Somewhere along the foggy banks of my memory, there is an article titled "Japan: The Land Feminism Forgot." I can't find the article, not for lack of trying, but because when I searched "The Land Feminism Forgot," I found it was not just an article. It was a bit of headline trope, phrased alternately to emphasize a country (I found an article for Italy with basically the same title, as an example) or for a demographic of women (either married women or single women, depending on the slant of the writer, I suppose).
The top hit I found was a BBC article* discussing "Western Myths about Japan," and they bring up the phrase verbatim. Dr. Christopher Harding writes "Japan has been seen as the land that feminism forgot. Both Japanese and Western commentators have tended to see the geisha girl as the ideal of Japanese womanhood - attractive and subtle, subservient to men, but clever enough to be good company." This "geisha girl" ideal was leveraged by an artist in a previous article, Tamaki Miura, to craft her performances of Madame Butterfly. Her personal life, on the other hand... Lets say the Japanese media had a difficult time reconciling the two personas.
How entire countries could come to be viewed as "left behind" by feminism, or to lack feminist thinking entirely, has much to do with media representation. (As an aside: Portland, OR is learning the hard way how much media representation matters. That's for another time. Maybe.) Speaking anecdotally, it seems like much focus is spent on Japan's problems with things like groping on subways or the as yet uncracked glass ceiling. My sense is, whenever these topics come up, it comes up with an air of superiority, as if America has solved these problems and those poor backwards Japanese are languishing in the distance. (More related aside: this attitude seems to be present for the Middle East and Africa as well.)
As if. Of course there are feminists in Japan, but I suspect the language barrier in consort with a host of implicit assumptions prevents their names from travelling far. I will not pretend to be an expert**, so if you're curious you can look up some of the historical movement: Shin Fujin Kyokai (新婦人協会), or The New Women Association, in 1919; the Sekirankai (赤蘭会), or The Red Wave Society, in 1921; uman ribu, or Women's Lib, in the 1960's and 70's... There's a lot of there there, and there's always more to be said.
**For the love of all that is holy, don't take me as the final word on any of this.
--- --- --- ---
One trend which has been pretty consistent in my Composer for Every Country series has been - women who compose academic music ("classical") don't pop up in Google searches very often unless you search for them specifically. Even if you do, you don't always find many. The pop world, on the other hand, is a place where women composers have consistently found prominence and success, and it seems like this has been true as far back as the 19th century with the advent of the salon.
There's plenty of ink to be spilled about how women consistently end up in the world of popular music, how such music's ephemeral nature and lack of perceived seriousness and "genius" work to quickly erode women out of the historical record... But that's not what I'm here for, go look for someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Searching for women composers in Japan, I find a handful of women working in the academic and symphonic stage world, and a whole lot working as composers for anime or video games. Michiru Yamane, Manami Matsumae, Harumi Fujita, Yoshino Aoki... The list goes on. But for today, I'm going to focus on a composer very near and dear to my heart: Kanno Yoko. As a film composer, I do not hesitate to say that Kanno Yoko is a composer of a caliber on par with John Williams. I am well aware that in certain circles, that is damning with faint praise, but lets be real - the attitude relegating film scoring to a lower tier of talent and compositional skill is part of the reason there's such a mess of inequality to begin with.
Anyways. Kanno Yoko's work spans a number of disparate genres, both in anime and music, and she has provided the scores for (in no particular order): Wolf's Rain, about a group of wolves looking for Paradise in an apocalyptic future; The Vision of Escaflowne, a story about the conflict of individual freedom and fate and giant robots... and... Isaac Newton? Somehow?; Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a story about... something... there's a lot of talking and then shooting and then talking some more; and Cowboy Bebop which is probably the best story ever told. Say what? That's an exaggeration? Fight me.
Continuing south down the West African coast from Guinea is Sierra Leone. Like Guinea, Sierra Leone is quite ethnically diverse, with sixteen different groups. The Temne and the Mende people form the largest percent of the population, each being about a third of the total. One ethnic group stands out compared to Guinea: the Krio. This group of people is the result of Sierra Leone's curious history as a British protectorate, and to understand where they come from we have to go back to the American Revolution.
You see, it turns out that chattel slavery is not just morally reprehensible and probably economically disadvantageous in the long run. It also causes national security problems (slave owners knew this, of course, given the universal fear of slave riots breaking out). So when the American Revolution started, a not insignificant portion of slaves joined the British army, some joining because, seriously, screw the slave owners, but many joining because the British promised emancipation.
After the war, the British lived up to their promises of compensation for the loyalty of these now-former slaves and relocated them to Nova Scotia. That didn't last long because it turned out there were just as many froth in the mouth racists in Nova Scotia as there was any other place on the continent, and that suddenly transplanting large groups of people from one location to another naturally causes friction.
At the same time, a number of freedmen had been relocated to England, with somewhat similar results. There was a big to-do about what to do with their "Black Poor," and, seeing that their plan to relocate certain sections of the British population to Australia was starting to really pay dividends, the British government proposed a solution the logic of which would make Patrick Star proud: they decided to take the freedmen from Nova Scotia, and the "Black Poor" (who, lets be clear, were also freedmen) and put them somewhere else. That somewhere else happened to be Sierra Leon.
Sierra Leon continued to be the location of choice for sending people liberated from slave ships throughout the 19th century. Due to the nature of the slave trade, the Liberated Africans came from all manner of locations and ethnicities. The end result was a new creole ethnicity, or "Krio," as they came to be known in Sierra Leone. Somehow, despite making up only about 2% of the population, the Krio language became the lingua franca, spoken by almost every ethnic group even though English is technically the official language.
Like every African country, there's more to say about Sierra Leone than its history with colonialism, but the downside of writing about a new country every week is to sacrifice some depth for breadth. More recently, Sierra Leone has been wracked by civil war and the outbreak of ebola and now the novel coronavirus. That said, the country is doing somewhat better than some of the other countries I've covered so far, at least as far as economics are concerned. That growth is tenuous, though, and a lot will have to go right to stabilize the country.
--- --- --- ---
Today's composer is Asadata Dafora (1890-1965). I say "composer," but that really sells the guy short. He was also a dancer, choreographer, and operatic concert singer. He was born to a wealthy family in Freetown, where his father, John Warner M. Horton, was city treasurer. In 1929, Mr. Dafora went to New York. Given the Great Depression, it wasn't the best timing, but his talents as a musician and dancer eventually saw him through to success and the founding of his dance troupe, the Shogolo Oloba.
Asadata Dafora also had a remarkably productive collaboration with Orson Welles, performing in Welles' all-Black production of Macbeth, as well as co-authoring a radio play called Trangama-Fanga. Mr. Dafora's magnum opus, Kykunkor, is a dance/opera telling the story of a bridegroom who is cursed by a witch doctor and her groom's attempts to lift the curse. The opera was a literal overnight success, it's afternoon audience of 60 or so attracting so many people for the evening performance the concert venue had to turn people away (this may be exaggeration, because the numbers don't quite add up, but it's hardly my place to throw away a good story).
Unfortunately, I cannot find any recording of the work. In fact, I can hardly find any recording of anything Dafora wrote. But I did find this performance of his solo dance, Awassa Astrige/Ostrich, composed and choreographed in 1932.
Dafora is a really intriguing figure I had no knowledge of. It seems his legacy lives much more strongly in the world of ballet, where his work laid the foundation for future Black dancers and choreographers to be taken seriously in a (still) largely white profession. I hope his work sees a revival, because it sounds super interesting, and if it's even half as good as Awassa Astrige, it will still be worth revisiting.
I was not born into a musical family. My father was an engineer, and my mother was a teacher for a time. Neither of them play any instruments whatsoever, and they certainly don't have any experience in the music industry. They were always supportive, especially because I think it was very difficult to get child me to commit to anything, so seeing me commit to music must have come as a bit of a surprise. I would not say I showed any talent or promise at the beginning, that is for sure.
While my parents did what they could to help, there were always limits to what they could do. They could sign me up for youth orchestras, drive me to lessons and auditions, agree to send me out more or less unchaperoned (my orchestra director was there, along with a few other students from my class) to San Antonio for All-State. They did a lot. But when it came time to jump the gap between high school and college, and particularly from college to career, there wasn't much they could do other than cheer from the sidelines. Which they do, as they always have. Thanks mom and dad!
