Honoring a composer's intentions when he's not dead yet: Indie band San Fermin as musical albatross

So I saw the indie rock band, San Fermin, last night in Ann Arbor.

Their concert was one of the first live indie rock concerts I've attended in a looooong time. In fact, it had been so long since I'd gone to hear an indie band play that two thoughts entered my mind as I stepped into the venue last night to hear San Fermin perform:

1. Would attending this concert garner me some pretty intense street cred among hipsters?
2.  Am I, in the words of Lethal Weapon character Roger Murtaugh (forever immortalized by Danny Glover), officially too old for this shit?

Time will tell on point number one. I'm pretty sure my 19-year-old brother thinks I lack all street cred of any kind. I'm probably irredeemable. A hopeless case. It's time to place my lifeless corpse on a pyre, push it out into the floating waters, and set it on fire. 

But I didn't *feel* too old at the concert. Living isn't just for the young, after all! I can actually leave my house on a weekday evening and do something other than watch Netflix. AMAZING REVELATION.

But the most fascinating part about attending the concert was realizing that all of the critical questions that I think about when I write about classical music - questions that excellent musicologists have trained me to ask, questions that strike right at the heart of contemporary debates about authenticity and performance - were firing off in my brain when I heard this octet perform.

A little background on San Fermin before I go any further:

A motley octet of musicians (trumpet, strings, saxophone, guitars, keyboard percussion) that started performing together in 2013, San Fermin sounds like a mix of Sufjan Stevens, the National (seriously: the male vocalists sound indistinguishable from one another sometimes. It's kinda crazy), and Grizzly Bear. One of their most popular songs is "Sonsick:"

But my favorite by far is "Parasites" (listen with headphones on! You need to get into that bass line!):

They're an indie rock band, yes. But I think that the reason I started questioning what I was hearing so much stemmed from the publicity surrounding the band. People describe San Fermin as a classical music/indie rock hybrid. The term "baroque pop band" gets tossed around pretty fast and loose in descriptions of them and their music. Moreover, much of the band's "classical music" cred centers on the main person who writes their music, Brooklynite Ellis Ludwig-Leone:

Composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone

A graduate from Yale's School of Music where he majored in composition, Ludwig-Leone is the brainchild of San Fermin, and earns praise as the band's "composer."

It's that "composer" label here that I want to start picking at. It's what led me to listen more critically to what I was hearing last night. Why do people use it in their descriptions of him? Why don't we apply the term to all songwriters? Because what's the difference, really, between Ludwig-Leone and other famous songwriters of rock/pop/r&b/rap music (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Kanye - yes, even him)?  

Obviously, his classical music training or, rather, his sense of belonging to the classical music world empowers Ludwig-Leone and others to call him a "composer" rather than simply a "songwriter." Indeed, part of his big revelation that he could be a "composer" in an indie rock world came during college, when he decided to try writing music for rock instruments: "It was like a big step forward when I realized that those two things [rock music and classical music] could be in same room together," he said in an interview with the Washington Post. Inspired in part by the grand, orchestral scale of Sufjan Stevens's album, Illinois, Ludwig-Leone uses a mix of instruments (violin, mandolin, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, and so on) to create indie rock, like many other musicians (Andrew Bird comes to mind).

But unlike Andrew Bird or Sufjan Stevens, Ludwig-Leone doesn't sing on his records. He is entirely dependent on his octet (of which he is the keyboardist) to perform his music. In fact, if one were to listen to the album without knowing about Ludwig-Leone, one might assume that the two singers in it - Allen Tate and now Charlene Key - were the original generators of the music. Because that's how a lot of rock and pop music has functioned, hasn't it? The singer is usually the main songwriter!

Which leads me back to thinking about the role of the composer in contemporary indie rock music. What role does the composer here serve? What challenges or problems arise in the relationship between the composer and the performer in a contemporary indie rock band? Who should get credit for these live performances?

Musicologists offer much insight here. Through their research on the history of performance practice in classical music, we've come to learn that by the early 20th century, performers and listeners were invested in performing a piece of music "as the composer intended." The sense that one should try to divine the composer's intentions has greatly shaped the history of classical music performance in the 20th century, too. There was (and remains for many) a real sense that one could perform a Bach invention or a Mozart symphony authentically through close musical analysis and historical investigation. One could, in other words, reconstruct a musical event or recreate the musical object. 

