[Dixielandjazz] Avant-Garde & Post Modernism - Musical Suicide?

[Steve barbone]

Here's an interesting viewpoint on avant-garde & post Modernism for those
interested in Philosophy & Jazz. Not for everyone on the List, but
interesting to some.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

September 20, 2004 - NY Times - CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Pushing Boundaries in Search of Vision By MARGO JEFFERSON

This is a test. Please choose one of the following:

When you hear the phrase avant-garde

1)You flip through your intellectual file folder looking for examples (Dada,
12-tone music, modern dance, underground films, the Beats, theater of the
absurd, electronic music).

2) You experience a certain dread. (You ask yourself if you are the only one
in the gallery not getting the artist's joke, or worry that you can't finish
that book said to challenge narrative conventions so boldly.)

3)You rage, "Where's the vision today, the energy?" You think back
longingly. Paris, 1913: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes hurl Stravinksy's "Rite
of Spring" at a shocked public. New York in the 1940's: Bird, Diz and Monk
lead the charge for the music that would be known as bop. The 1960's and
70's: lofts, galleries, parks and churches shelter free jazz, new music and
every kind of performance. What does it take to bring artists together to
make brave new works?

I've felt each, and I'm about to start writing about the avant-garde in
occasional essays and pieces of criticism. Which brings up another question:
If an avant-garde is written about in a major newspaper like this one,
doesn't that prove that it has moved to the culture's prosperous Midtown?

Many say that no real avant-garde - which I'll define as a combative group
of free-thinking artists - can exist anymore. The media's reach is too vast.
New artists and movements get snatched up too quickly. If they are popular
they get overexposed and stale. If they are not popular they disappear, and
the marketeers decide they had better play it safe next time.

There is truth to this. Playing for maximum market value can turn a fresh
form into pablum. Too much of what is called new music or world music now
sounds as blandly mellow as the synthesized pop that calms impatient
telephone customers. It doesn't make one look forward to any kind of new
age. But this is not just a mass media issue. It is the nature of the art
beast, too. 

Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition they start a double
life. In one they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other they
inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary.
The artists and their art become intellectual brand names. Universities are
filled with arts programs. The training raises the level of craft and
sophistication. It does not necessarily raise the courage quotient - the
likelihood that artists will go their own way despite the rules dictated by
the vanguard. 

Postmodernism has the same effect. It drives artists to mine the past
constantly - and flagrantly. The past might be a five-year-old television
show, a 50-year-old song, a centuries-old performance style. Or folk dance,
puppet theater, melodramatic ghost stories, music traditions from other
continents. All are deconstructed and sampled.

This reaching to the past perhaps proves that the energy of the original
creations is indestructible. But one can't always say the same for the art
that draws on them. Too many clever references can make audiences think they
are in a game of "Trivial Pursuit."

Sometimes it feels as if the artist hasn't done the real work of engaging
with the material. Film noir can't just play off looks and attitudes. A
thriller needs a dose of genuine suspense. It does not have to be literal,
but it does have to feel genuine. Otherwise the artist is just leeching off
the form. 

When innovations become habits, prescriptions, they must be imagined all
over again, made new. Take the wonderful improvised nature of performance
art: image and text, body and sound, all mingled, wrestled and merged. It
was process. Bodies turned into pictures. Sounds told stories. Talk was a
form of music. 

One can find this today in theaters and galleries and in all kinds of
multimedia work. There is exciting stuff out there, but it has to fight past
styles that have calcified. A kind of performance art prose that was truly
fresh in 1974 is now grimly predictable. You have probably heard it:
declarative sentences, cool ironies, elusive images recited in a flat
anti-emotive style. You can almost hear the artist asking, "Don't you admire
the way my mind makes associations?"

The avant-garde is history and commerce now. When I did a Google search for
the phrase "avant-garde,'' Virtual Marketplace and Brand Name Items:
Discounted, Wide Selection appeared instantly. I moved onto eBay and found a
postmodern pastiche of "avant-garde" items for sale: "sexy studded" heels by
Prada, from the 2004 collection; " "No More War" posters from the 1960's;
poetry books from 1920's Russia; 1980's noise music from Japan; modern
pottery by American Indian women. There was a salon hairdryer and there was
a vintage dress that the seller claimed could pass for Japan chic, indie kid
or punk. 

"I like the word because it's so retro," a young writer said of
"avant-garde.'' But "experimental" serves my purpose better in this column.
For one thing, artists have changed the world without ever being called
avant-garde. The high-art credentials of jazz and film were still being
debated when Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, D. W. Griffith and Mary Pickford
were doing their best work.

Anyway, I don't want to canonize, but to explore. And I'm not sure what I'll
discover. There are so many ways to experiment. Musicians change the play of
sound and silence. Writers disrupt the meaning and rhythm of words.
Filmmakers and choreographers re-imagine motion and stillness. Art forms mix
and match all the time: dance, theater, performance art, noise music,
graphic novels. 

The digital world has only augmented this phenomenon. On multiple Web sites,
groups are bonding over experimental zines, film and music.

There is so much experimental technology now, with machines and instruments
that challenge our bodies, senses and thought patterns. History does repeat
itself, and avant-gardes spring up in certain conditions. We have those
conditions now - wars, ever self-renewing technologies, jarring cultural
schisms. So in this space I will be looking for the vision, the change of
heart that always signals a change of form.