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******New Year 2006******

Obituary

Derek Bailey

Restlessly creative guitarist forever pushing at the boundaries of music

John Fordham
Thursday December 29, 2005
The Guardian

On and off over the past decade, I would meet Derek Bailey in the same Chinese restaurant in Dalston, north London. As well as being a wonderful raconteur, the Yorkshire-born guitarist regularly blew holes in convenient wisdoms sitting smugly on some shelf in my head. His provocativeness was not oneupmanship, or a parade of erudition; it was the way his brain was wired. He had done the same for musicians and listeners all over the world for 40 years or more as a free-player and a freethinker, a Frank Zappa for the world of spontaneous performance.

Article continues

Bailey, who has died aged 75 of complications from motor neurone disease, was a guru without self-importance, a teacher without a rulebook, a guitar-hero without hot licks and a one-man counterculture without ever believing he knew all the answers - or maybe any at all. With his passing, the world has lost an inimitable musician and an implacable enemy of commercialised art.

Bailey once described his friend John Zorn, the American avant-garde composer and improviser, as "a Diaghilev of contemporary music" for his catalytic influence. But he could as easily have been describing himself. He worked with performers as different as free-jazz piano legend Cecil Taylor, cool school saxist Lee Konitz, Harlem bop-and-swing hoofer Will Gaines, naked Japanese improvising dancer Min Tanaka, fusion guitar star Pat Metheny and the drum virtuoso Tony Williams. In later years, he collaborated with Japanese art-of-noise rock band the Ruins, and - when he had already passed 70 - with young drum and bass DJs.

Singlemindedly devoted to unpremeditated improvisation, Bailey published a book on the subject in 1980 called Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music. Twelve years later, it led to Jeremy Marre's revealing Channel 4 four-parter On the Edge: Improvisation in Music, an ambitious venture that Bailey both scripted and presented. The project tracked the improvising impulse through the most radical interpreters of Mozart, the methods of the organist at the SacrÃ© Coeur, Paris, in baroque music or the blues, and in locations from the Hebrides to the Ganges.

Bailey was born to George and Lily Bailey, in the Abbeydale district of Sheffield. His father was a barber, his uncle a professional guitarist who gave the boy his first instrument and some haphazard lessons. By a process of osmosis from musicians he met, sustenance from odd jobs, record-listening (bebop guitar pioneer Charlie Christian was his early model) and some later self-education in theory and arranging, Bailey became a pro on the UK dance-band and studio circuit in the early 1950s. By 1965, he was playing Blackpool seasons for Morecambe and Wise.

By that time, he had begun rehearsing regularly with two adventurous younger players in Sheffield - classical percussionist turned jazz drummer Tony Oxley and bassist (later to become classical composer) Gavin Bryars. The three formed the group Joseph Holbrooke (named after an obscure British composer whose work they never played), and, from 1963 to 1966, its jazz beginnings in John Coltrane and the Bill Evans Trio were crossbred with ideas from John Cage, Stockhausen, serialism, Oxley's labyrinthine rhythm variations, and much more. Gradually, the group moved from jazz into a non-idiomatic approach - free-improvisation.

From 1966, Bailey began visiting the Little Theatre Club, a West End bolthole where the drummer John Stevens ran all-comers' sessions and young improvisers (including Evan Parker, Trevor Watts and Paul Rutherford), jazz virtuosi (Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler) and contemporary classical players like Barry Guy gathered. With various versions of Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Oxley's sextet, the Music Improvisation Company (electronics, percussion and Parker's sax) and the trio Iskra 1903 (with trombonist Rutherford and bassist Guy), Bailey began to build a completely new vocabulary for the guitar.

Though he never abandoned the conventional instrument, he was mixing warped chordal ideas, serialism's lateral melodies, Cage's elevation of silence, pedal-operated electronics and a brittle attack borrowed from percussionists. From 1970, he also ran the Incus Records label, first with Oxley and Parker, then with his partner (and later third wife) Karen Brookman - their Hackney flat is still the Incus HQ.

Bailey's Diaghilev qualities came to the fore in 1976, when he began his Company project, an improvisers' festival that involved 400 players each year up to 1994 in Britain, the US and Japan, with Zorn, Lee Konitz, saxist Steve Lacy, classical violinist Alexander Balanescu, bassoonist Lindsey Cooper and composer/saxist Anthony Braxton among those taking part. He also invited dancers, performance-artists, electronica-specialists and avant-rockers to join in, with the artists deciding who would improvise with who.

He likened improvisation to spontaneous relationships and conversation - full of accidental harmonies, misunderstandings, passion and indifference. Though a sophisticated instrumentalist himself, he did not mind playing with people who had comparatively few skills; something interesting might always happen. He worked with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Tony Williams in the trio Arcana in 1995, and collaborated with Pat Metheny and two percussionists on The Sign Of Four in 1996.

He described that encounter to me thus: "The equipment I use I bought in Canal Street 15 years ago. Pat's sitting in the middle of what looks like the console of a 747, with four guitars and a distortion unit that could be used for dispersing mobs. There were two guys with huge percussion kits, and I'm making a lot of noise, and then he switches this thing on, and it's like there's three dogs playing around a little, and suddenly an elephant lands on top of them."

