'Complaining time is over': Network and collective strategies of the New York Musicians Organization
Issue: Vol 5 No. 1 (2011) Vol. 5.1/5.2 (2011)
Journal: Jazz Research Journal
Subject Areas: Popular Music
Abstract:
This article traces the history of the New York Musicians Organization (NYMO), an artist-run collective that rose to brief prominence at the dawn of the loft jazz era. Founded in 1972, NYMO attracted a broad membership and considerable press attention for two heavily-publicized summer festivals. In stressing themes of self-reliance, avant garde performance practice and African American agency, the group’s organizers drew extensively from earlier Midwestern collectives like the AACM. Yet unlike those groups, NYMO failed to establish a strong central governing body, instead acting as a consortium of smaller, independently-managed ventures. This approach laid the groundwork for the proliferation of small-scale initiatives that characterized the loft period, and several former NYMO members went on to establish important loft venues. While the group’s prominence was short-lived, it played a crucial bridge role between the collectivized strategies of the 1960s and the loosely-connected musical networks of the loft era.
Author: Michael C. Heller
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