That I Might Be: Lessons from Julius Eastman’s Black Queer Experimentalism & gLitchED dreams//invisible BEINGS

Abstract

The past five years have marked a resurgence of the music of Julius Eastman both in scholarship and performance. While Stay On It (1979), The Holy Presence of Joan D’arc (1981), and Gay Guerrilla (1979) are amongst Eastman’s most performed and researched works, other works like Evil Nigger (1979) and Crazy Nigger (1979) are often avoided due to their controversial titles. However, these works and the compositional tools Eastman used to construct them offer much for us to learn if we accept the challenge of contending with the discomfort of these pieces. This article engages methodologies from music theory, critical theory, and queer theory to analyze the work of Julius Eastman and situate his output in lineages of the avant-garde, minimalism, and Black experimentalism. Through this analysis a reading of Eastman’s music as a site of radical imagination, political change, and reimagining of the concert hall emerges. gLitchED dreams//invisible BEINGS is a modular, sonic collage, drawing inspiration from Afrofuturism, afrobeat, minimalism, and experimentalism that follows the journey of Eye, an android that finds itself trying to break out of a world in which it cannot exist as its authentic self. Through this journey of self actualization, Eye struggles to untangle where the world ends and it begins, grappling with the blurred lines of choice, coercion, and control within invisible power structures. Inspired by Legacy Russell’s Glitch, this work explores the ways technology, our intersecting identities, and the unseen structures around us inform and mediate one another, asking, “how can I choose agency within a controlled construct?” The performers of the piece engage with the material through the perspective of Eye. With the order of musical material determined by a computer, performers must choose to perform as they are instructed, perform their own material in defiance, or refuse to engage with the material dictated by the computer. gLitchED dreams//invisible BEINGS was commissioned by Alarm Will Sound through the Matt Marks Impact Fund.