Yet for all that raw-noise energy, Bailey continued to be a delicate acoustic improviser, often unaccompanied or in duets. Just in time, he was caught by the ideal biographer, Ben Watson, in the book Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation. And, though his combativeness never left him, he seemed to take heart from the musical eclecticism and dissolution of idiomatic differences he had done so much to encourage.

"The kids don't mind whatever it is these days," he told me once. "Maybe there's a lot of stuff out there now that is by its nature odd. But they seem to be able to take anything. Which is great to somebody like me. I find it very comfortable. In an uncomfortable sort of way." Karen survives him, as does Simon, the son of his second marriage.

Richard Williams writes: The least typical recording Derek Bailey ever made also turned out (not that he would have appreciated the compliment) to be one of the great jazz recordings of the last 40 years. Titled simply Ballads, and recorded in 2002 for John Zorn's Tzadik label, it consisted of solo guitar meditations on 14 songs from the standard repertoire, including Laura, Body and Soul, What's New, Stella by Starlight and You Go to My Head.

Although this was the last project one might have expected from a professed enemy of composed music, it was no surprise to discover that in these songs - their musical and emotional contours long since flattened by overuse - Bailey found brand new angles and meanings, thanks to the application of his highly personal imagination and unique instrumental language. Extraordinary renditions, indeed, and utterly spellbinding.

By the time he recorded another solo CD for Tzadik, entitled Carpal Tunnel, three years later, his refined technique had all but disappeared. No longer able to grasp a plectrum with his right hand, he adapted by striking the strings with his thumb. The album's title came from the condition, carpal tunnel syndrome, that was said by doctors to explain his reduced dexterity. In fact, it marked the onset of the motor neurone disease from which he died.

In these pieces, the spiky elegance of Ballads is replaced by a halting delicacy reminiscent both of Japanese koto music and of the last paintings of Willem de Kooning, when illness had robbed the great abstract expressionist of the power to do anything other than trace a haunting shadow of the shapes and colours that had once burst from the canvas.

Â· Derek Bailey, improvising guitarist, born January 29 1930; died December 25 2005

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We regret that this information was lost in its entirety. "News and info" will be updated as reguarly as possible

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Below is the listings from 2004. Above will be the listings for 2006 onward. If you have any questions

please contact:

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Black Phone Records Staff

Desert News Publishing Co. July 11, 2004

Church's peyote use OK'd

High court ruling may clear founder of charges

By Angie Welling

Deseret Morning News

Members of a Utah County American Indian church, whatever their race,

can continue to use peyote as part of their religious ceremonies without

fear of state prosecution, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

James Mooney, right, and Linda Mooney appear in court in 2000. The Mooneys

were accused of distributing peyote during ceremonies at their church.

Dan Lund, Associated Press The unanimous decision applies to all 200

members of the Oklevueha Earth Walks Native American Church and may result

in the complete dismissal of criminal charges against the church's founder,

James "Flaming Eagle" Mooney.

"The bona fide religious use of peyote cannot serve as the basis for

prosecuting members of the Native American Church under state law," Justice

Jill Parrish wrote in Tuesday's opinion.

Mooney's attorney, Kathryn Collard, praised the ruling as a victory

for religious freedom that affects all Utahns, not just members of Mooney's

congregation.

"For the rest of us, what it confirms is that individuals can still

rely on the courts and their state and federal constitutional rights to

protect them from this incredible power of the state. And that is a

wonderful thing," Collard said. "I think it should make all of us who take

these rights for granted think about how in every age people have to

struggle to preserve these fundamental rights."

Mooney was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but Collard said he is

grateful for the Supreme Court's decision.

"He just expressed to me what a great thing it is that the court

protected the religious diversity that is the foundation of our country and

our state," Collard said. "He just could not be happier. It's been a very

long struggle for them."

Mooney and his wife, Linda, were arrested in November 2000 and charged

with 10 first-degree felony counts of operating a controlled substance

criminal enterprise and one count of second-degree felony racketeering for

allegedly distributing peyote to non-Indians.

Collard said she will revive a motion to dismiss all charges against

the Mooneys, which 4th District Court Judge Gary Stott rejected in October

2001 when he ruled that the exception does not apply to any race other than

American Indians.

Though Tuesday's opinion overturns Stott's ruling, Assistant Attorney

General Kris Leonard said it may still be possible for the case to go

forward.

"There are still issues that haven't been decided below that may yet

allow prosecution of the case," she said.

The court's ruling holds true only for members of a valid Native

American Church, Leonard said, and there has been no investigation into the

validity of Mooney's church.

For the purposes of its decision, the Supreme Court assumed Mooney's

representations, she said.

At issue in the case was an exemption in the Federal Controlled

Substance Act that allows the use of peyote in religious ceremonies. The

exception was enacted by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, now

known as the Drug Enforcement Administration, after peyote was classified as

a controlled substance in 1970.

The state Attorney General's Office argued on appeal that the

exemption has never been incorporated into state laws controlling drug use.

Additionally, the state argued, the exemption does not apply to non-Indian

members of the Native American Church.

The Supreme Court rejected each argument Tuesday, saying the state

statute must be interpreted to include the exemption to avoid a conflict

between state and federal law and to protect the Mooneys' constitutional

rights. Additionally, the court noted, the exemption makes no mention of

tribal status as a requirement for immunity from prosecution.

"The term 'members' in the exemption clearly refers to members of the

'Native American Church' Â‹ not to members of federally recognized tribes,"

the opinion states. "Therefore, so long as their church is part of the

'Native American Church,' the Mooneys may not be prosecuted for using peyote

in bona fide religious ceremonies."

