Zócalo Public SquareInterview – Zócalo Public Square

Raven Chacon Makes Noise

Interview by Eryn Brown — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:01:41 +0000

Raven Chacon has been making noise, literally and otherwise, since he was a youngster growing up in New Mexico. Fascinated by instruments of all kinds (those he’s bought and those he’s built), the 45-year-old Diné composer and artist has spent a lifetime studying the sounds things and people make, and creating experimental performances that build upon that noise, melodious and otherwise, to make listeners think about the places they inhabit: physical, spiritual, artistic, and intellectual.

Today, Chacon’s music is having a moment. In 2022, his composition for church organ and ensemble “Voiceless Mass”—a piece that “considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power”—won a Pulitzer Prize. And in August 2023, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Chacon its prestigious “Genius” grant, lauding his “practice that cuts across the boundaries of visual art, performance, and music” to activate “spaces of performance where the histories of the lands the United States has encroached upon can be contemplated, questioned, and reimagined.”

On December 14, Zócalo and partners wasteLAnd, GRoW Annenberg, and ASU Gammage present “How Do We Hear America?,” an evening showcasing performances of two Chacon works: “American Ledger No. 1,” an ensemble piece performed beneath a giant, flag-inspired score that tells the creation story of the U.S.; and “Echo Contest,” a call-and-response duet that plays with notions of distance. The program will take place at the historic ASU California Center, in downtown Los Angeles. (Tickets are free. Sign up here.)

Zócalo’s editorial director Eryn Brown caught up with Chacon over Zoom to talk about the saxophone sitting on his couch, how Los Angeles influences his work, and what it means to be American.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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A Letter From Beijing, Where There Is No Normal to Go Back to

Interview by Peter Hong — Tue, 19 May 2020 07:01:41 +0000

In China, people have recently emerged after spending months in their homes. Ching-Ching Ni, editor-in-chief of the New York Times Chinese website, explained to Zócalo how being stuck at home with her husband and teenage daughters in Beijing changed how they saw their surroundings and each other.

Courtesy of Ching-Ching Ni

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The Expansion of the Universe Raises Unnerving Questions

Interview by Lisa Margonelli — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 07:01:56 +0000

Jo Dunkley is a leading researcher into the origins and evolution of the universe and professor of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. In her work, Dunkley uses the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to probe the history of the universe and study the ancient radiation known as Cosmic Microwave Background. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the James Clerk Maxwell Medal, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, and, most recently, the New Horizons in Physics Prize. In October 2019, following the publication of her book Our Universe: An Astronomer’s Guide, she took part in a wide-ranging conversation with Zócalo editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli at a salon in Los Angeles, California. They discussed how to conceptualize the vastness of space, the startling legacy of women in astronomy, and the possibility of life outside Earth.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

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America’s Hidden History of Conquest and the Meaning of the West

Interview by Gregory Rodriguez — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 23:00:50 +0000

Patricia Nelson Limerick is a leading scholar of the American West, and the faculty director and chair of the board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, where she also serves as a professor of history. She has published five books, including The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, a complex work of scholarship that reframed the narrative of the “opening” of the West. She has been the Colorado State Historian, a columnist for The Denver Post, and a MacArthur Fellow. In August 2019, while visiting the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, to take part in a discussion on whether Americans ever got along, she sat down to talk with Zócalo publisher Gregory Rodriguez. They discussed the difficulties of defining “the West,” how Limerick’s own views of history have evolved over her career, and why reading Ovid helps explain the romanticization of Native Americans.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

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American History, Theology, and Three Competing Memories of the Civil War

Interview by Gregory Rodriguez — Tue, 07 May 2019 11:10:26 +0000

David W. Blight, a historian at Yale University who has written seven books and edited many more, stopped by Zócalo’s offices in December of 2018. Earlier that day, The New York Times had named his most recent book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, one of the top ten books of the year. Blight said he was stunned when he heard the news, having worked on Douglass’ biography for most of his adult life. He added that he was surprised—and delighted—to realize how much Americans continue to care about reading history. He sat down with Zócalo Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Gregory Rodriguez to talk about his 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. They discussed the differences between memory and history, the three competing stories Americans tell about the Civil War, and why Walt Whitman is our death poet.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

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Why Martin Luther King Saw His Life as a Sacrifice

Interview by Warren Olney — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 07:01:22 +0000

David J. Garrow is the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1987. Warren Olney, a veteran journalist for KCRW, Southern California’s flagship NPR affiliate, who covered the civil rights movement as a young reporter, interviewed Garrow about King’s life in December 2017 in Los Angeles. They discussed the ongoing relevance of King’s work and his deep commitment to Christianity, equality, and nonviolence—including his response when he was actually punched by Nazis.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

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Why Has America Been So Reluctant to ‘Own’ the South?

Interview by Gregory Rodriguez — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 07:01:31 +0000

James C. Cobb is Emeritus B. Phinizy Spalding distinguished professor in the history of the American South at the University of Georgia. He has published 13 books and many articles focusing on the interaction of the economy, politics, and culture in the American South. Three of his books—The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development 1936-1990, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity, and The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity—are considered classics in the field.

In December 2017, he sat down with Zócalo Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Gregory Rodriguez in Los Angeles to talk about what “the South” is, how the South came to embrace Thanksgiving, and why old country songs often reinforce a cult of the noble loser.

This transcript of the discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

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