But looking at famous musicians, I can't help but notice how many of them had family members with connections in high places. Yo-yo Ma's father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a professor of music at Nanjing National Central University. Jacqueline du Pre's mother, Iris Greep, was a wonderful concert pianist and music educator who attended the Royal Academy of Music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father, Leopold Mozart, was an exceedingly well connected violinist of his time. What, you think 18th century opera impresarios just let any old talented 14-year old waltz in an write an opera for them? No, of course not. Don't be silly.
Does this detract from their talent and hard work? Gods no. Do not mistake me for saying "Oh, if only I had musical parents, I'd be as famous as Mozart." But the soft power of social connections cannot be denied. My life, had either of my parents been musicians at all, would have unfolded in an altogether different manner, and not necessarily for the better. Which makes me wonder: how many exceptional talents are lost in the noise of history for want for a letter of recommendation? For that matter, does it matter?
I suppose it might matter to them.
--- --- --- ---
Speaking of musical families, this brings me around to the Kazuhito Yamashita + Bambini Quintet. Kazuhito Yamashita is a classical guitarist of some small controversy. The man is an absolute wizard at the guitar, transcribing works one would assume impossible to arrange for the instrument: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Dvořák's New World Symphony. From what little I have read, not everyone thinks he should have done that, but it's a bit too late for complaining now, isn't it? He is also quite dedicated to the performance of newer works for guitar, giving upwards of 60 premiers, including the works of his wife, Keiko Fujiie.
Fujiie's music has proved frustratingly difficult to find. This frustration is familiar, cropping up whenever I dig around for composers farther afield than, you know, France or something. It turns out, written records are easier to get ahold of than recordings. Anyways. Fujiie has written a number of orchestral works, twice winning the prestigious Otaka Prize. She also has composed a number of works for her husband and for the family guitar quintet.
Family guitar quintet, you say? Yes! The Kazuhito Yamashita Family Guitar quintet has done a number of tours, and has one album, Kasane, featuring the music of Fujiie. If you're looking for the CD, it's kind of hard to get ahold of. It has a listing on Amazon, but is labeled "unavailable." It's not on Spotify, either. In fact, out of all the searching I've done, I've found exactly one video of the quintet playing together, from a performance at the Festival de la Guittara de Córdoba. Supposedly, they are playing one of Fujiie's works, but it was not credited, so who knows?
One daughter of the group, Kanahi Yamashita, has been going on to pursue of guitar career of her own. You can see some of her work at her website here:
If you enjoy my blogs and find them informative, consider becoming a Patron. The page is in its infancy, but I plan to make videos, scores, and live interviews available to patrons in the future. Thanks for reading!
Guinea stands separate from Guinea-Bissau because Guinea was colonized by the French, while Guinea-Bissau was colonized by the Portuguese. Something I learned from reading about Guinea which hadn't popped up yet is the collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958. The founding of the 5th Republic saw Charles de Gaulle (of World War II fame) basically told the West African colonies: stay with us, or else. Guinea, under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré, voted for independence by referendum and found out the "or else" part of the ultimatum.
The French settlers pulled out of Guinea in a two month time frame, displaying just about the ultimate in human pettiness in the process. As The Washington Post reports, French "unscrewed lightbulbs, removed plans for sewage pipelines in Conakry, and even burned medicines."
Politics within Guinea after that became... complicated. Touré aligned the country with the Soviet Union, which, you know, makes a certain statement in the 20th century, and advocated a combination of socialism and Pan-Africanism. As you might surmise, this led to a certain degree of conflict considering the country was surrounded by countries still occupied by European powers. Not least was Guinea-Bissau, through which Portugal launched a kind of proxy war in an attempt to remove Touré from power. The Portuguese ultimately retreated after freeing a number of political prisoners. Before you go feeling bad for Touré, though, know that he followed that conflict with a huge purge, killing almost 50,000 Guineans and arresting and torturing many others.
At the bigger picture, there are three main ethnicities which hold the most political power now: the Mandinka, the Fula, and Soussou. There are quite a number of smaller ethnic groups which tend not to be well represented in the government. Though French is the official language, some 24 languages are spoken across the country. Religiously, the people are mostly Muslim, with a minority of Christians and indigenous traditional religions making up the rest.
--- --- --- ---
The composer I have picked for today is Mory Kanté (1950-2020). He was kind of a big deal, and I'm not just being facetious. I mean, I am a little, but seriously, his album, Akwaba Beach (1987), was the best selling African record of its time. Please do take a moment to remember Africa is a continent, not a country, to get a sense of how big that album was. One song in particular, "Yé ké yé ké," also became a number 1 hit song in Europe. It was the first African single to sell over a million copies in Europe.
Mr. Kanté was born into a Mandinka griot family. His father, El Hadj Djeli Fodé Kanté, and his mother, Fatouma Kamissoko, were among the most famous griot families of the early 20th century. Mr. Kanté also learned kora, balafon (relative of the marimba), and griot singing in Mali. In addition to being influenced by Islamic music, he became known as "The Electric Griot" for incorporating electric instruments and various pop and electronic dance styles into his traditional song writing.
Every country I read about, I find something surprising about how connected the world is. In this case, Mory Kanté's songs were the inspiration for at least two Indian Bollywood songs: "Tamma Tamma" and "Jumma Chumma."
Mory Kanté died of complications from various chronic health issues. Unfortunately, it was lack of medical care that did him in. He had been receiving treatment in France, but the outbreak of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals and he could no longer get adequate treatment for his illnesses. It is a story I am sure we will learn is all too common in 2020.
Adam Eason: Okay, and now we pretend like we're saying hi for the first time again.
Lisa Neher: Okay. Hi!
Adam Eason: Hi, how are you?
Lisa Neher: I'm doing well.
Adam Eason: Yeah, good! For everybody who is unaware, this is Lisa Neher... I think I got that [pronunciation] right? Singer, composer, all around great person. Now, I think the best place to start is at the beginning. So what is your earliest musical memory?
Lisa Neher: Wow... I mean for me it's a lot of running around in the backyard pretending to be Tolkien characters, or Kirk and Spock, or Luke and Leia, or some mashup of those and humming my own soundtracks. There was always background music going on in my head and in my mouth and in my throat, so that's a pretty early memory.
Another early memory for me would be my Uncle Dan's wedding. I think I was a flower girl and I must have been... four maybe? And I remember my aunt sang, I think she sang Ave Maria, and just being like "Oh my gosh! Rose sounds amazing!" and she did. She was a really big choral singer in high school, and I don't know if she did it in college or not because she was in nursing and that's pretty intense. But that's a big memory of mine, too, is it's kind of one of those faint childhood memories.
Adam Eason: And you grew up in Portland. I think I have that right?
Lisa Neher: Oh, actually I grew up south of Seattle in this town called Kent Covington. Covington used to be unincorporated. So South/Southeast of Seattle in the suburbs, and then I came to Portland for my undergrad at Lewis & Clark College. So Portland is like my second, you know, it's where I grew up as an adult, I guess? As an undergrad you kind of have another sense of growing up somewhere.
Adam Eason: I got you. Did they have school music programs where you were?
Lisa Neher: Well, so it's interesting. I was home-schooled, and so there was probably school music. I'm sure I think Kent has actually pretty good schools. So I'm sure they have music going on. It was probably great, but I wasn't involved in it. I did get involved in the junior high and high school musicals, which were considered extracurriculars. So in Washington state what's really awesome is everyone pays education taxes, so homeschool families, they have the access to any of the extracurriculars that you want or you can go in and take a class or two classes or whatever and just not be somebody who's working towards your diploma. So I made use of that the minute I got excited about drama and was involved in the musicals and while in junior high and high school and that was how I got involved in school music was through musicals.
Adam Eason: Okay, and you learned music from your parents? Or from private instructors who are brought in from school?
Lisa Neher: So I took piano lessons from a neighborhood teacher, a wonderful woman named Mary Bolstad, and then Laurie Shannon who was another kind of local private teacher and I took piano lessons and just a few voice lessons to help with musicals, but I didn't do voice lessons till college on a regular basis.
Adam Eason: Okay, interesting. So I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but all of your undergrad, Masters', DMA... has a very heavy theater emphasis. It seems like. Like at Lewis and Clark you got voice, composition, and theater. University of Kansas I know as a big musical theater place. I think.
Lisa Neher: Yeah! My degree at from University of Kansas is actually composition.
