tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43906202698518729292024-03-05T19:24:23.979-08:00...at the Sound of the ToneClassical Music, Teaching, and StuffUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-64454882602445814942020-10-19T10:57:00.003-07:002020-10-19T10:57:58.707-07:00The blog is moving!<p> Thanks to everybody who has been keeping up with my blog, but just in case you follow with an RSS feed, I want to let you know the blog will be moving to my website. You can find today's entry on Malaysia over here: <a href="https://www.adameasonmusic.com/index.php/bloghome/world-composers/91-composer-for-every-country-malaysia">https://www.adameasonmusic.com/index.php/bloghome/world-composers/91-composer-for-every-country-malaysia</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-24180302915237863532020-10-11T18:11:00.001-07:002020-10-12T09:30:28.975-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Cameroon<p> At some time in 1472, the <i>Lepidophthalmus turneranus </i>(or ghost shrimp, if you're a plebian (not to be confused with the other two species of shrimp called ghost shrimp)) had one of their massive swarms they have every 3 to 5 years, bursting out of the mud for a grand shellfish orgy in the Wouri River. It was a grand time to be a ghost shrimp. At the same time, a group of Portuguese sailors arrived on the coast, made their way into the river, and couldn't help but notice the piles of copulating shrimp, and decided to name the river <i>Rio dos Camarões</i>, or "Shrimp River." This marked the beginning of a less than grand time to be African in the area which English speakers would mispronounce as "Cameroon."</p><p>Before we get to that colonial Cameroon, there are two human groups which formed the first cultures in the area. The first, the <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2017/08/03/inside-cameroons-pygmy-community-traditions-lifestyle-and-religion">Baka</a> peoples (or "Pygmies," but you'd do well to avoid using the term) settled the area probably 5000 years ago, or so. Hunter-gatherers of the Central African rainforest, their culture is undergoing rapid change due to increasing deforestation. They are also excellent fishers, and if you want to learn more about Baka fishing practices than you'd ever imaging, you can click on <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/2818">this link</a>.</p><p>Afterwards, and alongside them, came a number of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bantu-peoples">Bantu</a> migrations, leading eventually to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Kanem-Bornu">Bornu Empire</a>. This empire lasted from about 700AD to 1900AD, encompassing areas of Chad, Niger, and Sudan. The history of the Bornu Kingdom is known mostly through a text called the <a href="http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Girgam">Girgam, or Royal Chronical</a>. The long-lived kingdom finally fell in 1900 when the French won a decisive victory against warlord <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rabih-az-Zubayr">Rabih az-Zubayr</a> in the <a href="https://omniatlas.com/maps/northern-africa/19000422/">Battle of Kousséri</a> and captured the capital, Dikwa.</p><p>Is there much can be said about the region before 1800? Yes. Can I easily find that information? No. But the 1800s saw two big events - <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Modibbo-Adama">Modibo Adama</a> led the <a href="https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Fulani+">Fulani</a> people in a jihad and established the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Adamawa-traditional-emirate-Africa">Adamawa Emirate</a>, causing a large redistribution of the population in the area; and Sultan Ibrahim Njoya invented what is called <a href="https://medium.com/eklektikos-delectus/king-njoyas-beautiful-shu-mom-pictographs-5ac1b9db8eb6">Shumom</a>, or the Bamum script, a written language that compressed the whole range of script evolution, from pictographs to phonetic script, in 14 years. The time was otherwise rather dark for many people in the area because the German colonizers ran a system of forced labor (I don't know why Wikipedia doesn't call it slavery) to lay down railroads, and introduce industry. The treatment of local Africans got so bad, one governor, Jesko von Puttkamer, was relieved of his duties. But don't worry, Wikipedia tells us he at least left a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesko_von_Puttkamer">"splendid residential manor"</a> behind.</p><p>Wikipedia was less than helpful with Cameroonian art. Literature is divided between <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301278028_Writing_in_Cameroon_the_first_hundred_years">colonial writers</a> and <a href="https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijhcs/v4-i2/2.pdf">post-independence</a> (1960) writers. The city <a href="https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/yaounde-a-contemporary-awakening/">Yaoundé</a> is rising as a center of various visual and performative arts exploring nature, ecology, and colonial fallout. Standout musical genres (beyond traditional music) are the enormously popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ixYlLpRbU">makossa</a> and a dance craze called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0TvoUk7ydA">bikutsi</a>. </p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Our composer today is Francis Bebey (1929-2001). Poet, guitarist, composer, mathematician, radio broadcaster... He had many talents. As a guitarist, he was influenced by Andrés Segovia while in Paris, and was hired by UNESCO to travel and document music of Central Africa. Stylistically, he blended elements of African, Latin American, and European classical music, leading many to consider him a pioneer of the world music genre.</p><p>A good introductory song to his pop-oriented style is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m56H4E5bZLk&list=PLwOeeAAuJkW7r_kVE7wHE8JR7SyQJbMkn">The Coffee Cola Song</a>. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-25491211025044473462020-10-05T10:58:00.001-07:002020-10-05T15:30:17.300-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Indonesia<p> The island nation of Indonesia is a tough one to write about succinctly. Not only is the country expansive, but every island has its own unique culture, and there are a LOT of islands. 17,500 of them, in fact, and 6,000 of them are inhabited. It's also a bit tough to find information on Indonesia in English. Not only is Indonesia apparently a bit of a lightning rod for "alternative histories" involving Atlantis, Lemuria, and cryptids, but the country's rich archaeological sites prove problematic for young earthers who search for creationist explanations for the <a href=" http://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/document-1029">Java Man</a>. Also, there's a Java Man coffee house which sucks up a lot of prime Google pages, in case you want to learn more. The internet never fails to surprise.</p><p>In any case, fossilized <i>Homo erectus</i> skeletons suggest inhabitation started between 500,000 and 2 million years ago. Heck of a margin of error, but that's how archaeology do sometimes. For modern humans, there are two major groups of note - the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236169876_Origins_of_the_Austronesian_Peoples">Austronesian people</a> showing up around 2,000 BCE and known for their <a href="https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/art-of-the-austronesians-the-legacy-of-indo-pacific-voyaging">pottery and woodcarvings</a>, and the <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/melanesia-future-tradition">Melanesian people</a> who were displaced by the Austronesian migrations.</p><p>As far as large scale kingdoms go, Indonesia is largely shaped first by Hinduism and Buddhism, and then by Islam. The <a href="https://thai-heritage.org/srivijaya/">Srivijaya kingdom</a> really took off in the 7th century CE. Two kingdoms highlight the religious influences: the Saliendra kingdom, who were Buddhist and are primarily known today for the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/592/">Borobudur Temple</a>; and the Mataram dynasty, who are largely known for the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/642/">Prambanan Temple</a>. In the late 1200s, the Hindu Majapahit kingdom spread across Java, leaving a large body of <a href="https://indonesiaexpat.biz/travel/history-culture/terracotta-memories-of-the-majapahit-civilisation/">terracotta works</a>. The <a href="https://historyofislam.com/contents/the-post-mongol-period/islam-in-indonesia/">spread of Islam</a> into the archipelago was slow, a process occurring over several hundred years. </p><p>As one might expect, these religious roots had a dramatic influence on the arts of the kingdom, informing art with <a href="https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/india/global-influence-of-hinduism/influence-hinduism-buddhism-indonesian-culture/">Buddhist and Hindu</a> styles from India and south China. The influence of Islamic art is, for some reason, <a href="https://squarekufic.com/2015/01/31/islamic-art-in-indonesia-a-neglected-and-problematic-heritage/">less well studied</a>, but is present nonetheless. The influence can also be found in architecture, as can be seen in the <i><a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/aija/74/642/74_642_1857/_pdf">candi</a></i> structures on Bali or the <a href="https://swarajyamag.com/culture/central-java-epitome-of-dharmic-architecture-in-south-east-asia">temples</a> in Java.</p><p>Christianity was brought by Europeans in the 1500s. While the Portuguese made first contact with the Indonesians, it was ultimately the <a href="https://www.indonesia-investments.com/culture/politics/colonial-history/item178">Dutch East India Trading Company</a> that became the dominant European force in the area. Not that they had an easy time of it. Rebellions against Dutch presence were frequent, and several leaders, like <a href=" https://jakartaglobe.id/culture/different-view-javas-rebel-prince-diponegoro/">Prince Diponegoro</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20021204081533/http://www.minahasa.net/en/history-imambonjol.html">Tuanku Imam Bonjol</a>, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cUoGJSs9yOUC">Kapitan Pattimura</a> have been canonized as national heroes and are pictured on their currency.</p><p>Getting into music, traditions are markedly different from island to island. Indonesia's biggest claim to musical fame is the gamelan, an orchestra of gongs and drums, but the styles of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HwqqiVxbE">Javanese gamelan</a> differ from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmlAZxha8Pw">Balinese</a>. Bali also has a traditional ceremony called the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46FCjDUb8zI">kecak</a>, a ritual telling of the Hindu epic, Ramayana. Another distinct tradition is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2L8oO7nq7U">Sundanese folk music</a>, from a minority group on the island of Java. Music and dance are often (almost always?) tied together, and two notable examples include the <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/USL/saman-dance-00509">saman</a> "Dance of a Thousand Hands" and the dances of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm_8PCp8G_4">Mirangkabau peoples</a>. Many of these musical traditions are still living, with new compositions being written for them, but Indonesia also has its own genre of popular music called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFnF0VvJoOQ&list=OLAK5uy_mgTWnMqbHV_K3IUvylBPweu5in0nFnGVE">dangdut</a> which blends many of the traditional instruments with electronic instruments, while adopting a modern pop style.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Today's composer is Dr. Gumgum Gumbira Tirasondjaja (1945-2020), a Sundanese musician, choreographer, and orchestra leader from Bandung, West Java. Dr. Tirasondjaja's music is a 20th-century reimagining of rural dance rituals. His compositional direction was dramatically influenced by Indonesian President Sukarno who, in 1961, prohibited Western popular music like rock and roll and pushed for a renewal of local traditional music. The most popular result of Dr. Tirasondjaja's studies was a dance called Jaipongang, combining influences from the Indonesian martial art, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDA5p2L4D-A">Pencak Silat</a>, the masked dance, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bfzew_gxFs">Topeng</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqWtEe7bsR0">Wayang </a>shadow puppet theater.</p><p>Apparently, Jaipongang wasn't the "right" Indonesian art, because the government did try to suppress it after its debut in 1974, but it survived and continues to survive to this day, although rather reduced in popularity. Here is a solo dance, Keser Bojang, which, due to my illiteracy in Indonesian and total lack of information in English, I can't find much to say about. The little I've been able to find tell it is a dance of "moving," that is "moving from one position to a better, more precise position." Given the sung accompaniment, I would guess the movements are also a form of pantomime.</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aEWmmbaCKU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aEWmmbaCKU</a><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-41327877917430857202020-09-28T14:23:00.011-07:002020-09-28T14:30:13.128-07:00Composer for Every Country: Nigeria<p><i>Editorial Note: </i>I've decided to change my approach to writing these essays. If you've been a regular reader, you'll notice a lot of hotlinks. I don't intend, or even recommend, for the reader click and follow the links. They are mostly there for reference and to provide the reader an easy way to find non-Wikipedia articles for points of interest. If they prove too distracting, I'll move them to end-notes. I've also stopped embedding the music videos, and included them as a link only, because of copyright concerns I hadn't considered before. These blogs take a good amount of work, so if you feel like supporting the project, consider joining my Patreon here: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/creator-home">https://www.patreon.com/creator-home</a>. Thanks for reading!</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Here in the States, Nigeria has a bit of a reputation because of the infamous "Nigerian Prince" email scam. It's true, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/nigerian-email-scammers-more-effective-than-ever/">there are a lot of Nigerian scammers.</a> But Nigeria also is home to the earliest evidence for <a href="http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/kahlheber316/">iron smelting in West Africa</a>, thanks to the Nok culture. The Nok date back to about 1500BC, and also created a number of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/nok-earliest-sculptural-art-west-africa-171942">terracotta figures</a> that date back to 500BC, right around when they started iron smelting. The prevailing Medieval ethnicities in the area include the <a href="https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Igbo">Igbo</a>, who founded the kingdom of Nri, and the <a href="https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Yoruba">Yoruba</a> peoples, who founded the Ife and Oyo kingdoms. Of great cultural significance to the <a href="https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Hausa">Hausa</a> people is the Kano Chronicle, a collection of stories about the founding and list of kings of the city-state, Kano. Its authorship and date of collection remain in doubt, although at least <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/article/historical-whodunit-the-socalled-kano-chronicle-and-its-place-in-the-historiography-of-kano/8DC5438DE86A0CF05C1E6FCE707FE67E">one author</a> thinks the work was written down in the 17th-century. Regardless, the Kano Chronicle stands as a rich source of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/article/historical-metaphors-in-the-kano-chronicle/16DE46AEC5C9D1713D0C1F81F301A068">tradition and literature</a>.</p><p>After European contact, the germination of the slave trade led to a number of port cities in the <a href="https://www.whitneyplantation.org/history/slavery-in-louisiana/slave-trade-in-louisiana/the-slave-coast-and-the-bight-of-biafra/">Bight of Biafra</a>. The 17th-18th centuries were a tumultuous time for the region, with infighting among the Hausa groups leading to the rise and settling of the <a href="https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Fulani+">Fulani</a>, a previously nomadic Sahelian tribe. This political shift culminated in the 19th century when Fulani religious leader Usman dan Fodio led a successful jihad against the Hausa and established the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/uthman-dan-fodio-and-sokoto-caliphate-44244">Sokoto Caliphate</a>, a kingdom lasting from 1804 until 1904 when it was broken up by the British. The firm establishment of Islam in the area also had clear artistic influence, which can be seen in <a href="https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_534132">fashion</a> and <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jii/4750978.0015.206/--unity-in-diversity-palace-art-in-nigeria?rgn=main;view=fulltext">visual iconography</a>. </p><p>British occupation and rule of Nigeria was established in 1914 and lasted until Nigeria's independence in 1960. The establishment of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria joined two previously established protectorates, Northern and Southern, as well as Lagos Colony, a port in southern Nigeria. This occupation brought a number of large scale changes to the culture. First, it led to the choice of English as the national language allowing communication and commerce across the nearly <a href="https://translatorswithoutborders.org/language-data-nigeria/">500 different languages</a> in Nigeria. Second, it brought Christian missionaries to the area which have culminated in a near 50/50 demographic split between <a href="http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/nigeria#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010&region_name=All%20Countries&restrictions_year=2016">Christian and Muslim Nigerians</a> which, in turn, has dramatic implications for the country's <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/246689/nigerians-deeply-divided-religion-key-issues.aspx">politics</a>. Finally, European style education, which had been introduced long before, was firmly established, leaving long roots in Nigeria's <a href="http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/eng6365-walters.htm">literature</a>, <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/contemporary-art/">art</a>, and <a href="https://books.openedition.org/ifra/609?lang=en">music</a>. </p><p>Since independence, Nigeria has vacillated between democratic and military rule and is quickly growing in economy and political influence. Musically (as artistically and culturally), Nigeria is so diverse that summary is impossible. Traditional music continues to flourish among the <a href="https://youtu.be/eMGvAvbG8ws?t=49">Igbo</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O7_-_iA1cc">Yoruba</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDdDNQw4WAU">Hausa</a>. Popular styles include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr0Ewt27pzY">palm wine</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsWTzgDd6xw">jùjú</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lswSQuBPaJk">apala</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSq82yCFoEI">afrobeat</a>... the list goes on.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Our composer for today is Joshua Uzoigwe. Starting music very early, he drummed and played the oja flute as a child. He attended King's College Secondary School in Lagos, studying piano with Major J. J. Allen, winning prizes for his playing. He studied ethnomusicology under John Blacking at Queen's University at Belfast, and as a composer joined Nigerian, European classical, and a variety of other African influences to fuse a singular style. Mr. Uzoigwe was also a <a href="http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/magonline1105/Joshua_Uzoigwe.htm">poet</a>, and has a collection of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Joshua-Uzoigwe-Memoirs-Nigerian-Composer-ethnomusicologist/dp/1419673807">memoirs</a> detailing his life and work The <a href="https://www.nyafricanensemble.com/joshua-uzoigwe-african-spirit-award.html">Joshua Uzoigwe African Spirit Award</a> is given in his honor.</p><p>Here is the first movement of his piano work, "Talking Drums," in which Mr. Uzoigwe applies his knowledge of Igbo drumming to the keyboard, performed here at Boston Conservatory in Berklee by pianist Kevin Madison: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZgIvLZiMsI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZgIvLZiMsI</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-25544412274950224442020-09-24T23:19:00.000-07:002020-09-24T23:19:11.207-07:00Interview: Washington Plada<p>The following is an interview I conducted with Washington Plada back in August. The transcript has been edited for clarity, but since English is Washington's second language, I decided to keep his idiosyncratic grammar to better preserve the flow of his speaking and thoughts. As usual, if you are interested in financially supporting these interviews, you can follow me at my Patreon, linked below.