FRANK ZAPPA, HIS MUSIC, AND THE LEGACY WITH POSTMODERNISM

Paper presented at the Graduate Forum, 16 December 2010

OSVALDO GLIECA

Rightocopy

Abstract

The aim of this presentation is to analyze the content and forms of music by Frank

Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention to demonstrate between the years of 1966 to 1970 their musical afnity with certain aspect of postmodern practices. This presentation is not an analysis of single song or album, but more an introduc-

tion of Zappa musical directions already clear from the very beginning. The presentation is divided in a rst part to unwrap some musicological aspects, and, after playing some short musical examples, I will present the second part to describe more practical way his music. The conclusions will to establish the aspects that may or may not position Frank Zappa within a postmodern condition.

Zappa has been often misunderstood, playing any of his record will lead to an ar-

gument, his music has been often described a pastiche, his lyrics outrageous, his music had no sense of beauty; it was above all a provocation and a smack in the face for public taste. If Postmodern practice are mirrored in Zappas music because of the unusual wide range of musical sources, and techniques incorporated into his recordings, at this stage of his career, raises a spontaneous question: how then did these albums gure into the cultural dialogue between Rock musical language and the changing experience of modernity especially in America in the 1960s? The quickest and probably easiest answer is that by juxtaposing different musical

genres, Zappa, who considered himself a composer, was attacking the academic establishments, whose members distinguished categorically between art and popular music, particularly as regards structural and tonal complexity, and philosophical approaches; part of his line of thinking was directed against the sort of highbrow quality of art.

He was against the repetitiveness and standardization of consumer music but

for the careful listening instead, and in this meet Adornos view on cultural industries, in which popular music is intended for thoughtless audience for mere commodity consumption. Zappa welcomed the "modernist" music of composers of the European avant-garde, but his philosophy was more directed towards the maverick American tradition of composers like Charles Ives or John Cage. His music was by that time a crossover to reconciliate not only different forms and

styles, but more importantly redene the musical meaning of heterogeneous nature in one platform to cancel the imposing differences created by music business. This characteristic is relevant to me as include some issues in the postmodern agenda, as these days we have to come to appreciate that the distinctions between high art and low art exist as much as in popular music as serious music. In other words, there is only good or bad music, whether serious or popular. He balanced instrumental music with Pop songs, the lyrics of which mostly sati-

rized the manufactured trends and fashions of contemporary America, parodies on popular critiques of the mass media advertising, and the consumer capitalist culture that sustained them all. However, placing this output in theoretical discourse, it should be obvious that his

musical borrowings, uses of collages, and quick-cut recording techniques were never ambivalent they always had a point. This could be classied into the tradition of twentieth-century musical modernism; his early works do not anticipates characteristic of postmodernist quotations, that had resembled a typical restless irony that all too often lapsed into mere cynicism in its short-sighted rejection of high modernism. Much of his goal at this stage was to deal with recordings of music about music. Before examining this hypothesis in a more deep sense, Zappa's early works

needs to be put into the larger context of sixties and seventies Rock, and its connections with modernism, for the reason that popular genres closely associated with postmodern intertextuality, had already emerged. Particular emphasis need to be addressed on the tendency of late 1960 Rock on borrowing melodies, harmonies, and instrumentation from "classical" music, as later successfully happened in Progressive Rock, of the 1970s,

especially by British bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Zappa in his career used borrowed material in the best way, not taking straight referenced quotations, but using technique and compositional procedure to identify unconventionally genres like Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, Folk, Doo-Woop, Punk, Disco, Reggae, Heavy Metal, as well as the Classical music. These intertextual combinations were reections of social realities, intellectual

claims, generated also as a part of the modern condition that was shifting between traditions and new ideas. Zappa wanted to make listeners aware of their conned and limited conceptual cultural spaces they were occupying, astutely transforming his music as an artistic statement to re-dene new modes of sensibility. There was not only satire and parodical sarcasm, but new concept of lifestyle were questioned, message of injustice, chaos, and idiocies of contemporary American society. This should be considered as an unifying sociological theme: the American West-Coast particularly Los Angeles of late 1960s, with its freak counterculture and racial tensions between Latinos and AfroAmericans. Lyrics were intended to puncture what Zappa saw as shallow experimental genre like psychedelia targeting the hippie life-style, and drug culture associated that he had publicly rejected.

