Flea Market and New Merchandise Update

~Continued from Part 1~

As Selena’s popularity grew placing additional demands on the band (e.g. travel), Abraham removed Selena from the 8th grade, drawing immediate unwarranted criticism. Some accused him of violating Child Labor laws while others warned that he was ruining his kids. “They’ll be surrounded by drinking and drugs” and “it’s going to have an effect on them,” the critics incorrectly predicted.[1]

Despite the skeptics, Selena remained unaffected. She continued to have fun and enjoy singing. She kept her down-to-earth personality and refused to snub anyone, believing that “if you treat people good, it [will] come back” in the end.[2] Accordingly, Selena always maintained a great repertoire with her fans and audience.[3] At the same time, she also kept up with her academics and earned a G.E.D. from a Chicago-based Correspondence School at 17.

As Selena was growing into a star, her brother, A.B. III was becoming an accomplished songwriter and producer, after originally taking it up to supply his youngest sister with the quality, original material that the band lacked. One of his first songs, “Dame Un Beso” enjoyed moderate success. Before long, A.B. III supplanted his father as the band’s leading songwriter. In addition, Ricky Vela, another band member also assisted with music composition.

When the band’s second album, “Alpha” was released, it brought Selena her first music honors. She won “Female Vocalist of the Year” at the 1987 West Texas Hispanic Music Awards and KFLZ Awards ceremonies and was voted “Female Vocalist of the Year” and “Performer of the Year” at the Tejano Music Awards. This recognition introduced Selena to two influential people: Rick Trevino, founder of the Tejano Music Awards and Johnny Canales, a television personality on one of the top-rated Spanish shows. Their efforts gave Selena much needed publicity, expanding the horizons for “Selena Y Los Dinos.”

Two more albums, “Preciosa” and “Dulce Amor” were released in 1988 earning Selena greater recognition. With album sales exceeding 20,000, Selena’s name began to spread beyond Texas. Not surprisingly, Selena was a finalist for “Female Vocalist of the Year” for 1988 and “Terco Corazon” and A.B. III were nominated for “Single of the Year” and “Songwriter of the Year,” respectively, at the Tejano Music Awards.

Despite Selena’s growing fame, the Quintanillas’ lifestyle had not changed much. They continued to live on beans and hamburgers and shared just about everything. As a result, they had “Nobody You Know” written at the top of the band’s bus, “Big Bertha’s” front windshield.

Their fortunes, though, changed dramatically when Selena was signed by Jose Behar, the former head of Sony’s Latin music division and creator of the Capitol/EMI Latin label in 1989. The signing came about when Behar and a friend, Mario Ruiz, who became President of EMI Mexico attended the 1989 Tejano Music Awards searching for new talent and discovered Selena. The events went as follows according to the account by Jose Behar:

“…We were standing at the back of the auditorium when we saw her. Mario and I looked at each other like, ‘Wow. This is special.'”

“…I said, ‘It’s interesting. Women don’t sell in the Tejano market.’ And they really hadn’t. Yet I said to myself, ‘This is the crossover act I’m looking for.”[4]

Afterwards, Behar, believing that he had found the next Gloria Estefan, a popular and successful crossover Latin artist went backstage and met and signed Selena after talking to her father. At the time, Behar never imagined how many records Selena would eventually sell.

Despite her signing with Capitol/EMI Latin and her taking “Female Vocalist of the Year” honors at the 1989 and 1990 Tejano Music Awards, and also “Female Entertainer of the Year” at the 1990 Tejano Music Awards, Selena’s first few new releases did little better than her previous ones. However, another breakthrough came in 1991 when she was paired with Alvaro Torres in “Buenos Amigos.” Their video soared to #1 on the Billboard Latin Tracks Chart giving Selena national exposure. An appearance on “Donde Quiero Que Estes” with the Barrio Boyzz, an immensely popular Latin band further enhanced Selena’s rising stature, enabling her to enter the international Latin market with her solo hits, “La Carcacha” and “Como La Flor.”

Johnny Canales then helped make Selena an instant Celebrity in Mexico leading to an offer star in a leading role in a Mexican Soap opera, which she turned down because of its steamy scenes. Though determined to make it big, Selena wasn’t about to sacrifice her principles. She valued her appeal to her broad audience that consisted of young children and grandparents alike.