Mooney founded the Oklevueha Earth Walks Native American Church in

1997 in Benjamin, a rural community west of Spanish Fork. The Native

American Church, which was established in 1918 in Oklahoma, operates

throughout the United States and Canada. Each chapter operates autonomously

and sets its own rules.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Â© 2004 Deseret News Publishing Company

									ray charles dies (june 10, 2004)

									Ray Charles, Who Reshaped American Music, Dies at 73

									
									June 10, 2004

									 By JON PARELES

									Ray Charles, one of 
									America's greatest singers and a

									musician who brought the essence of soul to country, jazz,

									rock, standards and every other style of music he touched,

									died today. He was 73.

									A spokesman for Mr. Charles, Jerry Digney, told Reuters

									that Mr. Charles had died at his home in 
									Beverly Hills,

									
									Calif., of complications from liver disease.

									Mr. Charles reshaped American music for half a century as a

									singer, pianist, songwriter, bandleader and producer. He

									was a remarkable pianist, at home with splashy barrelhouse

									playing and precisely understated swing. But his playing

									was inevitably overshadowed by his voice, a forthright

									baritone steeped in the blues, strong and impure and

									gloriously unpredictable.

									Mr. Charles could belt like a blues shouter and croon like

									a pop singer, and he used the flaws and breaks in his voice

									to illuminate emotional paradoxes. Even in his early years,

									he sounded like a voice of experience, someone who had seen

									all the hopes and follies of humanity.

									Leaping into falsetto, stretching a word and then breaking

									it off with a laugh or a sob, slipping into an intimate

									whisper and then letting loose a whoop, Mr. Charles could

									sound suave or raw, brash or hesitant, joyful or desolate,

									insouciant or tearful, earthy or devout. He projected the

									primal exuberance of a field holler and the sophistication

									of a be-bopper; he could conjure exaltation, sorrow and

									determination within a single phrase.

									In the 1950's, Mr. Charles became an architect of soul

									music by bringing the fervor and dynamics of gospel to

									secular subjects. But he soon broke through any categories.

									By singing any song he prized - from "Hallelujah I Love Her

									So" to "I Can't Stop Lovin' You" to "
									Georgia on My Mind" to

									"
									America the Beautiful" - Mr. Charles claimed all of

									American music as his birthright. He made more than 60

									albums, and his influence echoes through generations of

									rock and soul singers.

									Ray Charles Robinson was born on 
									Sept. 23, 1930, in the

									small town of 
									Albany, 
									Ga., and grew up in 
									Greenville, 
									Fla.

									When he was 5 years old, he began losing his sight from an

									unknown ailment that may have been glaucoma. He became

									completely blind at the age of 6. But he began to learn

									piano, at first from a local boogie-woogie pianist, Wylie

									Pitman; he also soaked up gospel music at the 
									Shiloh

									
									Baptist 
									Church and rural blues from musicians who included

									
									Tampa Red.

									He was sent to the 
									St. Augustine 
									School for the Deaf and

									the Blind from 1937 to 1945. There, he learned to repair

									radios and automobiles, and he started formal piano

									lessons. He learned to write music in Braille and played

									Chopin and Art Tatum; he also learned to play clarinet,

									alto saxophone, trumpet and organ. On the radio, he

									listened to swing bands, country-and-western singers and

									gospel quartets. "My ears were sponges, soaked it all up,"

									he told David Ritz, who collaborated on his 1978

									autobiography, "Brother Ray."

									He left school at 15, after the death of his mother, and

									went to 
									Jacksonville to earn a living as a musician. He

									played where he could as a sideman or a solo act, taking

									jobs all over the state and calling himself Ray Charles to

									distinguish himself from the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He

									modeled himself on two urbane pianists and singers, Charles

									Brown and Nat (King) Cole, carefully copying their hits and

									imitating their inflections. After three years, he decided

									to put 
									Florida far behind him and moved to 
									Seattle. There,

									he formed the McSon Trio, named after its guitarist, Gosady

									McGee, and the "son" from Robinson. He also started an

									addiction to heroin that lasted for 17 years.

									Mr. Charles made his first single, "Confession Blues," in

									
									Seattle in 1949, credited to the Maxin (a different

									spelling of McSon) Trio. His second single, "Baby Let Me

									Hold Your Hand" by the Ray Charles Trio, was recorded in

									
									Los Angeles in 1950 with musicians who had played with Nat

									Cole. The singles were hits on the "race records" (later

									rhythm-and-blues) charts, and Mr. Charles moved to Los

									Angeles.

									He joined the band led by the blues guitarist Lowell

									Fulson, and became its musical director. After two years of

									touring the 
									United States, he left to resume his own

									career.

									In 1953, he signed with Atlantic Records; he also moved to

									
									New Orleans to work with Guitar Slim as pianist and

									arranger. Guitar Slim's "Things That I Used to Do,"

									featuring Mr. Charles on piano, became a million-selling

									single in 1954, and it convinced Mr. Charles to leave his

									imitative style behind and free his own voice.

									He moved to 
									Dallas and formed a band featuring the 
									Texas

									saxophonist David (Fathead) Newman. And after working with

									studio bands on his first Atlantic singles, he convinced

									the label to let him record with his touring band, playing

									arrangements that had been road-tested on the

									rhythm-and-blues circuit.

