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S01E02 "Wildflowers" (Free Jazz in New York City 1970-75)
229 Plays1 year ago
We discuss the network of Downtown Jazz Lofts created by experimental musicians in Manhattan in the early 1970s. We examine how the spirit of independence and artistic adventure dovetailed with a determined organisation by jazz musicians to create an alternative to the traditional music industry platforms. These factors culminated in the formation of the New York Musicians Organisation (NYMO) and the counter-festival staged by the NYMO to challenge the imposition of the Newport Jazz Festival which was held in New York City for the first time in 1972. The growth and decline of the Jazz Loft scene is representative of the changing economic conditions of the City at this time, and how the ethics of Black Nationalism were adopted by many Jazz musicians as a central part of their personal and musical identity.
Books
“Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s” by Michael C Heller.
“As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution: 1957-1977” by Val Wilmer.
“Love Goes To Buildings On Fire” by Will Hermes.
Music
'Tranquility' - Sam Rivers (Crystals) / 'Crossing (Fourth Movement' - Cecil Taylor (Silent Tongues) / 'Hence Forth' - Roy Ayers (Red, Black & Green) / 'Blue Phase' - Ahmed Abdullah (Wildflowers 3 - The New York Loft Jazz Sessions) / 'Four Winds' - Dave Holland Quartet (A Conference of the Birds) / 'You Gotta Have Freedom' - Pharaoh Sanders (Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1980) / 'Marshmallow' - Anthony Braxton (In the Tradition)
EMCK
Recommended
Transcript
The Emergence of Jazz Lofts in 1970s NYC
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode two of Real Gone. Last time we looked at how New York's 1926 cabaret laws imposed restrictions on jazz musicians and small music clubs in the decades had followed. In this episode we're going to discuss the network of downtown jazz lofts created by experimental musicians in the early 1970s.
00:00:18
Speaker
We'll examine how the spirit of independence and artistic adventure dovetailed with a determined organization by jazz musicians to create an alternative to the traditional music industry platforms. These factors culminated in the formation of the New York Musicians organization and the counter festival staged by that organization.
00:00:36
Speaker
to challenge the imposition of the Newport Jazz Festival, which was held in New York City for the first time in 1972. The growth and decline of the jazz loft scene is representative of the changing economic conditions of the city at this time, and how the ethics of black nationalism were adopted by many jazz musicians as a central part of their personal and musical identity.
Soho's Transformation and Artist Occupation
00:00:59
Speaker
The artistic renaissance of Soho, the name given to the neighbourhood south of Houston Street close to Greenwich Village and the adjacent neighbourhoods of Noho and Tribeca in the 1970s and beyond, had its roots in the urban crisis which New York faced, along with other American cities in the post-war years, where de-industrialisation, suburbanisation,
00:01:18
Speaker
and the failures of urban renewal had created a desolate landscape in certain parts of the city. Soho's industrial decline was rooted in specific industries such as textile and waste paper recycling, warehousing and light manufacturing which were in a state of decline as well as general unsuitability of loft buildings for modern industry.
00:01:37
Speaker
The industrialisation in Soho and nearby areas had created a dense collection of vacant loft buildings close to the amenities of Greenwich Village, Little Italy and Chinatown. The vacancies in these industrial buildings were seized on by artists and musicians, including painters, sculptors and the city's free jazz pioneers, along with their young disciples, to create new venues for musical expression and performance. These venues enabled artists to more effectively seize the means of musical production,
00:02:05
Speaker
and the representation of their musical output.
00:02:37
Speaker
New York's jazz loft scene was influenced by the artists of the previous decade, most notably the spiritual jazz of John Coltrane and the experimental free jazz of Albert Eiler and Ornette Coleman.
Inspiration and Creation of Alternative Performance Spaces
00:02:49
Speaker
The avant-garde loft artists were respectful of jazz tradition but sounded like nothing that came before. New York's energy music, as it was referred to by Saxophonist Archie Shepp, was played without any concern for traditional song structure or standard instrumental presentation.
00:03:04
Speaker
The unpredictable and adventurous nature of the music did not meet the favour of the traditional jazz clubs, prompting the artists to create an infrastructure of their own. The 1981 documentary Imagine the Sound, which features astounding live studio performances by Cecil Taylor, Archie Shep, Penis Paul Blay and Bill Dixon, valuably examines the motivations of the cutting-edge jazz artists of this era.
00:03:28
Speaker
Part of the motivation for artists using downtown loft space in the late 60s and early 70s was to break from the orthodoxy and traditionalism of the established galleries, clubs and concert halls, and the rigidity of the cabaret licensing authority. Others like Sonny Rollins, who practiced saxophone day and night on the pedestrian walkway under the Williamsburg Bridge to escape the tight space of his Lower East Side tenement apartment, just needed room to play whenever and whatever he wanted.