</p><p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/SoundOfTheTone">https://www.patreon.com/SoundOfTheTone</a><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Adam Eason: Okay, it should be going. All right. So this is Washington Plada. He's a composer, also a guitarist from Uruguay and he's joining us for an interview today. So thanks for coming in. </p><p>Washington Plada: Thanks for inviting me.</p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, so I think to kick off with how many people have you met so far in Oregon who know where Uruguay is?</p><p>Washington Plada: Very few to be honest. And well, that's been a constant throughout the states. I think it's such a small country that it makes sense that not a lot of people know it. It's only three and a half million people. What are the chances that you meet somebody from Uruguay in the States? Small. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah. Yeah pretty tight.</p><p>Washington Plada: A lot of people know us because of soccer. So soccer fans tend to know where it is and know the famous soccer players from there. Lately a few years ago the country was in the news, too, because of the Progressive President. It was maybe five six years ago when this president that was very progressive passed a lot of laws, like they legalize weed. They legalized abortion and gay marriage the same day. So that was kind of a big deal and it's always interesting when somebody asks me where I'm from and to listen, let them know and kind of spread my spread my heritage a little bit. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah. So what's the musical education like in the country? How did you start with music? </p><p>Washington Plada: It's not as widespread as it is in the States. I find it fascinating that here it's how, since a very young age they're for the most part introduced to music through Elementary School. I didn't have any classes of elementary school, in elementary school. I mean music classes. So I had something in... what is it? Like last year of middle school. We have only one class. That was all we had through middle school and high school as a music class. They told us about some composers and that was it. Yeah, no real music playing. No instrument playing or any of that.</p><p>Adam Eason: I got you. Yeah, it's music appreciation kind of thing.</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah. Music appreciation. And then some of my friends played and I picked up a guitar and that's how I started rock and roll, had my own like cover band and then grunge, and my own grunge songs. Oh, yeah, so I play bass for that band. I'm not... I started with guitar and I'll call myself more a guitar player, but I always end up playing bass because now I want to. We always need a bass player and its like, "Ok, I'll do it."</p><p>Adam Eason: What's the music scene like there? I mean if you're doing like a rock band grunge band kind of stuff. </p><p>Washington Plada: There's a lot. People play like, we all, I would say like 99% of the people, but everybody plays. Some more, some less but like there's always a guitar there and everywhere you go, to a party, you go to wherever your friends and there's somebody that plays and... music is... it's a very important part of our culture and yeah. I was always interested in classical music. I will go to every concert I could even though I lived in a very small city. Around like 30,000 people. So we didn't have many chances but I took all the chances I could but I didn't take the chance to study. Just any music more formal education in... When I was older after High School and I started, I went to a different city just for some days just to take classes in violin. I took violin classes for over a year and then I came to the States, so I couldn't continue. Yeah. Easier for me to continue my education here and started from the ground up going to Community College getting my... all the music theory and all this stuff. So that's how.</p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. So what what brought you to the states in the first place? Was it for music education or were there other reasons?</p><p>Washington Plada: No. No, it was love.</p><p>Adam Eason: Okay!</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah it was... I was in Argentina. I was just doing some backpacking and I met some girl and we kind of hit it off, fell in love and spend some time there, travelling together. Well after, she was from here. So after a while we were like, well this internet thing is not working we'll move in together. And I decided to come to the States.</p><p>Adam Eason: All right, and that was to Oregon?</p><p>Washington Plada: No, it was to California, was in Santa Cruz. It's a small town like south from San Francisco? </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. Yeah.</p><p>Washington Plada: It's a beautiful beach town, beautiful. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, how long ago was that? Like, how old were you?</p><p>Washington Plada: It was 11 years ago? 2009. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. Gotcha. And then you stayed in Santa Cruz for a while and you're just kind of hanging around like working there. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, I lived there. Primarily there, then a couple years in the Bay Area, San Francisco. 2017 I moved to Oregon. I came to Western Oregon University to finish my bachelor's degree. Now at the moment, I'm living in Eugene, Oregon. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. Yeah. </p><p>Washington Plada: I just finished my first year of the master program in composition here at the University of Oregon. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay, cool. So where did you go before Western Oregon University? You were studying down in California at the time.</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, down in Santa Cruz I did a Community College. That's called Cabrillo, Cabrillo Community College. So I did my first two years there and then I transferred to Western Oregon and I finish those the remainder 2 years to get my bachelor's there. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, and that was for music as well?</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, that was for music composition. Yes, it was a cool program, gaining knowledge not only to classical composition but also to film music and jazz arranging. Very good program, it was very interesting. </p><p>Adam Eason: Who was your teacher there in, California? </p><p>Washington Plada: We had many teachers. What happens is when you go to a community college in California for the first few years, even if you go, you don't have private lessons. So I didn't have any composition lessons until I came to Oregon. So the first two years mainly was music theory and like, aural skills and music history. Yeah, nothing nothing... Nothing in composition. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay, was it kind of strange? Making the musical shift, I mean, because if you're playing in garage bands and pick up rock and roll bands and kind of things like that, I imagine most of that's by ear. And then going to something where it's all notated and then having to think maybe more abstractly rather than more aurally... was that kind of a difficult shift for you, or did you just kind of... sink into it? </p><p>Washington Plada: Um, it was... it wasn't difficult. It was different. It was very different. But I think the training that I got from playing in rock bands actually helped a lot, because it's... I think it's a really good complement to what you see, mixing the oral tradition with or the listening tradition with the visual. I think it's more, it's more powerful and in my case it kind of like complemented each other. I didn't say that "Oh, wow. This is two separate things that they don't really like connect." I think they connect really well and even though like this, at least the little that I was studying, there was no room for playing by ear. It still helped. Yeah, but I didn't know anything when I started. So what can you imagine one little first year of violin? Like I knew the duration of the notes and not much more. Yeah, the interesting thing was that the little bit I studied, I studied in Spanish. So I had to learn all the names for the note durations for everything. I think that's that was the most difficult part. </p><p>Adam Eason: That was the hardest part, the language part?</p><p>Washington Plada: The language. Yes. It's the new language. Yeah, but I caught up very fast. Yeah, it's fascinating, I mean, when you're studying something that you love, I think it's even if it's a little bit complex, you're excited to do it.</p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah. Sure. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah it was, it was a good... It was a good challenge.</p><p>Adam Eason: Cool. And then you came up to Western Oregon University and you started studying... I'm sorry, I forget the professor's name that I met.</p><p>Washington Plada: I studied with mainly with Kevin Walczyk. He's a very well-known name in the band world. He's one of the... one of the top composers for the band world today in the in the US. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. What drew you up to Western Oregon University. Was it him or another connection maybe? </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, I... before I start, a friend came to me and said go to him. I really like the program because first it was a small school and, honestly, coming from a community college I was a little bit afraid to... a little bit afraid to land in a big school and fall through the cracks and not find my way. I was kind of used to a community college like when you have small community, everybody knows each other. The professors know the students it's kind of like it was an environment that I felt safe. This school I thought that would provide me that, that was one of the reasons but the other one was I'm very interested in different aspects of music. So this school program, I mean, like I said before like with the classical instruction plus the film plus jazz arranging and then they have Latin ensembles to play. It fulfilled a lot of... a lot of my interests. I thought it was... I visited other schools and they didn't really caught my attention like this one did and I can say that was a very... I made the right decision because I'm really happy about the education I got and all the things that were offered to me. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, it sounds like it was all kind of right up your alley. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, I loved it. It was great. I learned a lot. A bunch of really cool and dedicated amazing professors and also students that we keep in touch today. I know that I'm going to have some players for life if I need like finding some players to collaborate, and that's great. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah for sure. So what kind of compositions did you start writing at Western Oregon University? How did you begin with your private lessons?</p><p>Washington Plada: So the first thing I brought to a lesson was some compositions that I had done on my own with guitar. But they weren't... they weren't notated. I had some software on my computer and I was like, plug my guitar in and started playing and get some rhythm going and then come and do the lead or some melody with another guitar. So that's what I... what I did was to, I transcribe that to a notation software. And what I did was instead of the lead guitar with the melody, I decided (audio glitch) instead. And with the help of the professor, I reworked it from there, from a more classical standpoint. So my first composition was this short piece for guitar and flute. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. Yeah and were these still kind of... I'm trying to figure out how to segue into this because I know I asked for a commission from you while you were still at Western Oregon University and you wrote some cello and piano pieces that were based on kind of Uruguayan I guess... traditional musics? Like tangos and milongas and things like that. Were your first compositions sort of slanting in that direction already or were they just sort of naturally coming from that source?</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, so a big inspiration of my music. My idea when composing is to fuse traditional western music that we call classic, classical music with world music, the music from different parts of the world and... One of the music that I know the most is the music from my own country, the music, the most popular music there, it's tango that we share with Argentina, milongas and candombes. Candombe is the only one that is only from Uruguay. </p><p>So a lot of my inspiration even unconsciously sometimes just slips in my music because these are... this is my musical heritage. So it's hard to know (glitch) that the music doesn't get involved when I'm writing. But I also do like the composition that you commission for me because the theme was Latin American Music, the concert you were putting on, I drew more influences using some of the rhythms and from those styles that I just mentioned in and using like, the rhythm or some kind of aspect in building, building upon those or as a source of inspiration for each of the pieces. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay. </p><p>Washington Plada: That's kind of what I want to do with my music. It's so all the music kind of has some kind of World Music association, even if it is from the music or from the feelings or from the thoughts or bring some kind of mundane aspect if you can say that.</p><p>Adam Eason: Sure that makes sense. I'm kind of curious because I know that my piano partner and I, Dianne, had a little bit... it took a little while to kind of click into especially the condombe rhythms. I'm curious if you have found it difficult translating some of the stuff that happens naturally by ears. Sometimes there's a lot of details that get lost when you try to write it down. So I'm curious how you approach that problem, especially because if you try to hyper notate everything like some of Bartok's pieces, he tried to get every little nuance in there and it just looks kind of crazy. So I'm curious how you approach that issue. </p><p>Washington Plada: Well, I... this is, this very... it's a very new process for me to kinda like translate things from one culture to the other, and mixing cultures so I learned a couple things through the process and even like working with your piece and with a previous piece that I also drew something from condombes. Condombes... It's a... It's an Afro rhythm. So it started as a dance and music that was playing with these three distinct drums. So they can become very complex rhythms that interlock when the three drums are played. So if you played one drum by itself, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but what you put the three together, the rhythms compliment each other. When they are not playing all together (glitch). </p><p>For example, the chico that's being played is the first beat so the downbeat so it's like (demonstrates rhythm). So if you play by yourself, it doesn't make sense. But if you're playing with the other ones, for example, the bigger drum that place the down beats with the boom boom and when you play them together its (demonstrates rhythm). </p><p>And what I tried to translate some of those rhythms to different instruments like piano, it can be really complicated to play because as Westerners with downbeats, for example, and that's something that is very, very strong in the western culture. And if you're not that familiar with us, you tend to kind of always want to give like a nod to the downbeat. So for example, if I give you the chico drum that doesn't have the down beat, I had experienced this before and when I had written some music kind of condombe using that rhythm, that people tend to grab the first note and give it to the downbeat it can be... the ensemble can be a little bit not on the same page. Yeah, so I've learned that things are very difficult to translate literally or there are ways to get the same effect but you can avoid the confusing notation or the confusing rhythms. It's a very fascinating experience how you sometimes you had to rework things. Of course, you don't think about this until it happens, right? Because it's like well... and then you realize that it's much more than just notation. </p><p>You can have the best, the best player playing that and it's not that they cannot play, they can, but there's much more to they don't know, a certain feeling, there's the knowledge behind this, the culture that all that makes the music's not just notes on the staff. And a good player, this much more that you need sometimes to express what you really want to tell through their music and I think people that are trained in different traditions might, like... It might not come naturally for them. So I think you... you for example, you're a composer, too, so as a composer we have to build a bridge between what do you want to say and who's going to say it and make the link as a smooth as you can so the performer can catch without a lot of information or detail. Without writing an essay about what you want them to come to play. I think that's what we're doing, this show is when the players can play what's behind your mind without have to have a meeting for two hours telling them what you want, right? </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, for sure. So kind of taking a little bit of a sidetrack. You also have some compositions that you sent to me that are sort of like meditation-centric sort of relaxation musics. And you said you've written them with like yoga or like massage or just kind of different things along those lines and it looks like you have those tracks up on Spotify. So what kind of drew you in that direction? And when did that happen? Like was this while you're at school before you're in school for anything? </p><p>Washington Plada: This is a very, at least to me, is a very interesting story. So this is that's how my... How can I say this? My approaching music started predominant time in my life? So I was a professional cyclist back in Uruguay, and when I was 18 years old, I had an accident when I broke a couple vertebraes on my body and I have difficult to walk and I had like a two-year-long recovery with doctors, chiropractors a lot of stuff. Before that I had a contract to come and race for a professional team in Kansas in the US. And I didn't do that of course because I just couldn't come when they wanted me to come. So I couldn't do much during those two years, were a little bit, like, me in bed, me walking a little bit in the house. This was mainly when I need to do something else than cycling and I couldn't do much with my life.</p><p>So that's kind of when I found music, I found playing music for myself was a little bit of relief for my life, kind of a little bit mentally like, just to put my... my energy on something else and at the same time I started, I grab the guitar for the first time and that's what my first approach to music was like... Music made me feel better. It made me, kind of, give me a purpose. And at the same time when I was listening or practicing the guitar, laying down in bed or sitting down... my pain would go away. Maybe it wasn't... it wasn't really away. But my mind wasn't focusing on that, right? So that was the first time I realized the power of music and how music can be more than entertainment. It could take your pain away, either really physically or just distracting your mind.</p><p>But I didn't have any knowledge more than my own experience so that led me to start playing the guitar and then all the rock bands and whatever I told you they playing festivals and stuff like that, but I always been interested in how music can affect your... your mind, your body and so when I came to the states, when I was living in San Francisco, I found this kind of more internet University that taught a year-long certificate that's called Sound, Voice, and Music Healing. It's a one-year certificate and through CIIS is that it's a university in San Francisco. And there the education that we got it was... it went from very new age all like "woo, woo" to like scientific and everything in between, you know. We got new age people. We got monks. We got scientist, we got all kind of musicians. So we were exposed to many different modalities and different approaches, which was great, you know, because you pick or they're like, oh go deeper in the one that you really liked or wanted</p><p>So during the time I was having a lot of problems sleeping, and we had to get a final project going to graduate from the class for the certificate. My idea was to do something with music that I could play or something. So I started to compose music to try to help me sleep. I would go to a computer, write music and then at night go and try with myself. Yeah, it was like, "Oh, these are distracting, I don't like that. Those bells they're too loud." Okay, and go the next day. I adjust it, remove instrument, play another instruments and I came up with a set of seven songs that I presented as a CD together with no intention of anything else, just, that was something for me, to help me. And then after a while I was like, "Well, why not share it with the world?" So I decided to press like a hundred CDs and it turned out that a lot of people liked it and they went from New Age studios on the east coast in Buenos Aires, for example to yoga teachers and practitioners and massage therapists and like, at the time, I put in some promotion, put it on CD Baby and people were writing emails from different parts of the world saying, "Hey! Like, I like what you're doing."