Bklyn Sounds 7/4/2023 - 7/10/2023 + The Matter of Independence

Some July 4th thoughts on DIY venues (RIP seCret loCation) and cultural choices + Shows: Sun Ra Arkestra with Ahmed Abdullah / Matana Roberts / Eli Escobar / "The Brooklyn Cumbia Festival" / and more

I am out of the city this week — and again later in July. No worries though, as Bklyn Sounds will continue. But, as I did a few months back, I thought my weeks out-of-town might be a good time to take Bklyn Sounds from behind the paywall, and to give a sense of why I do some of the things I do at Dada Strain, and to get folks who read it for free to consider becoming payed subscribers. Towards that here’s a recap of “what this is” and “why this is.”  

This past weekend, the vibrant Greenpoint DIY spot Chaos Computer (often listed as “seCret loCation” on flyers and mailing lists) held its final shows. The folks behind the space knew for a couple of months that they were about to be displaced — and as a going-away, they hosted a series of packed-bill blow-outs of improvisation, punk and metal noise, beat and song experimentalism, (etc. etc.) that looked fun as hell, and gave a sense of just how richly diverse the sounds of Brooklyn and the people making them are. The underground is as alive as ever, still incoherent and extreme and glorious in some measure, a beacon and a pin-drop for the future. 

A different kind of borough wealth is also behind the closure of CC — their corner of waterfront Greenpoint is now ready for its redevelopment moment, thankyouverymuch — though the collective is also actively looking for a new spot. They are running a GoFundMe for that purpose, and to help find “housing for several trans and BIPOC members of the CC collective” who were living in the building and are now losing their home.  

On some level, I was late in discovering Chaos Computer, its purpose and bookings, location and schedule. But on another, this kind of “late” is right on-time for a community that primarily chooses to stay hidden from mainstream culture’s gaze, and for which a certain kind of successful largess is not an artistic intent. The make-up of the audience matters, and more publicity or promotion is tolerated at best. I only listed a couple of CC shows on Bklyn Sounds, out of deference to folks who thought that maybe it’s best if I did not; having learned long ago that when faced with foreign influence, out-of-the-way communities know what’s best for themselves, a trait unfathomable in contemporary “journalism” and tourist-type virality. 

DIY is partly its own strategy of community survival, and folks of color and non-binary people have done as well as anyone can in the face of supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist urges to the contrary. This is also where the cheap analogy between CC’s closing and the disintegration of parts of the Williamsburg DIY scene currently in film-documentary vogue, breaks down. Hipsters in the ‘00s were unabashed careerists; whereas many of the older CC community members are survivors of those tendencies. (See also Cisco Bradley’s ‘The Williamsburg Avant-Garde.’)        

That CC’s closure came at the onset of the July 4th weekend has some personal symbolic significance. As I sometimes allude, I’m an immigrant, the son of political refugees, brought to the U.S. on a myth I figured out early was fraught with hypocrisies, and which I’ve been struggling to come to terms with my entire adult life. Balancing the promise with the lie, the mind-set of aspiration and opportunity, with how identity entitlements often do the subjugating work of colonialist capital. This matter of figuring out freedom and independence actively bleeds into Dada Strain. 

Among the ideas, a lot of it boils down to the notion of “individual choice.” Today, individualism is too-often code for consumer and religious desires, “MAGA” and its lost privileges; but in the era of platforms, development and technological inevitability, independent choice-making can also act as a rethinking of one’s code, and way to glean how the inescapable nature of being a culture-consumer could in fact better align with one’s world-making/-evolving manifestations. At times, anyway…

Sometimes this sort of championing of individual choice can sound old-fashioned as f*ck (“old man yells at clouds [about streaming versus record stores]”). I’ve had students call me out on it.   But that kind of binary response to choice seems equally dated. A primary purpose of DIY and the independent alternatives it fosters at its best, is as an escape from exactly this sort of dichotomy. We already live in a highly fractured society, whose every natural sign points towards a world-in-crisis largely due to uncritical thinking about scale in industry; which makes the rigidity of cultural choices in favor of delivery systems even less logical. 

Part of the Dada Strain work is the belief that presenting more less-overtly-popular options is simply a way to document a broader, fuller canopy, and its inherent promise. From its anarchic name on down, Chaos Computer was built on those same wonders. May it be again.

