Raven Chacon, a Diné composer, performer, and installation artist, visits the WBCA Studio to discuss his practice. His work has been exhibited or performed at LACMA, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, The Kennedy Center, and other institutions, and his composition Voiceless Mass won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He frequently creates and performs site-specific pieces, including a recent show at Boston's Metropolitan Waterworks Museum presented by Non-Event. He discusses this performance as well as his influences, teaching youth in his community, and what, beyond sound, can be captured in a recording.
WBCA Podcasts
WBCA Presents: Raven Chacon
- WBC. - This is WBCA 102.9 FM, Boston's Community Radio Station. I'm your host Tommy Shenifield, and this is WBCA Presents, a show where we highlight musicians and artists from Boston and beyond. And today we are very lucky to be joined by Raven Chaconne, a Pulitzer Prize winning composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, who has done so many things. And thank you for being here. - Thank you, Tommy. - I'm interested to hear in your own words, how would you describe your practice as an artist and so much more? - Yeah, my work is mostly as a musician and as a composer. I think I do work in different areas that don't always overlap. One of those is writing chamber music, working with classical musicians, writing for the violin or the clarinet or the bassoon, and putting these ideas down on paper. And sometimes I don't even meet the musicians. I write the score and I send it over to them and they play it. And if the budget is there, I get to maybe even go and rehearse with them or see the concert. But having said that, I also make experimental noise music, and that never really had an institution. I was usually going and playing in somebody's basement and maybe they'd pass the hat and I'd get five bucks from each person or they'd buy a cassette tape or something. You know, that's a whole separate part of what I do. I'm an improviser and I used to make instruments, I used guitar pedals, I'm a guitarist also, but I like the pedals more than the guitar. And again, the cassette tape is a medium of both making music and also delivering music. So those end up in my work quite often. And so for a long time for, you know, I think from the time I was a teenager up until going and deciding to study music more formally through the university, these were the two areas I found myself in. But, you know, there were other works I was always wanting to make that extended beyond the score page or the cassette tape or the stage. And that led me to start understanding more how I can present my work as perhaps a sound installation, maybe a sculpture, maybe a room that is making sound, maybe working with video more than, you know, other kinds of delivery mediums. - When you went off to university beforehand, you were debating whether to focus on music or the visual arts. And obviously, as things have progressed, you've worked across both of those realms. But I'm interested, how did you make that decision at the time to at least at first focus more on music and sound than visual art? - I think, yeah, I think as a young person, I was naive in both ends, you know, at both ends of that, I assumed to be a professional musician, you had to read music and you had to write things down. And when I was very young, when I was about nine years old, I was able to take piano lessons. And so I was able to learn that language of reading and writing notes, but of course, you know, most musicians don't have to do that. It's not something that's a requirement to be a musician at all. But it's definitely one if you want to work with musicians who are playing classical instruments. So that was one end. On the other end too, I had an assumption, I didn't know what an artist really did. I mean, we know there's painters and people who draw and sculpt and do other kinds of things. But for myself, I had no idea of the kinds of mediums I would want to work in. Video was one idea, but I also did not have a camera. I did not have that kind of budget to work with as a young person either. But I did have a Walkman, you know, a cassette player, and I had a guitar amp. Maybe I could just make music with those two things. And so that, you know, that really made the decision for me. I don't think there was much of an internal debate at all of what to do. Rather, it was trying to decide, you know, what kinds of pieces I was going to make. - It sounds like it was partially that lower barrier to entry and that greater presence around you of music. Your grandfather, is it your grandfather that sang traditional Navajo songs? - Yeah, he did. He's somebody in the family that everybody points to as being a master musician of, you know, he would sing constantly in Dene language. He knew a lot of traditional songs. He would make up songs on the spot. We're watching a basketball game or watching the Olympics or something. He'd just probably make up a song about that, right then and there. We hope that these things are carried down through our blood, but I'm not certain I can point to him as a big influence into the things I do today, other than just being my grandpa, you know, and being somebody who I love, you know. But yeah, I also at the same time believe that every piece of music we've ever heard in our lives ends up in the music that we make or the music that we dream about. And so certainly he's in there as well. And he is where I come from. My body exists because of his body. And so, you know, that I suppose the influence is infinite. When we talk about it like that, the music that I wanted to make was music that I had never heard before. Not saying that I'm necessarily doing anything original, just at the time growing up in such a rural place, I had no idea what experimental music was. All I knew is that I had an interest in loud music, heavy metal music, distorted music, abrasive music, possibly