The American experimental music century: an oral history

"Twentieth-century American experimental music provoked and engaged unseen, inspired, and unprecedented directions in composition, performance, recording, advocation, and community-building and it did so in a way unlike any other national tradition before. Reflecting the richness and diversity of a country based on the ideals of freedom, immigration, and individuality, composers, musicians, and their supporters took new steps that defined a musical tradition. While experiencing many movements of inequality throughout a history of a music characteristically thought of as having few boundaries, experimental music's growth largely proved to describe progress rather than decline, collective collaboration, individuality, and community. Artists, performers, patrons, advocates, and avid listeners demonstrated the success of this nascent history through their acknowledgement and offered their popularity. Over the twentieth century, this would include the prodigious and transformative work of composers as diverse as Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Cowell, Meredith Monk, Charles Ives, Betty Freeman, Morton Feldman, John Zorn, Ruth Crawford, and hundreds of others.