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WORK TITLE: A Nation of Neighborhoods
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https://www.slu.edu/department-of-american-studies-home/faculty-and-staff/benjamin-looker-phd * http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo21428643.html
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Washington University in St. Louis, A.B., 2000; Goldsmiths College, M.A. (cities, globalization, and culture), 2001; Yale University, M.A. and M.Phil (both American studies), 2005 and 2006, Ph.D., 2009.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, educator, and writer. St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, associate professor.
Also serves on the advisory board for the university’s Micah Program and the interdepartmental Urban Workshop Team and as board member and secretary for the campus’s American Association of University Professors chapter. Also served on faculty councils and various committees. Served as a volunteer union organizer for the Graduate Employees & Students Organization (GESO) at Yale University. Work-related activities included organizing the two-day symposium and concert series “Music and Musicians of the Black Artists’ Group in St. Louis,” 2006.
MEMBER:Mid-America American Studies Association, president, 2015-16; board member.
AWARDS:Received following awards for A Nation of Neighborhoods, all 2016: John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, American Studies Association, for “best published book in American Studies”; Missouri Conference on History Book Award, State Historical Society of Missouri), for “best volume on any historical topic by a Missouri resident”; Lawrence W. Levine Award, Organization of American Historians, for “best book in American cultural history”; and the Kenneth Jackson Award (corecipient), Urban History Association, for “best book in North American urban history.”
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles and book reviews to professional journals, including Canadian Review of American Studies, Historical Review, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and Michigan Historical Review. Also author of liner-note essay for LP reissue of Black Artists Group album In Paris, Aries 1973, Rank & File Records, 2011.
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Benjamin Looker works in the areas of twentieth-century urban social and cultural studies, jazz history, and postwar U.S. cultural history. He has written about topics such as arts collectives of the 1960s, postwar social movements, and the role of urban cultural texts such as city guidebooks. Looker, who once worked as a volunteer union organizer, also organizes lectures, walks, and panels on local urban spaces and culture in St. Louis, Missouri.
Point from Which Creation Begins
In his first book, Point from Which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis, Looker examines the Black Artists’ Group (BAG) of St. Louis. BAG was an arts collective from 1968 to 1972 that focused on supporting African American experimental artists in the areas of theater, visual arts, dance, poetry, and jazz. Located in an abandoned industrial building on Washington Avenue, BAG operated in the midst of a distressed urban area. Among the noted artists who were part of the group were Julius Hemphill, a jazz composer and saxophone player; Oliver Lake, a jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, and poet; and Emilio Cruz, an artist.
Point from Which Creation Begins features seven chapters that examine BAG within the context of its times. Looker studies the history of St. Louis in general and explores the Black Arts Movement’s foundation. He also discusses funding issues and the members’ relationships with one another. The book includes footnotes and references.
“Looker, who first tuned into the BAG while a student at Washington University in St. Louis, has assembled the definitive story of the collective,” wrote a contributor to the All About Jazz Website, adding later in the same review: “The holistic view he adopts in his text is absolutely key to making it work.” Writing in the Journal of African American History, Debi Hamlin remarked: “Looker is to be commended for offering another lens through which to view black artistic developments in the Midwest during the civil rights-Black Power era. Although prolix and overly descriptive at times, Looker’s book offers an intriguing account of a relatively obscure subject.”
A Nation of Neighborhoods
In his next book, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America, Looker examines the state of city neighborhoods within a cultural, social, and political context. Exploring the idea of “neighborhood” as it came to be in postwar America, Looker focuses on the numerous changes that occurred in the urban environment from World War II to the 1980s. In the process, Looker addresses how Americans adapted to these changes.
Looker considers the competing visions for urban neighborhoods within the context of broader debates about American national identity and the practice of democracy. He discusses these debates as they were presented in everything from Broadway shows and radio plays to children’s programming and real estate documents. Locker writes that cultural workers, regardless of political affiliations and beliefs, saw neighborhoods as a way to symbolically represent new visions for reshaping society.
