Toward a Unifying Theory of Che Chen
Reflecting on Chen's performance at Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, 4/26/24
1. All music is party music: historically, music is community-forward and shared among villages/places of worship/the honky-tonk, etc. Even silence is best enjoyed with company—there is the silence within yourself and then there’s the shared acknowledgment of nothing, a different animal from mere shower thoughts.
2. Composer Che Chen in conversation with journalist Geeta Dayal shares this observation when recalling his own study: what the west calls “world music,” and the heady scholarship of different cultures’ music as investigated by ethnomusicologists, tends to be fussed-over analysis of what the culture or the participants in their respective scene would consider party music.
3. While under the tutelage of legendary Mauritanian guitarist Jeiche Chighaly, Chen witnessed the nightlife of the country and giglife of his band revolved around weddings—a prosaic setting for someone trailblazing a guitar tone and technique that westerners would later “discover.” The crux of Chen’s observation is among unfamiliar contexts the truth of what we perceive as groundbreaking, or even “difficult” music, is simply what the bride and groom want to hear.
4. To complicate things a bit, in his own practice, Chen stresses all sounds are music, or hold the potential for musicality. Through his solo set, Chen’s could not be conceived as traditional party music, but his belief every sound is music would logically suggest his patient, contemplative, and improvisational performance as music experienced communally, together, all at once comprise tenets that are the skeleton of any party from rager to potluck to black-tie—any simultaneous gathering of souls.
5. This framing fleshes out my appreciation of Chen’s practice. He sculpts a place where a gathering of people can sit or stand or nod in quiet meditation—I sat cross-legged on the floor of the black-box theater—the serenity of the opening drone, the spaces between his reverberating percussion, horn, pedal feedback, and multi-tonal guitar improv are crevices where he lets the listener experience sound. There were a few obligatory restless folks shuffling their feet but there was also an attentiveness that bordered on adoration. There was no tension of ambient or “out”-influenced minimalist music, but an intentional, second-by-second delivery of sound to the listener. It was an empathetic movement.
6. In his thoughtful discipline, as someone who’s spent years studying and listening and performing a range of music, western- and diaspora-informed and not, Chen lays open a quiet catalogue of sounds he pulls out one by one, like a congenial lab partner sharing his notes with you a page at a time.
7. Chen’s performance was a Deep Listening™ -informed world of sound, and in this lies a utopian vision where Chen is the host of a party where he invites the guests to come in, sit down, remove their shoes, close their eyes, and feel.
8. This interpretation is of course but one way to parse Chen’s work. Born into a Taiwanese immigrant family, Chen spent his youth in the D.C. area before decamping to New York City to enter the world of no wave, avant-garde composers, and the experimental underground, accidentally turning an acquaintance's corner coffeeshop into a sought-after venue for touring outré musicians, starting a performance group dubbed 75 Dollar Bill whose goal was to use rock instruments and sounds in spaces without presenting a rock and roll experience, and generally becoming a DIY ambassador.
9. Showing up in these spaces as a nonwhite person is an act of decolonization. During his conversation with Dayal, Chen intimated his philosophy extends beyond commonly understood ideas of cultural exchange (from Wu-Tang Clan sampling kung fu movies to starker instances like the Stones taking from Black blues musicians or Terry Riley’s deep study of Indian music). He positions his music in a non-western context because decolonizing goes beyond fighting oppression grounded in the west; endless nodding in agreeable spaces serves the ruling class. Grounding his community-focused practice in some post-racial context would be corny and unhelpful, but through his work and ethos he urges everyone to look beyond common ways of resisting and western-centric thinking, to move with intentionality toward building another world.
10. I’m not a musician but as an Enthusiastic Appreciator my preferred musical praxis is one of community and the sublime. The world and inner workings of atonal guitar tunings is above my head but not to the extent where I couldn’t admire Chen’s non-showy world tour of guitar technique with which he closed his performance. It probably speaks to my rearing among the western rock canon that this is the section of the performance I most enjoyed, but within that deeply held moment of the show’s climax was a feeling of “you belong here,” and to the host I gave thanks for their generosity.
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I’ve been having a semi-crisis regarding my taste: I know what I like but I also rely on a handful of trusted friends to point me in the right direction. I don’t deny I take these cues but I get insecure about this because I am an alleged “music writer” but I view my path as one of careful curation and consideration rather than endless crate-digging and discovery. We live in a society. Here’s a quick almost-summer playlist:
cash cobain + bay swag ft. ice spice “fisherrr (remix)” / j.p. “bad bitty” / chief keef + mike will made it ft. sexxy red “damn shorty” / glorilla ft. finesse2tymes “finesse da glo” / concrete boys + karrahbooo “two hands two eyes ten whips/rent due” / future “amazing” / tinashe “nasty” / lola brooke ft. bryson tiller “you” / erika de casier ft. they hate change “ice” / lolina “meet the devil”
tommy richman “million dollar baby” / sadboi “slide” / big ace “i can do that” / tisakorean “sluttalk” / vegyn + john glacier “a dream goes on forever” / mk.gee “candy” / mount kimbie “yukka tree” / fine “days incomplete” / roc marciano “went diamond” / amber mark “comin’ round again”