Adam Eason: Oh, okay!
Lisa Neher: Yeah. So like this is welcome to the the crazy world that is Lisa's CV which is always some weird combination of things that is not quite consistent, but it always kind of comes back. Yeah, so there was musical theater happening at U of Kansas. It's also a big opera school. Again, the weird thing. I love University of Kansas. It's a great composition program. It's a great vocal program. It's just always hard at the graduate school level to do two things. It's very difficult. So I was involved in the Opera department just a little bit my second year. I was in the chorus for Riders to the Sea and I took voice lessons from a wonderful TA and then my second year at U of Kansas from one of the faculty members Julia Broxholm, who's fabulous.
Adam Eason: So you've always had a mix of the classical side and more contemporary musical theater side and opera and it's all kind of...
Lisa Neher: Yeah, and I think... I don't necessarily have contemporary musical theater like pop rock stuff. And Lewis and Clark is a program that's mostly straight theater. I mean non-musical, sometimes people call that straight theater. And so they only did one musical I was there and ironically it overlapped with my very last semester when I was doing two senior recitals and a senior theater project, so I was not a part of that musical and the timing of that seemed very ironic to me at the time. At the same time, I was so excited to get to put on these events that you kind of been building up to that it really wasn't that big of a sense of loss to me, because I just knew there was no way I could add anything on top of that.
So I let it go and everyone was wonderful. They did Urinetown, it was hilarious, and I had fun watching my friends. And and then I went back and rabidly practiced and composed and all the other things. Yeah, but I wouldn't say my training in theater is mostly... like the acting was very much separate from the singing. I love to combine them, but I definitely don't have the pop rock contemporary training in the same way that I had the legit Golden Era of classical musical theater, you know? That's kind of where my voice has more of the technique right now, maybe someday that will change.
Adam Eason: Okay, so not so much the Andrew Lloyd Webber's...
Lisa Neher: Well, Webber is pretty much still... Okay, I guess it depends on the show, you know, and then it gets all involved in these kind of crazy things about voice types and belter versus legit and whether that means legit is soprano or not, you know? But I guess if you think about Pop Rock musical theater, that's not something that I have extensive training in at this time. But you know, if you go back to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, those kind of golden age of musical theater. That's the kind of technique that I studied.
Adam Eason: Okay. Because musical theater in general, like opera and the more recent kind of musical theater, is not something I'm hugely well-versed at, but you do opera-ish stuff as well?
Lisa Neher: Oh for sure.
Adam Eason: Yeah, and how do those two... they're pretty different sounds to my ear.
Lisa Neher: Yeah, they are different sounds.
Adam Eason: And you know... I'm thinking of like, there are sometimes polyglots will say when they go to a country it takes them a few days to get into the language and then when they come back home it takes a few days to get back into it. Is it hard for your brain to switch back and forth between those two styles or is it not as compartmentalized?
Lisa Neher: Yeah, I think you could say there's something similar. I mean if you think about what's asked of you in the classical style: consistent vibrato, consistent legato, the chiaroscuro, that bright/dark sound that's kind of a mix of the overtone projection, you know? That you get this kind of "wraaaahw!" around in your head, resonance... That's a technical term, but you get like this resonance thing going on along with the depth thing... And mainly because of the tradition of miking [in musical theater] a lot more variety of sounds are possible once you're miked. So as mics became things that were used in musical theater, this allows a lot more variety of sounds that you can make that wouldn't otherwise project. So musical theater might has a different approach to vibrato, you know, maybe more delayed vibrato, maybe different diction stuff. So I think you can totally like, if you do a lot of it, you can kind of come back to your opera and go like "Oh, whoa! Oh, I got to remember to keep that vibrato going all the time!"
And then a lot of the time, too, we might be asked, "Hey less vibrato," or "No, no less! less! less! More talky less singy!" is a direction that is often given when you move into that musical theater space. But also if you kind of look at the styles that I say I'm more comfortable in which is like, the Golden Age and legit, that's the time when they weren't miked as much. Original Rodgers and Hammerstein, you know, you listen to Julie Andrews sing The Sound of Music? That's pretty much classical technique, really not that different at all. So the farther you deviate from those I think... You can get into habits like anything else.
But as a voice teacher, I believe the voice can do many things. We can have many gears. I'm a triathlete, I can swim and bike and run, and I think the voice can do the same thing. It's kind of a matter of like, do you have the time to study each one? Do you have good coaches to help you figure out how to do each thing so that you know how to move into those different gears and do you want to be switching between those? How does that fit with what you're working on?
Adam Eason: I also noticed on your biography, you have a number of pretty heavy classical rep that you've done. So like the Bach B Minor Mass, Durufle Requiem. I think I saw Faure on there? I can't remember all of them, there a lot.
Lisa Neher: There's a lot of things! Yeah. I haven't done the whole Bach B minor. I think I did an excerpt of that. Often the whole Bach B minor might be done by an even darker contralto, but I've definitely done the St. Matthew's Passion and The St. John's Passion.
Adam Eason: So yeah, so something I'm kind of curious about because those aren't overtly theatrical pieces. And I mean, I guess you could make an argument they have theatrical elements to them because of the stories that they're telling, but how much of the theater element gets brought into your performances of not quite as theater-y stuff, or even down to like lieder, kind of the classical art song.
Lisa Neher: Everything. Yeah, I can't quite get into anything without... It's all storytelling. It's all communication. Now, there's different style. There's different movement. I've seen art songs staged in a way that I didn't think actually helped. Like it's not necessarily that to do something and involve theater is to... It does not always mean that you're going to do a bunch of blocking in my opinion. I think theater tells us that we're always communicating something we always have a goal. We always want something. We're trying to get it. We're trying to communicate or trying to... we're in dialogue, that to me is theater and I think oratorio absolutely has to feel that way and actually maybe even more so when you repeat the same three lines for 6 minutes.
I mean you have to... Yes, of course. There's a suspension of reality when anybody starts singing on stage. It's not like a realistic television show where we sort of, you know... most television to be in the style of realism or melodrama. That's the style of acting that were the most familiar with as American audiences. There's many styles of acting. It's not only realistic kinds of acting or kind of intensified realistic kinds of acting which would be like melodrama where we kind of have a little heightened emotion. That's very common in our television and movies which is how most of us encounter acting on a daily basis.
So where was I going with that? So there's the first of all there's many styles, you know, so if I do a piece that is like a contemporary music piece, that's kind of maybe very avant-garde and doesn't really seem to have a story you can still approach that with theater because theater is about "doing," theater is about communicating, theater is about making bold choices and doing that thing and being really comfortable doing that thing. If you're talking about oratorio it often means being very comfortable standing and being in that space. Of standing and communicating something and of shaping it in subtle ways.
It's not just that "Erbarme dich" is sad for 6 minutes. That's too simple. It's got to be specific. There's got to be variety and finding that variety within the style of singing Bach with your eye on the conductor. Yeah, that's pretty subtle. But I think there's a big difference between every time you sing that phrase having a specific intention that changes, of deciding whether you're actually speaking and looking directly at the audience, or you're choosing to address an unseen entity; versus having wandering eye syndrome and not knowing exactly which of those you've chosen, which is something that a lot of younger singers can fall into when they're first trying to get their hands around this, you know, because it's a huge task and it's a ton of music. So theater to me is a lens of approaching everything that I do. But it's not one size fits all yeah.
Adam Eason: You got your DMA at University of Iowa, and I actually found that I could download your thesis.
Lisa Neher: Oh way cool! You're one of the ones I got in my report! I get an email once a month.
Adam Eason: Nice! I didn't read it because it's 300 pages long, but I did read the abstract and you wrote about composer Gabriella Lena Frank who you met at University of Kansas.
Lisa Neher: Yeah, she was a guest. She came as a guest composer. Yeah.
Adam Eason: Was that for an extended time or is that like a one off...
Lisa Neher: I think it was like a day or maybe two. Must have been a few days because I feel like the one of the ensembles was performing some of her stuff. So I met her first there and then a couple years later I was at the Cortona Sessions for new music as a singer, which is a kind of an artist retreat style festival for new music composers and performers to have this really loving safe space to experiment and grow and drink wine and enjoy beauty and create together and she's on faculty there. And so we we met again there, or we connected there, and I sang her cycle Quatro Canciones Andinas on one of my doctoral recitals.
