I met Cisco during my sophomore year of college in Brooklyn. Cisco is undoubtedly himself, bringing his own style and his own thoughts to every situation he encounters. He organizes local jazz shows and is one of the most dedicated patrons of the arts I have met. He is a professor at Pratt Institute and, what I would call, a community leader, always pushing for positive change and justice for others.
Jeanne Landers: I know you’re from the Midwest. I’m interested to know what brought you to the city? The environment seems so different.
Cisco Bradley: Several things. I’m from a small town in Wisconsin. I left after high school and never went back. I got all three of my degrees at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I think, after spending a decade in Madison, that I just found the small town way too small. But when I graduated, the academic job market crashed in 2008 with the economy and it never really recovered. I don’t think it ever really will recover, unless we start to fund education a different way in this country.
Jeanne Landers: And that’s a whole other thing…
Cisco Bradley: Whole other thing. So, the year that I came on the market was, I think, the worst year that there had ever been. But I was very fortunate to get a post-doctoral position at Hamilton College.
Jeanne Landers: Okay, and where is that?
Cisco Bradley: It’s in Upstate New York, near Utica.
Jeanne Landers: Okay.
Cisco Bradley: It was a two year position, and during my first year, I saw a job posting at Pratt and I applied here. So, one - the job really lead me here, but I’d also lived in New York once before. I really loved New York City…
Jeanne Landers: And when was that?
Cisco Bradley: 1999-2000. So I was here, for about a year right after I finished my undergrad. I wanted to be a writer.
Jeanne Landers: Oh yeah, I can definitely relate to that.
Cisco Bradley: Yeah, I was trying new fiction writing and poetry, and I don’t know… I published a few things but it was really not my thing, I don’t think. So I think I was trying to avoid the obvious thing for me which was to be a historian. I sort of had that in mind forever and I thought, well maybe I’ll try other things before I go down this road. So basically, the job lead me here, but also, my wife and I were really excited to move to New York City. I love the community of artists and just the whole vibe of New York.
Jeanne Landers: Absolutely. So when you initially came to the city in ‘99, you said went back home shortly after?
Cisco Bradley: Yeah, so I was here for about a year. I worked for an accountant at a law firm which was soul-draining and awful. Their main client was the American Tobacco Lobby, and they were trying to sue various and good organizations… So I only stayed there for not even a year, and I started running out of money. You know, it’s an expensive city.
Jeanne Landers: Oh, definitely.
Cisco Bradley: Although it was nothing like it is now. So eventually, I went back because I was thinking about graduate school. And a couple years later I applied.
Jeanne Landers: That’s interesting. That makes me think about one’s relation to place. I’m curious to know if where you’ve grown up and where you do a lot of your work now has any influence on your writing. I know my experience of place has shaped my own work. Do you think it’s affected you at all?
Cisco Bradley: It’s had a major influence. My first book was about Southeast Asia. The book that I published, that came out last year, focused on a region in Thailand. I had gone there, and I felt like I had a great experience there and really enjoyed my time.
Jeanne Landers: That’s amazing.
CB: Yeah, it was a wonderful part of the world. Wonderful people. A lot of great culture and cuisine. Everything. I just had a wonderful time there. Especially because I was spending time in a lot of small towns in the south, a lot towns that tourists just don’t go to. I think I had a different kind of experience.
JL: Certainly a different kind of small town…
CB: Yeah, very much so. So I finished that project last year, and I’m still working on some scholarship related to Southeast Asia. But living in New York, I’ve started writing about the cultural history of the city. It’s taken me some time to get up to speed engaging with a new place.
JL: So what aspects of culture are you reflecting on here?
CB: I have two books that I’m working on now. One is a history of free-jazz - of the improvised, experimental music scene in Brooklyn. So, very much the communities in which I live.
JL: Well, that seems to be the best way to do research, immersing yourself in it.
CB: It was very different because in my previous work, I focused on a historic figure who died in 1847, and the book is centered around him. And now I’m writing about people who are mainly 25-45 who are alive, who I talk to….
JL: So you’re dealing with something entirely different here.
CB: It’s a very different kind of project, one where you’re engaging with the community. So it’s very much a community based thing. Even more so, it’s placed based because I’m studying people and then the areas in which they live. The Brooklyn project looks at Brooklyn as the main place, world-wide, where the greatest innovations are happening. It’s where some of the best venues are and where some of the greatest artists are from the younger generation…
JL: So this is all in the contemporary context?
CB: All in the contemporary context. Basically, Brooklyn since about ‘94-’95. Different neighborhoods beginning to attract artists at that time. And this is due, largely, from people that they priced out of the Lower East Side, one of the most important center for the arts in New York throughout this whole history… or at least in the last hundred years. So, with the gentrification of the Lower East Side, we have the destruction of really the vital arts center of New York. This is where organic stuff was really happening.
JL: And are you talking about just in relation to music, or art broadly?
