No wave

No wave was a short-lived avant-garde music and art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in downtown New York City.[3][4] Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance and atonality in addition to a variety of non-rock genres, while often reflecting an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic worldview.[5][6][7]

This article is about the music genre. For the album by Music Revelation Ensemble, see No Wave (album).

No wave
Stylistic origins
Cultural originsLate 1970s, New York City
Derivative forms
Other topics

The term "no wave" was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music.[8] The movement would last a relatively short time but profoundly influenced the development of independent film, fashion and visual art.[9]

Musical styles and characteristics

No wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features, although it was generally characterized by a rejection of the recycling of traditional rock aesthetics, such as blues rock styles and Chuck Berry guitar riffs, in punk and new wave music.[6] Various groups drew on or explored such disparate styles as funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, and the avant garde.[3] According to Village Voice writer Steve Anderson, the scene pursued an abrasive reductionism which "undermined the power and mystique of a rock vanguard by depriving it of a tradition to react against".[10] Anderson claimed that the no wave scene represented "New York's last stylistically cohesive avant-rock movement".[10]

There were, however, some elements common to most no-wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds; repetitive, driving rhythms; and a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody—typical of La Monte Young's early downtown music.[9] In the early 1980s, Downtown Manhattan's no wave scene transitioned from its abrasive origins into a more dance-oriented sound, with compilations such as ZE Records's Mutant Disco (1981) highlighting a newly playful sensibility borne out of the city's clash of hip hop, disco and punk styles, as well as dub reggae and world music influences.[11]

No wave music presented a negative and nihilistic world view that reflected the desolation of late 1970s downtown New York and how they viewed the larger society. In a 2020 essay, Lydia Lunch said there were many problems in the years that led into the '70's, and that calling 1967 the Summer of Love was a bold-faced lie.[12] The term "no wave" was probably inspired by the French New Wave pioneer Claude Chabrol, with his remark "There are no waves, only the ocean".[13][14]

History

In 1978 a punk subculture-influenced noise series was held at New York's Artists Space.[15] No wave musicians such as the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, DNA, Theoretical Girls and Rhys Chatham began experimenting with noise, dissonance and atonality in addition to non-rock styles.[16] The former four groups were included on the No New York compilation, often considered the quintessential testament to the scene.[17] The no wave-affiliated label ZE Records was founded in 1978, and would also produce acclaimed and influential compilations in subsequent years.[11]

By the early 1980s, artists such as Liquid Liquid, the B-52s, Cristina, Arthur Russell, James White and the Blacks and Lizzy Mercier Descloux developed a more dance-oriented style described by Luc Sante as "anything at all + disco bottom".[18] Other no-wave groups such as Swans, Suicide, Glenn Branca, the Lounge Lizards, Bush Tetras and Sonic Youth instead continued exploring the early scene's forays into noise and more abrasive territory.[19]

No wave inspired the "Speed Trials" noise rock series organized by Live Skull members in May 1983 at White Columns which included British band the Fall and American bands Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, Beastie Boys, Elliott Sharp, Swans, the Ordinaires, Arto Lindsay and Toy Killers. This was followed by the after-hours Speed Club that was fleetingly established at ABC No Rio.[20]

Cinema
Main article: No Wave Cinema

No wave cinema was an underground film scene in Tribeca and the East Village. Filmmakers included Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Charlie Ahearn, Vincent Gallo, James Nares, Jim Jarmusch, Vivienne Dick, Scott B and Beth B and Seth Tillett, and led to the Cinema of Transgression and work by Nick Zedd and Richard Kern.[21]

Visual art

Visual artists played a large role in the no wave scene, as visual artists often were playing in bands, or making videos and films, while making visual art for exhibition. An early influence on this aspect of the scene was Alan Vega (aka Alan Suicide) whose electronic junk sculpture predated his role in the music group Suicide, which he formed with fellow musician Martin Rev in 1970. They released their first album, Suicide, in 1977.

Irish artist and film maker, Vivienne Dick, made a number of Super 8 films with Lydia Lunch in the mid-1970s in New York.