Performing in skin-tight pants, low-cut bustiers, and shiny outfits was her limit. Unlike many others, Selena did not need to forego her morals for fame. Her natural-born talent was sufficient. In addition, when Johnny Canales compared Selena to Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Janet Jackson, all pop stars, he declared, “I’d say [Selena] was like those people, but better. Those people never sang Tejano. She could do what they do, but it would be hard for them to do what she does.”[5]

Also during this time, the Los Dinos Band was expanding, providing Selena with some of her happiest moments. Pete Astudillo, a Laredo, Texas native and talented artist joined in 1989. Together, he and Selena went on to perform hit duets like “Yo Te Amo” and “Amame, Quiereme.”[6] Accordingly the pair were twice nominated for “Vocal Duo of the Year” at the Tejano Music Awards.

A second great addition was Chris Perez, who briefly joined Los Dinos in 1988, left a year later to try it on his own, and then returned in 1990. Chris was a talented guitarist who eventually became Selena’s husband. They were married on April 2, 1992.

Although Selena’s father initially opposed the marriage, he soon viewed Chris as “a son.”[7] Afterwards, Selena and Chris shared a nearby house, with her parents living next door in one house and her brother, A.B. III and his wife and children in another. Between the three houses there were nine dogs, five of which belonged to Selena, an avid animal lover. Later the pair bought a piece of land a little further away with plans to build a larger house to start a family and run a small farm. Prior to her death, Selena had already picked out the furniture.

As Selena’s career took off, she released two hit albums: “Ven Conmigo” featuring the hit song “Baila Esta Cumbia” in 1990 and “Entre A Mi Mundo” featuring the hit songs “La Carcacha” and “Como La Flor” in 1992. The great success of these albums completed Selena’s transformation from “unknown” to “star.” Then a show featuring Selena, La Mafia, and Emilia Navaira at the Summit in Houston in the summer of 1991 drew more than 9000 people. Next followed “Selena Live” in 1993, which gave the young singer her first Grammy along with three Tejano Awards, opening the door to mainstream pop.

After four years of attempts, Jim Behar, using Selena’s soaring popularity and sales to their advantage, finally convinced EMI’s pop division to give her the crossover chance she had been dreaming of. Prior to 1993, Behar had faced repeated setbacks and had to start over each time when key executives left the Company. As one EMI executive, Nancy Brennan, Vice President of Artist and Repertoire summarized, “All he [Behar] ever talked about was Selena. He was like a broken record, ‘Selena, Selena…'”[8]

Brennan was exposed to Selena when she attended a Billboard Latin Music Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada to see Jon Secada, an immensely popular EMI artist. There, Selena’s opening made a lasting impression. By December 1993, Selena had been signed by EMI’s SBK subsidiary to begin her crossover album, which took a year-and-a-half to produce due to the tedious effort of finding the right songs and producers.

The 1994 “Amor Prohibido” success also added to the crossover delays since Selena was requested to appear everywhere. Nancy Brennan recounted one such episode when had been forced to postpone a recording session: “This is the first time I have ever made a debut album by an artist who was too busy to record for me. How can you tell someone, ‘No I don’t want you to play the Astrodome for 60,000 people; I want you to work on your record.’ Everyone wants her.”[9]

The “Amor Prohibido” album featuring four #1 Latin Singles (title track “Amor Prohibido” “No Me Queda Mas,” “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” and “Fotos Y Recuerdos” launched Selena’s greatest year to date. When “Amor Prohibido” came out, it promptly replaced Gloria Estefan’s “Mi Tierra” at #1 on Billboard’s Latin Tracks Charts and even made the top 200 on Billboard’s Pop Charts. It led to six awards at the Tejano Music Awards ceremony attended by more than 45,000 people – “Female Entertainer of the Year,” “Female Vocalist of the Year,” “Orchestra Album of the Year,” Record of the Year,” “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” “Song of the Year,” and “Techno Cumbia, “Crossover Song of the Year.” More than 400,000 copies had sold at the time of Selena’s death less than a year after its release.

Selena also realized two more dreams in 1994. First, she opened a boutique/salon in Corpus Christi called “Selena Etc.” Since childhood, Selena had dreamed of designing clothing and jewelry. Second, she played a bit-role “Don Juan DeMarco,” a film released in early 1995 that starred Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp and offered the potential of leading to greater and perhaps leading roles. Acting had been a recent dream of Selena’s.

