Between 1975 and 1988 New York City spawned an incredible and wild array of artistic communities that overlapped and interbred with scant heed for generic "purity" (let alone posterity): every musician, it seemed, was also an artist, every artist a filmmaker and every filmmaker was in a band. These heady years saw the births of Punk at CBGB and Max's Kansas City, of Hip Hop in the Bronx, the emerging art music activities of Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson, Free Jazz and the No Wave art/rock scene around James Chance, Lydia Lunch and Mars. New York Noise is Paula Court's photographic tour of these colliding worlds. From her arrival in New York City in 1978, Court diligently photographed the likes of Glenn Branca, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Byrne, Rhys Chatham, Lou Reed, James Chance, Patti Smith, Afrika Bambaata, John Cage, Robert Longo, Jim Jarmusch, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, as well as bands like DNA, Suicide, Bush Tetras, ESG and the Rock Steady Crew. Also captured in these pages are nascent musicians and actors such as Michael Stipe, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe and Madonna, who came into artistic maturity amid these diverse scenes. With over 400 images, many of them previously unpublished, New York Noise follows Soul Jazz Records' critically acclaimed CD series, providing an unprecedented visual record of one of New York's liveliest cultural eras.

New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88: Photographs by Paula Court

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Soul Jazz Books

The momentum of the 1960s civil rights movement and the explosion of Rock music and the underground press in that decade impacted Jazz in amazing ways, both musically and culturally. Years before Punk, musicians like John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Don Cherry, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and others took control of their work by recording, releasing and distributing their music themselves, often in runs as low as 500 copies. As a result, Jazz music got a whole new look. The record sleeves of this era (roughly 1965-1983) are as iconic and historically unique as the music itself, which, in the wake of innovations by Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, boldly abandoned tonal anchors for the wilder shores of improvisation, incorporating Gospel, Asian, Rock and electronic influences. Soul Jazz Records has issued many releases relating to this music, and Freedom, Rhythm and Sound is the first ever collection of this fascinating goldmine of album art, which represents the first wave of inspired independent production within popular music. The book provides a large introduction contextualizing the music and artwork, as well as interviews with many of the people involved. Alongside the musicians mentioned above, these include Kelan Phil Cohran, Charles Tyler, Steve Reid, Mary Lou Williams, Horace Tapscott, Lloyd McNeil, Phil Ranelin, Marcus Belgrave, Paris Smith, Jayne Cortez, Joe McPhee, Weldon Irvine, Shamek Farrah, Cecil McBee, Stanley Cowell, Tribe, The Last Poets, The Pharoahs and many others. 30 years on, their works are exemplary in their untamed DIY energy and graphic boldness.

Freedom, Rhythm and Sound: Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965-83

Reference

Voodoo, sex, death and revolution are the main ingredients of the street theatre carnival of Jacmel, Haiti, where the men wear drag, black up, wear cow horns, throw lassos and dance with snakes in their mouths. In Haiti, carnivals offer an opportunity for people to come together-to hang out, sing, dance, laugh and to generally let go. Light years away from the government- sponsored, tourist inspired carnival floats of so many other cultures, the Haitian carnival is particularly notable for its more sober political dimension, as a venue for Haitian peasants to discuss local politics, or older, nagging, historical problems dating back to the slave revolts-and as an occasion to commune with ancestors both personal and historical. With oral histories from participants, Karnaval is a fascinating combination of photography, cultural analysis and anthropology.

Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti

Gordon, Leah

Fleming, Richard

Smith, Kathy

Constantino, Don

Beasley, Myron

Photography & Video

Spawned in the upscale beachside neighborhoods of Rio De Janeiro in the late 1950s, the laid-back sound and culture of Bossa Nova ("New Wave") rode on a brief wave of optimism in Brazil: the country had just elected a new president, a five-year plan for prosperity had been laid out and the great architect Oscar Niemeyer had proposed his plans for the new modern city of Brasilia. Reflecting this optimism in its gentle and sunny soundworld, Bossa Nova quickly became a worldwide musical phenomenon. (The first Bossa Nova single to achieve international popularity was of course the Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz hit "The Girl from Ipanema.") But by 1964, as Bossa Nova was taking America and the world by storm, tanks were thundering through Rio de Janeiro as the country fell under the rule of a violent military dictatorship that would affect the lives of musicians and ordinary Brazilians alike for the next 20 years. Retrieving the unique visual culture of this moment, Bossa Nova Beat features hundreds of stunning full-size record cover designs of Bossa Nova and later Brazilian music from the 1960s, such as M.P.B. (Musica Popular Brasileira) and Tropicalia. The book also comes complete with full accompanying text, essays and interviews on the historical, political and social context of this Brazilian music as well as features on all the important artists and musicians of the era such as Sergio Mendes, Tom Jobim, Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Caetano Veloso and many more. As the first visual treatment of this now popular music, Bossa Nova Beat is both a pleasure and a revelation.

Bossa Nova: The Rise of Brazilian Music in the 60s

Graphic Design

Harlem’s gay ball subculture of the late 1980s is superbly documented in this trove of previously unseen photographs.
In 1989, Malcolm McLaren had his only number one hit with a single called "Deep in Vogue." Early the next year, Madonna had one of the biggest hits of her career, with the single "Vogue," and when Jennie Livingston's film Paris Is Burning arrived in cinemas the same year, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the mainstream got hip to New York City's extraordinary ball culture, from which the film and McLaren and Madonna's songs had arisen. Paris Is Burning documented a gay ballroom scene that emerged in Harlem in the mid-1980s, which drew African American and Latino gay and transgender communities to compete against one another for their dancing skills, the verisimilitude of their drag and their ability to walk on the runway. Photographer Chantal Regnault spent many years recording this scene, from which the dance style known as voguing arose. A visual riot of fashion, polysexuality and subversive style, Voguing and the Gay Balls of New York City is also an extraordinary document on sexuality and race. The wild years of voguing are vividly captured in Regnault's hundreds of amazing, previously unpublished photographs. The book also features interviews with key figures from the movement, essays, flyers and ephemera. Photographer and documentarist Chantal Regnault was born in France. She left Paris after the 1968 uprisings to live in New York, where she lived for the next 15 years. At the end of the 1980s she became immersed in Harlem's voguing scene. Also around this time, Regnault developed an interest in Haitian voodoo culture and began to divide her time between Haiti and New York. Her widely published photographs have appeared in major magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair and The New York Times.

Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York, 1989-92

As iconic as Motown was to soul, or Blue Note for jazz, the legendary Jamaican reggae label Studio One was the creation of one of music's greatest impresarios, Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd. Throughout the 1950s, Dodd's Downbeat Soundsystem was the most important sound system in downtown Kingston's burgeoning dancehall scene, fighting off the competition of Duke Reid, Tom the Great Sebastian and others. Dodd began producing his own records in the late 1950s and in 1963, the year after Jamaican Independence, he launched Studio One. Once described by Chris Blackwell as the “University of Reggae,” Studio One is by far the most important record label in the history of reggae music, its artists comprising an A-Z of Jamaican music: it was there that Bob Marley and the Wailers, Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Freddie McGregor, The Skatalites, Marcia Griffiths, Burning Spear, The Heptones, Toots and the Maytals and many more artists became stars. This deluxe hardback volume is the first ever to tell the story of Studio One and the many artists whose careers it launched. It features hundreds of stunning full-size Studio One record cover designs and original artwork, as well as rare and exclusive photographs, original flyers and artist interviews. As Jamaica approaches its fiftieth anniversary of independence, Studio One Records offers a timely look at reggae music's most legendary record label and the artists and musicians that it made famous.

The Cover Art of Studio One Records

Music

From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music. This deluxe publication, featuring hundreds of stunning full-size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music, takes a timely look at the endless visual creativity of reggae record cover designs--iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning 60 years of Jamaican sounds. Reggae Soundsystem! includes a fascinating introductory essay on the history of reggae by Steve Barrow (author of Rough Guide to Reggae and founder of the reggae label Blood &amp; Fire) and is edited by Stuart Baker, founder of Soul Jazz Records.

Reggae Soundsystem: Original Reggae Album Cover Art: A Visual History of Jamaican Music From Mento to Dancehall

The 45-rpm seven-inch single is at the heart of reggae music, the main vehicle by which reggae music has been communicated to the public by the deejays in the dancehalls of Kingston, and to its worldwide audience beyond. Ever since the birth of the Jamaican music industry, over 60 years ago, and through to the present day, these idiosyncratic label designs have helped illustrate, signify and energize the music they accompany. Reggae Soundsystem 45! features 1,000 stunning 45-rpm single designs, reproduced full size, that span the history of reggae music. These label designs give us a hidden history in album design that is raw, innovative and hip. Published in tandem with the album-size Reggae Soundsystem!, the book includes a fascinating essay on the birth and rise of the 45-rpm single in reggae music by Steve Barrow, author of Rough Guide to Reggae and founder of the reggae label Blood &amp; Fire. The book is edited by Soul Jazz founder Stuart Baker.

Reggae Soundsystem: Label Art of Reggae Singles

Punk 45 is a revelatory guide to hundreds and hundreds of original seven-inch record cover sleeve designs--visual artifacts found at the heart of the most radical and anarchistic musical movement of the twentieth century. Spurred by the Desperate Bicycles’ rallying cry “It was easy, it was cheap--go and do it!” and Mark Perry’s “Here are three chords. Now form a band,” thousands of new groups emerged in the wake of the Pistols, between 1976 and 1980. This politicized do-it-yourself ethic was applied to design as much as it was to music, and these lo-fi record sleeves declared politics ranging from anarchism to socialism, anticonsumerism, feminism and more. Spanning pre-punk to postpunk, Punk 45 is introduced and co-compiled by Jon Savage, author of the acclaimed, definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England’s Dreaming, and the period’s most pre-eminent historian. It features sleeves from bands such as the Adverts, Cabaret Voltaire, Crass, Dead Kennedys, Electric Eels, The Flamin’ Groovies, The Human League, Joy Division, Pere Ubu, Plastic Bertrand, The Residents, X-Ray Spex and many, many others. As well as original artwork, the book also includes interviews and articles on designers such as Peter Saville, Jamie Reid, Malcolm Garrett and Gee Voucher, and interviews with record label founders such as Geoff Travis (Rough Trade), printing pressers and more. Punk 45 is an exhaustive, thorough and exciting celebration of the stunning artwork of punk music, including everything from the most celebrated and iconic designs through to the stark beauty of the cheapest do-it-yourself lo-fi obscurities.

Punk 45: Original Punk Rock Singles Cover Art

At the start of the 1960s, jazz entered a unique period of revolution as African-American musicians redefined the art form in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-centric rhythm and thought and an ideology of black economic empowerment. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and others developed a new cosmology of sound that was as revolutionary as the social and political changes that took place in America throughout the decade. From the musical explorations of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman to the collective and community concerns of Chciago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the black science fiction of Sun Ra, the new jazz musicians created a musical and cultural landscape from which jazz never looked back. This large-format deluxe hardback book features hundreds of stunning photographs of the new jazz musicians in the USA throughout the 1960s, presented with an introductory essay and biographies on the many artists included in the book.

Black Fire! New Spirits!: Images of a Revolution: Radical Jazz in the USA 1960-75

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