‘Nothing to practice’: Julius Eastman, queer composition, and Black sonic geographies

I trace the musical performances and life of Black, queer composer Julius Eastman, considering Eastman’s oeuvre as a heterotopia defined by both revolutionary freedom and tragic capture. Eastman lived on the margins of 1970s and 1980s avant-garde minimalist music scenes unable and unwilling to comport to white norms of esthetic innovation and cultural acceptability. Eastman’s infusion of camp performativity with minimalist music and his Blackness and queerness challenged (and ultimately nullified) the avant-garde esthetic claims made by white composers. Whereas the white avant-garde insisted upon a tabula rasa, a separation from history to create (supposedly) new sonic forms, Eastman’s melding of genres, provocative song titles, playful disposition to the world, and his very presence in concert halls and university auditoriums challenged the racialized norms embedded within minimalist music. Eastman ruptured assumed codes of composition and performance yet was punished for these transgressions, barred from work and ultimately dying alone and homeless at the age of 49. Pursuing a creative life encased by erasure exemplifies the ways in which Blackness is parantological, constantly escaping from the fixity of racial ontologies that erase Blackness in the name of white supremacy. Examining Eastman’s artistic work and conflict with minimalist music prefigures the contemporary moment in which efforts to prioritize materiality, affective reality, and being over culture, signification, and discourse often belie white racialized standpoints. Intertwined with these theoretical concerns, I sketch how Eastman disrupts overwrought notions of scale, direction, rigidity, and intent through what Camilla Hawthorne calls ‘everyday practices of Black space-making’.

THE MERGING OF MUSIC CRITICISM AND MUSIC PROMOTION: CONVERGED MUSIC INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS ON FACEBOOK

This paper explores the changing socio-cultural dynamic between local music entrepreneurs and journalists/critics on Facebook in Estonia. Through the analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with music industry professionals and experts and observations of their activities on Facebook, the study identifies the decreasing distance between music criticism and music promotion. On the one hand, the music critics once envisioned as ‘autonomous gatekeepers’ (Hirsch, 1972) find it increasingly hard to transfer their musical authority, expertise and perceived independence to the commercially driven social media environment. As a result, some of them have taken up entrepreneurship themselves, converged their various identities by mixing their critical/evaluative practices as critics and business-oriented practices as entrepreneurs. On the other hand, some niche music entrepreneurs are stepping into the role of cultural authorities by mobilizing and catering to specific taste cultures and genre communities by becoming expert gatekeepers in their own right, despite being compromised by their business interest. In this context, it is no more useful to talk about the ‘mutual dependency’ of the music press and industry PR (Forde, 2001; Negus, 1992). Rather, among the tightly interwoven music scenes like the ones in Estonia, where many players adopt a variety of different and often conflicting roles (especially on Facebook), we should recognize the complete convergence of music promotion and music criticism and the loss of critical distance and autonomy altogether.

Fragments of a Queer Feminist Rock and Pop History in Vienna

The historical development of Viennese rock and pop music started with rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, continued with beat music and the “dialect wave” in the late 1960s, punk in the 1980s, the popular Viennese electronic music scene in the 1990s, and is currently enjoying a renaissance of the “dialect wave.” Artists like the Rosée Sisters, Austria’s first all-female rock band founded in 1962, Topsy Girl, A-Gen 53, or SV Damenkraft were active in local music scenes. In retrospect, they are considered as exceptions in the historiography of Austrian popular music. This chapter discusses several feminist and queer artists and collectives in Austria, their position in popular culture, and in historical and geographical contexts. The author concentrates primarily on all-female bands, LGBTIQ+ artists, and queerpop projects to illustrate diverse approaches to music, feminism, and their position within the pop and rock music scenes in Vienna.

Slampt, the ‘fans’ and ephemerality: Punk, subject and object

Slampt Underground Organisation was conceived in 1992 by Rachel Holborow and Pete Dale, issuing music, fanzines and ephemera from then until 2000. Perceived as a record label, Slampt sold tens of thousands of units and seems to have had a significant impact on particular individuals who might or might not be best described as ‘fans’. This article uses the author’s archives and reflections to collate detail, much of it not publically available before, about a label/distributor/organization, which has already been a point of interest to several researchers and journalists but which is nonetheless unknown to most, even in punk-related music scenes, in the present century. The author, as one half of Slampt’s de facto leading partnership, reveals that this status as a largely forgotten arm of 1990s UK punk is not entirely accidental: Dale and Holborow actively believed in ephemerality as an ideal, particularly in punk. Using this case as a starting point, the article asks whether punk really ought to be as fixated on documenting its past, finding its place in museums/galleries and gaining recognition in rock history. Is punk about collectible objects, about a particular mode of subjectivity or, perhaps, about a phenomenological combination of the two? The irony of the author writing the article at this time is acknowledged: Slampt is being written back in to punk history, even if only in the margins, through the act of publishing this piece. Nonetheless, the article is based around the assumption that the present and the future will always be more important than the past.