With the impending release of Selena’s cross-over album, “Dreaming of You,” her wide-spread fame and rocketing demand, a million-dollar record deal, a Grammy Award, endorsements from sponsors like Coca Cola and her own line of clothing, it seemed like Selena’s meteoric career could only rise higher. By this time, Selena had been named “one of the most successful Latin entertainers in the world” by “Hispanic Business” magazine.

The sold-out Astrodome Concert for the Houston Livestock and Rodeo February 1995 with a crowd of 61,000+, at the time, the largest in Astrodome history only strengthened this belief. Yet ironically and almost prophetically, when Selena was asked to speculate on her future during a July 1994 interview, she modestly stated, “I just hope still to be alive, hopefully singing still and later on, maybe 10 years yonder, I hope to have a family by then.”[10]

Four years earlier, Yolanda Saldivar, a self-professed “biggest Selena fan” had come into Selena’s life after persistently requesting to start a fan club in her honor. Although Abraham had initially refused, he eventually gave in when Yolanda agreed to make it “not-for-profit” and donate leftover proceeds to charity. Eventually Yolanda’s relationship with the Quintanillas deepened when Selena named her Operations Manager to handle sales, customer-relations, and “Selena Etc.’s” finances.

At the time, no one saw Saldivar’s dark obsession. Furthermore, no one had been aware that Yolanda had failed to pay off a $5300 student loan, left her nursing job under suspicious circumstances, been turned down by Shelly Lares, a prominent, young Tejano singer to form a “Shelly Lares Fan Club,” and been accused of stealing $9200 from a dermatologist she had worked for.

However, by early 1995, Abraham Quintanilla began to receive complaints from upset fans who reported that they were not receiving the Selena packets, consisting of a T-shirt, baseball cap, cassette/CD, and autographed poster they had paid for in membership dues. Money also began to go missing from the boutiques. With their suspicions growing, the Quintanillas conducted an investigation and discovered that Yolanda had written four checks, including one to herself for $3000 from the Fan Club’s books. Selena’s father then angrily confronted Yolanda who claimed she could explain everything if given some time. Afterwards, Saldivar purchased a .38 caliber gun.

Yet despite the mounting evidence, Selena sent Yolanda to Mexico to assist with opening a “Selena Etc.” boutique in Monterrey. Hopeful that they could remain friends after the confrontation, Selena was willing to give Saldivar the chance she had requested – to “prove her innocence and find the missing papers.”

Then while in Mexico, Yolanda phoned Selena to hysterically report that the car containing the documents had been stolen and that she had been raped. Yet Yolanda refused medical care when she returned to Corpus Christi. Instead, she requested that Selena meet her at the Day’s Inn motel in Corpus Christi. When Selena and her husband arrived, Yolanda failed to produce any documents.

Afterwards, Yolanda called Selena around midnight on the morning of March 31, 1995 claiming that she was suffering from internal bleeding caused by the rape. During the phone conversation, Saldivar pleaded for Selena to return alone, which she did in the morning.

Once there, Selena drove Yolanda to the hospital where she retracted her rape story. Afterwards Selena drove her back to the motel where they both argued after, it is believed, Selena fired her and planned to return a Faberge Egg ring funded by all of the boutique employees, which she had been misled into believing that Yolanda had generously given to her as a gift.

Upon hearing the argument and a gunshot, a maid cleaning a nearby room looked out the window and saw Selena clutching her chest, screaming for help as she fled from Yolanda who clutched the .38 in her right hand, aimed and fired again.

When Selena made it to the lobby, she collapsed, bleeding profusely from her wound. Although the desk clerk locked the door and called 911 for an ambulance, it was too late. Efforts to revive Selena, despite a blood infusion and electric shocks that briefly restarted her heart, were to no avail. She was pronounced dead at 1:05 PM. Afterwards, tens of thousands filed past Selena’s open coffin to pay their last respects as her body lay in state.

Today, nearly 12 years after her death, Selena’s legacy lives on. Despite the tragedy, Selena made the crossover into mainstream and is an icon whose spirit still lives. Reminder’s of Selena’s warmth, generosity, and indelible beauty are all around Corpus Christi. Mirador de la Flor stands along the Gulf shore while a museum dedicated to her career stands only a few miles away. Each year thousands visit Selena’s grave, Mirador de la Flor, and the Selena Museum. Selena memorabilia remains popular with rare autographs going at times for more than a $1000. With her continued fame and popularity, it would not be surprising if the United States Post Office eventually issued a stamp to honor Selena’s enduring legacy.

