The Center’s Studio Podcast’s 100th Episode: An Audio Exhibition, Pt. 3

Part 3: Unexpected Insights - In this third of our Audio Exhibition to celebrate The Center’s Studio Podcast’s 100th episode, 7 clips were collected from podcasts where artists inform us about the world. These artists become the most engaging and delightful teachers you can imagine on a variety of topics: Barrett Burgin talks about horror films, Jeremy Grimshaw speaks about music and traditions in Bali, Jihea Hong-Park muses about classical music and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage, Kate Monson gives some surprising statistics about Utah and dance, Gonzalo and Susana Silva bring their Argentinian art and ideas to New York, Steven L. Peck talks about the ways that scientific truths can be even truer in a novel, and Trevor Reed provides illuminating thoughts on Native American objects and music and their repatriation to the tribes from which they sprang. 

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

Transcript

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Artists are experts, of course. They're trained or otherwise endowed with ideas and skills beyond what most of the rest of us possess. They also have often thought deeply about what they are communicating. And if you get them in just the right mood, they'll reveal to you choice bits of what they know. In this third of our audio exhibition to celebrate the Center Studio Podcast's 100th episode, I collected seven clips from podcasts where artists inform us about the world and their own world. One of the great things about a podcast is its ability to educate. These artists become the most engaging and delightful teachers you can imagine on a variety of topics. Barrett Bergen talks about horror films. Jeremy Grimshaw speaks about music and traditions in Bali. G. A. Hung Park muses about classical music and Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. Kate Monson gives some surprising statistics about Utah and Dance. Gonzalo and Susanna Silva bring their Argentine art and ideas to New York. Stephen L. Peck talks about the ways that scientific truths can be even truer in a novel. And Trevor Reed provides illuminating thoughts on Native American objects and music and their repatriation to the tribes from which they sprang. First is filmmaker Barrett Bergen. Kind of married all of these art forms in a way. And then as far as like my attraction to horror, and I would actually say I'm I'm not not perhaps a like a conventional horror buff. My my uncle is more this way. I have an uncle who loves like the classic 80s slasher movies and anything with, you know, kind of Halloween and killers and stuff. That's that's not really my interest. I enjoy a kind of a subgenre called elevated horror, which which uses fear to kind of tell a deeper dramatic story. For you, what is the connection between religion and horror and maybe specifically the gospel that LDS people believe in? And and I I think in order to find our way to the Latter-day Saint tradition, we can even back up and look at the literary function and the sort of cultural function of let's say horror, but any sort of kind of scary story that is as old as time itself. I mean, it is, it is, it is a, in my opinion, an integral function to uh to all of spirituality and religion. If you look at just where does it come from from an almost from an almost hunter-gatherer perspective or a or a nomadic perspective, yeah, you you need to keep the children away from the cave up on the hill, right? And you can either get into, you know, there's a big bear up there that's gonna gobble you up, or what is more natural and what is more passed down and evocative and memorable within culture is, oh, there's a witch that lives up there. And she she does these, these terrible things to children. And if you go up there, you'll never come back. And functionally, is it not kind of the same? I mean, it is keeping us away from danger. It is as old as sitting around a campfire and wondering what's in the scary area, not aware that there's an instinctive evolutionary function to it that keeps us away from danger. But if you think about the the Grimm brothers or the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales, right? They're dark. They're scary. The Greek tragedies are often just violent and terrible. And then, of course, I think probably the most applicable for us is the Old Testament warnings and graphic descriptions and wives turning into pillars of salt and people's, you know, people's eyes burning out of their heads and things. I mean, this is thousands of years old to kind of approach storytelling this way. And I think it is only, it's only in our kind of post-industrialist culture that I think we are so maybe bothered or afraid of these kinds of stories, because death used to be commonplace and you had to kind of have a way to deal with the brutality of life itself and sort of the natural world. So this is an ar archetypal way of telling stories. Well, I I mean, to to be maybe flip about it, and I I don't mean any disrespect in saying this, but it does not seem that God is above scare tactics, if that makes sense. You know, there there is an element of the threat of the lake of fire and brimstone. And to some extent, that's no different than the threat of the of the bear up in the cave or the witch in the cave. In fact, as Latter-day Saints, we we accept that the fire and brimstone visual is largely metaphorical, but it's it's meant to help us understand the consequences of our actions. And I think that in horror, you really do get kind of clear good and evil. You understand that evil is a force. And that uh to your point, Glenn, there's some catharsis in it. I've I've I've I've got a couple of features in the works, one of them being a uh sort of a Mormon horror approach. And I I hope people like it once it once it's done. The music is Belinese Gamelon, and we'll be talking all about Gamelon today, where it comes from, how the sounds are made, what its history is, and how an ensemble called Gamelon Bintang Wayu became resident at Brigham Young University, and how the school came to bring international Gamelon artists to campus in 2019. Our tour guide through this discussion is the wonderful and wise Jeremy Grimshaw, Alodan Salamat Datang, Jeremy. Wow. You prepared. What language was that? I have no idea. I think it was supposed to say welcome. Yeah. Ten years ago, I first came in contact with gamelon, something I knew next to nothing about. Let's paint a picture for those listeners who are equally new to it. Gamalong isn't a single instrument, but rather an ensemble of percussive instruments from Java and Bali. Is that getting close? Yep. Yeah. That's true. How do you describe it when people ask you what it is? Aaron Ross Powell The word gamelon is used sort of like the word orchestra would be or Ben. So it's a it's a percussion orchestra. