as the implicit idealism of surrealism. Bataille’s writings frequently describe raw flesh and sexuality in an unaestheticized, unforgiving light, leaving nothing to the imagination and certainly no hint of redemption or sentimentality. Later, and in a probably unrelated fashion, Morton Feldman spoke frequently of his desire to let his materials, the sounds themselves, just be, without referring to anything outside themselves. Roughly simultaneously, minimalist art under Donald Judd and Frank Stella aspired toward thingness or what Michael Fried critically called “objecthood,” a supposed rejection of signification. Stella characterized his own painting as follows: “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. . . . What you see is what you see.”36 Hypermaterialism is at heart a reaction to antimaterialism, and as such it internalizes antimaterialism’s underlying presumption that materials and ideas are necessarily separate and in an adversarial relationship. The schism between materials and content is one I’ll take on below, but note here the other weakness in hypermaterialism—­the supposition that we can encounter materials in an a priori fashion, prior to our knowledge of materials’ origins or relationships to other materials, ourselves, or the world. This is the fallacy of phenomenology, that there can be a primary, universal experience that precedes social and cultural imprinting.37 Hypermaterialism rejects the transcendental aspirations of idealism and yet imposes its own sort of transcendence by expecting and even demanding an identical reaction to material from every perceiver. An Integrated Ontology of Art To theorize about the ability of artistic materials to signify and communicate is thus a difficult task. Contemporary art and experimental music display contradictory tendencies, supporting both anti-­and hypermaterialist platforms simultaneously. In addition, recent art and art theory profess to accept all materials as suitable to artistic work. In the aftermath of Dadaism, Fluxus, expressionism, conceptualism, actionism, performance art, environmental art, outsider art, pop art, and of course John Cage, all materials are equally legitimate as aesthetic materials. Given this ecumenical environment, Danto and others have argued that there is nothing, or at least nothing in the way of material, that distinguishes recent artworks from anything we would traditionally consider non-­art.38 Likewise, since

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all sounds are permissible in experimental music, one might conclude that there is nothing acoustic or phenomenal that distinguishes the experience of listening to music from listening to sounds in daily life. In short, the antimaterialist approach, an approach that evinces a certain cynicism, would have it that if all materials are equally legitimate, then material as such no longer matters. According to this line of reasoning, art is defined according to the contexts in which it is apprehended, not by the materials with which it is constructed. Likewise, the hypermaterialist approach would aim to find in material some meaning that precedes language, culture, even thought, a need responding to art’s abstraction and loss of narrative coherence. Examining the social and institutional aspects of art’s being is certainly important, and my goal is not to diminish these approaches in any way. So, too, is there much left to be said about the so-­called pure aspects of material, even if the concept of purity is problematic. But I want to enrich our understanding of experimental music by proposing that we reconsider materiality in all of its ungainliness, particularly the ability of materials to either convey or resist meaning. This approach would offer an integrated ontology of art, one in which we recognize the persistence of both content and material as well as the ways in which contemporary art often blurs the distinctions between the two. Such an approach would not be identical to phenomenology, which for all its usefulness focuses more on the experience of perceiving art than on the status of content and material in the artwork itself.39 Yet in merely broaching the topic of the “artwork itself” (as if it were self-­evident), am I not reverting to the aestheticist fallacy that it’s possible to talk about artworks themselves, as separate from society? Is an integrated ontology of material and form merely hypermaterialism in disguise? I feel that it is not. I’d like to propose that we examine the elements of being of experimental music, and that we do so through examining the ontology of contemporary art broadly. I advocate this task with respect for what ontology entails, and where it can fail. Since Hegel, a good deal of philosophy has warned of the dangers of an ontological approach. Hegel’s system is itself an elaborate ontology of human spirit, one that (many argue) ends up forcing a reconciliation between subject and other. Anything that does not wish to be reconciled into the subject, anything that resists being incorporated into his all-­encompassing totality, is either left out of the discussion or, in more sinister circumstances, eventually made to yield to the system. I recognize the folly of assuming that an ontology, no matter how well intentioned, can explain every last aspect of art (or anything else). I there-

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fore propose setting about an ontological investigation that, following Vattimo and Catherine Malabou, has two goals.40 Our first goal will be deriving some basic description of contemporary art that we can apply to experimental music, and that deals explicitly with materiality. Our second goal will be to make space in this rule for the possibility of change, for novelty. For artworks, like life in general, always exceed and transcend the rules we set to define them. The trend in antimaterialist aesthetics and practice, especially art since the rise of conceptualism, has been to define art according to its metaphysical or ideological claims. And under this schema, what art does is signify ideas, emotions, or concepts. Hypermaterialism would, on the other hand, define art within what it is physically made of and would assume that physical characteristics by themselves do not signify. Hegel’s ontology approaches a hypermaterialist ontology in that it stipulates some combination of content and material. But Hegel departs from hypermaterialism in two ways: by leaving space for art’s signifying properties—­through claiming that art reveals some truth—­and by relativizing his formalist component by tracing the change in the relationship between art’s content and form through history. Hypermaterialism is less prevalent today than antimaterialism, in large part because of the peculiarity I mentioned above, that so much contemporary art lays claim to any and all materials. But material’s very protean nature—­the fact that it can change and assume any number of forms—­ works to our advantage in our search for an ontology that delineates qualities while simultaneously leaving space for innovation and change. I am not in search of an ontology that would define art according to specific materials, or even styles in which materials are deployed. Instead, I would like to find new ways to talk about materiality that are respectful of the particular and the general, simultaneously. In the context of experimental music, let’s see what such a refined approach toward materiality would mean. In the same way that I did with the Miki Yui track, I’d like to focus on three other examples from recent electronic experimental music, but with the intention that the general observations made here could apply to nonelectronic experimental music as well. These examples all contain sounds that are not easily reducible to words, narratives, programs, or any other straightforward signification. And yet I resist the tendency to conclude that these pieces must therefore be about “nothing” simply because they are not about anything in particular. After discussing each example, I’ll propose an integrated ontology that accounts for the fungibility of content and material.

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Three Analyses Celer began as a duo comprising spouses Danielle Baquet-­Long and Will Long. Until Baquet-­Long’s untimely death in 2009, Celer was exceedingly prolific, producing at least three dozen releases. A typical Celer track contains a mixture of acoustic and synthesized instruments and, sometimes, field recordings. Most often the track features a section of material, whether a single pitch, chord, or sequence, that is looped several times. Sometimes different types of sounds are looped at differing rates such that no two conjunctions of sounds are identical. Bloggers and critics describe Celer’s music as achingly beautiful, an opinion I share. But it is challenging to describe why. Its harmonies are generally tonal, but with a few modal extensions reminiscent of Debussy or Ravel, as well as patches of harsh dissonance. The spaciousness of the sounds—­from muted acoustic strings to epically proportioned synthesized strings—­might suggest a Hollywood soundtrack. And the trajectory of each iteration also evokes spatial volume. Sounds often first emerge quietly in the nether ranges, cresting in volume and register before dissipating into gossamer tendrils. Celer’s tracks work with the presence and absence of sound. When that sound is present, it is encompassing, inundating. When it is absent, it leaves doubt as to whether it had ever been present in the first place. The titles of Celer tracks are poetic and mysterious: “This Thinking Globe Exploding,” “The Once Emptiness of Our Hearts,” and “Normal Sadness (The Softness of the Sea Hibiscus).” And Celer album covers are nearly all composed of breathtaking photographs, presumably taken during the Longs’ trips to Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. In total, the sum effect of Celer’s music and mystique is one of great, intoxicating beauty. But one would be hard-­pressed to locate any particular content in these tracks. The track titles would appear to be poetry, but nothing ostensibly links these poetic verses to the music to which they are attached. There are never any lyrics that might anchor the sounds to particular concepts. The musical materials that we may potentially regard as meaningful are the repetitions and harmonies. A listener in search of signifying content in these tracks could perhaps hear in the seething of sound and the interplay of tonal chords an analogy to cresting waves or, more metaphorically, a waxing and waning of emotion or desire. This is reasonable, and I often listen to Celer with these sorts of thoughts. But those attending purely to material without concern for underlying content could hear in Celer’s music patterns of slowly building arcs of sound that climax before fading.

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The distinction between these two readings is subtle and perhaps amounts simply to the decision of whether to interpret Celer’s musical gestures as representing anything outside the music. This decision is not nearly as important as the polemics of the anti-­versus hypermaterialists might suggest. For the object of contemplation, Celer’s music, remains the same, even if our attention shifts from the music to the associations it triggers. Kevin Drumm is a guitarist and experimental musician best known for noise projects like Sheer Hellish Miasma (2002), which assault the ears with unremitting sheets of deafening screeches. Another album, Imperial Horizon (2009), is about as far removed from noise aesthetics as one could imagine. The album consists of a single track, “Just Lay Down and Forget It,” which lingers on a diaphanous chord for over sixty minutes, during the course of which the texture of the chord gradually thins in the bottom register to leave higher harmonics. Imperial Horizon is thus an example of drone music, which contains sustained pitches or chords with little or no melody. Harmonic and textural changes, if present at all, are slow in coming. The lengths of drones seem arbitrary and often dictated by a performance forum or recording media rather than predetermined ideas of what constitutes a “complete” drone work. The philosophies behind drone works vary, but artists often claim to emphasize the present moment rather than the past or future, a desire to quiet the mind through meditation, and a desire to escape suffering through a stilling of desire. It’s exceptionally difficult to write about drone music or Celer’s brand of ambient minimalism. For many, including myself, this music is beautiful in a way that draws the ears and attention inward, as if to listen to the soul. Yet it is impossible to describe what this experience feels like, so that even though we might rely on metaphors like those I have suggested when plain descriptions fail, metaphors themselves ultimately fall short. Theories concerning sound’s ability to bear meaning can only touch on part of the experience of listening to drone music. Yet it would be equally misguided to insist on the meaninglessness of drones, for the simple reason that drones are so often used as part of or alongside religious or spiritual contemplation. A hypermaterialist approach to drones would yield little since the music changes so little, and it would also miss the point. Yet an antimaterialist approach fails to explain the differences between drones; if sound material were truly inconsequential, then there would be no reason to explain why some listeners prefer Éliane Radigue’s drones to those of Sunn 0))). Filament 1 (1998) is an album-­length collaboration between Japanese experimentalists Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M. The opening track, “Filament 1–­1,” consists of a turntable playing what would appear to be