__________

[1] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[2] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[3] Bill Hewitt, et al. People Weekly. (Chicago, April 17, 1995) 49.

[4] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[5] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[6] Himilce Novas. Remembering Selena: A Tribute in Pictures and Words. (St. Martin’s Griffin: New York, 1995) 43-44.

[7] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[8] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[9] Rick Mitchell. Interactive Corpus Christi Caller Times Biography. (Houston Chronicle), 1995.

[10] Bruce Hagan, Producer; Joshua Kuvin, Editor, et. al. Dateline NBC – Obsession. (April 7, 1995).

Where most articles go wrong with any sort of MySpace tips is that they fail to mention that there are many different accounts for you to join. Two of them are a musician account and a user account. If you are a musician you need the musician account. I may sound smart, but if you don’t then you don’t have access to an extra 3 MP3s to display…which is a lot.

Any way. lets get on with these MySpace tips:

MySpace tips: 1. If you do use games, flashy stuff and big files, it will turn people away, mainly due to the slow loading time from MySpace. If you have to use graphics, don’t let MySpace host them for you, load them up using your own bandwidth this way pictures and larger files will get loaded up that little bit quicker.

Remember these few words for any site:

Short, clean, clear

See if you can invent an identity for your site, certain colours etc. The best sites are ones that you can navigate easily and find what you want quickly. To get the friend, it must be plain as day for them to sign up.

MySpace tips: 2. How many people are registered with MySpace? 106 million…so will of them become your friend? No is the answer and the main reason being not all of them like your music. So we have to find

Like minded downloaders and friends

To do this, MySpace has given us some tools. The first one is the search engine. Click on the drop down bar to reveal: blogs, music interest etc. You can then search for similar artists to yourself.

If you notice further below, the affiliation for networking, allows you to contact record companies and industry people (make sure that “field” is on music).

MySpace tips: 3. To get more friends go to a similar genre artist, and look down to their list of friends comments, and then click on view all. Now if your initial search was right, then these, like minded friends could easily like your music. Also these friends are active Spacers as well as fans of the artist (with the most recent comments being at the top of the page). Just make sure that you contact the friend with the most responsible comments.

MySpace tips: 4. Sometimes though you don’t want a friend that is 3000 miles away, especially if you want to gig. When doing a general search you can find people that are close to your home town, by doing a zip search, or county search. This has some great possibilities as when you start gigging then these people are more likely to come to your venue.

Also increase your zip search for surrounding areas. When you do have a gig ready, post in your forum a month before hand, a week and then a day…just to give ample time to everyone.

MySpace tips: 5 MySpace has grown because of the interaction between friends, a sort of pimped blog. So we also must interact. This is the time consuming part and it is also the best way of networking. What you need to do is go around your friends homepages and leave a comment by clicking on the add comment link at the bottom of the page.

Now as we have seen with the send a message weapon, the add a comment can be done right or can be done wrong.

Wrong way (but you see this 80% of the time…it doesn’t work!)

1. = “you rock”!

2. = “see my music on http://www.myspace.com/artist”

Right way

Wow, what a cool tune [name] is. I specifically like the middle part with the drum solo. Also, where did you get that great background from?

Today’s practitioners of what we once called “modern” music are finding themselves to be suddenly alone. A bewildering backlash is set against any music making that requires the disciplines and tools of research for its genesis. Stories now circulate that amplify and magnify this troublesome trend. It once was that one could not even approach a major music school in the US unless well prepared to bear the commandments and tenets of serialism. When one hears now of professors shamelessly studying scores of Respighi in order to extract the magic of their mass audience appeal, we know there’s a crisis. This crisis exists in the perceptions of even the most educated musicians. Composers today seem to be hiding from certain difficult truths regarding the creative process. They have abandoned their search for the tools that will help them create really striking and challenging listening experiences. I believe that is because they are confused about many notions in modern music making!