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Is this music that's passed down? Is it notated in some way? Is it improvised? Most music in Bali is not notated, at least not notated in the way that we might think in the West. Aaron Ross Powell You got into Gamelon a little bit at Eastman, but it wasn't until you were teaching at Denison University in Ohio that you became a student. Is that right? Aaron Ross Powell So I I played in a group for fun. Actually, my wife played in the Gamelon group at Eastman before I did. And as a sort of by then lapsed percussionist, I you know, I wanted to get my hands on some of the You had lost your calluses. Yeah, that's right. I'd gotten soft. And well, and I and I saw the instruments and I thought it's just a bunch of bars. It's like uh it's like playing the xylophone without any black notes. How hard could it be? And that was a dumb thing to think. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Had you read much about it before. I mean, I'd read I'd I'd read a lot because I was really interested in the music. And um but yeah, I was I studied Gamalon for a few years before I was able to go to Bali. And and at that point, but just as like as a as an interest, it wasn't like your career, right? Or was it uh not until I was a Denison. My first job out of grad school was at Denison University, and it's a wonderful small liberal arts college in central Ohio. And it's the kind of place where if you had a crazy idea that you thought would uh you know result in rich experiences for students, you could knock on the provost's door and say, Can I try this? How about if we do? Yeah. When did BYU get into all of this? Does it predate your arrival? Well, sort of. So I had been at Denison for two years, and around that time BYU had decided to change parts of its curriculum related to music history and world music. Uh they posted a job, and uh I I initially uh hadn't uh thought I would apply because it was specifically for somebody that had a PhD in ethnomusicology, and my PhD was in musicology, and I'd just sort of defected to into uh ethnomusicology and gotten into Gamalon. BYU had decided to expand its offerings related to non-Western classical music. And so I don't know that they were specifically looking for, you know, somebody that would come and teach Gamelon, but they were looking for somebody that would come and and open up some new musical possibilities. Right. So, okay, so congratulations, you get a job. Uh, you come here. It's not like there are any instruments to play. In 2010, you wrote a gorgeous book called The Island of Bali is littered with prayers about your experience going to Bali, this commission of instruments, and I loved how in the book you described these two distinct cultures of Bali and Provo, and how they gradually came together for you in a number of ways, uh the metaphorically and then literally with the arrival of these instruments. And one of the chapters is titled Stowaway Spirits in the Shadow of Mount Tipponogus, and I thought I would ask you to read an excerpt about it. So this is and you have no choice, okay, to say, but to say yes, I will do it. When the instruments arrived, I couldn't help but notice that the unpacking party was a kind of music of its own. A polyphonic chorus of hammering, the groan of boards being forced out of square, nails squealing at the pull of crowbars. The 21 crates, some of them as big as refrigerators, and all of them sturdy enough to protect their heavy, precious cargo on the 9,000 mile, three-month-long journey from Bali, Indonesia to Provo, Utah, put up quite a fight before giving up their contents. Luckily, a large welcoming committee had already assembled for the job. Some percussionists who had learned about these new exotic instruments, an Indonesian biochemistry major looking for a reminder of home, a few students, some with prior musical experience and some with none, who had simply fallen in love with recordings of Balinese music and were eager to try it out. One of the reasons I had ordered these instruments was because I had experienced their curious ability to create a sense of cohesion and community simply through the sounds they made. As it turned out, they had already begun their work even before they were out of their boxes. Although the builders had emailed some pictures from Bali, we were still taken aback by the instrument's beauty. The giant gongs hung suspended between intricate gilded scepters. The double headed drums were sheathed in bold swatches of hand painted fabric. The jackfruit wood frames of the graduated bronze xylophones were covered in elaborate carvings with figures and filigree busily jostling for space. The front panels of several of the instruments depicted scenes from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic recounting Prince Rama's rescue of his wife Sita from Ravana, the evil ten-headed demon king of Lanka. One packing crate fell away to reveal a golden deer fleeing from Rama's arrows into the forest. More hammering and pulling, and suddenly a benevolent gold winged vulture appeared to protect the princess. Someone tore through layers of bubble wrap, and there was Hanuman, the animal god, arriving at Sita's room to deliver Rama's ring as a sign of her imminent rescue. The back panels depicted various stories from the Panchatantra, ancient Sanskrit animal fables created to prepare the children of nobility for their future responsibilities. Lined up in a row and viewed from the back, the instruments, bustling with monkeys, jackals, crabs, cranes, and snails, looked like the cars in a miniature circus train. Each scene was carved in relief and painted in gold against a deep blue background. Blossom, cornices, and rounded kernels in gold and bright red surrounded these tableaus. Fierce buttukala, demons meant to scare away evil forces, protruded from the instrument's sides. The two largest instruments