00:03:55
Speaker
In 1968, free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman established Artist's House at 131 Prince Street in Soho, which functioned as a combination of performance space, recording studio, clubhouse and apartment. Coleman had been inspired by the use to which his friend and fluxes artist Yoko Ono had put her loft at 112 Chamber Street here in the 1960s. By 1970, Coleman was hosting occasional performances of music and dance
00:04:22
Speaker
fostering an informal atmosphere that was typical of loft gatherings.
Studio We: A Hub for Jazz Innovation
00:04:26
Speaker
The space was open to the public with no admission charge required of audience members. Artist's House in turn inspired many other avant-garde jazz musicians to take the same approach. Coleman closed the venue in 1974 just as the jazz loft scene was reaching its peak.
00:04:42
Speaker
Bass player and percussionist Jima Sultan moved from San Francisco to New York in 1966, where he divided his time between the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Woodstock in upstate New York. He joined Jimi Hendrix's band and played at Jimi's legendary Woodstock Performance in 1969. He also organized workshops, concerts and festivals out of the Eldridge Street loft named Studio We, opened in 1969, which he operated along with trumpeter James Dubois.
00:05:10
Speaker
Sultan also built a recording studio in Nui that musicians could rent to record rehearsals, demos, or even commercial albums. Importantly, Sultan also maintained an extensive archive of musical activities at Studio Nui, allowing future generations to celebrate the workings and values of this prototypical jazz loft.
00:05:30
Speaker
The total refreshment centre in modern-day Hackney, which is functioned as an incubator for the vibrant London jazz scene, hosting concerts by the likes of Sons of Gemmett, Cometis Cumming and Alabaster de Plume, can be considered a spiritual successor to venues like Studio We. The creation of Studio We is a perfect example of how post-industrial loft space in the Soho area of downtown Manhattan was occupied and renovated by artists seeking to turn the dereliction of vacant space and the inertia of landlords to their own creative ends.
00:05:59
Speaker
In the mid-1960s, the building that housed Studio OE was leased by pianist Burton Green from an absentee landlord who was reluctant to go near the building, which at the time was populated by junkies and others in desperate circumstances. Green agreed to occupy the building on a rent-free basis in exchange for keeping the upstairs loft free from undesirable occupiers, cleaning the stairways and carrying out any necessary occasional repairs.
00:06:23
Speaker
Before leaving the tour Europe, Burton Green was approached by James Dubois, a Pittsburgh native who played trumpet and jazz groups that featured Green. Dubois expressed interest in managing the building while Green was abroad and mentioned that he was searching for a space to host jam sessions and rehearsals. Green extended his stay in Europe, temporarily at first but then permanently. James Dubois became the building's permanent resident, inheriting Green's prior arrangement with his landlord.
00:06:50
Speaker
James Dubois had played in Pittsburgh in early rock and roll bands, but became fascinated with jazz as a teenager. He admired the local venue The Musicians Club, a hall operated by Pittsburgh's Black Musicians Union, Local 471 of the American Federation of Musicians.
00:07:06
Speaker
The space was administered entirely by the musicians and operated as a nightclub, rehearsal hall, meeting facility and business centre. The club provided employment opportunities but served also as a community centre and operated as an advocacy group that lobbied for the rights of African American artists.
00:07:23
Speaker
It remained in operation until 1965, when Local 471 merged with the White Local 60 as part of a nationwide initiative to integrate AFM chapters. This model of self-production for black artists left a major impression on James Dubois. He firmly believed that musicians should be in control of their own affairs.
00:07:42
Speaker
And while living in Cleveland during the 1950s, he organized concerts in a venue he named the Cleveland Cultural Center. In Pittsburgh during the 1960s, he acquired space in an abandoned glass factory on Central Avenue and there established a not-for-profit operation known as the Society of Universal Cultural Arts, or SOUCA. The SOUCA focused primarily on promoting concerts and sourcing work for musicians to play at local events.
00:08:09
Speaker
There was a clear intent and method to Dubois's approach, which was a common characteristic of other loft operators in the New York Jazz scene. Dubois revived the SOUCA as Studio We. In 1974, James Dubois described the condition of the building he took over as an archetype of urban blight. He embarked on a series of major renovations, installing a new roof,
00:08:31
Speaker
upgrading plumbing, repairing cracks in the walls, and stabilizing brickwork. Dubois installed a stage on the sixth floor and began hosting raucous, all-night free jazz jam sessions. He named the space Studio We, a community music project. In 1969, We started hosting public concerts, and by 1970, We hosted a music festival called Three Days of Peace Between the Years. The event featured several musicians, including Sam Rivers and Rashid Ali,
00:09:01
Speaker
who would later open their own influential loft venues. As Dubois had access to multiple floors in the building, the festival presented simultaneous sets in multiple rooms. The success of this festival and others prompted a gradual expansion of Studio We's programming and also its funding. Dubois obtained his first presenting grant from the New York State Council of the Arts in 1972, allowing him to stage another ambitious series of concerts that spring.
