"From 1968 to 1972, St. Louis was home to the Black Artists’ Group (BAG), a seminal arts collective that nurtured African American experiementalists working in theater, visual arts, dance, poetry, and jazz. In an abandoned warehouse in the city’s central core, a generation of innovative artists created a movement of intense and vibrant cultural life. Working to raise Black consciousness and explore the far reaches of interdisciplinary performance, members established a local arts academy for area youths, navigated a relentless calendar of original multi-media productions, and articulated an uncomprosmising social agenda.

"As debates over civil rights, nationalism, and the role of the arts in contemporary struggles all found form in BAG, the organization quickly became one of the Midwest’s most significant exemplars of the emergent Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s."

from "BAG - Point From Which Creation Begins - The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis" by Benjamin Looker(Missouri Historical Society Press, 2004, St. Louis)

St. Louis has a brand new BAG, St. Louis Jazz Notes January 2007:

Operating in St. Louis from 1968 to 1972, the Black Artists Group was a multidisciplinary arts cooperative that brought together music, poetry, dance, drama and visual arts, providing performance opportunities for local artists as well as educational programs for young people in the community.

Though coverage in local media was scant at the time, over the years BAG has come to be recognized as an historically significant organization that not only served as an important incubator for new artistic ideas but also helped launch the careers of a number of notable creative musicians, including Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Hamiet Bluiett, Baikida Carroll, Charles "Bobo" Shaw, Floyd LeFlore, J.D. Parran, Joseph Bowie and Luther Thomas.

The original BAG ended when the group’s funding sources, primarily grant money, began to dry up and a number of the group’s most active members left town for New York or Europe. But BAG’s legacy has remained an important part of St. Louis’ cultural history, and was celebrated in 2005 with a symposium and performances at Washington University.

Now some of the members of the original Black Artists Group, along with some new faces, have formed Black Arts Group (or BAG II for short). According to an email from bassist/composer/mbira player Zimbabwe Nkenya, the new organization’s mission is "to present to the community music, dance, theatre, visual and literary arts welcoming and appealing to all age groups and multicultural audiences. BAG II is working to revive the creative efforts of and expose audiences to BAG’s musical, artistic and cultural legacy."

Whether you call it a rebirth, a remix or a resurgence, the return of BAG in any form is a welcome development, and StLJN definitely will have more coverage of this story and future developments as they unfold.