And here's the kicker: we've tended to see the performer's role in the recreation of a musical work as a servant to the music, an obedient musical worshipper whose sole job is to dogmatically pursue the composer's orthodoxy and implement the composer's musical design. The performer daren't think about wavering from the piece of music, about steering off course, about creatively altering the piece in any way. To alter Beethoven's music would simply be heresy!

But (and many of you see this coming)! Musicologists have taught us to push back against this. In the 1980s and 90s, Richard Taruskin and others came to criticize the Early Music movement, for example, for their attempts to create an authentic early modern musical performance. The more that Early Music folks tried to painstakingly recreate a musical work, the more they revealed their own ideologies and subjectivities in our contemporary world. What are we doing here in trying to honor a composer's wishes, Taruskin and others started to ask. What does it say about us and how we understand classical music today? To many people, these musical orthodoxies were proof that a strict canon of music had been set in place, and that the concert hall had become what Lydia Goehr calls "an imaginary museum of musical works." We go to the concert to admire these sacred musical works but not really to experience them, to be moved by them.

But to take things further - and to get back to thinking about San Fermin - some musicologists began arguing something even more controversial in the 90s: there is no such thing as a musical work. Not really. The only thing that exists at all is the performer! It is the performer entirely who determines what a musical moment will sound like. So why do we spend so much time obsessing over the composer when really all of the power lies in the performer's hands?

Freeing yourself from the composer's intentions is all well and good when the composer's dead. Do whatever you want. You want to make a Mozart sonata slightly more atonal? Go for it. Do your thang, girlfriend.

But what if the composer is alive? And is your friend? And you're in a band together?

Allen Tate, the lead male singer of San Fermin and BFF of composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone

At last night's concert, I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable/fascinated by two things:

1. For the first 45 minutes of the show, the composer never revealed himself. He never said that he was Ellis Ludwig-Leone, the composer of all of this music that the band was performing. If he hadn't said anything, one would have (rightly) assumed that the two singers were the leaders of the group.

2. After Ludwig-Leone did out himself as the composer, all of the performers praised him repeatedly as the sole creator of this music. They called him "the creator of all of this music," as if they had no say in it.

But that's not true, is it? The performers are the creators, too. Through moments of musical improvisation and good old-fashioned jamming, they made the music sound like it did and brought it to life. I doubt, for example, that Ludwig-Leone told singer Charlene Kaye to perform that specific vocal melisma at that specific time in one of the songs. I wonder who first suggested that saxophonist Stephen Chen create that basso ostinato in one of their closing numbers: Ludwig-Leone, who as far as I know doesn't play the saxophone (or not nearly as well as Chen), or Chen, who might have been fiddling around on the instrument during a jam session and came up with a cool musical pattern? Who is the originator here? And even if Ludwig-Leone had suggested that Chen play that ostinato bass line, it's Chen's act of performing it that brought it alive during the concert, and who made it fun by bouncing around on stage while performing it.

I really wish I could ask the performers at what point are they in control of their own music-making? At what point are you all pursuing Ludwig-Leone's wishes?

On the other hand, different performers have left the group over the years. The band is now on the third female lead singer:

Charlene Kaye (a University of Michigan alum! Go Blue!)

Clearly the composer's music has continued to resonate with his audience in spite of who might be singing it.

Musicologists studying Western art music have taught us for some time now that the relationship between the performer and the composer is way more complicated, messy, and blurry than we might think. Who is the agent of a musical experience?

I found myself asking the same question last night when I heard San Fermin perform, a band steeped in the world (and perhaps rules!) of classical music while also supposedly being free from many of these debates surrounding authenticity, performance practice, and musical orthodoxy as an indie rock band.

The band has embraced the composer label pretty fiercely. But how do they live with its power?

