[Dixielandjazz] The problems of keeping music alive

[Steve barbone]

Below article is not OKOM, however it illustrates two approaches that keep a
style of music alive by presenting it to a new audience. The article is
excerpted for brevity. One path, by faithful reproduction and one by newer
interpretations. Does OKOM face the same challenge?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Frank Zappa's Family Brings His Music to a New Audience

NY TIMES - By JESSE FOX MAYSHARK - June 11, 2006

IN the liner notes to the 1966 album "Freak Out!" by the Mothers of
Invention, you can find the following things: annotations on the 14 songs,
describing them variously as "very greasy," "trivial nonsense" and "what
freaks sound like when you turn them loose in a recording studio" . . .

Forty years on from that debut, a band led by Zappa's son Dweezil and
featuring several of his former associates is seeking to illuminate the
rigorous ambition and musical iconoclasm of his work. The Zappa Plays Zappa
tour, which arrives at the Beacon Theater in New York on Monday after an
extensive European leg, is the first memorial effort by his family since
Zappa died of cancer in 1993.

"My overall goal in doing this is to present Frank's music to a newer
audience," Dweezil Zappa, 36, said in a phone interview from the Los Angeles
area last month, the day before heading out for the tour. "I think his music
for one reason or another kind of skipped some generations that didn't get a
chance to discover it." . . .

"We're representing the authenticity of these songs." . . .

That is what Dweezil Zappa and his mother, Gail, hope to remedy with a tour
that they envision as an annual event. "Hopefully people will understand
that this music is alive and well," Gail Zappa said by phone, "and it's
going to be around for a long, long time." . . .

"He was blending rock and jazz and classical in the middle 70's in a way
that nobody else was," he said. . .

One fan wrote of the May 19 show in Stockholm: "This was my first chance to
experience the music of FZ live in concert. And what a concert. Sitting
there on the fourth row from the stage, I found myself with BIG smile on my
face, laughing out loud at times." . . .

Gail Zappa said feedback on the family's Web site (zappa.com) had been
similarly warm. "It's all age ranges," she said. "The older guys say, 'Oh, I
saw Frank seven times, and now I'm taking my 14-year-old son who's a
musician,' or 'my 7-year-old daughter who loves 'Freak Out!' " . . .

But Frank Zappa's work has remained central to the family. Both Dweezil and
his mother come across as fiercely custodial of that legacy, fighting
against copyright infringements and advocating for the music to be played as
it was written. "My job essentially is to protect the intent of the composer
and the integrity of the work," said Gail Zappa, 61, who had been married to
Frank for 26 years when he died.

Dweezil Zappa said that despite his years of experience on the guitar ‹ he
started learning when he was 12 ‹ playing and arranging his father's music
was a significant challenge. For one section of "The Black Page," he had to
"completely change my technical style of picking to accommodate what was
needed to play this accurately. That was probably a two- or three-month
process of intensive playing and studying," he said. . .

Andy Hollinden, a lecturer who teaches a course on Zappa at the Jacobs
School of Music at Indiana University, called him "my favorite writer of
melodies ever." Zappa, he said in a phone interview, "is different from
everybody else in my opinion, in that he was a composer who wrote for
electronic instruments in the rock 'n' roll era."

Zappa has attracted other disciples ‹ tribute bands like Project/Object in
New Jersey and Bogus Pomp in Florida ‹ somewhat to his family's dismay.

"People get upset with me sometimes when I say I've never heard Frank's
music played correctly," Dweezil Zappa said. "If there were people out there
playing it correctly, with the right spirit, with the right notes, I'd be
the first one to get excited."

But Ed Palermo, a New York saxophonist who has been performing big-band
arrangements of Zappa's music since 1994 (most recently at the Iridium in
Manhattan), said Zappa was subject to inevitable recontextualization.

"I believe Zappa deserves to be known down through history as a musician of
the caliber of Gershwin and Duke Ellington," said Mr. Palermo, who has just
released an album of his Zappa arrangements called "Take Your Clothes Off
When You Dance." 

"I know the Zappas are very protective, and it's admirable," he continued.
"But I think they're looking at it from a classical point of view. I do what
jazz musicians do, in reinterpreting the music." . . .