Art Ensemble of Chicago performance at MCA Chicago, 1979. © MCA Chicago
In the years following the Civil Rights Movement, artists and musicians were searching for ways to contribute to the message of freedom and equality. In 70s New York, writer Amiri Baraka’s Black Arts Movement flourished while Nina Simone formed her own one-woman musical revolution; in Chicago, the black avant-garde formed the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA) as a way to creatively highlight the communities facing racial and economic injustice and to offer new ideas through their art. The music and art created in Chicago by AfriCOBRA and AACM are now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago exhibition, The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now.
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