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a record devoid of recorded sound. We hear pops and crackles of vinyl, a looping sound as if the needle is repeatedly tracing a circular groove; on top of this phonographic sound coincide occasional, brief bursts of sine tones. This first section gives way to a passage of a single sine tone pitch. For the first few minutes, this pitch is without deviations, but then impurities begin to intrude: pitch fluctuations, brief static, then finally a screeching additional pitch. The ensuing album tracks proceed with similar configurations of noise and either faint or loud sine tones. Even for listeners accustomed to noise music, Filament 1 makes for difficult listening. The most shocking moments are between tracks, especially when loud, pain-­inducing sounds are suddenly followed by silence. The gaping void of that silence, a silence that the mind attempts to fill with remembered noise just as the eyes will retain a retinal image of a bright light, exacts its own sort of discomfort. Pain is central to the discourse of noise music. Transgressing not only aesthetic norms but the body’s dictates for physical comfort, noise music espouses hypermaterialism in its attempts “to keep material material (or make it back into this, now, again, for the first time) rather than idealized, organized musicality. It is interested in material being stuff, not a source.”41 And there is certainly something to be said for the liminality of this genre, for its ability to place the ears and body at such levels of discomfort that thought and reflection seem to become impossible. But lest I state the obvious, noise music has a great deal of meaning alongside its base materiality. Paul Hegarty’s book is among the best scholarship on the subject, and he has no difficulty filling his pages with perceptive observations on noise music’s relevance to politics, sadomasochism, and contemporary visual art. The power of noise music may well consist in momentarily stripping sound of its normal signifying baggage, but this does not mean that sound in noise music has stopped signifying altogether. I have listened to the works discussed above both with an ear for the meaning of the music and with as little attention to meaning as I could muster. Both ways of listening are legitimate, but for me ultimately unsatisfying. If Celer’s music could be easily decoded into lines of poetry, poetry and music would be indistinguishable. If it sufficed to summarize a drone work in a few words, it would make no difference whether I listened to Drumm’s Imperial Horizon or any other drone work, nor would the idiosyncracies of Miki Yui’s small sounds, or Sachiko M’s drill-­like sine tones, seem unique. Yet if these works are meaningless, why should we find them affecting? This music is moving because the ideal content that causes so much emotional turmoil is the very material that we perceive with our senses. Celer’s

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cresting waves of sound make sense at a level that trumps language, and yet that dares us to fumble with language in order to convey what we hear. Sounds cry out for explanation, even as they render language superfluous. Sounds are at once material and content.

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Material in Electronic Music The ontology of experimental music would thus appear to be messier than we might have thought. Is it still appropriate or even necessary to distinguish between content and material in experimental music? Until the mid–­ twentieth century, few writers would have referred to sound itself as form or material. Musical notation, of course, could be described as material if by material we mean something that indicates, that suggests—­a signifier. But the idea that sound by itself could have plastic, malleable, phenomenal properties, that it could persist in time, only began to gain steam after the rise of phonography. This makes sense, for we typically require of artistic materials that they have some presence, some continuity. Sound by itself is ephemeral; it resonates, then dissipates. But recorded sound gives the impression that it has been captured. This is, of course, not really the case. Phonographs capture a record of reverberations that a sound makes in some medium, and then transmit new vibrations through that record, which gives the impression that sound is recurring. After the development of phonography, many perceived in sound malleable qualities that made comparisons with other artistic forms, like plaster or paint on canvas, seem more likely. And thanks to sound editing software current today, it seems natural to conceive of sound the way we would conceive any other artistic medium. I wrote above that few writers would have regarded sound as a form or material. There was one important exception—­Hegel, who, as Mandy-­ Suzanne Wong has detailed, regarded “musical sound as at once passive and active, plastic and dynamic, as material and as an agent, as objective and ideal.”42 One of Hegel’s own words for describing sound is material, meaning a plastic substance that the composer shapes like a sculptor shapes stone.43 Hegel’s understanding of sound is more nuanced than one-­sided depictions of sound as a passive embodiment of the composer’s genius. Sound is dynamic, active, and even seems to possess agency.44 Hegel’s understanding of sound is exceptional, for it already intimates that the tidy demarcation between content and material, a demarcation on which Hegel relies in his aesthetics lectures, may not be so tidy. Indeed, as Wong points out, Hegel’s ontology of sound proves uncannily prescient for anticipating experimental music. Adorno further muddles the distinction in his descriptions of musical material.45 For him musical material includes sounds,

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but also musical forms (e.g., sonata form), notation, and compositional approaches. And while such materials lend themselves to formalist analysis, they cannot be understood as separate from the culture and time in which they were conceived. Material, in other words, is an extension of its circumstances of production. Thus, long before the rise of experimental electronic music, at least two thinkers had already questioned the supposition that sound is neutral, inert material that musicians sculpt. Hegel and Adorno both provide frameworks in which we can understand sound as something other than simple surface decoration. But so, too, is it unsatisfactory to regard sound as pure content, if by content we mean disembodied emotion or thought. Sound is clearly phenomenal, so it has qualities of both surface medium and conceptual notion. But rather than attempt to find some new configuration that places sound between the antipodes of material and content, perhaps a better policy would be to revise our current understanding of the word material. Such work is already being carried out in “new materialism,” a subfield of philosophy and critical theory. Pheng Cheah, for instance, contrasts our traditional way of conceiving of material as object, exterior, and therefore other (what he calls “dialectical materialism”) to a nondialectical, deconstructive materialism. This latter permutation, as initiated by Derrida, requires that we “think of matter outside the oppositions that have imprisoned it, [which] therefore requires us to think of matter outside opposition itself, including the oppositions that most patently denote opposition, the inside/outside and subject/object pairs.”46 I mention Cheah’s work with some reservation, because he describes Hegel’s understanding of dialectic as always placing matter “on the outside,” a statement that Wong’s reading of Hegel’s ontology of sound would refute. Nevertheless, Cheah points to a new mechanism for making sense of material, for breaking the habit of writing off material as external to the subject. Let’s see if we can attempt an at least cursory aesthetics of experimental music given our ontology. We know from our discussion of sound that it can exist as both material and content. And we know that listening to experimental music can entail contemplating meanings and associations of sound, contemplating the internal characteristics of sound, or a mixture of the two. We also know that a basic, Hegelian ontology of art involves a pairing of content and material. From these three statements, it follows that in an ontology of experimental music content could be synonymous with material. Again, Hegel proves useful, through the intermediary of Paul de Man, whose essay on Hegel’s aesthetics distinguishes between his definitions of sign and symbol. Both signs and symbols are pairings of content and material. But as de Man sees it, Hegel perceives the connection

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between a sign’s content and material as purely arbitrary; there is nothing about the word horse that signifies anything particularly horselike. On the other hand, in a symbol there is “concrete interpenetration of meaning and shape.”47 For de Man, Hegel’s periodization of art into symbolic, classical, and romantic eras indicates that he regarded only early examples of art as being particularly symbolic. Classical and romantic arts lost the symbolic period’s “concrete interpenetration” of content and material and instead began to assume more abstract, arbitrary relationships between material and idea. If all this is the case, then what we may find in contemplating experimental music, and arguably a great deal of recent abstract art, is a reversion to an aesthetic ontology as exemplified by Hegel’s symbolic era, in which content and material are one. This is a provocative contention, for it means essentially that Hegel’s historical trajectory of art has gone full circle by becoming what it once was in the past. And this is in no small part ironic, for it utterly contradicts Hegel’s assertion that art has become for humanity a thing of the past. The equivalence of content and material would mean that we don’t need to aspire to restrictive or prescriptive forms of listening. It also means that we needn’t denigrate either the conceptual or the physical aspects of art, nor be afraid to talk about the way in which they are interrelated. Yet even with this revised understanding of material, and an integrated ontology of art, are we any better equipped to describe why art is distinct, since anything—­whether it is physical or conceptual—­ can be material in art? And, to repeat my opening question, must artistic materials communicate or signify? Suffice to say here that there remains a good deal of work to be done on the relationship between aesthetic meaning and aesthetic experience. Clearly, there is nothing specific to the artwork that guarantees its acceptance as art. Aesthetic experience hinges on customs for apprehending art, such that we knowingly appreciate art as art and not something else. We can sometimes bring these same customs to experiences or phenomena not typically regarded as artworks, like sunsets, even barbarity,48 or debauchery.49 But at least with a revised, more relaxed view toward the material that makes up the art we enjoy, we can allow ourselves the freedom to say why we enjoy it—­the first step in defining aesthetic experience.