Adam Eason: Gotcha. What was it like writing a thesis on somebody who is still alive?
Lisa Neher: It was awesome. I highly recommend it. That was actually one of my criteria when I was thinking about what to write about was ideally did not want to write about something that had been written about a lot before. I didn't think that that would be as helpful or as useful. Where really what I was able to offer by writing about Gabriela's music because she's so generous and open-hearted and giving of her time and herself was that, in addition to my thoughts and analysis of the music and the text, I got to call her and have her talk to me about these pieces. And this was so helpful to me as a performer to get more insights. It was so inspiring and it was also so wonderful as a composer to understand some of the things that inspire her and that have led her down this path of the work she's explored and how she thinks about composition and how she thinks about orchestration and how she chooses texts and stories.
So I felt like I knew I was right about someone living. I knew I didn't want to have a little review where I was going to have to thread the needle between a bunch of experts, you know, as a sort of a someone newer to this kind of scholarship that sounded like a lot of headache and tearing my hair out just to try to claim some tiny piece of space that didn't seem very useful and also as a contemporary music singer/contemporary music composer. Yeah, but I knew it would only work if I had somebody who was going to be super excited about that and open and she was so, so wonderful, she gave me access to some non-commercially released recordings to help with my analysis, because some of the works had not been commercially recorded or at least hadn't been at the time and access to scores and just interviews with her. She was also so loving and kind about like, you know, "Don't just write what I say. Write what you think!" You know she was so trusting and I really appreciated that.
Adam Eason: Yeah, I guess I can kind of see you might want to know the person you're writing about on some level. It's easy to imagine that could go a different direction with a person who has a different personality.
Lisa Neher: Yeah. Or just, you may not be able to have access to things. I mean, when I was thinking about different ideas and different composers that I might want to focus on and one of the pieces that I was looking at, I can't remember who it was by... But anyway, my professor was like, "Why don't you write about such and such?" And I said, "Well, I don't know them. There was no recording. I can't even begin to make an analysis of this piece." If I'm trying to pluck out from a chamber score on the piano... I mean, just from a practical standpoint, and I really think pretty practically when it comes to starting to define a big project like a dissertation, I really didn't want that to become some horrendous task of me paying people to make a realization of a score just so I could analyze what was happening. And you can't just analyze music in my opinion by looking at the score. You have to hear it. You're letting go of so much that your imagination can't put in for you.
Adam Eason: So these songs and even the composer herself. You mentioned that you're a little surprised your teachers, your professors, haven't heard of her as a vocalist and that a lot of the works on her Spotlight bio from Schott publishing... I think?
Lisa Neher: Oh, I think it's Schirmer.
Adam Eason: Ah, ok. [Those works] were instrumental. Have you found that maybe in contemporary classical music there's a slant more towards the instrumental as opposed to the vocal?
Lisa Neher: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, totally 100%. it's getting better in some areas. I mean our theory books, our theory curriculum, our music history curriculum. It's not just contemporary. You know, once we're out of the Renaissance, we're going to be lucky if they talk about anything vocal. You know.
Adam Eason: That's true. Actually. Now that you mention it.
Lisa Neher: Yeah, it is true actually. It's actually really strange to me because I remember in theory class we'd have to choose pieces to analyze, and when I go back now and I look at art songs that I'm assigning my students, I think, "This is exactly that form thing that people were talking about. Why didn't we look at some of these art songs for examples of different phrase forms?" Do you want obvious examples of the most common modulations ever? You go to Gilbert and Sullivan. How helpful would it have been not just for the singers in the class, but just to everyone to get to see some examples in, you know, tonal theory of really obvious "This is how [it is]." It's like when you go and you read church hymns and you go that's all the part writing stuff they were talking about and for some reason these silly books. You know these textbooks they jump right into like the most difficult exceptions to the rule in the most thorny Beethoven string quartet ever instead of letting undergrads see five examples that are super obvious. So anyway, there's my soapbox.
Yeah, I think... I mean look I've had like so many great experiences with wonderful composers and performers who absolutely take singers totally seriously and it is fabulous, but there's definitely a feeling that if you're a singer in new music, you better have perfect pitch and if you don't you're dumb. That is definitely a thing. Especially if you're talking about new music that values very crunchy sonorities or pointillistic things where the pictures are sort of coming in and not necessarily being traditionally related to each other. These are things that are very difficult sometimes for non-perfect-pitch singers to do. Yeah, because we don't have buttons. So again if that's one of the genres or one of the aesthetics that's being elevated, then that is also an aesthetic that's a lot easier to do on a piano as it turns out. Maybe it's a lot easier to have success with certain instruments with that and not with singing or probably other certain instruments and that's more difficult. But I mean, yeah, there's a bias. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Eason: It's interesting what you brought up about using vocal music as examples, or the lack of examples of vocal music, because I think... I always appreciated like... Webern, who is almost the epitome of the thorny composer for a lot of people. And I remember actually going, "What are his songs? And what text did he pick?" and actually reading the texts and then when I went back to his Sinfonia, I was like, "Oh! I get what he's expressing!" because I have the text. Like, there's a literal, concrete sort of imagery that he has in mind underpinning his music.
Lisa Neher: That's a nice way into something sometimes, too, if a style is something that might be a little harder to relate to at first or if a composer... Yeah, it can be really wonderful to have a text or program or something, you know, it's not the only way but I think it can be a really great way. Especially if you're talking about, maybe, an audience that you want to reach that hasn't maybe heard that recently, you know.
Adam Eason: Yeah, so pivoting more towards your own compositions. You've written a chamber opera. White Horizons, right?
Lisa Neher: Yeah.
Adam Eason: What were the circumstances that brought this about and what was it? Where was it done?
Lisa Neher: It was done at the University of Kansas. So University of Kansas has a fabulous student performing new music ensemble, Helianthus, that is organized by Forrest Pierce who is one of my mentors and was the reason I went to University of Kansas - to study with him. And what he did was he took one of the semesters for Helianthus while I was there, and that was going to be the semester they performed new chamber operas by several of the composer's who was studying at U of Kansas at the time. So what we did is in the fall semester, we wrote our pieces, we were matched up with people who signed up to be in the class to do this project in the spring semester, so we wrote specifically for those people, and then in the spring semester, we did musical rehearsal staging rehearsals and then performances of the chamber operas. So I wrote for two of my colleagues as the singers and then a quartet of instruments and a fabulous conductor, and then I actually performed in a colleague's own Chamber Opera as well.
Adam Eason: Was that Li Kai Han?
Lisa Neher: Yeah, Li Kai Han Jeremiah. Yeah, the Nightingale and the Rose is beautiful. Yeah, really cool.
Adam Eason: How is your experience working on those smaller, very small theatrical works from the large kind of full scale productions that you've been part of.
Lisa Neher: So, you know, what I think is really neat about chamber effort and where I draw parallel to black box theater, is that chamber opera really lets everyone be on the same playing field. Often times, you're not even performing with the pit. You don't need to because the ensemble's small enough where you don't have to have that acoustic muffling, I guess? Or that's probably the wrong word. But you know, sometimes if the orchestra was actually on stage with the singers, you couldn't see them and also the brass might kind of blow out the singers sometimes depending on the acoustics of the hall. So what's great about chamber music is there's ideas of balance, of collaboration, of really looking your fellow ensemble members in the eye during those music rehearsals, it's so much more fun and collaborative.
You also get to be really creative about using your space. We staged these in 3/4, so we were able to put audience on three sides and then there was just one kind of backdrop, and that also made it very interesting to set up the space, to set up where the people were going to move. The minute you're doing three quarters, you have to move in a completely different way as an actor because no matter where you're pointed, someone's kind of looking at the rear side of you, so you have to move in a different way to kind of give that love and work the corners. And it's really interesting and audiences love kind of seeing they can kind of [see our?] reactions. It was really, really neat project and it's a model I keep going back to in my dreams of what I would love to create and how I can make that happen.
Adam Eason: It's kind of an uncommon genre. Are there other people? Is this like percolating around in the background and is just kind of waiting for its time in the sun or is this kind of still...
Lisa Neher: I think there are many companies. They're, like, if you kind of look up in the opera, there's some Facebook groups and you go around, there's quite a few small opera companies doing really innovative neat things with new works, with staging older works differently, you know. There's a lot on the east coast and then there's a smattering of them in other places. I mean, we have Opera Theater Oregon here based in Portland that does unusual smaller work sometimes or you know, the Little Prince isn't necessarily a smaller work, but they did it in kind of an intimate space. And Renegade Opera which is a new company that's getting started up and they're doing... Well, they were supposed to do this summer, it was supposed to do Clemenza di Tito staged in a really unique way and I think that's being pushed because of the pandemic.
