No wave: History and Key Facts

No wave was an avant-garde music and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was coined as a rejection of commercial new wave music. No wave musicians took rock instrumentation and experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic worldview, originally pioneered by New York artists Suicide and Jack Ruby.

In 1978, Brian Eno produced the compilation album No New York, which became an important document of the scene. The no wave movement influenced independent film (no wave cinema), fashion, and visual art, then, in the mid-1980s, musical developments such as mutant disco and post-no wave. Regional scenes influenced by New York city no wave emerged, including Japan's Kansai no wave movement along with the Chicago no wave scene.

Notable artists include James Chance and the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, DNA, Theoretical Girls and Rhys Chatham.

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