The Golden Bride and Jewish-American Dreams

When I first heard the chorus to the song that was undoubtedly intended to be the Schlager--or instant hit--from the 1923 Yiddish operetta Di goldene Kale, I immediately tried to place the melody, as I was certain that I had heard it before. The overall sound of the operetta resembled Johann Strauss Jr. so closely that momentarily I wondered if it had been lifted directly, but if it was from a Strauss Jr. work, I was unable to identify which one. Instead, I suspected that I had simply heard the tune in the overture and it had stuck, as any good Schlager should. It wasn't until I was standing on the subway platform after the performance that I suddenly realized where I had heard it before: the melody was close (but not identical) to one of the options for the Jewish prayer 'Adon Olam' that is sung as part of synagogue services on Shabbat--as a quick YouTube search taught me, there are many, many options to 'Adon Olam,' including one that sounds like a paraphrase of 'Deep in the Heart of Texas.' The potential connection is intriguing: Jewish audience members whose activities were mostly limited within their community would be exposed to this melody in synagogue, then internalize it as a Schlager almost immediately. But this train of thought can also easily be derailed: what if they didn't know that 'Adon Olam' (prayer melodies are not typically written down, so it would be hard to verify this claim)? What if there is another familiar melody from the time? What if it is simply a successful Schlager?

The complexity behind my association of a Jewish prayer to an operetta Schlager reflects the complexity that underlies this seemingly simple operetta. Di goldene Kale is currently in revival by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbeine and is most certainly worth attending if you find yourself in the New York area. In its time, the work drew crowds not only in New York, but also on a tour of various American cities. It reflects a tradition that disappeared from stages as Yiddish disappeared from American Jewish homes: this belief was already present during the operetta's age, as one of the characters claims that to speak 'fancy,' they will have to learn English. Subsequent generations--particularly those who were second- or third-generation--preferred to speak fancy, and saw Yiddish as a detriment to their pursuit of the American Dream, which required a hefty amount of assimilation. Not so in Di goldene Kale, where the characters move fluidly from one culture to another, as evinced by their ability to speak a combination of English, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew depending on context.

This accretion can even be heard in the score, which draws heavily on operetta standards. The music is undoubtedly influenced by Strauss Jr., in particular his most popular operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874). Indeed, there are points during which Goldele, our heroine, sounds almost identical to Fledermaus' Adele, although the character parallels end there--unless Goldele's friend Khanele's interest in a stage career borrows from Adele's Act III 'Spiel' ich die Unschuld vom Lande.' As would be expected in a Strauss operetta, the characters waltz (and even announce that it's a waltz in case we miss that) and polka (again, announced), then end with the Schlager. The final scene takes place at Strauss-style masked ball: unlike in Fledermaus, where it is essential for the plot, here it takes place for almost no good reason at all.

One of Fledermaus' most memorable moments occurs when Rosalinde, dressed as a Hungarian countess, sings 'Klänge der Heimat,' a plaintive song about her 'homeland' to prove to the guests that she is of Magyar blood (even though she isn't). Di goldene Kale has not one but two numbers in which Misha, Goldele's love interest, expresses his love for his homelands. First, he sings a rousing song about the recent drastic changes that Russia has endured and how the future looks promising, even if the present is a challenge. I heard echos of Rosalinde's Hungarian song, particularly since both are show-stoppers, but then Misha went on to have a second 'Klänge der Heimat'-type number within the finale where he described his voyage around the world. First, he sang plaintively about his time in Palestine and his great love for Israel, at which point, naturally, the crowd of (Jewish) guests at the masked ball chimed in with him. Moments later, he declared his undying love for Mother Russia by singing a folk song (in Russian) and even performed a dance to seal the deal. All of this takes place at masked ball in America. Where everyone speaks Yiddish. Truly, there is no need to speak 'fancy' when one can speak in whatever language is needed.

Misha is not the only character who exhibits such cultural fluidity. Jerome, an American whose father, Benjamin, immigrated from the Russian shtetl featured in Act 1, speaks Yiddish with an American accent and barely knows his Hebrew letters. He extols the virtues of horse races and baseball. Yet when Shabbat falls, he sings Hebrew prayers with his Russian kin. He is a Jew first, then an American. These impulses do not come into conflict, but instead are allowed to co-exist peaceful with virtually every character.

