Black Artist Group: For Peace and Liberty

A lost free jazz gem from the St. Louis collective

The Black Artist[s] Group (BAG) was a cooperative of performing artists and community activists in St. Louis that existed from 1967 to 1973.

Their live album In Paris, Aries 1973 gained cult status in the free jazz community. Until recently, it was believed to be the single existing documentation of BAG’s music. An original pressing of the self-released record will currently sell for $350 to $500.

But another recording has been discovered in the archives of France’s INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel), stemming from a concert on 3 Dec 1972 at Radio France’s Studio 104.

These tapes were remastered and released in September 2024 as the album For Peace and Liberty.

On this occasion, BAG consisted of Oliver Lake on saxophones and flutes, Joseph Bowie on trombone, Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore on trumpets, and Charles “Bobo” Shaw on drums.

At least Lake’s name should ring a bell with jazz fans, but Bowie’s too – Joseph is the younger brother of trumpeter Lester Bowie.

Due to high quality equipment at the French public radio station, the unearthed recording sounds absolutely crystal clear.

The continuous, freely improvised 35-minute set feels vaguely similar to the music of Pharoah Sanders and Don Cherry from that period, when they infused their spiritual jazz with repetitive grooves and techniques drawn from African, Arabian, and Indian culture.

I felt particularly reminded of Sanders’ Black Unity (1971) and Cherry’s Organic Music Society (1972), two albums that I hold very close to my heart.

What sets BAG apart are their experiments with space and silence – unlike other free jazz groups of the time, they didn’t aim to create a relentless energy field, but allowed for slow and quiet moments as well. In that interplay of tension and release, their music resembles that of their Chicago peers in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

Modeled after the AACM, BAG formed in 1967, the year of John Coltrane’s death. BAG had 25–30 members in its prime: musicians, singers, poets, dancers, actors, directors and visual artists. But just five are heard on the album.

These are the five leading members, who embarked to Europe in 1972, frustrated by the lack of opportunities and funding in St. Louis. Their departure led to the only available recordings of the group – but also to its dissolving.

The roots of the group lie in LaClede Town, a diverse housing complex near St. Louis University that opened in 1964.

The Circle Coffee House became a hub for local musicians and artists, staging jazz performances, poetry readings and improvised theater plays.

Oliver Lake, Lester Bowie, Floyd LeFlore and Julius Hemphill studied music together at the university. The young musicians who would form BAG were inspired by John Coltrane’s late works and free jazz pioneers Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, the latter also being a role model for their social and political activism. Aside from jazz, some of them were interested in the European classical avant-garde as well.

Black artists were then facing an exploitative music industry ruled by white club bookers and record company executives. As a reaction to the discrimination they experienced, especially when seeking out performance venues and recording opportunities, they formed an activist cooperative: the Black Artists Group.

All-Black musician cooperatives and collectives such as BAG and AACM were of enormous socio-political importance at the time.

Significantly, BAG’s first collective effort was a performance of Jean Genet's experimental play The Blacks in July 1968.

Other happenings followed, often combining music, dance, theater and poetry. BAG performed in smaller groups and as a large ensemble, but their bold experiments did not fare well with the traditionalists in the local scene. Commercial clubs wouldn’t let them play, so they had to start promoting their own shows.

Lester Bowie had moved from St. Louis to Chicago in 1966, became a founding member of AACM and played trumpet in the Art Ensemble of Chicago. His brother Joseph, a trombonist, stayed in Missouri and became a central part of BAG’s musical arm.

Through that brotherly connection, but also because Lester had studied in St. Louis, constant dialogue between the two collectives was established. Musicians were visiting each other and playing together, as well as traveling to other cities like Detroit and New York, where similar collectives had formed in that era.

In 1968, BAG gained non-profit status and received a grant of $100,000 from a funding foundation. This money allowed them to create an enduring Artist-in-Residence program, providing a steady income to some group members for teaching lessons and classes, predominantly catering to African-American youths.

A year later, BAG moved into their own building in St. Louis, which they rented for the symbolic amount of $1. For the next years, it would regularly host classes, workshops, rehearsals and performances. The programs included music, creative writing, dance, film, theater and visual arts. The place also featured a huge loft, similar to the spaces that started becoming hubs for New York’s avant-garde jazz scene at the time.

Their activism informed BAG’s music and art – and even their lifestyle. Aiming to counter the stereotypes around jazz musicians, who were often portrayed in the media as irresponsible, hedonistic drug addicts, BAG members didn’t drink or take drugs. Their performances were held at daytime in their own community spaces, not in shady nightclubs. Many wore African-styled clothing, reflecting a growing Afro-centric consciousness and spirituality.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, the more socially conscious and political BAG became, the harder it seemed to maintain funding cashflows.

Grant money started drying out by the early 1970s.

Unfortunately, even the Black audience didn’t embrace the group’s experimental style of music, instead feeling drawn to the popular R&B and soul of Motown and Stax, or Miles Davis’ vision of jazz fusion.

BAG stayed in their lane, building on the foundation of 1960s free jazz, even if that meant reaching just a marginal audience.

Around the turn of the decade, some of their AACM peers reported back excitingly from recent travels to Europe, especially France.

Anthony Braxton’s trio and the Art Ensemble of Chicago had gone to Paris and felt extremely welcomed by local audiences – which was reflected in several recordings, big concerts and other opportunities that had arisen overseas.

In 1972, five of the leading BAG members raised money for transatlantic flights and left for Paris as well: Oliver Lake, Joseph Bowie, Baikida Carrol, Floyd LeFlore and Charles “Bobo” Shaw, the five musicians heard on the two existing BAG releases, both recorded in Paris.

Upon arrival, they experienced a similarly welcoming atmosphere as their AACM peers. They even received a grant from the French Ministry of Culture, bought two vans and traveled through the country for a couple of months to play shows outside of Paris.

Still, the departure for Europe marked the end of BAG. Their funding program in St. Louis had collapsed, and the mostly younger artists who stayed home weren’t able to keep the group together.

When the quintet returned from France, some of them decamped to downtown New York City, where the loft jazz scene flourished, providing new spaces and opportunities for progressive jazz musicians.

In 1977, three former BAG musicians – Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett and Julius Hemphill – formed the World Saxophone Quartet together with David Murray. It would become a lauded jazz group of the 1980s.

“BAG exists now only on a spiritual level,” jazz journalist Val Wilmer wrote in that very same year, essentially sealing the group’s history.

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