</p><p>So yeah, that's always been a big part of my big interest in music so it kind of goes parallel with my more academic music composing. I hadn't done anything yet applying all my new knowledge or my academic knowledge, though. Those songs are pre-music education. Yeah, it doesn't mean that it's not good because it's a different approach. So I'm gonna write piano, it's not like I write a thousand notes like in one second because that's not what it's about. It's more about an experience and I did trying it on myself with the the goal of relaxation and yeah. Yeah, I'm very interested right now I'm researching. I want to write an article... no, more than an article, it's a paper. How music can be used for... to help with stress and anxiety.</p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah. A music therapy sort of thing. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah. I kind of really like, (unclear) being made and for many years and I'm, I want to back all that up with science and experiments. I found a lot of experiments done by universities on how music can help with postoperatory like pain, for many different reasons, so I kind of wanna (unclear) a little bit like everything I do and bring some research behind it maybe. I'm thinking that might become a book in the future and also bring my composition expertise and me, with all the all the science behind it. Maybe bring my composition expertise and to guide other people that want to make music with that purpose.</p><p>Adam Eason: I see. </p><p>Washington Plada: Kind of tie it all together. Okay, that's kind of like still an idea that maybe... it's kind of a strong idea. So I don't know when that might happen, but I'm in the research phase right now. We're collecting papers, reading and just starting from from (glitch).</p><p>Adam Eason: Nice, so currently though you're at University of Oregon and for your master's program and are you studying with David Crumb? </p><p>Washington Plada: I am, yeah, I'm studying with David Crumb. And also with Robert Kyr. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay, both. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah with both. Yes, so when you start this program you have to have a year with each. Okay, and then at the end of your two years you pick... you pick one or kind of like, it defaults to the professor that has more more expertise in the area that you want to develop your thesis or your your big project. So yeah. Already it's been a fantastic experience. They are both like great composers and great educators. They both have tremendous experience, great composers it's been, like, wonderful. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah. I know that David crumb is George Crumb's son. George Crumb, the kind of Avant-garde composer, and I haven't heard a lot of Robert Kyr's music but you and I met at the Oregon Bach Festival Composer Symposium, and he had I think one or two samples of his music played there and he seemed a little bit more... I guess romantic kind of feeling? How would you describe the differences between their styles and have you been gravitating more towards one or you trying to tie them together? </p><p>Washington Plada: Actually their styles are very different. So their approach to composition is... I would say that in some level is very opposite, but not... It's not this is better than the other, but they're just different and they are both really good. So what I notice from the classes is that Robert Kyr focuses a lot on the emotions, what's the story behind what you want to write, how you can project all those feelings and emotions to the piece and maybe that ties a lot to what you're saying about the Romanticism in this case. I think that's what a lot of like romantic music comes from is all of... all these big emotions. And experience with Crumb is more focused on like the purpose of each note. There in a more like... How can I describe it? It's more... it's not so much all these stories more about like well, that's these notes go together here, is more like...</p><p>Adam Eason: Like how its constructed I guess?</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah. I don't want to call it intellectual, but it's more... The approach is it's more about what's the purpose of each note there? How do I tie together how this relates to that, it's more about like the music and not so much like bringing this story into it. So I'm fascinated by both worlds and trying to put those two together, because I think if I can do that, that would be amazing. For me, I'm not saying that I'm going to be the best composer. I'm saying that I love both approach in there. So like but the good thing is that they both have very different approaches, but both of their music is amazing. There's no one way of doing things but I want to bring the best of those worlds and like have a purpose behind each note I put on my paper that is deliberately put there for a reason. And that note can bring the best emotional effect that I can bring. So I think that's if I can convey that I'll be happy. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, I saw you posted... I think it was the Delgani String Quartet? Is that right? You wrote something for for them. Can you tell me what can you tell us a little bit about that work? Kind of what brought it about and... yeah. </p><p>Washington Plada: So through the University, through this program that I'm currently doing, they bring us amazing artists to work with. I really like that. So the Delgani String Quartet started working with us, so we had the possibility to write for them and we started writing the pieces and then came for... they work with us throughout the whole process. So since the inception of the song until the performance, we wrote elements like a little bit more than sketches, like an advanced sketch lets say, and then they came and they played it. We told them about the story of the our piece and what we're going to convey: what, why, where everything else, all the details. And then they played what we had so far. There was like between 20 and 40 measures for the first time we got together. And they gave us feedback about this work that doesn't work. Or you can do these to translate better your ideas. </p><p>It was like an amazing experience. They are great people, amazing musicians and they're like wonderful to work with. It was really cool. So it was a group setting, they came, everybody presented their piece. And it's really nice not only to hear your piece, but you hear your classmate pieces because you're learning from that, too. What they're saying may apply to other pieces if it does not apply to this one. I'm sure you'd apply it to your next one that you are writing. So then they came a couple more times. One time they came at the 50% of the piece, and they came at the... a few weeks before the concert. So we had to have the piece completed and they went through to make last minor details and and then we have rehearsal with them. </p><p>And the piece was performed. All that process was very eye-opening and wonderful to work with. As a composer, you don't have all the time, that input. So you, your commission, or you're writing something on your own and you don't have all the players there. Like, the feedback like from the cello players and viola, from the violins, they're each giving you specific things about how their instrument work, how you can notate it better, how you can make it sound better. That's amazing because it's bulletproof then, your piece. At the end of that process you have something of really good quality that, you know, that can be played. Yeah, of course, then we have different categories of players but that's a whole different story. </p><p>Adam Eason: What's the story? What's the story behind the piece? </p><p>Washington Plada: The Spanish title translates to "Never Again." This... that phrase was used during the dictatorship in South America in the 70s until early 80s. Mostly all Latin America went through a dictatorship and they were very sad and scary times. Lots of people disappear, a lot of torture, lot of no good things happen and the militaries were in charge and everything that they didn't like, it was severely punished. Even just for having, like books that they didn't like at home, you know? They would come and it was very sad and "Nunca Más" is started as a saying like, never again, never again.</p><p>We don't want that again. Last year, 2019, a lot of riots and protests against the government were happening in many countries in South America, in (Chile), in Colombia, in Bolivia. And there was this collective fear because all that was done with the military that were going to streets, and again we were seeing in Chile many people disappear. A lot of people got killed and seriously injured like with because the militaries were like shooting them on the streets. Like, Big Brother's here. It was very sad and happened in many countries.</p><p>And there was this Collective fear of the 70s again. Yeah, and people were really afraid that they were going to take over the government and there's a lot of people that are alive right now they're in the 60s that they went through like, their mom, their dad, their cousins, disappear then themselves. Like I had friends, my parents friends. They were tortured, some of them disappeared. So that fear is still very strong. So I titled that piece "Nunca Más" because it was hard for me to see all this happening in my, like, only happening in my country but happening in other countries that I had, like, a very strong connection to so what's my way of letting participating in saying "No" say "Nunca Más" to that from being in the states. I cannot fly there and go to fight because that's not possible for me right now. So my fight is through music and through music can be heard. To a lot of people, and it's my way of like contributing to Chili's fight. So that's what the piece talks about. </p><p>So the piece in the first, in the beginning of the piece is very chaotic and it kind of wants to translate a little bit what's going on in the street. Is this fight, is this bombs, is this fighting between people, police like, trying to survive yelling and screaming for your rights? And that's what the piece tells about. The middle of the piece, it changes completely the mood goes to, like, very quiet and almost delicate sound. What I wanted to translate there it was what's going on in the... in the mind, it the heart of some person that is looking. They're kind of like, aside from all the chaos, but it's looking at everything how you see how everything gets destroyed, how your family, your friends get beat up, they die, and it's a reflection of like what's going on, you know, yeah. By the end of the piece, the chaos comes back and is the guy is like kind of wakes up is like whoa, like I need to like, you know, the realities here around me again, you know, he wakes up from the dream state, let's say. And the piece finishes in this fury. Really fast and and loud and the piece ends as the quartet playing as loud as they can on their instrument. Just like, that's kind of an end to that fight, but the same time the moment is the fight itself. Yeah. </p><p>Adam Eason: Okay, that's </p><p>Washington Plada: That's a really strong piece.</p><p>Adam Eason: It's pretty heavy. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, I'm really happy how it turned out.</p><p>Adam Eason: I was very struck by its expressivity when I watched the video of it. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah people seem to like it a lot, I'm very happy with it. It was not an easy piece, it was challenging and the performers, the Delgani String Quartet, did such an outstanding job, they can take whatever you throw at them. They get it. They play every single note how it needed to be, it was like perfect. I couldn't ask for more. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, they they definitely killed it at the performance. It was pretty awesome. Okay. Well, we're being up at the end of time, actually. It's always a little surprising how fast these hours can go. So I guess I'll just end with if you were to name a musician or a composer that like you think basically every Uruguayan would know. Like, maybe they don't like them, but they just know them. Who do you think that composer or musician would be?</p><p>Washington Plada: Does it have to be from my country, or...? </p><p>Adam Eason: I mean just like just as a general like oh, yeah, everybody's heard of this person. </p><p>Washington Plada: Wow. I didn't see that coming. That's a good question, it makes me... I don't know, it's not easy, but... Wow. Well, I would say definitely Carlos Gardel. </p><p>Adam Eason: Gardel. Okay. Yeah.</p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, he's a tango singer. Everybody knows him. That's kind of an icon of Uruguay, Argentina, South America. When you talk about tango, it's hard to not talk about him because he, in the singing tango, he is... He's the best. Yeah, even though he died like a long time ago, even if you asked to young people, they would know who he is. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, he did a Por Una Cabeza, right? </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah. And many many more. Yeah. Yeah. Well known all over the world, known in Uruguay, but a lot of people know him. If you know tango, you probably think about two and I think those two are probably Gardel in the singing style and Piazzolla in the instrumental tango, those are kind of like... Of course, there are more in the instrumental tango, but if you set up a he's probably one of the most well-known. Yeah, so he brings kind of like more classical. </p><p>Adam Eason: Right, right. Also jazz and stuff.</p><p>Washington Plada: Jazz and stuff. So I think it covers more ground. The other people that play tango that they are great orchestras, that's only like in that style.</p><p>Adam Eason: Gotcha. Cool. All right. Well, I guess that's that's all for today. Thanks for joining us. It's been a really good talk with you. </p><p>Washington Plada: Yeah, thank you for inviting me in, this is great. And I love talking about, like, mostly about my heritage and my country, it's nice to like, be are an ambassador. Yeah. Be a humble ambassador for my country and my music. Thank you. It's a pleasure. And let's see if we can collaborate soon enough. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, of course! Yeah, do something together.</p><p>Washington Plada: I know that I have to say that I love the collaboration we did together. That concert is still going to happen? Like when the Latin American concert. Are you still thinking about it? When all this clears up? </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah, it's a little bit hard to say. We did most of the program that we wanted to do. So it ended up being like 75% We had like the Piazzola, your pieces, Ginastera, a little bit of Ponce, but we didn't quite have enough time at that... Like this was early/late December and we were going to do a couple more pieces and then covid hit so we had to kind of shelve some things but we got most of the programming we wanted. </p><p>Washington Plada: Well, maybe if you do another one maybe I'll come up with something new for that. </p><p>Adam Eason: Yeah that we are. All right. </p><p>Washington Plada: And thank you. </p><p>Adam Eason: Thank you. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-21587251439487165882020-09-07T11:20:00.006-07:002020-09-07T11:22:06.788-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Papua New Guinea<p>It really says something about not just the breadth of colonialism's reach, but also the dearth of its creativity that there are countries called "Guinea" on opposite sides of the globe. Apparently, New Guinea was named by Yñigo Oritz de Retez who thought its inhabitants were similar to the inhabitants of African Guinea. Hm. I wonder what those similarities might be... I guess we'll never know (Guinea's etymology eventually leads back to "Land of the Blacks"). I don't want to rib the guy too hard, because as an explorer and seasoned seafarer, de Retez did a heck of a lot more with his life than I have, but still. Naming countries wasn't his forte.</p><p>Papua New Guinea is about half of the world's second largest island, the other approximately half, called... let me see here... Western New Guinea? Seriously? Ok, fine. Western New Guinea is part of Indonesia. As it turns out, Papua New Guinea is probably the most culturally diverse country in the world, containing a whopping 840 living languages and just as many customary communities, which the majority of the country's inhabitants still live in.</p><p>I have to say, I am again disappointed to find that most of the history of Papua New Guinea starts post-colonialism. It makes sense, because the tribes didn't have writing, but surely their oral histories must count for something, yes? Like, you could even say "Oral accounts tell such and such," with the understanding that oral histories have their own form of distortion. But we've got what we've got, I suppose. </p><p>So it goes like this: the northern half of what would become Papua New Guinea was colonized by Germany, and the southern half was colonized by Great Britain. In 1905, Britain transfers its control of British New Guinea to Australia and it is renamed Territory of Papua. Then, in 1914, Australia takes German New Guinea shortly after the outbreak of World War I. After WWI ends, the League of Nations said Australia could retain control of German New Guinea, now called Territory of Guinea, but that, for some reason, the Territory of Papua was only an external territory of Australia but still legally British. Even though the Brits gave it to Australia. End result? Papua and New Guinea, from the end of WWI to 1949, were both controlled by Australia, but required two separate administrative systems. People looked at that and nodded and said, "Yes. This is acceptable."</p><p>Throughout all this, nobody asked what the local tribes thought of all this. To be sure, nobody asked the local tribes what they thought about the Japanese coming in an taking control of the area during WWII either. In any case, after WWII, Papua and New Guinea were combined into Papua New Guinea, settling many a bureaucratic headache but also cutting off a number of opportunities for petty corruption, and the region achieved independence in 1975. Interestingly, the Papua New Guinean government did seem to ask local tribes what they wanted, and settled on a type of tenure called "customary land titles," which gives indigenous people inalienable tenure over their traditional lands.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Today's composer is George Telek (b.??) from the village Raluana on the northernmost point of New Britain, an island to the east of Papua New Guinea. Local legend has it that, as a child, Mr. Telek chewed on a sacred betel nut and was granted dreams of his ancestors which gave him the basis for his music. While George Telek is still rooted in his village life, he is the first Papua New Guinean to achieve international fame in music. The National Broadcasting Corporation began putting out recordings of local talent in 1977, and Mr. Telek recorded 5 solo albums with them. Later, in 1986, he met Australian rock musician David Bridie, and had a long and fruitful career working together with him. The song below, Tatabai, is the result of this collaboration between the two artists.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pk3iuQq_4_Y" width="320" youtube-src-id="pk3iuQq_4_Y"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk3iuQq_4_Y&feature=emb_logo">George Telek and David Bridie, Tatabai</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-7555592268884455122020-08-31T13:04:00.004-07:002020-08-31T13:04:44.872-07:00Composer for Every Country: Benin<p>While the borders of today's Benin encompass a number of pre-colonial tribal and imperial zones, there's one in particular I want to address: the Kingdom of Dahomey. This Kingdom was made up of the Fon ethnic people and they controlled a chunk of the southern coastal area of Benin-to-be from about 1600 to 1894 when they lost the Second Franco-Dahomean War and became a protectorate of France. They were a very militaristic kingdom, their military including both men and women, and fought with two of their political rivals, the Oyo Empire and the city-state Porto-Novo, to control gold mines in the area.</p><p>They also caught and sold slaves. They were usually war prisoners or criminals who, for whatever reason, weren't chosen for their rituals involving human sacrifice. I'm not particularly equipped to deal with any nuances of the Kingdom of Dahomey's slave trade, but I bring it up for a couple of reasons - first, it does a disservice to the victims of atrocities to flinch away and ignore the worst elements of human history; second, and related, there are not a few foolhearted Euro-Americans who, out of ignorance or spite or both, cling onto African slavery as a smokescreen to deflect responsibility away from European and American crimes against humanity.