Dave Meder — Unamuno Songs and Stories - Digital Liner Notes (original) (raw)

unamuno

songs and stories

NOTES ON THE ALBUM

We are living in a critical moment in American history. Increasingly, our political discourse pits factually justified positions against pure misinformation, and independently verifiable truth against “personal truth.” It forces us into tribes, so that pride and ego prevent us from evolving in our own understanding of the world. It gives rise to “anti-politicians” who seem uninterested in advancing any sort of helpful policy, instead choosing to mischaracterize, vilify, and prod the opposing side, often while hiding behind religious views. It feels as though we are at a societal breaking point.

I find historical context for this polarized political climate in the life and work of a somewhat-counterintuitive figure: Miguel de Unamuno (1864 - 1936), a Basque/Spanish philosopher, poet, novelist, essayist, and academic most known for his work in the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939). Unamuno was not a “leftist” or a “liberal” in the modern American sense of the term: for one, he rejected the fierce anti-religious sentiment that lived within the Spanish left-wing parties in the years before the war. Yet, even as a Catholic, he fiercely rejected the church’s relentless insistence on dogma and historical doctrine, and he criticized the broad religious support for right-wing regimes in early 20th century Spain.

Unamuno was a proponent of liberalism defined in the classic sense of the term, supporting principles like freedom of the press, human rights, and civil liberties. Still, despite this advocacy, he would support the initial military coup attempt against the moderate-left government of 1936, citing an overwhelming need for societal order and unity. It was this right-wing nationalist uprising that plunged Spain into a three-year civil war, which would ultimately establish General Francisco Franco as dictator until his death in 1975. After his initial endorsement, Unamuno would quickly withdraw his support from the right-wing rebels after witnessing the atrocities perpetrated by their forces in the early stages of the war.

Ultimately, in Unamuno, I see an imperfect man, one who seems full of contradictions. There is an odd tension, a strange balance, and a sort of yin and yang to his life and work. He was proud of his convictions and quite unafraid to speak on them, yet humble in changing and evolving his own views. He was eminently intelligent, yet never ceasing in his struggle for truth; full of religious faith, but constantly wrestling with spiritual doubt; a supporter of national unity and patriotism without ignoring his Basque roots.

I first discovered Unamuno’s work in my college days, when I majored in Spanish and political science, while also studying sacred music and liturgy. Unamuno landed squarely at the intersection of all my interests at the time. I was fascinated (and scared) reading about how democracies can slide gradually into dictatorships, how the church has so often become intertwined with misguided political movements, how propaganda can lead good people to hate their own countrymen. His work provides literary context for these complex issues. So in 2020, when a global pandemic, a renewed struggle for racial reckoning, a fraught national election, and a contentious political transition left so many of us scrambling to explain it all…I reached again for Unamuno.

I did not set out to write a “protest album,” nor would I describe this album as such. The music here is tonal, mostly harmonious, and even romantic at times. I am not seeking to abrasively hold up my own values, or those of Unamuno, as the gold standard for all American society. But at a certain point, when we experience enough avoidable tragedy, the “protest” occurs naturally.

Many of Unamuno’s works ponder the grey area between faith and non-belief, giving me a lens through which I can explore the tensions between my own conservative religious upbringing and my later education. Other works illuminate the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, encouraging me to stay engaged in the democratic process. Finally, in my own life as an academic, Unamuno inspires me to hold up truth, intelligence, and education as supreme values, both for myself and for my students.

In the end - I believe we are allowed to be complex figures like Unamuno. We are allowed to blur the lines between the imaginary tribes of “left” and “right.” We are allowed to change our viewpoints when presented with new information. In the long view of history, it even seems a bit normal (in a strictly observational way) for societies to flirt with authoritarianism, even to elect leaders with autocratic tendencies. But we must come back from that brink. We cannot minimize the human cost of such dangerous leadership: it leads to oppression and death. We need to wrestle with any person, political party, doctrine, or religion that seeks to suppress truth for its own autocratic purposes, or that allies itself with such misguided leaders.

We need to stay engaged with facts and scientific consensus and build our debates on clear foundations. We need to defend our systems of societal progress, like voting, from those who would seek to subvert them through propaganda, violence, or even legislation in broad daylight (as in the current voter suppression laws being passed all throughout the United States). We must refine these political systems so that they are truly equal, open, and participatory for all.

