Andrea Fowler
University of Wisconsin - Madison
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"What I Am to the Fullest": Building a Black Arts Network Around Julius Eastman
Composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was often the only black musician on stage; he composed and performed in isolation. Despite his proximity to the Black Arts Movement, no attempt has been made to contextualize Eastman and his compositions as part of an era-defining artistic collective. The Black Arts Movement, approximately 1965-1975, gave rise to a generation of African American literature, poetry, theatre, music, and dance as the artistic outgrowth of the Black Power Movement. Sparked in part by the assassination of Malcolm X, individuals within the Black Arts Movement, such as Amiri Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas, and Maya Angelou, strove to create politically engaged works that explored the African American cultural and historical experience. This ten-year span of heightened creative output directly aligns with Julius Eastman’s tenure at the University of Buffalo. During this decade, Eastman honed his skills as a performer and often incorporated aspects of his identity into his compositions and his performances of other composer’s works. His musical performance of identity became his trademark as he sought to be, in his words, “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.” In this paper, I examine some of these trademark performance and composition characteristics and argue for the inclusion of Julius Eastman within the rich network of the Black Arts Movement, allowing for a new perspective on his complicated identity as he moved away from academia and built a following in Brooklyn.
Composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was often the only black musician on stage; he composed and performed in isolation. Despite his proximity to the Black Arts Movement, no attempt has been made to contextualize Eastman and his compositions as part of an era-defining artistic collective. The Black Arts Movement, approximately 1965-1975, gave rise to a generation of African American literature, poetry, theatre, music, and dance as the artistic outgrowth of the Black Power Movement. Sparked in part by the assassination of Malcolm X, individuals within the Black Arts Movement, such as Amiri Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas, and Maya Angelou, strove to create politically engaged works that explored the African American cultural and historical experience. This ten-year span of heightened creative output directly aligns with Julius Eastman’s tenure at the University of Buffalo. During this decade, Eastman honed his skills as a performer and often incorporated aspects of his identity into his compositions and his performances of other composer’s works. His musical performance of identity became his trademark as he sought to be, in his words, “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.” In this paper, I examine some of these trademark performance and composition characteristics and argue for the inclusion of Julius Eastman within the rich network of the Black Arts Movement, allowing for a new perspective on his complicated identity as he moved away from academia and built a following in Brooklyn.
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