In general terms,
avant-garde is a word used in the arts and politics to refer to innovation, experimentation or revolutionary change. In the less idealistic cases –in which a "re-foundation" is not at stake–, it constitutes a quest which is undertaken in a permanent cycle of construction/deconstruction, as is the case, for exampe, in dadaism or situationism. So, in such terms, how can the avant-garde be thought of in music today?
When we hear the term
avant-garde used as an adjective for some piece or song, the first thing that comes to mind is some distraught, dissonant, noisy, disjointed sound that is probably produced through methods alien to those used in what is normally understood as music. But primarily, one expects something new, a sonic, semanthic and existential alternative to the
status quo, to the current binary conventions regarding what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, true or false, etc. But newness is not enough to understand what the avant-garde is. For example, noise music was discovered decades earlier than
boy bands, which does not imply that the New Kids on the Block are more avant-garde than Luigi Russolo. The avant-garde is not mere novelty, but rather newness tinged with disruptiveness. It is an aesthetic-political attitude against normalisation, and thus, it implies rebellion and transgression, disobedience and dissent, an interruption of
de facto stiffening and openness to every possibility. A critical path, an emancipation of chaos. Music without a past, but also without a future: music free from the museological device of spectacularised history.
I will now suggest a short list with some of the avant-garde milestones that, in accordance with the above, are not such due to their novelty, but especially due to their level of transgression and liberation from rules and injunctions:
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John Cage and chance music: This noted US-American composer introduced the possibility of chance, of the uncontrollable, and especially, of the liberation from the traditional method of making chamber music. In the face of Schoenberg's contempt –Schoenberg was his professor and considered that he did not have a melodic ear–, Cage answered that if this was a wall which would keep him from making music, he would beat his head against that wall and make music in such way. Well, especially in his early years, Cage defied the injunctions of chamber music and managed to reformulate music as an open possibility, in which every sound is welcome.
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Free jazz: When Charles Mingus started to open the tonal spectrum of jazz, not only was he reaching a new sound, but to some extent, that transgression also symbolised the liberation, the rebellion of Afro-Americans against white dominance. In this sense, the introduction of influences stemming from contemporary classical music to the Afro-American tradition was not the only innovation here, but also the need to express unhinged feelings that would produce the necessary turmoil to dismantle the racist dominance that persisted in the US in those days.
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The Velvet Underground and US-American minimalism: Another flank emerged in the US, the very cradle of market industrialisation and of dominance power through sensationalist spectacle: minimalism, which had its more popular by-product in its fusion with rock & roll as undertaken by the iconic
The Velvet Underground.
La Monte Young,
Terry Riley,
John Cale, Steve Reich, among others lesser known, created music radically opposed to the magnificence of the entertainment business, resorting to extreme naturalness, to meditation, to humility and to distancing itself from any need to feed the ego. Music thus returned to its ancestral ritual meaning; the West rebelled against itself by looking at Eastern naturalness and rediscovering it in a semi-formal language, or in case of
The Velvet Underground, ritualising rock & roll.
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| Amon Düül II |
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Krautrock: The post-war era brought about cultural tension, a need to outweigh totalitarianism, the murderous idealism of European fascism. Thus, so-called krautrock emerged as reaction. It basically consisted in an eclectic wave of bands and musicians that brought a sound that was not only innovative, but also free, chaotic, anarchist and deeply psychedelic, generating a new sonic language in which spontaneity embraced uncomitted expression; a language in which, as in free jazz, music meant liberation, a need for chaos and nihilism. Although there are some exceptions, such as
Popol Vuh, European non-commercial music, and especially that from early-70s Germany, was always on a quest for moments of sonic deformation, a systemic deformation that "healed" Europe from the idealistic formalism that fascism had imposed years earlier.
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Rock in Opposition: Progressive divergence that took the most essential parts of King Crimson's sound and fused it with the dissonance of classical music and jazz, achieving a unique sound in which the lyrical dimension was often politically charged, or in other cases, marginal delusions that redimension the listener's existence. The interesting thing here is that technical mastery are put in the service of shapeless chaos, of a demanding and heavy density.
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Industrial music: At this stage, chaos and sonic noise were already experiencing a need for reformulation. Hence the emergence of industrial music, which takes The Velvet Underground's rancid lyricism and fuses it with the sonic extremism of European peripheries (early
Kraftwerk or
Kluster), thus giving rise to a new language that feeds on the liberty of opening up in the face of the ugly, which had originated in another relatively disruptive genre, known as punk. Let me here paraphrase a remark made by Cosey Fanni Tutti in those years: «TG is not punk, because punk has a determinate form, and industrial music does not». Sadly, industrial music's undefinable spirit got "uniformed" as much as punk's.
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| Swans |
In early and mid 80s, an amorphous creative niche that I find quite interesting and underrated (perhaps precisely due to its deformity) popped in. Two "post" emerged here: post-punk and post-industrial, which somehow constitute a post-avant-garde.
Why do I consider this branches to be particularly interesting? Because, to some extent, the prefix "post" means "where it comes from", but not "where it goes to", and when it is used as a prefix for two transgressive genres
per se (punk and industrial), "post" means a transgression of the transgression, deserting us in the midst of a semanthic limbo that left journalists and musicologists speechless, thus resorting to a meaningless use of "post". For the same reason, instead of summing up the "genre", I chose some bands that especially reflect the iconoclast spirit of these non-movements (I will also include so-called no wave bands).
