AV on Music Theory Print

Avant-funk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Artists described as “avant-funk” or “mutant disco” have blended elements from styles such as funk, punk, disco, freeform jazz and dub. Reynolds described avant-funk as “difficult dance music” and a kind of psychedelia in which “oblivion was to be attained not through rising above the body, rather through immersion in the physical, self loss through animalism.”

History#

Early acts who have retrospectively been described with the term include German krautrock band Can, American funk artists Sly Stone and George Clinton, and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Herbie Hancock’s 1973 album Sextant was called an “uncompromising avant-funk masterpiece” by Paste. Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman led the avant-funk band Prime Time in the 1970s and 1980s. Guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer, who performed with Coleman in the 1970s, was described by The New Yorker as “one of avant-funk’s masters.” According to Reynolds, a pioneering wave of avant-funk artists came in the late 1970s, when post-punk artists (including A Certain Ratio, the Pop Group, Gang of Four, Bush Tetras, Defunkt, Public Image Ltd, Liquid Liquid, and James Chance, as well as Arthur Russell, Cabaret Voltaire, Talking Heads, DAF, and 23 Skidoo) embraced black dance music styles such as funk and disco. Reynolds noted these artists’ preoccupations with issues such as alienation, repression and the technocracy of Western modernity. The artists of the late 1970s New York no wave scene, including James Chance, explored avant-funk influenced by Ornette Coleman. The 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne was described as a masterpiece of avant-funk by Paste. The New York label ZE Records released the influential compilation Mutant Disco: A Subtle Discolation of the Norm in 1981, coining a new label for this style of hybridized dance music blending punk and disco. Later groups such as Skinny Puppy, Chakk, and 400 Blows represented later waves of the style. By the mid-1980s, avant-funk had dissipated as white alternative groups turned away from the dancefloor.

Avant-garde jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1950s#

While some avant-garde jazz concepts were originally developed in the late 1940s (such as the collective free improvisation on Lennie Tristano’s 1949 works of “Intuition” and “Digression”), the advent of avant-garde jazz (synonymous with free jazz at the time) is usually considered to be sometime in the mid- to late 1950s. As a genre, avant-garde jazz was founded among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of bebop and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous aspects of these genres. In addition to continuing the tradition of experimentation within jazz (a phenomenon evidenced by the development of earlier offshoots of bebop, such as cool jazz, modal jazz, and hard bop), jazz artists would also begin incorporating modernist ideas, such as atonality and serialism. With the release of The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, saxophonist Ornette Coleman paved the way for free (and avant-garde) jazz.

Avant-garde metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

“Avant-garde metal” is interchangeable with “experimental metal” and “avant-metal”, Avant-garde metal is related to progressive metal, but avant-garde metal often has more experimentation, while progressive metal usually has a tighter focus on traditional metal instrumentation and higher levels of technical complexity. Avant-garde metal also uses unusual sounds, breaks conventions, and often includes new elements. The lyrics and visual presentation of the genre are eclectic as well. The Canadian group Voivod also influenced future bands in the genre, pioneering technique such as robotic vocal effects, unusual time signatures, and fractured, dissonant, unorthodox guitar sounds.

Avant-garde music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Distinctions#

The biggest distinction between avant-garde and experimental music was how it relates to tradition. Other distinctions include subject matter, as well as having a superficial idea to avoid diving into serious subjects. Even though avant-garde and experimental music have many distinctions, experimental music and avant-garde music also have similarities due to experimental music being referred to as the “contemporary avant-garde” which is in relation to the electronic style of music being the forefront of many compositions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a historical sense, some musicologists use the term “avant-garde music” for the radical compositions that succeeded the death of Anton Webern in 1945, but others disagree. For example, Ryan Minor writes that this period began with the work of Richard Wagner, whereas Edward Lowinsky cites Josquin des Prez. The term may also be used to refer to any post-1945 tendency of modernist music not definable as experimental music, though sometimes including a type of experimental music characterized by the rejection of tonality. a piece which instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during its entire duration. The piece has been described as “not a musical ‘work’ in the normal sense, only an occasion for a Zen-like meditation”. Although some modernist music is also avant-garde, a distinction can be made between the two categories. According to scholar Larry Sitsky, because the purpose of avant-garde music is necessarily political, social, and cultural critique, so that it challenges social and artistic values by provoking or goading audiences, composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, George Antheil, and Claude Debussy may reasonably be considered to have been avant-gardists in their early works (which were understood as provocative, whether or not the composers intended them that way), but Sitsky does not consider the label appropriate for their later music. A prominent feature of avant-garde music is to break through various rules and regulations of traditional culture, in order to transcend established creative principles and appreciation habits. Avant-garde music pursues novelty in musical form and style, insisting that art is above everything else; thus, it creates a transcendental and mysterious sound world. Hint, metaphor, symbol, association, imagery, synesthesia and perception are widely used in avant-garde music techniques to excavate the mystery of human heart and the flow of consciousness, so that many seemingly unrelated but essentially very important events interweave into multi-level structures and forms.

Avant-pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

“Avant-pop” has been used to label music which balances experimental or avant-garde approaches with stylistic elements from popular music, and which probes mainstream conventions of structure or form. Music writer Sean Albiez describes “avant-pop” as identifying idiosyncratic artists working in “a liminal space between contemporary classical music and the many popular music genres that developed in the second half of the twentieth century.” The Tribeca New Music Festival defines “avant-pop” as “music that draws its energy from both popular music and classical forms.” The term has elsewhere been used by literary critic Larry McCaffery to describe “the most radical, subversive literary talents of the postmodern new wave.”

Avanzada Regia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

In 1995, the group Zurdok Movimiento won the Battle of the Bands at the Rockotitlan music festival, becoming the first band not from Mexico City to win it, thus creating such expectations towards the city that the record labels began to move there to search for groups. La Ultima de Lucas, made up of young people all under twenty years old, but which had talented musicians in its lineup, was the first band from Monterrey to sign a record contract. The Hispanic American phenomenon of Control Machete was followed by, by way of a domino effect, more bands. Zurdok Movimiento (who started it all) were finally signed by Discos Manicomio, an imprint of PolyGram, as well as the rapcore group called La Flor de Lingo.