| The first time I heard Gabriela Lena Frank's music live - | | | | it was both at the same time. One minute it was like |
| with Gabriela herself improvising on a piano at an | | | | one, then I would careen to the other feeling...it was |
| intimate gathering in Berkeley, California - I was | | | | both...it felt good and awful at the same time. It still feels |
| surprised and a little embarrassed to find tears | | | | good and awful at the same time. I've gotten |
| streaming down my face. I know next to nothing about | | | | comfortable with that, you know, that it feels good and |
| contemporary classical music, and I often find it too | | | | awful. Awful could be something physical, like I get sick |
| dissonant and challenging to truly enjoy, but that | | | | from food there, physical rejection of my body, but |
| evening, Gabriela's music just knocked me out. Of | | | | then I'm feeling great because I just understood some |
| course, I'm not alone. The Los Angeles Times calls her | | | | Peruvian slang. Or I got a song before my cousins did - |
| work "luminous... bursting with fresh originality" while the | | | | I realize I'm really getting something, or I could sort of |
| Washington Post notes its "unself-conscious craft and | | | | identify where something came from, in an intuitive |
| mastery." | | | | way, not an intellectual way. There's an academic |
| In 2009, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Latin | | | | understanding of this stuff, then there's a feeling for it. |
| American Grammy for "Inca Dances," and was | | | | Or it sparks a response in me and I know what I'm |
| featured in a PBS documentary on her collaboration | | | | going to do with it, and I know that I'm going to change |
| with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Clearly, | | | | it in a way that's authentic but you could not even tell |
| Gabriela is an artist in the full bloom of her creative | | | | where it came from. |
| powers, and one of the major new musical voices of | | | | That's the next step to culture, where you're not just |
| her generation.She is also a wonderfully rich, realized | | | | making a mirror to it, but cheaply, because you're not |
| human being, without a zot of the pretention or | | | | doing the indigenous tools and indigenous musical |
| preciousness that could easily accompany her rare | | | | instruments. We have a lot of these Westernized |
| musical gifts, as you'll see for yourself, in this | | | | translations of whatever, food, music, paintings, you |
| conversation with Gabriela over a long dinner at my | | | | know whatever. And then there's the stuff that's the |
| home in Richmond, California, in July 2009. | | | | beautiful next step. That's what happens to Latin |
| YO: As ignorant as I am about what you've done | | | | American culture when it comes to the states, like |
| musically, I do have this strong sense that you are one | | | | Tex-Mex, or whatever. And it becomes it's own thing, |
| of those rare people who can successfully integrate | | | | and it's every bit as legitimate. There's the charlatan |
| your individual personal genius with your energy and | | | | development as well, but then there's the legit,so if I'm |
| your actions, creating a great... | | | | in that right place of where it feels good and awful, |
| GLF: I think a lot of it comes from discomfort, and | | | | feels intuitive, and yet it feels like I'm grappling with it, |
| discomfort with accepting my training in music, | | | | and wrestling with it - that's why I compose - It's from |
| accepting the vision that other people had for me, of | | | | that I have to compose. Because the piece of music |
| music. I didn't disrespect my teachers necessarily. For | | | | represents a challenge that I set up for myself, |
| a long time I thought I wasn't good enough, that I didn't | | | | something I want to figure out and the answer comes |
| fit in in a certain way. Then, I started to start to live | | | | at the end when I put that bar line at the end of the |
| with the discomfort and say this discomfort is good, | | | | piece. |
| this is who I am, so I'm in that feeling all the time now | | | | And kind of like with the ISO experience [Indiana |
| and it's just a rewiring. It's not changing your feelings, it's | | | | Symphony Orchestra.See video on YouTube]. I have |
| changing your intellectual appraisal of it. | | | | to answer to a lot of constituencies, where that piece |
| I think it's very important for teachers to do to young | | | | of music can reflect something private that I'm |
| developing spirits, when they're creative or intellectual -- | | | | wondering about - the musicians will never know that |
| to trust their instincts and to go deep with it. We all | | | | it's coming from 35 years of neurosis, wondering, you |