bore our group's name on their front panels, Bintangwahu. My good friend Ed Luna, a polymeth expert in the languages, dance traditions, and musical styles of Indonesia, had suggested the name to me. It ingenuously followed two Balinese traditions while at the same time reflecting the unique spiritual aspirations of the instrument's new home at Brigham Young University, the flagship school of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, or Mormons. First, the name Bintang Wahu invoked divine blessing through vivid imagery. Bintung means star, especially a star of good omen. Wahu means vision or revelation. In fact, Wahu is the word for the book of Revelation in the Indonesian translation of the New Testament. Considered together, the words evoked a sacred cosmology, star of vision. Second, the name formed a clever play on words by containing within itself a reference to its new home, Bintang Wahu BYU. Opposite the panels bearing the ensemble's name, facing towards the players and away from the audience, another figure had been carved into the instrument casings. This one was entirely unique among all Balinese instruments anywhere in the world. It had occurred to me as we were placing the order with the builder that in order to create a community around this ensemble, it would help to have something unusual, something of our very own to connect us with the instruments. We would need from right from the start some lore. It seemed appropriate and resonant with the cross-cultural nature of the instrument's acquisition to conceal some small symbol of Mormonism somewhere among the Hindu and Balinese figures, just as the instruments themselves represented a small island of Hindu Bali culture within the Mormon Sea of Provo. These two panels bore our curious logo, a stylized Balinese version of the iconic sunstone. This emblem had adorned the temple in Nauvoo, Illinois, which the Mormons had barely erected before being driven out by mobs in 1846. The Balinese carver replicated this unique Mormon symbol closely, except in one important respect. The hands descending from the corners above the smiling sun no longer held trumpets as they had in Nauvoo. Trumpets, after all, are nowhere to be found in most Balinese ensembles. Instead, the angelic hands bore the mallets and hammers used in Balinese music. I relished the beautiful incongruity of it all, the drab basement rehearsal space filled with these glimmering instruments, the jumbled religious iconography, and this room full of students eagerly waiting to make music from the other side of the world. We cleared away the lumber and packing foam and arranged the instruments in order to take in the sight of them all at once. Together, this elaborate percussion orchestra, the first of its kind in Utah, constituted a single collective entity known as a Gamalon. You write way too well to be pushing spreadsheets the rest of your life. Just throwing that out there into the thing cube. Today I'm speaking to a globe-trotting concert pianist J. Hong Park. In addition to your academic career, you are an active performer as a soloist and chamber music artist, but that's just the beginning. You are also lecturing on social issues at conferences, building artist residency programs and community bridges between artists and audiences. You're publishing, presenting academic papers, collaborating with composers to create new music, and standing as a powerful voice against prejudice aimed at Asian peoples. Before we get to all of those things, tell me where this drive to excel and make a difference comes from in your life. My late mother often reminded us from an early age that our purpose in life is to use our unique talents to glorify God and build up his kingdom. And so for me, that meant it was through music that I do that. I must say that a turning point in my life came in 2001, shortly after 9-11. I was just beginning my master's program at Juilliard, and like many New Yorkers who've gone through 9-11, I was pretty traumatized. All of a sudden I found myself confused, wondering the meaning of life, what does it mean to be a performing artist? Why am I doing this? Does it even matter to the world what I do? What's my greater purpose in pursuing a life in music? So since then I've done a lot of soul searching. And after all these years, I finally recognized three critical components of my personal identity that gives me a sense of meaning and purpose in my work. You want to hear them? Um first, my identity as a woman and woman of faith. Second, my identity as an Asian American and more specifically Korean American. And lastly, my identity as a Latter-day Saint artist. For me, these identities are the driving forces behind my desire to make a difference and share my artistry in the wider world. Just in my life, I've known many incredible musicians who are speaking up and who are making changes, advocating for what we do and also advocating for social change. Well, we could talk about any one of these interests for hours, but let's focus a little bit on social issues given that May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. So, first of all, what have you witnessed as a Korean American musician that's alarming? Well, first my family and I immigrated to the US when I was in seventh grade. I grew up in New Jersey where I was one of very few Asian students in school. As a teen, as you can imagine, that was really tough. I didn't talk like my friends because I had an accent. And first day of school was always stressful because none of my teachers knew how to pronounce my first name. For the first time, Glenn, I felt a sense of belonging, if that makes sense. But to my surprise, I now found myself dealing with a different set of challenges. For instance, I wondered how can I stand out among this crowd of super talented Asian and Asian American musicians and be recognized for my own uniqueness and individuality? How may I withstand certain bias and assumptions of being an Asian American female piano student? And later, as I continue to pursue my career, I found myself asking other questions related to race. For example, are Asians and Asian Americans people of color? I certainly think so. But often we are stereotyped as a model minority, a myth that suggests we are all very polite, obedient, submissive, self-reliant, and perhaps successful. We are often perceived to be doing just fine and that we do not need any