BRANCA SCHOEN

BRANCA SCHOEN

ANN ARBOR, MI—Like the spirit of rock ’n’ roll itself, Glenn Branca could only have come from that brutal, sweet land of mad poets, the good ole U. S. of A. Like Walt Whitman and Iggy Pop before him, this composer of guitar symphonies is one of those self-styled primitives, an avatar of the barbaric yawp, and tonight in Detroit he even looks the part. With his withering stare, five o’clock shadow, and shirt sleeves tattered up to his elbows, Branca might actually be mistaken for some Bowery bum, and his music— which is inseparable from his persona—sounds like it could have been composed by one. Ranting, barely controlled, yeah, even frightening, it resembles the sort of half-articulate cosmic screed that emerges out of the passion of suffering, that white rage that makes you want to pound on heaven’s door to demand an explanation.

Architect of keening, expansive structures of metallic dissonance, Branca has just recently emerged from his lower Manhattan haunt to give the first performances of his Symphony No. 5, a massive work scored for bass, drums and (count ’em) nine guitars. It’s probably Branca’s most ambitious work to date, comprising seven movements that together last the better part of two hours. If you haven’t guessed already, performances of Branca’s music can be a bit of an ordeal—sweat drenched endurance rituals of troublesome catharsis, the focal point being Branca’s own conducting. Onstage, he’s everybody’s subconscious vision of Ludwig van— fists clenched, hair askew, compressing his mass as if forcing the music through his pores.

Branca’s latest work also continues his experiments with tuning systems based on the electric guitar’s natural overtone series, which gives an added dimension of timbral color and an ensemble sound that resonates even more resoundingly. To this end, Branca had to literally take apart the entire battery of guitars and re-fret I them, as well as construct some new instruments of his own, like an electric hammer dulcimer and what looks like a seven foot-long pedal steel guitar.

“One thing that’s really imporI tant to me is to try to make music that’s interesting to me every time I hear it,” an exhausted Branca ofI fers after the show. “Some of the I movements are totally scored, very ■ tightly scored. But I make as much of an effort as possible to leave places that are open-ended. I have to, otherwise nothing’s going to happen.”

He’s been under fire for the violent, even fascistic nature of his performances. Heavy metal for boho intellectuals, it’s been called. “Sure it’s violent,” Branca responds. “But that leaves out the other 90 percent of it.”

Branca disdains any and all commercial music, but he’s no academic snob. The three months of guitar lessons he got as a teenager are the only formal education he ever received— and he’s learned how to read music. There’s still that essential connection between the teenager who thrashed out the chords of “Louie, Louie” in his Pennsylvania home and the high art composer he turned into. “I try not to forget the feeling that I had when I first stood in my bedroom with an electric guitar and turned the thing up to full volume. There’s a certain feeling you have when you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks what you do. And I try to maintain that feeling.”

As Branca enters the ranks of leading contemporary composers, a lot of violin teachers will have to scratch their heads and go figure how some rock ’n’ roll kid got that far.

Richard Chon