Zanaida Robles - Part 4

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 152: Zanaida Robles - Part 4

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In this week’s episode, we talk to Zanaida Robles about her work with the LA Street Symphony as music director for the Messiah Project and the impact the project had on the community of Skid Row. 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/15732824

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 continue our conversation with Zanaida Robles, who we spoke to in January 2024.
• 0:46 Looking at the past a little bit, you were the music director for the LA Street Symphony's Messiah Project for five years, which is impressive. Both the symphony and the project sound deeply meaningful. Can you tell us about it?

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 continue our conversation with Zanaida Robles, who we spoke to in January 2024 [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. Looking at the past a little bit, you were the music director for the LA Street Symphony's Messiah Project for five years, which is impressive. Both the symphony and the project sound deeply meaningful. Can you tell us about it?

Zanaida Robles  00:45

Sure. Street Symphony is a organization. It's, the it's not an actual like orchestra or established, you know, ensemble. It's an, Street Symphony is like an organ, it's a nonprofit organization founded and directed by Vijay Gupta, who is a prodigy, brilliant, like, like genius violinist when, he was the youngest violinist ever, whoever was selected to play with the LA Phil.

Nanette McGuinness  01:17

Wow.

Zanaida Robles  01:17

And, super brilliant. While he was here, and he tells this story, you could look up Vijay Gupta, and I think his story is, is available. But he founded Street Symphony because he realized that, you know, there was such a divide. And it was, it was difficult. It was, how do you reconcile, you know, being on top of the hill playing in Walt Disney Concert Hall and you just walk a couple of blocks down the hill, and you're at Skid Row, and that's really what was happening. And the people there, you know, we're all people, and people that are playing in, you know, the concert hall, that music is not just for people that can afford to be in that concert hall, that music is for everyone, and that's how that's sort of the gist of Street Symphony. So what, what we did with Messiah Project... so just to be clear, Messiah Project was the was the element that I, for which I was the music director.

Nanette McGuinness  02:16

Right.

Zanaida Robles  02:17

And Messiah Project happened for five years at The Midnight Mission in Skid Row. And the objective was to bring this idea of a Messiah sing-along out of the, you know, big concert hall on a hill, you know, the golden palace, and bring it to the people that could benefit from it, and to benefit from the message of hope and and and healing and and grace that that, you know, one might find in the singing of something like Messiah, and in a Messiah sing-along, you know, there, it's not just the music of itself being sublime, you know, if you if you like Messiah, if you're familiar with the Hallelujah chorus, you know, but it's the idea of singing it in community and finding ways to bring human, like, embody our humanity where there's no, where, whether you're, you know, a concert, you know, professional, or you're you're a novice, or you're experiencing homelessness, or you're experiencing, you know, recovering, or you're trying to recover from addiction, every all of these people in all these walks of life are in the same room, and we have, we share that experience, and I got to facilitate that for five years. It was some of the most important work I've ever done, and it was some of the most challenging as well. It was very, very emotionally challenging to have to go into that area to see the the just sprawling, you know, homelessness and, you know, just desperation on the streets. It just, for miles, it's, it was, it's really, I would say that for many of us in Southern California, if you're not, you know, if you don't, most of us don't go down there. You don't know. You don't know what's there. And once you actually do go see, you hear about Skid Row and you hear about homelessness, but most people are, is they're removed from it because they, they don't just, they just don't go.

Nanette McGuinness  04:28

Right.

Zanaida Robles  04:28

But actually making it a, being intentional about going there and connecting with the community, it changes everybody that participates, so and and so the most, maybe the most important element, is that Street Symphony actually changed, the people that it changed the most, the people that Messiah Project had the biggest impact on, was us. It was those of us coming down from the hill, sort of reclaiming our humanity in that action of singing with the rest of the community. You know, that there that that's so powerful. We're not, we are, we're not the saviors of, you know, we're not their saviors. We didn't come there to offer our amazing gifts. We came there to be, to be welcomed into their community. That's their home.

Nanette McGuinness  05:16

Right, right.

Zanaida Robles  05:17

And to have the experience to, it's to commune with them. It's communion. That's, that's holy. So it was really, it's really sacred, holy work that that we did, that program has now expanded, I'm no longer working in that with that organization, but it's going strong. They did a wonderful project this year, and they've expanded it, and it's gone beyond Messiah, it'sno longer just about Messiah, and it's about service, people that come in, you know. And we don't just have people, you know, coming in from, you know, different areas, you know, of affluence, like sort of showing up to stamp their, you know, their I participated card, you know. You have to do, if you go, they put you to work, you know, you're going to be a part of the community, and you're going to do some service. And so it's a really beautiful way for people to reclaim their humanity and also to recognize that it's that that's one of the largest recovery areas in the country. People are people go there to recover and find sal, not find salvation, but you know, it's a it's a really special, special place.

Nanette McGuinness  06:22

Yeah, there's some pretty strong studies on the power of choral singing from the inside, on the human spirit.

Zanaida Robles  06:32

Yeah. That's true. That's true, and especially, well, one of the things from for me, my role was to sort of encourage the audience, the community participants, to to sing out. And they don't, many of them don't read music. Some of some of them do, some of them actually do have training but most of them don't. Most of them, they know they kind of know the Hallelujah course, but they don't really know Messiah. I actually had to teach several of the choruses, not, not, not all of it, it's a long work, but some of the choruses I had to teach by rote, and I had to teach the Hallelujah chorus by rote. And it takes, I can't even describe what it takes to be able to do that with people who don't necessarily have musical training. How do you get there? You've got to find a way to bring the music to the forefront and make it about the music, not about the people. You know, I'm, you know, you don't have skills. You need this skill. I have to, let me, you're not making tone, you know, I'm not judging people. This is how the music goes. Do it with me, you know? And that essentially, that that was my job, is to try to get people to, and some people were, they had a hard time doing it. They were emotional about it. They were they realized that they felt vulnerable in ways that they had never felt vulnerable for. You know, they're expo, they're exposed. They they feel their voices connecting with someone else's voices for the first time. And to see that in this kind of community, it's, it's like you said it, it does, it does things to you on the inside, and you could see the change. People were were healed through that experience.

Nanette McGuinness  08:08

Nothing more vulnerable, or very few things more vulnerable than singing, you know, connecting that way. So yeah, no that sounds really powerful.

Nanette McGuinness  08:18

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Dr. 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].