These ideas are (and have always been) liberal values according to the traditional definition of the term, and yet they have now come to be vilified as “liberal” (in the pejorative). In reality, and as evidenced in Unamuno’s life and work, these are moderate values – the most fundamental baseline for a healthy civil society.

Above all, we must at least speak out against the forces that would oppress us or deny us our rights. For in Unamuno’s words:

“…to be silent is to lie, for silence can be interpreted as assent.”

This album is my humble way of denying my assent.

- Dave

L to R: Philip Dizack (trumpet), Dave Meder, Michael Piolet (drums), Marty Jaffe (bass)

L to R: Miguel Zenón (alto sax), Dave Meder, Michael Piolet (drums), Marty Jaffe (bass)

I am a product of the jam session tradition, in which a song melody is followed by multiple improvised solos around that melody and its underlying harmonic form. This format has been the lifeblood of the music for most of its history.

Yet when I compose, I find that improvised solos usually serve as means to a musical end, not ends in and of themselves. I think I can trace this idea back to one of my mentors, the great pianist Marcus Roberts, who first explained to me the idea of using an improvised solo as something transitional and intentional rather than an opportunity to just “blow the horn.” I also remember being impressed as a young listener with how Maria Schneider (and the deeper lineage of Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans et al) uses improvised solos as a compositional tool to travel from one point to the next within a piece.

Big Orange Sheep Recording - Brooklyn, NY (Michael Perez-Cisneros, engineer)

Similarly, all solos on this album have a purpose within the overarching compositional structure of the piece. The soloists cannot simply “improvise” - they must know the function of their solo relative to rest of the composition. If they fail to achieve the musical goal that I set for their improvisation, the whole composition fails to reach its potential in that performance. As a composer, it is a risk to delegate such tremendous responsibility to other players, especially given they had nothing to do with the initial creation of the music. It certainly takes time to find the right kind of artist for such a project: one who can not only “blow the horn” but can also be a “co-composer.”

So, I could not be more pleased with how Marty, Michael, Philip, and Miguel beautifully merged their own individuality with my compositional vision on these tracks. They are three-dimensional musicians and artists: seamlessly tempering their improvisational languages to the unique “dialect” of each piece. The music is so diverse and wide-ranging, and still they were able to bring out musical nuances that blew me away (and I’ll try to note them below as I hear them). My deepest gratitude to Marty, Michael, Philip, and Miguel for their contributions, and to you, the listener, for taking the time to appreciate these great artists.

A SONG OF SECRET LOVE is a line from an unnamed poem found in Unamuno’s later anthology Cancionero. The poem, loosely translated, is below:

The moon sings in silence; you must hear it with your eyes;

a white song, a lulling song, a song of secret love,

A song of love, growing weary in its loneliness;

The stars, distracted, refuse to join in its chorus.

Poor moon, blind and alone, it sees not its own shadowy eyes

that dream, and sing

…to distract from its idleness.

Marty Jaffe (bass)

The poem describes a love song, one which we first understand to be warm, calming, and quiet, and later suggesting notes of melancholy and solitude. The melody of the piece is perhaps the simplest and most “song-like” on the album: largely consisting of a single phrase repeated through a variety of different harmonies, some of which paint a picture of love in the euphoric sense, while others lend a more melancholic and yearning aura. Although the music has a modern groove and feel, the underlying harmonies are very much influenced by my many years studying Bach chorales, both on my own and with Philip Lasser at Juilliard. The chords are not always conceived as vertical structures - more so as individual voices moving horizontally in varying patterns. It was even difficult for me to write traditional chord changes, so I opted instead to write out all the individual notes of each chord and let Marty (bass) determine how best to solo through them — a testament to his genius.

At the beginning of the piece, we hear a solitary and lonely figure (like the moon) singing the melody alone. The tone of the piano here is one of tenderness, using the una corda(soft pedal) to give the instrument this understated tone. After a bass solo (1:29), I use a brief interlude (2:40) to move the tonality up by a half step, setting up a fresh atmosphere for the piano solo (3:10). Eventually, the original melody weaves its way back into the piece, except now the subject has visions of love as something not-so-secret anymore, something no longer unrequited. I recorded the melody as a wordless vocal line in post-production and layered several different versions together to suggest the feeling of a dream-like chorus.