									"I've Got a Woman," recorded in a radio-station studio in

									
									Atlanta with his seven-piece band, became Mr. Charles's

									first national hit in 1955, starting a string of bluesy,

									gospel-charged hits, among them "A Fool for You," "Drown in

									My Own Tears" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So."

									In the mid-1950's, he expanded his band to include the

									Raelettes, female backup singers who provided responses

									like a gospel choir, and they became a permanent part of

									his music. It was the beginning of the rock and roll era,

									but Mr. Charles didn't gear his songs to teen-agers; they

									had the adult concerns of the blues. Yet his songs began

									showing up on the pop charts as well as the

									rhythm-and-blues charts.

									At the same time, Mr. Charles made clear his allegiance to

									jazz, recording an album with Milt Jackson of the Modern

									Jazz Quartet in 1958 and appearing at the Newport Jazz

									Festival.

									In 1959, a late-night jam session turned into "What'd I

									Say." It was a blues with an electric-piano riff, a

									quasi-Latin beat and cheerful come-ons that gave way to

									wordless, call-and-response moans. Although some radio

									stations banned it, it became a Top 10 pop hit and sold a

									million copies. But his next album, "The Genius of Ray

									Charles," took a different tack: half of it was recorded

									with a lush string orchestra, half with a big band. He also

									recorded his first country song, a version of Hank Snow's

									"I'm Movin' On."

									Mr. Charles left 
									Atlantic for ABC-Paramount Records in 1959

									when it offered him higher royalties and ownership of his

									master recordings. He began to reach a larger pop public

									with songs that included two No. 1 hits, his version of

									"
									Georgia on My Mind" in 1960 (which brought him his first

									of a dozen Grammy awards) and "Hit the Road Jack" in 1961.

									With increasing royalties and touring fees, Mr. Charles

									expanded his group to become a big band.

									By the early 1960's, Mr. Charles had virtually given up

									writing his own material to follow his eclectic impulses as

									an interpreter. He made an instrumental jazz album, "Genius

									+ Soul = Jazz," playing 
									Hammond organ with a big band

									featuring Count Basie sidemen. On the duet album he made in

									1961 with the jazz singer Betty Carter, two highly

									idiosyncratic voices sounded utterly compatible. And in

									1962, he released the album "Modern Sounds in Country and

									Western," remaking country songs as big-band ballads. His

									version of "I Can't Stop Lovin' You" reached No. 1 and sold

									a million copies.

									After recording "Modern Sounds in Country and Western, Vol.

									2," Mr. Charles settled into an office building and studio

									in 
									Los Angeles that remained his headquarters. He returned

									to rhythm-and-blues for his other major 1960's hits:

									"Busted" in 1963 and "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966. But he

									was also recording standards, country songs and show tunes.

									In 1965, Mr. Charles was arrested for possession of heroin.

									He spent time in a 
									California sanitarium to break his

									addiction and stopped performing for a year, the only break

									during his long career. When he emerged, he resumed his old

									schedule: touring for up to 10 months with the big band and

									releasing an album or two every year. He started his own

									label, Tangerine, which released albums through ABC and on

									its own. In the mid-1970's, he started another label,

									Crossover, which released albums through Atlantic Records.

									His presence on the pop charts had dwindled, but he was

									still widely respected. In 1971, he joined Aretha Franklin

									for the concert she recorded as "Live at Fillmore West."

									His version of Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" won a

									Grammy award in 1975. He wrote an autobiography, "Brother

									Ray," that became a best-seller in 1978. In 1979, his

									version of "
									Georgia on My Mind" was named as 
									Georgia's

									official state song, and in 1980, he was featured in the

									movie "The Blues Brothers."

									During the 1980's, Mr. Charles returned to the charts, this

									time in the country category. The boundary-crossing

									Southern music he had envisioned with "Modern Sounds in

									Country and Western" had been not just accepted, but

									treated as natural. Mr. Charles signed to CBS Records's

									
									Nashville division and made "Friendship," an album of duets

									with 10 country stars, including songs with George Jones

									and Willie Nelson that reached the country Top 10 in 1983.

									He sang "
									America the Beautiful" at the Republican

									Convention in 1984.

									In 1986, Mr. Charles was one of the first musicians

									inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He received a

									Grammy award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987, and in 1989

									he appeared on Quincy Jones's album "Back on the Block,"

									winning another Grammy for a vocal duet with Chaka Khan on

									"I'll Be Good to You." In 1990, he turned up in television

									ads for Diet Pepsi, singing, "You got the right one, baby,

									uh-huh!"

									Mr. Charles's private life was complicated; he was married

									twice, and had nine children with seven women. But he had

									become an American pop icon. And year in and year out, Mr.

									Charles continued to move audiences with his concerts. He

									would take a set of familiar songs and find within them

									moments of tenderness and bitterness, humor and

									resignation.

									In songs he had written and songs that he had indelibly

									claimed, Mr. Charles summed up American music from big-band

									swing to country, Tin Pan Alley to gospel. With his

									profound knowledge of musical styles and matters of the

									heart, Mr. Charles composed, arranged and improvised his

									way toward an American culture that embraced soul and

									acknowledged no barriers.

									http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/arts/music/10CND-RAY.html?ex=1087910282&ei=1&en=4895d3103cdadd99

eminem in the "lyrically judicial" press

									Lyrical Judge Praises Eminem in Lyrics Fight

									
									June 10, 2004

									 By MICHAEL BRICK

									Comparing Eminem to Benny Goodman, Elvis Presley and Paul

									Simon, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the company

									that publishes a leading hip-hop magazine was in contempt

									of court for failing to comply with orders in a copyright

									battle with the rapper.

