Welcome to Dada Strain 2023
Happy New Year! Dada Strain and jaimie branch in 'The New Yorker,' new and upcoming work, #BklynSounds and paid subscriptions + Thank You!
Happy New Year!!!
Welcome to Dada Strain, a “periodical” about music — specifically, about rhythm, improvisation and community. I want to wish you a wonderful 2023, to thank you for subscribing to Dada Strain, and for, potentially, reading. You could have signed up for any other content feed in the world, but you’re spending the first day of the new year here with me, and I appreciate it.
The kinda-monthly “Welcome To” “check-ins” are an opportunity to introduce new Dada Strain subscribers to what this space is about. (And I am delighted that there’s been a couple of hundred more of you over the past 30+ days—thank you!!!!). It’s also a chance to give all readers a general update about new work, upcoming developments, and what’s percolating in my brain about Dada Strain purpose and potential. (Since this is a space that will hopefully always be evolving.)
Dada Strain was created as a forum to combine traditionally segregated musical interests (specifically, rhythm music = dance, improvising music = art); to show how ideas natural to music extend into other spaces and reinforce social compacts; and to support local musickers in ways usually afforded to national/international/viral artists, platforms and infrastructures. Re-launching #BklynSounds as part of Dada Strain in November, and receiving a ton of positive feedback about it, has boiled up some long-brewing ideas about the loss of local media, and its importance in developing and advocating for an arts ecosystem. One plot-line from the first season of the great British sitcom, We Are Lady Parts (about an all-female Muslim punk band in London), which I binged the past week, reinforced how community arts get lost when translated by outsiders, and especially by media professionals with no stake in either the “art” or the “community.” This is a lot of what passes for arts and music criticism nowadays. Seemingly the only way to transcend this is through the gain of bigger audiences, of no longer serving strictly the community. I strongly disagree with this as a pathway for developing creative work. Keeping it local does not mean keeping it from having meaning for the larger world. Diversity of ideas and of the arts begins with their support on the block. </soapbox exits stage left…for now>
In this month’s “Welcome To”’
Year-End Dada (Props and Otherwise)
Some Upcoming Work
#BklynSounds, Paid Subscriptions
Here’s something to listen to as you read on: this month’s Dada Strain on The Lot Radio show, featuring some new music by me, and a great hour of downbeat grooves by Hasan Insane:
Year-End Dada (Props and Otherwise)
It is with immense pride that I found one of the episodes of Dada Strain Radio included on Hua Hsu’s “My Year in Listening” list in The New Yorker. Full disclosure: Hua and I have known each other for nearly 20 years, in that time worked together on a couple of music- and futbol-related writing projects (I’ve edited him, he’s edited me), and spent many hours discussing sounds and words and culture. Hua is someone I have immense respect for as a critic and a thinker, and know full-well he doesn’t hand out compliments lightly. So to have him take note of the episode “Bird Songs for Breezy (pt.2),” which honored my friend (and a primary Dada Strain inspirations), the trumpeter jaimie branch, was very gratifying. But it’s also pretty f*cking bittersweet. I miss jaimie on-the-daily, am listening to her music, replaying our conversations, still writing about all the things we said, especially the bits where we reinforced each other’s views of the world. I would love for everyone to listen to “Bird Songs (pt.2),” to hear jaimie’s family, friends and bandmates tell stories of how funny, talented and intense she was—and maybe listen to “Bird Songs for Breezy (pt.1),” a two-hour The Lot Radio show I did right after she flew off, consisting of all-jaimie music (with Aquiles Navarro playing a gorgeous solo trumpet elegy, and Lester St. Louis providing moral support). Yet old as I am, I’m a novice at death, not having emotionally figured out how to celebrate the life without bitterly lamenting the loss. So it feels very weird receiving compliments for something I worked so hard on, but which also hurts so much I can’t actually go back to it. Yet.
