Larry Nozero

Like so many talented reed players before him, Larry Nozero received instruction at Detroit’s Larry Teal School of Music, granting him common ground with legends like Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, and Bennie Maupin. Although Nozero flirted with the Strata camp in 1964 as a member of Charles Moore’s Detroit Contemporary 5, he was soon drafted into the military. There, Nozero took full advantage of the opportunities in the Army Band, gaining seasoning that led to several high profile jobs upon his return to Detroit.

Charles Olson

Charles Olson (1910-1970) was an innovative poet and essayist whose work influenced numerous other writers during the 1950s and 1960s. In his influential essay on projective (or open) verse, Olson asserts that "a poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader. Okay. Then the poem itself must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge." Form is only an extension of content and "right form, in any given poem, is the only and exclusively possible extension of content under hand. . . .

Harvey Ovshinsky & the Fifth Estate

Fifth Estate was started by Harvey Ovshinsky, a seventeen-year-old youth from Detroit. He was inspired by a 1965 summer trip to California where he worked on the Los Angeles Free Press, the first underground paper in the US; Harvey’s father, inventor Stan Ovshinsky, knew the editor of the Free Press, Art Kunkin, from their years […]

Genie Parker

Genie Parker was born Genie Johnson, in Vernon Texas, the daughter of a high ranking official in the US Air force. Being brought up in a military family, most of Genie's childhood was spent in continuous travel; living for short times in Japan, France, Scotland, Germany and the Eastern United States. Genie left home at an early age and became a member of the collective beginning in the summer of 1967, just before the riots in Detroit. She was an organizer and activist, taking charge of communications and training between WPP chapters. She held a leadership position as "Minister of Foreign Affairs" in the WPP, and traveled overseas to Vietnam as a civilian observer and eyewitness.

Christopher Perret

Christopher Perret was born June 26th 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. The son of a French artist, Rene Perret and American wife Frances, nee Roach. Perret and Leni Sinclair met onboard the ship "Provence" headed for Genoa, Italy just after the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. At the time of departure in early September, Perret was living with his brother in New York City. After an onboard romance, they traveled together through Europe and briefly settled in Deya on the island of Mallorca at the home of artist Mati Klarwein. Perret's artwork was used for the Journal, published by the AWS press and a planned but unpublished book with Leni Sinclair.