User:HJensen/ZappalegacyAugust2008

Lead. Rewritten to accommodate legacy

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa worked in various musical genres, and wrote for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesizers, symphony orchestra, and created musique concrète works. He also worked on feature-length films, music videos, and album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

In his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde classical composers like Edgard Varèse, as well as 1950s rhythm and blues music. He started writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electrical guitar. He was an autodidact composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his skeptical view of established political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and he gained wide-spread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock history, and he is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He maintains being a major influence on musicians and composers today. He had some commercial success, in particular in Europe, and he was for most of his career able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964 (no children), and in 1967, to Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death of prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust.

Legacy

Acclaim and honors

Frank Zappa was one of the first to try tearing down the barriers between rock, jazz and classical music. In the late Sixties his Mothers of Invention would slip from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" into The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" before breaking down into saxophone squeals inspired by Albert Ayler

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, p. 497

Zappa earned wide-spread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. The 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable". Even though his work found inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite". On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity' ".

Guitar Player Magazine devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music". Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s. He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s, and he said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millenium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music." Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that". Pierre Boulez stated in Musician magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive." Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation.

In 1994, jazz magazine Down Beat's critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 with a motivation that partly read "Frank Zappa was rock and roll’s sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease". He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board included We're Only in It for the Money in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa’s inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America’s reactions to it". The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Artists influenced by Zappa

A number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Fee Waybill of The Tubes and Billy Bob Thornton cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and John Frusciante. Heavy rock and metal acts like Mike Portnoy, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, and Clawfinger all acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Fireworks Ensemble, regularly perform Zappa's compositons and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton. Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa, include new age pianist George Winston, electronic composer Bob Gluck, and parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic.

References in arts and sciences

Scientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it Amaurotoma zappa with the motivation "The specific name, zappa, honors Frank Zappa". In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea Zappa Confluentus. Biologist Ferdinando Boero named in 1987 a Californian jellyfish Phialella zappai, noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer". Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named Pachygnatha zappa because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache". A gene of the bacterium Proteus mirabilis that causes urinary tract infecti was in 1995 named ZapA by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature". In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it Spygori Zappania to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".

In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli, led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: 3834 Zappafrank. The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".

In 1995, a bust of Zappa by renowned sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A replica was in 2008 offered to the city of Baltimore. In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, since 1990 location of the Zappanale, an annual music festival celebrating Zappa. In 2007, the festival was sued by the Zappa Family Trust for use of the Zappa image without permission. Court hearings were held in Düsseldorf in August, 2008, and the involved parties were given time to reach an out-of-court settlement.

At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007. The same year, Baltimore's mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

References

• DeCurtis, Anthony; Henke, James with Holly George-Warren, ed. (1992), The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, Jim Miller (Original Editor) (3rd ed.), New York: Random House, ISBN 0-679-73728-6 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)