Stan 153: "In the early seventies graffiti was basically a neighborhood thing" (original) (raw)
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In the early 1970s, the “graffiti movement” made its way to New York City in the form of “tagging.” The New York City graffiti movement’s popularity grew, but problems in the city began to mount. The city faced severe weather, fiscal crises, and violence in the 1970s that resulted in economic, political, racial, and social chaos. With the rise of graffiti, the appearance of unrefined writing and imagery on public spaces became an easy target for the city’s prevalent unemployment, poverty, crime, and violence during the 1970s and 1980s. Graffiti consumed almost all of New York City public spaces, covering buses and subway trains, government buildings, schools, sidewalks, and streets. The “broken windows” theory developed among politicians that linked the city’s dirty and disheveled spatial appearance with social disorder. City politicians attacked graffiti in hopes of eliminating the economic, political, racial, and social turmoil of the city. Even with success in eliminating a majority of the graffiti by the end of the 1980s, the same problems of the city remained. Consequently, the “broken windows” theory was incorrect. Graffiti had become a scapegoat for New York City’s urban crisis and was not the cause for the city’s urban decay in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Out of the Studio and Into the Street": Art and Artists for Social Change, New York City, 1966-76
This study examines artists’ approaches to social change in New York City from 1966 to 1976. During this period, overlapping communities of artists and art professionals sought means of providing a social meaning and purpose for their practice – one that addressed the political ruptures of the 1960s and 1970s, and challenged what was perceived as a classed, elitist, and socially disengaged art establishment. In doing so, they produced politically motivated art and performance, while participating in active protest, initiating museum reform, and engaging in community arts and education projects. While these developments reflect the national context, the thesis argues that they need to be understood within their local setting. As artists responded to political and social concerns, they did so with reference to their own local conditions as both artists and residents of New York City. Tracing these impulses into the 1970s, the thesis also challenges scholarly periodizations that present 1969 as an endpoint for social movements initiated in the 1960s. Within this framework, the art and actions of New York art-protesters reflect unique and innovative approaches to activism and social change that both appropriated aspects of the avant-garde tradition, and anticipated future modes of political radicalism.
Salsa Criticism at the Turn of the Century: Identity Politics and Authenticity
Popular Music and Society, 2005
Turning the table on the critics, a salsa musician writes about the writings on music, becoming a critic himself during the process. Having played in at least one of the famous salsa bands mentioned in each of the books he considers, the musician sets out with the presumption that the critics will have nothing new to tell him. Picking his way along the printed pages, he discovers answers to some of the questions that plagued him during salsa's golden age, as well as newly significant aspects of a musical style that has lasted long enough to be heard by the children of its original audience. Some mysteries remain, however; the critics cannot agree on who plays this music authentically, who knows how to listen to it, and why. In the end, it may turn out that the music will create its own listeners: the interbred offspring of salsa's varied listeners who are as difficult to categorize as the music.