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JOAN LA BARBARA AND THE NEW WILDERNESS PRESERVATION BAND, 1973–74
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2022
Abstract
Joan La Barbara's involvement in the New Wilderness Preservation Band is an often cited but virtually unknown period of her history. And yet it may have been one of the most generative periods of her early career. Drawing upon archival documents, unreleased recordings and interviews, I narrate the history of the band, including La Barbara's early use of extended vocal techniques. I argue that her work in the band reflected a mode of collaborative authorship that is often lost in retellings of her history, and that her emergence in 1974 as a composer reflected a broader tension around authorship in bands and ensembles during these years.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Musik unseren Zeit, Stuttgart, Germany (19–20 January 1974); Tage der Neuen Musik Hannover, Germany (24–27 January 1974); Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (29 January 1974); Sonja Henies og Niels Onstads Stiftelser, Høvikodden, Norway (3 February 1974). Programmes for these concerts are held in the Steve Reich Sammlung, Paul Sacher Stiftung.
2 Beal, Amy C., New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 197–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also O'Brien, ‘Machine fantasies to human events: Steve Reich and technology in the 1970s’, in Rethinking Reich, eds Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 328–30.
3 ‘Rhythmische Muster (‘Patterns’) werden ausgestanzt, eingehämmert, beliebig reproduziert, wobei sich ganz von selbst die Vorstellung von Fabrik und Fließband ergibt.’ Manfred Gutscher, ‘Musiker am Fließband’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 22 January 1974. La Barbara would return to Germany numerous times throughout her career. On La Barbara's work in West Berlin, 1979, see Joy Calico's essay in this issue.
4 ‘Der Anziehungspunkt dieser maschinellen Präzision, die Steve Reich und seine Musiker [ . . . ] demonstrierten, folgte jedoch auch deprimierende Ernüchterung angesichts der fatalen politischen Konsequenzen des hier mit musikalischen Mitteln realisierten Ameisenstaates. Seine ohne Rücksicht auf das Individuum durchrationalisierte Fließband-fertigung zementiert die Unfreiheit des Musikers aufs neue.’ Ludolf Bauke, ‘Von der Unfreiheit eines Musikers,’ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 January 1974.
5 These kinds of accusations of ‘controlling performers’ culminated in Tom Johnson's review of Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, with a photo of the ensemble followed by the caption: ‘Steve Reich: exerting too much control over his musicians?’ Johnson, ‘Exactly How Good Is Steve Reich’, The Village Voice, 10 May 1976, p. 121. Multiple musicians, including Geordie Arnold, Shem Guibbory, Nurit Tilles and David Van Tieghem, wrote letters of support to Reich, protesting this characterisation. Correspondence, Steve Reich Sammlung, Paul Sacher Stiftung.
6 Reich describes this process in a 1974 essay: ‘Joan La Barbara, Jay Clayton, Judy Sherman and I all contributed various patterns we heard resulting from the combination of the three marimbas.’ Reich, Writings about Music (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974), p. 46; see also David Chapman, ‘Collaboration, Presence, and Community: The Philip Glass Ensemble in Downtown New York, 1966–1976’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, St Louis, 2013), p. 206.
7 Joan La Barbara to Charlie Morrow correspondence, 1 February 1974. Charlie Morrow archive, Barton. Reprinted with permission.
8 Ibid.
9 This phrase is printed at the top of their first programme: ‘NEW WILDERNESS: New-old Explorations of Sound and Oral Poetry’. Charlie Morrow archive, Barton.
10 The most extensive history of NWPB appears in Chapman, ‘Collaboration, Presence, and Community’, p. 209.
11 Reich felt strongly enough about the matter to write an unpublished essay titled ‘Against Improvisation’. In a 1974 interview, La Barbara explained that there were limited moments within Glass’ Music in 12 Parts where improvisation was permitted (in Part 4). Willoughby Sharp, ‘The Phil Glass Ensemble: Music in Twelve Parts’, Avalanche 10 (December 1974), p. 42.
12 NWPB was not the only collaborative project she undertook during these years. For a broader overview of La Barbara's Downtown years, see Bernie Gendron's essay in this issue.
13 This concert was held on 15 January 1975 at Washington Square Church. Tom Johnson, ‘Research & Development’, The Village Voice, 27 January 1975, p. 106.
14 As Tom Johnson wrote in a profile on Morrow, ‘[Morrow] is quite capable of turning out a TV jingle in the morning, working on an atonal score in the afternoon, and improvising on a Tibetan scale with the New Wilderness Preservation Society in the evening’. Johnson, ‘Compose by Numbers’, The Village Voice, 31 March 1975, pp. 100–01.