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Post-punk:
–Joy Division: Undoubtedly, this band had no precedent and fed more on an expressive urgency than on a thirst for mere innovation. Angst and existential rudeness stemmed from the libraries and the intelectual rooms to get covered in the dirt of the streets of a decadent and depressive England, where the absence of a future intensified the present and youthfulness shone up to the point of being unsustainable. Joy Division lied between punk wildness and existential reflection; a contradictory and tormented duality.
–Chrome: The delusional surrealism submerges itself into the subsoil of a rotten society and feeds on psychedelic hallucinations, on collage, on distorsion, on frantic rhythms and on the ability to succumb with dignity to the monstruosity of a city thirsty for freedom. Chrome turned techno-market domination into a psychedelic party. It could be said that they are to music what William S. Burroughs is to literature.
–Swans: Just as the asthetic boundaries of punk were being transgressed in England, an even crazier reaction emerged in New York, where non-trendiness and non-labelling were praised. In this scene, blurry and chaotic, in which guitars began to roar as never before, Swans emerged; a band that particularly embodies this spirit of rebellion which even rebels against itself. From the crushing brutality of their first records (it is worth mentioning that its main member, Michael Gira, came from jail), and becoming (in)famous through torture-gigs due to their volume and aggresivity levels, they react to their own extremism mutating into the exact opposite: semi-reflective acoustic sound. Swans have currently returned, polishing the edges of their whole career, which has also translated into clear commercial success.
–Glenn Branca: Crucial musician who achieves the impossible: to fuse classical formality with punk wildness. Hailing from the no wave scene (Theoretical Girls) and mentor for key bands such as Sonic Youth, this musician is the pinnacle of the anti-composer (John Zorn, with another character, might also be it). Formality is uncomfortable with itself here, and with a wild conjunction of influences, he generates this unheard-of hybrid, where minimalism intersects with noise and dissonance, but especially with post-punk's pulse, reaching, in my opinion, the most credible fusion of classical and rock.
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Post-industrial:
–Nurse With Wound: Steven Stapleton sometime said –let me paraphrase–: «I'm happy with my music work, simply because I achieved my own language». Well, rather than post-this or post-that, NWW is sonic surrealism taken to its most delirious and unclassifiable expression. Not only is dissonant or noisy "tradition" reformulated here, but it is also "mixed", freely and provocatively, with pop elements, like a real delusion, with no intelectual motives, but simply with a twisted spirit; an anarchic and iconoclast heart that remains unruled. NWW is the first band that is able to mix easy listening with un-easy listening with such mastery that in the end, it is all about the simple becoming of an impulse that does not answer to anyone.
–The Legendary Pink Dots: In the mid 80s, Edward Ka-Spel answered to the question of whether he felt as a member of any specific scene pointing out that LPD's friend bands –Current 93, Coil, NWW– did not have anything in common, besides the fact that each one of them had achieved its own sound, gathered by weirdness, but distinguishable among them. Well, if there is one band impossible to classify, that is The Legendary Pink Dots, especially considering that it is one of the most prolific bands that I know. This inexhaustible creative work is reigned by some kind of base concept, which is the only element at hand to sketch something from the sonic avalanche that the Anglo-Dutch band's discography constitutes –I paraphrase–: «The concept of the terminal kaleidoscope consists in viewing the universe as a drowning man, who sees all the emotions and colours experienced throughout his life flashing before his eyes... Sing while you may...» («Sing while you may» is the motto read in most of the band's releases).
Also in those years we find another interesting transgression. This time, it is not only the total annulment of tone and harmony, but in addition, this is put in the service of the stimulation of a brutal derangement: power electronics and harsh noise:
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Whitehouse: Stemming from industrial and the movements that preceded them, Whitehouse took noise and chaos to unheard-of levels of rawness and aggresivity, reaching a sonic parallel to the Marquis of Sade, self-styled as power electronics. This is sound understood not only as a ritual which invokes pain and aggresivity, but also as a vehicle for amoral expression, where the imagery is introduced into the most intolerable and sick. Somehow, Whitehouse express the inexpressible and submerge their audience into a subworld of forbidden emotions, that in the context of a gig or listening to a record, can be felt with no criminal consequences.
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Merzbow: Merzbow (relatively) prescinds from Whitehouse's lyrical extremism, but deepens into sonic torture, into the distorted catharsis, taking what Whitehouse had discovered to an even harder, even more indigestible, even more demanding level, but which has been feeding thousands of twisted ones that enjoy the unpleasant and relax with brutal derangement for decades.
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Drone: Although it derives from the North American minimalism, drone has its own character, which answers to sensacionalist excess of musical spectacularisation in a similar way. Revitalising naturalness, drone is different from minimalism to the extent in which it is closer to rock. Somehow, it is halfway between
La Monte Young and The Velvet Underground. The band that shaped this sound also emerged in mid 80s: Maeror Tri, which later became Troum. Drone metal appears with
Earth in the 90s, gaining much popularity lately.
Nowadays, there are still bands and labels that generate unclassifiable stuff, so I suggest researching the eclectic catalogs of the following labels:
I know I left many "genres" aside, as well as millions of bands or solo acts, but what I aim for is not to elaborate a comprehensive compendium, but rather a debatable formulation regarding the disruptive becoming of unquiet musicians that revolutionise the revolutions. —Unattributed