Notes 1. See Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Carolyn Abbate, “Music—­ Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 505–­36. 2. See Karol Berger, “Musicology According to Don Giovanni; or, Should We

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Get Drastic?,” Journal of Musicology 22, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 490–­501; and Michael James Puri, review of Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-­Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment, by Berthold Hoeckner, Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 488–­501. 3. I have elsewhere explored competing theories for listening to content and material in electronic music. See Joanna Demers, Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 21–­68. 4. Anthony Moore, liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina, Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. 5. Noi Sawaragi, liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina, Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. 6. Minoru Hatanaka, liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina, Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. 7. Robert B. Pippin, “What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel),” Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (Autumn 2002): 7. 8. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol.1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 602. 9. Ibid., 86. 10. Ibid., 55. 11. Robert B. Pippin, “The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-­Century Philosophy, ed. Frederick C. Belser (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 397. 12. Hegel, Aesthetics, 13. 13. Pippin, “The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics,” 397. 14. Hegel, Aesthetics, 35 (emphases are Hegel’s). 15. Ibid., 20. 16. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 17. Hegel, Aesthetics, 300. 18. Ibid., 301. 19. Ibid., 519. 20. Ibid., 10. 21. Ibid., 9. 22. Ibid., 10. 23. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (London: Penguin, 1993), 40. 24. Hegel, Aesthetics, 604. 25. Ibid., 103. 26. Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 30–­31. 27. Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, trans. Caroline Saltzwedel and Mitch Cohen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 13. 28. Gianni Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth, trans. Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 109. 29. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-­Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 22.

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30. J. M. Bernstein, “Freedom from Nature? Post-­Hegelian Reflections on the End(s) of Art,” in Hegel and the Arts, ed. Stephen Houlgate (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007). 31. Alain Badiou, “Art and Philosophy,” in Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 1–­15; Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth. 32. Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), vii. 33. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Paris: Les presses du réel, 2002), 107. 34. Anna Dezeuze has made similar observations in reviewing recent histories of conceptual art. See Anna Dezeuze, “Dealing with Dematerialization,” Art History 32, no. 2 (April 2009): 399–­404. 35. Demers, Listening through the Noise, 79–­82. 36. “Questions to Stella and Judd: Interview by Bruce Glaser, Edited by Lucy R. Lippard,” in Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: Dutton, 1968), 158. Originally broadcast in February 1964 on WBAI-­FM, New York, as “New Nihilism or New Art?” 37. For more on the phenomenological fallacy, see Brian Kane, “L’objet sonore maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, Sound Objects, and the Phenomenological Reduction,” Organised Sound 12, no. 1 (2007): 15–­24. 38. Danto, After the End of Art. See also Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? (London: Routledge, 2010). 39. See, for example, Maurice Merleau-­ Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in The Merleau-­Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 59–­75. 40. Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth, 57–­70; Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (New York: Routledge, 2004). 41. Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music: A History (New York: Continuum, 2007), 140. 42. Mandy-­Suzanne Wong, “Hegel’s Ontology of Musical Sound,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, Victoria, BC, Canada, October 23, 2010. 43. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 890. 44. As Hegel writes, “The chief task of music consists in making resound, not the objective world itself, but, on the contrary, the manner in which the inmost self is moved to the depths of its personality and conscious soul.” Ibid., 891. 45. Max Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 149–­58. 46. Pheng Cheah, “Non-­dialectical Materialism,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 74. 47. Paul de Man, “Sign and Symbol in Hegel’s Aesthetics,” in Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 93. 48. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (New York: Vintage, 1991). 49. Michel Houellebecq, Plateform (Paris: Flammarion, 2001).

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Works Cited Abbate, Carolyn. “Music—­Drastic or Gnostic?” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 505–­36. Badiou, Alain. “Art and Philosophy.” In Handbook of Inaesthetics. Translated by Alberto Toscano. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Belting, Hans. Art History after Modernism. Translated by Caroline Saltzwedel and Mitch Cohen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Berger, Karol. “Musicology According to Don Giovanni; or, Should We Get Drastic?” Journal of Musicology 22, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 490–­501. Bernstein, J. M. “Freedom from Nature? Post-­Hegelian Reflections on the End(s) of Art.” In Hegel and the Arts, edited by Stephen Houlgate, 216–­43. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Paris: Les presses du réel, 2002. Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-­Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Cheah, Pheng. “Non-­ dialectical Materialism.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 70–­91. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. de Man, Paul. “Sign and Symbol in Hegel’s Aesthetics.” In Aesthetic Ideology, edited by Andrzej Warminski, 91–­104. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Demers, Joanna. Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Dezeuze, Anna. “Dealing with Dematerialization.” Art History 32, no. 2 (April 2009): 399–­404. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage, 1991. Goldie, Peter, and Elisabeth Schellekens. Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? London: Routledge, 2010. Hatanaka, Minoru. Liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina. Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. Hegarty, Paul. Noise/Music: A History. New York: Continuum, 2007. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T. M. Knox. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. Translated by Bernard Bosanquet. London: Penguin, 1993. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Houellebecq, Michel. Plateform. Paris: Flammarion, 2001. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Music and the Ineffable. Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Kane, Brian. “L’objet sonore maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, Sound Objects and the Phenomenological Reduction.” Organised Sound 12, no. 1 (2007): 15–­24.

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Lippard, Lucy. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Malabou, Catherine. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic. New York: Routledge, 2004. Merleau-­ Ponty, Maurice. “Cézanne’s Doubt.” In The Merleau-­Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, edited by Galen A. Johnson, translated by Michael B. Smith, 59–­75. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1994. Moore, Anthony. Liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina. Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. Paddison, Max. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pippin, Robert B. “The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-­Century Philosophy, edited by Frederick C. Belser. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pippin, Robert B. “What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel).” Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (Autumn 2002): 1–­24. Puri, Michael James. Review of Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-­Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment, by Berthold Hoeckner. Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 2 (2006): 488–­501. Sawaragi, Noi. Liner notes to Miki Yui: Magina. Hören MIMI-­024, 2010, compact disc. Stella, Frank, and Donald Judd. “Questions to Stella and Judd: Interview by Bruce Glaser, Edited by Lucy R. Lippard.” In Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock, 148–­64. New York: Dutton, 1968. Originally broadcast in February 1964 on WBAI-­FM, New York, as “New Nihilism or New Art?” Vattimo, Gianni. Art’s Claim to Truth. Translated by Luca D’Isanto. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Wong, Mandy-­Suzanne. “Hegel’s Ontology of Musical Sound.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, Victoria, BC, Canada, October 23, 2010.

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Contributors Virginia Anderson is a musicologist and clarinettist specializing in British experimental indeterminacy, improvisation, minimalism, and alternative notation. She has written for a number of journals and books on experimental organology, politics, minimalism, time and listening, linguistics, and the science of indeterminacy. She is on the editorial board of the French journal Tacet and the Experimental Music Catalogue and is the editor of the peer-­reviewed Journal of Experimental Music Studies.

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Louise E. Chernosky completed her PhD at Columbia University in 2012, with a dissertation titled “Voices of New Music on National Public Radio: Radio Net, RadioVisions, and Maritime Rites.” Her interests include American music in the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries, radio broadcasting, feminism and music, and the construction of musical experimentalism. Joanna Demers is an associate professor of musicology in the Flora L. Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, where she teaches classes on popular and electronic music. Her monographs include Listening through the Noise (Oxford, 2010) and Steal This Music (University of Georgia, 2006). Her current research treats aesthetics, moral philosophy, and ambient drone. Ryan Dohoney is an assistant professor of musicology at Northwestern University, where he teaches courses in historical musicology and ethnomusicology. His work approaches questions of affect, musical experience, and mediation through the genres of experimentalism, disco, punk, and new wave. He also writes on philosophies of voice from feminist and queer perspectives. Stephanie Jensen-­Moulton is an assistant professor of musicology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Her edition of Miriam 275 Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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Gideon’s 1958 opera Fortunato is published by A-­R’s Recent Researches in American Music (2013), and she is a coeditor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability. She has published articles in American Music, Disability Studies Quarterly, Music Theory Online, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her current book project centers on American opera and disability.
 Tim Lawrence is the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–­79 (Duke, 2003) and Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–­92 (Duke, 2009) and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–­83 (Duke, forthcoming). He is a professor of cultural studies at the University of East London and a co-­founder of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research.

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Tamara Levitz is a professor of musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published widely on transnational modernism, and her books include Teaching New Classicality (Lang, 1996), Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone (Oxford, 2012), and the edited volume Stravinsky and His World (Princeton, 2013). George E. Lewis, a 2002 MacArthur Fellow whose compositions engage chamber, orchestral, computer, and improvised music, is Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. His articles on experimental music, video, visual art, and technology have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes, and his widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago, 2008) received the 2009 American Book Award. Elizabeth Ann Lindau is a visiting assistant professor of music at Wesleyan University. She completed her PhD in 2012 at the University of Virginia. Her research explores intersections between avant-­gardism and popular music, especially in the work of Yoko Ono, the Velvet Underground, and Brian Eno. She is currently writing an article on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), Eno’s experimental worldbeat collaboration with David Byrne. William Marotti is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching modern Japanese history with an emphasis on everyday life and cultural-­historical issues. His book Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan

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(Duke, 2013) addresses the politics of culture and everyday life in Japan in the early 1960s through a focus on transformations in avant-­garde artistic production and performance. Andrew C. McGraw is an assistant professor of music at the University of Richmond. He received his PhD in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in 2005 and has published extensively on traditional and experimental music in Southeast Asia. He has studied and collaborated with leading performers of Bali and Central Java during more than five years of research in Indonesia. His book, Radical Traditions: Re-­imagining Culture in Balinese New Music, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press.

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Benjamin Piekut is an assistant professor in the Department of Music at Cornell University. His monograph Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-­Garde and Its Limits, was published in 2011 by the University of California Press, and his articles have appeared in Jazz Perspectives, American Quarterly, TDR: The Drama Review, Contemporary Music Review, Cultural Critique, and several edited collections. With George E. Lewis, he is the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (forthcoming).