So I do think there's a lot of this going on in little places and then in between, there's kind of these places where we're not seeing it in every city yet, and like any small companies it's really challenging. I mean, opera is really time-consuming, even on a small scale, and it's very expensive even on a small scale. So you have to figure out how you're going to do that. I think it can be a real passion project and you have to have a good team behind you which is kind of another reason why I keep having ideas and I haven't quite figured out how to make it happen yet, but I have schemes. I love to scheme.
Adam Eason: It's interesting the comment about cost because I think my assumption and probably the assumption of most people is that this would be a fairly cost-effective way of moving forward. I think it just sort of goes to show how expensive opera as a genre is.
Lisa Neher: Yeah, I think if you talk about, like, a chamber ensemble, maybe that doesn't memorize things? And doesn't have to do staging, doesn't have lights or costumes, and doesn't maybe need the same staging space? Even if you even if you stage things and usually you still want some kind of like entrance and exits and you know, things like that. And opera, even chamber opera, often has a conductor that can often be helpful depending on the music especially if it's contemporary, it may really require a conductor. So you need to have kind of a space for the conductor, space for the singers. They have to be able to see [the singers]. It has to be memorized, and you're going to have to do musical rehearsals and staging rehearsals with a rehearsal pianist, and then have your time when everybody gets together and you run it a few times. So it's a much more involved process than a chamber music concert and anytime you have to memorize things and any time to have to stage things.... It takes more time.
Yes, absolutely, it is way more affordable than grand opera, but I think grand opera companies, they don't want to let go of that. I mean they exist like a symphony doesn't want to become a string quartet, you know, it's a beautiful genre in and of itself and also there are people who are writing new wonderful grand operas, you know? We want to see those on those big stages, too, so I think it's like a both/and for me. You definitely see, like, Portland Opera has done a few kind of smaller chamber productions over the last few years, and maybe even before then, where they've done things kind of in a black box setting that are sort of smaller productions and that's really cool to see them do these hybrid seasons. It's super exciting. I love it.
Adam Eason: So getting even smaller, you have the you call it the One Voice Project. Can you describe what the project is? It's about unaccompanied voice and what exactly are the goals of the project or is this just like an overarching name for something? Like a general approach to writing for voice?
Lisa Neher: Yes. The One Voice Project. The goal of it is to expand the repertoire for unaccompanied voice and also to advocate for unaccompanied singing as a completely wonderful genre to write for and to sing in the same way that we have unaccompanied instrumental music for just about every single instrument ever. We don't have that repertoire as part of our normal practice in classical music, although certainly once you go digging there are many pieces that exist, but they are not taught. Nobody has to do an unaccompanied piece at any point in any recital ever. And I doubt as a cellist that is true for you.
Adam Eason: No, yeah, I mean... Bach is part of the audition process.
Lisa Neher: So this came out of a few things. The same Li Kai Han Jeremiah, who wrote Nightengale and the Rose, had these beautiful Japanese haiku settings that were really gorgeous. I performed [them] at University of Kansas and also at the Cortona Sessions for New Music, and they were scary to do unaccompanied. You get to the end of a piece you're a half step off, you know it's completely your fault so, you know... it's not because the pianist wasn't there that day. You notice it challenges you in this different way that like, I'm sure all of you instrumentalists who work on unaccompanied stuff have to... "Oh my intonation" or "Oh that rhythm here, oh shoot," you know all those. You're very exposed.
So on the one hand it was this huge challenge and kind of nerding out and geeking out about that was exciting and overwhelming and cool, and then at the other hand was, it was so amazing to sing something on my own and feel like it was complete. Because maybe you've also had this experience of going home for the holidays and your family asked you to play something? In my case, it would be me singing art song, and you sort of have this thing like, okay. Do I just skip the interlude? How do I... oh, let me go get my new note. It's super awkward because it is awkward to do something without half of it. Right? I mean the music doesn't exist [as] just the solo line. The piano part is so important in art song, the piano part is so important in any instrument plus piano combo, it's not solo. It's a duet. It's really a duet. So it was really exciting. And so then I went, "Why don't we have more of this and why don't we do more of this?
One place where we do have that tradition would be many of our folk songs often have a tradition of where people would sing them unaccompanied. Maybe they're laborer songs that they would do in the field or they would sing them and improvise or whatever. So that's another source of inspiration to me. I sang some unaccompanied Irish folk songs as well as some other unaccompanied pieces on a concert in Iowa with a friend of mine, Timothy Hsu who's a violinist, so we did some solos and some duets.
And then I put out this call for scores. So the One Voice Project kind of got kicked off then with a call for scores, and of those I selected some winning works that were performed several times in Iowa and then subsets have been performed in many different venues at New Music Gathering in Boston. Some of them actually were on my Third Angle Concert last month. They have become a repertoire that I can pull from and add to a little bit more organically recently, sort of one piece at a time and more by invitation.
You know, back when I did it in 2014, the call... Twitter was still pretty new and I think I got maybe 45 submissions, you know some from people I knew, some from people I didn't know. I think if I put out a call [now], I would be not able to sort through all of them because my network is so much larger and I don't think it would be very fair to people, especially if maybe they were writing something new. So I've been rethinking that as I move forward. How can I, now that I'm lucky enough to know more people who want to write for me, how can I use that most usefully? To ask specific people to write, or to notice somebody has a piece in their repertoire that I want to add to mine that they've already written and needs a second performance, things like that.
Then recently I've written some more pieces for unaccompanied voice. So I was invited to write a piece for Arwen Myers, she's a fabulous soprano here in Portland, for her ArtsLandia concert back in April. And so I wrote Strawberry Man, which is a short song for singer, accompanying with a little bit of claps and stomps. And I just wrote a piece for Rhymes with Opera's 'Pocket Opera Workshop' that's happening next week. And that's a three-minute micro unaccompanied Opera. And so they'll be workshoped next week and is kind of getting my gears going for some other mini unaccompanied projects that I think could be very impactful given that we're all in our homes during this quarantine.
Adam Eason: Moving on to your own compositions now, I think the one that I heard was at the Cascadia composers presentation you gave it was American Waters. Then I was just looking through some of the titles of your other works. So like... Twister, Icy Celestial Bodies, Thaw... It's very nature inspired and I was curious where that inspiration is coming from. Are they like coming from poetic texts, or is it just a general love of nature and the beauty and sublimity of it all?
Lisa Neher: Yeah. So for me as a composer I find... maybe this is because I'm a singer or an actress... that I really need to have an image or concepts or a theme something somewhat... even if it's loosely programmatic, that's when ideas flow. That's when I come into artistic flow. Maybe that will change, but I did an experiment a few years ago, maybe even last year, where I sort of tried instead to just think about things purely like, "Let's write some motives!" you know and much more abstract kind of [composition] and it was an interesting experiment. It did not unlock my creativity the same way that once I start to try to write about a gulper eel. suddenly all kinds of cool stuff comes out that I am feeling is useful and interesting and that a clarinetist likes to play. So that's kind of the first thing, is finding what I want to talk about, finding an inspiration, an image, a concept, a critter, or a landscape. I'm somebody who... going out in the world and encountering plants and animals and mountains is really... it's a very spiritual thing.
It's a place where I feel connected and sort of comforted by the fact that I'm not alone in being a living creature that has a beginning, middle, end. You know, there's something elemental. I feel also a kinship and a great deal of empathy. I'm a vegan and I felt this empathy since I was a little kid always with just like every little tiny critter and plant and just feeling like they deserve to have their shot and live and I love that empathy. Also, I feel a sense of the alien that I don't ever really know what their existence is like and that's kind of cool.
Then with natural phenomena, without making light of [it]... like I know tornadoes can be horrible. You know, I don't want to make light of that or volcanic explosions. But when I think about natural phenomenon I think about how we humans have done a lot to our Earth that maybe the Earth is not so happy about, and that we feel very in control and like it's our right to be in control.
