CISCO BRADLEY/WILLIAMSBURG AVANT-GARDE in Andes

 

Music historian and Pratt Institute Professor Cisco Bradley visits Diamond Hollow to present his two recent Duke University Press publications: The Williamsburg Avant-Garde:  Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront 

and 

Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker

 

Sunday, June 18, doors at 5 PM followed by Cisco's presentation and LIVE musical contributions from DAVID NUSS and SARAH MARTIN-NUSS, the Brooklyn-based experimental pop duo Dancing In Tongues as well as DAN DERKS who explores broken beats and melodies through electronics and kinesthetic gesture.

                                          *Wine, water and hors d'oeuvres*

 

Admission is free with a suggested donation of $10-$20 to support the shop and the artists.

 

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. Building on the neighborhood's punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg's free jazz, post-punk, and noise musicians and groups 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, Queens, and beyond. 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 offers thoughts on the formation, vibrancy, and life span of experimental music and art scenes everywhere.

 

Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists today. In Universal Tonality, historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker's life and music. Bradley traces Parker's ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker's early influences--Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black arts movement--grounded Parker's aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom.

 

Diamond Hollow Books  72 Main Street, Andes  347-262-4187

                               www.diamondhollowbooks.com

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