Frank Zappa International Festival Guide - Downbeat

saying what he wanted that other people identify
with. Frank would always tell you how he really
felt. He didn’t follow rules, and his music didn’t,
either. It’s not a fad; it’s not something you get
into because the media told you to. It’s because
the music really speaks to you. That, and the fact
that the music is so incredible.”
“For all the comedy, the music had a lot of
substance in it,” argues saxophonist Ernie Watts.
“Any time you have music that’s on a high level, it
transcends time constraints. Like Miles and Trane,
Frank’s music sounds good in any time period.”
Watts and Cuber are just two of the many
jazz musicians who played in Frank’s bands.
Others include George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty,
Billy Cobham and Randy and Michael Brecker.
Some of them continue to play Frank’s compositions
in their own sets or at special
concerts or festivals dedicated to
the composer. Duke, for example,
included a 20-minute mini-set of
Frank’s tunes during his 2009–’10
tour, which was documented on
the DVD George Duke Band Live
In Prague. Watts was the special
guest when the Chicago Jazz
Orchestra presented “A Tribute
to Frank Zappa” on Dec. 29 at
Chicago venue the Park West.
For the latter show, jazz bassist/composer
Dave Morgan rearranged
selections from such
works as Frank’s 1972 album The
Grand Wazoo for a conventional
jazz big band: reeds, trombones, trumpets and
rhythm section. The lines were the same, but the
timbres were very different.
“To me, Frank Zappa is the quintessential
postmodern composer,” Morgan says. “He knew
an incredible amount of music from all genres,
and appropriated everything he was interested
in into his art, creating amazing musical collages
that destroyed all of the barriers between jazz,
classical and pop—and between high and low
art. He was ‘sampling’ music before it was fashionable,
but rather than simply ripping from digital
recordings, he notated the sounds and taught
living musicians how to realize the ‘sample.’
While he famously stated that ‘jazz is not dead, it
just smells funny,’ he clearly appropriated many
techniques and sounds from jazz, and used many
terrific jazz-oriented players in his ensembles.”
Concerts such as those by Duke and the
Chicago Jazz Orchestra are essential to a successful
posthumous career. Sure, the albums are
always there—as long as someone keeps them in
print and online—but it’s hard to attract new fans
with merely a CD hiding in a bin or as a line of
type on a download menu. You need the visceral
connection of a live show to lead new converts
to the recordings. And if you don’t attract new
fans to replace the aging ones, then a posthumous
career can be quite short. That’s why Frank’s
43-year-old son Dweezil has devoted himself to
Zappa Plays Zappa, a rock ’n’ roll sextet focused
on live performances of Frank’s music.
“That’s the challenge: how to find that
younger generation and get them into it,”
Dweezil says. “In 2006 most of the audience at a
Zappa Plays Zappa show was between 50 and 75,
but since then we’ve seen a diversification. We’ve
been playing different kinds of venues and festivals
to put ourselves in front of younger audiences.
We have a keyboard player in his mid-20s,
Chris Norton, who didn’t know Frank’s music at
all, but he heard us playing it, and said, ‘I’ve got
to learn that stuff.’ He learned it to the point that
he wanted to audition for the band. We hear that
from everyone who likes Frank’s music. It’s like
a light goes on: They say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you
could do this. I want to explore more of that.’”
Frank’s son Ahmet was involved in Zappa
Plays Zappa for a while, but he left to pursue
“I knew the
man I was
marrying was
a composer,
not a pop star.”
—Gail Zappa
film and books. But Dweezil carries on, insisting
on exact fidelity to his father’s original scores,
improvising only when those scores call for
solos. For each of the past three years, Dweezil
has led a four-day music camp that he calls
“Dweezilla in the Catskills.” He’s constantly surprised
by how little music history the incoming
students know. “I’ve had kids look at a drum kit,”
he recalls, “and say, ‘Oh, that’s what they used
to use to make drum beats.’ And I say, ‘No, they
still use it.’” Part of his mission, he says, is bringing
that history to a new generation.
Even if these various live performances draw
new fans to the recordings, the albums need to
be presented in a way that highlights the full
scope of Frank’s composing. “The real problem,”
Dweezil adds, “is that too many people think of
his music as novelty music. They say, ‘Oh, he’s
the guy with the kids who have funny names.’
People go, ‘Oh, I’ve heard ‘Don’t Eat The Yellow
Snow’ and ‘Valley Girl,’’ but that’s just scratching
the surface. And what’s below the surface
hasn’t been promoted very well. That’s changing
with this reissue program.”
The reissues are the result of Gail’s ongoing
campaign to promote her late husband’s legacy
better by controlling his work as much as possible.
Frank had been one of the few artists who
controlled all his recording masters, but when he
was dying in 1992 and 1993, he had insisted that
Gail sell the rights.
“He said, ‘You’re going to sell the catalog,
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