AUGUSTO’S DILEMMA is inspired by the main character in Unamuno’s ground-breaking novel Niebla. Unamuno would call Niebla a “**nivola,” distinguishing it from the usual Spanish term for novel (novela**). Rather than following the standard novel archetype, in which characters move through a linear plot in a realist world, Unamuno in Niebla “allows” the fictional main character, Augusto Pérez, to build his world as he moves along. Augusto eventually finds himself rejected by a lover, and suddenly wishes to exit the nivola by way of suicide, at which point he speaks with Unamuno himself.Unamuno then informs Augusto that he is only a character in a fictional work, not a real person, and therefore he is unable to commit suicide. This rather absurd, existential conversation between author and main character is one of the most highlighted moments of the nivola.

The dark subject matter aside, Unamuno’s warped and whimsical treatment of the novel form is particularly fascinating. A nivola,in comparison to a novel, is typically written in a more stream of consciousness fashion, with less initial thought and preparation. I tried to adopt the same compositional process for this piece: largely sporadic and unfiltered. The time signatures meander back and forth between bars of four and five beats, painting the picture of a character improvising and stumbling his own way through the musical form.

Michael Piolet (drums)

The piece features a simple five-note motif with three chromatically moving chords underneath (e.g. at 0:16, 0:34, etc.), which I discovered could be used to move the piece into a wide variety of keys. With such flexibility, the piece ended up opening with a phrase that starts in B-flat and ends in C major, eventually finding its way to E major for the bridge, and later repeating the five-note/three chord motif several times in sequence until landing in D-flat, which then becomes the basis for a 12-bar blues section nestled within the middle of the piece (2:32). The 12-bar blues form, the same structure used by blues artists from Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters and beyond, is usually a standalone piece, not a constituent part of a larger musical piece. For some reason, it just felt right to land on a blues in the middle of this piece and stay there for a while.

In my world, composition tends to be a slow and methodical process. By the time I finish a piece, I have usually spent so much time on it that I can immediately start playing it from memory. This piece was different: with such an unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness writing process, I found that I had to learn to play the piece from scratch as if it was someone else’s composition. In fact, I remember Marty (bass) and Michael (drums) playing through all the time signature changes much better than I could in the first couple performances! The piece itself has also evolved quite a bit since our first performance, much like a character in a nivola. Since the five-note/three chord motif can lead us to several different keys, we experimented with several different options for placing the blues form within the overall structure. The version on the recording is only one possible version.

MEDITATION: DOUBT is a short, completely improvised interlude meant to be a foil to the later track MEDITATION: FAITH. Both improvisations take their inspiration from Unamuno’s writings on faith and doubt in his own life.

I LOOK FOR RELIGION IN WAR is a line from an Unamuno philosophical essay entitled “De la correspondencia de un luchador” (“From the Writings of a Warrior”). The writing seems to portray, all at once, a sense of dystopian warfare, and a deeply spiritual (if not controversial) sense of peace. Unamuno twists our conventional idea of “peace,” claiming it to be nothing more than a temporary form of reality: one that can breed envy and awareness of the inequalities between nations or groups. War and struggle are the more lasting ideals that ultimately give rise to true mutual understanding. It’s a rather provocative idea, but perhaps one that we see borne out in history. As a human race, the only constant we seem rely on is war. In effect, this perpetual struggle for a relatively fleeting sense of “peace” has become our deeper spiritual **peace**…our guiding ideal, our true religion. Unamuno defends this idea with lines such as “…don’t preach peace to me, for I fear it…,” “while you may fight for victory [which leads to peace], I fight for the fight itself…”

Unamuno thus describes the religion of life as a perpetual fight - a fight against each other, a fight against our impending spiritual eternity, even a fight against God itself. And yet, he describes this kind of “religion” as admirable, and even peaceful in its own way.

The music begins in the fog of war, with bowed bass lines and half-valve effects on the trumpet suggesting a hazy atmosphere. The piano melody emerges, timidly, out of the carnage (0:23). Eventually, a regular, plodding rhythm in the left hand of the piano (0:53) sneaks into the piece, signifying the beginning of a long march forward in the metaphorical war of humanity. The piano solo here weaves its way through the bombs of the drums (1:33) before handing off the melody to the trumpet (2:08). The group continues to build together via a trumpet improvised solo (2:29) and an adaptation of the initial melody in a new harmony (3:03).

