FRANK ZAPPA: THE CRISIS OF POETIC DISCOURSE
FRANK ZAPPA: THE CRISIS OF POETIC DISCOURSE

Summary/Abstract: Frank Vincent Zappa’s work spanned virtually every contemporary musical genre (including avant-garde, rock, doo-wop, jazz, jazz fusion, reggae, ska, electronic music, contemporary classical, blues, musique concrète, hard rock, big band, progressive rock, pop, proto-rap and world music), and was often noted for its blend of high art, rock opera, absurdity, scatological humor, and for its hilariously caustic social satire. The wording of his music as well – lyrics, adlibs, autobiographical comments, jokes, indistinct Dada-like ravings, etc – has always fascinated the audience with its crisp freshness and mysterious gnomic relevance. The paper tries to unveil the ways in which the great musician’s lyrics can be related to the poetry of some important poets of the time – among whom Ginsberg and Lowell – and unravels the similarities and differences between Zappa and those poets in expressing the deep cultural crisis underlying the overwhelming exuberance of the ‘60s and the ‘70s. The chameleonic auctorial self is examined as being dismembered through a crisis of discourse which in its turn mirrors the crisis of music and poetry reception in a society where all artists and audience seem to share is their autistic way of addressing and perceiving each other. That vision is seen as involving scathing critique but as being nonetheless shrouded in his copiously diverse, mordantly ironical and exuberantly multi-layered ways of artistic expression – all analyzed in view of some classical as well as some very recent approaches in the theories of postmodernism.

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