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Index AACM. See Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians Abba, 69 Abrams, Muhal Richard, 69, 103 Acosta, Leonardo, 180, 189–­91, 195, 200 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Action Music (Lucier), 8 actor network theory, 2, 160–­61, 174 Adams, John R., 55 Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (Oliveros), 8 Adorno, Theodor, 268–­69 aesthetics, 254–­70 of Cage, John, 9, 20–­21, 24–­26, 45 of Cardew, Cornelius, 161–­62 of Celer, 265–­68 of Drumm, Kevin, 266–­68 of Eastman, Julius, 42, 56–­57, 70 of Leicester School, 169–­74 of Nortec Collective, 214–­16 of Yui, Miki, 255–­56 See also experimentalism; materiality; ontology African Americans in experimental music, 50, 66–­68 Aguilar, Delia, 222 Akiyama Kuniharu, 113 Alit, Dewa Ketut, 141, 150 Alkan, Charles-­Valentin, 164, 169–­70 “Aluminum Nights,” 75. See also Kitchen, the Álvarez, Salvador, 199–­200 Amacher, Maryanne, 66, 76 Amirkhanian, Charles, 235, 239 AMM, 162, 165 Amoeba Music, 18 Andersen, Eric, 90, 103 Anderson, Beth, 70 Anderson, Laurie, 66, 74, 76, 212, 234

Anderson, T. J., 89 Anderson, Virginia, 5, 9 Antheil, George, 169 Anthony, Michael, 242 anti-­art. See Dada Aoki Shizuo, 112–­13 Aragon, Louis, 116 Ardèvol, José, 185 Arditti Quartet, 33 Aristotle, 257, 260 Arnawa, I Madé, 141 Arnold, Malcolm, 173 Arsawijaya, Sang Nyoman, 141–­42 Ascough, Richard, 164 Ashley, Robert, 71, 73–­74, 76 Asnawa, I Ketut Gede, 142 Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), 101, 103, 182 avant-­garde, European, 5, 33 versus experimentalism, 64, 95, 102, 159–­ 61, 181–­85, 239, 242–­46 and music distribution, 73 Auslander, Philip, 93–­95 Ay-­O, 87 Baars, Ab, 29 Bach, Michael, 33 Bacon, Ernst, 235 Badiou, Alain, 260 Bagong Kussudiardjo, 145–­46 Bailey, Derek, 71, 168, 239 Baja California Orchestra, 215 Balinese experimentalism aesthetics of, 141–­43 and Cold War politics, 144–­49, 155n17 and colonial power, 140, 144–­53 and development, discourses of, 139–­40, 143–­44 emergence of, 140–­41 “freedom” and foreign aid, and, 148–­54

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Balinese experimentalism (continued) and nationalism, 140–­41, 143 and orientalist representation, 5, 139–­40, 149–­54 and relativism, 153–­54 terminologies of, 141–­43 and US foundations, 144–­­49 See also experimentalism Bang on a Can All-­Stars, 150–­52, 211 Baquet-­Long, Danielle. See Celer Baraka, Amiri, 184 Baran, Roma, 234 Barton Workshop, 33 Bataille, Georges, 261–­62 Bauermeister, Mary, 87–­88 Beastie Boys, the, 77 Beatles, the, 192–­93, 197–­98 Becket, Wheeler, 149 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 24, 67, 162–­63, 166 Belting, Hans, 160 Berberian, Cathy, 39, 44 Bennink, Han, 29 Berg, Alban, 242 Berio, Luciano, 159 Bernard, Lisa, 215 Berners, Lord, 164, 171 Bernstein, J. M., 260 Berry, Chuck, 71 Beuys, Joseph, 90, 102 Bird, John, 169 Birtwistle, Harrison, 159 blackness and experimentalism, 67–­68, 184–­85 in music history, 89–­90 See also experimentalism; race; African Americans Black Power, 53–­54, 184 See also blackness; race Black Sabbath, 28 Blanchot, Maurice, 116–­17 Bley, Carla, 168 Blue, John, 214–­16, 221, 224 See also Maquilapolis Boas, Franz, 153 Born, Georgina, 140 Bostich, 214–­16, 221 See also Nortec Collective Boulez, Pierre, 18, 41, 64, 72, 92, 159, 243 Bourdieu, Pierre, 126 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 261 Bowie, David, 67 Brahms, Johannes, 163

Index Branca, Glenn, 16, 29 and Cage, John, 77 critiques of, 77 at New Music America, 77 and radical pluralism, 63, 66, 69, 72–­74 Braxton, Anthony, 18, 68–­69, 239 on avant-­garde and jazz, 72 Brecht, George, 87, 95–­96, 101, 103 and British experimentalism, 161 Bresnan, John, 147 Breton, André, 116, 124 British experimentalism aesthetics of, 5 and “classics,” treatment of, 162–­65, 171–­72 “ethos” of, 161–­66 and Leicester Polytechnic, 167–­70 and minimalism, 170–­71 and New York School, the, 164–­66 and performance practice, 164–­65 and popular music, 165 and visual arts, 165–­66 women in, 165–­66 See also experimentalism; Leicester School Britten, Benjamin, 163 Brouwer, Leo, 180–­81, 189, 199 on Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, aesthetics of, 191–­94 teachings of, 192–­95 Brown, Earle, 19, 41 Brown, James, 69, 73 Browne, David, 17 Bryars, Gavin, 5, 75, 160–­61 and improvisation, 168 and Leicester Polytechnic, 167–­70 and music as sociality, 162 and sound art, 166–­67 See also British experimentalism; Leicester School Buñel, Luis, 186 Bürger, Peter, 260 Bush, George W., 103 Bush Tetras, the, 75 Bussotti, Sylvano, 41, 159 Cabrera, Sabas, 185 Cage, John and authorial control, 28–­33, 39–­40, 47–­57 on Branca, Glenn, 77 as “cultural accreditation,” 33 and Cold War culture, 53

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Index  at Darmstadt, 87 on Eastman, Julius/S.E.M. Ensemble, 49–­54 Eight, 23 and Fluxus, 4, 90–­91, 96 Four6, 2, 18, 26, 28, 30, 32 and improvisation, 21 and Leicester School, 169–­70 and liberalism, 183–­84 and Japan, 113–­15, 129–­30 and Kotik, Petr, 41, 47–­48 and Music group, the, 111–­14, 129–­ 30 and New School for Social Research, the, 90–­91, 96 Ocean, 18 and performance aesthetics, 9, 20–­21, 24–­ 26, 45 (see also SYR4) and quotation/sampling, 28–­33 and race, 49–­50, 53–­54 (see also race) reception of, 23 and recording supervision, 20 and revolution, 183–­85 and rock, 26 and sexuality, 3, 39–­40, 50–­57 Six, 2, 24–­26, 28, 32 and Sonic Youth, 15, 18, 26–­33 as subject-­formation, 40 0′00″, 45, 56, 130 See also experimentalism; indeterminacy; performance practice; Song Books Calderio, Francisco. See Roca, Blas Cale, John, 162 camp. See queer experimentalism Campana, Deborah, 76–­77 canon/canonization. See experimentalism Cardew, Cornelius, 19, 41 aesthetics of, 161–­62 and British experimentalism, 160–­62, 169–­71 and New York School, the, 161 Cardew, Stella, 165 Castro, Fidel, 185–­89, 200 on art and ideology, 187–­89 and isolationism, 188–­89 Caturla, Genaro García, 180, 195, 197 Celer, 7 aesthetics of, 265–­68 Cellum, Steve, 234 Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, 40–­42, 55, 65 Chadabe, Joel, 44

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281

“The Challenge,” 230, 246–­48 See also RadioVisions Chatham, Rhys, 63–­69 on new music, decline of, 77–­79 on popular music, 72–­74 See also radical pluralism Cheah, Pheng, 269–­70 Chernosky, Louise E., 6 Cherry, Don, 71 Chopin, Frédéric, 169 Coleman, Ornette, 9n1, 69, 239 Cold War politics. See under Cage, John; Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Coltrane, John, 72 conceptualism/conceptual art, 260–­64 See also materiality; ontology Confusion Is Sex (Sonic Youth), 17 Conlazo, Roberto, 217–­18 See also Reynols Conrad, Joseph, 150–­51 Contortions, the, 73 Courtis, Alan, 217–­18 See also Reynols Corner, Philip, 90 Corona, Luz Elena, 222 Cowell, Henry, 66 on RadioVisions, 233, 235, 238, 244–­45 Cowell, Sydney, 238 Crane, Lawrence, 174 Creative Associates. See Center for the Creative and Performing Arts Cuban experimentalism. See Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Cudamani, 149 Cuní, Miguelito, 191 Cunningham, Merce, 239 Cage, John, collaboration with, 18 Cage, John, romantic partner of, 52 Ocean, 18 Dada, 27, 100, 102, 141, 183 and Music group, the, 115–­17, 121–­22, 125–­26, 129–­30 and ontology, 262–­63 See also Balinese experimentalism D.A.F., 72 Dane, Barbara, 190–­91, 196 Danto, Arthur, 260, 262 Darmstadt summer composition courses, 40, 87, 163 Darta, Gusti Komin, 151–­52