</p><p>So the Kingdom of Dahomey made money by selling slaves? Ok, that's bad. But you know what? It was the Europeans and Americans who bought and sold them again, and they kept the receipts. In an uncommon instance of an African-American being able to trace their ancestry back to a particular place, the show Roots found that musician Ahmir Khalib Thompson was descended from a slave on the boat of one William Foster, the captain of the last slave ship taking slaves from the Kingdom of Dahomey to the US as part of a bet made by Timothy Meaher that he could sell them after Thomas Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1808. Take a moment to let the full implications of that story sink in, and then we'll move on to more pleasant topics.</p><p>There's more to Benin than slavery, of course. Due to the country's low literacy rate, oral tradition is still alive and well, and the country has a flourishing and diverse music scene. Everything from native tribal music, Ghanian highlife, French cabaret, rock, reggae, rumba are all played in the country. For a time in the 1970's, Benin was one of the premier hotspots for funk in Africa. During my searches for Beninese music, I also came across a number of artists who are still creating new music within tribal styles and genres, which is cool to see.</p><p>During the course of writing about Africa, it occurred to me I hadn't come across anything resembling an avant garde, whatever that may mean to Africa. While I haven't found anything like that in music so far (at least, in sub-Saharan Africa; North Africa is a different story), there's plenty of visual artists and clothing designers across the continent who are experimenting with what their cultures have to offer, and what it means to be a citizen of whatever country they are in when the borders of them are so blatantly artificial. In 2010, Benin's Ministry of Culture initiated a Biennial Foundation project called Regard Benin. You can check out some of the results of the 2012 exhibit at their website here: <a href="https://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/regard-biennale-benin-benin/">https://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/regard-biennale-benin-benin/</a></p><p>--- --- --- ---</p><p>Today's composer is Lionel Loueke (b.1973). A guitarist and vocalist, Mr. Loueke started guitar at 17, working for a year to earn the $50 needed to buy the instrument. Poverty compelled him to try and find solutions to the problem of replacing strings, using everything from vinegar to clean his strings to using bicycle brake cables (not recommended, they broke his guitar neck). In 1990, he went to the National Art Institute in Côte d'Ivoire, then the American School of Music in Paris, Berklee College of Music, and finally the Thelonious Monk Institute (now known as the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz). </p><p>The list of musicians he has worked with is extensive, but he currently belongs to a jazz trio called Gilfema with Massimo Biolcati (Swedish-Italian) and Ferenc Nemeth (Hungarian). The song posted is "Wishes," from his second album <i>Mwaliko</i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/87Jx4R4lfTM" width="320" youtube-src-id="87Jx4R4lfTM"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Jx4R4lfTM">Lionel Loueke, Wishes</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-78228989462090566062020-08-28T15:04:00.000-07:002020-08-28T15:04:11.058-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Australia<p> Australia - land of Steve Irwin and 1000 ways to die of poisonous critters. Fun fact. Australia has the second most venomous land snake in the world. It's called "the common brown snake." Can you guess why? That's right! Because it's brown, and it's common. As it happens, Australia also has the <i>first</i> most venomous land snake in the world, the inland taipan. Don't worry, though, because the inland taipan is not particularly aggressive. As opposed to the THIRD most venomous snake in the world, the coastal taipan, which is very aggressive and is ALSO IN AUSTRALIA. I didn't even get to the spiders, and I'm not gonna.</p><p>Australia is kind of odd in terms of population density. Clocking in at 3.3 people per square kilometre, it's one of the three least dense countries in the world. But, in the way that statistics don't always tell the whole story, almost everyone lives in a city on the East coast, with Melbourne having a density as high as 21,900 people per square kilometre. When Googling around about this, one of the more commonly asked questions is apparently "Why is Australia's population so low?" I didn't check the answers, but if one of the reasons isn't "all them snakes," well... I'll just pretend its because of all them snakes.</p><p>Culturally, Australia is split between the cities, founded mostly by British colonies, and Aboriginal tribes. The cities are among that group of countries, including the US, Canada, and Great Britain, which share enough words we can pretend we all speak the same language. It is common knowledge in the US that Australia was settled largely as a penal colony, but like most popular histories, this is only part of the story. One part that is often missing is, England settled Australia as a response to losing the American colonies after the Revolution. The implication is, the American colonies must have also been, at least in part, a place for England to dump their overcrowded prisons. This will give me some pause the next time I feel like ribbing Australia for their raison d'être.</p><p>Like a lot of indigenous peoples post-European contact, the Aboriginal tribes are in rough shape. Disease, warfare, and the arrival of various invasive species (dogs, cats, rats, and mice) proved disastrous culturally and environmentally. Lately, however, it seems like the Aboriginal and European peoples have reached something of an accord, if tenuous, and co-exist more or less peacefully. While Aboriginal peoples do speak English, native languages are also in use, although the diversity of languages is much reduced. Of the 250 or so languages recorded by the first European colonists, only 130ish are still in use, and only 13 of those are not considered endangered.</p><p>While the Aboriginal people are also somewhat present in US common knowledge, the Torres Strait Islanders are not. The Torres Strait Islands are located off the North coast between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Two main language groups are in use: Kalaw Lagaw Ya, and Meriam Mir, with a Torres Strait Creole used to facilitate trade. The tribes' cultures share an overlap with Papuan and Australian Aboriginal cultures. Song and dance is central to the Torres Straight Islander's sense of history, being the main storytelling medium.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Because of the sharp division between the European and indigenous cultures in Australia, I wanted to write about a couple of different musicians. From the indigenous side is the Warumpi Band, an Aboriginal country group founded in 1980. Their debut single, "Jailanguru Pakarnu," was the first rock song to be written in an Aboriginal language, in this case, Luritja. Another hit of theirs, "My Island Home," achieved global reach during the 2000 Summer Olympics closing ceremony when it was sung by Christina Anu, a Torres Strait Islander.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1baOxLwccB8" width="320" youtube-src-id="1baOxLwccB8"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1baOxLwccB8">Warumpi Band "Jailanguru Pakarnu"</a> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From the European academic side, there are many to choose from, but I decided on Miriam Hyde (1913-2005). A pianist, teacher, and poet, she developed a professional solo career in London, 1933, with a recital at Holland Park. She went on to debut her Piano Concerto #1 with the London Philharmonic in 1934 and her Piano Concerto #2 in 1935. As a teacher, she worked with the Australian Music Examinations Board from 1945-82 giving workshops, exams, and teaching materials through that time. She continued performing right up to the end of her life, and gave a performance of her 2nd Concerto at the spry old age of 89 with the Strathfield Symphony. The video I've linked is from an interview she gave in 1991, when she was 78, and includes her performance of a solo piano composition she titled "The Fountain."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D-FS3xuKXYY" width="320" youtube-src-id="D-FS3xuKXYY"></iframe><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-FS3xuKXYY">Miriam Hyde, "The Fountain"</a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-84542189413024082812020-08-24T19:28:00.006-07:002020-08-24T19:28:49.355-07:00Composer for Every Country: Togo<p> Togo's pre-colonial history is not particularly well recorded, even compared to the countries I have written about so far. There have been some references to oral histories within the tribes that occupy Togo, but there are no strong griot traditions in the same way as, say, Senegal or Mauritania to help consolidate information. The country is also rather far from Islamic regions in Africa, so there was likely not a lot of travel to the area by the major literate centers of Medieval Africa. Nevertheless, it is clear from the archaeological record that tribes had entered what is now Togo by at least the 11th century, and that movement and trade was quite active along the coastal areas.</p><p>Not long after Europeans arrived, the coast earned the nickname "The Slave Coast," for reasons which should be obvious. My reading about the Ewe people, who constitute about 1/3rd of the population, states that the tribes were largely decentralized and had a resistance to consolidating power amongst shared ethnic lines. As such, the Ewe were as involved in the slave trade as they were victims of it due to internecine tribal warfare. I'm sure the European powers didn't complain about the arrangement. </p><p>Somehow, for reasons I can't find, Togo didn't become a protectorate until 1884, when they signed a treaty with King Mlapa III of Germany. It occurs to me that this is around the time the Ashante finally fell in Ghana, so it could be that the main powers struggling for supremacy in the area, Britain, France, and Germany, had their hands full over to the West. The fall of the Ashante and the subsequent border drawings definitely played into the creation of German Togoland, but that doesn't explain why the area wasn't claimed earlier. *shrug* </p><p>Togo eventually became a colony in 1905, being exploited for labor and taxes until World War I, when France and Britain invade and form a brief condominium of the area until after WWII, when the West chunk of Togoland went to the British and was incorporated into Ghana, and the East chunk stayed with France and became Togo as we know it today. Politics have since been a back and forth between various strongmen and coups, the longest running leader being Eyadema Gnassingbé who ruled under a one-party system from 1969 until his death in 2005.</p><p>Because African nation borders were drawn by European powers over pre-existing ethnic regions (I hesitate to say boundaries), they aren't very useful for grasping African cultures. With that in mind, I'll start spending more electrons on the tribes themselves, although there is no way I could possibly get to all of them. The Ewe, mentioned above, are a strongly patrilineal tribal culture. The chief of the tribe is always male, and his family is the "owner" of the land the tribe lives on. I put this in quotes because "ownership" doesn't do justice the the relationship between the family and their land, which is considered an ancestral gift that be neither bought nor sold.</p><p>Their religion is Voodoo. Yes, <i>that</i> Voodoo, the same one that shows up in Haiti, and let me tell you, the cosmology of Voodoo's gods, goddesses, and spirits is intense. Like most Americans, my only contact with Voodoo was through Hollywood which, uh, lets say... Doesn't do justice to source material even when the authors are present. That said, Christianity and Islam are present, although in the minority. Now that I think about it, this is the first country where the indigenous religion outnumbers the two major religions. Curious.</p><p>Artistically, the Ewe are known for their kente cloth, a style of striped patterns made from interwoven cotton strips. Most music centers around drumming, and it is thought that good drummers inherited the spirit of an ancestor who was good at drumming. They also have several styles of dancing, from Agbadza, a traditional war dance which has since transformed into a dance to celebrate peace, to Bobobo, a very recent tradition based on 1940's and 50's Highlife songs, and danced for political rallies and important events like funerals.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Today's composer is King Menseh (b.1971). Known as "The Golden Voice of Togo," King Menseh has developed a strong international career based largely out of Paris. His music is strongly influenced by Ewe and Kabye drumming, which is mixed with reggae, funk, and Afropop. Besides being a singer-songwriter, he has also acted with the Ki-Yi M'Bock Theater, a professional troupe of musicians, dancers, actors, and puppeteers based in Côte d'Ivoire. King Menseh also founded a philanthropic group, Foundation King Menseh, devoted to the care and education of orphans in Togo. I can't seem to find the lyrics to the song I've posted, but he tends to sing about the orphaned and the oppressed.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Un68h_Xo6sk" width="320" youtube-src-id="Un68h_Xo6sk"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un68h_Xo6sk">King Mensah- Mousoekeo</a><br /></div><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-39598553326602836202020-08-21T12:04:00.002-07:002020-08-21T12:05:18.159-07:00Composer for Every Country: New Zealand<p> I've decided to drop the Smelting Pot articles for now, because... well, because if I only do one country a week for this series, I'm going to be writing it forever. This left me with some choices about where to pick up for a second article a week, and I decided to go to New Zealand and work West towards Asia. The Polynesian and South-East Asian cultures tend to get left out of music discourse (with the exception of Disney's Moana, I guess) so it seems a good pairing with Africa.</p><p>New Zealand! Land of the Maori, the British, and Peter Jackson's hobbits. I was surprised to learn that the settling of the islands is recent. Like, Medieval Times recent. Current evidence points to Polynesian settling in the late 13th century. To put this into context for my Anglophone readers, the first settlers in New Zealand didn't show up until AFTER Notre Dame Cathedral was finished. This makes New Zealand the last of the large islands to be settled by humans.</p><p>The indigenous culture, the Maori, might be somewhat familiar because their distinctive tattooing, called moko, attracted many American and European artists and writers, making the Maori a prime target of the noble savage trope. Despite suppression of the Maori culture during the early 20th century, the people hung tough and now look to stay. The Maori language has made a come back, as well (we'll look at that more with my composer of the day) and is now an official language of New Zealand. Somewhat curiously, the Maori took to writing very quickly once it was introduced, and most of their previously oral traditions have been preserved in book form.</p><p>Europeans arrived only slightly later than the Maori. Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, sighted the islands in 1642, and the UK signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the Maori in 1840, making the islands a colony a year later. There's not too much to add about the European side of things, so instead, here is a list of flightless birds native to the islands: the kiwi, the kakapo, the weka, and the takahe. These are all birds that lost the ability to fly, largely because of the lack of humans; specifically, the lack of animals that like to follow humans around and eat birds and bird eggs, like rats, cats, and dogs. Well, jokes on them, I guess. The kakapo, at least, got their revenge when one of the few remaining birds, in a pique of evolutionary frustration, proceeded to mate with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY">back of Mark Carwardine's head</a>. </p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Our composer of the day is Te Kumeroa Pewhairangi (1921-1985). While she was a composer of songs, Te Kumeroa lived a life that extended far beyond music. She was also a teacher of the Maori language, tutoring the Maori club at Gisborne Girls' High School and then teaching Maori studies at Gisborne's University of Waikito. She also spearheaded the Tu Tangata program in cooperation with the Department of Maori Affairs, which helped reconnect urban at-risk Maori youths with their family tribes, and she was a key leader in the kohanga reo movement, which aims to revive and revitalize that Maori language in schools.</p><p>Two of Te Kumeroa's songs topped the New Zealand charts: Poi E and E Ipo. Poi E stands out for a number of reasons. Scored by Dalvanius Prime, a Maori entertainer and mentor, Poi E's style is a blend of hip-hop, gospel, funk, and show-band elements. Unable to receive backing from the major New Zealand labels, Dalvanius Prime produced the song himself on his own label, Maui Records. Its popularity was achieved kind of by accident. The song had no radio or television marketing, but received a brief new story on a local network. It suddenly shot to the number one spot on the charts, and remains something of a cult classic in New Zealand culture. The group which sang the song, Patea Maori Club, was made a one hit wonder on the back of this tune.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DQLUygS0IAQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="DQLUygS0IAQ"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLUygS0IAQ&feature=emb_logo">Patea Maori Club - Poi E</a><br /></div><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-75358408513103485932020-08-17T12:48:00.001-07:002020-08-17T12:48:13.029-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Ghana<p>The name "Ghana" translates from the Soninke language to "Warrior King." That name seems apt, considering local kingdoms fought off the British for about a hundred years. There were two kingdoms which had substantial power in the area when the Europeans arrived: the Kingdom of Dagbon, located in the Northern area of what is now Ghana, and the Kingdom of Ashanti, which covered much of the south and central parts of the region. </p><p>The kingdoms have roots in two different ethnic groups. The Kingdom of Dagbon was first founded in the 11th-century by the Dagomba peoples. Their history is divided into two kingdoms, with the first being known only through oral histories told through drum chant. The Second Kingdom of Dagbon started around 1700 when the capital was moved from Yendi Dabari to Yendi due to conflicts with another tribe, the Gonja. This kingdom lasted until 1888, when they agreed to become a neutral zone between British and German controlled areas, and then were decisively defeated by the Germans in a massacre known as the Battle of Abido.</p><p>The Kingdom of Ashanti was descended from an ethnic group called the Akan, settling along the coast between the 10th and 12th centuries. The kingdom itself coalesced in the 17th century when King Osei Kofi Tutu I consolidated a confederation of Ashanti city-states against a nation called Denkyira, defeating them in 1701. Following their victory, King Tutu began expansion through military strength and diplomacy. Apparently, the Ashanti peoples have attracted a great deal of study, particularly by British authors. I have to suspect some of this interest sprouts from the Ashanti giving the British army a run for their money for the better part of a century, but that's none of my business.</p><p>There were other, smaller kingdoms in the area, as well as a number of loosely organized tribes. Thus, like other African countries I've looked at so far, it makes less sense to say "Ghana culture" than it does "cultures." One cultural element which is fairly common are adinkra symbols, a collection of icons which are used on fabrics, pottery, walls, and architecture. These symbols make reference to a number of ideas, proverbs, and aphorisms which, when combined, create a wealth of communications. It seems adinkra cloths were traditionally worn by spiritual leaders during funerals and other religious services. </p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Our composer for today is Dr. Ephraim Amu (1899-1995). He received his early musical training from Karl Theordore Ntem, getting organ lessons in exchange for farm work on Saturdays. In 1916, he left for college, travelling 150 miles on foot to get to Abetifi. Graduating in 1919 and taking up a teaching position at a middle school in 1920, Dr. Amu was immensely dedicated to giving his students the best possible education. One story tells of him buying a 5-octave organ in the city of Koforidua, about 18 miles from his school. While he was able to transport the organ by train most of the way back, he ended up having to carry the organ on his head for a whole night to get the organ back to the school.</p><p>Musically, his primary focus was writing for chorus, typically setting scriptural passages in the Twi and Ewe languages. He also strove to incorporate local styles, rhythms, and instruments in his music. This occasionally got him in a bit of hot water with some people, as one minister, Rev. Peter Hall, found it unacceptable to see Dr. Amu preach a sermon while in traditional African dress.</p><p>The work I am sharing is Alegbegbe, a setting of John 3:16. