#9 with David McGee: The Eastman Effect

Julius Eastman was a provocative, outspoken composer active in the 1970s experimental music scene in New York. His titles for his works, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger, created an uproar at the time among academic circles and continue to provoke discomfort. His infamous 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, in which Eastman undressed a male volunteer onstage and made sexual overtures to him, incensed Cage and created a permanent rift with the elder statesman. Things would go downhill from there for Eastman, who struggled to make ends meet and was eventually evicted from his Lower East Side apartment, losing all his compositions and possessions in the process. As a promising young singer and pianist, Eastman had performed at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center; but he died in 1990 at the age of 49, homeless and forgotten in Buffalo, NY. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work, with an exhibition and tribute at the Kitchen in New York earlier this year. Our host David McGee speaks with composer and self-described "accidental musicologist" Mary Jane Leach, who co-authored the 2015 book Gay Guerrilla (Eastman Studies in Music); and with Houston composer and writer Chris Becker.