support because we're not considered people of color. And this is absolutely not true. Asian Americans are a diverse group of people from a vast and culturally diverse background with diverse experiences. We need support. We need to be seen, and our voices need to be heard as well. Yes, there is a well-representation of Asian and Asian Americans in music schools, competitions, and orchestras. But why aren't there more of us holding leadership positions in academia, cultural institutions, and music industry where important decisions are made? Where are the Asian singers in great American opera companies? How might orchestras promote compositions by Asian and Asian American composers beyond the lunar New Year celebration? And finally, what does diversity, inclusion, and equity mean for our field? And does it include Asians and Asian Americans? In 2021, an article was featured. You might know this article in the New York Times. And I want to read you this quote. The reporters suggest, quote, the success of some artists of Asian descent obscures the fact that many face routine racism and discrimination. The reporter then asks a point question Do Asians are represented in classical music, but are they seen? So these are some of the challenges that I feel that we as Asians and Asian Americans musicians face today. Because hate crimes aimed at our Asian population really exploded. Uh at the time my wife was working for a Chinese backed financial firm in Midtown and it got so bad for the employees that they were told not to come to work anymore. It was just too dangerous for them to be on the streets or in the subway to get into work. And so eventually, I mean the company closed its doors. No way. It was it was really scary. The things that you're bringing up regarding inclusion just really hit home for me because I have a whole bunch of friends who are in that exact camp. My experience as a teaching artist of New York Philharmonic had a tremendous impact on me as a performer and educator. I had the privilege of working with elementary school students and classroom teachers across the fibros of New York City, facilitating in meaningful musical experiences that allow for creativity through active engagement. I remember an experience that has made a deep impact on me. I was teaching a fifth grade classroom back in 2010 there was a boy who had moved to Harlem from Haiti shortly after the massive earthquake that hit the country if you remember I believe we had listened we did some composing activity and we performed a melody based on Mzorski's pictures at an exhibition and after the class while I was packing up this little boy ran after me and grabbed my sleeves and said excuse moi and continued to speak to me in French and I was really confused and another student translated for me and the boy asked where can I find more music like this? Where can I listen to music like this? Apparently it was his first experience with classical music. At that time we still carried around CDs and so I grabbed whatever I had in my bag and I said here these are yours. I believe that music can unite and bring communities together there is a great power in music as we all know. And this is Kate Monson to you and your students what are they like what kind of training have they had before they are arrive on your doorstep? I mean Utah's a dance place right Utah is wild about the dancing. So I started adjunct at BYU so I was part time at BYU starting in 2005 and then I switched to full time in 2013. And I would say over the years that our students have become more and more well prepared in even contemporary idioms before they hit our campus that we're kind of blown away by our freshmen coming in these days. So we do have people that walk in that have never danced in their lives and become a dance major and succeed really well at being a dance major. I don't know if it's fair to ask you that how to characterize BYU compared to other institutions, but how does teaching dance at BYU differ from maybe what it might be like at another university? I mean I think the biggest difference is the breadth and size of it that we have we service I I've heard the number several times that we service 5,000 students a semester and that's a lot that means we have 5,000 students that come through our classes per semester. They're not majors we have about 120 to 140 majors per year but we have so many companies which is also very different. Most dance departments don't have companies anymore it's it's expensive it's a lot of work and we have so many companies so the contemporary alone has three ballet has two I can't even count how many ballroom and cultural dance have I lose track especially ballroom they have multiple so the fact that we have four genres always going is huge I'm so excited to be with Gonzalo and Susanna Silva this morning. Last night was the opening of their exhibition Instrumentos de silencio at Sgt's daughters gallery in Tribeca here in New York and I'm exhausted. I woke up this morning and my voice was like hello so I don't know how the two of you are feeling but good morning. I thought what we would do this morning is talk a little bit about your show and how it came to be and hear from both of you Susanna and Gonzalo are brother and sister from Buenos Aires and they are the winners of the Ariel Bibe Endowment Prize. Had you and Gonzalo ever worked together before to make art? Never it's our first time it was a magnificent excuse to work together and we are brothers we talk about everything and we do a lot of things together but never make art before. The name of the exhibition is instrumentos de silencio and unless my Spanish has completely disappeared that means instruments of silence. I love this title because the exhibition has a lot to do exhibition has a lot to do with music. So instruments are part of that and silence is wonderful too because in sound there's the opposite of sound but it's also to be silenced is a group of people who no longer matter to other people. And so instruments of silence is also practices and cultures of subjugation or forcing people to acculturate to a new thing. Am I just making all of this up or is that part of your thematic? That's absolutely the the the central theme of the of the exhibition yeah there is also like instruments not only concerns about musical instruments but also like devices more general way the devices to silence and devices