A Nation of Neighborhoods features eleven chapters presented in three parts. The first section discusses competing visions for the urban neighborhood. Looker explores the idea of city neighborhoods as microcosms of democracy, postwar privatization of the neighborhood unit plan, and community ties. The next section explores the urban crisis within the context of the meanings of the city community. One chapter in this section focuses on children’s stories that address the “Great Society” neighborhood. The book’s final section focuses on urban pluralism and the neighborhoods movement. Topics addressed include the self-government movement, ethnic revival, and urban communities and presidential politics.
Looker “strikingly reveals just how relentlessly diverse ideas of ‘neighborhood’ have been offered as proxy for the meaning of America,” wrote A.E. Krulikowski in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. An Urban History Newsletter Website contributor noted that Looker provides “the foundation for a greater understanding of how we live now and how we might proceed to address some recalcitrant issues of urban life.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2016, A.E. Krulikowski, review of A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America, p. 1532.
Journal of African American History, spring, 2006, Debi Hamlin, review of Point from Which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis, p. 238.
ONLINE
All About Jazz, https://www.allaboutjazz.com/ (December 19, 2004), review of Point from Which Creation Begins.
St. Louis University Web site, https://www.slu.edu/ (June 4, 2017), author faculty profile.
Urban History Newsletter, http://urbanhistory.org/ (June 4, 2017), review of A Nation of Neighborhoods.
About the Author
Benjamin Looker teaches in the American Studies Department at Saint Louis University.
Hometown: St. Louis, MO
Benjamin Looker, Ph.D.
Benjamin Looker, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of American Studies
(314) 977-3008
Adorjan Hall 112
3800 Lindell Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63108
blooker@slu.edu
Education
Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University (2009)
M.A. and M.Phil. in American Studies, Yale University (2005 & 2006)
M.A. in Cities, Globalization, and Culture, Dept. of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London (2001)
A.B. in Urban Studies and in Music, Washington University in St. Louis (2000)
Teaching
Graduate Courses Taught:
ASTD 5000 – Perspectives in American Studies
ASTD 5700 – Metropolitan America
ASTD 5900 – The Practice of American Studies
ASTD 6300 – Jazz, Cities, & Social Movements
ASTD 6700 – From Satchmo to Strangelove: Cold War Cultural Politics and the "American Century"
ASTD 6930 – The Cultural Studies Movement: Origins and Contemporary Practice
Undergraduate Courses Taught:
ASTD 3000 – American Decades: Culture of the Cold War, 1947–63
ASTD 3100 – Making the American City: Culture, Space, & 20th-century U.S. Urbanisms
ASTD 3200 – The Urban Crisis
ASTD 4960 – Senior Capstone
Teaching Recognitions:
Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, SLU College of Arts & Sciences (2012)
Helen I. Mandeville Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Humanities Teaching, SLU College of Arts & Sciences (2014)
Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award, for St. Louis–area educators at all levels (2014)
Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring, SLU College of Arts & Sciences (2016)
Research
Ben works in the areas of twentieth-century urban social and cultural studies, jazz history, and postwar U.S. cultural history. His book A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America, published in 2015, examines competing ways in which the city neighborhood has been imagined in U.S. arts, popular culture, and political discourse from World War II to the Reagan era. In earlier work on urban cultural history and representation, he has explored topics including arts collectives of the 1960s, postwar social movements, and the role of urban cultural texts such as city guidebooks.
Service
Ben serves on the Advisory Board for the university's Micah Program and the interdepartmental Urban Workshop Team, and as board member and secretary for the campus's AAUP chapter. He also represents the American Studies Department as board member for the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA), serving as MAASA president in 2015–16. In the past, he has been a member of the Faculty Council of the College of Arts & Sciences (2010–12, 2015–16), the SLU Mellon Faculty Development Grants Selection Committee (2009–11), the Des Peres Hall Learning Studio Advisory Committee (2010), and three departmental faculty search committees. Before joining SLU, he organized the two-day symposium and concert series "Music and Musicians of the Black Artists' Group in St. Louis" (2006), and he served as a volunteer union organizer for the Graduate Employees & Students Organization (GESO) at Yale University. Ben currently organizes an irregular departmental series of lectures, walks, and panels on local urban spaces and culture.
