How Music Works (35 page)

“Surrender to His Will,” by Reverend Maceo Woods and the Christian Tabernacle Choir was the first gospel song I ever really responded to. I heard it on a distant South American radio station whilst in Compass Point, Nassau, working with Talking Heads on the album
More Songs About Buildings and Food.
Spending time with them, and becoming aware of their musical interests, opened my ears to genres and styles I hadn’t really noticed up to that point, including gospel. So, it’s fitting that the circle should close with this record.

As a foreigner in New York, where I ended up shortly after recording
More
Songs
, I was surprised by how little attention Americans gave to their own great indigenous music. It was even slightly uncool, as though the endorsement of gospel necessarily implied support of its associated religious framework. Thanks to Reverend Woods however, I began to see gospel music as conveying the act of

surrender more than the act of worship; and this, of course, intrigued me, and has informed my music ever since. Perhaps it’s the reason I use modes and chords that 192 | HOW MUSIC WORKS

are easy to follow and harmonize with. I want music to be inviting, to offer the listener a place inside it.

Though my trajectory as I described it to him was vague, Eno seemed fine

with it, so I attacked the first song, which I think he had given the working title “And Suddenly.” I’d just finished reading Dave Eggers’s book
What Is the
What
, which is about a young man named Valentino Achak Deng and his

hallucinatory and horrific journey from his destroyed village in South Sudan to Atlanta, Georgia, and beyond. Valentino’s story was harrowing but also

beautiful, uplifting, and at times even funny. I think I may have been under the spell of his story when I sat down in front of my microphone. The result was “One Fine Day.” I sang a few harmonies in the choruses to make it sound

fuller, and emailed the result to Eno.

We were both thrilled: what the song—the whole album, really—was to

become was fully articulated here, in this first piece. The words I had gravitated toward indeed had some Biblical allusions (that would be the gospel

connection I’d mentioned), but nothing too overt. We agreed to continue

with the project.

I realized that the harmonic foundations of some of the tracks Eno had

sent were simple, much like traditional folk, country, or old-school gospel

songs before those styles evolved to become as sophisticated as some are

today. Brian’s chord structures were, in their apparent musical plainness,

unlike anything I would have chosen myself. My music-geek side wouldn’t

have allowed me to write a song with essentially just three major chords in

it, not anymore—I thought I was supposed to have outgrown that. However,

the fact that this almost naïve directness was someone else’s idea meant I

could excuse myself—I could blame someone else, which made it okay. This

pushed me in a new (old) direction, which, of course, was a good thing.

The lyrical challenge was more emotional than technical: how to respond to

these harmonically “simple” (though texturally complex) foundations and write heartfelt words without drawing on the clichés that such chords and structures might bring to mind? I was surprised that the results that began to emerge were often hopeful and positive, even though some lyrics describe exploding cars, war, and similarly ominous scenarios.

There were some remnants of our previous work in these songs—no

surprise there—but something new emerged as well. Where did this new

DAV I D BY R N E | 193

sanguine and heartening tone come from, particularly in those troubled

times? Every day, as the songs were emerging, I continued to be appalled by

the cynical maneuvers of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Tony

Blair, and all the rest, as well as the disappointingly compliant manner in

which they were reported by the media. By then, McCain was running for

president and his minders had picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate—a

move that was taken surprisingly seriously. A black man was running against

them—a man who wrote inspiring speeches and held out a tiny bit of hope

for some of us, though I think all politicians possess some amount of poison in their system. This was the political context in which I wrote these songs, and I found that my response was similar to that expressed on my previous

solo records—hope and humanity as a force to counter cynicism and greed.

Some of the lyrics and the plaintive melodies I came up with were a

response to what I sensed was already there, hinted at, but buried deep in

Eno’s music. I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical—to have some faith

even when nothing around me seemed to justify it. Writing and singing

seemed to be an attempt at a kind of musical self-healing.

DREAMWORLD

Red Hot, the AIDS charity organization founded in 1989, produces a series

of benefit records in which they initiate collaborations between disparate

musicians. Although he’s not Portuguese, it was suggested in 1999 that the

Brazilian composer and singer Caetano Veloso and I collaborate on a song for their
Red Hot + Lisbon
collection. I’m a huge fan of Veloso’s, and we’d met a few times, so the idea of working together wasn’t too insane. I happened to

have a song in progress on which I was using a percussion loop taken from one of his songs—an aid in the writing process that I would typically replace with real musicians somewhere down the line. Though some composers appear

to be able to write over forms they hear in their heads, I find that when the rhythms I’m writing over are audible and a little complex, when they swing

a bit, then actually hearing them keeps me on the rails as far as the metric of potential melodic vocal lines. That I’d been writing over a loop from one of Veloso’s songs meant that in a sense we’d already started collaborating and it made Red Hot’s invitation seem fortuitous.

194 | HOW MUSIC WORKS

I already had a structure, too—guitar chords that had been inspired by a

combination of the American standards and Brazilian songs I’d been learn-

ing from songbooks. They didn’t sound much like rock chords. I also had a

melody, but only a few words. The lyric fragments I had come up with were

about a girl who spent all her time in nightclubs and discos, never really connecting with what most of us call daily life. Some called her a bad girl, but the lyrics defended her, saying there was nothing wrong with innocent sensual

pleasure. Some of the lyrics reminded me of Neil Young, at least the way they fit with the melody, though I doubt anyone else noticed that. The piece had

shape but was unfinished when I sent it to Veloso.