to produce silence. Absolutely yeah I'm going to describe one of your pieces Susanna it's displayed on a pedestal and it's an elaborate paper cut book. And so if you can visualize a case that kind of closes and goes around a book that was laser cut paper that has this text then then there are the guts of the book sort of these folded signatures in this beautiful red Fabriano paper. You'll have to correct me if I'm wrong with this but it is it's informed by a 1610 publication. Do you remember the title of the publication? Okay. Better that you say it than me. And it was the first book published in the Western hemisphere that had musical notation in it. Yeah. And so it's a significant book historically and so Susanna you created some of the pages that have notes on them. Yeah. But there were some other pages too a couple of the pages one is like looking down a an architectural plan. And so like if you're looking at the building where this music would first have been performed that's it. Exactly completely cool. And then like in the original book opposite the title page there's like a frontispiece image and that image is also part of your book. So I think it was you Gonzalo who was describing a little bit about why that object has a kind of a complex relationship with history. Yeah it is like so so tell us a little bit about how that book was used and why it was important in the exhibition. Okay so when in the 17th century at the beginning as you said there was these uh these these codics books that were written to sort of teach the Christian way to live to Andean people and this this book it's a compendium of all these uh doctrines and and ways for evangel evangelicize evangelize yeah evangelizing evangelizing and one one of these uh methods of subjugation as you said is through music so they translated uh a hymn to quechua language which is the this was the first time Western music was translated to a quechwa language and they made some parallels from this was uh anymore to to the Virgin Mary so they translated to the Inca most relative uh god lady that's so complex but it's really interesting and somebody at the at the exhibition last night at the opening speaks quechuan yeah yeah but I didn't I didn't get to know him next time next time you're in New York for an opening I'll be sure to point it out. I'm getting emotional thinking about saying goodbye to the two of you this has been the loveliest experience. I just have the best job. Susanna you're leaving town tomorrow and Gonzalo's staying a little bit longer because he has a very long checklist of New York things to do. This is Gonzalo's first time in the States Susanna's been here this is her third trip to New York City so you're an old pro. More or less um I would just generally I would love to know what this experience has meant to you. For me it was a dream really that I was completely afraid because it's it was a lot of people I I didn't know I don't know if I'm gonna feel comfort with all of them and the feeling was automatic as a friend. The the the journey here was one of my enrichment experience I had talking personally and artistically really without getting too weepy I have loved having you here I just feel like I've said this to you privately so I'll say it publicly too we're going to be friends forever. It's just the loveliest experience for me. You have to come to Buenos Aires as well yes please for for mate or just for generally speaking? Mate is the entry. It's literally a gateway drug for you all. Thank you thank you for for everything. You know in Spanish sometimes when I get emails and letters from people who are Spanish speaking who are friends they sign off by saying unfuerte abrasto which is means how do you how would you translate that a strong hug? A strong hug, yeah. A big strong hug. A big strong hug. I'm here today with Stephen El Peck to discuss his latest novel according to the title page is Mr Stephen El Peck's The Tragedy of King Lear, The Goat of the LaSalle, published by By Common Consent Press in 2019. The novel was a semifinalist for the Big Moose Prize at Black Lawrence Press, and it's a wild ride of a read. Publisher's weekly said of the novel readers will instantly be won over by this wildly creative blend of stunning speculation, terrifying warning and fraught relationships. And I confess I was talking about those things. How does this new book relate to other novels of yours? So a lot of my novels take place in the Moab area. That's where I grew up and went to high school and so it's a land I'm familiar with and so for example the scholar Moab takes place there. Part of Gildatrillum takes place there and this one obviously set in the LaSalle's right next to Moab it follows Shakespeare's king lear pretty closely but it takes place in the future after a climate change apocalypse. It's a lot of science and I definitely want to talk about that predictive nature of it. Yeah you say it's in the future but it's not that much in the future. No I mean at one point I is if I'm recalling correctly you mentioned 2021 as a year when some large mammals are last seen or something like that. Yeah. So it's it's cautionary in the sense without being futuristic which is somewhat easier to dismiss as a writer. Right. Other people and I think maybe even the book jacket might describe this as funny, but I find it as scary as I'll get at it. That's fine. You do? Yeah I do too. So as a scientist are you scared about the health of the planet? I am very I I think we're in trouble and we see it everywhere and especially as an ecologist one of the things that often are given as evidence of climate change are the graphs and the the actual temperature readings and things which are significant but they're not very personal. It's hard to look at a graph of increasing temperature and and and feel something emotional. But in every ecosystem that I know climate change is affecting it. And if you go to ecological meetings and and hear the reports you see coral reefs dying you see tundra being affected and permafrost melting and affecting the biota you see the loss in rainforests and places of there was just a report that there's a massive decrease in the number of insect species which are the foundation of an eco ecology. Birds are disappearing worldwide and I'm not sure why that well in certain presses this appears but it's not widely known how devastating the ecosystems are on our planet. You