Selected Publications
Book: A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Recipient, 2016 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize (American Studies Association), for "best published book in American Studies" from 2015
Recipient, 2016 Missouri Conference on History Book Award (State Historical Society of Missouri), for "best volume on any historical topic by a Missouri resident" in the previous year
Recipient, 2016 Lawrence W. Levine Award (Organization of American Historians), for "best book in American cultural history" in the previous year
Co-recipient, 2016 Kenneth Jackson Award (Urban History Association), for "best book in North American urban history" in the previous year
Finalist, 2016 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award (Urban Communication Foundation)
Book: "Point from which Creation Begins": The Black Artists' Group of St. Louis (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2004). [Reviewed in J. American History, J. African American History, J. Royal Musical Association, Choice, AllAboutJazz.com, and Mo. Historical Review.]
Article: "Visions of Autonomy: The New Left and the Neighborhood Government Movement of the 1970s," Journal of Urban History 38, no. 3 (May 2012): 577–598.
Article: "Microcosms of Democracy: Imagining the City Neighborhood in World War II–Era America," Journal of Social History 44, no. 2 (December 2010): 351–378.
Review essay: "Revisiting City and Race," Canadian Review of American Studies 33, no. 2 (2003): 171–183.
Essay: "Exhibiting Imperial London: Empire and the City in Late Victorian and Edwardian Guidebooks," Critical Urban Studies: Occasional Papers Series (London: Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, 2002).
Liner notes: Liner-note essay for LP reissue of Black Artists Group, In Paris, Aries 1973 (Berlin: Rank & File Records, March 2011).
Individual reviews: Review of Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949, by Priscilla A. Dowden-White, Missouri Historical Review 106, no. 4 (May 2012): 245–246. Review of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown, by Nayan Shah, Gateway-Heritage 23, no. 3 (Winter 2002/03): 53. Review of Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline, by Dora Apel, Michigan Historical Review 42, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 97–98.
Looker, Benjamin. A nation of neighborhoods: imagining cities, communities, and democracy in postwar America
A.E. Krulikowski
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1532.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Looker, Benjamin. A nation of neighborhoods: imagining cities, communities, and democracy in postwar America. Chicago, 2015. 432p index afp ISBN 9780226073989 cloth, $82.50; ISBN 9780226290317 pbk, $27.50; ISBN 9780226290454 ebook, contact publisher for price
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Academics have long struggled to pinpoint precise definitions of "neighborhood," but as Looker (American studies, Saint Louis Univ.) demonstrates, outside academe, a surprisingly "vast fleet" of writers, politicians, artists, and activists unhampered by specifics constructed myriad ideal versions of the urban neighborhood from WW II to the 1980s. Looker insightfully demonstrates that cultural workers of all political persuasions fashioned representations of the urban small community because traditional values and experiences, as well as new visions for reshaping society, could be usefully attached to neighborhoods. Thus, the urban neighborhood became "a rich symbolic vehicle" through which to debate often competing visions for the nation and for managing change and social division nearby. Progressing chronologically, each of the 11 chapters examines several related efforts to shape ideal visions of the urban neighborhood, defining and redefining terms such as blight, ghetto, and slum. Deconstructing examples of these "elaborate territories of the imagination," such as the children's stories of Jack Ezra Keats and the Sesame Street television program, this author strikingly reveals just how relentlessly diverse ideas of "neighborhood" have been offered as proxy for the meaning of America. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All levels/ libraries.--A. E. Krulikowski, West Chester University
Krulikowski, A.E.
