“American Ledger no. 1” sounds different each time.

That’s by design, MacArthur fellow Raven Chacon told Zócalo before a performance of his ambitious sound and visual retelling of the nation was staged at the ASU California Center in downtown Los Angeles. The event concluded Zócalo’s 2023 public programs season.

Aside from the abstract shapes that appear on the score and the notes Chacon provides to the conductor and musicians, the musical expression is left up to interpretation. Some sounds and actions occur regularly: throwing coins when a bunch of dots show up. Lighting a match when you see an eighth note with a flame. But other elements vary widely, from the instruments used to other ways sound is conveyed. (For example, because the ASU California Center does not allow axes, the performers last night had to get creative when the score suggested chopping wood.)

“I’m very open to what somebody might bring to this, as long as they are trying to tell the very serious and violent history of the United States,” Chacon said.

The special evening of music, co-presented with L.A.-based music collective wasteLAnd, ASU Gammage, and GRoW Annenberg, began in the historic lobby of the Herald Examiner building, with another Chacon creation, the call-and-response duet “Echo Contest.” As the audience followed the music into the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Event Center, performers embedded in the audience to create a blanketing—yet assertive—effect.

A voiceover from Chacon explained what each line of the score for “American Ledger no. 1,” rendered in the shape of the American flag and supersized on the screen so the audience could follow along, represented.

First, there is a blank space: a time before humans, and maybe animals, “where we don’t remember what existed here on this land.” Topography—stars, mountains, landscape—follows. A continuation of this “uninterrupted lineage of this worldview” is only offset by ships being built from the other side of the world, coming closer and closer. The following lines continue the story: Colonies are built, humans are labeled not five-fifths but three-fifths of a person, the economy grows, and commerce expands; all the while, a steady beat of inequality drums on. By the sixth line, things are either speeding up or slowing down—maybe there’s revolt or protest or assassination, Chacon suggests.

The final line is open-ended: “We don’t know what happens,” he says.

After the show concluded, the audience enjoyed refreshments and tamales from Mama’s Tamales, and Tacos, Too.

“The coins—line four, line five—that was actually the best sounds for me,” an audience member, Andrew Choate, said while chatting with one of the ensemble members, William Roper (who played the helicon, a brass instrument in the tuba family), after the performance.

But Choate said that he had to plug his ears during the police whistles: “That was too harsh.”

“It was harsh,” Roper agreed, “but we live in a harsh land.”

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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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