15 Morrow and Weber met through dancer and choreographer Ze'eva Cohen to create the score for Cohen's 1973 work Wadi. Morrow, email correspondence with author, April 2022.
The band's name came from poet Jerome Rothenberg, Morrow's long-time collaborator. In 1974, the two would co-found the umbrella organisation New Wilderness Foundation as a 501c3 non-profit, which would produce The New Wilderness Letter, New Wilderness Audiographics and many New Wilderness Foundation Events.
16 Carole Weber, Bruce Ditmas, Joan La Barbara and Charlie Morrow, ‘Declaration of Independence, tape from rehearsal 7/10/73’, Charlie Morrow archive, Barton. The Declaration of Independence performance begins at 16:55.
17 On La Barbara's ingressive singing in Circular Song, see Gelsey Bells, ‘Voice Acts: Performance and Relationality in the Vocal Activities of American Experimental Music Tradition’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2015), pp. 84–86.
18 Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, 11 February 2022.
19 Sharp, ‘The Phil Glass Ensemble’, pp. 42.
20 Bells & Humming on NWPB Sampler, December 1974. Charlie Morrow archive, Barton. This NWPB Sampler post-dates La Barbara leaving the band, but it appears to have been assembled from multiple previous recordings, including, for instance, ‘Greeting Music for Avery Jimerson’, which would have taken place in January 1974.
21 See especially 'Series 5: Overtone Investigation', Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation; La Barbara, The Voice Is the Original Instrument, Wizard Records RVW2266, 1976, LP.
22 This schedule is drawn from papers in the Morrow archive. There are multiple drafts of this schedule, some with entries handwritten in. Most of these events can be confirmed through listings in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice and/or concert programmes held in Morrow's archive.
23 All three artists are featured in ‘The Commentaries’ section of Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia & Oceana (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1968); see Jackson MacLow, ‘First Light Poem: For Iris – June 10, 1962’ (p. 395) and Armand Schwerner, ‘Excerpts from Tablets’ (p. 415). Sonia Sanchez's ‘a/coltetrane/poem’ was included in a later edition. Jerome Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 610–11.
Alcheringa was an experimental magazine that ran from 1970 to 1980 and included recordings by NWPB guests Jackson MacLow, Armand Schwerner and Spencer Holst. Digitised recordings are available online: https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Alcheringa.php. Last accessed 1 February 2022.
24 Jerome Rothenberg, ‘Total Translation: An Experiment in the Presentation of American Indian Poetry (1969)’, in Pre-Faces and Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1981), p. 76.
25 La Barbara was absent for Avery Jimerson's event; she was in Europe on tour with Steve Reich & Musicians.
Working with and learning from Indigenous musicians has been a long-standing interest of Charlie Morrow's. The Avery Jimerson event – hosted by a classically oriented ensemble in church – reflects what Dylan Robinson has called an ‘inclusive’ gesture towards Indigenous musicians, which seeks to incorporate Indigenous sounds without necessarily changing the structural elements surrounding performance, such as their standing Tuesday evening concert time, the venue at Washington Square Church or how space was used. Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), p. 6. In a 1990 interview, Rothenberg and Morrow debated the differences between appropriation and collaboration in their earlier work. Jerome Rothenberg, ‘Making Waves: An Interview with Charlie Morrow’, TDR 34, no. 3 (1990), pp. 150–51.
26 Rothenberg, Jerome, Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p. xxiGoogle Scholar.
27 In his preface, Rothenberg explains that the book grew out of collaborations at The Poet's Hardware Theater and The Café Metro in New York. He adds: ‘The idea for a “book of events” came from a discussion with Dick Higgins about what he was calling “near poetry” & from my own sense of the closeness of primitive rituals (when stripped-down to the bare line of the activities) to the “happenings” and “events” he was presenting as a publisher of Something Else Press.’ Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred, pp. xxiv–xxv.
28 Some of the other participants, like Joel Oppenheimer, Bernadette Mayer and Sonia Sanchez, were then associated with the St Mark's Poetry Project in the East Village, where La Barbara would premiere Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation, in December 1974.
29 Walter Zimmerman, ‘Joan La Barbara’, Desert Plants (1975), http://home.snafu.de/walterz/biblio/10_joan_labarbara.pdf. Last accessed 1 February 2022.