The Newport Jazz Festival's NYC Transition
00:09:27
Speaker
The model of sourcing grant funding for special events mixed with a dense schedule of more casual presentations where door charges covered expenses would become the modus operandi for Studio We and other independent jazz lofts throughout the city. The 1971 Newport Jazz Festival, held in its traditional home of Rhode Island, had been a problematic event.
00:09:48
Speaker
Large crowds of festivalgoers, reportedly around 12,000 people, supposedly inspired by the notion of free music at Woodstock the year before, crashed the festival site without paying, leading to a full-scale riot. Although a jazz festival in Naim, the inclusion of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and, in 1971, the Allman Brothers had attracted a large number of rock music fans,
00:10:11
Speaker
This alarmed the conservative townsfolk, meaning the decision by its organizer George Wine to move the festival to New York City the following year was not entirely voluntary.
00:10:21
Speaker
Hosting the Newport Jazz Festival in the city meant a change in the outdoor festival format was required. Instead, concerts were staged at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, and the Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall. The 1972 Newport Jazz Festival in New York City did produce brilliant performances by, among others, avant-garde musicians Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.
00:10:44
Speaker
Legendary artists like Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner also performed. However, the young loft artists were largely ignored in what was a fairly traditional lineup of established artists from the swing and bebop eras. Mayor John Lindsay sat on the festival planning committee. The festival was welcomed by city authorities and even presented as a means of stimulating the city's flagging jazz economy, which was held to be at a low ebb in 1971.
00:11:08
Speaker
The 1972 Newport Festival in New York was seen by many as too safe, favouring established artists at the expense of younger musicians and those involved in the avant-garde. The racial and economic implications of the festival also came under scrutiny.
00:11:24
Speaker
Upscaled midtown concert halls had been selected, while Harlem and other black communities were disregarded for hosting concerts.
Formation and Impact of NYMO
00:11:31
Speaker
It was Juma Sultan's opinion that George Swine was not hiring black musicians who were a part of and represent this city and jazz today.
00:11:39
Speaker
Archie Shep was public in his criticism that the festival had not sought the input of black musicians at an organizational level. The influence of black nationalism in the arts was evident at this time, with more black artists seeking to exercise control over their own music at both artistic and organizational level.
00:11:57
Speaker
Growing numbers of complaints led to meetings at the University of the Streets, a community centre at 7th Street and Avenue A. Among the organisers were James Dubois, Jima Sultan, Milford Graves, Sam Rivers, Rashid Ali and Flautist Ali Aboui. In addition to Dubois's work at Studio We, Jima Sultan and Aboui had organised the Aboriginal Music Society in Woodstock.
00:12:19
Speaker
Rivers had established a teaching studio in Harlem before opening his own jazz loft at Studio Rivbe. Rashid Ali and Milford Graves had been involved in Bill Dixon's October Revolution in 1964, a collective showcase for young experimental jazz musicians playing in the city at that time.
00:12:36
Speaker
All these musicians had to some extent been concerned with strategies for independence and self-determination for jazz musicians prior to the arrival of Newport Jazz Festival in the city. These musicians eventually adopted the moniker, the New York Musicians Organization, or NYMO, to consolidate their efforts and work towards permanent collective representation and promotion for its artist members.
00:13:01
Speaker
This collectivist approach by the NYMO had precedent in organisations formed by New York jazz musicians in the previous decade. The short-lived Jazz Artists Guild, led by Charles Mingus and Max Roach, was formed in the summer of 1960, following the artist-run Counter Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. This Newport Rebels Festival, as it came to be known, was staged to protest the hiring policies of the better-known Newport Jazz Festival.
00:13:27
Speaker
The musicians involved championed the notion of self-empowerment and a break from the traditional dependence on booking agents, promoters and record industry gatekeepers. The jazz artists Guild had proposed to produce concerts and to represent Guild members in negotiations with club owners and record producers. There were some events organized in Manhattan in the months following the Counter Festival.
00:13:49
Speaker
but the organization folded soon after. Michael C. Heller writes in his book, Loft Jazz, Improvising New York in the 1970s, that despite its short lifespan, the proposed agenda of the Jazz Artists Guild would resurface as the basic blueprint for several later collectives, self-presentation in suitable venues, collective bargaining in the music industry, artist-run educational programs, and an egalitarian organizational structure.
00:14:20
Speaker
Oh.
00:14:39
Speaker
Trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon organised the October Revolution in Jazz in October 1964 at the Cellar Cafe venue on West 96th Street off Broadway. Dixon had gained a favourable reputation when booking musicians for this venue in the previous months.