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/75KX2kTgnxg" width="320" youtube-src-id="75KX2kTgnxg"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75KX2kTgnxg">Dr. Ephraim Amu, Alegbegbe</a><br /></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-12965821081491843322020-08-14T16:20:00.001-07:002020-08-14T16:20:20.773-07:00Interview: Casey Ray Parrott<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The following is a transcript of my interview with Casey Ray Parrott on Aug 03, 2020. He is a visual artist, primarily a painter, currently living in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area of Texas. He has been a good friend for quite a long time, has become quite an accomplished painter since I have known him. I encourage you to check out some of his work at his website.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.caseyparrottart.com/xnfvi1zmi2pchhu2axr3o5w4zcp0m3">https://www.caseyparrottart.com/xnfvi1zmi2pchhu2axr3o5w4zcp0m3</a><br /></p><p>In addition, he and I discuss his time working for My Possibilities, a non-profit dedicated to assisting people with mental and physical disabilities in the North Dallas area. You can learn more about what they do here:</p><p><a href="https://mypossibilities.org/">https://mypossibilities.org/</a><br /></p><p>For myself, as much as I love interviewing, providing the video, transcript, and closed captioning is a time consuming process. If you enjoy these interviews and would like to support them financially, consider becoming a Patron at my Patreon site, where you can choose to give a monthly donation. In addition to making future interviews possible, Patrons will receive access to my works in process, including scores, MIDI demos, and revision videos of upcoming compositions and arrangements. You can find my Patreon here:</p><p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/SoundOfTheTone">https://www.patreon.com/SoundOfTheTone</a></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a526ed54-7fff-9dbe-6f89-eb24f80a5635"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam: Hello everybody. This is Casey Ray Parrot, an old friend of mine going back to good old college days. I guess they weren't all good old college days, depending on which days...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey: Some were terrible. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam: He is a visual artist mostly you paint, I think. Yeah, is most of what I've seen and I guess the first question, which is on everybody's mind. What do you think of Bob Ross? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey: I mean, there's some interesting stuff that he does. He's made the comment, I've created this so that no one has to paint all the little nooks and crannies in the rocks. I get it, but I also love painting the nooks and crannies and rocks. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam: Sure. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey: Hey, to each their own. I love the guy and when I needed a good nap, I'd watch this show. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam: Yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah. It's not because of his work </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - His voice. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Exactly. Puts me to sleep every time. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah, so for my interviews, I've been starting from, like, literally the very beginning and it seems like a pretty good place to start. Do either of your parents still have any of your drawings that hang on the fridge?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Oh, yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Oh, yeah. I don't know how many my dad and stepmom have right now, because they're cleaning out their house last I heard. But my mom has paintings and drawings since I was 18 months old. She said that's when I started drawing people, like heads and hands with fingers, at 18 months. I don't know that I believe her anymore, but that's what she says and I'm going to just say thanks Mom. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah, sure sure. So when... like how far back is your memory for like your first things that you remember drawing? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Oh, man. Pre-K? Yeah, I remember doing stuff in the daycare my sister and I were in. Actually most of my cousins were in, we kind of took over this day care. But I remember distinctly, you know the table where I sat and I would draw houses trees, you know, the typical houses and trees that everyone does add 4 and 5, but that's when I remember it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Okay. Do you remember at all, like, what kind of things you were drawing? Was it just sort of what was around you? Monsters?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Monsters... at that time, predominantly dinosaurs and then Ninja Turtles. I, For the longest time kind of gravitated towards the nonhuman side of things. if I were to ever iterate some superhero version of myself, he was always some kind of animal. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. So this may be a bit of a reach. Do you remember at all if you had encountered those stop-motion dinosaur videos? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah. Absolutely. Those were totally in my visual DNA. I mean, I just love dinosaurs and then I remember having a huge paradigm shift when Jurassic Park came out because I thought "That's not how dinosaurs stand! That's not how they move! But... Wait a minute...</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, that's really cool."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so you can see the Paradigm Shift be affected even in my artwork where I started thinking about actual anatomy and physiology as far as my figures go. Figurative work was kind of the staple of all my sketchbooks. Because I didn't paint until I was 14?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah and Jurassic Park was mid-. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - 1993. I was eight. Seven or eight. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. Cool, and then so... you didn't paint until 14. I'm trying to think because you went to Booker T Washington School right? For high school. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah, so I attempted a Bob Ross style painting on the outside of my manila folder to show the teachers during my interview that I could that I could try to paint. I never really pushed outside of Elementary and Junior High art classes. I never sought to get extra education. So it was a challenge and even then I didn't like the way they taught me to paint. Though,now, I look back and think "Dang if only I had listened then I might be better today."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - I can relate. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - What were classes like at Booker T?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Awesome. I mean the art class. The normal education we had to do because of national federal and state mandates. I had good teachers. Physics was probably the most enlightening as far as relating to art though. And I think it had everything to do with the instructor. But my art classes were hard because I'd always been allowed to just make my own stuff with no criticism. No interjections. No teacher really.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even when I was in elementary and Junior High they were like, "You're so good just do whatever," and I think that hurt me. And the preparation. But when I got to high school, I mean they said "No, come on. You can do better." And there were people that were way better than me freshman year and that was… was disheartening. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, because I thought I was creme de La Creme and I found out I was maybe 1% milk, you know, freshman. And I got much better being in that environment. I mean, what was really cool is that there was no real competition between the artists in my classes that makes a big difference. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I mean, you had people that were far superior technically and even in their expressions, than most of the other class and they usually kind of shut away as they didn't talk to a whole lot of people. But for the guys that were really good but still genial it was a huge help because then at that time we could build on each other and only complement and that's again another paradigm shift. It was incredible to have that. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Do you remember which teachers from that time that stand out to you?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - My painting teacher who actually went to SMU, John Hernandez or Juan Hernandez depending which culture he's in, he’ll change his name. Cool guy. Ava Couchite, who was my printmaking teacher, and just her introduction was really great. And then another painting teacher George Mosley who left after the first semester I had and I think he had some internal drama at the school, but there was... he didn't say much but when he would come in on our still, on my still life, and he would just say "Why do you do that? Try this." The way he approached me. I mean dishevelled everything I was doing and I said, okay. I need to try this. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, and then I really had to lean on his instruction of... "This is new to me. Where do I go?" "Like just try it."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - It was great. I was like, sure thing boss. Yeah, but then he disappeared and we had like this litany of substitutes that just you know, they were subs and we're the same so...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Were they mostly influential in their teaching approach or were there stylistic things that you picked up from them that you can kind of still see today?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - So I would say most of it is technical. However. I think John Hernandez definitely tackled something stylistically when I was painting. He says "Look you have really good colors. I like this, but you need to stop blending." Which is a technique, but stylistically there's something about leaving brushstrokes that just helps magnify the painting and I mean when he said that it really just kind of hacked me off and like, “Dude, just leave me alone.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But again, that's one of those things looking back like I wish I'd held on to that because it would have... it could have kind of jump-started the way I paint now, maybe a little earlier. And then Nancy Miller and Charlotte Chambliss who were both drawing instructors. Drawing and design really pushed me to work bigger and more loosely.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had this terrible habit of working super small and super tight almost like a photograph. And I didn't know this but you know, when you do that, it makes everything kind of feel flat. There's no movement within the surface, and they really challenged me that way. Then Charlotte Chambliss really pushed more finding a focus. Like, "What is it? What narrative are you wanting to go at? What are you trying to evoke how can we put emotion and thought?” and I didn't have her until my senior year. So it was just kind of like dang, I wish I had you more in my tenure here, but still I gleaned a lot from her and the short time that I had her she was great. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - 00:10:14 > 00:10:15</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What about other students from the time and have you kept up with anybody or...?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - So there are few people that I follow up with on social media and mostly Instagram. Like there's one guy who was one of the cream of the crop, </span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jeannot Quenson.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Born from France. So he just, you know, he came with a heavy portfolio before anyone else. He's now doing like 3D painting with VR technology. And as I think he's in the Pacific Northwest doing a whole bunch of album art music and then when he got into this 3D paint, I mean the stuff he makes is trippy but impressive. A couple of other people that I do keep up with don't make art anymore.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The majority of the people don't make art they're just kind of in the art community and dabble but...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Heavy attrition rate. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah, sadly. I am curious if that's in most areas of study or just hours. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. I don't know I mean… it seems like a lot of the people I knew from high school who were in Orchestra and were doing really well they kind of stopped in college and I think a lot of it just has to do with, I mean, they weren't going for a music major and college sucks up all your time and energy and it's sad. Like you wish that people had more time to kind of play around with whatever creative endeavors they've got but that seems to be kind of what happens to a lot of people </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - That's sad.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - I guess speaking of college then, what drew you to Southern Methodist University?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I mean… Throughout high school I did the art thing. Predominately, I mean it's what I like to do, but it also got me out of my home high school. So I didn't have to do sports. I didn't want to do sports with anybody just you know a ton of insecurity. But then maybe about junior year started thinking maybe I'll go into the mission field. I'll just be a missionary for the rest of my life. But you know, I'll go to this really cheap local Dallas Mission School and go from there. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And see midway through senior year I had my first kidney transplant. I've suffered from kidney disease my whole life and had a transplant which, I mean, man. When they talk about having brain fog disappear and chemical rebalance, the world changes quite literally overnight. So my outlook physiologically became a lot more open, and my ability to perceive became a lot clearer. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I thought well, you know and in the recovery time, I was watching a lot of The Lord of the Rings DVDs because they just come out with the third movie had just come out in theaters. And so I was busy watching Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and all of the added DVD stuff all the extra content the design process. They went through all the different galleries they exhibited. I was just so jazzed to see this this fantasy stuff and it just... I went through so many sketch books as I was downing barbecue chicken and gaining so much weight after this surgery. But I felt like that God told me to go to SMU and I had one of those "Hmm moments like wait a minute… Hold on, are these the drugs are these the new meds? You want me to go from the cheapest school in Dallas to the most expensive school in the state and to do what now?” and I just had this unction that it was art, and I thought “What?” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So that's what I did. I did a 180 and I applied maybe the last day that I could apply for SMU, got in, and then decided to major in art. I think going to SMU there was a lot more to learn through the college experience than just art. I think had I known about it I might have gone to an atelier or maybe gone to a different school that really focused on Arts because SMU sends all of their art money to the museum and not to school. So... and that's fine. I mean that's their prerogative, but you can... I think it shows </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think it shows and even one of my professors said you should have gone to you know, Art Institute of Chicago or something, which is a great compliment coming from that particular Professor, but anyway, that's how I got there. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - I landed in SMU almost by accident. So I'm kind of curious, like what is SMU's reputation within Dallas? Like, as a local growing up there.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I'll put it this way. When I got into SMU, I found out you know, my best friend, Matthew, who you also know very well, was going... and I don't know how we didn't communicate that before we both got accepted, but I started telling people. "Hey, so I'm going to SMU, you know fall 2004." A lot of people say “That's great. What are you gonna do?" </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I'm gonna go for art, you know, like painting."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Painting like walls?"</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would stop and think wait a minute. You should be smart enough to know what SMU is. Check. But you don't know what an art degree is? So I think most people think very highly of SMU. They look at the Ford Stadium, just the name SMU and everyone's eyes kind of like, oh, wow, "Okay, you must be rich." kind of thing. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like well, you know... strike two I'm not rich by any means. I'm a poor kid from East Dallas. So I think people like the name but there's not a lot of association with the art school there. I don't know how much that's changed really, and I think that's kind of the drawback that you know, my professor wanted me to go to a school where the art program was an immediate beneficiary of all income to the school. SMU's just... that's just not their priority. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They have it and it's a good program. I learned an exorbitant amount and I had quality professors through and through but you can tell that it's just not... </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - A little rough around the edges </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - A bit. I mean the maze downstairs was enough to say you don't care about your student body. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. It is interesting. Because it's like... for people who don't know the the Meadow School of the Arts is kind of the central arts building that houses all of the arts: music, dance, theater... visual arts. I frequently ran into theater people dancers, obviously other musicians because that's what I was there for. We rarely saw you. Like, the painters, the sculptors. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - No, we were locked away in the old Museum because the old museum is what became the visual arts department. So a majority of our drawing classes and everything took place in the old museum rooms, and then you had one group of studios kind of clustered in the upper mezzanine. And the only way to those were through several locked doors. And then I lucked out on the undergrad studio and it was again behind several locked doors that faced the north side, and then if students weren't in there, then we were just generally locked up in the different studios. So I mean everyone passed through our world to get to music and theater but not so many stop. Not a lot of interaction. We're not particularly friendly on the whole </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - So from Booker T, Washington, you had already kind of had your pride bubble popped a little bit. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Did you encounter further frustrations with that going into Meadows? </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Absolutely. We had to do a foundations class and I went to the office and said hey,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you know, I'm from the Arts Magnet downtown. Is there any way that I can skip the foundations class? I've already done this for four years and they immediately laughed at me and said no, everyone does it and then that was the end of that conversation. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was... I said, I can't apply for this? They said no, you have to do foundations first. Period. End of discussion. So that was a blow, that was a big blow but you know... I got sick first semester with you know, bilateral pneumonia and missed, you know, two and a half weeks of class. I'm glad that I had a foundations course and I'm really glad that I went because I met some of our mutual friends who are still very dear to me today through that class, and one of my mentors who is still a dear mentor today through that class and I learned a lot. It was a lot of deeper end knowledge. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a lot more exploration into the art world and what it meant to be an artist through that course than I ever received in high school and that's not a knock on my high school teachers. I think that's just the nature of moving up and levels of education. I can say affirmatively that my art education was levels beyond what I went through in high school. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So there was that. I had two professors outright tell me I was lazy. And I was baffled. I thought I was just poor because I couldn't afford... like in printmaking, I couldn't afford a whole bunch of copper plates to keep trying different images. I was always trying to perfect and make the best masterpiece and that wasn't the point so he called me lazy. But when he saw the way I painted he said "Now I know how to help you print," and he led me into a method of printmaking that to this day I wouldn't be a better painter without having gone through that type of printmaking.