can see it in Utah with the bark pine beetles becoming more widespread because his trees are stressed by the droughts and by the changes in climate. And there are references to a lot of these things in the book. Yes. At the end of the book you make I I mean I haven't committed it to memory but if I'm kind of paraphrasing it, you say one of the dangers of all this climate change was it was easy to dismiss because it was so gradual. Right. I don't know if you can say that now though it's ramping up yes it is another thing in the book that I thought was kind of funny is like the worst swear word that you can think of for a person was a denier. Yeah yeah that was adorable yeah yeah it's hard book it's obvious that the climate has changed so completely it's harder to deny I made the big mistake of reading your book I shouldn't I shouldn't stop I made the mistake of reading your book at the same time the Australian fires were going. Oh and so you know it's only the beginning of their fire season there. Right. And they're they're noticing weather phenomena including fire driven thunderstorms, fire clouds and ember attacks. And so as I was reading your book, I was also reading the news and so King Lear felt less fictional by the minute. Yeah. And I think that's I I think that's the way I see things going these these kinds of fires the big California fires the thing about climate change is we often think about it just in terms of warming but it also means changes in weather patterns. So dry places become wetter wet places become drier it's a complete rearrangement of what's happening on the planet. And so these kinds of fires are going to become more common in some places other places are getting wetter we're seeing these thousand year floods every five years, every ten years where before we we had some prediction of when these things were going to going to happen and now things are turning topsy turvy. Earlier this week I was reading an article in my local newspaper about bristle cone pines and I have a deep connection to them. I love bristlecone they're just my favorite thing. And I was reading about what the the density of their wood has helped protect them against some beetles and whatever and they tend to grow quite a a substantial distance to each other so if there's a fire they tend not to jump to the next one. Yeah. But even now they're seeing some of those millennia old species disappear disappearing. Yes. One of the things that kind of broke my heart about your book was um your love of aspen trees. It seemed I'm I do love aspen trees. Yeah and and I grew up each year not tending goats like King Lear but tending sheep. And we would go up uh we would take our herd of maybe 500 head of sheep or so up in this was in Cedar City past Cedar Breaks where there's this big lookout and on a clear day you can see way past Zion. You can see almost to the Grand Canyon on a clear day or you could when I was a kid I don't know what air quality is like now. And there were groves of aspens that would just continue for miles and who knows what was going underground. Right. Right. And as in your book these endangered species are starting to make a comeback in the beginning of the book and they have a powerful place uh in the ending of the book. But is it sort of a metaphor for these the large systems of of ecology for you they are I love aspen to me they're almost a metaphor for life they they don't grow alone they they shoot out these clones and so when you're looking at an aspen tree of of thousands of individuals it's really just one organism it's just this uh organism that's a community that's an ecosystem in itself and the LaSalle aspens are some of the most beautiful trees on the planet to me. I I I almost feel this connection with Tolkien's Law Florian these these giant trees with white bark and in the fall they turn golden and there's the sound that they make and all that stuff is completely beautiful. It is but they're kind of vulnerable I mean that's not specific that's not tough bark. No. I imagine that they're prone to bugs and things too aren't they? They are in fungal diseases and and all kinds of things and what about people carving their names into them does that Yeah that's probably not good. Yeah it opens the door to to to things like fungus and and things well I have a I have a question for you. I mean there's a lot of science in King Lear not the Shakespeare but the peck has more science in it. Is it kind of a chicken versus egg question I guess but did the science inspire the novel or did you come up with the idea for the novel and look for science to support the telling of it? So this will sound really strange. My novels just kind of happen and I don't know how else to put it they they come out of who I am in a way. And so the Shakespeare and the story itself came out at the same time. I I love Shakespeare. I love watching it I love even reading it. And I was thinking about King Lear. I had I had just watched a production of it on um I think it was London Theatre's website and I started thinking about the dynamics of that and all of a sudden I was thinking about Moab and the LaSalle's and all of a sudden this novel appeared that had to be written. And the concept was so strong that aspect of it felt ready-made yeah huh yeah and and for me I I write very organically so I one thing that's funny about my novels is I don't plan them at all. They kind of just get written which means that all of a sudden things come out that surprise even me and I'll say oh wow I didn't see that coming. It requires a lot of going back because I have to I have to to go back and forth but it's uh it's it's always been kind of an organic process for me and the next thing I knew this novel was appearing and I got really excited about it and drew on King Lear and drew on science and and drew on my fears of climate change and the losses that that are possible with with that. So here's another here's another passage that I thought was kind of extraordinary. Halfway through the book exactly a heroine of your book tells a old children's story the tale of the thirsty frog. Yeah. Did you create that or did you find that no it's an Australian um there's a reference to it in Australia. All right so tell us what it is. So so basically it's a um indigenous legend in Australia about a frog who drinks all the water in the world and it keeps taking in all the water and all the