This is not a blog post.
This is an invitation for an adventure in artistic expression. This is about you creating your own art manifesto. After all, to start a movement you first have to move yourself.
Is Something Missing?
Don’t you enjoy talking about your creative work?
Do you have trouble figuring out where to go artistically with your next album?
Does your artist biography read a tat dry and impersonal?
Does your grant application need a punch?
Did your last interview with that great jazz magazine miss artistic flavor?
There is a way to infuse your art and communication about it with more personality and purpose that’s not used in Jazz: the Art Manifesto. To see the first-ever art manifesto click on it. It truly still is worth the read!
Free Art Out Of Its Music Box
As an artist, you express your humanity through your chosen medium; music. You work relentlessly on further mastering your craft to convey your message ever more eloquently, fluently, and with increasing precision. You strive for that state of flow where you seem nothing more than a humble vessel for the Muses. You create great art, outspoken, personal, and deeply human. Great! So, what’s next?
After creating art comes spreading your art. You need to communicate it to others using other media. You will have to write and speak about your art. In my experience though, few musicians stay artists when they start typing. They lock up their inner poet and unleash their inner – often even outsourced – marketing manager. Not only the produced content suffers from this, but also the artist herself will enjoy the process of communicating about her art less.
Sounds familiar? Then ask yourself: why does your art stop with music? Why doesn’t it include language? Does your artistry have limits? Why not set your art free beyond music and let it breathe life into all your communication with others?
This blog post is a battle cry for your inner poet. Karl Marx talked about ‘the poetry of the revolution’ – the forms and the phrases that would make it sing – I want you to find the ‘poetry of your music’. Your own specific, personal, colorful, purposeful, quirky, and inflammatory poetry. We’re talking about artistic vocabulary. Purposeful language that expresses your artistic vision, personality, and your purpose with your art.
Are you with me?
What Is An Art Manifesto?
An art manifesto is a statement of your artistic vision. It is a core set of beliefs about art. It is a battle cry for your inner artist. It spells out what you stand for. It’s what you want to change in the world through your art. It holds the conviction of artists’ ideas and the power to spread them. An art manifesto has two main goals. The first is to define and criticize a paradigm in contemporary art or culture; the second is to define a set of aesthetic values to counter this paradigm.
An Unfamiliar Artform
Art manifestos are mainly associated with fine arts and movements like Surrealism, Dadaism, or Futurism. Few musicians know that from 1910 till now, also many composers published manifestos of their own. From Classical Music (Pratella), Punk (Bikini Kill), Indie-Pop (The Knife), Ambient Music (Brian Eno), Black-Metal (Liturgy) to Funk (Mono Neon). So, you might ask, what about Jazz? Well, it’s rare, but We Insist recently published a powerful manifesto on Jazz and its revolutionary role in society. A quote: “The music of this country, Jazz, narrates this struggle for justice and Black Liberation throughout the United States and the Global South. By this definition, Jazz is an intrinsically collaborative revolutionary act and discourse. There is currently little respect for this revolutionary orientation in academic jazz programs or spaces, the record industry, media, or arts organizations.“
The act of thinking about your art and its possible meaning of transformation for others is essential if you want your art to connect. It is essential if you want to bring about change: be it emotional, spiritual, political, societal, physical, or musical. Therefore, this article is a call-to-action to add your revolutionary voice to the choir and sing your gospel of Love and Change. You just still have to write its text.
Below, another example by Funk artist and bassist Mono Neon.
Steal Like An Artist
Some more inspiring examples for further exploration are:
- The Art of Noise (1913, Russolo). Basically, the foundation for experimental electronic music before it was even invented. A quote: “We must break at all cost from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.“
- The Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1911, Busoni).
- The Stuckist Manifesto (1999): “Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist. Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression. Painting is the medium of self-discovery. It engages the person fully with a process of action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving breadth and detail.”
Why Write One Yourself?
When you create your own art manifesto you can clarify your beliefs about music and where you stand. It gives words to the intentions behind your art. Instincts, feelings, intentions, values, even your whole identity can stay vague when not concisely described in words. The right words that make your text sing. The exercise of writing it will challenge your own assumptions and force you to formulate your artistic position in the current Zeitgeist. If you let it, it can be a daily reminder about what art is all about for you. In addition, learning how to explain your creative motives can be a useful skill when promoting yourself.