Perhaps this lack of conflict is part of the idealism that envelopes the operetta as a whole. It is hard to miss the fact that every character who immigrates from Russia to America finds a way to not only succeed, but to succeed mightily. We know that Benjamin is a millionaire and that Goldele's father (now dead) also did well in America, so much so that she is now considered the 'golden bride' because of her inheritance (Goldele's wealth conjures up a reference to yet another operetta: The Merry Widow. In contrast to Hanna, who is happy to be single after her husband's passing, Goldele only wants to be married). Contemporary audiences must have found some way to reconcile this fantasy with their reality, one in which, as working-class immigrants, they would not have enjoyed such affluence. Why was this particular work so popular? What was its enduring appeal?

There may be another parallel here with Strauss Jr. operettas, which were immensely popular with recent immigrants to Vienna and, as Camille Crittenden has argued, offered models for learning the nuances of Viennese society. In Vienna, success required acceptance of Habsburg-German culture as preeminent and, by extension, assimilation. In Di goldene Kale, success has been repackaged in the form of the American Dream, best espoused by the character of Benjamin, who is a businessman in America, primarily speaks Yiddish, visits the Russian shtetl, and observes Shabbat.  In other words, this version of the American Dream requires almost no assimilation and can be achieved while remaining essentially unchanged. The happy ending here, then, is not simply Goldele marrying her beloved Misha. It is the society that surrounds her finding a way to both stay old and be new in America. So go right on ahead, and blend tradition with innovation. Heck, you can even sing 'Adon Olam' to the tune of 'Deep in the Heart of Texas.'

Authenticity and Pop Music: the cases of Britney Spears and Sia

Kira's most recent post on Florida Georgia Line sought to delineate some of the factors that earn a group near-universal disdain, taking as her examples such disdainful groups as Nickelback and Creed.  Several of the factors that Kira identified as crucial to earning this level of disdainfulness fall under the category of authenticity, or lack thereof.  The idea that artists should be 'authentic' is tied larger concepts in Western culture about the imperative of originality for the genius--in other words, we value those who come up with innovative, new ideas, and we tend to see these genii as working independently, often in opposition to what is popular.  In this paradigm, genius artists also tend to skew male, which is not necessarily within the theory, but was at one point linked to gender: since men could not create life without the help of women, their creative tendencies were channeled elsewhere.  Hideously archaic?  Yes, but this paradigm continues to govern how we talk about 'good' and 'bad' music today.  The genius paradigm helps explain why the sell-out is so reviled and why the canon of art music so heavily favors men--even when discussing contemporary art music.

I bring these notions up because I want to talk today about two artists who break this paradigm, but are still subject to its strictures.  One is frequently viewed as a sell-out with limited artistic value, yet her career has reshaped the world of pop music.  The other is an anomaly within pop music, since she fits the concept of genius in some respects, but adheres to few of the expectations that we have of pop artists.  I am talking, of course, about Britney Spears and Sia respectively.  Both of these artists simultaneously meet and thwart our expectations of what a 'genius' can do, while demonstrating how complex our understanding of pop music can (and should) be.

Britney Spears

Go ahead, hate on Britney.  She doesn't write her own songs.  She doesn't sing her own songs in concert.  She relies on auto-tune for her albums.  She can't act (okay, this one may be fair).  She is nothing more than a Disney star transformed into sexy, sultry pop star--so basic.  And yet, I defy you to name another pop star working today who has had as many iconic moments as Brit Brit.  I plan to pepper this post with random ones.

What Britney can do--and can do better than almost anyone else in the biz--is perform.  And that is what she does best.  She can do so in lives shows, as seen above, and she is famous for having done so at award shows:

I saw a documentary once where it was revealed that actually, Brit Brit is afraid of snakes.

I saw this when it aired.  And I remember where I was.  It was Notable.

She is also justly famous for iconic video moments.  Many, many video moments:

These first three are all from the same freaking video

Of all the songs above, perhaps 'Circus' best sums up what Britney does best.  All eyes do fall on her in the center of the ring and we keep watching for what she will do.  The lyrics 'Don't just stand there watching me, follow me,' with their slight syncopation, make clear that not only are we 'gazing' at her, but that she relishes the attention.  Her songs are heavily produced to be successful, but I think the 'it' factor that has kept Britney relevant is precisely her:

I don't care how many 'handlers' Britney needed around her to make these moments happen.  The end result is that she was the one who delivered (to make a football analogy here, this is like saying that Tom Brady is a 'system quarterback,' which is all well and good, but he is still Tom Freaking Brady, and he still has more Superbowl rings than any other active QB and LEAVE TOM BRADY ALONE).  She is a consummate performer.  Note that I did not say 'singer,' because I don't think that she is necessarily a consummate singer; of pop stars working today, there are better examples on a technical level, such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.  However, detracting from her artistry for not creating her own material has always struck me as odd.  There is no question in my mind that the 'creative genius' paradigm is afoot whenever that happens.  To say that Britney is an inferior artist because she doesn't perform her own material is bizarre.  It's like saying that Meryl Streep is somehow a bad actress because she reads other people's words.

