UC Santa Cruz

Catalytic Sound is a collective of thirty creative improvising musicians working toward creating economic sustainability for themselves through cooperative means. In this thesis, I investigate the ways Catalytic Sound developed to this point from its beginnings as an online musician-owned record store. I write a short history of Catalytic Sound from 2011 to 2021 through ethnographic observation and interviews, archival research, and my own personal experiences as manager of the cooperative from June 2018 to July 2019. Beyond a description of this history, I develop an understanding of Catalytic Sound and its evolution through modeling and analyzing the network of musicians and other actors who have shaped the cooperative. Additionally, I draw historical connections to the Jazz Composers Guild, the New Music Distribution Service, and the AACM to historically situate Catalytic Sound within a broader history of political and economic organizing on the part of improvising musicians in the United States and Europe.