smCOLUMN FIFTY-SIX, FEBRUARY 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
SECTION FOUR
sm
COLUMN
FIFTY-SIX, FEBRUARY 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al
Aronowitz)
MUSIC AND POETRY FESTIVAL
(Paul McDonald is a writer based in
Louisville, Kentucky who traveled to New York for the
festival. Send comments to paulmcd@bellsouth.net)
On the weekend of
November 10-12, seventeen venues in the East Village hosted a celebration that aspires to yearly reprise. The First Annual
New York City Underground Music and Poetry Festival
featured dozens of musicians, songwriters and poets from all over the country and the world. The festival was the brainchild of producer
Nora Edison and poet/songwriter Casey Cyr, both
all too aware of the ungodly number of dollars---and connections--needed for an artist to get his/her work out and noticed by the public.
Last Summer,
Edison attended a very reputable (and expensive) music festival out West, and recalled that it had once been free of charge, had
once served first and foremost to support its participating
artists.
"Why,"
she demanded of Cyr, "isn't there something like this in New York?"
Cyr agreed it was
an idea whose time had come. "If you want to
get your video on MTV, you practically have to sell out a football stadium four times
over."
Yet, unknown
artists are busy. "They're producing amazing work, and somebody has got to give them a nod."
The two envisaged
a free festival which would showcase some of the best unrecognized and non-mainstream talent New York has to offer, and
would foster the principles of community support
and brotherly love.
Thus began an
endless cycle of phone calls, emails, meetings, brochure designs, blood, sweat and caffeine-induced insomnia. After several
weeks, the organizers developed a website (<www.nycundergroundfest.org>), named a
board of directors and articulated their mission:
A focused , 3-day
festival showcasing artists in the traditions of music and spoken word who bring their creative talents to New York City, the worldwide
Mecca of art, and the thriving community of night clubs
that provide these artists with a place to perform.
They recruited as
honorary chairman musician/composer David Amram, a man equally at home conducting the New York Philharmonic or recording
with Barenaked Ladies. Amram’s seventieth
birthday was November 12, coincident with a concert at The Knitting Factory that evening. The concert, "Keeping The Flame
Alive," went on well past 3 a.m., and brought together
an eclectic spectrum of poets, musicians and writers from every living generation,
each of them looking to the past in order to
invent the future.
Amram was a
contemporary of The Beat Generation, a group, which, he said, tried to combine a classical European method with a
reverential hands-on approach to spontaneous New World
styles of improvisation; something very hard to categorize. A lot of the subjects we're
celebrating now came from a community over 40 years ago of painters, poets and artists who
would support one another---kind of our own
12-step program. The only thing we had in common was that we were so different from one
other.
Edison and Cyr
were never concerned about a lack of talent. New York probably has the densest population
of musicians, poets and artists anywhere on the planet. But with the encouragement of
Amram, they soon realized that the Underground, that ethereal dwelling place of purity and brutal honesty, extended far beyond NYC. Amram
spoke about the City’s first jazz/poetry reading:
“When Jack
Kerouac and I gave the first-ever jazz poetry reading in New York City at the Brata Art
Gallery in November of 1957, we were rejoicing in the spirit of being inclusive, rather
than exclusive, in the company of painters
poets composers musicians actors dancers and assorted dreamers who wanted to share their
gifts
With this
mandate, brochures were sent out all over the country, submissions considered, and talent booked from places as near as
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and from as
far away as Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee, California, Canada, Britain, and
Belgium.
Organizing and
producing any event without corporate sponsorship can be daunting---as the Pearl Jam/Ticketmaster debacle attests.
Nevertheless, an impressive roster was assembled that
included Lee Ranaldo, Amiri Baraka, Rocker T, Ron Whitehead, Tuli Kupferberg,
George Dickerson, Jack Newfield, The David
Amram Trio, Ugly BoyFriend, Suicide King, Frank Messina and Octopoet, Church of Betty,
Chaotic Past, Olivia Cornell, Genesis P-Orridge, John S. Hall, Al Aronowitz, Bob Holman,
Hersch Silverman, and John Tytell, among others.
Most of the
venues donated their space, among them, The C Note, The Nuyorican Poets Café, The Pink Pony, Tribes Gallery, The Living Room,
Sidewalk Cafe, and The Luna Lounge. Most events
were free, and others very inexpensive ($5 for the Saturday evening event at the Nuyorican, $10 after 10 p.m.). Most of the artists
mentioned above featured there, and the evening
included a tribute to poet Gregory Corso which was filmed for a documentary.
Since many of the
events occurred simultaneously, a visitor could begin Saturday afternoon hearing Amiri
Baraka at the Tribes Gallery, catch Ugly Boyfriend in the early evening at The Living Room, move to The Pink Pony to The Glue
Puppets and poet Bob Holman, and finish off at
The Nuyorican with jazz, world music, and spoken word. Originally conceived as a beatnik rock 'n' roll party, the festival grew enormously,
prompting Holman to call it, "a giant squid whose
tentacles [were] out, erect and hongry."
Edison and Cyr
hope the festival will become an annual event, and would like to see other cities around the world take the initiative to produce
similar festivals of their own. Amram commended
the event for its spirit of egalitarianism and wholesomeness. ##
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