unlistenable music, and that I thought that it should sound differently than it did. What would, yeah, very slow motion, thrash metal sound like? What would a tonal, minimal death metal sound like? And sure, there's bands who were doing that. I just wasn't exposed to them. And somehow I wanted to make my own version of these things I was imagining could be possible and develop that made sounds alone or in front of small groups of people or sometimes with small groups of people. But eventually I moved to California and I found a whole scene of people who are making noise music. And so that was a community I fell in two right away. And also, you know, people who are making experimental chamber music, people who are doing performance art, doing experimental video. Then, you know, I think that was just more motivation to continue what I was doing. And I found what it is I was supposed to be doing. - I like how part of what you touched on for your motivation is to make music that you weren't hearing and that you wanted there to be. But I'm curious from when you were growing up, do you see ways in which the sounds that you are drawn to were present? Partially thinking about field recordings, your 1999 piece, how did the environment you were in inspire you? - I mean, that's a question I get a lot. And I think the reason is that people are asking about, you know, where does an indigenous person get their influence from? And it's become a trope that, you know, we get it from the land, but it's a true thing. And I think I came upon understanding that very accidentally as well. I think I truly had an intention of trying to make a field recording. Not even a field recording as a piece of sound art or anything like that, because again, I didn't know what that was. Just to record the places I knew. And maybe there's always a bit of subversion in this. I thought I would go to these places that are fairly quiet. I mean, very rural out in the desert of the reservation, the Navajo Nation, and take a quiet recording. And what's the biggest way I can invert that would just be to turn it up. And when I turned it up all the way to its maximum, I really liked that sound. I could hear a magnification of that place. I understood that to be music, but at the same time being this kind of statement of resisting documentation of the place that I knew more personal, I didn't have to go and make a field recording of those places, I know those places. So I think that's remains a constant idea in this work is thinking about places that I am responding to or that I find myself in, or that I get invited to, places where I am a guest. And more and more of that becomes the case as I get invited to come and present art or do projects in different places. And so I think that's something that music and sound can actually do quite well is talk about place. And not just the sounds of the place, but maybe the speed of the place. And inside of all of that information, maybe one could even start to think about where, you know, what things have occurred in that site. And so that's one of the things I think about when I'm making a new work is just what can I say? You know, what can I learn and what can I share? - I'm curious, do you ever, especially in the context of where you are now, where you're obviously an incredibly accomplished having won a Pulitzer Prize for your piece, "Voiceless Mass," or 2023, MacArthur Fellow? Do you ever feel in the midst of all what I'm sure is, you know, great to get that recognition. Do you ever feel pressure to do something that somebody else might want you to do as opposed to to keep on the path that you've been going on and what you want to make? - Oh, not at all. Both those awards are very liberating to me. - Oh, that's great to hear. - I feel like I could stop if I wanted to, but I won't, of course. No, that pressure was there a bit early on and that pressure comes from different angles. It comes from the angle of the obvious one that you need to make a living somehow doing the things you love. Perhaps, you know, you could always just go get another separate job and do the things you love in your spare hours, but I had faith in the things that I wanted to do, whether they were gonna be able to support my living or not. But at the same time, too, yeah, there's another direction that one might receive. Some pressure would be of representing others or yourself. And so, you know, I understood that I was representing where I come from, my family, my relatives, my relations. And so there is pressure there in being able to want to make the things that do not exist in a world, but also you're representing something that has been tried, that people have tried to make not exist anymore. And so, yeah, how does one survive? How does one make something generative? And so I think for me that a solution came not through the art, but through perhaps teaching, teaching young people from my community to have that same freedom of expression with whatever they're doing. This was not to see, you know, to try to steer all of them into some kind of collective new sound or create a new genre or anything like that. Really, it's just, it's another experiment in some ways just to see what would emerge. What is the sound that these young, or the sounds that these young people are listening to? What happens when they become the filter for those sounds and it emerges through their own string quartets, for instance? And yeah, what are these concerns that they might have and whether they're art related or not? - What has teaching inspired in your own music and practice? What have you learned from your students perhaps? - I learned a lot of techniques from students who were doing what they should, which is playing instruments the way they should not be played. So for a long time, I was doing a project called the Native American Composer Apprentice Project where I would go back to my home community, other towns on Navajo reservation, Hopi Reservation, Salt River Pima