This Week’s Shows:

The last of the Ava Mendoza-curated free first Tuesday improvisation shows at Union Pool is an absolutely unf*ckwithable bill: tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis paired with longtime drum partner Chad Taylor, the incredible saxophonist Matana Roberts, and some variation of guitarist Che Chen and boxtop percussionist Rick Brown’s 75 Dollar Bill. One of the great line-ups of the summer. Highest Recommendation. (Tues. 7/4, 8p @ Union Pool - FREE)

Another week, another must-see Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few show in NYC, and yet another set of collaborators for the great tenor saxophonist — though bassist Jeremiah Hunt and drummer Michael Shekowoaga Ode are actually two of the Chosen Few on Collier’s already classic 2021 LP, Cosmic Transitions. I do wonder whether the other two great layers on the bill — trombonist Zekkereya El-Magharbel and pianist/singer Eliana Glass — might also get involved in the group mix. (Wed 7/5, 8p @ public records - $25) 

Many kudos to the folks behind the production company One Whale’s Tale for putting together the “Brooklyn Cumbia Festival,” which will be bringing different expressions of the great Afro-Latin rhythm to venues across the city. There are excellent live band shows — Afro Domicano at Joe’s Pub (Thurs), Spaghetti Cumbia and Tropa Magica at TV Eye (Sat), Son Palenque at Barbes (Mon). There’s also another installment of Mickey Perez and Toribio’s great “Public Service” party at Maria Hernandez Park in the heart of Latin Bushwick (Sun). And that’s just the tip. It feels a little like Cumbia Christmas.  (Thurs 7/6 - Mon 7/10 @ various locations - FREE-$25)

An excellent social freebie, “Friends & Lovers in the Park” is a live band + DJs + evening under the stars put together by the Crown Heights bar venue where the performers are all residents. Brass Queens is a punky New Orleans-style nonet, with a (d’uh) all-female horn section, while the DJs Monk-One & DJ Prestige (of the “Shake!” monthly), Nina Vicious and Run P are first-rate selectors and DJs, swinging from funk and hip-hop, to jazz and house party classics. This park jam will be very well soundtrack’d.(Fri 7/7, 6p @ Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 3 - FREE)

ART+FILM+MUSIC: The Met’s conceptual ‘Short Films for Short Nights’ is a “three-part film series featuring dozens of short silent films made between 1896 and 1959 that collectively explore themes of modernity through cinema and film technologies.” Each evening’s program is themed, and each will be scored by great improvisers: bassist Brandon Lopez (Fri), saxophonist Matana Roberts (Sat), and electronic-minded multi-instrumentalists Lea Bertucci and Ben Vida (Sun). Check the listing for details. (Fri 7/7 + Sat 7/8, 7p and Sat 7/9, 2p @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art - FREE with registration) 

2013’s Rocket Science was a noisy, improvising outer-space quartet album made by trumpeter Peter Evans, saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta on live electronics. Issue Project Room has brought the band back together for a rare performance — with the stuck-in-England Parker now replaced by the electronics-minded rhythmalist (and recent MacArthur Grant recipient) Ikue Mori. Expect this excursion to go even deeper into the unknown, so not for the faint of heart. (Fri. 7/7, 8p @ Brooklyn Music School - $20)

Eli Escobar has long been one of the best any-room-any-time DJs in New York City. He will make you dance again and again, and keep coming back: seriously, I can do an Eli-only section of this newsletter, listing 3-5 gigs each month. Key point: he makes all these rooms go off, with house, freestyle, electro, hip-hop, pop, disco, dancehall, re-edits, techno, whatever is in the crate. (Recently on IG, somebody called his style “feel good 80’s young adult movie theme song stuff” and…sure, perfect.) The best Eli Escobar is open-to-close, and that’s what you get at House of Yes. (Fri 7/7, 10p @ House of Yes - FREE with RSVP and “creative looks” before 11p/$25-35)

Another week, another must-see Sun Ra Arkestra show in NYC, this one with a great bonus. The freebie (plus suggested donation) will open with a reading by Ahmed Abdullah, long-time Arkestra trumpeter and current music director of the wonderful Bed-Stuy community-music spot, Sistas Place. Abdullah will be reading from his soon-to-be-published memoir, “A Strange Celestial Road,” and then play with the Arkestra, which, to the best of my knowledge, he has not done in a long long time. Highest Recommendation. (Sun. 7/9, 5p @ Pioneer Works - Free w/RSVP/$10suggested donation) 

The interplay between the spoken delivery of poet-theorist Fred Moten, Brandon Lopez’s bass and Gerald Cleaver’s drums has, over the past few years, become the local embodiment of one oral tradition. The trio presents both the history and the possibility of liberation discourse around music sometimes known as “jazz.” The wordsmith and the rhythm section are doing a three-night stand, with great opening acts each evening: alto saxophonist Darius Jones playing solo (Sun), the duo of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and Cecilia Lopez on electronics (Mon), and saxophonist Matt Nelson playing solo (Tues). (Sun 7/9 - Tues 7/11, 8p @ FourOneOne - $20)

I wanted to promote Big Joanie’s gig at Union Pool next Wednesday ever since it was announced, but that sold-out long ago. Luckily, one of the best punk bands to come out of London in recent years — singer/guitarist Stephanie Phillips, bassist Estella Adeyeri and drummer Chardine Taylor-Stone — added this other Babys Allright play. Three chords and the truth. Highest recommendation. (Mon 7/10, 10p @ Babys Allright - $18)