00:14:54
Speaker
by allowing musicians to rehearse there during the day and to play for as long as they wanted at the afternoon and evening shows. He also placed an emphasis on booking jazz artists whose contemporary styles meant they had difficulty obtaining work in the more traditional venues. The four days of music between 1st to 4th October 1964 were organised with the intention of showcasing players of avant-garde jazz in the city
00:15:18
Speaker
in order to elevate the status of the music to the level of serious critical consideration and popularity. The events featured almost every major player of what was called the new music in the city at that time, including Sun Ra, Milford Graves, Giuseppe Logan and Paul Blay.
00:15:33
Speaker
The October Revolution led directly to the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, which included in its membership, pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Archie Shepp, Burton Green, the original occupant of the building housing studio We, and others who had performed at the Cellar Cafe. The plan was for the Guild to implement collective bargaining strategies to advocate on behalf of its member musicians.
00:15:59
Speaker
Guild representatives rather than individual musicians would negotiate performance contracts with the operators of music venues. These intentions were noble, but the foundations of the guild were unstable, with too many musicians used to surviving at near subsistence level in the city. Shortly after the formation of the guild, Archie Shep, with several children to support, entered into direct negotiations with impulse records for a recording contract without informing his fellow guild members. They reacted furiously when this was made known.
00:16:28
Speaker
There was a further rupture when Sun Ra made the misogynistic suggestion that the involvement of female musician Carla Blay, wife of pianist Paul Blay, was bad luck for its male members. When Bill Dixon subsequently left, the Guild soon disbanded.
00:16:43
Speaker
In 1965, John Coltrane, Babatunde Olatunji and Yusuf Latif formulated plans for their own cooperative venture, The Triumvirate, based on similar strategies to those adhered to by the Jazz Composers Guild. These plans were however stifled by John Coltrane's untimely death in 1967.
Collectives and Movements for Black Artists
00:17:02
Speaker
The objectives of these organisations were influential on the jazz and people's movement, led by multi-instrumentalist Rashan Roland Kirk and trumpeter Lee Morgan. The movement staged a number of notable protests during the recording of television talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson in the early 1970s.
00:17:21
Speaker
The purpose was to protest the lack of black artists hired for television work and to demand greater representation and media for black jazz artists, including on network television. Collective Black Artists, headed by Reggie Workman, former bassist for the John Coltrane Quartet and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, was an initiative to progress the development of black music and arts based in New York City.
00:17:44
Speaker
The collective published its own newspaper, called Expansion, with a view to preserving exposure for jazz artists in the face of diminishing audiences and media coverage. Leroy Jones, Black Arts Group, presented new music in the streets of Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn between 1963 to 1965 to educate these communities, particularly school-aged children about jazz. Similarly, the Jazz Mobile Project,
00:18:10
Speaker
literally a bandstand on the back of a truck, founded in 1964 by Daphne Ornstein, an arts patron and founder of the Harlem Cultural Council along with Dr William Taylor staged performances in these same neighbourhoods. By 1971, the Jazz Mobile Project was receiving grants from the New York State Council of the Arts and quickly progressed from a summer season project to a year-round event with regular concerts, workshops and a lecture series featuring jazz heavyweights like Dizzy Gillespie,
00:18:39
Speaker
to educate the next generation of jazz musicians. The Jazz Mobile organization is still active today. Musicians outside New York also explored collectivist strategies, the most renowned being Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, founded in 1965.
00:18:56
Speaker
The AICM had lasting success and established a broad network of African-American artists to pursue its aims, which again included producing concerts, educational programs, and the promotion of its artists. The AICM remains in existence today. The St. Louis Black Artists Group, or BAG, founded in 1968, operating until 1972, was generally seen as a sister organisation of the AICM.
00:19:22
Speaker
The BEE went further into the arts to promote not only musical performance, but dance, theatre, visual arts and creative writing. The BEE's dissolution resulted from diminished grant funding, but many of its members enjoyed independent success in the following years.
00:19:38
Speaker
Los Angeles Union of Gods Musicians and Artists Ascension, founded in 1961, centered around live performance in local community centres, churches, mosques, schools and social centres, with a strong emphasis on community engagement.
00:19:53
Speaker
And considering how the lifespan of some of these organizations extended well beyond that of their New York counterparts, Michael Heller points to how the focus of the Midwest organizations such as the ASEM and BHE was centered on creating new institutions of their own, independent of the traditional music industry. This differed from groups such as the Jazz Artist Guild, which sought to utilize trade union strategies, but were nonetheless tied to the commercial music industry to a greater extent.
00:20:22
Speaker
Going back to the 1972 Newport Jazz Festival in New York City, the New York Musicians' Organization eventually resolved to send Newport's organizer George Wine a list of ten demands dictating how the festival should operate in the city. Seven of those demands made reference to promoting black artists and musical outreach efforts in Harlem. There was an intensity about the tone of these demands that many felt was unwarranted in relation to the Newport Festival,
00:20:47
Speaker
and George Wein himself, who was generally thought of as being a decent man and a proper champion of jazz music. Many were quick to defend Wein, who they felt was being made a scapegoat for the artist's broader frustrations with the treatment of black artists in the music industry. In fairness, George Wein had indeed championed black artists who featured heavily in each Newport Jazz Festival and had been a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.