community in the Scottsdale area, what's now called Scottsdale, Arizona, and teach young people to write for string quartet. I wasn't teaching them how to play strings 'cause I don't really know how to play strings at all. I mean, I'm a lifelong student of cello and someday maybe I'll be capable, but I know how they work. And so I show them what I know, but, and then I hand over this violin or cello to them and they'll always make some kind of sound I'd never heard before. It's really quite a direct thing that I've learned from them and maybe more technical than you're hoping, but it's always some kind of extended technique that I gather from them. I mean, I'd like to say yes, I've learned more about myself by being a teacher, but I'm not gonna give you that one 'cause I think there's other things I've learned and it's surely sounds I've never heard before. - What's the most surprising sound you've ever heard? Can you think of that? - In life? - In life. - Oh, no, I don't know. I don't even know if I want to go there because it's got to be some kind of horrible sound and by horrible, I mean, violent and bad. But no, I try not to think about that. You know, I like to think of sounds existing on their own, sounds representing something that we don't know what it is, you know, sounds that come out of nowhere. I think there's power and a lot of sounds. Not just information, I mean, information is one thing, but I think power can be another thing that has no information, it remains a mystery. And so I'm always seeking that kind of experience, I think. Not just, and I'm not so certain it can come from just music, but I think we try our best as composers and performers to get to those places. - As you say there, you know, there's a lot of sound that is violent or otherwise haunting. And I feel like something that comes across in a lot of your work is this braveness in a sense to, and maybe it's not necessarily brave, it's just simply existing. But to capture moments that, well, for instance, silent choir, your piece, which features 500 people at the Backwater Bridge at Standing Rock. And it's a moment where you were there and you recorded this moment of 500 people simply standing. And I liked what you had to say about that where so much of the power of the recording isn't necessarily what you can literally hear, but the space that's recalled by that recording. And I just think that you have a very powerful way of simply recording in a sense. - Yeah, that was a moment, you know, that was by chance myself being present at a moment when there was not just a protest, but a silence where nothing else could be said about, you know, towards those who were encroaching upon the water of the Standing Rock reservation. And so what, you know, not only what does that mean when one does not respond, but what else is in that recording? Sound is not really in there. No one is doing anything other than breathing and staring at the police. But, you know, what else can be felt? I think it's what I'm asking. Can we understand the amount of people who are present in that recording, even though they're not saying or doing anything? Is there an extension from that recording to us to understand the seriousness of the situation? And so I think that'll be something I'll always be trying to understand, maybe even justify as I make sound art or make music, is what else is being emitted or being conjured up into the space between that situation in our ears to, that is becoming something that we are trying to understand. And if anything, can I help that occur? Or can I myself create a situation that conjures that? And so, you know, I think of that. I mean, I'm talking about that in a way that sounds very, you know, separate from me. Music, staged music, maybe even, maybe even I'm talking a little bit more about something spiritual, but at the same time, we all have these kinds of experiences when we, I think when we go see art, you know, when we see theater, when we see a really good music performance. And so it's something else that, you know, I think we can understand being a part of these experiences and it's quite different, you know, and I think it's constantly evolving as we have different relationships with recorded mediums, with going to see live events, interacting with each other, interacting via phones and email and whatever, Zoom. You know, the big thing that happened was a pandemic. I mean, there was a lot of eye-opening for me during that time, I had realized the experience of going to an art exhibition for myself, let's say of paintings or sculpture, had nothing to do with the ocular, you know, myself going and looking at anything. It was more to be in the presence of these things, to be in the same room as a sculpture. Looking at it might be part of it and what other senses are happening around. But I think just being next to something, being in the same room as something, has its own kind of, its own power and its own relationship with whoever encounters it that I think is very special. And so I'm still trying to figure out what that is, but pandemic was a big revelation to me in just how I experience art. And so, you know, another question that gets asked all the time to me is, what am I listening to? And I always respond, you know, I don't really listen to recorded music. I mean, if I really want to hear something out and understand it, I'll do that. But ideally I would go see it live, see this music being made live, see somebody performing it. Even if the conditions are not ideal, you know, perfect stage or whatever. But I think to be with it, be in proximity to it and be able to, maybe the ability to not recall it is also a good thing in that it stays in this other floating area of memory or a one-time experience. - Recently, a little under a month ago, you performed at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum here in Boston. And that was a site-specific one-time performance. And I'm interested to hear about the process behind developing