The Loft Jazz Movement in Lower Manhattan
- J Plunky Branch
- Mar 18
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
that the musical movements you pass through can be numerous and reach far back in your history. Stay in the music long enough and your life becomes a kind of living archive - an oral history carried through memory, relationships, and late-night bandstands.
One such movement for me was the loft jazz scene in lower Manhattan in the early 1970s.
“Loft jazz” is the term that came to be applied to music that was created and performed in
various lofts, basements, and small improvised venues in downtown Manhattan. The music
presented there was often experimental - free jazz, avant-garde jazz, or what some
musicians simply called the new music. Performances were typically given by small
ensembles, duos, or soloists. These were not conventional clubs; they were spaces created
by artists themselves, where musicians could explore ideas outside the commercial
constraints of the traditional jazz circuit.
To understand the loft jazz movement, it helps to think of it as having three essential components.
First, there were the musicians themselves, the community of artists who were in New York
and participated in that creative experiment.
Second, the music itself - the new music that had been developing since the early 1960s.
And third, there were the spaces - the lofts and improvised venues where the music was
performed and developed.
Together, these three elements created a unique cultural moment.
The loft jazz movement of the early 1970s was part of a larger wave of experimental Black
jazz that had been developing from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. One of the
interesting aspects of that music was that it did not have a single universally accepted name.
Over time the music accumulated a whole vocabulary of labels. It was called free jazz, new
music, the music, great black music, black classical music, cosmic jazz, the new thing, and
avant-garde jazz. Each of these terms reflected a slightly different way of thinking about the
music and its purpose.
One group of musicians and critics favored the term free jazz. Many of the artists associated
with that description approached the music through complex ideas about structure,
improvisation, and composition. Even when the music sounded completely spontaneous,
the musicians were often engaged in sophisticated mental exercises involving form,
harmony, and collective improvisation.
Musicians frequently associated with this orientation included Ornette Coleman, Sam
Rivers, Dewey Redman, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, and Eric Dolphy.
Another group of musicians preferred terms such as “the music,” “great black music,” or
avant-garde jazz. These artists tended to view the work more directly as an extension of
Black cultural expression and African diasporic traditions. The emphasis was less on
theoretical analysis and more on the music as a living cultural force rooted in rhythm,
collective improvisation, and community energy.
Figures often associated with this cultural nationalist orientation included the Art Ensemble
of Chicago, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Rashied Ali, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
A third orientation within the movement emphasized the spiritual dimension of the music.
Often described as spiritual jazz or cosmic jazz, this approach treated music as a pathway
toward higher consciousness. Improvisation could function almost like prayer or
meditation, a vehicle for reaching deeper spiritual states.
Among the musicians most strongly associated with this spiritual dimension were John
Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, and Alice Coltrane.
There was also a visionary branch of the movement that might be described as Afrofuturist.
Musicians associated with this outlook sometimes spoke of the music in cosmic terms,
imagining sound as a vehicle for expanding human consciousness and even transcending
earthly boundaries.
The most famous proponent of this perspective was the bandleader Sun Ra, who spoke of
music as a form of interstellar communication. Other artists whose work intersected with
this Afrofuturist imagination included Miles Davis and Lonnie Liston Smith.
Jazz has always been an urban music. It began in cities like New Orleans and traveled north
along the Mississippi River to Memphis, St. Louis, and Chicago before eventually
establishing its strongest center in New York City. Other major cities such as Los Angeles,
Philadelphia and Detroit also played important roles.
Cities are crowded places, and nowhere is that more true than in New York. In crowded
cities, space is scarce and expensive. The kind of space needed for musical
performance - room for instruments, musicians, and audiences - is very different from the
space needed for quieter activities.
Music requires room to breathe.
That is where lofts entered the picture.
Lofts were large open-floor spaces usually located in former factories or warehouses. In the
late 1960s many of these buildings in the SoHo area of lower Manhattan were no longer
being used for industrial purposes. Artists began moving into them because the spaces were
relatively inexpensive and offered large open rooms that could function as studios,
rehearsal halls, and living quarters all at once.
Musicians soon discovered that these lofts could also function as performance venues.
One of the best-known examples was Studio Rivbea, run by saxophonist Sam Rivers and his
wife Beatrice. Their loft was located at 24 Bond Street.
Sam’s space had an elongated two-level design. The main floor served as his living area. A
raised platform built on stilts held his bedroom above the room. If you walked under that
platform toward the back of the loft you would eventually reach the kitchen. Just before
reaching the kitchen there was a stairway leading down to the basement.
That basement space became the performance room. It was narrow, intimate, and often
packed with listeners. Down those steps and inside that basement, some of the most
adventurous improvised music of the era was created.
