ZAPPA THE MAN:

    Frank Zappa’s background is from Italy; he was the first generation of his family to be born in the United States. As a kid, Zappa experienced many health problems. He was the kind of kid that would get sick very often and stayed in bed. Although, Zappa would be reading or playing in his house with the chemical instruments that his father had or listen to music since an early age. In his teenage years, Zappa was seeing as the clown of the class for his unusual and strange ideas.  Besides that, in his last high school years, Zappa would be composing and conducting pieces for the school orchestra. After finishing high school, Zappa moved out from his parents’ house and met Kathryn Sherman and got married in December of 1960. 

   Throughout the early 1960s, Zappa worked with different local artists composing and recording songs. During this period Zappa’s marriage ended and he moved to Cucamonga where he started to record in the renamed "Studio Z". Although in this studio Zappa did not created a lot of recordings, it became famous after the incident of the fake erotic tape where Zappa was arrested and stayed in jail for six months. Consequently, all these experiences and knowledge that Zappa gain through his life were the result of all his work throughout his career. He had a defined and creative vision and interest to generate music with the philosophy of improving American musical knowledge and also to incorporate social and political manners. Zappa had always an unusual and innovative way to think and express himself, so he wanted to communicate all his ideas through his music and art.

ZAPPA THE ENTREPRENEUR:

Zappa was always very consistent in his work and throughout his entire career. He would always tried to make a balance between his art and the commerce part of it. Since the beginning of his career, Zappa had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve and he took the leadership of the band to manage the production of the music and also the business.Zappa had the vision of produce music to create and expand a superior musical taste between young people, but he would also be focus in the business of it. Zappa would explain that he wanted to become famous to of course be able to survive as a musician but also to be able to infiltrate in different ways with his music. 

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So in order to become recognized in the musical industry, Zappa knew that he had to sign contracts with music recording companies. Of course this would produce some conflicts with Zappa’s work since many of his songs have explicit lyrics, but this would not stop him. He signed a series of different contracts with different music recording companies, where they always limited and controlled many of the original recordings of Zappa. On the other hand, most of the contracts that Zappa did during his career helped the band and Zappa to be recognized and to be able to go on tour and travel around the world. All of this was mainly generated by Zappa’s constant work and effort along with their manager Herb Cohen. After several contracts and the absence of labels that would record Zappa’s music, in 1973 Zappa and Cohen decided to create DiscReet Records, which was distributed by Warner Bros. Although, in 1976 the relationship of Zappa and Cohen finished because of different conflicts produced by the rights of the DiscReet Records label. In consequence, Zappa would have a period where he would not be able to release and have access to his own material, but eventually this would finish in the mid 1970s.

ZAPPA THE MUSICIAN AND SOCIAL CRITIC:

   Frank Zappa started to be involved in music when he was a teenager, in the 1950’s. He began to write classical music when he was in high school, but at the same time he would also started to play the drums in bands of rhythm and blues. After, he would changed to electric guitar, which he will maintain as his main instrument. He always was a self-taught composer and performer. Zappa was influenced by a large range of music genres such as R&B, classical music, rock, jazz, orchestra, and many more. He was also influenced by different musicians such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, between many others. As a musician, Zappa created a musical legacy; he was an outstanding leader band, composer, and performer in his music concerts. Zappa was very disciplined and devoted to his work and also with his musicians. 

       Besides his artistic vision, Zappa also included an important political analysis and concern to most of his songs and it will also distinguished him and his music later on. Zappa developed a strong criticism towards the society he was living in at the time and “the plastic culture,” as he emphasized in many of his songs. He attempted to communicate his different points of view about the society by trying to “infiltrate” through his songs and other forms of art or media. Looking through Zappa’s lyrics, art, interviews and other kind of medias, we can see how he wanted to gain access to the audience so that they could improve their musical taste and also to experience a more complex way to listen to music and be able to understand all the symbolism that he created. For example, we can see how since his first album Freak Out (1966), Zappa was focused in many political aspects that would concerned him such as the U.S. education system, the American society and values, and other political matters of that time, which we can notice through the lyrics of the album. 

ZAPPA THE COMPOSER:

     By looking to the musical structure in Zappa’s compositions, I have discovered more about the complexity and unexpected organization that Zappa created in these compositions. He was an unconventional composer that produced a variety of musical genres and put them together creating eccentric and outstanding compositions. In many of Zappa’s arrangements, we can hear the diversity of genres that he liked to merge in a single composition such as jazz, rock, rhythm and blues joined by other genres like classical music, between many others. Zappa had a mesmerizing creativity and vision that is shown in all of the compositions he wrote and in the recordings as well. 

      The recording of his songs was also a primordial element in his music since in many of his recordings, Zappa and his musicians would also improvise and create a variety of collage sounds to blend them together with the rest of the composition. From what I have listen in Zappa’s compositions, I have learn that most of his songs have a different form of structure and it would change, generally, depending on the album. For example, in the album Lumpy Gravy (1967), which was Zappa’s first solo album, we could describe the main musical structure style that he used through the album in the following lines:

- Spoken Word

- Serious Related Music

- Rock Related Music

- Jazz Related Music

-  Electroacoustics

    

-  Satirical Music

This music structure shows the range of genres and the complexity of the compositions that Zappa produced.

 Video that includes segments from Suzy Creamcheese promo 

and live acts in New York 1967, London 1968, and Germany 1968.