00:21:14
Speaker
Demands made by the NYMO organizers, which related to the redirection of revenue flows, implied a personal criticism of wine, but were actually more in line with a broader approach to redress systemic inequalities. For example, wine had made a pledge to donate one half of the festival's profits to the Urban League,
00:21:33
Speaker
a civil rights organization based in New York City that would advocate on behalf of economic and social justice for African Americans. A number of the demands made by the NYMO organizers expressly referred to the Urban League being obligated to ring fence a certain amount of those funds derived from the Newport Festival for a music school in Harlem and for a program to address the wants and needs of black musicians. The pilot project for which would also be launched in Harlem.
00:22:02
Speaker
There was not a direct criticism of the Urban League in these demands, but implicit was a dissatisfaction with this moderate organization and an apparent shift towards a more radical ideology, consistent with proponents of black nationalism in the United States, such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. The NIMO were intent on celebrating jazz as an expression of African-American communities and as a means of self-empowerment for people within those communities.
00:22:31
Speaker
The NYMO musician's reaction to Wine's proposed Urban League donation was reflective of the position the civil rights movement found itself at in 1972, following gains made by way of reforming legislation during the 1960s, the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the FBI's co-intel Prooperation, which effectively dismantled the Black Panthers. As exemplified by the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton in Chicago,
00:22:58
Speaker
had left activists uncertain about the next steps for social reform. The first national black political convention was held in Gary, Indiana in March 1972 with the aim of addressing the social and economic perils many black Americans were living through at the time. The convention was aimed at kick-starting the process of fundamental change in American society.
The Rise and Influence of Counter Festivals
00:23:18
Speaker
One topic of discussion being the need for increased representation of black people in the American political and cultural systems. The convention nonetheless indicated a wide ideological tension between more traditional liberals and those nationalist factions who were emphatic that the existing political structures had failed and would continue to fail black people in America
00:23:39
Speaker
The Gary Declaration issued at the Convention was a powerful indictment of modern America, containing the statement that, quote, we lift up a black agenda, recognising that white America moves towards the abyss created by its own racist arrogance, misplaced priorities, rampant materialism and ethical bankruptcy. Therefore, we are certain that the agenda we now press for in Gary is not only for the future of black humanity, but the only way the rest of America can save itself from the harvest of its criminal past.
00:24:10
Speaker
The absence of a response from George Wine to the demands of the NYMO led its organizers to stage the New York Musicians Festival in 1972, partly as an act of protest. The festival lineup was programmed as a corrective to what organizers deemed to be flaws in Newport's approach. More left-field artists who had largely been disregarded by George Wine were spotlighted. Concerts were staged in all five boroughs of the city, including many free concerts.
00:24:38
Speaker
Partly to keep the costs low, artists split in public parks, community centres and lofts throughout the city. Studio Riv B hosted the magnificent saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Studio We hosted Leon Thomas and Clifford Jordan, and Mount Morris Park and Harlem was the venue for concerts by Pharaoh Sanders. Numerous other venues hosted festival artists, including Slugs on East 3rd Street,
00:25:02
Speaker
where the Sunrau Orchestra had a residency in the early part of the 1970s, Free Life Communication on West 36th Street and the Third World Cultural Centre in the Bronx. There were over 250 concerts at 100 discrete events in 22 venues across the city. The counter festival gained national and international media coverage and was so successful that the NYMO were able to avail of state and city funding for future events.
00:25:27
Speaker
Like their predecessors in the New York guilds of the previous decades, the NYO members found it difficult to sustain the energy of the 1972 counter festival. The counter festival had galvanised the jazz loft scene and strengthened the gravitational pull of New York for jazz artists throughout the country. This was evident the following year when George Wein reached out to Sam Rivers
00:25:49
Speaker
to help him select a more adventurous artist roster for the 1973 Newport Jazz Festival, again to be held in New York. This was to be the first stage in the splintering of the NYMO. Juma Sultan, James Dupois and Sam Rivers saw this olive branch offer from wine.
00:26:05
Speaker
as a validation of their actions in the previous year. Others, most prominently Rashid Ali, who formerly drummed for John Coltrane, saw aligning with fine a seating control back to the musical establishment they had been working to gain independence from. This led to Ali and a number of others leaving the organisation. Sam Rivers also left soon after,
00:26:29
Speaker
The 1973 Newport Festival in the city was a remarkable series of events. There were historical performances by jazz heavyweights, including Ella Fitzgerald at Carnegie Hall, which also hosted concerts by Benny Goodman, who performed with his legendary quartet featuring drummer Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. The Apollo Theatre in Harlem hosted concerts by Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. However, the festival also showcased a large number of artists who were breaking new ground.