And then I look at Mount St. Helens and Mount Saint Helens just decided to blow up and there was nothing we could do about it. And it's awful that it hurt people. I feel an odd sense of comfort that we can't completely destroy the Earth, you know. I also feel a kind of spiritual connection that there's something that's sitting there and it's going to be there when I'm gone and it's existing on its own plane, and these things to me are very interesting to try to express through music in some way. Some little bit of appreciation, of wondering, of my place in it all, of its place in its own thing and how little my place in it all matters to the mountain or to the tornado or to the gulper eel, and I hope that that is an invitation to audience members to sit in space.
I think our art form... It unfolds over time. So what do we give our audiences? We give them time to sit with something and you're going to get to sit in something in a sound world. I hope it can be an invitation to sit in that sound world and see what comes up for you and maybe look at that mountain differently or go look up that goofy weird gulper eel and see what it's all about and feel a sense of maybe comfort, and also maybe a sense of challenge to protect and to appreciate you know, so yeah.
Adam Eason: Yeah. So coming down from the mountain now, you have a keen interest in gender representation and music. Historically, contemporarily, for composers. You know, when I was thinking about this for our interview, I was kind of like... it's a different world in opera and voice. Because I was just remembering, I had to look it up, the Vienna Philharmonic, the first time they had a woman in their orchestra at all, it was like 1997.
Lisa Neher: Terrible.
Adam Eason: Right? But then in the world of voice the prima donna, what would you call it? Phenomenon?
Lisa Neher: Yeah. Sure.
Adam Eason: Yeah. Yeah it's been a thing for very long time. And you know the thing that sort of kicked off a thought line for me. I saw in your DMA thesis you had a book Michael K Slayton wrote called "Women of Influence in Contemporary Music," and I had the thought that, thinking historically, I could think of a lot of women who had influence but not a lot of women who had power. Does that distinction makes sense to you? Because I'm like, well, we've got Queen Elizabeth, sure, Catherine the Great, you know, maybe some others.
Lisa Neher: That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think... For sure. It's difficult for us to look back and go "How much of it is erasure, and how much of it is limiting in that moment?" You know what I mean? Because I think the historical gaze backwards means that sometimes people who were more influential got erased or their influence has been diminished in how we talk about them. Because it's a choice to keep talking about Beethoven or to talk about Robert Schumann and then mention Clara as a footnote versus the other way around, and we'd have to... I would have to be a better musicologist or have a time machine to know for sure.
But yeah, I do think that women.... I can even just look at my own life and I can think of the huge influence and the huge impact that women around me have and then the thing is that institutionally the power still is often held not by women, right? Whereas a mentor one-on-one can have an amazing impact on somebody's life and on what they go on to do, you know the impact of women working in the home, you know its a huge impact for hundreds of years of our society, thousands of years of our society. You can't say that's not an impact to raise children or whatever. But were they given the same rights, the same powers? Yeah, I think that's an interesting lens. I think there's probably a good amount of truth to that.
Adam Eason: What about your view of gender from within the world of vocal music and musical theater?
Lisa Neher: It's super problematic. It's so problematic. So there's so many... you go to like opera and theater. There's so much typecasting by gender and there's so much heteronormativity and you know erasure of LGBTQ, you know, there's just a huge erasure. And it hurts everybody, you know, it hurts everybody. It hurts the soprano friends of mine who are so sick of singing the damsel in distress and it hurts my baritone friend who's sick of being the sleazy old guy. I mean it hurts everybody and it certainly hurts people who don't feel like there's a place for them at all. Most of all, right, it hurts people who feel like they don't ever get to be authentic on stage. Most of all.
So that's a huge problem, and our associations with different voice colors with different gender and different characters that stereotypical kind of casting is just going to be really hard to unprogram but we have to start doing it. We just have to because just because your voice is low doesn't mean you're a "bad guy," just because your voice is low doesn't mean that you're going to present as male, and just because your voice is high doesn't mean you're going to present as female, or that your identity is female, not even present [as]. That doesn't mean that your identity is a woman, your identity can be many things and that's not tied only to the pitches that you sing.
So this is a challenge. It's a huge problem. I'm probably making all kinds of mistakes in how I described it right now, but I'm forging ahead and doing the best I can. Queer Opera was a really wonderful experience that I was a part of last fall. That's a project that is being put on by Chuck Dillard and his team based in Portland University, Portland State and I performed with that Ensemble. My part was as an ally. It was really, really interesting. We did scenes from standard repertoire, but we staged them to reflect a broad diversity of gender identities and expressions and it was by and far some of the most impactful work I've ever done. The most meaningful theater making I've ever done.
Many of the singers are really talented undergrads and recent grads of Portland State and they were so expressive, they were so sharing of their talents, and it meant so much to all of us to be part of that. So I think that's a model and I think there are some other really wonderful models for breaking that down and a lot of times for uplifting another voice and stepping back and shutting up, you know, and that includes me as well.
And then also we just need more women on stage as well. I mean, we just we need more women's roles. There's so many really wonderful sopranos and mezzos and there's many wonderful basses and tenors, but there's not as many of them. And you can you could hire ten wonderful sopranos for every tenor and probably still have a bunch of sopranos in the city who don't have work and that's stupid. It's extremely frustrating and it's perpetuated every time someone writes another opera that's Billy Budd or Moby Dick.
It's just doesn't fit the demographics of who's available to sing and it perpetuates this problem that you have all these talented people who want work and you're just making them have a harder shot instead of being like, "Sweet! Look at all these awesome sopranos and mezzos, lets write for them as well!" I mean, I wrote White Horizon for tenor and baritone. It doesn't mean you don't ever get to write for any of that stuff.
But yeah, and there's some really wonderful articles on New Music Box and some other publications about how to make vocal writing in classical music like... how to write music and market your music, so it's more open to many different singers. You know, talking about ranges instead of talking about voice types, sort of addressing different ways that we can think about and just disconnect our gender ideas from voice typing, and that's something that I've really been thinking about as well and trying to update on my website: vocal range versus voice type as much as I can. Or include both, at least, and I try to be really clear and upfront with language that you know, if you would like to sing this piece down an octave or up an octave, you're welcome to.
I still think for now we're in this thing where many sopranos want to quickly scan and see what do you have for them, many tenors want to scan what they have for tenor. Maybe someday that will change but I think if one can say, you know, "mezzo-soprano or anyone with this range." If that's a piece that you would like to make available and if it's a piece you really feel has to be sung by someone with specific identity, then you can have that of course. But yeah, it's a big thing. You have to work on it. We just have to.
Adam Eason: Alright, well, coming up on time so we should probably wrap this up. But the last question: on the count of three, first composer that pops into your head three, two one go.
Lisa Neher: Benjamin Britten?
Adam Eason: Oh, okay. What brought Benjamin Britten to your head?
Lisa Neher: Curlew River.
Adam Eason: Okay.
Lisa Neher: It's so awesome.
Adam Eason: Yeah, it's a cool piece.
Lisa Neher: So when I said ,"I want to write chamber opera" Forrest Pierce said, "Why don't you listen to Curlew River?" And I went and got the score and the CD. It was back in CDs and I had like one of those CD players, you know, there's like a portable CD player? And I sat down with the score and you know like... We do school things and sometimes you're kind of making yourself do it? Like, you're glad but it's kind of work... and I was so captivated! I couldn't stop, it was really creepy and weird. It's a weird story and the instrument grouping is so unique and there's so many interesting sounds and I couldn't stop. I had to keep going through the whole show and I love it.
And I think there's something so interesting, too, he combines this sort of Japanese Noh theater with... this was just on the recording, but that does influence some of his instrumental choices. So he combined that with this sort of morality play format, of the whole cast walking on stage and chanting and proclaiming that they're about to tell this story. I was always kind of a fantasy and Middle Ages geek and I loved that and yeah, I actually... I gotta dig in. I don't know if Benjamin Britten ever said anything about a gender swapped version of those. I don't even know if anyone does those shows in America. I would love to do a gender flipped Curlew River. I would love to do it with a cast of all women. I think it would be wonderful and super cool and I don't think anyone has done it. Or if they have, it's been a while. So why not do it again?
Adam Eason: Cool! All right. Well, thanks for joining me today. It's been wonderful talking with you and hearing your experience. And yeah, I really appreciate it.
Lisa Neher: Oh, thanks for having me on I really appreciate your time, too. Thanks for asking me.
