[Cozy]

Hellllooooo,


This week's theme involves the exploration of music commonly referred to as "avant-garde". Often used to describe art that is cutting-edge and counter-cultural, in our community the term has become fairly nebulous over the years, and possibly with good reason. This program will focus on the continuum (the gray space) of music we refer to as avant-garde.

Avant-garde is often used to describe music of a fairly eclectic nature, delving into areas that are fairly opposite of what the average person commonly associates with music. Dark melodies, angular progressions, dissonance, atonal sounds, free-form playing, and a disregard for musical structure are all elements that have been used to describe avant-garde artists. But this by no means exclusively defines avant-garde.

An interesting quote I read once: "Today's avant-garde is tomorrow's mainstream" always summed up the musical cycle pretty well for me. Based on this idea, avant-garde comes off as less a style, and more of a philosophy.

Many musical artists in the past 50 years were influenced by classic examples of avant-garde in art, literature, and classical music.

In the 60's, jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor were redefining how people perceived jazz. Music became more free-form, disregarding conventions, and re-defined by individual artist's terms. Some modern day jazz artists have carried on this tradition by mixing elements of jazz with free-form improvisation, classical music, minimalism, and rock elements to name a few. In fact, many prog rock artists were influenced by these 60s jazz artists.

In the 70's, there was a small political movement started in the rock community by Chris Cutler (of Henry Cow) known as "R.I.O." or Rock-In-Opposition. The mission of RIO was essentially to make a statement against the music industry. They felt that the industry was responsible for compromising art. Artists in this loosely aligned movement included Henry Cow, Samla Mammas Manna, Univers Zero, Etron Fou Leloublan, Stormy Six, and later Art Zoyd, Art Bears, and Aqsak Maboul. These "official" RIO bands didn't necessarily have a common sound, yet they all have been referred to as avant-garde and avant-prog by many. It is important to note however that these bands were the only RIO artists, despite the fact that many present-day artists are labeled as such.

Ironically, the diversity in styles amongst the original RIO bands contributed ultimately to the nebulous nature of the term. Now avant-garde and RIO in the prog rock community are practically interchangeable.

On these Interzone shows, we will focus on the “styles” associated with music we label as avant-garde. While terms such as avant-jazz, avant-fusion, avant-prog, RIO, etc may or may not be ideal to describe the music, they do give the listener some idea of what to expect.

This will be the first of many avant-garde themed programs. I hope you enjoy.


- Cozy


PS: Playlist to come!