"Point from Which Creation Begins": The Black Artists' Group of St. Louis
Debi Hamlin
The Journal of African American History. 91.2 (Spring 2006): p238.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc.
http://www.jaah.org/
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Benjamin Looker, "Point from Which Creation Begins": The Black Artists' Group of St. Louis. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2004. Pp. 316. Cloth $29.95.
Benjamin Looker has written a cogent and provocative study of the Black Artists' Group of St. Louis, Missouri (BAG). Looker describes BAG as a collective of musicians, dancers, poets, and actors organized to "reclaim and redefine" whites' representations of black culture. This interdisciplinary collective constructed an ideology that emphasized education and mentoring of urban youth as fundamental to black economic progress and cultural autonomy. BAG saxophonist Oliver Lake, at his 1971 recorded performance NTU: Point from Which Creation Begins, provided audiences with a cultural experience that highlighted continuity in the African and African American experience as well as the significance of BAG in the making of St. Louis history.
Looker traces BAG from its 1968 formation through its decline in 1972, a period characterized by heightened black militancy. Although an ideological extension of the Black Arts and Black Power movements, BAG was distinct in that it provided a "safe" physical and cultural space for social commentary, dissent, and "collaborative interweaving" through a complex range of aesthetic media. The collective's mission was to serve working class families and their children, yet the members were successful in gaining financial support from black professionals and white philanthropists. Although leaders such as Julius Hemphill defined the group's cultural agenda, BAG's brief success could also be traced to its promotion of intergenerational collaboration, interracial alliances, and an interdisciplinary program that broadened the notion of Black Power while enhancing the collective's appeal and accessibility to a larger segment of the local community.
In Looker's view the BAG program, initially created and supported by and for African Americans, overlapped and at times conflicted with the interests of white conservatives and liberal philanthropists which resulted in a series of political and artistic alliances that endured for four years. Looker argues that BAG was a local, black working class answer to racism, poverty, illiteracy, and police brutality in the aftermath of desegregation. Under Hemphill, BAG members were both assertive and visionary, establishing a cooperative that identified a global black connection by promoting the concept of the "African continuum" as the cornerstone to black progress. BAG's aesthetic, which encompassed rhythmic poetry, choreographed dance movements, and multi-layered jazz melodies and improvisation, emerged as a regional and experimental artistic phenomenon informed by black nationalism and inspired by the local, working class consciousness.
The book, divided into seven chapters, explores the BAG philosophy of self-determination and the founders' vision of an organization that would use black art to bring attention and resources to the demands of black working class families for quality education, jobs, and improved housing and social services. BAG nurtured the artistic interests of black youth from poor neighborhoods who, through the performance of their art, became the voice of the poor, and although a local enterprise, BAG reflected a national surge in black consciousness and protest. According to Looker, BAG presented a "self-consciously racialized version of identity," constructed for the African Americans who met in urban spaces such as churches, neighborhood theaters, and community centers. While the BAG aesthetic had been produced for working class consumption, BAG's "reclamation" of black art altered the American cultural and social landscape. Linked by white and black-owned businesses and churches located in the center of the black community, BAG broadened its constituency by displaying a wide range of artistic performances for regionally and racially diverse audiences contributing to what Looker describes as "integrationist ideology."
BAG members ultimately constructed an elastic concept of black nationalism that, although insisting upon black leadership and economic self-determination, did not limit itself to this paradigm. BAG, not a political organization in the strictest sense, provided a local venue for voicing dissent and developing protest strategies. For example, in 1968 BAG joined with Saint Louis University and Forest Park Community College students in a sit-in organized by the Association of Black Collegians (ABC) resulting in a "Black Manifesto" and a program for Black Studies. Alliances between BAG members and the student protesters, as well as between BAG and other professional organizations such as the Human Arts Association, encouraged a fusion of ideas and artistic expressions that blurred the perceived distinctions of race, class, gender, and region.
