Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Pamela Z and Nina Shekhar

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 182: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Pamela Z and Nina Shekhar

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Pamela Z’s and Nina Shekhar’s perspectives on music they’ve written. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Pamela Z and Nina Shekhar, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in June 2022, click here, and June 2024,  click here.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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/18233806

Co-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, Christy Xu

Chapters

• 0:29 Today we revisit Pamela Z's and Nina Shekhar's perspectives on music that they have written. Here's what Pamela Z had to say.
• 6:41 Here's what Nina Shekhar had to say.

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble For These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Pamela Z's and Nina Shekhar's perspectives on music that they have written. Here's what Pamela Z had to say.

Pamela Z  00:37

Well, I do think that a lot of the work that I compose is really in the realm of musique concrete, because I am using actual sounds, found sounds from the environment or, you know, from the world around me. And, I'm building the music–a lot of it – out of those sounds. And I always like to say, especially if I'm giving a workshop or something like that, and I'm asking people to make a found sound or a found text piece, I always have to define what I mean by “found sound” and“found text”. So when we're talking about text, I think of found text as being text that was not intended by the author to be art, but was maybe instructions for doing something or the ingredients for something, or a method of assembling something that you bought from a store – like from the instruction manual, or an official notice that you may have gotten. So I take that language, and it becomes the libretto. It becomes the lyrics, instead of using a poem that was written by a poet that was intended from the very beginning to be art. And so then that just becomes like setting somebody else's poetry to music, or writing my own poetry or lyrics. I sometimes do write my own poetry or lyrics. But more often, the text is either found text, or it might be invented text, like I might make sounds that sound like language. They sound verbal, but they're actually in some kind of invented language or language from another planet. [laughs] So because as a singer, actually, I think a lot of singers will relate to this. It's tricky, it's harder to sing music that has no syllables. I mean, it's hard to sing anything other than sustained tones on solfege or vowel sounds, you know, it's much easier to articulate rhythmic singing, if you've got some consonants to land on. And it's more interesting, I guess it or feels more natural and somehow communicative if there's some kind of verbal essence to the sounds. And so that's why I sometimes just start using found language because I just need something to hang the notes on. And so the language does that for me. So I'm talking about found text now. But I can also say that, for found sounds, I have a similar definition. Found sounds to me are the sounds of actual objects or events that occur in your space or outside or whatever. So it could be me dropping my keys on the concrete floor in my studio and recording that, or it could be me filling basins of water in my kitchen sink and splashing that water to get some water samples. Or it could be just recording the sounds of emergency vehicles – sirens as they go by, or birds that are sitting outside my window. So those become found sounds as opposed to hiring a cellist or a trumpet player to come into my studio and then ask them to play scales throughout their entire range and record those sounds and then make a bank of samples of cello sounds or trumpet sounds. Those are just sampled musical instruments, those aren't really found sounds. So, and I tend to use more found sounds – not that I've never used samples of musical instruments – but when I use samples in my pieces, more often than not, they'll be found sounds.

Nanette McGuinness  05:07

Your "Baggage Allowance" comes to mind here.

Pamela Z  05:09

There are actually two different sections in "Baggage Allowance," at least two, that directly use found language. One of the sections is a piece called"Unknown Person" and the lyrics to that song are simply the questions that they always ask you when you when you go to board a plane when you're traveling, I think those questions were usually asked during international travel,"Did you pack your own bag" and so forth. And then I have another section in that piece, where I am simply reading the little love note...[laughs]...that the TSA leaves in your bag whenever they open it to inspect it. I have found there have been times when it seemed like it had been opened and they didn't put the note in but they're supposed to put this note in. And I happen to have one right here, and it says, "To protect you and your fellow passengers, the Transportation Security Administration is required by law to inspect all checked baggage. As a part of this process, some bags are opened and physically inspected. Your bag was among those selected for physical inspection..." Then it goes on from there. So I have a piece in"Baggage Allowance" that just uses that language as the text of the piece.

Nanette McGuinness  06:41

Here's what Nina Shekhar had to say.