The Art Of Manifestoing
We all have heard of Marx & Engels and their Communist Manifesto, but it wasn’t until ‘The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism‘ was splashed on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909 that the arts embraced this new medium. It was the beginning of ‘manifestoing’. Every serious artist needed a manifesto. Art didn’t need a gallery, it needed a movement. It was a chance to take a stand, burn the tradition and proclaim your art as the phoenix rising from the ashes of meaningless, unreal, and dead art.
How do you write a manifesto?
To manifesto is to perform. I recommend any artist to see this as an extension of their artistic expression; as a piece of art in itself. There is therefore not one way of creating your art manifesto. There are countless variations, but some essential elements can be named.
Manifestos typically consist of two parts: a poetic battle cry that puts your vision in words and rallies the troops, and a list of principles formulated as statements. The introduction of The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, the frontrunner of the Avant-Garde movement in Europe, still speaks to my heart – and the hearts of many – a century later:
“It is from Italy that we hurl at the whole world this utterly violent, inflammatory manifesto of ours, with which we today are founding ‘Futurism’ because we wish to free our country from the stinking canker of its professors, archaeologists, tour guides and antiquarians. For far too long Italy has been a marketplace for junk dealers. We want our country free from the endless number of museums that everywhere cover her like countless graveyards. Museums, graveyards! … They’re the same thing, really, because of their grim profusion of corpses that no one remembers.”
How is that for a start? It clearly shows the ‘poetry of the revolution’ in action.
Your Manifesto Needs Statements
Your principles about music are the ‘policies’ that a political manifesto would describe. In these principles, you lay out the groundwork of your vision on music (and its role in society). Just like the ten commandments in the Bible. To illustrate the second part – principles – below you’ll find the first four principles from the “Manifesto of Futurist Musicians” (1910, Pratella):
- “To convince young composers to desert schools, conservatories and musical academies, and to consider free study as the only means of regeneration.
- To combat the venal and ignorant critics with assiduous contempt, liberating the public from the pernicious effects of their writings.
- To found with this aim in view a musical review that will be independent and resolutely opposed to the criteria of conservatory professors and to those of the debased public.
- To abstain from participating in any competition with the customary closed envelopes and related admission charges, denouncing all mystifications publicly, and unmasking the incompetence of juries, which are generally composed of fools and impotents.”
There still is truth in these statements today about Higher Music Education conserving tradition instead of moving music and individual expression forward. Or the role of music critics that sometimes just don’t get the music or even times we live in because they’re stuck in an almost religiously fanatic and narrow definition of what ‘real’ jazz is.
Your Kind Of Manifesto
Traditionally, the success of an art manifesto depended on its violence and its precision (l’accusation précise, l’insulte bien définie) combined with humor and theatrics. It requires style, courage and a rebellious spirit. You cannot be generic and safe. Furthermore, you will have to find a balance in defining yourself against (mainstream, predecessors) and in defining yourself for. A bit like long live and down with.
My tips for writing your own, besides reading inspiring examples, is to have clarity on your values. Are you all about freedom, spirituality, adventure, and curiosity? Infuse your art manifesto with them. Ask yourself what these values mean for your live performance, your compositions, your collaborations, band interplay, or album artwork. Below an example of Wynton Marsalis:
“Jazz calls us to engage with our national identity. It gives expression to the beauty of democracy and of personal freedom and of choosing to embrace the humanity of all types of people. It really is what American democracy is supposed to be.“
I think his ‘mission statement’ comes alive in his music and in how he speaks about it on stage and in the media. Wynton clearly tries to embody his values in his art.
Make It Personal
Make it personal. Make it reflect who you are and what your art is all about. Yes, ‘steal like an artist’ as Austin Kleon would say, but do it your way. And be pppppppplayful, play with words like with notes. Imagine a different future, a different sound, free of conventions and ego. Let your music and your manifesto take you forward. Let it never be finished and never be perfect. Create your art manifesto NOW!
Jazz or the revolution, that is the question.
Pieter Schoonderwoerd
Your Jazz Career
A great resource on Art Manifestos is the book: “100 Artist’s Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists” selected by Alex Danchev.
Find an empowering ebook on developing your artistic vision and writing a compelling artist biography here.
I’ve been coaching and educating jazz artists for years to achieve their creative and professional ambitions. If you are a high-performing artist and interested in transformative career coaching, you can read more about it here.
Be More Of You. Be Creative!