Zanaida Robles - Part 1

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 149: Zanaida Robles - Part 1

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In this week’s episode, we talk to Zanaida Robles about her path to becoming a composer, how her musical background influences her compositional style, and how she has balanced motherhood with her professional career.  If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Zanaida Robles, check her out here: https://zanaidarobles.com/. This episode was originally recorded in January 2024.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/15732653

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Addy Geenen, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Don't miss Ensemble for These Times' upcoming concert 'Mujeres Ahora' on May 9 at the Community Music Center, presented as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. For more information, go to www.E4TT.org.

Chapters

• 0:38 In this week's episode, we're joined by Dr. Zanaida Robles, who we spoke to in January 2024.
• 0:51 You're a vocalist, a composer, a conductor, and educator, as well as a native Californian, rare as that is. Can you tell us more about your musical journey? Did you always know you wanted to be a musician and composer?
• 2:17 Do you come from a musical family or...?
• 3:58 Well, so you have one daughter...? (Two daughters!)
• 4:43 You said you took lessons in other instruments? What other instruments do you play, or have you played?
• 6:29 I didn't know you were a mom. You want to talk a little bit about how that might have affected your career as a musician and as a composer, you know that large can of worms?
• 10:14 In your bio, you describe your music as harmonically colorful, rhythmically driven, heavily modal, occasionally with African elements and touches of progressive rock. This is such an enticing description. Can you talk about your music and the different...

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists, sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we're joined by Zanaida Robles, who we spoke to in January 2024 [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. Thank you so much for joining us. Really happy to have you.

 Zanaida Robles  00:33

Thanks for having me.

Nanette McGuinness  00:35

You're a vocalist, a composer, a conductor, and educator, as well as a native Californian, rare as that is. Can you tell us more about your musical journey? Did you always know you wanted to be a musician and composer?

Zanaida Robles  00:49

I always knew I did. I just have always sort of identified as a musician, even from the time I was as early as eight years old, I tell the story often how on television or somewhere in some church or, I don't know, I heard someone being referred to as a doctor of music. And as soon as I realized you could be a doctor of music, I was like, "That's me. That's what I'm going to be." And it took a while to get there, but I, you know, and I didn't know if I was going to be, I was playing, I was, I like to make up songs on the piano. So I was like, I could play piano, I could be a singer, I could I wanted to do all kinds of different things. I liked to write little songs. But I didn't care what I was, you know, what my instrument was going to be, I was like, but whatever it is, I'm a musician, that that is who I am, and...

Nanette McGuinness  01:46

That's really great.

Zanaida Robles  01:47

Always known, and so I've always been in music lessons and doing music throughout school, and I just can't get enough of, I still can't get enough of music. I just really like music.

Nanette McGuinness  01:59

Yeah, no, that's great. Do you come from a musical family or...?

Zanaida Robles  02:02

Yeah, my mom was a and is was a church musician. She sang in, sang church a lot, and I recall going to church and listening to her. And I always wanted to be in my mom's choir. I didn't want to be in the kids choir...

Nanette McGuinness  02:18

With the real singers.

Zanaida Robles  02:20

And then my father is a, was at one time, a gigging keyboard player. And he even produced an album of music of his own, which is a weird it's, it's sort of like got a cult following, I understand, if you, if you ask, like, Alexa to play, play Jared Stewart, that's my father's name, youou can hear his music on on Amazon. 

Nanette McGuinness  02:50

Oh my gosh!

Zanaida Robles  02:52

It's really interesting, I never... and he, and he, he laughs whenever I tell him, I'm like, "Yeah Dad, I was listening to your music," so I definitely was, was influenced by my father for sure. So yeah, I guess I do come from a musical family.

Nanette McGuinness  03:04

That's very cool. Just out of curiosity, what genre was his?

Zanaida Robles  03:08

I would call his... I, he's a he's a progressive rock music frog. He's got a lot of jazz influence also, and some some funk and R&B is in there, but mostly it's an instrumental album. He was a keyboard player, classically trained pianist. He also, and he also was quite a good bass player, actually, which I just discovered, because my daughter now is, is playing electric bass. So, yeah my dad was, my dad's kind of ridiculous, actually.

Nanette McGuinness  03:41

Wow. Well, so you have one daughter--

Zanaida Robles  03:44

Two daughters, my my oldest daughter is a singer, and she's going, and she's looking at colleges for singing right now, because she's a senior, actually I can't believe. And my youngest daughter is a ninth grader. She's a freshman, and she's, like I said, she's a bass player, but they both sing. We're a very musical family. My husband's a singer. Music, music, music, all the time. They get sick of me, but I don't get sick of it. 

Nanette McGuinness  04:06

I love it, sounds like my family, not the professional music stuff. I'm the first professional musician, but we used to sing in the car. My mom taught me to harmonize by ear, you know. We would do stuff, my sister would sing the melody, I'd harmonize, my dad would sing the bass, you know, so, yeah, that that just leads to so...

Zanaida Robles  04:24

Fun times.

Nanette McGuinness  04:25

Yeah, exactly. You said you took lessons in other instruments? What other instruments do you play, or have you played?

Zanaida Robles  04:35

So I did, I did most of my, most of my classical training in piano when I was young, you know, I took piano lessons for maybe eight years. I also took, I played flute in my middle school band. I was first chair, um, I played either I there was a brief, very brief moment where I played accordion, but I like to point that out, because I think it's interesting, and I liked the accordion but, it wasn't a piano so I was like, I don't want to play this, I want to play piano, right? Like, I don't know, um, and then I that's, I mean, that's the extent of any formal like training I had. I otherwise, I just play whatever I can play. I try to figure out instruments. Um, I'm, I'm a terrible brass, I cannot play brass instruments. But I'll fool around with strings, and I can play a few chords on the guitar. And I love percussion. I collect djembe drums, and I have an assortment of different percussion instruments at home, so...