other animals are dying of thirst and so they want to open the frog's mouth and so they try different things to be funny. They tickle they tell jokes and nothing uh will open the frog's mouth until finally that that's exactly how they they win the day one of the animals tickles the frog and it opens its mouth to laugh and all the water and the oceans are filled again and everyone has water available. And and so in this work it's a cautionary tale about this sort of accumulation of things that cease to flow. Aaron Ross Powell So there's some righteous anger in the book. Yeah yeah you probably can't put that into your scientific work. Yeah that's no this and this is why I think fiction gets to speak it truths that are are difficult other ways where you're demanding data and and proofs and things and I think fiction can explore counterfactual worlds that give voice to kin that don't have voice. Yeah. Toward the very end of the book you have your robot angel of destruction Kent say this to another robot named Bob who basically sounds like every one of my relatives growing up I've processed most of human literature Bob says Kent and you know what I feel? I feel grace. I feel that what I see matters. You matter even these fleshy things that have turned over so much of their lives to taking and taking and not Seeing the higher things that I see them. I see existence, Bob. I see and feel and hear a world of grace. That happens towards the end of the novel. It sounds like it's almost what you want the reader to walk away with, in a way. Yeah. I don't I think that's fair. I want to thank you, Stephen, for joining me today to chat about your novel, The Tragedy of King Lear, The Goatherd of the LaSalle. And finally, Trevor Reed. After living in New York, this fall, Trevor will move to Phoenix, Arizona, where he will be associate professor of law at Arizona State University. He is the director of the Hopi Music Repatriation Project. He combines his degrees and research in the fields of law and music to be a powerful advocate for indigenous rights and art repatriation. You've written a book titled Sonic Sovereignty, Hopi Song, Indigenous Authority and Intellectual Property in an Era of Settler Colonialism. Mostly it has to do with the role of music in Hopi life. Generally speaking, what is that? Like, what does music do for people in the Hopi community? You know, I think music is uh it's always played a central role in in the Hopi community, even from the very beginning. I remember hearing stories from elders telling me about how music emerged with us into this world. And it's been a force for good. People have used it to be able to not only bring good happiness, you know, happiness, positive thoughts, but also uh as a way to bring about changes in the world, um, uh to encourage rain clouds to come, to uh be able to encourage crops to grow. And you know, these are ways of approaching music that maybe we don't think so much about in the artistic community. But, you know, beyond aesthetics, beyond just wanting to listen to something that sounds good, music also has this wonderful uh force and power for members of my community. And I think that's something that I've been wanting to learn more about and and potentially tap into more in my own composition. The Hopi word for a song is tatuy, that's plural, right? Right. Is there a distinction made between a song that is performed ceremonially or a song that just instructs people or a song that has more just an entertainment value, or is it all the same concept? Well, I think the word tatawi, I think it it helps you to kind of distinguish from other types of vocal art that Hopi's have. So, you know, we we have typical just speaking language, so you know, making statements, things like that. But there are also kind of intermediate ways of talking as well. So kind of a when you go to a Hopi village in the morning, sometimes you'll hear somebody uh announcing the the activities of the day, and it it takes on this song-like quality. So I I think thataway, yeah, it's loosely correlated with song and all its varieties, but it also distinguishes the way people talk from the way we express uh out into the community and out into the world. A lot of times we think about Native American music, especially uh kind of traditional genres, as being very static, as you know, being traditional, and we need to respect their the tradition and the conventions that are there. But for Clark, he sees Hopi Song as uh as evolving. Certainly it has very traditional elements, and um there are certain kinds of Hopi song that um are performed in a certain way, but there are also many opportunities to take Hopi Song in new directions, and uh and he felt very strongly that they needed to in order to reach Hopi Youth. Aaron Powell These earlier recordings that you're referring to, those are the Laura Bolton recordings that that you took. It was like 120 or something of them that you found at Columbia University and brought them back. Absolutely, yeah. So uh I began this project, the Hopi Music Repatriation Project at Columbia, where by chance I happened to run into Aaron Fox, uh the director of the Center for Ethnomusicology at the time. And there happened to be uh something like 30,000 tracks of indigenous and other types of uh traditional music that had been housed there for uh at least 70 years. And nobody had really touched them, nobody had really used them. And I was able to uh work with Aaron Fox and bring many of our Hopi songs back home. Yeah, there were about 120 of them, and I had no idea what to do with these songs. Uh all I knew is that I wanted to bring them back home. I did I didn't even know what the word repatriation meant. He told he told me about repatriation and his efforts to bring them back. And I was like, I don't care about repatriation, but I just want to bring these songs back to my people, so let's let's get to work. And that's what we started doing. Um, it was very slow at first. The project has taken eight years now, and uh we're still, I feel like, scratching the surface. These songs have been around for many, many years, and we hope they will continue to be around. And uh if not, then they're used in a way that it respects the Hopi community's values and and interests. Aaron Powell The museum world is really familiar with this topic because they have a lot of works in their collections that they got, who knows how they