Julius Eastman performs at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, New York, 1974. Photo courtesy Ron Hammons.

As agreed upon the two works to be performed are Gay Guerrilla & Evil Nigger, the lengths of the pieces are 28:30 and 19:35 respectively, a total 48:05. The instruments to be used are 4 violins, 4 violas, 3 celli, 1 Bass. Good would be 5 three hour rehearsals. I will arrive the day before the first rehearsal, and I am to receive the agreed [payment] in cash on the day of arrival. Let me know by phone if these things are possible.

Yours, Julius Eastman¹

In a 1980 handwritten letter to Nigel Redden, the director of Performing Arts at the time, the composer and vocalist Julius Eastman (US, 1940–1990) details what he will perform at the Walker’s 1980 New Music America Festival. The event, which was presented by the Walker in conjunction with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Minnesota Composers Forum, included more than seventy-five composers, performers, and ensembles from throughout the United States in an attempt to represent the stylistic diversity of experimental music at the time.² The festival included an array of musical happenings—from traditional music concerts to environmental performances, sound sculptures, and installations—and featured a diverse range of artists, including Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Anderson, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Julius Eastman, and Julia Heyward, among others.

According to Redden, “The New Music America Festival was founded on the principle of ‘us’ and ‘them’—it was a kind of rally cry for American experimental composers who were often overlooked and shut out of traditional concert halls because their work was seen as oppositional.”³ Allowing a variety of sonic experimentations to coexist together, from jazz to minimalist sound (admittedly, as they do in the real world), the Walker’s festival built upon, deepened, and expanded the concepts that fueled the New Music festival held a year prior at the Kitchen, New York, and ambitiously increased the scope of its geographical locations by presenting events at a number of carefully selected venues across the Twin Cities.Though Eastman was relatively unknown to most outside of niche music circles until recent years, his compositions Evil Nigger and Gay Guerrilla, performed as part of the New Music America Festival in 1980, today are among his most celebrated works.⁴

Born in New York City in 1940 and raised in Ithaca, New York, Eastman composed what he called “organic music,” in which each phrase of a piece contains elements from a previous phrase, though at times some phrases were eliminated altogether. Often creating long pieces written for a strict number of instruments, Eastman was a radical composer who has been likened to iconoclasts such as John Cage or minimalists like Philip Glass. However, as an openly gay black man (who had a flare for provocative titles), he took on a more radical politics in his work, layering his music with sociopolitical concerns that became extensions of the messy world in which he existed.

Eastman’s compositions and their intricacies have inspired generations of contemporary sound experimentalists, such as Kevin Beasley, L’Rain, Camille Norment, and Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture), whose work The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner serves as electronic tribute to the composer as well as the starting point for his essay in this publication.

Text by Danielle A. Jackson

Performance Video

Interview

Archival Photographs

Artist Response

ARTIST REFLECTION ↗

Reverence Is a Form
of Forgetting

by Jace Clayton