30 Ibid.
31 John Rockwell, ‘Morrow's New Band Improvises Solidly’, The New York Times, 13 December 1973, p. 63.
32 A sound recording of Spencer Holst reading ‘Music Copyist’ is available on New Wilderness Audiographics, https://audiographics.bandcamp.com/track/side-2-34. Last accessed 1 February 2022.
33 ‘New Wilderness Event #2’, concert programme, Charlie Morrow archive, Barton.
34 This reading of ‘Milarepa's Meeting with Kar Chon Repa’ is printed on a typed list of pieces, which appears to be a rehearsal set list for NWPB and Schwerner. The list also includes a reading of ‘[Rechungpa's] Journey to Weu’ from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Charlie Morrow archive, Barton.
35 Zimmerman, ‘Joan La Barbara’. In early interviews before the turn of the century, such as those with Zimmerman (1975) and Linda Ann Brown (1999), La Barbara describes the discovery of this split-tone as occurring in response to Schwerner. In our recent interview, however, she recalled that it may have also happened in response to Jerome Rothenberg during a work session at Morrow's studio. She certainly recalls that the experiment was recorded, so she was able to go back and listen to the sound she had unexpectedly produced to try to recreate it. See Linda Ann Brown, ‘The Beautiful in Strangeness: The Extended Vocal Techniques of Joan La Barbara’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 2002), pp. 26–27.
36 Tom Johnson, ‘Gelling Jazz and the Classical’, The Village Voice, 21 March 1974, pp. 38, 80.
37 La Barbara, Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation, 1975.
38 La Barbara, interview with the author, 11 February 2022.
39 Charlie Morrow, interview with the author, 2 August 2021.
40 Ibid.
41 ‘CHARLIE MORROW New Wilderness Preservation Band, Cross Species Concert’, concert poster, 9 August 1974. Charlie Morrow archive, Barton.
42 La Barbara, interview with the author, 11 February 2022.
43 John Rockwell, ‘Fish Silent on Concert by Morrow’, The New York Times, 10 August 1974.
44 La Barbara, interview with the author, 11 February 2022.
45 Chapman, ‘Collaboration, Presence, and Community’, pp. 5–6; Taruskin, Richard, Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 5, Music in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 153Google Scholar.
46 Norderval, Kristin, ‘What We Owe to Cathy: Reflections from Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Rinde Eckert, Susan Botti, Theo Bleckmann and Pamela Z’, in Cathy Berberian: Pioneer of Contemporary Vocality, eds Karantonis, Pamela, Placanica, Francesca, Sivuoja-Kauppala, Anne and Verstraete, Pieter (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014), p. 202Google Scholar; see also Lucie Vágnerová, ‘Sirens/Cyborgs: Sound Technologies and the Musical Body’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2016), p. 43.
47 ‘All of my “extended vocal techniques” were developed as a result of improvisation, sometimes with other musicians, and as a result of responding to experimental situations or to stimuli from other media or ideas.’ Joan La Barbara, email interview with Linda Ann Brown, 17 February 1999, cited in Brown, ‘The Beautiful in Strangeness’, p. 26.
48 Joan La Barbara, personal journal, 2 February 1974. Reprinted with permission.
49 Hubert Saal, ‘Music: Out of Tune with Today?’, Newsweek, 24 December 1973, pp. 53–54, 59.
50 See David Gutkin's article in this issue.
51 Patrick Nickleson, The Names of Minimalism: Music Historiography, Authorship, and Dissensus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).
52 Nickleson, The Names of Minimalism. Nickleson argues: ‘Authorship is a material element of the work much like arranging notes, producing sounds, or booking gigs. Authorship is something performed in the course of the work; it is the totality of what one does when authoring, rather than an inviolable status that precedes the work.’
53 One of La Barbara's first compositions was actually written for NWPB: Ides of March, dated 15 March 1974. It was written for NWPB and a string quartet, possibly for the 23 April event with the Vieuxtemps Quartet. It was ultimately not performed by NWPB and would not receive its premiere until 15 February 1976, at The Kitchen.
54 La Barbara, personal journal, 2 February 1974. Reprinted with permission.
55 Reflecting La Barbara's collaborative history, Louise Marshall has written, ‘The closeness and tension between interpretation and co-composition is evident in her accounts of working with Cage’, as well as with Alvin Lucier and Larry Austin. Louise Catherine Antonia Marshall, ‘Deep Listening: The Strategic Practice of Female Experimental Composers post 1945’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Arts London, 2018), p. 48.