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the other was the ceramics professor of all things. I did a bunch of clay stuff in high school, but when I got into ceramics that kind of rocked my world because we didn't have wheels in my sculpture classes in high school that was just for ceramics, but I took ceramics because it pushed me and helped me understand form a lot better and how to conceptualize form and the same professor said you know, “I like where your head is going, but you're very lazy. You need to put more work into this.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then the same Professor who told me to go to a better school. Within the same semester, maybe even the same week told me "You're better than I was at your age, but I wanted it more," and that messed with me because I'm like wait, how do I want it more? I don't know how to do that. And then another time during one of our six hour painting classes, he said "If you only realized how asymptotic you were you would no longer be an asymptote."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought, “So you want to explain that to me?” And so, you know, he drew out an asymptote and said look you are a parabola that is ever increasing towards the y-axis, but you will never cross it. Well, it's technically impossible, but I get what you're saying. But again, he left... he kind of left me in that spot. And I'm really glad that he did because it pushed me to want to be better and I'm at that place now, you know as I mentioned before we started recording. I'm at the place where I want it more and I'm searching, I'm sojourning for. How can I communicate that on my canvases, on my surfaces. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So yeah, there were a lot of deep life lessons that I learned from my art professors that's like, they still haunt me in the studio sometimes for my benefit, sometimes to my detriment because I get hung up on what was said instead of using that as fuel to go forward.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope that answered your question. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - So still kind of going chronologically, you graduated from SMU. The next thing that I personally can remember, I think there's some time in between then and this, is you ended up teaching a kind of... I don't know how to describe it... as a special ed kind of course? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - So that came probably about 3 years after graduation. Three years? Yeah, that sounds about right. And in the interim I stayed at smu as a contract laborer for the art department and got into a company, Glazer's, they're a Wholesale Distributor. I got into that company. With the promise of "Hey do six weeks of stocking liquor for us and then we'll get you in the Art Department making displays for different big liquor companies." They pay artists to create sculptures and I'm like, okay I could do that. It's booze. It's art. Fun. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the guy that hired me was fired like right after I started, and no one was privy to our conversations of being put in the art department. So all of the sales reps and all the managers just kind of laughed when I mentioned it and they're like, do you even know how to operate a dolly? Like yeah, I've moved multiple hundred pounds sculptures and equipment with dollies, more than liquor. But when I told him I went to SMU they just kind of laughed me up and down. I thought well, this is a dead end. Even if I do get the art department, if I have to work for these guys, I don't think it's going to be worth it at the end. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I... you know kind of absconded overseas for a little bit. I was dating someone overseas. Came back and I was just looking for something better, still doing a bunch of the contract stuff. Turned to beer and that didn't, it just didn't help further down the road. And didn't do a whole lot of art. I kind of stopped the arts thing. I think my focus was on, you know, having this relationship and thinking I was going to get married to a foreigner and you know, these very romantic ideas that I lost focus big time.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I started going back towards the art world when I worked for a framing company and was moving up their corporate ladder. When... actually my cousin, who also went to SMU, called me and said "Would you like to teach an art class at my special needs program?"</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I said tell me more, this sounds interesting, but I don't know that I'm qualified. So I checked it out and I got in and at first they just kind of needed me to be… I'm like an assistant to the instructors there and it's... the program was for adults who have aged out of high school. So 18 on up. I think our youngest client (we didn't call them students) our youngest client was 18, and our oldest at the time was 66.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just to give them a place to go but what they wanted from me was to do art classes. And not just like kitschy arts and crafts things just to keep keychains, whatever. Those are fine to keep people busy and to teach some manual dexterity skills, but they really wanted to find out who the artists were in this community. And that was actually a big struggle. Not for the artist, but for parents, for other teachers and programs involved with our community. Because they thought, “Wait. Why are you trying to teach them Fine Art?”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I said because clearly these five individuals are visual artists. You may think of them as only having autism or down syndrome... and their parents don't think they only have autism or down syndrome, cerebral palsy, but they thought surely my child isn't that creative? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I said, "No not only does art soothe them, but they are incredible visual artists This is how they process.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I had one student in particular that… I mean she should have been in museums. She was so gifted. All I did was help her kind of process drawing. I'd have her copy a lot of the old masters and Renaissance paintings just to see where she was and to see where she gravitated in her output. And she had this ability to... and it could have been our printer quality, how everything pixelated, but she took that and she pixelated her images. So it was so much more than pointillism because she would do dots on dots on dots kind of, you know, stipple her values and she just did it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I were to introduce to her a new color theory concept she kind of gave me this quizzical look and I thought okay, out the window. I'd step away just to let her paint, you know process. I'd come back, like, holy smokes. You got it. You did it. You took my poor instruction and turned it into incredible artwork, you're every professor’s dream student. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She's so gifted and we had several others. I mean some there was one girl who came in, one young woman, and I was really impressed. Just by the way, she painted this landscape. I mean, it was almost kind of like a Monet but without all the individual strokes. She just had this incredible movement and how she painted and I was very moved by it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So when her dad came to pick her up, I pulled him aside and said, "Did you know how well your daughter can paint?" and he says, "Oh, I know. She loves art. " I said "No. No, this isn't 'I love art.' This is 'I know how to paint.'" And I showed him what she made and he started to cry. And I thought. All right, I got to go because I'm gonna tear up that this is affecting people this much. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it was really cool. I mean there had to be varying sides to what I did with my art Department because of the government pay, like, so many hours had to be a day hab based instruction. And so what I did is I use the elements of the arts to teach people hand building skills, manual dexterity, cognitive and memory skills, that kind of thing, and it all had to be tiered per level of understanding or ability </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So that was challenging because I'd never written a curriculum and so I had to draft a curriculum that was art based but not about art output, because we just didn't have the time or facilities in my opinion, too. Why get everyone to make bowls? We tried. We did molds, we did ceramics, we did glass slumping. I mean we did and we had the resources to get it done whatever we wanted to get done. But every time they would make an educational shift in the program I'd be the heckler saying that's not going to work for us. Sorry. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I'm being told to do from the upper. Is it going to work from what you middles want? But then I had complete freedom in the afternoon to do whatever I wanted, so I use that time to train artists, you know, we were going to get into the community, we were going to do portfolio building, have group shows etc. But there were just so many demands coming from every different direction and I was a yes-man, and it was just me so...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know we... and we had some help with adding on some other teachers, but they always got pulled in. Another SMU Alum came and did music therapy and she and I developed a showcase so our visual artists could showcase their work, but then all of our performers could showcase on stage to a live audience. That was pretty killer to be a part of that, having to be manager and art teacher and facilitator. There's just too many hats. And I was just getting to the point...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had a guy with CP who had very limited range and control in his dominant hand. But I thought hey, let's try to use painting. I want you to copy this to try to get a little bit more control. So I had to be scientific about it. Just trying different ways and different methods and we finally got to a place where he was able to make some impressive calculated strokes. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They got to the point where he was building scenes and Landscapes just from shapes, kind of Cubism, but not. It was beautiful and I saw, you know, he didn't have this drastic change in motion, but you could tell he was gaining control and because of that was gaining confidence, so he came to Art once or twice a week just to hang out and give me a hard time because we could do that. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it was it was a... it was a phenomenal season. You know, I wish I hadn't been such a yes-man about everything else and just focused on the art part because I learned a lot,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you know, then the attempts to explain something and the aftermath was like, "That was so abstract. I don't know who would have understood what I said." But to have these students take that, reorganize it like wonkavision and then create something spectacular. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - I remember seeing one of those exhibits. It was pretty awesome. I guess starting to turn a little bit more towards your own artistic output. I can actually... I think I see the map of Middle-earth behind you. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it. I know that Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, various fantasy things figure pretty heavily in your life. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And when I say “heavily,” I mean you actually read and remember parts of the Silmarillion kind of. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Oh, yeah.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah, right, like that extra step that most don’t make it past the Hobbit right? To learn... </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I had to learn some Elvish terms in different languages. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - And I remember at your senior exhibit there were some scenes there that were kind of more fantasy oriented in terms of what you were painting and I know like that kind of subject matter has come up. How else does this manifest as you paint? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - So it's a really pointed question. You're kind of hitting the eye of my current storm. You know, I did a lot of figurative work and I loved the fantastic. I loved the very romantic scenes that you see in a lot of German and especially French painters. Just you striking a pose. And that kind of goes back to my days of my sketchbooks. I love figurative work, you know, from dinosaurs to Teenage Mutant Turtles to Predator, to… when I finally got into high fantasy, I started drawing elves and Dúnedain and orcs and all that stuff. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I even turned in one of those assignments in my freshman year and I was totally nervous because I thought "This isn't fine art!" but it fit the criteria of the homework and the professors were really stoked about it and I thought "Hmm. Do I bunk this and just go the illustrative route?"</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of the problem, too, is, as much as I love illustration, I don't want to be known as just a fine arts illustrator, or "was an illustrative fine artist" kind of thing. I don't like isms and titles. They tend to pigeonhole me. I get caught up in the minutiae of isms. But with a fantasy it became this all-encompassing aspect. It wasn't just in my art. </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found… you know, I was healthy in college, and I found that I liked being physical. I really enjoyed being... not necessarily athletic but, I like fighting. And not to beat the crap out of people. I just enjoyed the movement. I enjoyed the art and the science </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - We had a couple light saber fights together. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I had several bruises for a long time. I think our friend Allee still has a welt </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Druvhan and Nathan also learned quickly, if I remember. So there was that aspect and I think... wanting to be a good guy, you know wanting to be the Aragorn, Legolas, or Luke Skywalker, I had to find something to fight for. So I couldn't just go pick a fight because that was the thing to do. You know being in the art school, it could have been very easy to lose to a whole bunch of jocks that predominated on campus. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in appreciation, wanting to have the good fight and you know, even that kind of matching up with my faith. What is the good fight? How do we go about that? How do we endure and press on? That kind of led to more study of armor, architecture, weaponry, that kind of thing. How are these things designed? How does that look in art? What can these shapes and designs and patterns evoke? What can they symbolize?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know movies particularly. Everything has to be so simplistic and readily recognizable, right? I think a lot of that's kind of transitioned into art in general. Everything has to be immediately recognizable for it to be understood. But what I gained in my painting classes, my art classes at SMU and since then is, I don't want it to be easily recognizable. I don't want this to be a symbol. I'm not painting iconography, but I want something to capture the attention that allures and invites an audience in. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So there are some symbols, there are some designs that are very good at that. And then trying to find out how that could incorporate. Whether it's a surcoat blowing in the wind or a cave or is it the pattern on the samurai's armor. I think I've only done one or two of those. You have one. But trying to think of it as an artist is... okay. What values and what shapes and what colors can I use to invite the audience into my piece?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because ultimately what I want is to give a sense of atmosphere, a place of belonging, that kind of real intimacy that comes from real spaces. Whether you're indoor, outdoor. And I think that was something that grabbed me about Tolkien is his ability to describe a landscape and to make you feel like you're in an actual landscape while you're reading the book.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love it. He doesn't give a lot of description about clothes or about the armor. He doesn't, you know pull a George RR Martin with "and the gilding on the hilt of Oathkeeper was..." No. He gives evocative expressions or directions of to what something might look like that's worn or held.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it comes to landscape, he gives you these very almost billowing descriptions of the world around you, because that's what he was writing about was saving this world. So for me, that's something that even now it's... Landscapes alone don't cut it. Figures alone don't cut it, you know, I might do a figurative painting or landscape paintings, but to me there's still something about the two becoming one, there's something about man and his place on earth that is very profound </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even in our space race, we long to go to Mars. But we were born here, right? And we have the ability to take care of this place and make it better again. I think we should. So how do I evoke that. And I don't do a lot of paintings about, I don't know, contemporary problems as we see it. But invoking contemporary issues into landscapes whether that's just mountains if it's, you know, trees... I like adding the little details of fantasy of a mysterious figure holding a torch.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why a torch? We have flashlights these days or we have modern lanterns that use LEDs. There's something about fire to me that feels more alive than LED. LED is far brighter and far more efficient than a kerosene soaked torch. But there's something more romantic and alluring to me about fire. It feels more natural. It feels more integral and still distinct to the landscape. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I'm still working on my narrative. I'm still looking for that one liner that I can give that's just kind of that evocative image of everything else I'm doing. Because I think that will help me in a… in an essence be like a capstone to why I paint. Because it's… I got stuck in the rut that I had to paint one thing. And that drove me crazy. It did! It's like, well if I can only paint this one thing it's like, I don't want to be known for this one thing. </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just I want... would rather be known as a good painter than a good painter of trees. "Oh, yeah, he does trees super well!" it's like. Mazel Tov who cares? That's just one aspect. I want to be known as a good painter. Did I use my colors well? Did I have a strong composition that I present what I was conceptualizing in an effective manner? Did I draw my audience in? That kind of thing. And not everyone buys that stuff, you know, it's like making art for artists. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But yeah, I think for me, that's the greater challenge to rise to.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah, trying to walk that line. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then there's… I don't know if this sounds... I guess it's probably not insulting but like… there is some overlap, too, with your faith. Because I know you're a big fan of CS Lewis, who is also a fantasy writer, sci-fi writer, and you go to I guess it's a synagogue?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah, Messianic synagogue, Jews that believe Jesus is the Messiah and I'm not Jewish but, you know, my wife is and some of my dearest friends are, but it's a place for them to stay culturally Jewish and believe in the Jewish Messiah.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">History has not been kind. Anyway, so yeah...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - I think we're seeing some of that pop up again. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Oh, yes. MmHm, very strongly. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - And I think what's interesting to me about some of the works of yours and the past few years in particular. There are some kind of CS Lewis-like paintings. Like some of them are directly I think inspired. Like a painting of basically Aslan the lion, right? I think there is one that was very popular of a lamppost and the snowscape. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Yeah that one people really wanted that one. I didn't... I just had fun painting it.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - But I think, In the way that CS Lewis would write with Christianity sort of under the surface, these symbols kind of riding and delivering that message there. There's some of your paintings that seem to operate similarly where you'll see it's a tree and the light. And if you don't as a viewer know anything about Casey Ray Parrot and his faith, you'd be like "It's a pretty tree in the light."