You can learn more about Lisa Neher, or contact her for lessons, gigs, and commissions at: http://www.lisanehermusic.com/
I was lucky enough to go to a wealthy public school. One of the benefits to this was a very well funded music program - large music halls, instrument lockers, practice rooms... Now that I've taught in a number of different public schools, and even a couple of private schools, I've learned how extraordinary this is. But in the moment, it was just, you know, "normal." I didn't have anything to compare the experience against, so it didn't cross my mind to question it. That's just how it was.
One of those "just how it was" things was the school marimba. Marimbas? I think there were two, but they were in the band hall and there wasn't much reason for me to be over there. They did bring the marimbas out for full orchestra rehearsals from time to time, though. In another example of something weird that "just was how it was," the school had a full sized five-octave marimba.
Now, I know I have non-musician readers out there. They are probably thinking, "Oh, a marimba, it's that xylophone thingy, right?" Well, yes... but no. I won't get into it here. What I want to impress is, a 5-octave marimba is pretty darn big. A typical length is usually 107 inches, a bit longer than a grand piano, and can weigh around 380 pounds. It's the kind of thing that makes you appreciate whoever invented the wheel, and I remember it was always a hassle to move around. Average cost of a new 5-octave Yamaha marimba? $17,000. You know. About the limit before a really rich person notices someone has stolen their credit card number.
The point I'm trying to get at is, this is not a common instrument. But our school, being blessed with a combination of high property values, an appreciation for the arts, and riding the crest of good old Texan 5A high school football, had enough funds to purchase something extraordinary, and, crucially, house it in a facility which made it feel ordinary. It's just how it was.
--- --- ---
What am I going on about marimbas for? To be honest, I was going to write about Minoru Miki, and how he composed new music for traditional Japanese instruments, and how he repurposed the European orchestra to perform something akin to Japanese gagaku. But I couldn't find any recordings of his koto concerti on Youtube. I couldn't even find his koto ballades, collections of short works grouped by seasons. Instead, I found his koto ballades arranged for and played by marimba, and I couldn't help but think, "What the heck? Where are all of these Japanese marimba players coming from, and why are they playing koto music?" The answer lies in Abe Keiko (b.1937). For non-Japanese speakers, that 's "AH-bay," not Abe as in "Abe Lincoln."
Now, because Japanese leaders, in the wake of Admiral Perry, had come to the conclusion that European culture was the superior culture of the world, this came with a conscious shift to adopt European music. In 1879, the Meiji government created the Music Study Committee, devoted to the study and dissemination of Western music. This made fertile ground for Asabuki Eiichi (1909-1993) to fall in love with the xylophone, which subsequently filtered out to Japanese schools between the 1920's-30's. By the time Keiko went to elementary school in the 1940's, they were there for her to play. Pre-1920, no xylophones in Japan. Post-1940's, common enough for little Keiko to be playing in school. It's just how it was, for her.
Do you know what else Abe Keiko did? I mean, you don't, unless you're a marimba player, that's a hypothetical question. She worked with Yamaha Corporation to invent the 5-octave marimba. In the early 1960's, I guess Yamaha's higher ups went, "You know what we need? New marimba designs." So they gave Abe-san a ring and, over the next decade, worked with her to create the design of the 5-octave marimba that percussionists know and love today. Even smaller 4-octave models bear the stamp of this work, the rather uneven sound quality of the traditional instrument being polished and standardized over the length of its range. One could question if this homogenization of sound is a good thing, but, you know, too late now. Yamaha is currently one of the biggest sellers of marimbas in the world. Anyone else who wants to sell their own version has been pulled well into Yamaha's event horizon, so the modern marimba design looks like it's here to stay.
Hey, did I also mention Abe Keiko performed Minoru Miki's piece "Time" for her first professional recital? Yeah, that's how I fell down this rabbit hole of the marimba world. Unfortunately, I can't find a video of her playing the piece, so I'll post two videos today: the first is Abe performing her own work, "Prism," and the second is Taylor Davis performing Minoru's "Time."
Somewhat ironically, the marimba arrangements I found of Minoru's ballades for koto were not written by Abe, they were written by Brian Zator, who worked closely with koto player Yamada Akemi to create his transcriptions.
Continuing along the coast, south of Senegal, is Guinea-Bissau. From Morocco down to Senegal, colonial French influence was very strong, but Guinea-Bissau was colonized by the Portuguese in the mid- to late-15th century in an attempt to control the gold trade, largely controlled by Morocco at the time. Before the Europeans arrived, Guinea-Bissau was part of the kingdom of Kaabu, part of the larger Mali Empire.
I'm just now realizing this is the first time I've brought up pre-colonial geopolitics. The Mali empire lasted from about 1235-1670. Much of what we know about the empire comes from North African Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, Moroccan travelers Ibn Battuta and Leo Africanus, as well as from local griots passing the history down through oral traditions. At its height, the Mali empire stretched from the Atlantic coast in Mauritania, down to include Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, inland into Mali (obviously), and out into parts of what is today Niger.
If you, like me, are curious about the histories of places, you might be frustrated, like me, to find that Wikipedia articles tend to start discussion of the histories of West African countries at the time they were colonized, with a brief mention of pre-colonial times. Unfortunately, there aren't continuous written records of the area, and those accounts often conflict with what is told through oral traditions. I can't help but suspect this absence of historical account is exacerbated by unconscious bias creating a blind spot in what counts as "history," but that's a whole other blog I'm not qualified to write.
ANYWHOSOMES. Guinea-Bissau, ecologically, is a really intriguing place. Off the coast are the Bissagos Islands, and the coast itself is a mesh of waterways spilling out from the Geba River, creating a marshy area well suited to rice and cashew growing, as well as a number of mangrove swamps.
As for the people, Guinea-Bissau is very ethnically diverse, including Fula and Mandika speaking peoples, Balanta and Papel, Manjaca and Mancanha. I unfortunately hadn't the time to delve into all of them, but one thing seems to unite the country. Well. Two, maybe. First, Independence Day on September 10, 1974, the date the country separated from Portugal. And second: Carnival. Everyone knows of Rio de Janeiro's Carnival, of course, but Guinea-Bissau celebrates the festival as well.
That's a lot to pack into such a tiny country, but West Africa's history, particularly its recent (past 400 years or so) history, was one of much social upheaval with the arrival of European nations.
--- --- ---
My composer for today is Karyna Gomes (I can't for the life of me find her date of birth. Sometime in the late-60's/early-70's I would guess? Maybe?). Born in Guinea-Bissau, she grew up with music all around her. In an interview, she said that her family, her neighbors, her culture needed little reason to start a party or to start singing. At 21, she moved to São Paulo, Brazil, and began working with musicians there to create a fusion of the music she learned and loved growing up with Latin genres. Today, she tours globally, and has one album titled Mindjer, which won two Best Singer prizes in Guinea-Bissau.
I was rewatching My Neighbor Totoro for the umpteenth time recently. My SO had requested to see it, and that's not a request you just turn down. Because Totoro. Seriously, have you seen it? It's so cute!
Λ Λ
>(ô.ô)<
( O )
Anyways. We were watching, and there's a scene where the two kids are standing next to a Jizo statue, and my SO makes an off-hand comment that the statue was kind of creepy. Granted, the way Jizo statues are presented visually is pretty ominous looking, especially the ones near the end. But Jizo himself is far from a creepy figure in Japanese culture. He is a bodhisatva, one who has obtained enlightenment but declines to enter Nirvana to help others obtain freedom from suffering. Primarily, Jizo is a protector of children. The statues are all over the place in Japan, especially near temples, but also along roads and walkways because he also protects travelers.
Granted, Jizo does have a darker side to his story: children who die before their parents are unable to reach Nirvana, and instead are condemned to pile rocks on the side of the river of the dead as penance for making their parents suffer. Jizo goes to the riverbank to protect the children from wandering devils, hiding them in his robes until the devils go away. Not exactly light-hearted stuff you'd expect in a children's movie, but there it is. Can't exactly wish it away, especially since confronting death is a primary theme of the movie. Miyazaki don't pull punches.
After my SO's reaction to a very common and what I can only imagine is a welcome figure in Japanese culture, it led me to wonder how many other visual symbols pass over the heads of American audiences when watching the film. The Jizo statues, divine yoshiro trees, references to Shinto purification rituals... There's a lot in there which is very Japan specific, and while great credit must go to team Ghibli for crafting a truly universal story, a great deal of the iconography is lost on American audiences. Heck, the quandary can be generalized to any literature crossing from one culture to another. Symbols that are taken for granted, or have a particular emotional resonance to them, are in danger of being completely overlooked or misunderstood.