A few blocks away at 131 Prince Street there was a very different kind of loft space
maintained by Ornette Coleman. His venue, known as Artist House, contrasted sharply with
the basement environment of Studio Rivbea. The gallery space was large, open, and filled
with natural light, with modern art hanging on the walls.
My band Juju performed there several times. After hearing us play, Ornette told me he liked
the music. Shortly afterward he approached me and asked if I would run the gallery while
he was away on recording dates. He also told me my band could stay in the loft.
For several weeks we lived there and kept the music going in that remarkable space.
Although much of the loft jazz activity took place in lower Manhattan, another crucial venue
for the movement was The East, a Black cultural center located at 10 Claver Place in
Brooklyn.
During the week The East functioned as a community institution - a school, daycare center,
and cooperative grocery. On weekends the small performance space inside the building
became a powerful stage for spiritual and avant-garde jazz.
The room would fill with culturally aware listeners
eager to hear artists such as Sun Ra,
Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, and my band Juju.
Some of my fondest memories come from performing there. When I pushed the saxophone
to its limits - screaming high notes into the horn - the audience would sometimes scream
back in response, echoing the sound. It was call and response in its most visceral form.
Sun Ra often said, “Space is the place.” He was speaking about outer space, but the phrase
also applies to the physical spaces where music happens. Musicians need room to practice,
experiment, and perform. Space means square footage, but it also means tolerance for
sound.
Another important development growing out of the same creative environment that
produced the loft jazz movement was the rise of independent, musician-run record labels.
One of the most significant of these was Strata-East Records.
Strata-East was founded in the early 1970s by pianist Stanley Cowell and trumpeter Charles Tolliver.
The label became one of the most important outlets for musicians who wanted to
record and distribute their music outside of the traditional commercial record industry.
The philosophy behind Strata-East was closely aligned with the broader spirit of the loft
jazz movement. Musicians wanted control over their own work - control over how the
music was recorded, produced, and presented to the public.
Among the artists whose work appeared on Strata-East were musicians such as Pharoah
Sanders, Clifford Jordan, Charles Tolliver and Music Inc., The Piano Choir, Gil Scott-Heron,
and my own group Juju.
Gil Scott-Heron occupied a unique place at the intersection of poetry, jazz, and social
commentary. His spoken-word piece “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” had already
made a powerful cultural impact, and his later recordings with keyboardist Brian Jackson
helped define a new fusion of poetry, jazz, and rhythm and blues.
One of their most influential recordings was the song “The Bottle,” from the album Winter in
America. The record blended socially conscious lyrics with deep grooves and
improvisational sensibilities that drew directly from the jazz tradition.
Around 1974 or 1975, Gil Scott-Heron and his musical partner Brian Jackson relocated to
the Washington, D.C. area. Around the same time I also moved to Richmond, VA with my
band Juju, which I soon renamed Oneness of Juju.
In Washington our bands socialized and performed together several times, often booked
through the same agency, Charisma Productions, who also booked, Roy Ayers, Hugh
Masekela, Norman Conners, Lonnie Liston Smith, Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, and
other local bands.
In many ways the spirit of the loft scene - independence, experimentation, and
community - traveled with us. The music emanating out of the DMV was a lot more
commercial R&B and jazz. And we developed our own record label, Black Fire Records. We
would move forward toward the end of the 20 th century and into the next.
Jazz and Poetry
Poetry and spoken word were also deeply intertwined with the loft jazz movement. The relationship between jazz and poetry stretched back to the 1950s when Beat poets performed alongside jazz musicians in coffeehouses and small clubs.
Avant-garde saxophonist Archie Shepp occasionally incorporated poetry into his recordings, using spoken word as another expressive layer in his music.
Other artists approached the relationship from the opposite direction - turning jazz improvisations into lyrics. Writers and vocalists like Oscar Brown Jr., King Pleasure, and Eddie Jefferson created poetic texts for bebop solos and instrumental compositions.
One particularly striking example came from Charles Mingus, who released the album A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry. The recording featured actor Mel Stewart performing Langston Hughes’s poem “Scenes in the City” accompanied by Mingus’s jazz ensemble.
By the early 1970s poets and musicians were often part of the same downtown artistic community. Writers like Thulani Davis and Ntozake Shange were an integral part of the loft jazz scene.
In the late 60’s poet/writer Leroi Jones lived in the SoHo area in the same building as saxophonist/recording engineer Marzette Watts and was an early participant in the arts in the area. Though once associated with the “beat” poets who had incorporated jazz as a part of their recitations, Jones, converted to a cultural nationalist orientation and developed a cultural center in NewArk, NJ committed to new music, poetry and theater productions.
Another important spoken-word presence of that era was the group known as The Last Poets, Felipe Luisiano, David Williams and Gyland Kane, whose rhythmically delivered poetry helped lay some of the groundwork for what would later become hip-hop.
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