									In two separate orders released yesterday, Judge Gerard E.

									Lynch of 
									United States District Court for the Southern

									District of New York awarded some monetary damages to

									Eminem's record company, Shady Records, and dismissed

									counterclaims against Eminem himself, whose real name is

									Marshall B. Mathers III.

									Judge Lynch ruled that the publisher of The Source, Source

									Enterprises, had violated his injunction by publishing on

									its Web site (www.the source.com) lyrics ascribed to

									Eminem. The lyrics, which disparage black women, are

									several years old, written before Eminem acquired his fame.

									The judge said their publication by The Source carried the

									potential to impair the credibility of Eminem, who is

									white. Eminem has acknowledged writing them but described

									them as a product of adolescent heartbreak.

									"Mathers is the most prominent of the handful of white

									hip-hop artists who have been artistically or commercially

									successful," Judge Lynch wrote. "Like other white musicians

									who have been successful in musical genres or forms

									pioneered by Africans or African-Americans, from Benny

									Goodman to Elvis Presley to Paul Simon, Mathers has been

									accused of exploiting black culture; he in turn has

									asserted his respect for his black role models and peers,

									and has maintained that he comes by his hip-hop success

									honestly, as a young man from a poor urban background who

									has long been associated with African-American friends,

									neighbors and mentors."

									The magazine cast its publication of the lyrics as a

									journalistic exposÃ©; Eminem and his record company cast it

									as copyright infringement, and the parties took their

									dispute to court. The main copyright infringement claim is

									still being litigated.

									One order issued yesterday released Eminem from

									responsibility for counterclaims of copyright infringement,

									finding that only his record company, as the assignee of

									his rights, was directly involved in that dispute.

									A second order found that The Source was in civil contempt

									for publishing the lyrics on its Web site, where a lawyer

									for Shady Records found them. The judge stopped short of

									ruling the magazine company's contempt willful, and he

									denied requests for sanctions against it, awarding little

									more than the costs of enforcing the injunction, which have

									not been determined.

									"At the same time," Judge Lynch wrote, "the degree of

									acrimony and lawyerly zeal in this litigation makes it

									inconceivable that Source was unaware that Shady would be

									vigorously monitoring its compliance with the order."

									Dennis Dennehy, a spokesman for Interscope Records, the

									parent of Shady Records, declined to comment on the orders.

									Michael S. Elkin, a partner at Thelen, Reid & Priest who is

									the trial lawyer for The Source, said in a telephone

									interview that his client's focus remained on the copyright

									infringement claims.

									"The Source had every right to publish the material it did

									release to inform the public about who Eminem is," he said.

									http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/arts/music/10RAPP.html?ex=1087902039&ei=1&en=5ec70f7f0ea212b7

									
									
									
									artists as criminals (june 2, 2004)

http://www.caedefensefund.org/

SEVEN ARTISTS SUBPOENAED IN USA PATRIOT ACT CASE

On May 30, members of the performance art collective Critical Art Ensemble were subpoenaed by the FBI. The FBI is planning to indict Steve Kurtz, a member of CAE before a grand jury on June 15, on unknown charges. CAE is under investigation for their use of scientific equipment to produce art projects that question the relationship between commerce, politics and biotechnology. Critical Art Ensemble have been producing performances and theory that merge political realities with technology and theater since 1987. Thus far seven subpoenas have been issued to: Adele Henderson, Chair of the Art Department at UB; Andrew Johnson, Professor of Art at UB; Paul Vanouse, Professor of Art at UB; Beatriz da Costa, Professor of Art at UCI; Steven Barnes, FSU; Dorian Burr and Beverly Schlee.

****

The Washington Post
June 2, 2004 Wednesday
Final Edition

HEADLINE: The FBI's Art Attack;
Offbeat Materials at Professor's Home Set Off Bioterror Alarm
BYLINE: Lynne Duke, Washington Post Staff Writer

"A forensic investigation of FBI trash." On the telephone, Beatriz da Costa says it wryly. Her humor sounds bitter. She's talking about the detritus of a terror probe at the Buffalo home of her good friends, the Kurtzes.

She's talking about the pizza boxes, Gatorade jugs, the gloves, the gas mask filters, the biohazard suits: the stuff left by police, FBI, hazmat and health investigators after they descended on the Kurtz home and quarantined the place.

The garbage tells a story of personal tragedy, a death in the Kurtz household, that sparked suspicions (later proved unfounded) of a biohazard in the neighborhood. And it tells a story of the times in which we live, with almost daily warnings about terror, and with law enforcement primed to pounce.

Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo art professor, discovered on the morning of May 11 that his wife of 20 years, Hope Kurtz, had stopped breathing. He called 911. Police and emergency personnel responded, and what they saw in the Kurtz home has triggered a full-blown probe -- into the vials and bacterial cultures and strange contraptions and laboratory equipment.

The FBI is investigating. A federal grand jury has been impaneled. Witnesses have been subpoenaed, including da Costa.