00:26:57
Speaker
Donny Hathaway, George Benson, Larry Correille, Pat Martino, Keith Jarrett, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Ramsay Lewis, Freddie Hubbard, Jacques de Jeanette, Return to Forever and The Weather Report featuring Wayne Shorter. Chuck Mangione, Grover Washington Jr. and Roy Ayers, Ubiquity, performed a new form of soul jazz.
00:27:36
Speaker
As part of the 73 Festival, the Sun Ra Orchestra played Carnegie Hall on July 6th, brilliantly documented in the live album Spaces to Place. When the festival saw the New York Premier of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the avant-garde jazz collective that grew out of the progressive black cultural group, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the late 1960s.
00:27:57
Speaker
The Art Ensemble featured legendary saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, who would record for the Wildflower series, recorded at Studio Rivbe in 1976. Son Ra would later record the brilliant Linguidity album in 1978 with Bob Blank at his independent Blank Tape Studios loft at 20th Street on 6th Avenue. This would be one of the early significant releases from Blank Studio, which effectively became the in-house production base for Z Records in the late 1970s and early 80s.
00:28:25
Speaker
Z was the independent label that most effectively pioneered mutant disco. Blank managed to produce an eclectic range of acts, including Arthur Russell, James Jansen the Contortions and Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and was involved in pioneering work with disco remixers Walter Gibbons and Larry Levann.
Expansion of Jazz Lofts and New Venues
00:28:44
Speaker
Minor issues like an absence of running water in the building between 6pm and 8am seemingly never hindered Blank's creative operations.
00:28:51
Speaker
The NYMO continued under the stewardship of Sultan Dubois and Milford Graves from much of the 1970s, with events overlapping with Studio Rivbe and the SOUCA. The NYMO continued to host festivals well into the 1980s under various names, including the Five Burrows Jazz Festival and the Studio We Park Concert Series. Although the organization lost any credible claim to being an all-encompassing citywide collective for activism,
00:29:18
Speaker
Its influence is evident in numerous musician-led organisations which followed. Between 1973 and 1977 numerous successful independent loft venues opened, including Studio Riv B, Studio We, Allie's Alley, Lady's Fort, the Firehouse Theatre and Sunrise Studios, all operated by organizers of the New York Musicians' Organisation.
00:29:41
Speaker
Not all these venues were located in the former industrial lofts of Soho or Tribeca, but they did share common characteristics. Low admission charges or voluntary donations, a casual atmosphere with the lines blurred between performers and audience members, ownership and administration managed by the musicians themselves, and mixed use space, combining family residence, performance space, recording studio and often community centres.
00:30:06
Speaker
Many of the jazz lofts operated with the deliberate shared strategy of circumventing the traditional music industry channels, such as nightclubs, commercial record labels and established radio channels. There was also a concerted effort by loft artists to engage with their local communities and to develop the talents of young musicians from primary school level onwards, something that was central to earlier jazz musicians' collectives such as the Jazz Mobile and Black Arts Group.
00:30:31
Speaker
The jazz lofts were emblematic of the explosion of self-produced musical programming in New York during the early 1970s. The blue-note saxophonist and former Miles Davis sideman, Sam Rivers, opened Studio Rivbe in 1969 at his loft at 24 Bond Street between the Bowery and Lafayette, managing to acquire a liquor license by 1972. Studio Rivbe was central to the progression of new jazz in New York in the 1970s.
00:30:58
Speaker
Rivers had located the property with the assistance of poet, painter, and political activist Virginia Admiral, who, as a member of the Art Workers Coalition, was instrumental in obtaining low-cost housing for artists working in the area that became known as Soho. Admiral's son, actor Robert De Niro, would find the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 to stimulate cultural activity in the same area following the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11. The photographer Robert Maplethorpe would later move into the same building.
00:31:28
Speaker
buying a fourth floor loft for $15,000 in 1972. Rivey's brochure presented the venue as a cultural centre but avoided the more confrontational approach of the NYMO. Bea Rivers managed business operations while her husband Sam coordinated bookings and served as music director.
00:31:47
Speaker
Their robust organizational structure helped establish links with other cultural institutions, including James Dubois' operations, the Harlem Cultural Council, Collective Black Artists, the Center for New Music, and Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock, the New York State Council for the Arts awarded a grant in 1973 for Studio Rithby to host its own summer music festival,
00:32:10
Speaker
which ran parallel to the 1973 Newport Jazz Festival in the city and the second New York Musicians Jazz Festival. The revenue structure developed so the grant funding guaranteed payment for musicians during annual festivals. More casual door gigs where ticket sales created revenue covered overheads for the venue throughout the year. Studio Rivbe quickly surpassed the New York Musicians Jazz Festival as the preeminent showcase for New York's avant-garde jazz artists.
