Nanette McGuinness 00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Carla Lucero, who we spoke to in February 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] In your bio, you talk about having roots in India, Latin America and New Mexico and of having memories of listening to The Marriage of Figaro Le Nozze di Figaro at age three, and then followed by Ravi Shankar, or, you know...
Carla Lucero 00:44
Celia Cruz.
Nanette McGuinness 00:46
Yeah. And it sounds like a fascinating, rich, diverse background. Can you talk about what it was like growing up? And how the musical background of your childhood influenced and affected and enriched your music? It sounds like such a marvelous stew.
Carla Lucero 01:02
It is, it totally was a stew. And thank god my parents had good taste in me to say, [laughs] "Who knows what would be happening?"
Nanette McGuinness 01:11
Yeah, right!
Carla Lucero 01:12
Um, yeah, I...my parents have extremely eclectic taste in music. And I do as well. And I feel that, that growing up with, with, you know, listening to all kinds of music in the house, also, you know, I grew up eating Indian food almost every day, you know, because my mom is Indian.
Nanette McGuinness 01:41
Right.
Carla Lucero 01:42
And, and hearing Spanish in the house, because my grandparents, you know, my dad's side, their first language was Spanish, same with my dad. So it was bizarre, you know, bizarre household mix of cultures.
Nanette McGuinness 02:01
Sounds wonderful, not bizarre.
Carla Lucero 02:03
Thank you. It was, I mean, in terms of, of understanding the world in a different way, because we grew up in a totally white neighborhood. And, and just to digress for just a second, there were times when my mom would answer the door at our house. And, you know, at that time, people were like, selling things at the door. And they'd ask her is the woman of... the lady of the house home?
Nanette McGuinness 02:35
Ooo, yes, of course.
Carla Lucero 02:36
I think they always thought she was the help.
Nanette McGuinness 02:39
So what did she do?
Carla Lucero 02:41
Well, she got wise. She said, "No." [laughs] That's a really easy way out.
Nanette McGuinness 02:52
Very clever. Oh, my gosh.
Carla Lucero 02:54
Yeah, yeah.
Nanette McGuinness 02:56
So insulting, though!
Carla Lucero 02:58
It's so insulting. And they think my dad was a gardener. And it was it was, we, my siblings, and I and my parents, although they really are pretty stoic about it. We all experienced a lot of prejudice. Growing up, my dad was a scientist. So he, he, he experienced it a lot at work, as well, you know,
Nanette McGuinness 03:26
What kind of science did he do?
Carla Lucero 03:29
Believe it or not, at the very beginning of it AI, artificial intelligence, but it was for the defense industry. And, you know, he until this day, he wishes that he would have applied that to medicine. But yeah, he, he has several patents.
Nanette McGuinness 03:49
Nice!
Carla Lucero 03:50
And since history, we it was a wild life. I mean, we never knew where he was going to work. Like if he was on assignment, my dad would be taken to an undisclosed location, picked up by a black van, taken somewhere else, and then put on a helicopter somewhere.
Nanette McGuinness 04:10
Oh my gosh, how movie?
Carla Lucero 04:12
It's totally! And when we traveled, we couldn't get the whole family, individually or together, couldn't come within 50 miles of a communist country.
Nanette McGuinness 04:27
Wow! Because he worked for the DOD?
Carla Lucero 04:30
Yeah. So, so you know, and our phones were tapped, and I remember one time, you know, we were teenagers and you know what teenagers talk about, you'd never want your parents to hear.
Carla Lucero 04:42
My dad [laughs] came downstairs to talk to my sister and I, and he said, um, "Our phones are tapped. So please, tone it down." We thought, "Oh my God."
Nanette McGuinness 04:42
[laughs]
Nanette McGuinness 05:01
So was it our side tapping them? Or who knows?
Carla Lucero 05:05
Who knows? That's all they told us. It was basically, like, "You know what, girls, don't even talk about anything that that's gonna embarrass you or us." And so, yeah.
Nanette McGuinness 05:18
Right. A good early practice for social media, right?
Carla Lucero 05:21
[Laughs] Yes, exactly.
Nanette McGuinness 05:24
Is it just your sister and you? Or do you have more than one sibling?
Carla Lucero 05:28
I have a brother also. My sister, Celeste, my brother, Andre. Celeste lives in Southern California. Um, and, and I have two nieces. And my brother lives in San Francisco. So he's here. It's really nice to have a sibling close.
Nanette McGuinness 05:47
Yeah. Are they in music or completely other things?
