StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: The BAG legacy, part one

For the next couple of weeks, let's revisit part of St. Louis creative music history by looking at some videos featuring musicians who were part of the Black Artists Group, a multi-arts collective that produced music, poetry, dance, theater and visual arts here from 1968 to 1972.

Partly inspired by and operating similarly to Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), BAG helped launch the careers of a number of notable musicians, including saxophonists Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and J.D. Parran; trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore, trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw, and more.

At its peak, the group was getting funding from organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Danforth Foundation to present performances and educational programs in local schools, as well as from their headquarters at 2665 Washington Blvd in what's now the Grand Center district.

By 1972, much of that funding had dried up, and most of the BAG musicians moved on, some heading to Europe and subsequently to New York City, where a number of them would play significant roles in the "loft jazz" scene of the 1970s.

Though not much documentation survives of what BAG did during its busiest years, there was one "official" album credited to the group, In Paris, Aries 1973, which, as the title implies, was recorded in Europe while a number of the musicians were living there as expatriates.

The first video up above, also recorded in 1973 in Paris, is part of what seems to be the only footage available online of an ensemble billed as the Black Artists Group, in this case including Lake, Carroll, Bowie, guitarist Jimmy Jones, and drummer Donald Robinson. The performance continues after the jump in today's second video.

Even though BAG may have been relatively short-lived, its influence continued to be felt through the continuing careers of the musicians who were part of it. One of the most significant groups to emerge after BAG was the World Saxophone Quartet, formed in 1977 by Lake, Bluiett, Hemphill, and saxophonist David Murray.

Their innovations, combining free jazz with arranged material in a band without a traditional rhythm section, proved to be both artistically influential and relatively popular by the non-commercial standards of creative music.

You can see and hear the WSQ's original lineup in the third video, recorded in 1987 at JazzFest Berlin in Germany and featuring material from their 1986 album Plays Duke Ellington.

Around that same time, Bluiett pursued a somewhat-similar concept with his band Clarinet Family, bringing together a half-dozen clarinetists including fellow St. Louisan and ex-BAG member J.D. Parran for a 1984 recording on the Black Saint label and live performances including the fourth video, a full set of music recorded in November 1984, also in Berlin.

The fifth video is an interview of Lake and Bluiett, recorded in March 2014, and the final clip is an interview with Bluiett alone, recorded in 2016 under the auspices of instrument makers P Mauriat North America.

While these clips just begin to scratch the surface, the history of the Black Artists Group was documented extensively in the 2004 book BAG: Point from which creation begins: the Black Artists' Group of St. Louis, written by Benjamin Looker, then a graduate of Washington University working on a master's at Yale, now an associate professor of American Studies at St. Louis University.

You can listen to interviews with Looker, Parran and another former BAG member, playwright and poet Malinke Elliott, in a 2006 episode of St. Louis Public Radio's "St. Louis History in Black and White" podcast. In February of that same year, several ex-members of BAG and Looker also took part in a symposium at Washington University exploring BAG's history and legacy.

Lake spoke about his experiences with BAG in a 2017 interview with Bandcamp Daily, and also was interviewed briefly by Psychedelic Baby magazine in 2018 when In Paris, Aries 1973 got a limited-edition reissue from Aguirre Records.

There's also a documentary film about BAG that's been in production for several years, with a trailer here and a Facebook page, though there's still no word about when the film might be released.

Next week, we'll take a look at some more music from Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett, as well as videos featuring other former members of the Black Artists Group. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...