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then, understanding more about your biography, you might go, Oh, there are some symbolisms and layers to this. How much of this is conscious and how much of it is like… Just part of how you operate visually?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - That's a great question. I'll answer your last question first. For me, I look at everything as a painting Right now, I'm looking at my closet doors in the office. And just what I do is, I break it down into shapes and the colors and I think what colors would I make to create this? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What would I need to do just to replicate what I'm seeing? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So just in that first layer of perception and perceiving... that's the same thing… of perception is painterly, I'm thinking of brushstrokes. I'm thinking of you know, big brush versus a little brush, soft edge, hard edge kind of thing and that's all just kind of turning on the surface. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then when I sit and meditate, you know in that process just think that's really cool. Seeing how powerful light is. And that even you know, even if it's dark outside, I can still see shapes that I can still perceive, I can still move around and it just gets me thinking about not necessarily just principles from scripture but actual verses that talk about light, that talk about space, God as light, you know the beginnings of creation. That kind of thing.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And you know delve into that. What does that look like scientifically with what we know? How does He know? How does that compare? Does it matter, you know all kinds of those questions and so they're all those ramblings. I start kind of building up images and I think “What is it that's so powerful about this to me? What is it that strikes me?”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conversely, sometimes I think how could I preach this? And I think sometimes those become the weaker images. When I try to get a message across. "Hey! Aha! Look over here!" you know. And those become the most frustrating pieces to make because I'm not really invested in it. It's not my relationship with God. It's not my relationship with my abilities or my perception. So takes me out of the game.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some commissions are that way, I may be able to give my technical ability, but some commissions still feel flat to me. And that's... that's a personal problem. That's... I don't know how many artists feel that way. So, you know, some people do commissions and like my God, you're just you're so good. How do you do that? Here, take my brushes, you know, just...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But for the pieces where it's a deep churning, you know, I feel like it's part of the narrative of my life. Those are the ones that are usually the longest to paint because I go through it more, it becomes more personal therefore it's more precious. In meaning, not necessarily in output, but I want to convey that I want to render what I'm seeing and experiencing in a memorable and powerful way, technically, creatively all that kind of stuff.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that's really where putting in the full effort as an artist comes in. How much research are you putting in? How much understanding of composition of shape and mass, value, temperature, color? Most people don't think about that even people that come off of you know, Instagram, "I'm an artist!" and like "Cool, you're drawing."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That's great. That's fundamental. That's not everything. I want to challenge you to keep going, you know, don't stop, keep going because real artists struggle through all the fundamentals. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so I think in doing that it's led me to look at other artists and how they create. For one to look and make sure that I'm... before I read any blurb about the art on the wall. Like if I'm in a gallery, I want to look at the piece, I want to see how it's made after I've taken a big picture. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I'll want to come up and see, Where are your layers? How is your process? How have you crafted this image and then say "I think this is what it means." and then I'll go read the blurb like, aha. Okay I missed it. Or no, I'm right on it. Great. Okay, my cognitive abilities are still a little sharp. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because then I can take that back to the studio and really start to wonder. Okay, how would this be better layered? Is this a glazing thing? Is this an impasto thing? And where would these techniques fall in the painting that are going to make the focal piece an actual epicenter? I don't want to just be like "hey, that's nice," but I want to be like, "Whoa. I'm feeling everything being affected because of this right here."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I think doing that and for me, it's kind of like with Tolkien. It's the land and the landscape in which God operates to the scriptures. You had these very powerful images in the Old Testament and the New Testament of God as these different things, you know. We have the typical images that become super trite like a lion, which, when I did Aslan, I thought "I don't want it to feel like hey, it's a lion but a good guy." I want to feel like "hey, this is kind of scary."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know, there's even a line where he says “Good, yes, but not safe.” He's not safe. You know, there in the Psalms particularly, because that is art within scripture. They are strictly poems that refer back to the scripture that they had at that time. Most of which was just relating back to the creation story of Genesis. Right? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So you have these very beautiful images and then how these writers process that same literature in their time and how it affected them and what they were able to craft. So even mine is still kind of derivative of their derivation of the actual text. But to get back to that and say hey I want to be like these guys, these psalmists. I might not be writing something but I'm creating a virtual poem here for people to experience that depth of relationship with God. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I think there's some paintings where I've been able to break through, I think, when someone has a positive mostly emotional response. I don't think that we give emotions much credit in our society unless it's negative and... it's a shame but I remember painting one, right after I left my job teaching special needs adults. I left because my wife got pregnant and we were expecting our first baby girl. I needed to stay home. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so I had a solo show just a month before all that was supposed to happen and I quickly had to scramble and paint some oil paintings for this last minute show and I don't recommend it to anybody. But I painted this piece and I just remember being so impressed by the movie Interstellar. And I just was just thinking what a striking image and it felt like I was being jettisoned out of the known world and to quote Elsa "Into the unknown." Which is very scary. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember feeling the same thing at the end of college. Like I don't know up from down. I don't know left from right. I feel like I'm in space. So when I caught that I said no wait, this is similarly known territory, you know… to know not what to expect. Right? Let's move on. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so I painted this kind of jet stream, you know, the rocket trail leaving the atmosphere and going into space and I had this gradation of blues following that and just got deeper and deeper and darker and darker, you know scarier and scarier as the jet stream went vertical the jet stream went off the canvas which, they tell you never do that. Never have a line go off the canvas and I said, screw you. I'm gonna do it anyway. That's what my painting's about, dang it.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I loved it for all the pieces that I did for that particular solo show. That was the one that...I think my wife even said, "This is the path you need to follow, this kind of thinking, this kind of processing, this kind of creating.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then a fellow musician, fellow artist. I mean, he's one of the most gifted musicians I've ever met in our congregation. I didn't see it but his mom said, "So when he looked at your painting he just cried," and she said "I need to buy it for him so that he can have that just because he said it helped him in his music." </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I thought oh man, I mean that's a blessing that my art could be something that inspires someone that good, you know and his music career. And that came from this, my personal journey of "I need to leave where I'm at and go into the unknown." And that's a beautiful image for anybody, which is really cool that it can be a beautiful image for anybody. But for someone who's in the same faith, they know that the unknown is really God, this great expanse of "we know so little of who He is."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know His character. We know that He's trustworthy and all that but the older you get, trust becomes scarier and scarier. Or I'll say it this way. It costs more and more. And so to catch that kind of depth I don't know if it's possible, but I want to try. I want to try to catch that. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exactly and I'm not there yet. I think that's what makes me mad is that I'm not there yet. Go figure Mr. Impatient over here. But that's my aim is to capture, evoke that sense of presence, that sense of atmosphere. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know, you go back to even like Thoreau and just how poetic he got about God and then really just about nature. But he got poetic about God because of nature at first, the way that he would talk about the deity and everything. It's pretty cool and it's a nice segue for me. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - 00:57:19 > 00:57:20</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's like, that's great. But because of what I believe I believe in an actual person with a name who lived on this planet, it comes a little different than just the ethereal.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and then I think “Okay. Well if Jesus Is God, how to get from that mundane of human to the expanse of Eternal? The fish swims through the ocean, but the ocean also swims through the fish kind of deal. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm still exploring how all that works, but there's something about the landscape. There's something about the natural that is so scary to us and that's known but also how to evoke the element of the unknown in that. We don't face cosmic storms and our atmosphere protects us from solar flares, but my God, what would happen if they didn't? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. Believe it or not. We're actually coming up on time. So I'm going to end with something that actually worked pretty well in my last interview. On the count of three who's the first artist who jumps to your head three two, one.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - DaVinci.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Why DaVinci? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - I don't know because I think I was just thinking of him. His draftsmanship is just unmatched. Close to unmatched. There's some other really good draftsmen. But I think it's how he thought of the world and how he imagined things to be. He would observe the human figure and think I think it looks like this on the inside and then would look at a corpse on an examining room table. That is how it looked on the inside. Okay. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that he would take that to inventions. You know, where there was the submarine or the machine guns, flying machines. Futurama did a great commentary on all that. But at a time when imagination wasn't upheld, you painted what your patrons wanted you to paint and you did it their way, he stuck it to him. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know, he spent a majority of his time perfecting one image, good for him. But she's this big. But you know, his striving for that for his own personal work, his ability to imagine and craft and for those drawings to remain intact and to be as powerful as they are to the art community, to the science community even, that's just incredible. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mean the Vitruvian man. Gosh, I mean it's just a beautiful image, but also some of his other paintings, he did paintings of apocryphal scenes, but the brilliance of his that he left unfinished. Yeah, and for that day and age that was taboo. Nowadays, that's a particular kind of genius to be able to say I can't do anything else to this. I'm going to leave it and just let it state its effect. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's really powerful. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam - Yeah. Well, I guess that'll wrap it up. Thanks for sitting down to talk with me and share your thoughts for whoever watches this or reads it because there will be a transcript, closed captions and all the rest of that. Yeah, so, thanks for stopping by. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casey - Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking with you again </span></p><br /></span><a data-patreon-widget-type="become-patron-button" href="https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=37128869">Become a Patron!</a><script async="" src="https://c6.patreon.com/becomePatronButton.bundle.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-21921484670999471302020-08-10T12:56:00.001-07:002020-08-10T12:56:54.146-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Côte d'Ivoire<p>Côte d'Ivoire is last of a number of names given to the region over the course of history. Others include Côte de Dents, or Coast of Teeth in reference to the ivory export, Côte de Quaqua, after the Dutch transliteration of a local tribal name, and Côte du Vent, the Coast of Wind. Eventually, Côte d'Ivoire stuck, although English speaking countries tend to refer to it as the Ivory Coast in spite of the the local governments preference for the French name.</p><p>As the name implies, the area has a long history with France, being a French protectorate in 1843, then a French colony in 1893. Independence was achieved in 1960 under the leadership of Félix Houphouët-Boigny. His rule continued until 1993, and the government remains a republic with a strong executive authority. Houphouët-Boigny himself was an extremely interesting individual, working as a medical aide, union leader, and planter before his election to the French Parliament. Even after independence, he maintained close ties with France with a policy known as Françafrique. I haven't double checked dates, but I do wonder if the <a href="https://12thtone.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-composer-for-every-country-guinea_20.html">French treatment of Guinea's referendum</a> for independence from France might have had something to do with Houphouët-Boigny's diplomatic decisions. Probably so.</p><p>One thing about Africa I am becoming increasingly less surprised by is the staggering number of languages and ethnicities that can be found within relatively small regions. Côte d'Ivoire is home to no fewer than 78 (!) languages within its borders. French is the official language, and acts as a lingua franca (ha!) alongside the African language, Dyula. Aside from local tribal groups, people from Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Guinea often immigrate to Côte d'Ivoire due to the country's relative political stability and economic prosperity. </p><p>Music in the area has strong ties to the region's tribal cultures. Compared to other West African countries I've visited in this blog so far, it is also distinctly not influenced by the Mali empire. I have not found any reference to a griot tradition, and the music is more strongly centered around vocal and percussion music. Reggae is quite popular, as is hip-hop and jazz. Genres originating from Côte d'Ivoire include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup%C3%A9-d%C3%A9cal%C3%A9">Coupé-décalé</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouglou">zouglou</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoblazo">zoblazo</a>. Each of them draw upon different elements of local drum rhythms and traditions, and tend to feature voice and drums with limited, or even a total lack, of pitched instruments.</p><p>--- --- ---</p><p>Speaking of zoblazo! Today's composer is Frederic Desire Ehui (b.1962), known by his stage name, Meiway. An ethnic N'Zema (one of the larger tribal groups in Côte d'Ivoire), Meiway started recording in 1989, releasing the album Ayibebou with his group, Zo Gang. He is one of the driving forces behind zoblazo's popularity, becoming second only to reggae singer Alpha Blondy in fame and sales. Unfortunately, his bio (in English) is sparse. In the videos I've watched of him, his stage presence is energetic, playful, even kind of goofy. Here he is in his song <i>Tu dis que quoi. </i>I haven't found an English translation of the lyrics, but he's apparently singing about how great Cameroon is.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GlCvxl1FE_0" width="320" youtube-src-id="GlCvxl1FE_0"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlCvxl1FE_0">Meiway - Tu dis que quoi</a><br /></div><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-64360100460684104472020-08-05T11:47:00.001-07:002020-08-05T12:04:59.467-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Manuel Gregorio Tavárez<div>(EDIT: Well, this is embarrassing. I have been informed by my mom that the mother in the family was from the Dominican Republic, and the father was Mexican. I suspect that, because child me didn't know what the Dominican Republic was, and because I knew she was from one of the islands, and the only islands I knew were Cuba and Puerto Rico, but I knew it wasn't Cuba, I just filled in the blank with the only other option child-me knew at the time. I assumed the mother and father were from the same place, so... Well. Since this blog is partly about how perception and memory and categorization are all squishy, but work together to create something which appears concrete and unalterable, I'm going to leave it as written, but now with this caveat that I was wrong. Imagine that! /EDIT)</div><div><br /></div>Latin-American is one of those identities which defines something so broadly it barely means anything. Kind of like European, or Asian-American, people have a vague idea in their heads for what it means, but education (if it can really be called that in the US) is such that the particularities are quickly lost. Wait. Why don't we say "European American?" Curious.<div><br /></div><div>In most States, "Latin American" usually is just another way to say "Mexican," which I'm sure is irksome to anyone from... well, from anywhere else in South America or the Caribbean. You might get some white Americans who know the word "Latino" without much change in definition, while scratching their heads at why there are people pushing for Latinx instead. My spellcheck sure doesn't recognize Latinx, I tell you what. It's a term also complicated by the fact that there are many Black Latinx of African descent, as well, so how those people approach the census asking their ethnicity must bring at least a pause for consideration.</div><div><br /></div><div>Where I grew up, in a mostly white suburb outside of Houston, TX, if you saw any Latinx, you saw guys working construction, or mostly women working janitorial and cleaning staff. I just happened to live right across the street from a family of Puerto Ricans, however, and having something of a glimpse into a rather different lifestyle than is commonly found in suburbia. Their mother cooked basically all day, and their house always smelled delicious. Their father I hardly ever saw, as he worked incredibly hard and usually came home after us kids left for dinner. As a kid, I knew they shopped at Fiesta rather than HEB, which is one of those weirdly specific details children sometimes pick up on. All in all, a nice family, but in my mind they were "just" neighbors and I had no inkling of their past or the culture they left behind when coming to the States.</div><div><br /></div><div>One day, however, I did get a brief glimpse. I forget exactly the occasion, a birthday or something, but my family was invited over to their house for a party. They had a number of extended family visiting, and it was one of the few times I ever saw the father of the house. I think it's my child-mind's sense of scale, but I remember him being rather tall, and he was very stern and didn't talk much. Not knowing much about him, I had assumed the guy was a total square. Then they turned on the music.