I bring this up in a music blog because the same thing absolutely applies to music from other cultures. It even applies to music of the official Western Canon, hallowed be its name. When is the last time you heard hunting horn calls outside of a concert hall? You may be able to recognize them intellectually, but that is a rather different thing than growing up with the sound emblazoned in your ears, filling your head with fantasies of the hunt and all its attendant luxury. Because remember... nobles owned the hunting grounds, and common people could be put to death for poaching the prey of the upper class...
--- --- ---
Takemitsu Toru could be considered part of the Classical Canon, I suppose, but surely not in the same way as Beethoven. I was curious and checked the NYPhil's program archives, and the last time Takemitsu's music was performed was back in 2015. Before that, Takemitsu's music wasn't really performed regularly by the NY Philharmonic, with the exception of Seiji Ozawa's appearances as guest conductor from the 60's-70's. A far cry from the obligatory litany of Beethoven symphonies that are performed everytime Beethoven's birthday rolls around. Or even when it's not Beethoven's birthday.
Right. So Takemitsu is known primarily as a figure in the 20th century avant-garde. It's curious. I wrote a research paper focused on Takemitsu in 2007, and all the papers I read made it sound like Takemitsu's great achievement was synthesizing traditional Japanese music with European music, a seemless integration and assimilation of disparate parts, a triumph of globalism transcending cultural boundaries. But that's not how Takemitsu talks about his music. Rather, he talks about his music in the language of Zen koans, in which the juxtaposition of irreconcilably different pieces defies logical interpretation, forcing one's consciousness into pure experience. Hardly sounds like "assimilation" or "integration" to me.
Also, every essay I've read focuses, naturally, on his music. That makes sense. But many of them mention, totally in passing!, that Takemitsu was also... a celebrity chef. He also wrote a Lovecraftian detective novel which he insists is untranslatable. Now. Excuse me when I ask, why oh why has nobody studied how Takemitsu ended up as a celebrity chef, of all things? It is easily the most interesting part of his biography! And why can't I buy his book? Come on, Simon & Schuster! Get on it! Ah well. Like all things crossing time and space, so many things are lost in translation...
When looking at The Gambia on the map, most people start with the obvious question: How the heck did Gambia and Senegal's borders end up with way they are? The answer, like most nations in Africa, has to do with meddling European powers. In this case, Britain and France were in conflict over the use and colonization of the Gambia River, it being an excellent way to establish trade farther in the West African region. Eventually, Britain won out, but France retained control of Senegal. And that's how you end up with *gestures broadly* this whole situation.
What's most curious to me is the difference between the perception and importance of national borders between these two countries and the USA. Particularly in recent years, border control in the USA has been a sore point in politics, and crossing from one country to into the states can be a hassle at best. One thing that became clear while reading, for a lot of Gambians and Senegalese, the border between the two countries fluctuates between permeous to non-existent. One local historian said in an interview that the borders are the result of European powers imposing differences where none existed, and the lines drawn up do not reflect any true ethnic or cultural boundaries.
True enough, The Gambia has a lot in common with Senegal. I suspect differences are becoming more pronounced in the cities, which are more under the sway of differences in local governance, but in rural populations, a good deal of trade, socialization, and intermarriage continues across the national borders. The Gambia, like Senegal, has a tradition of griots, musical families which operate as witnesses for important religious and historical events, conflict mediators, and carriers of family history. The common instruments are the same: the kora, djembe and dunun drums, and the dundun "talking drum." Heck, the way they decant their tea is the same. Incidentally, the way they pour their tea is also the same as Mauritania, and I'll be curious to see how far that tradition traveled.
One tradition I found in Gambia, but not Senegal (doesn't mean it's not there, I might have just overlooked it) is the "kanyaleng." These are women's music groups which started as support groups for women suffering from infertility, miscarriage, or the death of a child. In addition, kanyaleng provide performances for marriages and other important gatherings. One interesting part of kanyaleng history was their role in helping prevent the spread of ebola into The Gambia during the 2012-13 outbreak. A number of these groups were employed by health organizations to help communicate the transmission, symptoms, and treatment protocol of the disease.
--- --- ---
My composer for today is Sona Jobarteh (b. 1983). Growing up travelling between England and Gambia, Sona was born into one of the five griot families of Gambia. She studied kora first from her brother, Tunde Jegede, and then, at 11, convinced her father, Sanjally Jobarteh, to give her a full education in the kora. From what I have read, and what Sona confirmed in one interview, the kora is traditionally a male instrument. She also studied Western music, including cello, harpsichord, piano, and composition, at the Royal Academy of Music, the Purcell School of Music, and SOAS University of London. Afterwards, she returned to playing the kora, which she performs internationally.
There are few opera arias as well known and instantly recognizable as Puccini's "Un bel di," from Madame Butterfly. The story of the opera, about a 15-year old Japanese girl married to and then abandoned by an American naval officer, is seen alternately as a heartrending tale of love and heartbreak or a microcosm of American and European colonial bigotry. Or both. Things can be more than one thing at the same time.
My personal reaction to the opera is tinged by my own family history. My maternal grandmother, Sadako McMahon, married an American soldier, Thomas McMahon, at the end of World War II. When Americans think of the Pacific theater, they mostly think of atomic bombs, kamikaze suicide bombers, and maybe Iwojima. They tend to gloss over the fact that America did to Tokyo what Germany did to London, if indeed they know about the firebombings at all. Oba-Chan (my grandmother) barely ever talked about that time in her life, but when she did it was clear she was in desperate straights. So, in some small way, my grandmother's story is a little bit like Cio-Cio's, except with a happier ending.
It's curious to me, then, that Madame Butterfly is considered a love story. When Cio-Cio is introduced, she makes it pointedly clear to Pinkerton that she is poor. Heck, it should have been clear before that, considering Pinkerton bought her from a wedding arranger. She's also *checks notes* 15 years old? I know age of majority has changed a lot in the intervening years, and I don't want to get into that, but have you met 15 year-olds? There's a reason we don't trust them with driving cars.
Anyways, this is a roundabout way to get to my point: she may be in love, but she is absolutely driven by survival. Especially when her family disowns her, Cio-Cio is just about to fall off Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Which, you know, complicates my understanding of my grandparents. Did they love each other? Surely so. Oba-chan spoke of him fondly, and kept her wedding photo near her bed. She also never remarried. But was she also motivated to secure her own future? Undoubtedly. Oba-chan was far from the only Japanese woman to take the path she did.
So watching Madame Butterfly is, for me, lets say... uncomfortable. And that's even before we get to the issue of yellowface.
--- --- --- ---
Tamaki Miura was a Japanese soprano, the first to achieve global fame. Her success rests largely on her performances as Cio-Cio-san in Madame Butterfly. When I first read about her, I was excited to hear what she sounded like. Reviewers extolled her as one of the greats. When I first listened to her, I was... a bit disappointed. She has a very pleasant voice, but it didn't quite match my expectations. How could this happen, I wondered. Maybe a difference in attitudes about quality changing over time? It is not uncommon for contemporary musicians, hearing a missed note or rhythm in old recordings, to chuckle a bit at great musicians of times gone by.
But it's complicated. When I did some reading, it seemed more of the reviews focused on her quality of performance not from a perspective of technical vocal prowess, but from the simple fact that she was a Japanese woman playing the part of a Japanese character. Indeed, many reviewers noted she had a weak voice, but her performances as Cio-Cio were seen as more authentic simply by virtue of her race.
And yet... It is clear Mrs. Tamaki had her own ideas about how to present Madame Butterfly. Not only did she fight to ensure the style of clothes was correct (Cio-Cio and other Japanese characters were often presented in Chinese garb) and that elements of stage design were accurate representations of Japanese styles, but she also participated in a number of projects which worked to present a more "Japanese" version of the opera. One of them, a 1930 production translated into Japanese by Horuichu Keizo, made significant changes and adaptations to make a version which was more true to how the Japanese saw the Japanese. Another was a short animated film, Madame Butterfly's Illusion, which includes music written by Tamaki.
So who can say? We don't have video of her performances to make judgment, obviously. We simply have to make do with old cylinder recordings. With that said, here's a recording of Tamaki Miura singing "Un bel di," recorded in 1917.