He bounced back with additional lyrics in Portuguese, but they were about

Carmen Miranda. Outside of Brazil, most people think of her as the Brazil-

ian with fruit on her head who went Hollywood. But Miranda was actually

Portuguese, not Brazilian, so now we had a little Lisbon (or at least Portugal) connection after all. After Miranda’s appearances in so many campy Hollywood movies, some people began to disparage her—she had previously

been a respected and popular singer in Brazil. Her Hollywood manifestation

was, for them, both something to be proud of and also somewhat dubious

and confusing. Furthermore, her stage attire and even the big headdresses

alluded to Afro-Brazilian culture—they mimicked, in a way that Brazilians

would appreciate, the women of Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion—so

she represented more than just samba. There was some deeply profound shit

secreted in those headdresses
,
and Veloso alluded to it obliquely in his lyrics.

So we had my words talking about one girl and his referencing another, and

they kind of worked together, juxtaposed. I rarely manage to collaborate on

lyrics—I tend to mark my boundary as being between words and music, but

maybe because we were also intercutting languages, it seemed natural.

STARTING WITH WORDS—OTHER PEOPLE’S WORDS

In 2005, I began working on a disco-musical project for the theater, col-

laborating with Norman Cook, aka DJ Fatboy Slim, about former First Lady

of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Since it was based on a historical figure, I tried something I hadn’t done in a very long time: I began the writing process with the words. While I was researching the characters and the period,

DAV I D BY R N E | 195

I highlighted noteworthy and memorable passages and then assembled files

of anecdotes, quotes from speeches, interviews, and conversations. I began to group these materials into potential episodes and plot points, which would

ultimately link up to tell a story. The characters—all real people—and the

story had precedence in this project, and each episode and its song had to

convey something specific, so prioritizing the text made sense.

To begin writing a song, I would lay out all my notes on each scene—the

quotes and oral testimony of Imelda Marcos and her family, for example—

and simply try singing them, sometimes over chords I played simultaneously

on guitar and sometimes over Cook’s grooves. In my notes I’d kept track of

the many peculiar, emotionally loaded, alliterative, repetitious, and original phrases that Imelda, her husband Ferdinand, and others were supposed to

have said. For a songwriter, these things were a godsend. They were halfway to being lyrics already! I couldn’t have made them up, and of course they always perfectly encapsulated what the people were thinking and feeling—or at least what they wanted the world to believe that they were thinking and feeling.

Reading that Imelda had said she wanted the words here lies love inscribed

on her tombstone was like being handed the title of the musical on a plat-

ter. Not only did it epitomize the fact that she often viewed herself as having unselfishly offered love and sacrificed herself for the Philippine people, but it gave me an opportunity to have her reflect on her life and accomplishments,

along with some subtle ripostes she would throw at her detractors.

Other people have used such “found texts” as well. For example, Peter

Sellars used congressional testimony as source material for the libretto

of John Adams’s opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the bomb,
Doctor

Atomic
. Using these texts as source material for lyrics seemed to absolve me (at least in my own mind) of some responsibility for what the characters were saying, or singing, in this piece. I could use a lyric that was, for example, way more sentimental or corny than anything I would ever have

allowed myself to write, and it was okay because it was the character saying it, not me. In the song “Here Lies Love,” Imelda sings, “The most important things are love and beauty,” which is a quote from a speech she made.

If I sang those lyrics, people would assume I was being ironic, but to have

them come out of her character’s mouth rings true. I found that the same

thing applied musically: there were musical references—disco beats or, to

my ears, a Kenny Rogers reference—and other genre quotations that were

196 | HOW MUSIC WORKS

okay to include because they were what a character would have used as a

vehicle for their feelings, if one imagined them being able to express them-

selves in song. Who wouldn’t want to be able to “put on” the voice of Sharon Jones to express the jaw-dropping decadence, sense of fun, and abandon of

first visiting a major dance club? Lastly, to me the words just seemed truer knowing that they were what someone had actually said—that I didn’t put

words in their mouths.

Was this process of lyric writing a sort of collaboration with the past?

Although I reordered most of these found phrases, repeated some, and bent

others to help them fit meter and rhyme, I tried to make my own writing

embody the intentions of my invisible “collaborators.”

Here Lies Love
is a collaboration that is—like the score I did with Twyla Tharp, and like the film music I’ve done over the years—a collaboration

not so much with another musician, but rather with the theatrical form

itself (not to diminish Norm’s contribution one bit). It is the stage production, not a person, that needs my music to accomplish specific dramatic,

emotional, or rhythmic ends. There are exigencies and constraints in this

kind of collaboration that make it very different from working alone or with another musician.

I don’t know if stage, TV, and film composers think of themselves as col-

laborating with the directors, the medium, or the writers, but sometimes music and visuals work together so seamlessly that it’s hard to imagine a theatrical work or a film without its score, and vice versa. Some film and stage music

evokes the whole story, the characters, and the visuals every time one hears them. The constraints in these kinds of collaborations are not the tastes and proclivities of the other musician or songwriter, but the needs of the larger piece and its characters.

A book called
People Power: The Philippine Revolution of 1986, An Eyewitness History
, about the four days of the People Power Revolution, was hugely helpful to me while I was working on
Here Lies Love
. It included not only testimony from generals, priests, and public figures, but the moving words of ordinary individuals—the real meat and potatoes of that movement. As in Tahrir

Square, it was the presence of ordinary folks, manifesting daily, thousands

and thousands of them, that tipped the scales in the Philippines. Their words allowed me to view events through their eyes, the mundane mixed with the