00:32:38
Speaker
The five releases comprising the series Wildflowers the New York Loft Jazz Sessions recorded at Studio Rivbe May 14th to 23rd 1976 released in 1977 on the disco label Casablanca are essential documents of the city's jazz loft scene. The Wildflower series is featuring artists such as Sonny Murray, Jewie Redmond, Roscoe Mitchell and Paul Blay as a valuable artifact of a period of jazz music that is notably under recorded, under photographed and under celebrated.
Market Challenges and Independent Labels
00:33:10
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the the the
00:33:32
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Rashid Ali, formerly a drummer for John Coltrane, moved into a second floor space at 77 Green Street in 1972. When the rug merchant on the ground floor left, Ali moved into the vacated unit and opened the performance space, Ali's Ali, where he also operated survival records, recording live shows at the club.
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This was part of a deliberate attempt to attain self-sufficiency with Ali decisively opting out of applications for governmental grant funding. Ali also created a nightclub at the venue with a full bar and soul food kitchen. He claimed he was inspired by the avant-garde's exclusion from the mainstream jazz clubs such as the Village Vanguard, the Village Gate and Sweet Basil. Most of the significant left field jazz musicians played at Ali's Alley during the 1970s.
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The independent jazz loft artists had gained influence as the 70s progressed, with relatively meager grant funding support from organisations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, but wider commercial success was elusive. Avant-garde jazz artists faced the difficult task of finding their place in a market where the more muscular jazz-rock fusion of bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the funk-derived Head Hunters led by Herbie Hancock, at the time one of the biggest selling jazz albums ever,
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dominated popular jazz discourse. Adding to this feeling of being marginalized in the commercial jazz market, it was a common complaint among New York-born jazz artists that musicians arriving from other cities that played more traditional styles would be given more favorable local press coverage than the more extreme energy music pioneered by New York's own loft artists.
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Recording the most experimental jazz musicians in New York City and elsewhere for commercial release had often been a complicated endeavour. Debut Records was an American jazz record company and label founded in 1952 by bassist Charles Mingus, his wife Celia, and drummer Max Roach. The label was formed as an independent venture with the intent of bypassing the major labels to distribute left field jazz
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Celia's family had put up most of the funding to launch the label, and she also managed the bulk of the label's business affairs. When she and Charles Mingus divorced, this led to the collapse of the label in 1957. Celia would later remarry to composer Saul Sands.
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Although the debut label was short-lived, there were a significant number of quality releases, with many jazz heavyweights making their first recordings as bandleaders with the label, including pianist Paul Blay and saxophonist Hank Mobley. The label also released albums by Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Albert Eiler and Eric Dolphy.
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After Bill Dixon's 1964 October Revolution, drummer Milford Graves and Don Pullen had formed their own independent record label, SRP, meaning Self-Reliance Project, where every aspect of the production was controlled by them, even down to the hand-painted record sleeves. Their first release was a performance by the Pullen Graves duo at Yale University.
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Independent production and release was often a necessity, something that was taken to heart by the loft jazz musicians like Rashid Ali, who operated Survival Records to record live performances at his own venue. The New York-based record company ESP Disc deserves huge credit for recording a large number of the significant free jazz pioneers of the late sixties, everyone from Ornette Coleman, Paul Blay and Sonny Murray to Ferro Sanders, Carl Berger, Albert Eiler and Sun Ra.
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Label operator Bernard Stollman had been a New York lawyer who worked as an intern in the law firm that managed the administration of the estates of Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie before eventually becoming Dizzy's personal attorney. He developed a love of jazz music and would eventually go on to provide legal advice to numerous jazz musicians on performance and recording contracts. Stollman would become entangled with artists recording on ESP disc over the distribution of royalties, something that would tarnish his reputation.
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but it remains important to recognize his efforts in recording what was incredibly challenging non-commercial music and establishing a gateway for future generations to these incredible musicians. In the late 60s and early 70s, many of the most talented avant-garde artists had to look to European labels such as the French company BYG to have their music recorded for commercial release.
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The European festival circuit offered a lifeline to these jazz musicians, especially in later years during the 1980s when the music's commercial viability was massively diminished. The recent release of the live album, Faroe Sanders Live at Fabric Hamburg 1980, on the German label Jazzline, is a brilliant record of a musical style that was virtually endangered at the time of recording, but sustained by the enthusiasm of its adventurous musicians and those recording engineers devoted to ensuring its survival.
European Support and Major Contributions to Jazz
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Nonetheless, for an indicator of the brilliant experimental jazz albums recorded around this time in New York, have a listen to Dave Holland's debut as a band leader, Conference of the Birds, recorded at Allegro Studios in 1972, which features Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton dueling saxophones.
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There's also Cecil Taylor's Spring of Two Blue Jazz recorded at Town Hall in November 1973 and Crystals by Sam Rivers recorded for Impulse Records at Generation Studios in 1974 in terms of major label recordings.