Kurtz and his late wife were founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, an internationally renowned collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists. Steve Kurtz, 48, has focused on the problems of the emergence of biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble, which also includes da Costa, have authored several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas," both published by Autonomedia/Semiotext(e).

The day of his wife's death, Kurtz told the authorities who he is and what he does.

"He explained to them that he uses [the equipment] in connection with his art, and the next thing you know they call the FBI and a full hazmat team is deposited there from Quantico -- that's what they told me," says Paul Cambria, the lawyer who is representing Kurtz. "And they all showed up in their suits and they're hosing each other down and closing the street off, and all the news cameras were there and the head of the [Buffalo] FBI is granting interviews. It was a complete circus."

Cambria, the bicoastal Buffalo and Los Angeles lawyer best known for representing pornographer Larry Flynt, calls the Kurtz episode a "colossal overreaction."

FBI agents put Kurtz in a hotel, where they continued to question him. Cambria says Kurtz felt like a detainee over the two days he was at the hotel. Paul Moskal, spokesman for the Buffalo office of the FBI, says the bureau put Kurtz in a hotel because his home had been declared off limits. The probe, Moskal says, was a by-the-books affair from the very beginning.

"Post-9/11 protocol is such that first-responders have all been given training about unusual things and unusual situations," Moskal says.

And obviously, says Lt. Jake Ulewski, spokesman for the Buffalo police, what the cops eyeballed raised some alarms. "He's making cultures? That's a little off the wall."

Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. Officials won't divulge what precisely was examined, but it turned out not to be a danger to public health. And the house was reopened for use.

Still, federal authorities think something in that house might have been illegal, Cambria surmises. But Cambria denies there was anything illegal in the house. William Hochul Jr., chief of the anti-terrorism unit for the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of New York, would not comment on the investigation.

Kurtz, on Cambria's advice, isn't speaking to the press either.

Da Costa, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who has flown to Buffalo to help out, says Kurtz is "depressed" and dealing with the loss of his wife, who died of a heart attack. Today the Buffalo arts community will memorialize her.

Adele Henderson, chair of the art department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Kurtz has tenure, is among the people who've been questioned by the FBI.

On May 21, she says, the FBI asked her about Kurtz's art, his writings, his books; why his organization (the art ensemble) is listed as a collective rather than by its individual members; how it is funded.

"They asked me if I'd be surprised if I found out he was found to be involved in bioterrorism," she says.

Her response? "I am absolutely certain that Steve would not be involved."

They also asked about "his personal life," Henderson says, but she would not describe the questions or her responses.

The investigation, she says, will have no bearing on Kurtz's standing at the university, where he is an associate professor. (Prior to Buffalo, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University.)

"This is a free speech issue, and some people at the university remember a time during the McCarthy period when some university professors were harassed quite badly," she says.

Nonetheless, considering the kind of art Kurtz practices and the kind of supplies he uses, "I could see how they would think it was really strange."

For instance: the mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination. Such a machine was in Kurtz's home. His focus, in recent years, has been on projects that highlight the trouble with genetically modified seeds.

In November 2002, in an installation called "Molecular Invasion," Kurtz grew genetically modified seeds in small pots beneath growth lamps at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, then engineered them in reverse with herbicide, meaning he killed them.

"We thought it was very important to have Critical Art Ensemble here because we try to have our visiting artist's program present work that takes our curriculum to the next step," says Denise Mullen, vice dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design, whose Hemicycle Gallery hosted Kurtz's molecular exhibit.

Beyond the cutting edge of art, she says, "we want work that is really bleeding edge."

In Buffalo, in the aftermath of the bioterror probe that has found no terror, activist artists have scooped up the refuse from the Kurtz front yard and taken it away, perhaps, says da Costa, to create an art installation.

*****

The New York Times

June 7, 2004 Monday
Late Edition - Final
HEADLINE: Use of Bacteria in Art Leads to Investigation
BYLINE: By DAVID STABA

The F.B.I. agents in hazardous-material suits are gone from Steven Kurtz's house here.

He has buried his wife, Hope, whom Mr. Kurtz, an art professor at the University of Buffalo, found dead in their home last month. But the attention of federal investigators, drawn after his wife's death to Mr. Kurtz and the tools of his unusual means of artistic expression, has not ended.

Civil liberties advocates and supporters of Mr. Kurtz say the case is a matter of the authorities' misdirecting post-Sept. 11 investigative zeal and in the process, trampling First Amendment rights to artistic expression. Fellow members of his art ensemble, which describes itself as ''dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics and critical theory,'' call it frightening.

On May 11, Mr. Kurtz phoned 911 after waking to find Hope Kurtz, 45, his wife of 20 years, unresponsive. One of the paramedics who arrived at the Kurtz home noticed laboratory equipment used in Mr. Kurtz's artwork. That observation triggered a series of events that led to F.B.I. agents shuffling through the home in hazardous-material suits and confiscating the equipment and biological material. They also seized his books, personal papers and computer.

The authorities searched the house for two days before announcing that there was no public health risk and that no toxic material had been found. Mr. Kurtz was allowed to return home on May 17, and his wife's death was attributed by the authorities to heart failure.

An F.B.I. spokesman, Paul Moskal, referred all questions to the United States attorney's office in Buffalo. William J. Hochul Jr., the lead terrorism prosecutor for the office, declined to comment on the case, citing Justice Department policy regarding current investigations.