Repeatedly bringing such striking performances to life, that is a skill. And it is one at which Britney reigns supreme.

A reminder to choose what you make iconic carefully.

Sia

Readers of SGS, I have a confession to make: in late 2012, I pretty much stopped listening to pop music.  Shocking, I know.   My primary mode of consumption was the radio, but I started noticing more and more that what was on was just....well.....bad.  Everything sounded either like Rihanna's 'Birthday Cake' (NOT GOOD) or like Lil Wayne rambling over some slow jam.  Mostly, it was a morass of sameness, badness, and channel-change-inducing ennui.  Instead, I went to podcasts, and I pretty much never went back.  Yes, I felt very old when this happened.

However, there were a few exceptions (I will admit to Drake's 'The Motto' being one of them.  Don't hate.  Canadian solidarity, man).  And a few others that I didn't absolutely hate:

These songs are not completely terrible, unlike Rihanna's 'Birthday Cake'

Connoisseurs of pop music have already noticed the common denominator here.  All three songs are, in some way, the work of Sia: she wrote the lyrics to 'Diamonds; and she both performed the vocals for and wrote the lyrics to 'Wild Ones' and 'Titanium.'  Those who are not connoisseurs may be asking who exactly Sia is.  That is a great question.  It is extremely notable that she does not feature in either video for which she provides vocals, which is highly unusual for a 'pop' artist.  In the video, many people lip synch along with the chorus in 'Wild Ones,' making it unclear who the actual singer might be, but quite clear that it is none of the people lip synching (also, can I take a moment here and point out how unintentionally funny 'Girl With Arms Up In Bandeau' is?).  Perhaps she should be better viewed as one of those background singers, like Dido to Eminem in 'Stan' or Ke$sha to Flo Rida in 'Right Round.'  But that view misrepresents Sia's contribution: she is not only a singer, she is also a songwriter and has contributed to a number of hits (in fact, Sia's version of 'Titanium' was originally meant for Katy Perry).  Furthermore, it is a bit hard to say that she is the 'background' singer in 'Titanium,' even though the primary song credit goes to David Guetta, who is a DJ.

Sia now has her first credited major hit with 'Chandelier.'  Even in this video, though, she is wholly absent.  Instead, dancer Maddie Ziegler dances in a frenetic manner, likely representing the inner torment felt by the singer while she is 'swinging from the chandelier' and barely hanging on while partying:

If you haven't seen the SNL parody yet, take a moment and do that.  Also, there is something to be said here about performance, especially at the end when the fact that this is a performance becomes clear when Ziegler bows, but I'll leave that for you to ponder.

Sia conforms in many ways to the genius paradigm (and I will argue that because I think that 'Chandelier' is a genius way of representing the tension that often exists between those who party it up and their motivations...it's a broader metaphor).  She creates her own art.  She performs her own art.  Yet she is not, in my view, a pop star.  One of the most preeminent requirements in pop--as Britney teaches us--is creating notable performances.  Maddie Zielger does this in the 'Chandelier' video, but Sia remains absent. In fact, when she performed on Dancing with the Stars, Sia was 'hidden' in favor of the dancers:

What the cases of Sia and Britney demonstrate is that an understanding of pop music through the lens of the genius paradigm is inherently flawed (arguably, evaluating any type of work through the genius paradigm is flawed).  There are too many other factors that contribute to a notable and noteworthy pop experience, perhaps most importantly performance.  To subject these stars to the same critical tropes makes no sense.  Instead, we should recognize that pop depends on a wider scope of people for its success.  We are accustomed to the idea that the performer should be equated with the artist, but I am suggesting that Sia and Britney demonstrate to us that these roles can be divided.  Both make great art, but in very different ways.