Find out why Vision Fest is important; it's not just about experiencing new art and music, it's about the importance in freedom and creative self-expression.
YouTube / Arts for Art
This is founder Patricia Nicholson Parker’s last year as executive director at Arts for Art (AFA) in New York, but she’s not stepping away from her involvement with the organization. “There’s so much that we’re trying to do and have been doing and we don’t want to lose it,” she said in an exclusive interview with Examiner.com. Though she is handing over her role to bassist Todd Nicholson next year, Parker will continue to support the artistic community that AFA cultivates as its artistic director.
Arts for Art
Arts for Art produces Vision Festival, a multi-arts event which just completed its 20th year. Vision Fest showcases experimental work in music, dance, visual arts, poetry, and more. It’s a festival that exemplifies AFA’smission which is to support diversity in music, dance and art and to “cultivate ideas that embrace improvisation as a means to transform artist and audience.”
The mission does not stop there. AFA does work that crosses into the spiritual; it “aims to bring “balance to a world out of balance, through visionary arts and ideas that hold nothing back.” Additionally, AFA amplifies the presence of Avant Jazz and the various arts with which it commingles, creating a catalyst for social change by way of its multiple programs.
Parker explains that the music AFA promotes has been marginalized almost out of existence. She, along with a strong group of supporters have been working to make that music more visible. Part of that work involves reconnecting the primary drive and nature that is inherent in Avant Jazz. It is perhaps an underlying portion of AFA’s mission, but no less important to reconnect Avant Jazz to its African American Heritage as it expands out to inclusively involve all who would participate and increase its visibility.
I feel that the movement away from jazz’s roots was incredibly inappropriate. It’s not appropriate that it’s no longer part of African American Culture, states Parker. In the past, the only place you could really work [if you created this kind of music] was in Europe. At that time, jazz festivals were becoming more and more “white.” That is still the case today. It was even more inappropriate then, in a way, because by the mid ‘90s, the artists’ works weren’t being rightfully reflected. For a combination of very complicated reasons, it has become less present in communities of color. The music has become less and less accessible.
AFA’s mission drives more deeply, still: “What’s more important than the specific cultural politics is the politics of excellence,” Parker adds. Artists push their creative edges through improvisation. “Understanding what improvisation is isn’t just about learning how to perform an improvisational solo; the idea of Free Jazz or Avant Garde Jazz is that the artist has the freedom to, not only really choose, but to move beyond their own limitations in attempts to be more free.”
Parker relates that most music and art reflects a tradition which has very defined parameters. “There’s nothing wrong with that. You can be extremely creative within the parameters of the blues, Indian music, classical, etc. but Free Jazz and Avant Jazz allow for the borrowing from any tradition.”
Parker explains that a lot of music has become institutionalized and as a result has moved away from its roots, especially in cases like that of Avant Jazz. That is not to say that institutionalized music is necessarily a bad thing. With academic programs, for example, musicians could suddenly get regular jobs; jazz studies departments started to spring up in colleges and universities and knowledge of this music was being preserved and studied. However, institutionalization does have a dark side. Institutions began to codify the music that had traditionally been a product of a vibrant and ever-changing process, making it a little stagnant. In those venues, the music was at stasis. In classes, students began studying other people’s solos. They had to memorize and transcribe them as a way to learn how to improvise. This is a totally viable and effective method, but AFA likes to ask questions like: “What does it really mean to improvise?”, “How do you find yourself and remember why you danced or picked up an instrument in the first place?”, “How do you truly find your own voice?”
Historically, jazz was a spoken tradition. You learned on the bandstand. Some of the greats, even way back, also had music education. Some of them went to Juilliard and other music schools, but, even if they had that education, it didn’t control their music, explains Parker. I’ve been told that if you sounded like somebody else, they sent you home to practice so you could stop sounding like somebody else and instead sound like yourself.
According to Parker, players will often sound like each other, especially in academia. There’s literally a “college sound.” Parker relates that individual’s college sound may be personalized, “but academic jazz is becoming like western classical music and they’ve taken all of the juice out of it. They’ve taken all the character and the personality and what made it a living artform, turning it instead into a conservatory form.”
“What we celebrate is the other. It’s more of the living form of jazz. You are expected to sound different,” Parker urges. “We’re also really trying to get these ideas back into the universities because universities control things. That’s why Vision Festival was extremely important this year. We talked about what we’ve done, our aesthetics and what can be done with it.”
“The first day of this year’s festival was film shows at the Anthology Film Archives, and then there was a full day conference at Columbia University. The next six days was the event itself.” The festival is one of the ways AFA brings its mission in front of the youth, who have become an increasingly important facet of what the organization does.
“Some kids just can’t help themselves; they get into trouble in school because they can’t conform.” Parker continues to explain that those kids have been punished for that tendency instead of supported, but their inability to conform is ironically exactly what the world needs. There’s a lot of just clever and trendy gimmicks out there, and innovation has come to be equated with technology. Parker remarks, “I tell people that the only thing that’s really truly innovative is you.” It’s not about being on the cutting edge of technology. It’s about finding your own voice and pushing against your own boundaries.
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