On the other side of the “Year-End Props” spectrum, I wrote about one of my favorite records of 2022 for Bandcamp’s Essential list: Kahil El’Zabar Quartet’s A Time For Healing is an emotional groove-heavy “spiritual jazz” set from the drummer who was a cornerstone of AACM in the 1970s and played with folks like Pharoah Sanders and Nina Simone, and whose current group features three other incredible Chicago talents, Isaiah Collier, Justin Dillard and Corey Wilkes. It’s full of movement and spirit and wonderful tunes. Highly recommended.
More 2022 recommendations will be incoming shortly in a year-end post that is still in its gestation phase. As those who’ve followed my work, or were reading Dada Strain the last time I published a year-end post (2020), I’m less about lists, than about returning to what musically moved me, and common ideas I heard in the music. You should see some of that thinking, some of it in list form, posted over the next few days.
Some Upcoming Work (Dada Strain & Otherwise)
There are a few Dada Strain posts besides the 2022 recap already lined up for January, including a big interview with the instrumentalist-composer behind one of my favorite albums of the year, as well as a couple of #BklynSounds-related interviews with artists and musickers doing great things locally.
But most of my primary work over the next few weeks while infused with Dada Strain spirit, will be for other outlets.
The main short-term news is that I am taking a temporary full-time/January-long position as an arts reporter at the public radio station WNYC, and its local news site counterpart, Gothamist. I have produced a few stories for WNYC-Gothamist in 2022 — on the Dweller Festival and the Take Two music series, as well as writing an obituary of the great New York disco composer/producer Patrick Adams. My scope will be local community culture (not exclusively music), this directly reflects Dada Strain’s mission. As long-time readers know, I have been critical of how New York’s mainstream media covers the city’s arts communities, generally giving preference to bigger institutions and national stories, rather than to folks creating culture at the grassroots level. It is my hope to bring a neighborhood, historical and cross-medium perspective to WNYC’s coverage. Wish me luck.
On a more specific events level, I am helping produce an evening of music honoring jaimie branch at the 2023 Winter Jazz Fest. “Flock Up And Fly” will take place on Sunday, January 15th at Nublu on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and feature performances by her friends, colleagues, and collaborators, with music direction by Fly or Die cellist Lester St. Louis. Click-through the above link to see the names of all the folks already confirmed to play, but realize that there will also be a few more artists added to the list, as well as special guests. The whole thing will end with a late-night jam, and with the following Monday being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I think the room will be buzzing deep into the witching hour. I invite all those who will be in New York to come join us. (I will have more to say about it — as well as a preview of the entire Winter Jazz Fest — closer to the day.)
#BklynSounds & Paid Subscriptions
First of all, I would like to say thank you to all the new Dada Strain subscribers, and especially to the paid subscribers. Your private and public responses have been incredibly heartening and gratifying, and I have been thinking a lot about how to provide value for those who support this work, without getting bogged down by monetisation — which I hope we can all generally agree is one of the devils.
Where I’ve netted out is that by late January, there will be paid subscribers-only posts, and those will be the #BklynSounds show listings. While these weekly posts are primarily of interest to subscribers who live in the New York metropolitan area, I do think they are of note to anyone interested in discovering new music and cultural connections, as the events and artists I spotlight lean heavily on the local, and thus the less broadly known. So if you value the point of view, think about a paid subscription. There are a few additional things I am working on which will bring value to paid Dada Strain subscriptions, including providing specialty discounts (or free admission) to shows I recommend, or first-offer/early sale/limited-edition opportunities for music and merch. Early stages, but that’s the plan.
In the meantime, I will do three or four more weeks of free #BklynSounds listings, before those revert to paid. I will also continue publishing free-writing posts of a few different varieties, as well as updating the Dada Strain Instagram and (for the moment) Twitter. Thank you for your support and your interest, regardless of how you express it.
Again, I would like to wish you a happy 2023. Start it off with some music.