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282  Davies, Peter Maxwell, 40, 65 Davis, Anthony, 69 Davis, Miles, 192, 198 Daydream Nation (Sonic Youth), 16 Dean, Laura, 76 Debussy, Claude, 170, 265 Deep Listening, 211–­14 See also Maquilapolis; Oliveros, Pauline Defunkt, 71 DeJohnette, Jack, 71 De La Torre, Sergio, 5, 211, 217 See also Maquilapolis del Tredici, David, 41 de Man, Paul, 269–­70 DeMarinis, Anne, 77 Demers, Joanna, 7, 9, 159 de Ridder, Willem, 87 Derrida, Jacques, 269 Devereaux, Kent, 243 Dewantara, Ki Hadjar, 142 Díaz, José Fernández, 191, 193 Dinosaur L, 55 dis/ability, 7–­9, 218 disco, 3, 55, 63, 66–­70, 74–­75 DNA, 73, 75 Dohoney, Ryan, 3 downtown music and gentrification, 80 networks of, 68, 76–­77, 80–­81 and RadioVisions, 234 and stylistic diversity, 3 venues for, 63–­66 See also radical pluralism Dreyfus, Charles, 88 Drott, Eric, 182–­84 Drumm, Kevin, 7 aesthetics of, 266–­68 Drury, Stephen, 20 Dubček, Alexander, 181 Duchamp, Marcel, 165, 171 Duffy, John, 232 Dunn, Douglas, 76 Earth, Wind & Fire, 67 Eastman, Julius and Cagean performance practice, 44, 48–­57 on disco recordings, 70 in downtown community, 63, 65–­67, 69, 70 and improvisation, 42 Mace, 55–­56

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Index musical aesthetics of, 42, 56–­57, 70 and queer experimentalism (see queer experimentalism) in S.E.M. ensemble, 41–­42 and sexuality, 3, 50–­57, 66 and theatricality, 45–­46, 55–­56 and queer community, 57 See also Cage, John; queer experimentalism; Song Books Echo Canyon Studios, 17 Eco, Umberto, 195 Edson, Richard, 29 Edwards, John, 8 Eight (Cage), 23 Eisenhauer, Letty Lou, 99–­100 electronica, 15 See also radical pluralism; Nortec Collective Elgar, Edward, 163 Elósegui, Juan, 192 embodiment, 7–­9 Emigh, John, 149 Engelman, Ralph, 247 Eno, Brian, 74, 76, 161 Entelechy, 8 Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, the, 71 Euren, Judith, 165 Ex, The, 29 existentialism. See Music group, the experimentalism aesthetic theory of, 254–­70 (see also materiality; ontology) avant-­garde, European, versus 64, 95, 102, 159–­61, 173–­74, 181–­85, 239, 242–­46 and blackness, 67–­68, 184–­85 (see also race) and Cage-­centrism, 129–­30, 140, 181–­85 and canonization, 1, 33, 64, 79–­81 as cultural capital, 246–­47 and dis/ability, 7–­9 “founding fathers” of, 235 and globalization, 4–­5, 66, 110–­11, 200–­ 201, 222–­25 (see also Balinese experimentalism; global experimentalism; Grupo de Experimentación Sonora; Music group, the) and gender, 97–­100, 166, 190–­91, 235 and historiography, 1–­2, 7–­9, 63–­65, 89–­ 90, 159–­61, 173–­74, 181–­85 and improvisation, 2, 4, 21–­23, 31–­33, 182

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Index  and indeterminacy, 15, 19–­22, 28–­33, 46, 64, 119, 160–­63, 166 (see also indeterminacy) institutionalization of, 75–­81 and intersectionality, 2, 64, 184–­85 and jazz, 4, 18, 21–­22, 32, 70, 72, 79, 182, (see also jazz) and liberal-­leftist politics, 6, 183–­84 and listening, modes of, 7 as mainstream media, 6–­7, 15, 229–­30, 246–­48 (see also RadioVisions) and nationalism, 6, 109–­11, 145–­49, 159–­ 74, 194–­95, 245–­48 (see also Balinese experimentalism; Grupo de Experimentación Sonora; Music group, the; RadioVisions) performance practice of, 2, 33 (see also Cage, John; Eastman, Julius) and pluralism, stylistic/cultural (see radical pluralism) and popular music, 2, 3, 16, 22, 28, 30–­33, 63–­64, 67–­68, 71–­72, 74–­75, 163–­65, 183, 192, 195, 214 and postcolonialism (see Balinese experimentalism) and racial discourse, 4, 21, 32, 97–­100, 182–­84 (see also race) and radio broadcasting (see RadioVisions) and revolution, 184–­85 (see also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora) and subjectivity, 40, 48–­49, 52–­57 as “working concept,” 1 Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. See Nyman, Michael Ewart, Douglas, 69, 71, 76 Fab 5 Freddy, 75, 77 Feelies, the, 75 Feisst, Sabine, 21 Felciano, Richard, 232 Feldman, Morton, 19, 65, 262 and Center for Creative Associates, the, 39–­41, 44 See also New York School Fellini, Federico, 186 feminism, 6, 69 in Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 190 and historiography, 212 and narration/knowing, 212 transnational, 211–­14, 222–­25 (see also Maquilapolis)

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See also Deep Listening; experimentalism; Oliveros, Pauline Ferry, Jean, 170 Filliou, Robert, 87, 90 Finer, Carole, 164–­65 Fleetwood Mac, 69 Fluxus, 100–­103, 262 and British experimentalism, 161–­62, 165 and Cage, John, 4, 90–­91, 96 emergence of, 86–­90 and gender, 97–­100 historiography of, 86–­90 as quasi-­collective, 101–­3 and race, 3, 97–­100 See also Cage, John; experimentalism; Patterson, Benjamin “The Fluxus Manifesto,” 102–­3 Flynt, Henry, 97 Foege, Alec, 22 Foley, Kathy, 149 Ford foundation. See Balinese experimentalism Forster, E. M., 151 Foss, Lukas, 41–­42 Foster, Hal, 3, 78–­80 Foucault, Michel, 3, 7, 46 on subjectivity 54–­57 Four6 (Cage), 2, 18, 26, 28, 30, 32 Fox, Christopher, 159, 174 Franco, Francisco, 198 Fried, Michael, 262 Friedman, Ken, 90 Friedmann, Georges, 96 Funari, Vicki, 6, 211–­25 and feminist film scoring, 211–­14 as filmmaker, 216–­25 See also feminism; Maquilapolis; Oliveros, Pauline free improvisation, see improvisation free jazz, 4, 15, 29, 31, 32, 68, 182, 198 See also improvisation; jazz Fussible, 214, 224 See also Nortec Collective Galás, Diamanda, 71–­72 Gandini, Gerardo, 199 Gann, Kyle, 39, 46 Garden Furniture Music Ensemble, 173 Garelick, Jon, 29 gay versus homosexual experimentalism, 52–­57 Geffen, 17, 30

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284  Gena, Peter, 20 gender and British experimentalism, 166 and experimentalism historiography, 166 and Fluxus, 97–­100 and “founding fathers,” 235 and Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 190–­91 and Patterson, Benjamin, 99–­100 and transnational feminism, 224 See also queer experimentalism Gendron, Bernard, 32, 165 Genet, Jean, 46 Germany/US cultural exchange, 4 Ginsberg, Allen, 66 Giorno, John, 234 Glass, Philip, 3, 64–­66, 70, 72, 75 global experimentalism, 4–­6, 139–­40, 144–­ 49, 180–­81 See also Balinese experimentalism; Grupo de Experimentación Sonora; experimentalism; Music group globalization, 213–­14, 222–­25 Godard, Jean-­Luc, 198 Goehr, Lydia, 102 González, Sara, 181, 191, 198 on gender dynamics, 190 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Goodbye 20th Century! See SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century! See also Sonic Youth Gordon, Kim, 16, 26, 28 See also Sonic Youth Gordon, Michael, 216 Gordon, Peter and radical pluralism, 63–­70, 72–­74, 76 and RadioVisions, 234 Grabowsky, Paul, 149 Graham, Martha, 146 Grainger, Percy, 164, 169, 171 Green, Felix, 197 Grewal, Inderpal, 214 Grieg, Edvard, 163 Griffiths, Paul, 173 Grimes, Ev, 234 Group Ongaku. See Music group, the Group for Sound Experimentation. See Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Grupo de Experimentación Sonora and authorial control, 192 on Castro, Fidel, 189–­94

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Index and Cold War politics, 181, 200–­201 and Cuban cultural policy, 5–­6, 185–­201 film music of, 199–­200 formation of, 180–­81 and fusion, politics of, 190–­94 and gender politics, 190–­91 and imperialism, 193–­94, 196–­97 and isolationism, Cuban, 188–­89 and modernism versus nationalism, 194–­ 95, 200–­201 and music industry, the, 195–­96 and racial politics, 190–­91 recordings of, 196–­201 and revolutionary politics, 185–­201 stylistic development of, 6, 196–­201 and transculturation, 190–­91, 195 Guevara, Alfred, 180–­81, 185–­86, 189, 199 Guevara, Che, 186–­89 Hadot, Pierre, 96–­97 Halberstadt, Ilona, 165 Halperin, David M., 46–­47 Harris, William, 77 Harrison, Lou, 52, 54, 66, 235 Haskins, Rob, 24 Hatakana, Minoru, 256 Haydn, Franz Joseph, 172 Hayward, Charles, 8–­9 Hegarty, Paul, 267 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7 aesthetic theory, overview of, 257–­61 and art, history of, the, 258–­61, 270 and “end of art,” the, 256–­61 and hypermaterialism, 264 and ontology, 255–­57 and sound, materiality of, 268–­70 on “truth,” 257–­58 See also experimentalism; materiality; ontology Heidegger, Martin, 260 Heile, Bjorn, 159 Helms, Hans G., 184 Hemphill, Julius, 71, 79 Hendricks, Geoff, 90 Hendricks, Jon, 89 Hendrix, Jimi, 192, 197 Henry, Pierre, 125 Henze, Hans Werner, 191 Hijikata Tatsumi, 111–­12, 130 Hill, Tom, 216, 220 Hilliard Ensemble, 174 Hiller, Lejaren, 41