First, let’s examine the attitudes that are needed, but that have been abandoned, for the development of special disciplines in the creation of a lasting modern music. This music that we can and must create provides a crucible in which the magic within our souls is brewed, and it is this that frames the templates that guide our very evolution in creative thought. It is this generative process that had its flowering in the early 1950s. By the 1960s, many emerging musicians had become enamored of the wonders of the fresh and exciting new world of Stockhausen’s integral serialism that was then the rage. There seemed limitless excitement, then. It seemed there would be no bounds to the creative impulse; composers could do anything, or so it seemed. At the time, most composers hadn’t really examined serialism carefully for its inherent limitations. But it seemed so fresh. However, it soon became apparent that it was Stockhausen’s exciting musical approach that was fresh, and not so much the serialism itself, to which he was then married. It became clear, later, that the methods he used were born of two special considerations that ultimately transcend serial devices: crossing tempi and metrical patterns; and, especially, the concept that treats pitch and timbre as special cases of rhythm. (Stockhausen referred to the crossovers as “contacts”, and he even entitled one of his compositions that explored this realm Kontakte.) These gestures, it turns out, are really independent from serialism in that they can be explored from different approaches.

The most spectacular approach at that time was serialism, though, and not so much these (then-seeming) sidelights. It is this very approach — serialism — however, that after having seemingly opened so many new doors, germinated the very seeds of modern music’s own demise. The method is highly prone to mechanical divinations. Consequently, it makes composition easy, like following a recipe. In serial composition, the less thoughtful composer seemingly can divert his/her soul away from the compositional process. Inspiration can be buried, as method reigns supreme. The messy intricacies of note shaping, and the epiphanies one experiences from necessary partnership with one’s essences (inside the mind and the soul — in a sense, our familiars) can be discarded conveniently. All is rote. All is compartmentalized. For a long time this was the honored method, long hallowed by classroom teachers and young composers-to-be, alike, at least in the US. Soon, a sense of sterility emerged in the musical atmosphere; many composers started to examine what was taking place.

The replacement of sentimental romanticism with atonal music had been a crucial step in the extrication of music from a torpid cul-de-sac. A music that would closet itself in banal self-indulgence, such as what seemed to be occurring with romanticism, would decay. Here came a time for exploration. The new alternative –atonality — arrived. It was the fresh, if seemingly harsh, antidote. Arnold Schonberg had saved music, for the time being. However, shortly thereafter, Schonberg made a serious tactical faux pas. The ‘rescue’ was truncated by the introduction of a method by which the newly freed process could be subjected to control and order! I have to express some sympathy here for Schönberg, who felt adrift in the sea of freedom provided by the disconnexity of atonality. Large forms depend upon some sense of sequence. For him a method of ordering was needed. Was serialism a good answer? I’m not so certain it was. Its introduction provided a magnet that would attract all those who felt they needed explicit maps from which they could build patterns. By the time Stockhausen and Boulez arrived on the scene, serialism was touted as the cure for all musical problems, even for lack of inspiration!

Pause for a minute and think of two pieces of Schonberg that bring the problem to light: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912 – pre-serial atonality) and the Suite, Op. 29 (1924 serial atonality). Pierrot… seems so vital, unchained, almost lunatic in its special frenzy, while the Suite sounds sterile, dry, forced. In the latter piece the excitement got lost. This is what serialism seems to have done to music. Yet the attention it received was all out of proportion to its generative power. Boulez once even proclaimed all other composition to be “useless”! If the ‘disease’ –serialism –was bad, one of its ‘cures’ –free chance –was worse. In a series of lectures in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1958, John Cage managed to prove that the outcome of music written by chance means differs very little from that written using serialism. However, chance seemed to leave the public bewildered and angry. Chance is chance. There is nothing on which to hold, nothing to guide the mind. Even powerful musical personalities, such as Cage’s, often have trouble reining in the raging dispersions and diffusions that chance scatters, seemingly aimlessly. But, again, many schools, notably in the US, detected a sensation in the making with the entry of free chance into the music scene, and indeterminacy became a new mantra for anyone interested in creating something, anything, so long as it was new.

I believe parenthetically that one can concede Cage some quarter that one might be reluctant to cede to others. Often chance has become a citadel of lack of discipline in music. Too often I’ve seen this outcome in university classes in the US that ‘teach ‘found (!)’ music. The rigor of discipline in music making should never be shunted away in search of a music that is ‘found’, rather than composed. However, in a most peculiar way, the power of Cage’s personality, and his surprising sense of rigor and discipline seem to rescue his ‘chance’ art, where other composers simply flounder in the sea of uncertainty.

