»When you’re alone / And life is making you lonely,/ You can always go / Downtown«. These are the opening lines of Petula Clark’s 1964 hit single »Downtown«. The lyrics were written by British songwriter Tony Hatch, who found his inspiration amongst the glaring neon signs and traffic noise of New York’s Times Square. The feeling that »Downtown« expressed may have been right for many New Yorkers, but the geographic location wasn’t: when the locals talk about »downtown«, they are referring to the part of Manhattan south of 14th Street, which lies well below Times Square.
New York’s downtown scene – dazzling and eccentric
For the city’s arts scene, the »real« downtown provided a breeding ground for theatre, dance, film, music, performance art, painting and literature where the boundaries between the art forms were often fluid, with different circles and groups constantly establishing new alliances. Andy Warhol, for instance, made films there for his Factory, Fluxus artist Yoko Ono put on her loft concerts, and the legendary jazzman Ornette Coleman worked on his album »The Shape of Jazz to Come«. The famous artists Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg celebrated their happenings downtown, and galleries, clubs and artist-run spaces were set up far away from the more academic uptown scene to the north.
Reflektor John Zorn
From 17 to 20 March 2022, John Zorn will design the Elbphilharmonie programme with around thirty musician friends – from string quartets to all-star bands.
Starting in the second half of the 1970s, composer and alto sax player John Zorn became the leading light of the downtown music scene. Radical and eclectic, experimental and subversive, and impossible to pigeonhole in any classic genre, Zorn has been moving freely since then between avantgarde, Noise, jazz, classical, klezmer, exotica, grindcore and many other styles.
»What this scene produces is without a doubt hybrid music,« Zorn once declared, and elsewhere he emphasised that he wanted to work free of genre labels and hierarchies. It was cartoon figure Mickey Mouse that showed him the way to Stravinsky’s music, after all. For Zorn, a notorious workaholic, his work is his focus, the process of composition, of improvisation and recording: he can be heard as either composer or musician and often in both capacities) on a good 700 records.
The Spotify playlist in cooperation with ByteFM
He created the structures he needed over decades in best do-it-yourself style. With Zorn as a connecting link, the downtown music scene has turned into a place where unconventional music, music commonly seen as »difficult«, is played, recorded and marketed through clubs, record labels and record stores.
John Zorn has run various clubs himself and still does – starting with Studio Henry, later with The Stone, a venue where the musicians receive all the admission money and there is no bar serving alcohol to distract people from the music. Since 1995, Zorn has also been in charge of the Tzadik label, with which he keeps his own catalogue in circulation, as well as experimental music by many other artists.
John Zorn as connecting link
In interviews, Mr Zorn never tires of emphasising how important his musical-artistic community is and what a strong team spirit prevails. Like a film auteur who works together with a regularly ensemble of actors, John Zorn has a whole team of like-minded musicians at his disposal, among them Bill Frisell, Mike Patton, Ikue Mori, Joey Baron, Fred Frith and Susie Ibarra, who perform his compositions as an adventurous group with a changing line-up.
Last but not least, Zorn is also part of the downtown scene thanks to his third-floor apartment in New York’s East Village, where he has been living and working since 1977. The apartment also houses his extensive record collection, where albums by artists as diverse as Butthole Surfers, Johann Sebastian Bach, Miles Davis, Ennio Morricone, Carole King, Napalm Death, Die Kreuzen and Funkadelic stand next to each other on the shelves, one as important as the next.
Article in cooperation with ByteFM, last updated: 11 Mar 2022
