Institutions and the Local Musicking Ecology | Bklyn Sounds 1/17/2024—1/23/2024

On Lincoln Center's Unity Festival v. Winter Jazzfest, and how it can impact the future + Shows: sinonó / Amir ElSaffar / I Am / Nicole Misha / 'Abortion Access Benefit Series' / and much more

What is the role of institutions in local music communities? What should it be? The answers to those questions are central to ideas and aspirations that shape Dada Strain, but more importantly to the future of how culture evolves. They’ve been weighing on me long before this past weekend, when a related tempest in a teapot — Jazz at Lincoln Center’s (JALC) launch of a new two-day multi-stage festival on the exact days of the grassroots-and-20-years-strong Winter Jazzfest (WJF) marathon — pulled such questions into a more immediate focus and context. What happens when a powerful institution sets its eyes on a community culture not with the goal of being a partner, but as a competitor?

The Times’ Giovanni Russonello, a writer-thinker-musicker I admire, who annually summarizes WJF in a “critic’s notebook” column, framed the dueling festivals (JALC’s was un-ironically called Unity). The piece was full of his paper’s usual soft-touch diplomacy when addressing the city’s other institutional behemoths. Gio’s broad view points out that the circumstances “couldn’t help but highlight how much has been flipped upside-down,” when “the most institutional presenter in jazz is emulating” a “once-insurgent” upstart, were of course on-point. Complementary towards one, arched-brow hopeful towards the other. It reads like the parsing of a gentlemanly debate. But like many other instances of respectful discourse, it also conveniently side-steps the notion that one of New York’s well-endowed arts monarchs basically aimed its arsenal of dollars at an independent (relatively) bootstrap community venture. 

My institutional biases here are on full-display, but they’re not meant to indict individuals or profess intentions. There are a lot of incredible folks at Lincoln Center (JALC and otherwise) — possessing great ears, doing great werk, attempting to push cultural norms forward. (One of them, the longtime DJ/musicker Funmi Ononaiye, who was central to Unity’s more adventurous, very un-JALC-like bookings — and who was a knowing presence at a massive variety of NYC shows over the past three decades — passed away in December. In a graceful touch, Unity was dedicated to him.) These people are instrumental in executing the programs only a well-funded institution can afford, be it bringing musicians over from other countries, staging huge expensive productions, or creating cross-medium collaborations that actually get the pre-production resources to work into something truly extraordinary. At times, they pull off shit most grassroots orgs can’t fathom. But maybe this is also the most frustrating thing about an institution’s place inside the ecology of a local cultural environment: as its great werk gets universally acknowledged, the organization’s humility and reach evolve, its appetite grows, and it steps into spaces like a bull in a china shop, Or it applies the exclusivity/VIP standards of its audience to what were previously great populist programs. And gets away with it because…well, who doesn’t wanna be involved with Lincoln Center.  

My institutional biases cut both ways. I’ve known and worked with Brice Rosenbloom, the founder of WJF, in both official and unofficial capacities, longer than his festival has been around. At WJF, Dada Strain threw a showcase this year; I co-produced one with International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece in 2019; I’ve DJ’d and written essays and advised on marketing and programming, while attending almost all of the marathons these past 20 years. But over those same years, Brice and I have had our share of disagreements — about creative direction, tone and intention and representation, and the role of community-input versus centralized curation. (You can probably guess who drew the lines and where.) Local musicians and its union have also had their battles with WJF over musician rates and treatment, but these have been resolved amicably. (Last weekend, the union leader at the time of the dispute, guitarist Marc Ribot, staged a WJF marathon night of his own various projects. The disagreements aren’t forgotten, but the truce is celebrated.) People around WJF have fought for its soul because that’s what I think happens when people care about an entity that works on the community’s behalf, for better or for worse. They speak up and demand for this (much smaller but no less an) institution to do right by them, because they’re the ones who helped it grow.

Yet what happens when it isn’t the community that has helped grow (or even birth) an institution, but mega-wealthy donors, the tax-code and eminent domain laws of a civic government’s urban renewal plan, and the patronage of a billionaire ex-mayor? Of course I am no longer talking strictly about Lincoln Center, but any number of large glass arts mausoleums that have sprung up all over Manhattan in the past decade. What are these institutions' responsibilities to the artists and arts communities they purport to represent in their marketing materials, and which they occasionally use as a resource, but far more often abandon for the cultural interests and needs of the 1%?

