San Francisco’s Main Library used to have a turntable room where visitors could drop the needle on one of thousands of vinyl discs from its archives. (Vinyl discs were once known as “records,” kids.)
Those turntables are gone. But Hit Parade, a project launched this summer by the SF Museum of Modern Art and the city’s library system, is taking those old records off the shelf to delve into San Francisco’s past and start conversations about its present — in particular, inequality, gentrification, and the disorientation of technology and change.
The vinyl is one point of entry. Live music is another. The project explicitly focuses on three neighborhoods, Bayview-Hunters Point, the Mission, and the Western Addition — the hubs of black and Latino life in the city. So libraries there hosted five local musicians, who, across three live sessions this summer, learned an obscure piece of local music, shaped it, expanded it, and turned it into something contemporary. The short film is well worth watching.
The project has also gathered oral histories from the neighborhoods. Project leader Josh Kun, a cultural historian and professor at the University of Southern California, has made nine tracks, mashing up the stories with local music and pressing them onto vinyl. As of this writing, the recordings are available for listening at SFMOMA and in the circulating vinyl collection of the public library, but not yet online.
(Kun, like José Quiñonez of Mission Asset Fund, whom The Frisc wrote about earlier this week, is a 2016 MacArthur “genius” grant winner.)
Hit Parade also features a San Francisco playlist of 35 songs available on Spotify. (Hello, technology commodification.) There are grievous omissions, of course; Chinese and Chinese-American music is the most glaring absence, says Kun.
What Spotify makes available is one limitation, he says, but the project’s social agenda also directed his choices. “The stories I tell are based on the sources I use,” Kun tells The Frisc. “There’s built-in failure or limits, and I’m at peace with that. I’m trying to make an argument. When someone asks, ‘Why isn’t that song there?’—to me that’s a win.
“I’m trying to use the archives to mix up official narratives,” Kun adds.
We’ve picked a few songs from the Hit Parade playlist and asked Kun and University of San Francisco assistant professor Inna Arzumanova, who has also worked on the project, to comment.
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by Arthur Lyman and Bobby Womack
The Frisc: Why not include Tony Bennett’s iconic version?
Kun: Tony Bennett’s version is not clichéd. It’s a beautiful version. But I tried to choose versions that weren’t so well known. I still love what that song says even if you don’t read it literally, but read it contemporarily. People are saying the city has lost its heart and soul, and they’re leaving their heart here when they have to move.
“Barbary Coast” by George Gershwin
The Frisc: There’s so much material from this period. How did you winnow it down?
Arzumanova: There are indeed many songs about the Barbary Coast. This one was interesting because it was written for the character Frisco Kate, played by Ethel Merman, in the musical “Girl Crazy.”
“I Live Where You Vacation” by Soltron
Kun: They’re all young guys in the Mission who make music about gentrification, about losing places to rehearse, play, and live. Getting shows, getting audiences, it’s all a battle. They hear from their fans who come from Vallejo, Antioch … their fans aren’t in San Francisco anymore. But they still call it home: “We’re young, Latino, and live in the Mission.”
“17 Lyrics of Li Po” by Harry Partch
The Frisc: This seems like it has a through-line to Tom Waits, among many other local contemporary songwriters and composers.
Arzumanova: It’s an early example of music that the composer had written specifically for an instrument he’d designed. It was also, as the musicologist Bob Gilmore wrote, an integral part of Partch’s 1930s public concerts in California, including in San Francisco.
“San Francisco” by Cornelio Reyna
The Frisc: He says he’s got the best mariachis in the world, and he loves San Francisco. Right on.
Arzumanova: Reyna was a key figure in the Norteño-Conjunto musical genre. Reyna had a huge solo career, but he was also known for his early collaborations with Ramón Ayala, with their group Los Relámpagos del Norte.
Live at the Keystone Korner by various artists (including Bill Evans)
The Frisc: The Hit Parade playlist includes several performances recorded live at the city’s jazz venues, including the Keystone Korner, a world-famous club in North Beach that closed in 1983. The Bill Evans cut, “After You,” was in the final run of shows Evans played before he died in 1980. Evans introduces it by saying his bandmate is in the bathroom, but he’ll play solo because a woman in the audience has requested the song, which was written by Cole Porter.
Kun: I got obsessed with “Live in SF” albums. Not only the performance presented, but the sound of the nightclub. Clinking glasses, applause, coughing: The accidental audio ethnography of people and nightclubs and music scenes that are all gone. I Googled “live in SF” and got real-estate ads. I found that to be a powerful search convergence. You’re looking for evidence of the past that’s alive, and you get guides to a part of the present that’s driving people away.
An update corrects the spelling of Arzumanova’s name. Alex Lash is editor in chief of The Frisc. He has left various body parts in San Francisco over the years.
