This story originally appeared in Fanfare Fall 2024.
Trailblazing composer, musicologist, and trombonist George Lewis gave the keynote address at the Bienen School’s June 8 convocation. “Amazing achievements such as yours being celebrated today emerge as the product of hard work, insight, and dedication—not just by you as individuals, dear graduates, but also by communities of practice, desire, and love,” he said. Lewis spoke of the communities that have shaped his own life and career, notably the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which he joined in 1971.
Widely regarded as a pioneer in creating computer programs that improvise in concert with human musicians, Lewis focuses his scholarship on the history and criticism of experimental music, computer music, interactive media, and improvisation, particularly as these areas become entangled with the dynamics of race, gender, and decolonization. “My music, my writing, my noise, asks its readers and hearers: If we get what we want, what will it sound like?” he said. “This question ultimately calls for new histories, new subjectivities, and new identities in music.”
He spoke frankly about suppression of speech and music and “the cone of silence draped over the work of Afrodiasporic composers,” noting that those who do the banning “are also admitting how much they fear your awesomeness as musicians.” In his closing remarks, Lewis inspired graduates by expanding on a concept he credited to the late congressman John Lewis: “I’d like you all to get out there and make some noise—some good noise. Because good trouble and good noise are really the same thing: the forceful assertion of alternatives in the face of oppression.”