got these things. And so it's not uncommon at all for a museum like the Metropolitan to realize that they have some ill-gotten gains and to return those to their people. But are you talking more about repatriation so the Hopi people have access to these or to take them away from the university? I think there's a it's a complex situation uh when you're talking about Native American materials. Beginning in, I guess, the late 1800s and well before that, of course, but especially in the late 1800s with the advent of recording technology, there's a possibility of capturing another people's sound and taking it somewhere and using it uh and uh and being able to manipulate it in different ways or to house it or amass it in in archives and collections. This aggregation of voices of Indigenous peoples is pretty complex because uh, you know, uh some Indigenous peoples really would like to control the voices that are on these recordings. They'd like to be able to determine, you know, whether those voices are used for ceremonies or whether they're used to create educational materials, or whether they're used maybe for less uh less sincere purposes, creating new policies that dictate how Native Americans are allowed to use their culture. That was a big one in the early 1900s, or whether these recordings are used to kind of determine whether Native American people are creative or not. Um, that was also a big thing in the in the late 1800s. So I think when it comes to wanting these materials back, it's a very complex story. I think many Native peoples would like to have uh the population of uh settlers, you know, whether that's Americans, uh Europeans, wherever, I think they'd like to have them educated uh on the value of indigenous thinking and indigenous creativity. But unfortunately, it's hard uh because that also means giving up control a lot of the times. And so a lot of my work has to do with helping Native American people find ways to use these materials, get them back, get gain control over them so that they can be as beneficial as possible from the perspective of the tribes. Sometimes that means bringing them back, taking them away from museums because the museums or archives have abused their privilege of having them. Other occasions, the tribes have been very happy to have them at the museum because museums often have the tools to preserve them and can also invite the public to participate and learn. So it takes a lot of negotiation, and I think that's why this is such a long process, and and maybe it'll be an ongoing process. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The museum world wrestled with this using that same argument. They would say, well, here we are in the United States of America, and we have all these m amazing facilities to take care of your work, but at the same time, the people in these countries didn't have access to these treasures that could really change the identity of the people themselves. So it's been a very difficult battle. What has happened, at least from my vantage point, which is albeit an outsider, is that the museums in the States have been sending these works back, but also with an open offer to help take care of them and to protect them, to offer this kind of support and training for their long-term survival, which I think is a cool thing. I mean, 32 years ago I came to the city and I was working in Midtown Manhattan, and I walked into the American Folk Art Museum, and I remember really distinctly in the far south wall, there was a small artwork, maybe 24 inches square, that was Mormon temple garments had been worked into an artwork. And it was the first time that I had ever responded so viscerally to an artwork, I was so offended. I was really horrified. Is there an element too of the sacred that the music represents? Yeah, absolutely. I think uh that's one of the biggest concerns that people have expressed to me is that should songs that never should have been recorded, should those just be available for museums to study or for scholars to listen to and analyze, should those be dissected and taken out of the context that they were created for? You know, one of the arguments that I try to make in the book or the dissertation is that hopi songs really exist between people. Um a lot of times we think of music as being a work or like a uh something that's separate from people. But in many ways, hopi songs really do function as a node of connection between people and the environment or people and uh and other people. And so taking them out and making them into objects or treating them like property to be transacted, yeah, it really gives it really takes away from what we might call in in Mormon uh discourse holiness or the the sacredness of these materials. Uh it takes them away from the ceremony or the the uh the function that they should have on the ground that benefits people. As I was deliberating over these 100 podcasts and which ones to excerpt, in just this episode I was hit by their range: film, music, dance, art, literature from the U.S., Bali, Korea, Argentina, and the Hopi Reservation. But there are many additional podcasts and literally a world awaiting for your discovery of its artists. I invite you to go on your own global journey as you survey the podcast complete catalog. The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts has always taken a universal view of things. We are champions for and experts on all the creative arts disciplines, and we love sharing these arts from all over the world. I think you get that vibe from us. For a long time I was careful not to sound boastful or to be hyperbolic, but I think that I probably made a mistake by not claiming expertise. So I would say comfortably that the center is the leading authority on the full range of creative arts and artists by LDS people throughout the world. Would it be easier to focus on one state or one kind of art? Sure. And I have no problem with the approach of going all in on the usual suspects. But without the full range, you can't tell the full story. The center maintains databases of thousands and thousands of artists who identify with LDS Belief or heritage in some way. It might be our proudest achievement and most valuable resource. In our next and final episode of this four-part audio exhibition, I'll make you cry. Well, at least I'll share clips of interviews in which I made the artist cry. I mean in a good way. Goodbye.