When the label Phantom Limb got in touch about me creating music inspired by the late New York avant garde composer and pianist Julius Eastman, I had barely heard of him. They had a connection with his surviving brother, Gerry, which meant they had access to parts of his archive. I was gifted a zip drive of original pieces by him. Pretty quickly I realised that I knew lots of his peers – people such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich – who I learned about when I was studying music. But I never got taught anything about Julius Eastman. He was a long-standing part of that New York scene, but for a long time I didn’t even know Black composers existed. It’s not just an absence, it’s erasure – it feels as though there was effort made to leave him out.
Like me, Eastman was a queer Black composer, but while those aspects of his identity resonated with me, we’re also really different – we’re decades apart, and I’m from London. I’ve had it easier than him in some ways, even if my experiences haven’t been wholly positive, but I don’t face what he did, especially as a composer and musician. It’s an ambivalent, bittersweet thing to think about.
