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Joseph Klein
Dr. Joseph Klein, associate professor of composition at the University of North Texas, is teaching a five-week summer course about the music of Frank Zappa for the sixth year in a row.
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University students soak up Zappa this summer
Ask someone to name great music composers, and he or she may think of the usual suspects - Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss, to name a few. Add Frank Zappa to the list. Dr. Joseph Klein, associate professor of composition at the University of North Texas, is teaching a five-week summer course about the music of Frank Zappa for the sixth year in a row. About 20 students in the class will delve beyond Dancin' Fool and other well-known Zappa tunes to study his prolific mix of mainstream classical, avant-garde classical, jazz, rhythm, blues and electro-acoustic music. The class is offered from 10 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays through Aug. 10. Past classes have included students majoring in art, philosophy, sociology, English and anthropology as well as music majors. "It does draw a special crowd of people because the music is not easy to listen to," said Klein, who traveled to Lodz, Poland, earlier this year to present a paper about social and political commentary in Zappa's work. "But people who listen to his music are really fanatical about it." Besides studying scores and analyzing Zappa's musical compositions, students examine the political and social implications in Zappa's work. After forming the band Mothers of Invention in 1964, Zappa spoke before a Senate committee in 1985 about a proposal to label offensive music and traveled to Moscow and Eastern Europe for the Financial News Network in the 1990s. He died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52. Students in the class have watched videos of Zappa's concert performances and his appearances on "Saturday Night Live;" studied his lyrics; read books and articles on his work, including his autobiography, "The Real Frank Zappa Book;" and have even interviewed a former band member, Arthur Barrow, in a conference call during class. Barrow earned a music degree in 1975 from North Texas State University, now UNT. Pamela Ward, who is pursuing a master's degree in ethnomusicology at UNT, took the class about five years ago to satisfy a longtime curiosity about Zappa's music. "As a musician, you might feel like there are boundaries to a certain genre, and he gives you permission to walk outside those boundaries," Ward said. This year's class coincides with the 40th anniversary of the release of Zappa's first album, "Freak Out." But only in the last 10 years have composers been giving Zappa's work more serious consideration, Klein said. "Conference papers are being given on Zappa; several books analyze his work; ensembles play his music," Klein said. "His music has more relevance now. That's one of the problems of being ahead of your time."
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