Still, as a solution to the rigor mortis so cosmically bequeathed to music by serial controls, chance is a very poor stepsister. The Cageian composer who can make chance music talk to the soul is a rare bird indeed. What seemed missing to many was the perfume that makes music so wonderfully evocative. The ambiance that a Debussy could evoke, or the fright that a Schonberg could invoke (or provoke), seemed to evaporate with the modern technocratic or free-spirited ways of the new musicians. Iannis Xenakis jolted the music world with the potent solution in the guise of a ‘stochastic’ music. As Xenakis’ work would evolve later into excursions into connexity and disconnexity, providing a template for Julio Estrada’s Continuum, the path toward re-introducing power, beauty and fragrance into sound became clear. All this in a ‘modernist’ conceptual approach!

Once again, though, the US university milieu took over (mostly under the stifling influence of the serial methodologist, Milton Babbitt) to remind us that it’s not nice to make music by fashioning it through ‘borrowings’ from extra-musical disciplines. Throughout his book, Conversations with Xenakis, the author, Balint András Vargas, along with Xenakis, approaches the evolution of Xenakis’ work from extra-musical considerations. Physical concepts are brought to bear, such as noise propagating through a crowd, or hail showering upon metal rooftops. Some relate to terrible war memories of experiences suffered by Xenakis, culminating in a serious wound. To shape such powerful sounds, concepts akin to natural phenomena had to be marshaled. From the standpoint of the musical classroom, two things about Xenakis are most troubling: one is his relative lack of formal musical training; the other, or flip side, is his scientifically oriented schooling background. In ways no one else in musical history had ever done, Xenakis marshaled concepts that gave birth to a musical atmosphere that no one had ever anticipated could exist in a musical setting. One most prominent feature is a sound setting that emulates Brownian movement of a particle on a liquid surface. This profoundly physical concept needed high-powered mathematics to constrain the movements of the (analogous) sound ‘particles’ and make them faithful to the concept Xenakis had in mind. There is, as a result, a certain inexactitude, albeit a physical slipperiness, to the movement of the sound particles. Nice musical smoothness and transition give way to unpredictable evolution and transformation. This concept blows the skin off traditional concepts of musical pattern setting! Its iridescent shadows are unwelcome in the gray gloom of the American classroom.

In their haste to keep musical things musical, and to rectify certain unwanted trends, the official musical intelligentsia, (the press, the US university elite, professors, etc.) managed to find a way to substitute false heroes for the troubling Xenakis. Around the time of Xenakis’ entry into the musical scene, and his troubling promulgation of throbbing musical landscapes, attendant with sensational theories involving stochastic incarnations, a group of composers emerged who promised to deliver us from evil, with simple-minded solutions erected on shaky intuitional edifices. The so-called ‘cluster’ group of would-be musical sorcerers included Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Górecki and Gyorgy Ligeti. These new musical darlings, with their easy methodologies, gave us the first taste of the soon-to-emerge post-modernism that has posed as our ticket to the Promised Land for the last thirty years. It seemed that, just as music finally had a master of the caliber and importance of Bach, Schonberg, Bartok and Varese in the person of one Iannis Xenakis, history and musicology texts seemed not to be able to retreat quickly enough to embrace the new saviors, all the while conspiring against an all embracing creativity found fast, and well-embedded within the turmoil of the stochastic process.

Alas, Xenakis has been exiled from American history, as much as the powers have been able to do so! His competition, those in the intuitive cluster school, became the fixtures of the new musical landscape, because their art is so much easier than that of Xenakis. Ease of composing, of analyzing and of listening are the new bywords that signal success in the music world. Those who extol such virtues herald the arrival and flourishing of post-modernism and all its guises, be it neo-romantic, clustering or eclecticism. The proud cry these days, is “Now we can do about anything we wish.” Better, perhaps, to do nothing than to embrace such intellectual cowardice.

The promise of a return to musical fragrances that walk in harmony and synchronicity with intellectual potency was precious and vital. It should signal the next phase of evolution in the creative humanities. The challenge to write about this potential of a marriage of humanities was overwhelming. No adequate text seemed to exist. So I had to provide one. All that was lacking for a good book was a unifying theme.

Algorithms control the walk of the sounds. Algorithms are schemata that work the attributes of sound to enable them to unfold meaningfully. An algorithm is a step-function that can range from a simple diagram to stochastic or Boolean functions. Even serialism is an algorithm. While they are important, algorithms take second place in importance to the focus of music: its sound. This concentration is given a terminology by composer, Gerard Pape: sound-based composition. Isn’t all music sound based? It’s all sound, after all.