Sonic City: an exhibition of photography, A/V installation, community action

By taking participatory action research, utilizing sound as a means of harnessing the socio-cultural, and documentary exhibiting as mimesis, this paper takes themes of contemporary underground dance music culture, sonics, political engagement, and human development in urban spaces and looks at the key processes involved in formulating my documentary project Sonic City throughout the years 2014-2016. From personal experiences in Berlin (GER), London (UK), and Toronto (CAN) to research on the ephemeral nature of what creates thriving underground dance music scenes, this paper proposes that discotheques are vital and underestimated spaces for urban development, where complex socio-cultural monads of production and consumption are exercised and actualized. Sonic City as a documentary project is meant to shed light onto the places, spaces, and people involved in this vibrant culture, while as an artistic endeavour is attempting to put relational aesthetics at the forefront of documentary exhibiting, blurring the lines between gallery expectations and dance space experience.

Sonic City: an exhibition of photography, A/V installation, community action

By taking participatory action research, utilizing sound as a means of harnessing the socio-cultural, and documentary exhibiting as mimesis, this paper takes themes of contemporary underground dance music culture, sonics, political engagement, and human development in urban spaces and looks at the key processes involved in formulating my documentary project Sonic City throughout the years 2014-2016. From personal experiences in Berlin (GER), London (UK), and Toronto (CAN) to research on the ephemeral nature of what creates thriving underground dance music scenes, this paper proposes that discotheques are vital and underestimated spaces for urban development, where complex socio-cultural monads of production and consumption are exercised and actualized. Sonic City as a documentary project is meant to shed light onto the places, spaces, and people involved in this vibrant culture, while as an artistic endeavour is attempting to put relational aesthetics at the forefront of documentary exhibiting, blurring the lines between gallery expectations and dance space experience.

The “New Flowers” of Bulgarian Punk: Cultural Translation, Local Subcultural Scenes, and Heritage

First formed in the late 1970s, the Bulgarian punk band Novi Tsvetya was considered one of the first in the country, and they challenged restrictions associated with the totalitarian regime at the time. Focusing on Novi Tsvetya—or “New Flowers”—who are still active on the scene in the small town of Kyustendil where they first started, this chapter seeks to explore the genesis of the translation of “Western” subcultural music scenes into Eastern European Cold War contexts. It is argued that DIY politics of access, creation, and music performance enabled opportunities for youth agency and expression. They were in symbolic opposition to perceived repressive aspects of Cold War social and political environments in Bulgaria. The chapter also interrogates contemporary developments in relation to the wider interpretation of Bulgarian subcultural scenes, particularly a move towards a DIY cultural heritage discourse: a process of mythologizing youth resistance and creativity. While New Flowers and other bands discussed in this chapter are mostly musically and aesthetically engaged with punk and post-punk, the symbol of flowers in their name highlights the connectedness of subcultural scenes with other, earlier youth cultures, particularly the hippie culture. As the word flowers appears elsewhere in Bulgarian punk/post-punk, such as the song “Flowers of the Late 80s” (1987) by Revu, this chapter seeks to develop the notion of flowers as a conceptual and metaphorical device to understand how pre-1989 subcultural youth practices are holistically memorialized. The study is based on ethnographic interviews and observations, alongside analysis of musical, lyrical, and visual content, interpreting punk as an evolving intergenerational global language with a DIY ethos.

Music

A number of women who made their name as punk musicians and experimental performers have published their memoirs in quick succession. Taken together these books offer a rescripting of the dominant narrative of punk and related independent—indie—music scenes. The memoirs considered here—by Viv Albertine, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Brix Smith Start, and Cosey Fanni Tutti—go some way in challenging androcentric stereotypes in the “story of punk,” its politics and furious male icons. These memoirs provide rich insights into the complex, underground sexual politics of making it in a male-dominated industry. In so doing they rewrite the official record of punk registers of musical and political protest as groundbreaking experimental artists who also excel at playing fast, loudly, and with the libidinous energy usually attributed to masculine performance.