| have these ways of bucking the norm, we all have this | | | | know, how gringa I am and how latina I am, but they |
| potential. I got lucky in that whatever risk-taking spirit I | | | | get some sort of sense of it. It could be the lyricism of |
| have in me - I just chucked the normal path very | | | | it, it could be the hinting of other cultures, if it's a trio for |
| suddenly, very early, and almost totally. Although I love | | | | oboe, flute and piano, making the oboe sound like an |
| certain composers in classical music. I'm not a total | | | | erkencho, which is a clarinet kind of instrument from |
| classical music aficionado, which is a great irony. It's | | | | Argentina, and it keeps doing something that is totally |
| where I could get the best training, but I had to fit it into | | | | against oboe technique, and they sound really good but |
| a different kind of mold. | | | | they've never known that they have permission to do |
| My travel in Latin America wasn't like a homecoming. It | | | | that - their teachers have always told them not to do |
| was very difficult - because I'm gringa - I was born | | | | that, and here I am demanding, with oboe lingo, to do a |
| here. You know, this is my country, the United States is | | | | non-oboe kind of thing. You're going up against a lot of |
| my country. Peru is a tangential country for me. It's | | | | different impulses in there. In the end, what filters |
| where I find a lot of answers, it's something that has | | | | through to the audience is some evoked image of |
| always held a lot of mystery for me growing up. I had | | | | another culture, but it's not quite Argentinean, it's not |
| never visited Peru. I didn't visit Peru until I was 27 years | | | | quite Latin American, it's a third thing, and that's my job, |
| old, so 10 years ago. And it was very much tied to | | | | to try to represent cultural growth in that way with |
| meeting my family, you know my mom's family... she | | | | these kinds of ingredients, an oboe, a piano, and a |
| comes from a family of 14 children, so there's a huge | | | | Western flute. |
| history there that I never knew. | | | | So that only comes about because I have the |
| And I think that a lot of the impulse to keep going with | | | | discomfort, and if I didn't have the discomfort, it would |
| the music had to do with the connection to the family, | | | | be just like laying down bricks or something in a path |
| because it was always Peruvian music that really | | | | already determined. It would be very easy for me to |
| interested me. You know before I was really thinking | | | | take Peruvian tunes and play them straight on a piano, |
| about my mom's family that much as a little girl, I loved | | | | and give it a little oompah, oompah, you know and just |
| Peruvian music. I had a visceral reaction just to that | | | | do something like that, but I'm missing all the great |
| sound - and for me that's the greatest argument I can | | | | things a piano can do. The piano can maybe fatten it |
| make for some sort of genetic memory of culture, | | | | out, and now it sounds like it's several of those South |
| that somehow sifted through to this little gringa girl | | | | American musical instruments, and I know several of |
| growing up, whose first language is English. | | | | those instruments. That's gonna come from this part of |
| I welded my love of Peruvian music to all this hard | | | | the country and that's what they do in that part of the |
| core musical training I got [at Rice University in Houston | | | | country. I come back to the piano, and it's like a |
| as an undergraduate, and then at the University of | | | | dialogue between the two. It doesn't quite work, and |
| Michigan at Ann Arbor for a Ph.D.]. We were like | | | | the piano fixes it. And the piano does this, but I just |
| athletes, what they did to us. We trained for like 8-9 | | | | knock it over here, and so that's again the discomfort, |
| hours on an instrument every day. And then we were | | | | of unifying all these things that don't belong together, |
| studying all these pieces, picking them apart. Given | | | | that produces that piece of music |
| 10-20 different interpretations of a song. We just got | | | | YO: I love this idea of the discomfort, because it |
| skills, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't have a | | | | sounds like such a Buddhist thing - do you know this |
| vision, you know. And unfortunately my belief is that | | | | woman named Tara Brach? There's a Western |
| we turn out a lot of musicians that haven't developed | | | | Buddhist teacher who wrote a book called Radical |
| their vision skill. | | | | Acceptance>, which is the best thing that I've read in |
| So what if you're a good sous chef, that you can cut | | | | ages. It came out of deep discomfort -- her own and |
| things. If you can't devise new ways to combine food | | | | everyone else's -- deep discomfort with our own |
