The Williamsburg Avant-Garde : Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront

In The Williamsburg Avant-Garde Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and early 2010s. Drawing on interviews, archival collections, musical recordings, videos, photos, and other ephemera, Bradley explores the scene's social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Building on the neighborhood's punk DIY approach and aesthetic, free jazz, post punk, and noise musicians and groups ranging from Mary Halvorson, Zs, and Nate Wooley to Matana Roberts, Peter Evans, and Darius Jones produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station Free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York's experimental culture. In 2005, New York's rezoning act devastated the community, as gentrification displaced its participants further afield in Brooklyn and Queens. With this portrait of Williamsburg, Bradley not only documents some of the most vital music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, he helps readers better understand the formation, vibrancy, and lifespan of experimental music and art scenes everywhere.Rezensionen“With a sharp eye for detail and an awareness of broad cultural implications, Cisco Bradley has captured a clear image of an elusive moment, vividly chronicling an artistic movement and social scene as distinctive as it is historically significant. The Williamsburg he lays out is a staunchly alternative confederation of improvisers, performance artists, painters, poets, and sculptors all united in their renegade stature. This is an authoritative book on a creative foment that has often gone unrecognized in the discourse around experimental music in New York.” — Nate Chinen, author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century“Cisco Bradley compellingly guides readers through the successive adaptations of the experimental music community to a rapidly changing W In The Williamsburg Avant-Garde Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. Drawing on interviews, archival collections, musical recordings, videos, photos, and other ephemera, Bradley explores the scene’s social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Building on the neighborhood’s punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg's free jazz, postpunk, and noise musicians and groups---from Mary Halvorson, Zs, and Nate Wooley to Matana Roberts, Peter Evans, and Darius Jones---produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as in clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York’s experimental culture. In 2005, New York’s rezoning act devastated the community as gentrification displaced its participants farther afield in Brooklyn and in Queens. With this portrait of Williamsburg, Bradley not only documents some of the most vital music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; he helps readers better understand the formation, vibrancy, and life span of experimental music and art scenes everywhere. project_muse_109976-3344400 1 project_muse_109976-3344402 2 project_muse_109976-3344404 4 project_muse_109976-3344406 10 project_muse_109976-3344409 28 project_muse_109976-3344411 64 project_muse_109976-3344413 109 project_muse_109976-3344417 152 project_muse_109976-3344419 198 project_muse_109976-3344421 237 project_muse_109976-3344423 272 project_muse_109976-3344424 280 project_muse_109976-3344426 344 project_muse_109976-3344428 352 project_muse_109976-3344430 376 project_muse_109976-3344439 404