Nina Shekhar  06:44

For me, when I think about vulnerability, I think of kind of like ownership of identity and how much how we share that with others. And for me, I mean, after I wrote the piece I'm talking about is called "Quirkhead." After I wrote that piece, I did kind of have a period afterwards where I was I fell into, like, a quite major depression, like afterwards, and I think some of that was because, you know, after you share all this stuff about yourself that's very personal and that I hadn't shared before, I was kind of in this void afterwards, like, now what? And it was like, there's not a lot of support, you know, for artists like after they do something like that to, you know, help, like, cope with that, you know, and it was a really challenging time, and and then I, you know, I ended up, you know, getting going to therapy and having some sort of support. But I think since then, I've been quite protective over the way I approach vulnerability in my music and realizing, like, I can share things, but on my own terms, you know, and absolutely, and sometimes, you know, I've been exploring that idea of identity and in different ways, you know, like, sometimes I examine, like a peace of mind I can think of, called "Above the Fray." It's like, about, sort of my relationship to classical music in general. Like that piece kind of takes the Bach Cello Prelude in G and warps it in different ways and, and it's like, also very much related to my identity, but in a very different way than, like other pieces I've written and and a lot of pieces of mine sometimes do things with double meanings now, and so it's kind of interesting, or sometimes I'll throw in references. Another piece I've recently has a lot of references to Bollywood, and it's kind of about like sexuality and in Indian cinema and things like that. And I know that most people won't recognize some of those references, but there will be like, my mom once was in the audience for one of these pieces, and she knew all the references right away. So like, I think that's also be become part of the way I approach vulnerabilities. Like, you know, sometimes I'm sharing things of myself, but I know that not everybody will understand it, or know what is it I'm referring to, but then there will always be specific people I'm trying to reach that will understand right away and and I think I it's just changed the way I I approach, like even just sharing these elements of myself with others.

Nanette McGuinness  09:42

That makes sense. I mean, the whole point of in jokes are there are some people who won't get them, and some of people, but that the piece still works. You know, the like the the various Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven pieces that have jokes in them, they still work, even if you don't.

Nina Shekhar  09:59

Right! And I think in this context, I've been thinking about, like, yeah, this idea of inside jokes, and, like, who gets to be in on the joke? And I think for so long, you know, my parents never went to classical concerts. I mean, I didn't go to an orchestra concert, like a professional orchestra concert, until my undergrad. And, well, I, you know, I didn't really have that experience. And so my parents didn't grow up with, like, understand that you're not supposed to clap between movements. You know, they were never like, in on the joke. But that's why I feel sometimes when I do these pieces that have these references that only they can understand, it's like, suddenly I flip the joke. It's like, now they're the only ones nobody else is, and like, they're now suddenly in in the powerful position. So I think that that's something that it's interesting. Just like, flipping that power dynamic in this kind of subversive way has been really fun. Sense of like, how I approach identity, you know, in my work.

Nanette McGuinness  10:59

Yeah, no, that. I like that. What was the name of the piece you were focusing on OCD?

Nina Shekhar  11:06

Oh yeah, it was called "Quirkhead."

Nanette McGuinness  11:08

"Quirkhead," okay.

Nina Shekhar  11:09

Yeah, like "Q, U, I, R, K head."

Nanette McGuinness  11:12

Okay, that's what it sounded like.

Nina Shekhar  11:14

Yeah, no, Quirkhead was just a nickname for myself. So, you know, I didn't know that OCD was, like, there was a term for that growing up. And so I just would always say, Well, I'm very quirky. And then I just made up this name Quirkhead to describe myself. And then, actually, over time, because there was, I don't know, I think culturally, you know, a lot of Asian cultures are very afraid about talking about mental illness and about OCD, and so I had a lot of shame around it, and I was, like, afraid to even use the word OCD, so then I would use this word Quirkhead as, like, a euphemism For for that. So that's what the title refers to. That's really great, yeah? In a sense, a term of endearment. For myself, it sounded less scary than like, OCG, like disorder in the word for me, it's like, org head. It's like, oh, okay, light hearted, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  12:17

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations and a special thank you to our guests 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 www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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]