The Detroit Contemporary 5 [John Sinclair]

Newark / Detroit: The Artists’ Workshop / Detroit & The Jazz Art Music Society, 1966. Mimeograph on tan stock from type and holograph. 7 ½ x 11 in. Very good; mild age toning and edges embrittled. Item #6795

Handbill promoting “The Detroit Contemporary 5, featuring Marion Brown,” a series of concerts in Newark, presented by The Artists’ Workshop from Detroit, and the Jazz Art Music Society from Newark. Ensemble member John Sinclair would go on to found the White Panther Party two years later and play in the celebrated proto-punk band MC5.

The Detroit Contemporary 5 (DC5) was a fluid ensemble from Detroit that included John Dana, Ronald Johnson, John Sinclair, and trumpetist Charles Moore. It had grown out of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop, an important meeting ground for musicians and other artists at the height of the Detroit Free Press artistic movement. The concert was part of DC5’s ten day tour of the east coast, and featured the renowned alto player Marion Brown. The politically oriented jazz scene in Newark would soon coalesce with Amiri Baraka’s Jihad Productions.

A document of the intersecting networks of avant-garde jazz and radical politics.

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