Music to play

I have tried hard to enclose all this extraordinary musical range in the shortest time possible, hope it gives you a clear idea. However, I selected the more musical material in the strict sense rather the pure experimentalism, like concrete music, tape effects, and comical dialogues.
Playlist:

Hungry Freaks Daddy (social protest in Rock) from the album Freak Out (1966) Various extracts from the album Were only in it for money (1968) (a parody of Beatles and criticism toward excessive commercialism in pop music) Igor Boogie (Stravinsky typical language imitated by Zappa in a more eclectical way) from the album Uncle Meat (1969)

Little House I Used Live In (Zappa virtuoso-writing and conducting) Live from the album Burnt Eeenie Sandwiches (1970)

Is Frank Zappa a postmodern pioneer or a maverick high Modernist musician?

July 1966 is the ofcial recording launch of Zappa career, here the albums within

1966-1970 are varied, but mainly focused to the clear intent of fusing Rock and Modern Classical music. Various styles are connected one to another, such as large group improvisation, experimentalism, electronic music, Psychedelia, vocal techniques as sprechstimme, and cabaret-like recitative, tonal and atonal expressions, instrumental chamber music, blues-oriented guitar solos over two-chord ostinatos contemporary Jazz and Rock all taking the direction of a sort of electric chamber music; much of his musical grammar take place in symmetrical meter and the poly-rhythms played against a steady rock beat, and poly-metric bar arrangements. The unconventional forms, harmonization and chord changes, vocal harmonies,

and timbres of Doo-Wop, Rhythm & Blues ballads, and Folk melodies are mocked as they can be perceived as a sort of new Rock clichs. In addition, the unpredictable shifts among musical styles and text meaning, involves changes in instrumentation, and arrangement as well. Strings, Brass wood-winds, marimba, drum Kit, distorted electric guitar, electric pianos, and timpani, complete the effervescent sound-scape, and constant musical motion. Avant-garde, Neoclassicism and Rock intersect with modernist eclecticism. But

this is the problem. How then this music should not be analyzed? if, with the tools created for concert music, it would lead away from its "authentic" roots, and also might lead us to question that this search for "classical" inspiration were not for Zappa intention. It is, I believe, signicant that one key to assessing Zappa's place as an American composer and record producer, represent high modernist aspirations, they expanded listeners consciousness beyond a limited appreciation of eclecticism possibilities, and to present a far broader range of music to rock audiences than otherwise offered from record companies. However, the listeners today can judge for themselves the value of his early works, and trace his evolving path through his career and confront his unconventional genuine

output to the huge pile of works that has been located in postmodern music history. This early production is a controversial commercial rejection within a commercial product. Although many of Zappa procedures such as collage, fragmentation, parody, humor, documentary, and political directions, which all became requisites in postmodern music academies, Zappas formal writing was still seen as too arrogant, insolent and bold for contemporary classical recognition. The real problem with Zappa was his personal refuse to measure his art and compare it with any external and accepted standards. He was wrongly seen mainly as a rebellious musical anarchist that produced musical recordings for pure self-indulgence, to subvert the popular music taste, and contrast the classical academia as well, disintegrating the standard of the concert orchestra. Frank Zappa was a musical pioneer, his works ranged from Acid Rock to Classical

concert music, the barriers that once kept different style and tradition of music rmly apart were at that time, and now more then ever crumbling. Zappa music is much about thinking about music as it is about music, and also is about the social and institutional structures that condition and govern thinking about music. Finally in my conclusion the last thought: is Zappa modern or postmodern then?

Postmodernism is best understood as an assembly of discourses that is notonly internally diverse, but also contradictory in its relationship to modernism. Postmodernism is both a rejection of modernism, because of the modernist fascination with rigorous systems and forms, and a transformation, that reveals aspects of modernism that werepreviously denied and undervalued. Given that, the range of inuences which contributed to the career of Frank Zappa, are twisted as the diverse currentsthat feed postmodernism, it is not difcult at this point nd analogies between Zappas aesthetics and the postmodernist principles. In addition to this Zappas enthusiasm for unresolved paradoxes, makes no difculties to position him as postmodernist. However, the difculties presented by trying to decide whether Zappa is modernist or postmodernist, demonstrate just how hard it is to draw a rigid line between thetwo philosophical discourses.