Frank Vincent Zappa was born on December 21, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, throughout Zappa’s life he accomplished many heights in his career as making music that seems to blend different genres and universally changed the way some would view abstract music, but sadly 18 days before his 53rd birthday he died of Prostate Cancer, on December 4, 1993.
Frank Zappa started his musical journey at the age of 12 when he attended a summer school in Monterey, California and enrolled in a drumming course at his school. They had started learning drum rudiments in a lesson. Zappa says his teacher made the whole class practice on wooden planks instead of actual drums, so that when they do get to play real drums they would know how to play them. I can only imagine that when he was practicing those rudiments he found the “and” beats in the rhythm, the and beats that are the original beat… like if I were to count, “one (and) two (and) three and four (and) ect” you hear those “and” beats. And are what really get your creativity flowing and sounding groovy and I observed that especially with Zappa and his style of producing music he uses those and beats.
Zappa was very different from people from his time, especially with some of his earlier albums talking about ways of corruption from people in power, how he is only in the music business for the money, and he doesn’t care if he is misunderstood or hated. He simply doesn’t care about how people view his music. He focused on implementing the art of satire comedy to his music, he also experimented with adding complex rhythms that are always changing and twisting onto another rhythm. He was always on top of the way of improvising a song while he was making it and could be such a raw weird thing to the outside world. He wouldn’t change the way he would play, basically his mind suppressed the fear of being weird, he lets his soul take care of all of the imperfections he sees other people face. He always used the fact of when he would go out of line he sees that he is truly stepping into his mind, also figuring out what he can do intuitively with music. And with that there is more opportunity for creative output instead of just dismissing your fantasies, dwelling in them makes your creativity go wild. But when you are within your creative mind you have to discern what you say or else you could say stuff that could put you down and should rather be kept to yourself as it could be overwhelming to some people.
Spilling information that you created uniquely in your own mind is, in my opinion, the best output from the soul in the matter of existence. The reason why I say this is, people who focus on creatively reconstructing beliefs that have been passed on for years and instead creating a new meaning out them that is actually logical is truly universal and someone who has that gift is truly amazing, because To me they have the ability to change the world. Zappa may not have changed the world but he sure did change the way some artists perceive the music world. He also made it so that there is no prejudice in his music, he did this by paying attention to what he says and only pointing out some things that he may claim to be stupid. Zappa also mainly focused on making abstract pieces in an orderly form instead of being 100% all over the place like a madman on piano, it was organized to be all over the place to find an essence of creativity.
Zappa was an empathetic and very intellectual individual, he had many ideas for what problems should be discussed in society and he understood many of the problems that were unsolved in society. He also made many songs about topics of the sort, he uses a lot of social satire as comedic song ideas to help him with that goal of a valuable society. He was also such a provident figure throughout the 60s-70s, because of his ideas for society and how he came up with solid ideas to prevent these topics.
Like in 1976, Zappa was finding a route problem in society today, and he said “the biggest problem faced today is mental health, if everybody had good mental health then all the other problems would be solved.” The reason why I pulled this quote from this interview is because at the time of 1976, there were a vast majority of people who purly destroyed themselves mentally. By acquiring habits that negatively affect their life, most were unaware that most of peoples problems with life are purely mental and you just got to learn how to perceive the discouragement.
