Sometimes percussionist and composer Michael Zerang gets nostalgic for his early days, the late 70s, on Chicago’s music scene. “Back then I think the scene was healthier, because the visual arts, performance art, and music were all part of the same scene. You’d go down to some loft on West Randolph, and there’d be sculpture and someone hanging paintings–but there’d also be bands like ours playing and performance art. It was all very underground, but it was really vital. I met lots of writers, poets, and theater people in addition to the musicians and dance people I already knew.”
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Zerang’s taste has always been eclectic. Born in Edgewater, the son of an Assyrian father who’d migrated to Chicago from Iraq, he grew up around music, though it was seeing one of saxophonist Roland Kirk’s last gigs when he was 16 that cemented his dedication to it. He never saw any chasm between traditional Middle Eastern music and jazz; his primary instrument remains the dumbek, a Middle Eastern hand drum, and he and his father and brother still perform in Kismet, a traditional Middle Eastern dance band. But his biggest obsession since the 70s has been improvised and experimental music–performing in ensembles and writing scores for theater and dance pieces, films, and performance art. He’s had more than 90 commissions.
And he doesn’t just write and play music. He organized the performance series at Link’s Hall between 1985 and 1989, presenting people such as guitar improviser Derek Bailey and musical cutup Eugene Chadbourne and then-unknown performance artists like Lynn Book and Paula Killen as well as poetry readings with a populist slant before poetry slams took off. He programmed Club Lower Links for its first year and a half. And now he’s programming every Thursday at Urbus Orbis.
–Peter Margasak