I have been steadfast in my belief that we are living in a time that is crying out for new institutions and new institutional thinking — and not just in the arts. (In many ways, this note is a follow-up to the “The Crisis in (Local) Music Media,” and the question of local media institutions’ responsibility to local culture, though after Wednesday’s senseless decimation of Pitchfork at Conde Nast, you can edit out “local.”) How do we get there, to the next? And are there parts for established institutions to play that can aid their self-interested futures, while helping create a new generation of organizers and presenters who don’t just mirror the existing paradigm, but go forth and multiply a culture in which artists can create truly new work, and even subsist on it? 

The cynic in me says that these institutions’ lack of humility, egotism and bottomless pockets which can, to finish Oscar Wilde’s famous observation, “pay to greatness,” means we have to tear down in order to build anew. Yet Dada Strain is not merely a cynic’s endeavor. We need for smart institutions to not only not cannibalize or sabotage those coming up from behind, but to give the cross-generational upstarts a hand, empower and embolden them, help them shine. And then, those institutions can bask in the greater light. If what they are serving is actually the culture, and not simply its occasional consumers, we all know that this is the thing they should be doing. (In some ways they already are, but only with equally established institutional partners.) Those who truly get the hierarchy-dismantling cultural equation, will reap the adoration and rewards that both community and history bestow upon them — even if the near future may seem more like survival. Those who look only to the immediacy of a bottom line will not be so lucky.     

This Weeks’s Shows:

A loudly high-flying trio invades the backroom of Sisters: saxophonist Ravi Coltrane should need no introductions, drummer Weasel Walter’s metallic fusioneering is a heavy presence in the city’s DIY-sound circles, and and experimental electric guitarist Sandy Ewen has regularly been a noisy foil for both. Likely to get loud and weird. Also: The Jew-O (Richard Kamerman & David Grollman on percussion & parlance) and Daniel Malinsky (Wed 1/17, 8p @ Sisters, Clinton Hill - $10)

Though Amir ElSaffar has been recording for more than 15 years, I only heard the Chicago-born trumpeter for the first time on last year’s magnificent People of Eternity: BDS Mixtape Vol. 1. After which I dived into his excellent catalog. ElSaffar is masterful at weaving maqam harmonies and melodies, and layering electronics, into many contexts. At times, the Arabic textures are front and center. During this week’s residency at The Stone, he’s doing both. A pair of nights find him surrounded by local improvisors: Wednesday’s quartet will include drummer Tomas Fujiwara and tenor Ole Mathisen, as well as an unannounced guest on “microtonal piano”; and Friday’s Non-Conceptual Quintet fields an all-star line-up of guitarist Brandon Ross, drummer Nasheet Waits, alto saxophonist Darius Jones, and bassist Francois Moutin. More curious are the nights on which ElSaffar will also play the santur, a kind of Mesopotamian dulcimer, with mostly non-Western musicians: Thursday’s Microtonal Resonance Ensemble features pianist Sonya Belaya, guitarist Jerome Harris, Rajna Swaminathan on the mridangam hand-drum, Firas Zreik on the qanun (an Eastern hand-harp) and Zafer Tawil on oud and percussion; while Saturday’s “Music for a Free Palestine” program sees ElSaffar, Tawil and Zrei joined by vocalist George Ziadeh. Highest Recommendation. (Wed 1/17—Sat 1/20, 8:30p @ The Stone, New School, Manhattan - $20) 

Trumpeting multi-instrumentalist Takuya Nakamura’s practice goes into many electronics-oriented directions, which he’s always refining and pushing. Nakamura calls himself Space Tak, and his occasional Cosmic Jungle nights bring together a few fellow travelers. On Wednesday, they will be drummer Currency Audio, bassist Josh Warner, saxophonist “Mobius” Simms, and the DJ, rmzi. (Wed 1/17, 10p @ Babys All Right, Williamsburg - $15)

The Fire Over Heaven series begins 2024 by hosting sinonó, a trio of vocalist Isabel Crespo Pardo, cellist Lester St. Louis, and Henry Fraser on bowed bass, who make dusky, emotional gothy Latinx folk music, whose power has in recent months absolutely overtaken me. Also appearing is  Emmanuel Michael Group, consisting of guitarist Michael and bassist Rafael Enciso. (Thurs 1/18, 8p @ Outpost Artists Resources, Ridgewood - $15)

Massive free DJ double-bill at Jupiter Disco, advertised as a “Capricorn Birthday Bash.” Originally from Baltimore, Jialing’s sets usually nod (at least) to the city’s club massive, but also venture forth into other breakbeat-oriented territories. Donis is another in the army of excellently soulful house selector-guides currently tipping the city’s dancefloors. Use that dosh to tip your bartenders! (Thurs 1/18, 10p @ Jupiter Disco, Bushwick - FREE)