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No wave was an avant-garde music and visual art scene which emerged in the late 1970s in downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic worldview. The movement was short-lived but highly influential in the music world. The 1978 compilation No New York is often considered the quintessential testament to the scene's musical aesthetic. Aside from the music genre, the no wave movement also had a significant influence in independent film (no wave cinema), fashion, and visual art. No wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features, but it generally was characterized by a rejection of the recycling of traditional rock aesthetics, such as blues rock styles and Chuck Berry guitar riffs in punk and new wave music. No wave groups drew on and explored such disparate stylistic forms as minimalism, conceptual art, funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, and avant garde noise music. According to Village Voice writer Steve Anderson, the scene pursued an abrasive reductionism which "undermined the power and mystique of a rock vanguard by depriving it of a tradition to react against". Anderson claimed that the no wave scene represented "New York's last stylistically cohesive avant-rock movement". There were, however, some elements common to most no-wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds; repetitive, driving rhythms; and a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody—typical of La Monte Young's early downtown music. In the early 1980s, Downtown Manhattan's no wave scene transitioned from its abrasive origins into a more dance-oriented sound, with compilations such as ZE Records's Mutant Disco (1981) highlighting a playful sensibility borne out of the city's clash of hip hop, disco and punk styles, as well as dub reggae and world music influences.

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