Grammy Museum follows melody from Itzhak Perlman to the Pixies
LOS ANGELES — The Pixies, Itzhak Perlman, Ludacris, Brad Paisley, Madonna and Yo-Yo Ma typically wouldn’t share a marquee, but they’re in perfect harmony under the Grammy Museum roof.
The four-story, 32,000-square-foot music temple, opening Saturday in downtown L.A., pays tribute to 125 years of recorded sound with an elaborate array of eye candy, ear massage and interactive high-tech touting every imaginable stripe of music.
(Ric Francis/AP)
IF YOU GO
The Grammy Museum, at Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street in the downtown L.A. Live complex, is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily, except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Tickets are $14.95 adults, $11.95 seniors and $10.95 children (ages 6-17). For details, visit grammymuseum.org.
“That was our most daunting challenge,” says executive director Bob Santelli, a music author and former CEO of Seattle’s Experience Music Project. “We had to make certain that polka, Native American, Hawaiian, blues, hip-hop, country, opera and classical have a home here.”
Unlike shrine-heavy, artifact-driven counterparts, “this museum is more about the creative process and unraveling the mysteries of the recording process,” he says. “We don’t dwell on nostalgia. We took technological ideas from EMP and pushed it forward to get deeper inside the music. It makes the visitor a more sophisticated listener.”
Though the museum boasts an impressive cache of relics, including Leadbelly’s prison pardon and Sammy Cahn’s typewriter, the artifacts are “sidebars to the story we’re telling,” Santelli says. “This isn’t a pilgrimage site. The idea is to experience music and get your hands dirty. The Grammy award has represented artistic excellence for 50 years. We want to show the road to a great song.”
Chief curator Ken Viste says the Grammy Museum’s focus is far broader than its name implies.
“Music is a primary source of historical material, and only in the recent past have we started to accept that pop music isn’t disposable. We learn a lot from songs about what the hopes and fears and feelings of people are. Those are important stories.”
Music’s best stories would be yawners if museum visitors were forced through an old-school gantlet of static charts and photos, he says.
“We have the newest multimedia technology, and we can build interactive experiences,” Viste says, noting that the museum’s self-directed displays especially entice cyber surfers. “The Web is really powerful, and visitors expect that freedom to navigate. The difference is we have very deep content.”
Visitors enter on the fourth floor and wind down through three levels of exhibits. The highlights:
The entrance is an audiovisual tunnel pulsating with overlapping segments of Grammy performances.
Large touch-technology tables allow exploration of 160 subgenres, from modal jazz, emo and zydeco to Celtic, Norteno and two-tone.
“There’s so much cross-pollination, you can never possibly look at all of it in one sitting,” Santelli says.
Pods devoted to pop, folk, gospel, classical and jazz trace those umbrella genres in films with performance footage and interviews. The outer walls flaunt such artifacts as Billie Holiday’s costume jewelry and Louis Armstrong’s lip balm.
“Culture Shock ”highlights groundbreakers, from Elvis Presley to 50 Cent, who upended the culture in each of the six past decades.
A theater space shows short films of artists discussing influences and creative processes, flanked by artifact cases holding Buddy Holly’s guitar, Presley’s first guitar and the horns of Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller and Lester Young.
Wonder how Smokey Robinson came up with “Tracks of My Tears”? Brian Wilson, Isaac Hayes, Ludacris and Waylon Jennings explain how they composed famous tunes at the Songwriters’ Mezzanine listening stations.
“In the Studio” boasts eight booths featuring touch-screen interactivity that allows players to mix a track under the guidance of Manny Marroquin or record a vocal with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Other chambers offer virtual private sessions with Jermaine Dupri, Paul Oakenfold, Mike Clink and similarly hot names.
“Everything Grammy” flashes the show’s decades of glitz and glamour on big screens, in prized Grammys (The Beatles’ best-album trophy for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”) and the finery of such memorable red-carpet strollers as Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce and Kanye West.
Most of the second floor is gallery space that’s reserved for changing exhibits. The inaugural display, Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom, examines the 200-year entwined history of music and politics. Five flashpoints are spotlighted, including Pete Seeger’s protests during the blacklisting era and the Dixie Chicks anti-Bush brouhaha.
“It’s a walk through American history,” Santelli says. “It’s undeniable that music played a part in the political and cultural evolution of this country. You just saw that in one of the greatest presidential elections of all time. We’re showing it didn’t just happen this year.”