An important exhibition of no wave visual art was Colab's organization of the The Times Square Show.[22] In June 1980, more than 100 artists installed their work in an empty massage parlor near Times Square that included punk visual artists, graffiti artists, feminist artists, political artists, Xerox artists and performance artists.[23]

No wave art found an ongoing home on the Lower East Side with the establishment of ABC No Rio Gallery in 1980, and a no wave punk aesthetic was a dominant strand in the art galleries of the East Village (from 1982 to 1986).[20]

Legacy

In a foreword to the book No Wave, Weasel Walter wrote of the movement's ongoing influence,

I began to express myself musically in a way that felt true to myself, constantly pushing the limits of idiom or genre and always screaming "Fuck You!" loudly in the process. It's how I felt then and I still feel it now. The ideals behind the (anti-) movement known as No Wave were found in many other archetypes before and just as many afterwards, but for a few years around the late 1970s, the concentration of those ideals reached a cohesive, white-hot focus.[24]

In 2004, Scott Crary made a documentary, Kill Your Idols, including such no wave bands as Suicide, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and Glenn Branca as well as bands influenced by no wave including Sonic Youth, Swans, Foetus and others.

In 2007–2008, three books on the scene were published: Soul Jazz's New York Noise,[25] Marc Masters' No Wave,[26] and Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976–1980.[27]

Coleen Fitzgibbon and Alan W. Moore created a short film in 1978 (finished in 2009) of a New York City no wave concert to benefit Colab called "X Magazine Benefit", documenting performances by DNA, James Chance and the Contortions, and Boris Policeband. Shot in black and white Super 8 and edited on video, the film captured the gritty look and sound of the music scene during that era. In 2013, it was exhibited at Salon 94, an art gallery in New York City.[28]

Music compilations

Documentary films

See also

References
  1. Lawrence, Tim (2009). Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–1992. Duke University Press. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-8223-9085-5.
  2. Murray, Charles Shaar (October 1991). Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix & The Post-War Rock 'N' Roll Revolution. Macmillan. p. 205. ISBN 9780312063245. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
  3. Romanowski, P., ed. (1995) [1983]. The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. H. George-Warren & J. Pareles (Revised ed.). New York: Fireside. pp. 717. ISBN 0-684-81044-1.
  4. Masters 2007, p. 5
  5. McLaren, Trevor (17 February 2005). "James Chance and the Contortions: Buy". Retrieved 17 September 2013.
  6. "NO!: The Origins of No Wave".
  7. "No Wave – Music Highlights – AllMusic". AllMusic.
  8. Alison Pearlman, Unpackaging art of the 1980s, p. 188
  9. Masters 2007, p. 200
  10. Foege, Alec (October 1994). Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story. Macmillan. pp. 68–9. ISBN 9780312113698.
  11. Reynolds 2005, pp. 269.
  12. "Beth B: War Is Never Over". IFFR. 16 January 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
  13. O'Brien, Glenn (October 1999). "Style Makes the Band". Artforum International.
  14. Kalat, David. "Ch 20 The Story of Chabrol." The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse: A Study of the Twelve Films and Five Novels. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005. N. pag. Print.
  15. James Chance interview | Pitchfork
  16. Reynolds 2005, pp. 140.
  17. Masters, Marc (2008). No Wave. New York City: Black Dog Publishing. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5.
  18. Reynolds 2005, pp. 268.
  19. Reynolds 2005, pp. 139–150.
  20. Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, Princeton University Press, 2006
  21. "No Wavelength: The Para-Punk Underground".
  22. Masters 2007, p. 19
  23. "Times Square Show Revisited".
  24. Masters 2007
  25. Soul Jazz Records – New York Noise – Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978–88
  26. No Wave Archived 14 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine, with a foreword by Weasel Walter (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5.
  27. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. No Wave
  28. "Pulse Generator Pastry, NY Mix—Salon 94". Salon94.

Sources
  • Berendt, Joachim E. The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond, revised by Günther Huesmann, translated by H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992. "The Styles of Jazz: From the Eighties to the Nineties," p. 57–59. ISBN 1-55652-098-0
  • Masters, Marc (2007). No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing. ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5.
  • Moore, Alan W. "Artists' Collectives: Focus on New York, 1975–2000". In Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, edited by Blake Stimson & Gregory Sholette, 203. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
  • Moore, Alan W., and Marc Miller (eds.). ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery. New York: Collaborative Projects, 1985
  • Pearlman, Alison, Unpackaging Art of the 1980s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • Reynolds, Simon (2005). "Contort Yourself: No Wave New York". Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-punk 1978–84. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd. pp. 139–157.
  • Taylor, Marvin J. (ed.). The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, foreword by Lynn Gumpert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-691-12286-5
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