that piece and then performing it. - Mm-hmm, yeah, that was a really fun gig. It was an invitation from non-event to do a concert. And they invited me to do it at Waterworks. And so again, I'm always thinking site-specifically, how can I respond to water, to think of that place that's now a museum that tells the story of water management through this area. And I didn't, I think at the end of the day, I didn't want to do anything too didactic or literal. I was thinking, maybe I'll get filled recordings of water sounds or something, but I'm never really happy with the way water sounds through recordings. And it could be done quite badly too. I mean, it can sound like, I don't know, dripping water is not always the, you know, something that anyone wants to hear sometimes. But so I was thinking, how can I recreate at least the idea of motion of water, of torrents of water. And for quite a long time, I've been using pink noise as not necessarily a sound in music, but a way to mask sounds. So it, pink noise has its ability to, to kind of drown out other sounds or filter them in a way where you're not getting all of the information of what other sounds are next to it or in its beam. And speaking of beams, I've been using these hyper directional speakers to emit that pink noise to different, but usually to individuals in the audience. And so at Waterworks, I was, I was using pink noise and white noise, which replicates these sounds of water in motion and beaming those towards different areas of, of the museum, of the Waterworks, tanks and machinery. And so it really just started there. I mean, just, just a way to explore with beams of sound, all the nooks and crannies of that amazing space and, you know, allow people to kind of walk around. You know, we put out seats, but really the idea, I think they're, that, that could be made possible is one should walk around as much as possible and, and see all of this beautiful machinery and pipes and tanks and, and stairwells and everything that is inside of there. And also some, you know, those things look resonant. They're so massive, I don't think you can really resonate any of those tanks, even though we had large subwoofers and speakers in there, it takes quite a bit to do that. But I think one can make a connection or a link that implies that those, those machines and tanks are making sound themselves. And so that's what I was going for. I, you know, I had an hour and I brought everything I could. I don't, I live about three hours away from here. So it was, it was a gig where I could put everything in the car and bring it over and try things out. - I was there and I, I was walking laps around the space. I did kind of start to feel at certain points like all of the machinery was coming back to life and things were moving out of the corner of my eye and things. So I, I thought it illustrated really well how in your work through music and sound you can recreate memories and, and spaces that may have once been something else. - Absolutely, you know, I don't really, I'm not sure I believe in ghosts, you know. I, I want to believe in ghosts. I've tried, I've put myself in situations where a ghost should have come and, you know, said boo, but it's never happened. And, but something else surely occurs. And I think sound is probably a portal to that other place. Maybe it's just ourselves that is delayed in reality then we kind of feel this presence of others near us sometimes or maybe hear something or see something. And I don't, I don't know what that is. But when I, sometimes when I make sounds it does skew my idea of what the space is that I'm inside, you know, of and where I am. And so that's been, that's been another interest of mine. I think with, especially with a recording, recording it. We are, I'll use the word capturing a situation. And maybe it's appropriate to say capturing because maybe we are stuck in that situation once it's fixed. And that is creating some kind of friction or conflict in, in our local universe where, where we are, we are experiencing that. And so it's really interesting. We, you know, we have all this video, we have cell phones, we have cameras in our pocket, we have recording devices in our pocket. It's never happened before. So what, what is that doing? And I mean, I'm not even going to get in a conversation about AI or anything like that. But I think alone just us having this, these options to replay things and share, share the profile of the visual or sonic profile of a room next, you know, that somebody's in across the country and share that with you almost immediately or in real time. Surely is, is not natural or if it is natural, we're, it's going to take a while for us to understand it. Well, unfortunately, we're just about out of time. This has been WBCA presents on 102.9 FM Boston. I've been your host, Tommy Shenifield joined by Raven Chacon, a musician and artist in so many ways. I just have one last quick question. What's a hope for your future work? Yeah, thank you. Thank you for, for having me, Tommy. And just future work and what I got coming up next, my wife and I, our names, Candice Hopkins, we're co-curating a show at Tufts University Art Gallery called Impossible Music. So we've invited artists, composers to respond to a simple question. What is a music or sound that is impossible? Not just impossible to play, like it's too difficult, but what is something that should not exist in this world, but can? And so that's not that that's my hope, but that's, you know, that's a question we have and we're excited to see the answers to that question. And that's going to be in January at Tufts University. That's right. Well, we look forward to it. And is there a website or anywhere where people can best find out more about you and your work? Yeah, my website is called spiderwebs in the sky.com. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Raven, for being here. This has been WBCA presents on WBCA 102.9 FM Boston, Boston's community radio station.