JONESTOWN--THE OPERA!
posted by James Reel
This press release just in from Tucson composer Dan Buckley ...
Jonestown opera lecture demonstration scheduled
When: Thursday, Nov. 6, 7 p.m.
Where: Dinnerware Artspace, 264 E. Congress
Admission: $3 at the door, wine bar available (sorry, no Kool Aid)
On November 18, 1978 some 900-plus members of the People¹s Temple of Jonestown in Guyana took their own lives, hours after some of the Jonestown commune members murdered visiting congressman Leo Ryan, newsmen and a small number of Jonestown deserters on a jungle airstrip. The event remains the largest mass suicide in modern times.
Like Richard Nixon, Rev. Jim Jones frequently kept tape recorders going to document his "great socialist experiment." The tapes were discovered by the FBI when the bodies were recovered from Jonestown. The recordings were later released through the Freedom of Information Act.
Tucson composer Daniel Buckley has been working with the Jonestown tapes in a variety of musical settings since 1980. He is currently working in collaboration with set designer Alfred Quiroz on an opera based on the Jonestown tragedy, to be performed at the University of Arizona School of Music in November, 2010.
In anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown suicide this year, Buckley will hold a lecture demonstration at the Dinnerware Artspace. Buckley will talk about the history of the cult and the events that led to its demise. He will also present various pieces he has written using the Jonestown tapes, including the string quartet he wrote for the Kronos String Quartet in the mid 1990s and sketches from the upcoming opera. The lecture/demonstration will show how working with these materials has directly impacted his evolution as a composer and performance artist.
Why Jonestown as the subject for an opera? Jones himself said it best (quoting philosopher George Santayana) in a sign that hung directly behind his "throne" in Jonestown: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The Jonestown tragedy is the best documented example of cult behavior, but there have been more since (notably the Branch Davidian/Waco group of David Koresh and the Heaven's Gate cults), while the techniques Jones used to brainwash his followers were the same employed to get terrorists to fly into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. As operatic fodder, it's a tale of megalomania, sexual perversion, intimidation and death, with whispers of CIA involvement and prevailing mysteries.
From 1987-2005 composer Daniel Buckley was the classical music critic for the Tucson Citizen. Since 2003 he has created video and audio content for the Citizen's online operation, www.tucsoncitizen.com. He also writes about contemporary classical music for Stereophile Magazine.
Prior to working for the Citizen Buckley composed music for theatre, dance, art gallery installations and concerts in Tucson. He was a pioneer of the Club Congress performance art scene, working under his own name as well as Blind Lemon Pledge and Lonesome Jack Underpants. He was also a member of the dreaded Little Dinks, and a five-year president of the now defunct Central Arts Collective art gallery. He has received grants from the Southwest Interdisciplinary Arts Fund and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
WARNING: Reverend Jones is a foul-mouthed dude. This is not for kids.