| and spices, you can't create - you can just re-enact. | | | | selves. And she's talking about deeply accepting our |
| You're not going to contribute. You'll maintain a status | | | | own selves and our own fears. |
| quo, so you'll keep programming the same pieces of | | | | On one of Tara Brach's podcasts -- she was giving a |
| music. You'll keep upholding a certain model of | | | | teaching and she said that the Buddha, when he was |
| European culture that itself has changed a lot, and I | | | | under the Boddhi tree, in the process of enlightenment, |
| think coming from a place of discomfort has been | | | | was tempted by a demon called Mara. The Buddha's |
| very good for me and is very good when I see it in | | | | disciples were all around and Mara would come to the |
| young composers now, when I go into conservatories | | | | Buddha, in this dark night of the soul and Mara would |
| and universities. I see that they are struggling. I look at | | | | come to the Buddha in all these guises, as temptation |
| some of their music and see that they are trying to cut | | | | and as fear - as horrifying things. Mara was the bad |
| out, like a surgeon, the life that's in their music - exactly | | | | force, and the disciples would be like ssssssssssssss |
| what's making it unique, just like little hints of it. I'm like | | | | trying to shoo him off, but the Buddha would invite |
| this moment. That is you, and you have to start from | | | | Mara to tea. And that was the most powerful thing |
| here and make it bigger. And I can see this look of | | | | that I've personally ever read or heard about Buddhist |
| relief on their faces. To give them that permission - | | | | thought, because I've heard or been taught this |
| they just need somebody to tell them that has been | | | | concept in so many different ways, but this was the |
| doing it. I had a couple good teachers also doing that | | | | first time I understood that it was something that I |
| and though they didn't necessarily say those words I | | | | myself could actually do. Oh, I can invite Mara to tea - |
| think to them it was just obvious I was gonna do that. I | | | | you know, I'm scared, I'm freaked out, I'm this, I'm that, |
| was already taking off to Latin America. | | | | I'm uncomfortable...I can invite this feeling to tea, invite it |
| They didn't know how much fear I had in doing that, | | | | in... |
| 'cause I kept that to myself, I've always kept that to | | | | GLF: I never thought of it that way, I mean, I never |
| myself. I don't feel any differently than I did when I was | | | | made the connection. I had read that also, Buddhist |
| five years old. I just have more confidence. When I | | | | readings, or heard that it would be weird if you weren't |
| was five I wasn't scared, but liking Peruvian music and | | | | scared. And you're gonna survive it, and the fear |
| taking Peruvian music and doing that for Western | | | | maybe won't hurt what you're trying to achieve... |
| piano -- no one told me you can't do that.And then I | | | | YO: And it's what is... |
| went through a period when I was supposed to be a | | | | GLF: It is it. |
| straight-laced Mozart pianist, you know, and just play | | | | YO: And you were just saying that, the discomfort |
| Beethoven, play it a certain way, and then when I | | | | itself is itself a creative place... |
| discarded that, it felt kind of like I couldn't hack it, and I | | | | GLF: Yeah, create that sound... |
| couldn't have that career, so I thought oh well! I might | | | | YO: Do you come up against writer's block? |
| as well go to Latin America! And then I went, and | | | | GLF: Uh, I procrastinate. The problem is that I can get a |
| ironically, that's what gave me more answers, gave | | | | lot done at the last minute. Which I hate, I don't |
| me confidence. | | | | physically feel good when I do it. I've gotten much |
| YO: You are saying that when you were making the | | | | better about it, just working consistently. That's my big |
| decision to go to South America, and turn away from | | | | goal over the next couple of years, just working to |
| the normal young classical music composer track of | | | | make that a big part of my life. I just work a certain |
| competitions, that there was a lot of fear and feeling | | | | number of hours a day, then I stop. Even if I'm inspired, I |
| of not being able to hack it. But even then, didn't you | | | | know I'm gonna pick up more inspiration the next day. I |
| have an intuitive sense that this was the right thing -- | | | | have a pretty finely honed creative apparatus up |
| that it wasn't that you weren't good enough? | | | | there. They don't teach you that in school, the skill of |
| GLF: It was both, it was a paradoxical place, because | | | | being creative, ironically. |