Mr. Kurtz, 46, is not talking to reporters, either. His fellow artists and his lawyer are speaking on his behalf.

''No one likes the whole force of the whole federal government to come down around their shoulders,'' said Mr. Kurtz's lawyer, Paul J. Cambria, who represented Larry Flynt, the Hustler magazine publisher, in his Supreme Court case over censorship. ''He feels he's being unfairly treated and would like it all to be over.''

But members of the art collective Mr. Kurtz founded, the Critical Art Ensemble, say it is far from over.

A member of the collective, Beatriz da Costa, an art professor at the University of California, Irvine, said she was leaving her hotel to attend an art show in North Adams, Mass., last Sunday when a stranger called out to her.

''I heard someone say my name,'' she said. ''I turned around and an F.B.I. agent was there and served me with the subpoena.'' She was summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Buffalo on June 15.

Ensemble members heard reports that F.B.I. agents had questioned museum curators and administrators at university art departments with connections to the group. The group produces Web sites, books and touring shows and orchestrates 1960's-style ''happenings,'' aimed at showing the impact of technology and its representation on modern life.

''We knew there was an investigation going on -- they were talking to people and they weren't giving him his stuff back,'' said Steven B. Barnes of Tallahassee, Fla., another founding member of the group, who was subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury along with Ms. da Costa. ''Those things had nothing to do with public health.''

Ms. da Costa said her subpoena indicated the grand jury is looking into ''possession of biological agents.''

She said the bacteria E. coli, which can be fatal in some forms and harmless in others, was used in a Critical Art Ensemble production called ''GenTerra,'' which looked at genetic engineering of organisms from the perspective of a fictional corporation.

''I know everything we did was legal,'' Ms. da Costa said. ''We didn't buy it illegally or make it ourselves. We worked in cooperation with a microbiology lab in Pittsburgh to create a transgenic E. coli that was completely harmless.'' Transgenic cells include genes or DNA transferred by genetic engineering from a different type of living thing.

The bacteria's benign nature was one of the central themes of the work, which allowed audience members to expose themselves to the material.

''We were kind of demystifying the whole procedure and trying to alleviate inappropriate fear of transgenic science and redirect concern toward the political implications of the research,'' Mr. Barnes said.

Mr. Kurtz's fellow artists believe federal prosecutors will try to show that his possession of E. coli and other forms of bacteria -- harmless or not -- violated a federal law. The statute they refer to was expanded and strengthened by the Patriot Act passed after Sept. 11, 2001, and subsequent anthrax scares in Washington and elsewhere. It prohibits the possession of ''any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that, under the circumstances, is not reasonably justified by a prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose.''

Supporters maintained that the ''peaceful purpose'' exception should have snuffed out the investigation well before it got to the grand jury.

''Once they established that nothing in that house was toxic and that he had no connections to anyone but legitimate artistic and educational institutions, this should have been dropped,'' Mr. Barnes said. ''Everything he's ever done has been in the public sphere. There's no secret or private work. The transgenic bacteria was part of a show that's been traveling across the country for two years.''

A spokesman for the New York Civil Liberties Union said the initial phases of the Kurtz investigation were handled properly.

John Curr III, assistant director of the Buffalo chapter of the civil liberties union, said of the Kurtz investigation, ''Given the set of circumstances when it happened, I don't think there was an overreaction. Unless there's some golden nugget of information that they're not sharing, we feel they're overreacting now.''

''The code even makes a stipulation about a 'peaceful purpose,''' Mr. Curr went on. ''I don't think anybody could make the argument he was doing anything that wasn't peaceful.''

Mr. Barnes said: ''We're not an activist group. We're what we refer to as tactical media. We're mainly interested in issues of cultural representation, how things are represented to the public, and what's the ideology and the subtext to how something is being represented.''

The group's works, many of which can be seen online at www.critical-art.net, include Web sites and mock newspaper ads touting fictional biotech companies, and shows in which the audience has the chance to drink beer containing human DNA.

''That's the essence of the First Amendment,'' said Mr. Cambria, Mr. Kurtz's lawyer. ''It allows people to be different and express themselves in unique and creative ways.'' Up until the moment he and Ms. da Costa were served with their subpoenas, Mr. Barnes said he was confident no reason would be found to prosecute Mr. Kurtz.

''I was optimistic that when they saw what was going on and talked to enough people, they were going to realize there was no threat and no crime,'' Mr. Barnes said. When he was subpoenaed, he said his reaction was: '''They're really going to do this. They're going to push this.' I was also a little disturbed to realize I was being followed.''

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18830

How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop

By Kembrew McLeod, <http://www.stayfreemagazine.org>Stay Free! Magazine
June 1, 2004

When Public Enemy released It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in
1988, it was as if the album had landed from another planet. Nothing
sounded like it at the time. It Takes a Nation came frontloaded with
sirens, squeals, and squawks that augmented the chaotic, collaged backing
tracks over which P.E. frontman Chuck D laid his politically and poetically
radical rhymes. He rapped about white supremacy, capitalism, the music
industry, black nationalism, and in the case of "Caught, Can I Get a
Witness?" digital sampling: "CAUGHT, NOW IN COURT ' CAUSE I STOLE A BEAT /
THIS IS A SAMPLING SPORT / MAIL FROM THE COURTS AND JAIL / CLAIMS I STOLE
THE BEATS THAT I RAIL ... I FOUND THIS MINERAL THAT I CALL A BEAT / I PAID
ZERO."