By 1970 BAG had reached the pinnacle of its success as a local, grassroots organization although its influence would soon be undermined by internal disputes over leadership styles, the extent of white participation, the dwindling federal and private funding, and other issues. Some BAG members fled to Paris, only to return to the lofts of Manhattan's Lower East Side where they performed a rejuvenated jazz style rooted in a more sophisticated interpretation of the African and African American experience.
One wonders, however, to what extent diversity within the BAG "collective" may have contributed to internal conflict. In a discussion of "'Poets of Action': The Arts and the Local Village," Looker argues that BAG worked to "create a black-oriented aesthetic." If this is so, how inclusive were the black definers of black culture in their construction of this race-based aesthetic? Did the BAG formula mirror or depart from whites' assessments of black cultural expressions which had been criticized earlier? More discussion of the intra-racial ideological differences and distinctions might have led to a greater appreciation of BAG's artists and the problems they encountered as they attempted to create a monolithic black cultural identity.
Looker is to be commended for offering another lens through which to view black artistic developments in the Midwest during the civil rights-Black Power era. Although prolix and overly descriptive at times, Looker's book offers an intriguing account of a relatively obscure subject. His synthesis of primary and secondary sources as well as the use of oral interviews and discographies results in a well researched and lively examination of another aspect of American and African American history. Point From Which Creation Begins is a must read for any student of music and urban history.
Debi Hamlin
North Carolina Central University
Hamlin, Debi
Co-Winner of the UHA Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book (North American) Published in 2015The Kenneth Jackson Prize award committee is pleased to announce its selection of Benjamin Looker’s A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press)as co-winner of the 2016 Kenneth Jackson Prize for the Best Book in North American Urban History published in 2015.“Neighborhood” as a notion of how people comfortably dwell in cities emerged as an enduring theme spanning much of the twentieth century. Benjamin Looker offers a sweeping view of how this most basic envisioned component of American cities was promulgated, dissected, and reconfigured in the service of various socioeconomic agendas beginning in the years of prosperous optimism at the end of World War II until the political upheavals of the Reagan era in the 1980s. Remarkable in its scope and ambition, Looker’s work explicates the contested idea of neighborhood as reflected in popular culture, city planning, politics, literature, television, and sociology. He leads the reader through the notion of neighborhood as it was lived, imagined, and wielded rhetorically over the forty-year period of the book. He demonstrates how the pursuit of the neighborhood ideal transformed communities and in turn was transformed by larger sociopolitical forces. As the notion of neighborhood has once again become a focal point in urban upheavals during the current period, his book is most timely in providing the foundation for a greater understanding of how we live now and how we might proceed to address some recalcitrant issues of urban life.
Black Artists' Group Of St. Louis
AAJ Staff By AAJ STAFF
December 19, 2004
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Benjamin Looker
Point From Which Creation Begins: The Black Artists' Group of St. Louis
Missouri Historical Society Press
Distributed by University of Missouri Press
316 pages
ISBN: 1883982510
2004
When I arrived in St. Louis, Missouri from the West Coast, I learned quickly about the city's legacy. The first piece of advice I received when looking for a place to live was "don't go north of Delmar." White people, I was told, don't live there. A grocery store on the borderline, part of a larger chain, was colloquially termed the "Nairobi National" because of the color of its customers. The housing projects in the northern part of the city were notorious for crime, poverty, and just plain bad juju.
I was to learn more about that a couple of years later when I casually befriended a (black) man named Percy at a White Castle and helped him transport a (probably stolen) TV to his "cousin" Skip's house, deep in the ghetto. Skip threatened me with a gun when he saw what color I was, but Percy explained I was a member of the mafia and he relented. (I am as Scandinavian as they get, which made the whole situation all the more humorous, in retrospect at least. I guess there's something true about the adage that all white people look the same.) Through the course of the evening, Percy picked up two prostitutes, smoked pot and crack, and took another woman home with him for the night. The police were actually parked two blocks away, but they were busy, as Percy explained, "looking after folks like you."