</div><div><br /></div><div>Holy cats, could this guy dance. Like, absurdly good dancer. His wife. His family. Her family. They all could cut a rug. Oddly enough, the kids couldn't. Looking back, though, the reason is clear. Suburban American does many things, but dancing is not one of them. I mean, sure, there were school dances and things like that, but those were the awkward exception to the unspoken rule - thou shalt not bust a move. The only exception was if you did ball room dancing... but only for exercise. Anyways, there was a clear generational split. Those who grew up in Puerto Rico could dance. Those who grew up in the States couldn't, because dancing never happens.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nowadays I wonder what exactly brought that family here. I mean, I have guesses. Puerto Rico comes up in the news sometimes, and the news is generally not great. Like anything involving the media, I have to wonder how much is perspective, but it's a small island that keeps getting hit by hurricanes and keeps not receiving emergency funding from Congress, so... I imagine the outlook is grim. At this point, I highly doubt I'd have the opportunity to ask them. Wherever they are now, I hope they are well.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of dancing the composer I will introduce today is Manuel Gregorio Tavárez (1843-1883). He was a classically trained pianist, learning first from Gonzalo de J. Núñez then travelling to Paris and studying at the Music Conservatory of Paris with the help of a scholarship from "The Economic Society of Friends of Puerto Rico." Tavárez wrote a number of piano works, somewhat echoing the style of Chopin, and wrote a number of danza, a genre of dance that had been the national dance of Puerto Rico for a time. There's not a lot to the biography on Wikipedia, and I can't find much beyond that. He is referenced as "The Father of the Danza," but the links which are attached to those attributions are dead, so who knows? Maybe you do. It sounds reasonable, so why not. Here's one of those piano works titled "La Ausencia," or "The Absence."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AZFKtDqbqGk" width="350"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZFKtDqbqGk">Manuel G. Tavárez: La Ausencia</a><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-32136728812987332332020-08-03T10:44:00.004-07:002020-08-03T10:44:43.213-07:00A Composer for Every Country: LiberiaLiberia, like Sierra Leone, is a country of two populations - the native indigenous tribes, and people descended from freed slaves who came to the area during the 19th century. In this case, the freedmen were settlers from the American Colonization Society. Founded by Robert Finley, the basic idea was to encourage free African-Americans to go to Africa. If your reaction is "That sounds dumb and is probably racist," well... That was kind of the reaction of just about everybody else at the time. Opposed by both African Americans, who had lived in the US for generations and didn't want to leave, and abolitionists, who quickly learned that the Society's motives had more to do with preempting slave riots than finding a workable solution to the end of slavery. In the words of Gerrit Smith, "This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into a serviceable organ and member of the Slave Power."<div><br /></div><div>Still, some 15,000 freed African Americans and 3,100 Afro-Caribbeans were settled in what would become Liberia. They created a flag resembling the US flag and drafted a constitution modeled on the US Constitution. Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected the first President. Missionaries began to go forth and spread the gospel. Things were looking ok, but you might be wondering, "Sure, this sounds fine for the settlers, but how did the locals take all of this?" The answer can be summarized thus: poorly. It turns out, the settlers brought more than their government's structure with them, they also brought US attitudes towards Native tribes with them. The Kru and Grebo peoples, in particular, reacted rather violently as the new Liberian government dispossessed natives of their land and excluded them from birthright citizenship. Indigenous tribes would not be granted citizenship until 1904.</div><div><br /></div><div>Who were the Kru? As a tribe, they are indigenous to the eastern Liberia area, but they had also migrated and settled to various areas up and down the West African coast. More than anything, they were known for their sailing and nautical abilities. This made them valuable to European colonizers and slave traders, who often hired Kru onto their ships to act as navigators and sailors. The Kru, for their part, leveraged their expertise to stay free, and even developing facial tattoos to mark themselves as Kru to prevent capture by slavers. Since the early 1900's, the Kru have been one of three large indigenous groups of political sway, the other two being the Krahn and the Mano peoples.</div><div><br /></div><div>More recently, Liberia has suffered two civil wars, the first lasting from 1989 to 1997, the second from 1999 to 2003. The inter-war years saw Liberia become a pariah state under the leadership of Charles Taylor who helped fund the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone's own civil war. I haven't gone too far into reading about this time period, but a lot of the strife leading up to 1989 had to do with the Cold War and reactions to corruption brought by US financial backing of the People's Redemption Council in 1980, along with inter-tribal conflict between the Kru ad Krahn. Coming on up to today, Liberia is again fully democratic in its election process, and has most recently elected former football striker George Weah in 2017.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>Music in Liberia is influenced greatly by gbema, which is local traditional music, and various strands of Western religious and popular music. One particularly popular genre is highlife, originating in Ghana and traveling along the West Coast in the 1950's. My reading suggests that while highlife is still played regularly, it's on the old-fashioned side of things. The younger generations have been more into a Liberian brand of hip-hop called hipco, or just co for short. Developing through the two civil wars and becoming increasingly popular since 2000 or so, hipco is full of social and political commentary, with lyrics directed at corruption and economic inequalities. While the lyrics are mostly delivered in English, rappers fold a local dialect called Kolokwa (hence "co") into the flow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our composer of the day is hipco artist Takun J (b.1981). Born in Monrovia, he lived with his mother and three sisters through both civil wars and started singing professionally when he was 17, releasing the single "We'll Spay You" in 2005. After relocating to refugee camps in Ghana and the Ivory Coast for a time, he returned to Liberia and released his first album <i>The Time</i> which spoke against corruption in the Liberian National Police. He was promptly arrested and beaten, but he soldiered on. The track I will share, "They Lie to Us," draws on his biggest musical influences, Bob Marley in particular. It's message and intent is crystal clear, and speaks for itself.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K4zRaOs_15A" width="350"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4zRaOs_15A">Takun J - They Lie to Us</a><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-18668801986919025852020-07-29T09:50:00.000-07:002020-07-29T09:50:36.703-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Kanno YokoSomewhere 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).<div><br /></div><div>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, <a href="https://12thtone.blogspot.com/2020/07/canon-in-smelting-pot-mari-yoshiharas.html">Tamaki Miura</a>, 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.)</div><div><br /></div><div>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: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Women%27s_Association">Shin Fujin Kyokai (新婦人協会)</a>, or The New Women Association, in 1919; the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekirankai">Sekirankai (赤蘭会)</a>, or The Red Wave Society, in 1921; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_liberation_movement_in_Asia#Japan">uman ribu</a>, 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34005681#:~:text=Japan%20has%20been%20seen%20as,enough%20to%20be%20good%20company.">*Three Western Myths About Japan</a><br /></div><div>**For the love of all that is holy, don't take me as the final word on any of this. </div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2VsgkIE-RHg" width="320" youtube-src-id="2VsgkIE-RHg"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VsgkIE-RHg">Cowboy Bebop: Tank</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And because part of what makes Kanno Yoko great is the breadth of her stylistic talents, here's a second video.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5P8D4c_LzQM" width="320" youtube-src-id="5P8D4c_LzQM"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8D4c_LzQM&list=PL4ZXYByhrmXAGm-X1LtGPZcZPOQ8P1OIv">Wolf's Rain: Heaven's Not Enough</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ok, one more, then I'm done.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PBDrLgpOdqw" width="320" youtube-src-id="PBDrLgpOdqw"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBDrLgpOdqw">Ghost in the Shell: Monochrome</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-58369252977653951352020-07-27T08:41:00.001-07:002020-07-27T08:41:14.955-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Sierra LeoneContinuing 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.<div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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, <i>Kykunkor</i>, 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).</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BwwqA4iCV60" width="320" youtube-src-id="BwwqA4iCV60"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-87420823523761961642020-07-22T10:46:00.000-07:002020-07-22T10:46:32.088-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Keiko Fujiie and the Kazuhito Yamashita QuintetI 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.<div><br /></div><div>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!</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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?</div><div><br /></div><div>I suppose it might matter to them.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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, <font face="inherit">Dvořák's New World Symphony. </font>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? <span style="font-family: inherit;"> 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.</span></div><div><font face="inherit"><br /></font></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zcRA8M6cojU" width="310"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcRA8M6cojU">Kazuhito Yamashita Family Quintet playing Fujiie(?)</a><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">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:<br /><br /><a href="https://kanahi.de/media-2/">https://kanahi.de/media-2/</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">--- --- ---</div><div style="text-align: left;">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!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><a data-patreon-widget-type="become-patron-button" href="https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=37128869"><script async="" src="https://c6.patreon.com/becomePatronButton.bundle.js"></script></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-29658166642722252282020-07-20T10:38:00.001-07:002020-07-20T10:38:29.287-07:00A Composer for Every Country: GuineaGuinea 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. <div><br /></div><div>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 <i>The Washington Post</i> reports, French "unscrewed lightbulbs, removed plans for sewage pipelines in Conakry, and even burned medicines."</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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, <i>Akwaba Beach </i>(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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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."</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="310" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bJNiMNUSrw8" width="300"></iframe><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJNiMNUSrw8">Mory Kanté - Yé Ké Yé Ké</a><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-15763378468942538682020-07-18T00:46:00.014-07:002020-07-18T12:48:45.408-07:00Interviews with Artists: Lisa Neher<div><br /></div><div><i>This transcript has been edited for clarity. You can watch the interview in full here:</i></div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/vlOWwdPs2lg">https://youtu.be/vlOWwdPs2lg</a><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Okay, and now we pretend like we're saying hi for the first time again.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Okay. Hi!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Hi, how are you?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> I'm doing well.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>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? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> And you grew up in Portland. I think I have that right?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> I got you. Did they have school music programs where you were? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>Okay, and you learned music from your parents? Or from private instructors who are brought in from school?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>Yeah! My degree at from University of Kansas is actually composition. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Oh, okay!</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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...</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Okay, so not so much the Andrew Lloyd Webber's... </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>Oh for sure.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>Yeah, and how do those two... they're pretty different sounds to my ear.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Yeah, they are different sounds.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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 <i>chiaroscuro</i>, 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!"</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> You got your DMA at University of Iowa, and I actually found that I could download your thesis. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Oh way cool! You're one of the ones I got in my report! I get an email once a month. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Yeah, she was a guest. She came as a guest composer. Yeah.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Was that for an extended time or is that like a one off... </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Gotcha. What was it like writing a thesis on somebody who is still alive?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Oh, I think it's Schirmer. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> That's true. Actually. Now that you mention it.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Yeah, so pivoting more towards your own compositions. You've written a chamber opera. White Horizons, right?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Yeah. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> What were the circumstances that brought this about and what was it? Where was it done?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Was that Li Kai Han? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Yeah, Li Kai Han Jeremiah. Yeah, the Nightingale and the Rose is beautiful. Yeah, really cool.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason: </b>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... </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> No, yeah, I mean... Bach is part of the audition process. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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? </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Terrible. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Right? But then in the world of voice the prima donna, what would you call it? Phenomenon?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Yeah. Sure.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher: </b>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> What about your view of gender from within the world of vocal music and musical theater? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Benjamin Britten? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Oh, okay. What brought Benjamin Britten to your head? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Curlew River. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Okay. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> It's so awesome. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> Yeah, it's a cool piece. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Adam Eason:</b> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lisa Neher:</b> Oh, thanks for having me on I really appreciate your time, too. Thanks for asking me.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can learn more about Lisa Neher, or contact her for lessons, gigs, and commissions at:<br /><a href="http://www.lisanehermusic.com/">http://www.lisanehermusic.com/</a><br /></div><div><br /></div><a data-patreon-widget-type="become-patron-button" href="https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=37128869">Become a Patron!</a><script async="" src="https://c6.patreon.com/becomePatronButton.bundle.js"></script><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="410" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rr3_hBj8tuw" width="400"></iframe><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr3_hBj8tuw&feature=emb_logo">Aaron Israel Levin: Fiumana</a><br /></div><div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="410" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLwLSRh-nOc" width="400"></iframe></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLwLSRh-nOc&feature=emb_logo">Stacey Philipps: Looking at a Blackbird</a><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-23003435986697051892020-07-15T10:24:00.004-07:002020-07-15T10:41:14.024-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Abe KeikoI 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.<div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>What am I going on about marimbas for? To be honest, I <i>was</i> 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."</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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." </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V_EP4qbS8lI" width="320" youtube-src-id="V_EP4qbS8lI"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_EP4qbS8lI">Abe Keiko, Prism Rhapsody</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vfzurAG5yB4" width="320" youtube-src-id="vfzurAG5yB4"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfzurAG5yB4">Minoru Miki, "Time"</a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-41894082479970217722020-07-13T10:58:00.001-07:002020-07-13T18:42:59.245-07:00A Composer for Every Country: Guinea-BissauContinuing 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. <div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wiIxk1fPCa8" width="320" youtube-src-id="wiIxk1fPCa8"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-59740193208627277932020-07-08T11:02:00.002-07:002020-07-08T13:38:22.592-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Takemitsu ToruI 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! <div><br /></div><div> Λ Λ</div><div>>(ô.ô)<</div><div>( O )</div><div><br /></div><div>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 <i>is</i> 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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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...</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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 <i>why</i> 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...</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="410" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mLPjiHaDgqw" width="420"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-71536343601228422812020-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:002020-07-05T21:21:43.130-07:00A Composer for Every Country: The GambiaWhen 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.<div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="420" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oToZfPGMMBY" width="430"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390620269851872929.post-86503784032575751442020-07-01T12:58:00.038-07:002020-07-01T13:55:46.736-07:00Canon in the Smelting Pot: Tamaki Miura's ButterflyThere 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.<div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>So watching Madame Butterfly is, for me, lets say... uncomfortable. And that's even before we get to the issue of yellowface.</div><div><br /></div><div>--- --- --- ---</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.<br /><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f6TnBy5Xwqc" width="320" youtube-src-id="f6TnBy5Xwqc"></iframe></div><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0