Renee Levine-Packer & Mary Jane Leach 
Gay Guerrilla 
Julius Eastman and His Music

A compelling portrait of composer-performer Julius Eastman’s enigmatic and intriguing life and music.


Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Eastman’s provocative titles, including
Gay Guerrilla,
Evil Nigger,
Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us with his obsessions.

Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage’s Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. These episodes are examples of Eastman’s persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights.

In addition to analyses of Eastman’s music, the essays in
Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era’s social landscape. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist thatis compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights.

Jadual kandungan

Foreword by George E. Lewis

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Julius Eastman and His Music – Renee Levine Packer

Julius Eastman, A Biography – Renee Levine Packer

Unjust Malaise – David Borden

The Julius Eastman Parables – R. Nemo Hill

Julius Eastman and the Conception of ‘Organic Music’ – Kyle Gann

Julius Eastman Singing – John Patrick Thomas

An Accidental Musicologist Passes the Torch – Mary Jane Leach

A Flexible Musical Identity: Julius Eastman in New York City, 1976-90 – Ryan Dohoney

Evil Nigger: A Piece for Multiple Instruments of the Same Type by Julius Eastman (1979), with Performance Instructions by Joseph Kubera – David Borden

A Postminimalist Analysis of Julius Eastman’s
Crazy Nigger – Andrew Hanson-Dvoracek

‘The Piece Does Not Exist without Julius’: Still Staying on
Stay On It – Matthew Mendez

Connecting the Dots – Mary Jane Leach

Gay Guerrilla: A Minimalist Choralphantasie – Luciano Chessa

Appendix: Julius Eastman Compositions – Mary Jane Leach

Chronology

Selected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Mengenai Pengarang

Mary Jane Leach is a composer and performer and has been very active in recovering and reviving the music of Julius Eastman.