Carla Lucero 05:54
My sister is not musical. My brother was a DJ for for a while. Now he works in lighting design. And yeah, so he's musical. But I think I was the one who was basically born.
Nanette McGuinness 06:12
Yeah, yeah. So the richness of the background affecting your music, it's more kind of what's swirling around in your head than specific things. And yet some of your operas are connected to your heritage, like Juana and Las Tres Mujeres de Jerusalén. How else are Mexican and Indian culture represented in your music? Or are they not?
Carla Lucero 06:37
Well, I would say that that with, with Indian music, and I studied Indian music at CalArts, which I'm so grateful I did. That's another thing of hearing something growing up, hearing something and not really understanding what the theory is behind it. I think that melodically I'm really impacted by Indian music. I mean, yes. So, so basically, melodically with the, you know, quarter tones and, you know, this type of...
Nanette McGuinness 07:16
undulating?
Carla Lucero 07:16
Undulating and yeah, being expressive in a way that we usually don't hear in
Western music.
Nanette McGuinness 07:25
Right.
Carla Lucero 07:25
Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's, it's the orchestra doing it.
Nanette McGuinness 07:30
Yeah.
Carla Lucero 07:31
Right? And, and then, with Spanish music, I'm not gonna say Mexican, because my father's from New Mexico, and big Spanish, you know, population there.
Nanette McGuinness 07:45
Yeah.
Carla Lucero 07:45
So I wasn't really exposed as a child too much to Mexican music. It was mainly Spanish, like Flamenco music, and then my parents loved Cuban music a lot too. So I feel that my music was influenced on the with Spanish music, in terms again, of rhythm, of instrumentation, and passion,
Nanette McGuinness 08:14
And maybe the propulsiveness of the music?
Carla Lucero 08:17
Yes. There's something very passionate.
Nanette McGuinness 08:20
Yeah.
Carla Lucero 08:21
You know, about that music, and I feel that, that mainly affects the vocal line of my work. There's some where a statement starts, right, say the singer starts proclaiming something.
Nanette McGuinness 08:38
[laughs]
Carla Lucero 08:39
That there's [laughs] an authentic type of growth and kind of like an, like maybe a mini explosion, and then going on rapidly afterwards, and I think that kind of parallels Spanish speakers, you know, the way they speak more so than English speakers.
Nanette McGuinness 09:00
Ah, interesting.
Carla Lucero 09:02
Does that make sense?
Nanette McGuinness 09:03
It does, but I'd love you to give an explanation to those of our listeners who are less musical, because I think you can and I do think I get what you're talking about because I am a language lover. I speak a number of languages. So I do think I...can you give us an example?
Carla Lucero 09:20
Yes, say that you're, you're talking about something. And you're saying, Oh, I love just say it, say it without that first. Oh, I went to the store and I found something that I absolutely loved. Right?
Nanette McGuinness 09:38
Sure.
Carla Lucero 09:39
The way that, you know, a Spanish speaker would say that would be I went to the store...[pause] and then I found something I really loved!
Nanette McGuinness 09:48
Yeah, yeah.
Carla Lucero 09:49
It's that type of propulsiveness. You know, to, to, to really have a place where you're going, where you're landing.
Nanette McGuinness 09:58
Right.
Carla Lucero 09:58
Yeah, but there's two different tempi, right? That you're, that you're, that you're singing, you know, there's your, you kind of have this statement and then you go off.
Nanette McGuinness 10:11
Right, you have the enthusiastic declination.
Carla Lucero 10:14
It's almost about building momentum.
Nanette McGuinness 10:17
Yeah!
Carla Lucero 10:18
Where, where I feel that, that composing music to Spanish text, is much more natural kind of to do that, just the way that language is, is constructed. But I find myself doing that a lot with English as well. But it's much more subtle, and it takes a longer time to get to those explosive places. Yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Nanette McGuinness 10:50
It does. English is a flatter language, in general, for people who are native English speakers who haven't spoken a Romance language or something else beforehand. So it's more of a slow burn to kind of go there. And even the language I mean, Spanish is more of a staccato delivery as well, so it makes sense.
Carla Lucero 11:11
Absolutely, definitely staccato and, and there are a lot, a lot more dramatic pauses.
Nanette McGuinness 11:20
Yeah. [laughs]
Carla Lucero 11:22
You know, beginnings again, I love that. I love that.
Nanette McGuinness 11:26
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Carla Lucero, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button, and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