Well, yes, but not really. The point of the term is to highlight the emphasis of the approach being on the sound, rather than on the means used for its genesis. In sound-based composition, one concentrates on a sound, then conjures the way to create it. In serialism, ordering takes precedence over quality. The result often is vapid: empty sound. Directionless pointillism robs music of its vital role, the conjuring of imagery, in whatever guise. The other leading practitioner of sound-based composition is Dr. Julio Estrada. In his composition classes and seminars at UNAM (Universidad National Autonoma de México), he emphasizes the mental formation of an imaginary, sort of an idealized imagery. Then the composer/students are directed to formulate a conspirator sound essence that conveys something of the élan of this imaginary. Only then, once the construct of sound is concocted, is the method of sound shaping in the form of notation employed. Understanding of imagery and of fragrance precedes their specification. This is a sophisticated example of sound-based composition.

A curious, special case arose out of the arcane methods of Giacinto Scelsi, who made explicit what long had been lurking in the background. He posited a ‘3rd dimension’ to sound. He felt that the trouble with the serialists was in their reliance upon two dimensions in sound: the pitch and the duration. For Scelsi, timbre provides a depth, or 3rd dimension, explored only rarely until his groundbreaking work. He devised ways to call for unusual timbres, and evolutions of timbre that resulted in his focusing on the characteristics of, and the transformations between (within!), attributes of single tones. Indeed, his Quattro Pezzi are veritable studies in counterpoint within single tones!

This concept of sound-based composition provided the unifying seed around which a book could be built. It would be one that could salvage something of the first principles of the union of intellectual discipline and a vibrant sound context: that is, music with meaning, challenge, discipline, ambience and something that requires courage and commitment in its conception. Such would be a music that yields special, beautiful, powerful, alluring fruits, which, nonetheless, disclose their secrets only reluctantly, demanding skillful teasing out of their magic.

This epiphany revealed a road by which we could reestablish the Xenakian ideal of musical power attainable primarily through processes that have their basis in the physics and architecture of the world around us. Here was not only the answer, the antidote, if you will, to the rigidities of serialism, but also a cure for the sloppiness of unconstrained chance composition. Here was a way out of the impasse confronting composition in the 1960s. The question should be not what method to use to compose, for that leads only to blind alleys (serialism, chance or retreat), but why compose? What is in the musical universe that can open pathways not yet explored, pathways that reveal something that stir a soul? What is the best way to accomplish that?

If we abandon the search for unique roads and for challenge, we will become the first generation ever in music to proclaim that backwards movement is progress; that less is more. Yet the very apostles of post-modernism will have us believe just that! They hold that the public has rejected modernism; the public has held modernism to be bankrupt. Post-modernists will lure you into the trap that, because of its unmitigated complexity, serialism promised only its demise. “The only road into modernism is sterile complexity; we need to root this out, and return to simplicity. We won’t have a saleable product, otherwise.” This is the thinking that gave us minimalism, the nearest relative to ‘muzak’ one can conjure in art-music. One composer, a one-time avant-gardist, actually apologized for his former modernity, on stage, to the audience, before a performance of his latest post-modern work!

There is an inscription in the halls of a monastery in Toledo, Spain: “Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar” (pilgrims, there is no road, only the travel). This was a beacon for one of music history’s most courageous pilgrims – a fighter for freedom for the mind, for the body, and for the ear: Luigi Nono. His example could serve us all well. He exposed himself to grave danger as a fighter against oppression of all kinds, not least of all the musical kind. It takes courage to create. It isn’t supposed to be easy! Nothing worthwhile ever is. It would seem to me that Nono’s example serves as the antithesis to that of the previous composer.

I examine music history of the 20th century to find clues as to why certain composers generate more excitement than others. Is it possible that sound-based composition has flourished in an intuitive way from back into the 19th century? Has it been around a while, but just not codified explicitly as such? I feel that is so. To some extent the roots of this idea can be found in the so-called nationalism of such composers as Bartók and Janacek. Nationalism has gotten something of a bad rap due to folksy, cutesy concoctions usually redolent within its environments. But, upon reflection and examination, the more rigorous efforts in nationalistic composition yield tremendous fruits. Note especially Bartók’s highly original devices of twelve-tone tonality (e.g., axis positions and special chords). Less well known, but important as well, are the special folk vocal inflections resident in Janácek’s music. These special qualities spilled over from the vocal to the instrumental writing. So it appears that we can make a strong case for sound-based composition (composition focused on special sound qualities) being rooted in the music by the turn of the 20th century.