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Higgins, Dick, 86–­87 on intermedia, 91 hip-­hop. See radical pluralism historiography of experimentalism. See experimentalism Hitchcock, H. Wiley, 238 Hobbs, Christopher, 5, 160–­71 See also British experimentalism; Leicester School Holbrooke, Joseph, 168 homosexuality. See queer experimentalism; queer subjectivity Hornbostel, Erich von, 136 Hotho, Heinrich Gustav, 257 Howard, Leslie, 169 Humardani, Gendhon, 146–­47 Hutchins, Alice, 90 Huyssen, Andreas, 90–­91 hypermaterialism. See materiality I Am Sitting in a Room (Lucier), 7 I Ching, 27–­28, 51 See also Cage, John; indeterminacy Ichiyangi Toshi, 45, 111–­14, 129–­30 Iijima Takao. See Ay-­O Ikemiya Nobuo, 118 Imamura, Rae, 71 improvisation and Bryars, Gavin, 162, 168 and Cage, John, 2, 4, 21–­23, 31–­33, and dis/ability, 8 and Eastman, Julius, 42 and experimentalism performance practice, 2–­4, 21, 31–­33 and indeterminacy, 21–­22 and Music group, the, 114–­30 and politics, 21 performance practice of, 15, 19–­23, 27–­ 33, 49–­57 and power relations, 46 and race, 239–­40 and RadioVisions, 239–­40 and Sonic Youth, 16–­18, 31–­32 and SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century!, 19, 22, 28, 29 See also experimentalism; indeterminacy; jazz; performance practice indeterminacy and authorial control, 49 and improvisation, 21–­22 of New York School, 19–­21 performance practice of, 27–­33

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285

indie. See rock ineffability, 254, 267–­70 See also materiality; ontology Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC). See Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Irino Yoshirō, 113 Ives, Charles, 41, 233, 245 Jackman, David, 165 Jackson, Ronald Shannon, 69 Jamaican Music Festival, 71 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 254 See also ineffability Japanese avant-­garde, 4, 113–­15 See also Music group, the Jara, Víctor, 192 jazz, 18, 21–­22, 32 and aesthetic diversity, 72 and experimentalism, 70 in Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 191, 197, 199 Kosugi Takehisa on, 121 at Leicester Polytechnic, 168 loft scene, 63, 75, 80, 81n2 and race, 71–­72 See also radical pluralism Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, 71 Jensen-­Moulton, Stephanie, 6, 9 Johns, Jasper, 22–­23, 52–­53 Johnson, Lyndon, 188 Johnson, Tom, 74–­75, 234, 237 (table), 240 Jones, Caroline A., 52 Jones, John Paul, 34n7 Judd, Donald, 262 Kagel, Mauricio, 88, 159 Kant, Immanuel, 260 Kaplan, Caren, 214 Karg-­Elert, Sigfrid, 171 Kay, Ulysses, 232 Kennedy, Robert, 181 Kerouac, Jack, 121 Ketèlbey, Albert, 164 Khachaturian, Aram, 169 Kim, Rebecca, Y., 21 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 181 Kitchen, the, 63–­68 under Chatham, Rhys and List, Garrett, 71–­73 evolution of, 75–­81 under Lewis, George E., 71–­72

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Kitchen, the (continued) as mainstream institution, 77–­81 under Russell, Arthur, 67, 71–­72 Knowles, Alison, 103 Knox, Seymour, 47 Koch, Ed, 80 Kofsky, Frank, 184 Koizumi Fumio, 115, 120 Kosugi Takehisa, 2, 71 on improvisation/automatism, 120–­25 on Dada and Cage, John, 122, 130 in Fluxus, 87 Music group, the, developing practice of, 109–­17 +-­, 19 sitar playing of, 132n9 and Sonic Youth, 15–­19, 26, 31 See also Music group, the Kosuth, Joseph, 261 Kotik, Petr, 20, 29 and Cage, John, 41, 44, 47–­48 on Eastman, Julius, 44–­46, 51 and S.E.M. Ensemble, 39–­47 Kondo, Jo, 41 Kotz, Liz, 95 Kroesen, Jill, 63–­65, 72, 76 and feminism, 69 Kronos Quartet, 215 Kubera, Joseph, 41 La Barbara, Joan, 26, 41, 66, 71 on RadioVisions, 238–­39 Labrada, Jerónimo, 191 Lancaster, Byard, 69 Laneri, Roberto, 41–­42 Laswell, Bill, 69 Latour, Bruno, 160–­61 See also actor network theory Lauten, Elodie, 66 Lawrence, T. H., 151 Lawrence, Tim, 3, 9 Leach, Mary Jane, 40, 66 Le Caine, Hugh, 87 Led Zeppelin, 34n7 Leicester Polytechnic, 167–­70 See also Leicester School Leicester School activities of, 5, 160–­61, 166–­74 aesthetics of, 169–­74 and “classics,” treatment of, 162–­65, 171–­72 formation of, 166–­70

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Index and self-­promotion, 172–­73 See also British experimentalism Lely, John, 173 LelyWhite Ensemble, 173–­74 León, Tania, 89 de Lerma, Dominique-­René, 89 Levitz, Tamara, 5–­6, 9 Levy, Doug, 232 Lewis, George E., 3, 9, 21, 32 on genre and ideology, 79–­80 and Kitchen, the 71–­72 on jazz and ideology, 71–­72, 181–­84 on race/multiculturalism, 75–­76, 181–­84 and radical pluralism, 63–­65, 68–­69 Licking Piece (Patterson), 99–­100 Lindau, Elizabeth Ann, 2, 9 Lindsay, Arto, 73, 80 Lippard, Lucy, 261 Lipsitz, George, 31 List, Garrett, 41 on imperialism, musical, 67–­68 and Kitchen, the, 71 and race, 75 and radical pluralism, 63–­65 Liszt, Franz, 169–­70 Lockwood, Annea, 66 Lohn, Jeff, 70 LOLO. See Love of Life Orchestra Long, Will. See Celer Lounge Lizards, 69, 73 Love of Life Orchestra, 69, 72, 75–­76 Lucier, Alvin, 11n14, 69, 171 Action Music, 8 I Am Sitting in a Room, 7 Music for Solo Performer, 8 and S.E.M. Ensemble, 41 and Zummo, Peter, 66 Luening, Otto, 235 Lunch, Lydia, 75 Lurie, John. See Lounge Lizards Mac Low, Jackson, 71 Maceda, José, 146 Machado, Quinto Pino, 189 Madrid, Alejandro, 212, 214, 216 Maciunas, George, 19, 30 and Fluxus, 86–­87, 101–­2 Macle (Eastman), 55–­56 Mahler, Gustav, 163–­64, 172 Malabou, Catherine, 264 Mao Tse-­tung, 144, 181, 184 Maquilapolis: City of Factories

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Index  authorship, musical, of, 215–­16 and Deep Listening, 6 and environmentalism, 6 filmmaking, analysis of, 219–­25 and globalization, 213–­14, 222–­25 and labor activism, 222–­25 and NAFTA, 6, 211, 222–­25 politics of, 211–­14, 219–­25 soundscape as power, 223 soundtrack, analysis of, 219–­25 See also Deep Listening; feminism; Oliveros, Pauline Marclay, Christian, 15, 19 Marotti, William, 4–­5, 9 Mars, 73 Marti, José, 194 Martin, Judith, 41, 45 Mas, Tjokorda Agung, 146–­47 Mason, Benedict, 173 Mass, Steve, 72 materiality, 254–­65, 268–­70 antimaterialism, 256–­64 conceptualism, 260–­64 and Hegel, G. W. F., 264, 268–­70 hypermaterialism, 261–­64 “new materialism,” 269–­70 See also experimentalism; ontology Mayuzumi Toshirō, 112–­13 McCourt, Thomas, 247 MCDC. See Merce Cunningham Dance Company McGraw, Andrew C., 4–­5, 9 McPhee, Colin, 150–­52 Mead, Rita, 238 Medtner, Nikolai, 164, 170 Mellits, Marc, 169 Menéndez, Pablo, 180, 191–­92, 194, 196–­97 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 17–­19 Mertens, Wim, 64 Methods and Processes (Patterson), 4, 95–­97, 98 Metzger, Heinz-­Klaus, 184 Milanés, Pablo, 180, 188, 190–­91, 195–­99 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Mills, Mary Beth, 223 Mimaroglu, Ilhan, 232 Minh, Ho Chi, 144–­45

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287

minimalism, 3 in England (see British experimentalism) and first-­generation experimentalists, 63–­67 and populism, 239 and rock counterculture, 66–­67 Miró, Joan, 125 Mitchell, Ian, 168 Mitchell, Roscoe, 69, 71 Mitchell, Tim, 166 Mizuno Shūkō, 109–­17, 119–­20 See also Music group, the Mockus, Martha, 212–­14, 219 Modern Lovers, the, 67, 71 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 211, 224 Monk, Meredith, 55, 66, 74, 76 Moore, Anthony, 255 Moore, Thurston, 16, 18, 26–­33 See also Sonic Youth Morgan, Frances, 30 Moroi Makoto, 113 Mr. Bungle, 18 Mumma, Gordon, 73, 86 Murphy, Noel, 216, 220 Murúa, Lautaro, 186 Music group, the aesthetics of members, 128 anglophone commentary on, 4 and Cagean experimental tradition, 4, 129–­30 criticism of, 128–­30 and Dada and surrealism, 115–­16, 121–­30 and dance, 118 and ethnomusicology, 115–­16, 120–­21 and existentialism, 119–­30 and globalization, 110–­11 and group aesthetic, 109–­14, 116–­17, 119–­27 and improvisation, 114–­30 “music” ontology, politics of, 109–­11, 114–­27 and New York School, the, 111–­12 and nomenclature, 109–­11, 116–­17, 131n4 performances, referenced, of, 112 and tape music, 119–­27 theorizing practice of, 117–­27 Music for Solo Performer (Lucier), 8 musique concrète, 119–­27 See also Music group, the; Schaeffer, Pierre

