newclassic monthly #5: november 2024 – the “scene”
The “scene” I’m referring to is the one directly served by this website; the contemporary classical / experimental new music community of Los Angeles. It is the scene in which I found many of my friends, which produces the music I’m most passionate about, both of which I’m trying to serve with my work, including this website, my new music series, my ensemble, my studio, and my non-profit organization.
In order to better understand my place in the community, I’m reading a couple things about “the scene;” Michael Matsuno’s “New Music Ambassadors to the World: A Biography of the California E.A.R. Unit”, Andrew Kluth’s “A Study of the Los Angeles DIY Experimental Music Scene: Reflections on the Promise of the Possible” and the book pictured, Dorothy Lamb Crawford’s biography on the series formerly called Evenings on the Roof, now named “Monday Evening Concerts.” The thoughts below reflect an incomplete reading of the material, yet were/are crucial in shaping these thoughts into, ideally, something actionable. As I keep reading, I find myself thinking about certain aspects of “the scene.”
This calendar directly serves the visibility of events in the contemporary classical / experimental sphere in order to, in broad strokes, get more people to these shows. Given the ad hoc, DIY, underfunded and volunteer nature of these events, there is no central repository or database for these kinds of things in Los Angeles. Most new music series don’t have 10 month “seasons” laid out by August. This calendar is not and can not be a perfectly updated source of all these events, especially given the “rhizomatic” nature of the communities of Los Angeles (this word is used by Kluth in his dissertation and I quite like it).
Los Angeles sprawls, and the venues which host these events are spread apart and can be difficult to get to. Even those on the east side that are relatively well served by the Metro are difficult to find; the original building which housed the wulf had patrons “buzz unit 203” to enter, a similar sign you’ll now see taped to the lobby entrance of Oracle Egg, a space which serves a similar function, crowd and location since the wulf‘s closing (less than two miles as the crow flies).
2220 Arts & Archives, one of the larger and better funded venues of this type has no signage on the outside; its main parking lot still references the Bootleg Theatre, a previous venue at the same location which closed in 2021. Betalevel is infamous for its directions asking patrons “to take a right at the dumpster” to find the venue. My own studio doesn’t do much better; despite the label on the door, the address you type into GPS takes you to the taqueria it shares the building with, leading many patrons to knock on their kitchen access door instead of mine. Koreatown’s Monkspace, the Arts District’s FRANKIE and DTLA’s Coaxial have no signage at all. At least half of these venues have no designated parking lots. Non Plus Ultra doesn’t even have an address.
Some of this is, undoubtedly, pragmatic; Automata fits 50 if you’re lucky, Betalevel is a basement, and I cap attendance in events in my studio at 35. Keeping the active community small means that the events will likely never need to relocate from their current small, inexpensive homes and can continue to present events at a low cost. It also means that the people who do attend will be kept safer. Introducing friction, or at least, not taking steps to alleviate the difficulty of getting to, finding, and attending these events, seems to intentionally cap the active community at a certain amount.
There are very valid criticisms to this; we joke amongst ourselves about playing to the same room of 20 people, and so many new pieces are played once and never again. We believe in this music, but documenting and archiving these events are a low priority for many of those who run it, so the only people who will hear a spectacular piece of music are the 30 people who were there.
But at the same time, is this something that needs a solution at all? The often inaccessible (read: noisy) aesthetics of this music itself eschews broader commercial appeal, so certainly no one’s going to get rich off of ticket sales. An underground scene, by definition, doesn’t attempt to appeal to the widest audience, it serves a counter-culture. This music historically functions outside of (American) university and institutional oversight, though 50 years of CalArts musicians and recent Noons tos Midnights might argue otherwise. And the standout music of an underground scene will find its broader audience anyway; you can listen to Hanatarash on Spotify, for fuck’s sake.
There are other things we should undoubtedly improve first (not all venues are ADA compliant, and most of the music is, to put it one way, Eurological). The very purpose of this calendar seem to point towards inviting broader audiences, but I am just as complicit in “gatekeeping” as much as anyone. Last month, a musician rented my studio for a (private) event and asked why I didn’t put out a sandwich board so that people could find the studio easier. I felt the instinctive pull towards saying “the people who want to find it, will” and that didn’t really sit right with me.
To be clear, I love playing in living rooms, or in venues where there are more people on stage than there are in the audience. The fact that most of these people are my friends mean that I always have someone to talk to at these events. But as someone who is, like all of you, a person in this community, I feel like I have a duty to make sure new people hear this music. I am continually trying to make that happen; to that effect, check out the calendar and attend events in November and bring a friend. đŸ™‚
Further (related) reading in Marianna Ritchey’s “Composing Capital,” Michael C Heller’s “Loft Jazz,” and more.