Defunkt

Joseph Bowie, trombonist and son of a music teacher from St. Louis as well as brother to big band arranger Byron Bowie and the late Lester Bowie of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, guided Defunkt in generating some of the most daring music of the twentieth century’s final quarter. The ensemble came together in 1978 and first pursued a dance-oriented take on jazz. Its opening three albums—Defunkt, Razor’s Edge, and Thermonuclear Sweat—established the group as frontrunners of New York’s radical underground, yet disappointing sales prompted a 1983 breakup that sent Bowie into retreat on St. Croix. After he returned to New York in 1986, Defunkt regrouped and released six further albums by 1993, among them A Blues Tribute: Jimi Hendrix & Muddy Waters and In America. Starting in 1996, Bowie pursued a fusion of 1930s and 1940s big band jazz with the dance rhythms and grooves of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He enlarged the lineup by adding more horn players and background vocalists, then unveiled the Defunkt Big Band through a six-week residency at the Knitting Factory in New York.