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The beautiful solo concerts, Bremen Lucein, were released in 1973 by Keith Jarrett, who had moved from Boston to New York in 64. Keith played Rhodes Piano and Keys in Miles Davis' band around the time of Bitches Brew, recorded in New York before embarking on a brilliant solo career with classic releases on the jazz juggernaut Impulse Records and an incredible run of studio albums in 1971 for Atlantic Records.
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all recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York City. Unlike many of his peers, commercial success would follow for Jarrett, whose Coleman concert live album, released in 1975, became the best-selling solo jazz recording in history. Steve Baker, who had been working as an A&R man for Impulse Records during the Coltrane years,
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had convinced Clive Davis, formerly president of Columbia Records, to bankroll progressive jazz as part of his new label Arista, which is based in New York. Initial releases by the new label were older recordings of left field jazz artists such as Albert Eiler, but the recruitment of new avant-garde artists followed. There, Oliver Lake and Anthony Braxton all signed with Arista. Baker's business partner Michael Cascuna had prior experience with experimental jazz, having signed the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Atlantic Records.
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The adventurous approach at Arista was evident in the artists they signed, one of the first being saxophonist Anthony Braxton. This was an interesting move given that Braxton was generally considered to be on the more oblique end of the spectrum for the Aries jazz avant-gardists.
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Whereas many of the city's modern jazz players donned themselves an Afro-psychedelic attire, the handsome Braxton had a distinctive style, more like a hip college professor, woolly jumper, unkempt Afro, mutton shop sideburns. After returning from military service in Korea, he became involved in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in
Cultural Influences and Artist Displacement
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Chicago.
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As a side note, his son Tian De Braxton, an experimental jazz and electronic musician, would go on to form battles in the early 21st century, one of the great American bands of the past few decades.
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Prior to his move to New York in 1974, Anthony Braxton had played as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Europe. Treated as outsiders in Chicago, they both achieved a certain level of fame and adoration for more receptive European audiences. Establishing an outpost for American jazz musicians in Paris, where they lived for a number of years while touring the continent.
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Both Braxton and the Chicago Collective eventually decamped in New York. Just as Philadelphia's sole jump-started disco, Detroit's stooges inspired punk, these Chicagoans would have a significant influence on the city's jazz scene. The art ensemble were like a theatrical jazz version of the Wu-Tang Clan. Their live shows tread into theatrical performance art, with set design and costume often incorporated to embellish their eccentric musical vision, something that chimed well with the mood of downtown New York in the early 1970s.
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Braxton lived with his friend Dornak Coleman and made money on the side as a chess hustler in Washington Square Park. His Orista debut New York fall 1974 and the subsequent five pieces in 1975 showcase Braxton's kinetic talent while the standard set in the tradition released around the same time is equally impressive.
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Rent in the downtown area during the early 1970s was cheap. Rashid Ali paid $200 per month for the space at Ali's Ali, but this would begin to change with the completion of the World Trade Centre on April 4, 1973. This commercial development was intended to stimulate the revival of the areas now known as Soho and Tribeca
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and ultimately led financiers moving into the Twin Towers, setting about reclaiming the surrounding Loft district. These disused areas that had been revitalised by local artists were eventually seized on by developers to make them centres of modern lifestyle living, pricing out those very artists who had tapped into their potential in the first place.
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This was a pattern repeated in the first two decades of the 21st century in Williamsburg and other parts of Brooklyn, and many other modern American and European cities. Like the band and Bob Dylan in 1966, Anthony Braxton and many of the other musicians from the Loft Jazz scene ultimately relocated upstate to the town of Woodstock in the Catskill Mountains.
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This effectively operated as a small artist's colony. Braxton became involved in a musician's retreat, named the Creative Music Studio, established again by Ornek Coleman and German expat by Brofiness Carl Berger. As downtown rents began to rise, the CMS effectively became a rural outpost of the city's jazz loft scene, with musicians developing a tradition of freely improvised music amidst the natural woodland surroundings.
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In terms of source material for this episode, there are three books I would recommend for anyone interested in going further into the detail of the New York Loft Jazz scene. The first is Loft Jazz, Improvising New York in the 1970s by Michael C. Heller, which I've already mentioned and quoted from. For a brilliantly detailed examination of the players of free jazz during the period 1957-77, read As Serious as Your Life, Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution by Val Wilmer.
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and for an exciting and colorful overview of New York music in the years between 1973 to 1977, look up Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes, which races through the history of jazz, punk, disco, salsa and other experimental music of the time.
00:45:13
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Thanks for listening. In the next few episodes we're going to examine in detail how the artistic colonisation of Soho during the late 1960s stifled plans for the destructive Lower Manhattan Expressway project and how experimental electronic music and audio-visual art blossomed at the venue known as the Kitchen, first at its location in the Mercer Art Centre and later at its second home at Worcester and Broome Street in the heart of Soho.