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288 

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NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement Nancarrow, Conlon, 233, 235–­36 National Public Radio. See RadioVisions Necessaries, the, 69 Neuhaus, Max, 232 Neutral Records, 16 “new materialism,” 269–­70 See also materiality; ontology New Music Alliance, 76–­77 “new music” generation. See radical pluralism New Music, New York, 74–­75 See also Chatham, Rhys; radical pluralism New Order (Suharto). See Balinese experimentalism New School for Social Research, the, 90–­91, 96, 130, 161 new wave. See radical pluralism New York School, the, 19–­21, 64 and June in Buffalo, 40–­41 and performance hierarchy, 16 and popular music, 69–­71 Next Wave Festival, 18 Niblock, Phill, 41, 69 Nicola, Noel, 180, 188, 194–­95, 197 Nicholls, David, 160 NMA. See New Music Alliance noise. See Drumm, Kevin; Sachiko M; Otomo Yoshihide Noisefest, 15 Nono, Luigi, 92, 191 North American Free Trade Agreement, 6, 211, 222–­25 See also Maquilapolis Nortec Collective, 6, 211–­12, 223 aesthetics of, 214–­16 and Oliveros, Pauline, collaboration with, 214–­16 See also Maquilapolis; Oliveros, Pauline no wave movement. See radical pluralism; Sonic Youth NPR. See RadioVisions “number pieces” (Cage) composition of, 23 as “creative misunderstanding,” 31–­33 instrumentation of, 26 and Cagean performance practice, 24 Sonic Youth, renditions of, 24–­33 See also Cage, John; Sonic Youth NYC Ghosts & Flowers (Sonic Youth), 17

Index Nyman, Michael, 5, 64, 159–­61, 173–­74, 181 See also experimentalism; Leicester School objet sonore, see Music group, the Ocean (Cage/Cunningham), 18 O’Hara, Frank, 54 Oldenburg, Claes, 22–­23 Oliveros, Pauline, 6, 19, 66, 69, 73, 239 and Adaptive Use Musical Instruments, 8 and Eastman, Julius, 52 and Maquilapolis, 6, 211–­12 and Nortec Collective, collaboration with, 214–­16 and sexual difference, 52, 66 Six for New Time, 19 and sonic meditation, 219–­20 See also Deep Listening; feminism; Maquilapolis; queer experimentalism Ōno Tadamaro, 112, 114 Ono, Yoko, 19, 45 and British experimentalism, 162 in Fluxus, 90, 95, 132n11 and Music group, the, 111–­12, 131n7 ontology art, of, 254–­57, 265–­70 integrated ontology, 255, 262–­70 (see also Hegel, G. W. F.) See also aesthetics; experimentalism; materiality Ornstein, Leo, 235 O’Rourke, Jim, 17–­19, 26, 28 See also Sonic Youth Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, 180 Ortiz, Fernando, 190 Osborne, Peter, 121 Otomo Yoshihide, 7, 266–­68 Oxley, Tony, 168 Page, Tim, 72 Paik, Nam June, 76, 86–­87, 90, 95 Paper Piece (Patterson), 92–­93, 101–­2 Pasaribu, Ben, 142 Pascoal, Hermeto, 199 Parker, Charlie, 72, 87, 182 Parker, Evan, 71, 168 Parra, Isabel, 192 Parra, Violeta, 192 Parsons, Michael, 162, 177n62 Partch, Harry, 233, 235 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 186

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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Index  Patterson, Benjamin African American music history, absence from, 89 on artistic origins, 91 and blackness, 97–­100 and Cage, John, 93–­95 early works of, 92–­95 emerging interest in, 89, 101 in Europe, 3, 86–­88 in Fluxus, 87–­88, 100–­103 on Fluxus aesthetics, 88 historiographical oversight of, 87–­88 on Kontakte, 92–­93 Licking Piece, 99–­100 Methods and Processes, 4, 95–­97 on music and politics, 91–­92 Paper Piece, 92–­93, 101–­2 and Stoic philosophy, 96–­97 Variations for Double Bass, 4, 93–­95 Williams, Emmett, interview with, 88 See also experimentalism; Fluxus performance practice of experimentalism, 2, 19–­22, 24 indeterminacy, 27–­33 and Eastman, Julius (see Eastman, Julius; Song Books) See also experimentalism Perlis, Vivian, 238 Phillips, Tom, 165 Philly Sound, 69 Phombeah, Ilona, 165 Piazzolla, Astor, 199 Piekut, Benjamin, 21, 29, 97 and actor-­network theory, 160 on counterhistory, 89–­90 on liberalism, 182–­84 Pimentel, Leoginaldo, 180, 197 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Plato, 257, 259–­60 Pollock, Jackson, 115 Polyrock, 72 pop art, 22–­23 popular music, 2, 3, 183, 214 and British experimentalism, 163–­65 and downtown community, 63–­85 and experimental performance, 15, 22, 30–­33 (see also performance practice) and Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 192, 195 and New York School, the, 69–­71 and Sonic Youth, 15–­38

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289

Portsmouth Sinfonia, 162–­63 postcolonialism. See Balinese experimentalism Potter, Keith, 64, 161 Pousseur, Henri, 41 Preiss, James, 65 Presley, Elvis, 67 Price, Paul, 65 Pritchett, James, 24, 130 Promenade Theatre Orchestra (PTO), 164–­66 See also British experimentalism punk, 15–­16, 33 and Chatham, Rhys, 68–­69 See also radical pluralism queer experimentalism, 3, 40, 34–­57, 66 homosexual versus gay experimentalism, 52–­57 queer subjectivity, 40, 54–­57 See also Cage, John; Eastman, Julius Ra, Sun, 69 race and Cage, John, 49–­50, 53–­54 and experimental tradition, the, 4, 21, 32, 182–­84 and experimentalism historiography, 97–­ 100, 182–­84 and Fluxus, 3, 97–­100 and Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 190–­91 and improvisation, 239–­40 and jazz, 71–­72 and rock, 36n53 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 164 Radano, Ronald, 72 radical pluralism as anachronistic, 78–­80 and dance/disco, 68–­69 (see also Russell, Arthur) definition of, 63–­65 demographic diversity of, 66–­67 and experimentalism, 70 formalism of, 78 genre, and, ideology of, 79–­81 institutionalization of, 63–­66, 71–­81, 75–­81 as mainstream art, 77–­81 and multimedia, 73–­75 political limitations of, 75 and pop culture, 67–­81 and race, 75

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290  radical pluralism (continued) and studio composition, 74 See also downtown music; experimentalism; New York School, the radio as instrument, 240, 243. See also RadioVisions RadioVisions advisory panel of, 232 and audiences, 6, 230–­31, 243–­48 as cultural capital, 246–­47 funding of, 231 as edifying entertainment, 231–­33 and multiculturalism, rhetoric of, 247 personnel of, 233–­35 production history of, 230–­41 publicity and press coverage of, 241–­45 and radio as instrument, 240, 243 segments, descriptions, and producers (table), 236–­38 and transmission technology, 232 and US nationalism, 229, 232–­35, 238–­43 Radigue, Éliane, 71, 266 Raharjo, Sapto, 141 Ramo, John, 244 Ramones, The, 28, 67 Ramos, Eduardo, 180–­81, 191, 194, 197–­99 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Ranaldo, Lee, 16, 18, 26 Rancière, Jacques, 141 Raphel, José, 191 Rathe, Steve, 231–­36, 241­–­42, 245, See also RadioVisions Rauschenberg, Robert, 52–­53 Ravel, Maurice, 265 Raybeats, The, 75 Red Decade, 75 Reich, Steve, 3, 19, 64–­66, 74–­75, 149 and British experimentalism, 163, 168–­69 and RadioVisions, 232, 239 See also minimalism Reid, Larry, 149 relational aesthetics. See Bourriaud, Nicolas Revolutionary Ensemble, 71 Reynolds, Burt, 217 Reynolds, Roger, 81 Reynols, 6, 211, 223 and Oliveros, Pauline, collaboration with, 215–­19, 221–­22 See also Maquilapolis Riley, Terry, 3, 42, 64–­66, 239 and British experimentalism, 163

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Index Rist, Simone, 39, 44 Roach, Max, 77 Roca, Blas, 185–­86 rock, 22 and Cagean aesthetics, 27 and Chatham, Rhys, 78 and minimalism, 66–­67 and race, 36n53 See also radical pluralism; popular music; Sonic Youth Rockefeller foundation. See Balinese experimentalism; Center for the Creative and Performing Arts Rodríguez, Silvio, 180, 187–­90, 193, 201 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Rockwell, John, 75–­76, 242 Roldán, Amadeo, 195 Rolling Stones, the, 198 Rorty, Richard, 154 Ross, Alex, 64 Rudhyar, Dane, 235 Rumsfeld, Donald, 2 Russ, Andrew, 18 Russell, Arthur, 55 Kitchen, as musical director of the, 65, 67, 71 and radical pluralism, 63–­67, 71–­74 See also queer experimentalism Russolo, Luigi, 240 Rutherford, Paul, 168 Ryan, David, 159 Rzewski, Frederic, 29, 68, 71 Sachiko M, 7, 266–­68 Sadier, Laetitia, 29 Sadra, I Wayan, 141–­42, 147–­48 Said, Edward, 153 Salvador, Emiliano, 180, 199 Santamaría, Haydée, 180, 189 Santos, Carlos, 71 Sarusky, Jaime, 191, 193 Satie, Erik, 43, 51 and Leicester School, the, 164, 169–­72 Satō Keijirō, 112–­13 Saunders, Dave, 165 Saunders, James, 159, 174 Sawaragi, Noi, 256 Schaeffer, Pierre, 92, 125 Schat, Peter, 191 Scheib, Jay, 150 Schick, Paul, 150