CB: Music in particular. Obviously some art gallery scenes were scattered… But the LES was just so vital for music. I mean, every block had multiple clubs, and musicians could get work playing regularly. Even if they were low-paying gigs, a person could make enough to support themself.
JL: That’s interesting because I always associate New York City jazz with the West Village.
CB: Yeah, that’s the more established scene. And it’s survived better. The LES used to be the place where people went. It was avant-garde, less commercial appeal. No one under the age of 50 lives there in terms of this kind of music now. So, people started moving into Brooklyn in the mid-90’s. Some the late eighties.
JL: And this is the experimental scene?
CB: Yeah. They moved into places like Williamsburg, and Park Slope, and Bed-Stuy. Each of those kind of had its own character. And so I’m looking at the history of how those scenes developed. I’m looking at the social history, I’m looking at how those communities developed. I’m looking at the rise and fall of different venues. In Park Slope, things were happening in cafes and coffee shops, and bars… That was very much a scene. Bed-Stuy was more about new clubs, but not too different logistically from Park Slope. Then you had the Williamsburg scene, which was the biggest scene. Just the sheer number of venues and people involved… and not much of it was done legally because people moved into post-industrial spaces, and artist’s lofts, and squats… Even a few years ago there were people living in squats in Bushwick. But I don’t know if that’s still happening.
JL: I was actually just writing about this. In terms of where this all began, especially in the LES, I think about the squatting movement and gentrification resistance. So I’m interested in how that culture moved, but also how some of the same movements were then coming out of Brooklyn, after what happened in the LES.
CB: Well yeah, I think what was happening in Bushwick was the same thing that was happening in Williamsburg. People just moved out. There’s still that kind of DIY thing about the spaces. In a way, that got sparked by the emergence of a pirate radio station by the name of Free 103.9 in ‘97 on South 6th Street, and I interviewed a lot of the people involved. They had a great archive with a lot of great information. By about 2005 we see the turn of a lot of the artist’s loft being shut down and people getting evicted, and the illegal venues serving alcohol off the books - they were getting shut down. But at the same time there was an emergence of a new venue which pretty much saved the scene for about seven years, called Zebulon. But they closed in 2012. Now there’s almost nothing happening there in this particular scene. I wrote a series at the Legion, which is in the outskirts of Williamsburg, further East. Right now a lot is happening in Greenpoint, pushing out towards Ridgewood, and out towards East New York. So there’s been these whole kind of mini-migrations. In relation to place, artists are really good at building centers…. But what happens when that center is torn out, in terms of gentrification? People are displaced or forced out. Williamsburg was great because there were trains that ran through. It was easier to get to meeting places. So there’s challenges now. It gets harder and harder for people to get to the venues.
JL: In talking about gentrification, I think in terms of space and movement, it’s interesting to see people move throughout an area and start a whole new culture… then have to pick up and move again when they’re priced out.
CB: If people in 1998 knew what was going to happen they would have acted differently. They would have bought the spaces or formed collectives in the spaces they were living. They just didn’t see it coming. And the reason for this is because Williamsburg was a really rough place at the time. There were no street lights, you ran various risks of being mugged… people talk about as recently as ‘99 or 2000, packs of wild roaming dogs near the waterfront. People were living in shanties basically by the water.
JL: It’s amazing to see what happens in ten years… We’re talking about, maybe, the most “desirable” place in Brooklyn right now.
CB: Not even twenty years… And I think I’ve always been interested in place, but it’s different, living it and seeing it and being able to go to these places makes it so much more intense. If I flew into a place and spent three months on a research trip, it’s different. It’s temporary as someone just passing through.
JL: Do you ever feel, especially doing your work where you live and with such rich culture at stake, that you’re constantly bombarded by different aspects of the social and political world where it becomes a bit much? Do you feel responsible for place? I struggle with that a lot myself.
CB: Absolutely, I think we’re always obligated to serve the community in which we live. I mean, if you want to have a healthy community. So, I see gentrification as a major problem, and I hope to make my work serve the opposing forces. Or at least become aware of it. There’s all sorts of ways, even on the smaller level, that we can have a positive impact on where we live. There’s smaller organizations looking at who’s being included, who’s being excluded... In terms of art - who’s being allowed to present their work?.. regardless of the spaces available or the discipline. Are local artists being featured? I’ve been to events where you’re seeing people clearly not connected to the community, which is kind of astonishing sometimes.
JL: I think that’s what’s so great about this project. I’m interpreting this jazz project as something that is inclusive to anybody in that environment. I think, even with cultural centers, these are all great places to be a part of the community you live in.
CB: Every social space is a community. Every one of those spaces has the chance to make either a positive or a negative impact. Like you said [in a conversation we had earlier], if you’re opening up a gallery in an area and you’re only bringing in people from outside, you’re inevitably pushing people out and denying other people that space. It’s important to be asking those questions.
JL: Yeah, I think that’s why I’m so interested in this. I mean, I like jazz, but I’m also just interested in what this is doing both socially and politically.