Once we arrive at the height of our collective struggle - gnashing, fighting, and warring - we suddenly find our peace, or our religion (3:36). The music collapses into an idyllic, hymn-like melody loosely influenced by the piano works of Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (3:55), followed by a rhapsodic bowed bass solo (5:07). At this point, we have become comfortable with the idea that the human struggle itself is our religion, and by the tone of the music, we have come to “worship” it as such. Armed with this acceptance, the group charges into battle with renewed confidence (6:18), as we recapitulate the hymn-like melody and the original melody in turn.

THE LAKE AND THE MOUNTAIN is a musical representation of two primary symbols from Unamuno’s best-known work, “San Manuel Bueno, Mártir” (Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr). This short story centers around Don Manuel, the priest of a fictional rural village situated between a towering mountain and an idyllic, yet brooding, lake. Don Manuel is held up as a saint and an icon of the Catholic faith, extraordinarily well-known throughout the entire region for his good works and piety. And yet, at the time of the narrative, Don Manuel carries a crippling secret: he has succumbed to his own doubts, and he no longer believes in the afterlife. He therefore lives in a constant state of spiritual agony, yet he maintains his post and carries out his religious duties, believing that his role is to act as an opiate for the masses, letting his parishioners believe that they are indeed immortal through their faith.

Miguel Zenón (alto saxophone)

The mountain, therefore, represents faith, and its core promise of eternal life. The lake, which coincidentally mirrors the reflection of the mountain on its surface, symbolizes one’s outward presentation of faith, along with the internal struggles, doubts, and complexities that lie beneath. The entire narrative highlights this duality. One particularly poignant scene finds the village parishioners reciting the Lord’s Prayer in an enthusiastic chorus, which the author compares to the mountain, while noting that Don Manuel’s voice drops out conspicuously during the most critical line of the prayer (“I believe in the resurrection, and life everlasting…”) as if his voice were “diving into the lake."

Using the inimitable musical voice of Miguel Zenón (saxophone), we attempt to paint this sense of spiritual duality, conflict, and agony. The first section of the melody (0:23) is one of anguish, reflecting Don Manuel’s inner strife, yet it has a strong, clear rhythmic pulse, suggesting the kind of stable, communal, and “mountainous” faith he projects. Shortly after (0:47), we start to feel the pull of Don Manuel's spiritual doubts, represented by the lake. Here, the piano suddenly becomes more sustained, the harmonies become richer while the cymbals help to create a "wetter" texture. The first improvised solo section after the melody (1:43) is structured as an inner dialogue, with saxophone and piano weaving together various phrases that straddle the boundary between "lake" and "mountain."

Eventually the piece gives in completely to the pull of the lake (2:53), blending in a less-stable rhythmic pulse. The saxophone and piano begin trading improvised solo sections, each separated by a short and frenetic notated section that reminds us of Don Manuel's inner spiritual struggle. The solos continue to build together until the inner conflict reaches its zenith (5:07). All of this energy bubbles over into one climactic written-out phrase (6:01) that is built from all the fragments from the previous few minutes. We then return to the original melody (6:26). As to the question of whether lake or mountain prevails in Don Manuel's life, we leave that unanswered...

MEDITATION: FAITH is a short, completely improvised interlude meant to be a foil to the earlier track MEDITATION: DOUBT. Both tracks take their inspiration from Unamuno’s writings on faith and doubt in his own life.

EXILE is an allusion to Miguel de Unamuno’s time in physical exile from Spain (1924-1930). The writer’s outspoken critiques of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship cost him his position at the University of Salamanca and forced him to leave the country until a republic was reestablished in 1931. But, on a deeper level, the piece embodies the feelings of **mental**and **emotional**exile: the sensation of profound disillusionment at the actions of your leaders and fellow citizens. Alejandro Amenábar’s recent film Mientras dure la guerra (While at War) poignantly portrays the moment in 1936 when Unamuno renounces his earlier support of Franco and his right-wing allies, delivering a daring speech in front of military generals, clergy, and nationalist supporters.

In front of his very eyes, Unamuno is transformed into an enemy of the state, an enemy to his own countrymen, and an unwilling witness to the death of reason, intelligence, democracy, and decency. The rebel general who speaks after Unamuno, Jose Millán Astray, is utterly incapable of rebutting Unamuno’s words. Still, with nothing more than empty slogans of patriotism, he is able to incite his mob against Unamuno, liberals, and the intelligentsia. And so, Unamuno and those like him find themselves in exile yet again, with the rifts and differences between societal factions so deep that the only solution in that time was a bloody civil war. Unamuno would die under house arrest only months after this incident, during the initial phase of the war that would ultimately bring down the democratic government of Spain and impose a right-wing dictatorship until 1975.