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

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Index  Schoenberg, Arnold, 72–­73 and British experimentalism, 163–­64, 168 as European tradition on RadioVisions, 239, 242 Schuller, Gunther on La Barbara, Joan, 239 as RadioVisions host, 229–­31, 235, 238–­41, 244 See also RadioVisions Scott, James, 89 Scott, Tony, 149 Scratch Orchestra, the, 161–­66, 171 See also British experimentalism; Leicester School Scriabin, Alexander, 170 S.E.M. Ensemble, 39–­45 at June in Buffalo, 41–­43, 55 See also Cage, John; Eastman, Julius; Song Books sexuality, 3, 39–­40, 50–­57 and scientific discourse, 46 See also queer experimentalism; queer subjectivity Shelley, Steve, 16, 26, 29 See also Sonic Youth Shifrin, Greg, 232 Shiomi Mieko (Chieko), 87 on collage and improvisation, 126–­27 and Music group, the, developing practice of, 109–­17 on Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 127–­28 See also Music group, the Shrapnel, Hugh, 164, 173–­74 Siano, Nicky, 67 Sidia, I Madé, 149 Silber, Irwin, 196 Singleton, Alvin, 89 silence. See Cage, John Six (Cage), 2, 24, 28, 32 Skempton, Howard, 162, 174, 177n62 Slawinsky, Zenon, 244 Slonimsky, Nicholas, 235 Smith, Dave, 5, 160–­61 See also British experimentalism; Leicester School Smith, Douglas, 240 Smith, Federico, 192 Smith, Fred, 69 Smith, Hale, 89 Smith, Jack, 54, 59n29 Smith, Leo, 239 Smith, Owen, 87

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291

socialist realism and Balinese experimentalism, 5, 145, 148 and Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 185–­86, 189, 192, 202–­3n21 Sōgetsu Hall. See Music group, the Song Books (Cage), 3, 39–­41, 47, 55 and Cagean freedom, 44–­57 Cage, John, on S.E.M. performance, 47–­53 composition of, 43–­44 S.E.M., performance by, 40, 45 and sexual prohibition, 51 and Zen Buddhism, 50–­53 See also Eastman, Julius; S.E.M. Ensemble Sonic Youth, 2, 15–­16, 77 audiences for new music, effect on, 31 and Cage, John, 15, 18, 26–­33 Confusion Is Sex, 17 and “creative misunderstanding,” 31 Daydream Nation, 16 and experimentalism, 2, 17–­19 and improvisation, 16–­22, 28–­33 and Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 17–­18 at Noisefest, 15 and no wave movement, 16–­17 “number pieces,” renditions of, 24–­33 NYC Ghosts & Flowers, 17, 30 and punk, 16–­17 and recording as composition, 17 SYR3: Invito Al Cielo, 17 as tastemakers, 16 A Thousand Leaves, 17 on tour, 29–­30 See also Cage, John; SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century!; “number pieces” Soupault, Phillipe, 116, 124 Southern, Eileen, 89 Spivak, Gayatri, 153 Spoerri, Daniel, 87, 90, 91 Spring, Matthew, 168 SST, 16 Stalin, Joseph, 144 Static, The, 74 Stearns, Robert, 71 Steele, Jeffrey, 165 Stein, Leonard, 26 Stella, Frank, 262 Stereolab, 29 Stock, David, 232–­33

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292  Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 199 experimentalism, in contrast to, 64, 72–­ 73, 159, 173 and Fluxus, 87, 92 Shiomi Mieko (Chieko) on, 127–­28 Stokowski, Leopold, 87 Stoler, Ann, 1 Stone, Carl, 77 Stonewall uprising. See Eastman, Julius; queer experimentalism Stravinsky, Igor, 28, 171 Strong, Patience, 171–­72 Suarez, Paulina, 212 Subandi, I Madé, 141 Sublette, Ned, 63–­64, 67–­68, 73 on Branca, Glenn, 77 on criticism, 81 on Johnson, Tom, 74 on New York School, the, and rock influences, 69–­71 Subotnick, Morton, 65 Sudirana, I Wayan, 141 Suharto, 140, 142, 145 Sukarno, 139–­40, 145 Sukerta, Pande Madé, 141–­42, 147 Sunn 0))), 266 Surgal, Tom, 18 Surjodiningrat, Wisnu, 145 surrealism, 102 and Eastman, Julius and S.E.M. Ensemble, 43, 56–­57 and Music group, the, 115–­30 See also avant-­garde, European; Balinese experimentalism Suryodarmo, Suprapto, 149 Suzuki, D.T., 50 Swans, 77 SYR (Sonic Youth Records). See Sonic Youth; SYR3: Invito Al Cielo; SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century! SYR3: Invito Al Cielo (Sonic Youth), 17 SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century!, 15–­19, 30 See also “number pieces”; Sonic Youth Szcelkun, Stephan, 165 Takahashi Yūji, 111–­14 Music group, denunciation of, 128–­29 Takemitsu Toru, 112–­13 Takiguchi Shūzō, 121 Talking Heads, 67, 71, 76 Tanno Yumiko, 115, 131n6 Taylor, Cecil, 18, 71

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Index Taymor, Julie, 149 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilych, 171 Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, 73 Teitelbaum, Richard, 69 Tenney, James, 2, 19 Theoretical Girls, 70 Thomson, Virgil, 235 Thoreau, Henry David, 43, 51 A Thousand Leaves (Sonic Youth), 17 Tiers, Wharton, 17, 26 Tilbury, John, 161, 165 Tiravanija, Rirkrit, 261 Tojima Mikio, 111–­12, 115 Tomasin, Miguel, 217–­18 See also Reynols Tona Scherchen-­Hsiao, 71 Tone Yasunao, 90 background of, 114–­16 on Cage, John, 130 on improvisation/automatism, 123–­26 Music group, the, developing practice of, 109–­17 surrealism and, 116–­17 and tape music, 124–­25 See also Music group, the Tower, Joan, 232 transculturation, 190–­91 Trans Museq, 72 Tsuge Gen’ichi, 111–­12, 115 Tudor, David, 19–­20, 44, 51, 69, 87, 92, 130 See also New York School, the Turner, Frederick Jackson, 91 Tuttle, David, 42 Tuttle, Jim, 42 Twombly, Cy, 52 Van Tieghem, David, 63–­69, 72 Variations for Double Bass (Patterson), 4, 93–­95 Vattimo, Giani, 260–­61, 264 Vautier, Ben, 87, 96 Vera, Teresita, 191 Viglietti, Daniel, 192 Vitier, Sergio, 180, 190, 194–­95, 199 See also Grupo de Experimentación Sonora Vostell, Wolf, 87–­88, 90 Wakamatsu Miki, 114 Walters, James, 223 Warhol, Andy, 22–­23 Waters, John, 43

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Index 

293

Wolpe, Stefan, 113, 191 Wong, Mandy-­Suzanne, 268–­69 Woodard, Stephanie, 69 Xenakis, Iannis, 18, 41, 159, 199 Yamano Hakudai, 117, 118 Yancy, Youseff, 69 Young, La Monte, 87, 95, 239 and British experimentalism, 161, 162 and downtown music, 64, 66, and Music group, the, 112–­13 Russell, Arthur, on, 70 Yoshida Hidekazu, 113, 133n15 Yudane, I Wayan, 141, 149 Yui, Miki, 7, 264, 267 aesthetics of, 255–­56 Z, Pamela, 212 Zemlinsky, Alexander von, 164 Zen Buddhism and Cage, John, 4, 96 and Patterson, Benjamin, 4, 96 and sexuality, 50–­53 and Song Books, 50–­53 0′00″ (Cage), 45, 56, 130 Zhdanov, Andrei, 185 Ziporyn, Evan, 149–­53 Zorn, John, 18, 71, 80 Zummo, Peter, 63–­70

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Watts, Robert, 87, 99–­100 Wayan, Sudirana I, 141 Webern, Anton, 33, 72–­73, 242 Weisser, Benedict, 24 Westman, Jack, 223 White, John, 160–­68, 170–­74 See also British experimentalism; Leicester School whiteness, 72, 90, 98 Widnyana, Ida Bagus Gede, 141, 142 Wilhelm, Jean-­Pierre, 102 Williams, Catherine, 166 Williams, Emmett, 86–­88, 101, 103 Patterson, Benjamin, interview with, 88 Williams, Hank, 71 Williams, Jan, 41–­43, 45, 56 Williams, Ros, 8 Williams, William Appleman, 91 Wilson, Robert, 76, 149 The Wire, 3, 32, 65 Winant, William, 15, 26–­28 collaborators with, 18 and improvisation, 28 Witts, Noel, 167 Wodehouse, P. G., 173 Wolf, Hugo, 164 Wolff, Christian, 2, 15, 64, 87, 113 and British experimentalism, 161, 164 and June in Buffalo, 40–­41 and Sonic Youth, 19, 30–­31

  •   

Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan

Copyright © 2014. University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved. Tomorrow Is the Question : New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut, University of Michigan