The process of creation is the focus; not the glorification of the superficial sounds that only mimic real music. The reinstatement of Xenakis’, Nono’s, Scelsi’s and Estrada’s ideals to preeminence was crucial. The recognition of these trends, in preference to those of the more facile and easily attractive ones espoused by Penderecki, Ligeti and others, had to be ensured. The easy lure of cluster music had to be resisted.

If we don’t make this distinction clear, all that follows is nonsense. Too many people apply modernism to anything that resided in the 20th century that contained a little dissonance. That is a common error. For others, modernism exists in any era – it simply is what’s happening at a given time, and is appropriate as a description for music in that era. This, too, is wrong for its reluctance to confront the creative process.

We mustn’t yield to these impulsive descriptions, for to do so renders the profound efforts of the 20th century meaningless. There is a unifying thread in music that qualifies it to be considered modern, or modernist, and it isn’t just a time frame. Modernism is an attitude. This attitude appears periodically in music history, but it is most effectively understood in the context of creativity, most pronouncedly found late in the 20th century. Modern music is the music composed that results from research into the attributes of sound, and into the ways we perceive sound. It usually involves experimentation; the experimentation yields special discoveries that bear fruit in the act of composition. This distinction is crucial; for even though much cluster music, and some neo-classical music, contains high dissonance, their focus is reactionary. The experimental work of Schonberg, Berg, Webern, Bartok, Varese, and that of some Stravinsky, is forward-looking, in that the music is not a solution unto itself: it provides a template for further work and exploration into that area. Even more so, the works of Cage, Xenakis, Scelsi, Nono and Estrada.

The composers chosen for discussion herein are the ones I consider to be the most exemplary models in the development of sound based composition. They are as follows:

-Janacek (nationalist inflection)

-Debussy (chord-coloration)

-Mahler (expressionism and tone-color melody)

-Ravel (impressionism)

-Malipiero (intuitive discourse)

-Hindemith (expressionism in a quasi-tonal context)

-Stravinsky (octatonic diatonicism)

-Bartok (axial tonality, arch form, golden section construction)

-Schonberg (expressionism, atonality, klangfarbenmelodie))

-Berg (‘tonal’ serialism)

-Webern (canonic forms in serialism, klangfarbenmelodie)

-Varese (noise, timbral/range hierarchies)

-Messiaen (modes of limited transposition, non-retrogradable rhythms, color chords)

-Boulez (special live electronics instruments)

-Stockhausen (pitch/rhythm dichotomy)

-Cage (indeterminacy, noise, live electronics)

-Xenakis (Ataxy, stochastic music, inside-outside time attributes, random walks, granularity, non-periodic scales)

-Nono (near inaudibility, mobile sound, special electronics)

-Lutoslawski (chain composition)

-Scelsi (the 3rd dimension in sound, counterpoint within a single tone)

-Estrada (The Continuum)

There is so much glitter in the world, and so much noise pollution that we are being rendered incapable of reflection and of creative thought. We become mortified at the thought of a little challenge. We are paralyzed when faced with the challenge of keeping our evolutionary legacy in focus. We cannot afford to trade away quality for mediocrity, just because mediocrity is easier and more enticing. This would not be an acceptable social outcome. To live we must thrive. To thrive we cannot rest.

Entertainment is a laudable pursuit in certain settings and times. It cannot be the force that drives our lives. If a composer desires to write entertaining music, that is all right. But that composer must be honest about his or her motives for doing so. Do not write entertainment and then try to con the public by claiming this is great music. It is best to be able to discover the key to the writing of a music that can fulfill a need for tomorrow. By understanding nature, the nature of sound and the human condition, we can write music capable of conveying something essential. That goes beyond entertainment. It fulfills music’s most crucial purpose: providing a teaching role. What better way to go through a learning process than to find oneself doing so while wrapped in a cocoon of beauty? Music can be our best teacher.

It is all right to find beauty in old sources. Even Respighi can be very charming, engaging. It is also just as good to listen to soothing, euphonious music as it is to write such music. But can’t we as composers do better than this? Why can’t we give something besides pleasure to tomorrow? Young composers today are at a crossroads. They can fulfill a vital mission by helping fulfill a tradition that carries on a cultural legacy. Today’s composers must begin to dream; and then compose.