The tumultuous events in the United States over the past year and a half have driven many of us into a state of mental and emotional exile. In my relatively short lifetime, I had never felt so detached from my country as I did in 2020 and early 2021. I can only hope we can find our collective footing again. We are so polarized that we have completely lost our ability to delineate fact and fiction, as Unamuno does so eloquently. We have lost the ability to reconcile our deeply held beliefs with the indisputable truths that affect us all. We have forgotten the importance of education, which helps us recognize and strike down false prophets and leaders. Major facets of American society now resemble the kowtowing nationalists in Unamuno’s Spain: placing their loyalty in utterly misguided leaders who seek power and self-enrichment at any cost.

What happens if these kinds of ideas and leaders take power again in this country? What happens if voting rights are restricted to such a degree that the majority political ideology in this country is relegated to a permanent minority status — where one side can gain power not through the strength and appeal of their ideals but through the simple suppression of the other side? What happens if our leaders succeed in burying our own history and implanting false narratives? What happens if religious views infiltrate the courts to such a degree that our legal system begins to resemble a theocracy? What happens to the academics, artists, and other citizens who would still try to speak the truth in this hypothetical new world?

It is no longer an exaggeration or an overreaction to imagine scenes like the one above happening in the United States. In fact, we’ve already seen them.

Philip Dizack (trumpet)

Marty Jaffe (bass)

The bass introduction was completely improvised by Marty Jaffe. The score for this piece consists of only two lines of music. The melody (1:29) is brief and direct. The expansiveness of the song comes from the musicians themselves. The group begins as a unified society, playing the melody together, but we quickly become exiled from each other (2:33), pursuing our own paths, rhythms, phrases…conversing here and there but largely existing independent of one other. As the piece builds, we begin to come together again (3:59). The trumpet and piano begin to talk to each other, answering each other in our own individual solos. The bass and drums begin to initiate dialogue with the two soloists.

And all the while, we are beginning to build something together: a grand and beautiful musical metropolis, if you will, where everyone maintains their individual voice while being an integral part of the whole. More importantly, everyone has an equal right to express their individual voice within this whole. Eventually, we reach a sort of catharsis (5:38), an outpouring of love and beauty, and the recognition of the collective pain we have experienced. Back together again, we return to the melody (6:30) in a new spirit: one of hope, optimism, and a sense of rebirth.

I hope we can find this collective hope again as a people. I hope we can build together again. I hope we can restore our future, not by glossing over or suppressing the past but by acknowledging it, teaching it, and moving forward accordingly.

Above all, I hope we can fight together to see that no one in this country is left unwillingly in exile.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My profound and everlasting thanks to the following patrons for their invaluable support of my work and creative practice:

Executive Producers: Tom Coste, Bill and Martha Sando, Paco Alvarez Díaz, Elizabeth Hammond

Associate Producers: Carole Fiore, Christopher Walker, Joel Harrison, Susan and Marc Lariviere, Cesar Bravo Wolfe, Erdal Paksoy, Nathan Karakad, Susan and Steve Jewell-Larsen, Phil Gibbs, Alan Baylock

Recorded May 22-23, 2021 by Michael Perez-Cisneros at Big Orange Sheep (Brooklyn, NY).

Mixed/Mastered June 17-18, 2021 by David Darlington at Bass Hit Recording and Production (New York, NY).

I wish to give special thanks:

… to my parents, family and extended family, whose love and support has been truly immeasurable over the years.

… to the numerous fans and supporters who have contributed to this album project and followed my work over the years.

… to the many presenters and venue owners who have taken a chance on me and my work over the past few years.

… to my students who continually inspire me and challenge me.

… to Dean John Richmond, Associate Dean Warren Henry, former Chair of Jazz Studies John Murphy, current Chair of Jazz Studies Rob Parton, and all of my colleagues at the University of North Texas for their steadfast mentorship, guidance, and support of my work.

… to South Arts for supporting the inaugural tour of this music via the Jazz Road Tours grant program, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

… to Bonnie Barrett and the team at Yamaha Artist Services New York for believing in my work, and for providing rehearsal space and a beautiful CFX concert grand piano for the recording session, and to Chris, Michael, and the team at Big Orange Sheep Recording Studio for being so accommodating with the moving logistics.

My deepest thanks to my wife for her unending love, patience, and support in the long months of coordinating this release.