Nanette McGuinness  05:32

Wow.

Zanaida Robles  05:32

I try.

Nanette McGuinness  05:33

Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. You definitely...

Zanaida Robles  05:35

I have three ocarinas. I love, I collect little flutes too. I have a bunch of ocarinas. And my husband buys me different instrument, like that's his thing. He likes to buy me these, like every year, from either my birthday or Christmas, he gets me a new instrument because he knows I like to collect them. So this year, I got an automaton, which is a, it's like, it's an electronic instrument that's sort of played like a string, it's very strange. Look it up, it's, it's, I have a lot of strange things.

Nanette McGuinness  06:01

I've never heard of an automaton, and I've heard of a lot of instruments. That sounds very cool, and it does sound like your description of someone who loves music in every which way, is a really good description.

Zanaida Robles  06:12

Yep.

Nanette McGuinness  06:13

I didn't know you were a mom. You want to talk a little bit about how that might have affected your career as a musician and as a composer, you know that large can of worms?

Zanaida Robles  06:24

Oh, my goodness. I think, I'm not sure if being a mom affected it in any... I don't, I'm not sure how being a mom affected my career. I think I always wanted to have a family, and I always wanted to have a career, and I didn't know how it was going to work out. I didn't, I mean, children kind of just happened, you know, as they do, and I think you just kind of find a way to make it work. Um, I think looking back, if I had been more, you know, they say that, they say the human brain doesn't really fully develop until you're like, 26 years old. And I think I had, I had my first kid when I was 26. I don't think my brain was fully developed.

Nanette McGuinness  07:11

Yeah.

Zanaida Robles  07:12

So I was doing, so there were a lot of, I think I was a little bit insane. I wasn't thinking. And children happen, but you you make it work, you know. And so I was, you know, I was a mom. I was I worked part time as a teacher, teaching choir. I did, you know, and as my kids got a little bit older, I went back to school, I went back and did my doctorate full time when my kids were toddlers, which honestly is, I'm glad I did it when they were toddlers and not when they got older, because I'm learning now that, for what, you know, interestingly, old, the older your kids get, when they're still school age, the more they need you. They need you differently, and they need more of your time, and they need your mind, and you need to be awake and present. And so I'm really glad that I that I finished my studies, and, you know, I got I'm in my career now, when my kids are at the teenage so I can be so I can be there for them..

Nanette McGuinness  07:19

Be present, yeah. yeah.

Zanaida Robles  07:54

In a way that I couldn't be there before. But I'm really grateful. I think, I think I've, you know, in some ways, I caught some breaks along the way, and I've had a lot of good support. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to have my career and raise my kids. I have a great partner as well.

Nanette McGuinness  08:24

Yeah, no, that sounds like it. I actually, I was reading revisions of the third chapter of my dissertation when I started labor.

Zanaida Robles  08:36

Oh, my God. Well, hey, that's awesome, though you were already on the dissertation stage by the time that before the kid was coming. That's amazing.

Nanette McGuinness  08:45

Well, I was very determined that I wasn't going to be one of those women whose career was stopped because they had kids and then couldn't continue. So I was going to get pretty far, done or close to done in terms of education before I had my kid.

Zanaida Robles  09:07

I think that's really wise, because, I'll be honest, having children definitely, and having a family, there were definitely sacrifices we had to make, I think. And there were, you know, I there's time that I lost, you know, not being able to spend time with my my children and my family, because I was working and gigging and, you know, schooling and all that, I was grateful I had, I had the, I had the best mother in law in world in the world, and she was the kid's primary caretaker in their, when they were very young. But I that's not, I can't get that time back. So, you know, I'm, I don't, I wouldn't say I feel like I missed out, because I, you know, I was there, but I wasn't there like I may have been if I had gotten all the schooling out of the way, or maybe had planned it out a little bit better. I don't have any regrets, though. You know, it's just, you know, life throws at you what it throws at you, and you go with it. So I went with it. 

Nanette McGuinness  09:57

In your bio, you describe your music as harmonically colorful, rhythmically driven, heavily modal, occasionally with African elements and touches of progressive rock. This is such an enticing description. Can you talk about your music and the different influences on your style? Do tell me more, please. 

Zanaida Robles  10:16

Yeah, thanks for asking. This is, this is so, it's so interesting to think about this, because when I wrote it, you know, I really was thinking about very specific things, you know, thinking about my studies and in, you know, in school, and all of the things that I loved about the music that I studied, including, you know, syncopation and polyphony and you know. So I those things had filtered, filtered through into my music, all the things that I've that I sang when I was in choir, you know, that's, that's where that comes from. And then, you know, I, you know, I sang a lot of jazz, I sang gospel, I sang all of those things kind of, kind of get into you. I grew up in the black Baptist Church, so that that is definitely a part of my aural landscape. And I didn't know what progressive rock was when it was influencing me, but I was definitely influenced by it and new age music as well. Because, you know, I was that weird kid that would look for the radio station that played the instrument-only music, the instrument music, you know. So I was listening to classical music. And back in, you know, there's, you know, there's this radio station down here called the "Wave." There was a time the wave used to be, you know, smooth sounds. It was very like ambient and new age and progressive rock and, you know, and smooth jazz. So I was listening, that that was, that was that that was the 90s. That was the the early 90s, um, late 80s, early 90s..

Nanette McGuinness  11:32

Right, right.

Zanaida Robles  11:41

When I was really impressionable, and that definitely made its way into, you know, my aural landscape, and now it's coming out.

Nanette McGuinness  11:51

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Zanaida Robles, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at E4TT.org This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure" [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS].