Looking back on a century-old scene has always had its own set of problems, as you suggested in your last post. Postmodernism has taught us that we’re all special, inscrutable snowflakes and art history is nothing but an attempt to make a coherent narrative out of what was basically a bunch of ideas and nights at the bar and shifting alliances, etc. Still, most agree that these “fantasy versions of the past” crafted by historians have some value.

Probably all of that seems obvious, but I just wanted to acknowledge that human history has always been a hot mess before pointing out that our narratives are becoming increasingly incoherent. Scenes used to be much more tied to geography. Looking back, you can lock coordinates on a (local) scene and then trace its context more broadly into a (global) movement—a movement that, like the Vikings, forged a physical path.

As technology changes the ways in which we communicate and collaborate, the people whose ideas we brush up against are not nearly so likely to be the people with whom we fight and fuck. Anyone’s web of professional affiliations in 2009 is bound to be far more complex than anyone’s web in fin-de-siècle Paris. So, like, will future music historians comb through IM archives? And how many music movements will be traced back to myspace? How could any historian be expected to craft a narrative from, to take only one example, the professional affiliations you describe in your last post (much less its comments)?

Anyway, it is true that I wrote language, in our New Amsterdam mission statement, that includes the word “scene” more than once. But it’s very strange to have New Amsterdam held up as an organization with an ethos that might possibly run counter to the initial premise of your post – that scenes are ephemeral and constantly changing and can’t be pinned down. In fact, there’s one more sentence in our mission statement, coming just after the lines you displayed: “We hope that New Amsterdam develops as quickly and as broadly as the scene itself, capturing the best that people in it have to offer along the way, and touching the outer edges where musics meet.” So there is a scene, loosely defined, and then there is New Amsterdam; the term is descriptive, not prescriptive. Think of a National Park, think of Yosemite. To say that the park IS the mountains and lakes and trees it circumscribes would be an act of the greatest hubris….

Then there’s the question of affiliation, which feels like the central concern of your post. You’re certainly someone who could be placed in a variety of scenes, or none, depending on the person doing the placing. But that’s true of most everyone I know, and it’s certainly not the case that everyone on the New Amsterdam roster is defined solely, or even primarily, by their affiliation with the label. Look at just the examples you cite – Darcy’s got his jazz world, Jody plays in a ton of groups that aren’t on the label, and I don’t have to tell you about Nadia or Alex and the “scenes” they traverse. Or I can just speak for myself: very, very little of my own music is released on New Amsterdam, and I depend on my involvement with other “scenes” for many if not most of my performances. If that’s true for a co-founder of the label, why can’t it be true for you, too? Why the binary, the in or the out?

Or, to be more precise, when you ask the provocative question, does the fact that this community (as loosely articulated as the New Amsterdam family) has supported something that I find to be Literally Appalling mean that I am not ever really able to be fully part of the community?, how do you mean “fully part”? What would that look like? Or do you mean to answer that question, even as you ask it, by embedding a term that you know will drive you apart from some segment of that community?

These are questions to discuss this weekend, perhaps. As a final note, here, I just have to point out that we have never engaged in the kind of mutual critiques that you describe – you and I, I mean – in a public forum. The closest we came was that time in Seattle, which was incredibly fun and quite interesting (hopefully for the audience as well), but I think the public nature of it made it very different from what we engage in privately. Like, there was not a lot of spinach-in-teeth-noting; instead, it was more like “here’s what’s so great about Nico’s music, etc.”. Which is what I think we should do in Public. If we’re going to hold a special session to Publicly Critique one another, that’s certainly compelling, but I think we’d talk about it first – wouldn’t we? I hope? So, in that light, what you are proposing as the norm for intra-scene critique, which is to say, that of the unsolicited, spontaneous public variety, is really quite radical, even by the standards of a 12+ year friendship and musical relationship such as ours.

I’m looking forward to seeing you this weekend, whether we discuss these things or not. I’m not going to be on e-mail going forward so I’ll just see you up there.

Nico responds: Hi! Thanks for writing. No, I agree, it pained me to be specific — but I feel like that’s kind of a problem (unspecific criticism) inside “our” (the/this) community. And if a friend and colleague — like for instance, Judd — says something critical of what I’m up to, I take it very seriously indeed, much more so than a bad review coming from somebody not predisposed to like what it is that I’m up to. So when you ask “to what end,” I think the answer is so that we all can write better music in the future. People with whom I can enjoy aggressive back-and-forth about music are people I really value; my biggest, deepest phobia is that people would secretly dislike my music or like, cringe when they heard it PRIVATELY and never tell me about it!? Wouldn’t you die? It’s only ur homegirls who tell you when you have spinach in your teeth or if your fly is undid. So in this case I was like, this is a woman close to my community who is clearly a very, very talented musician with a lot of technical skillz and a ballsy, difficult project who has made what I would say are some bad decisions across various media & conceptual borders. Releasing an album is scary because all ur warts and gnúðitý are out there for anybody in the world to see. When JR becomes less obscure, relatively or not, I’d love for her to emerge triumphant, singing & playing, fabulous music fabulously. So it’s in that spirit that I wrote what I wrote. Thanks for writing in…!

I’ve played three of the five spots you name and then some (I’ve been here almost 12 years now…) and you’re right, there are some nice venues in this city for new music (Roulette definitely sticks out for me – that space is beautiful and Jim Staley is truly a force of nature).

BUT – without going into details, if you talk to musicians who gig more than once every couple months, you will find out that the club scene in NYC – generally speaking – is notorious for treating its musicians badly. Between real estate, economics, and a weird hostility towards the arts…It’s possible I’m thinking more about the rock and jazz players I know. A lot of the musicians I work with come from those worlds.

Think about it: What forward thinking jazz ensemble or new music group has had a residency (i.e. played more than one night) at a club here in NYC? AWS has over at Le Poison Rouge which is wonderful. But the fact that William Parker’s quartet or any number of other incredible bands that bridge “scenes” as you say can’t book a week or a couple weeks at one venue is absurd to me.

Now I will say something on topic. I went to The Stone once and had an okay time. But it was smaller and less comfortable than other venues in NYC that host this kind of music. They do exist, Chris Becker – Issue Project Room, The Tank, Galapagos, Roulette, The Kitchen sometimes, and there are probably some more that I have never been to. All these places may not provide as much support as Europe, or Italy, but to an outsider like me they seem to nurse many scenes and give these scenes chances to intersect.

nicomuhly.com : The Stone :: Google Reader : Europe

Frankly, Butch Morris’ show last Tuesday at the Stone was wonderful but – yes, the lack of A/C (Butch wanted it off) made it very, very hard on some of the audience members to enjoy his set. In fact, more than a few left at the break. And Butch didn’t look too comfortable either!

And the elephant in the room here is that NYC lacks venues to host this kind of music. If you talk to musicians who were here back in the 70’s and 80’s they’ll confirm that things have gotten worse! Butch did do sets with the ensemble I saw at the Stone at Issue Project Room (which is very nice but way the hell out of the way for most people) and the Visionfest. But his real support seems to come from (you guessed it) Europe – Italy specifically.

P.S. My first Anthony show was the best – The Knitting Factory before Now I’m A Bird dropped. Very intimate, musically just solid, good doses of humor – he and Joan did a kick ass version of “Be my husband…” that just rocked.