In the mid- to late 1980s, hip-hop artists had a very small window of
opportunity to run wild with the newly emerging sampling technologies
before the record labels and lawyers started paying attention. No one took
advantage of these technologies more effectively than Public Enemy, who put
hundreds of sampled aural fragments into It Takes a Nation and stirred them
up to create a new, radical sound that changed the way we hear music. But
by 1991, no one paid zero for the records they sampled without getting
sued. They had to pay a lot. The following is a combination of two
interviews conducted separately with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.

Stay Free!: What are the origins of sampling in hip-hop?

Chuck D: Sampling basically comes from the fact that rap music is not
music. It's rap over music. So vocals were used over records in the very
beginning stages of hip-hop. In the late 1980s, rappers were recording over
live bands who were basically emulating the sounds off of the records.
Eventually, you had synthesizers and samplers, which would take sounds that
would then get arranged or looped, so rappers can still do their thing over
it. The arrangement of sounds taken from recordings came around 1984 to 1989.

Stay Free!: Those synthesizers and samplers were expensive back then,
especially in 1984. How did hip-hop artists get them if they didn't have a
lot of money?

Chuck D: Not only were they expensive, but they were limited in what they
could do they could only sample two seconds at a time. But people were able
to get a hold of equipment by renting time out in studios.

Stay Free!: How did the Bomb Squad [Public Enemy's production team, led by
Shocklee] use samplers and other recording technologies to put together the
tracks on It Takes a Nation of Millions.

Hank Shocklee:The first thing we would do is the beat, the skeleton of the
track. The beat would actually have bits and pieces of samples already in
it, but it would only be rhythm sections. Chuck would start writing and
trying different ideas to see what worked. Once he got an idea, we would
look at it and see where the track was going. Then we would just start
adding on whatever it needed, depending on the lyrics. I kind of
architected the whole idea. The sound has a look to me, and Public Enemy
was all about having a sound that had its own distinct vision. We didn't
want to use anything we considered traditional R&B stuff bass lines and
melodies and chord structures and things of that nature.?

Stay Free!: How did you use samplers as instruments?

Chuck D: We thought sampling was just another way of arranging sounds. Just
like a musician would take the sounds off of an instrument and arrange them
their own particular way. So we thought we was quite crafty with it.

Shocklee: "Don't Believe the Hype," for example that was basically played
with the turntable and transformed and then sampled. Some of the
manipulation we was doing was more on the turntable, live end of it.

Stay Free!: When you were sampling from many different sources during the
making of It Takes a Nation, were you at all worried about copyright
clearance?

Shocklee: No. Nobody did. At the time, it wasn't even an issue. The only
time copyright was an issue was if you actually took the entire rhythm of a
song, as in looping, which a lot of people are doing today. You're going to
take a track, loop the entire thing, and then that becomes the basic track
for the song. They just paperclip a backbeat to it. But we were taking a
horn hit here, a guitar riff there, we might take a little speech, a
kicking snare from somewhere else. It was all bits and pieces.

Stay Free!: Did you have to license the samples in It Takes a Nation of
Millions before it was released?

Shocklee: No, it was cleared afterwards. A lot of stuff was cleared
afterwards. Back in the day, things was different. The copyright laws
didn't really extend into sampling until the hip-hop artists started
getting sued. As a matter of fact, copyright didn't start catching up with
us until Fear of a Black Planet. That's when the copyrights and everything
started becoming stricter because you had a lot of groups doing it and
people were taking whole songs. It got so widespread that the record
companies started policing the releases before they got out.

Stay Free!: With its hundreds of samples, is it possible to make a record
like It Takes a Nation of Millions today? Would it be possible to clear
every sample?

Shocklee: It wouldn't be impossible. It would just be very, very costly.
The first thing that was starting to happen by the late 1980s was that the
people were doing buyouts. You could have a buyout meaning you could
purchase the rights to sample a sound for around $1,500. Then it started
creeping up to $3,000, $3,500, $5,000, $7,500. Then they threw in this
thing called rollover rates. If your rollover rate is every 100,000 units,
then for every 100,000 units you sell, you have to pay an additional
$7,500. A record that sells two million copies would kick that cost up
twenty times. Now you're looking at one song costing you more than half of
what you would make on your album.

Chuck D: Corporations found that hip-hop music was viable. It sold albums,
which was the bread and butter of corporations. Since the corporations
owned all the sounds, their lawyers began to search out people who
illegally infringed upon their records. All the rap artists were on the big
six record companies, so you might have some lawyers from Sony looking at
some lawyers from BMG and some lawyers from BMG saying, "Your artist is
doing this," so it was a tit for tat that usually made money for the
lawyers, garnering money for the company. Very little went to the original
artist or the publishing company.

Shocklee: By 1990, all the publishers and their lawyers started making
moves. One big one was Bridgeport, the publishing house that owns all the
George Clinton stuff. Once all the little guys started realizing you can
get paid from rappers if they use your sample, it prompted the record
companies to start investigating because now the people that they publish
are getting paid.

Stay Free!: There's a noticeable difference in Public Enemy's sound between
1988 and 1991. Did this have to do with the lawsuits and enforcement of
copyright laws at the turn of the decade?
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