That story is 100% true. And no, I wasn't high. I had a feeling sobriety was important for survival.
The racial legacy in St. Louis dates back to Mississippi trading days, westward expansion, and the Courthouse where slaves were sold and the Dred Scott case was argued. It still stands. City planners crammed African Americans into a zone in the northern part of the city through a systematic policy of institutionalized racism, realized in part through housing development and urban zoning practices. There's a very good reason urban St. Louis didn't vote for Senate candidate John Ashcroft in 2000, instead helping elect his dead competitor, whose wife Jean Carnahan eventually took the position. (Ashcroft's friends in the Republican Party eventually elevated him to Attorney General, where he probably did more damage than he could ever have done as a Senator, but nobody could have known that at the time.)
Politics and personal experience aside, one of the products of this legacy is a sweet one for jazz, and it was born in the very center of the black urban experience. The Black Artists' Group (BAG), a collective of poets, actors, visual artists, and musicians, was formed in 1968. It was a fundamentally proactive group forged from and located within St. Louis's African American community. Among the musical members of the BAG: Hamiet Bluiett, Oliver Lake, and Julius Hemphill, who led numerous projects and eventually formed the BAG's most prominent and longest-lasting legacy, the World Saxophone Quartet, with David Murray. The BAG lasted but four brief years, unlike Chicago's parallel Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), which still provides musical instruction today.
Author Benjamin Looker, who first tuned into the BAG while a student at Washington University in St. Louis, has assembled the definitive story of the collective in the form of Point From Which Creation Begins , named after an Oliver Lake recording from 1971. Looker, who reported on the subject for AAJ back in 2002 , takes a systematic approach to the "Poets of Action" who dominated the grassroots experimental arts scene of St. Louis around 1970. The holistic view he adopts in his text is absolutely key to making it work. There's no way to look at this group in isolation.
That's because the BAG was not so much an institution as a fluid community group with ties to society, culture, race, politics, economics, and artistic innovation in the fields of experimental ("avant-garde") theater, painting, poetry, and music—often built around improvisation and usually aimed at forming meaningful and lasting connections with its (mostly black) audience. The Black Arts Movement of the '60s centered around mobilizing and empowering African Americans through creative expression, and it had deep roots in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Detroit, and several other cities during the period.
Looker's seven main chapters move in a logical procession through examination of St. Louis' history and roots, the foundations of the Black Arts Movement, the founding of the BAG, the multimedia relationships among its members, and a focus on musicians through their work in St. Louis and their departure to Europe and eventually the New York loft scene. Photos appear interspersed throughout, and there's a hefty collection of footnotes and references at the end for scholarly types to explore, plus a list of recordings from the period.
One of the things Looker emphasizes is the ways the group managed to recruit funding, which in some senses was crucial to its founding as well as its dissolution. There was always some controversy in the group about how to accept money from white liberals and foundations, and its outspoken politics of Black Power and tell-it-how-it-is presentations of race relations. In the history of the group, every member was black except for one: Muthal Naidoo, a South African expatriate of Indian ancestry who participated in the theater arm of the collective. The audience, with whom the BAG insisted on maintaining interactive relationships, was mostly black but definitely had a white component as well.
While Point From Which Creation Begins does deal primarily with the BAG, it touches on related events in other cities. But most importantly, it provides a template for focused creativity as a tool for social mobilization. Portia Hunt's description of events as a "meta-analysis, a performance inside a performance" holds true in many ways, as it turns out.
Art collectives have been an essential part of the musical history of the United States, and they've been particularly important in the development of jazz in the days since its transition from popular music to "art music" to underground culture. The do-it-yourself ethic that dominated the BAG's empowerment thinking persists in many forms today, including most recently the use of the internet to disseminate information on music and musicians, and the rise of independent record labels as a means for making meaningful connections with audiences everywhere. Local action can transform into both local and global influence, if channeled the right way.