DE LA VEGA’S MUSIC FROM THE INSIDE

“My music is not in,” Aurelio de la Vega said without the slightest bitterness. “I’ve always been against the current. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about what’s happening (musically) in the North or the South or on Venus.

“I don’t want to be connected with any wagon that’s moving at the moment.”

At 60, the Cuban-born composer has no reason to hop any passing wagons. In the last few decades, he bounced along on nearly every vehicle that came his way: “I was into chromaticism up until the ‘60s. Then I entered my austere, serial period during the next decade. Then in the early ‘70s my lyrical, dramatic qualities came to the surface.”

Ten years ago he grew tired of hitching rides and tried something radical. “I decided to write whatever I pleased. In the early days I had my heroes: Mahler and Berg, and later Boulez. But now, I try not to listen to music of others. I listen to my insides. I’m writing the music I feel I should write, and if someone enjoys it one day, fine.”

This is not to suggest that De la Vega is unknown and unloved. Performances of his music are regular occurrences around the world. And right in his own backyard, a milestone such as his 60th birthday does not go unnoticed or uncelebrated.

Tonight, he will be honored by friends and fellow faculty members at Cal State Northridge in a concert of his music spanning the last 20 years.

“It’s a funny thing,” De la Vega said of the tribute. “My 60th birthday was really last November, but I was in Brazil on a Fulbright. Still, my colleagues wanted to celebrate, so here we are in May. I think it will be a nice retrospective, but let’s see how it holds together.”

The party spirit of the concert tonight is one De la Vega wishes could spread beyond the Northridge campus. “There is a problem these days,” he commented, “and it’s something I’ve discussed with my students. We have lost the joy of making music. It has become a metaphysical issue. Everything must be on three levels at the same time. Philosophical questions must be answered.

“Yet when Brahms wrote an intermezzo, he just wrote it. He didn’t give a damn if anyone liked it or not. Let’s write music and smile about it. If we have fun, maybe music will be sane again.”

The compositional freedom De la Vega now relishes is as sweet as the political freedom he sought nearly 30 years ago, when he fled his “totalitarian” homeland. “My music is proscribed in Cuba,” he noted with a mixture of anger and bemusement. “All musicians who have left simply don’t exist there anymore. Fortunately, my family and friends are out of that paradise.”

As congenial as the Southern California life style has been for him, the cozy, comfortable haven afforded by the tenured world of academia has helped soften De la Vega’s stance even more, he admitted. “We are a congenial group here,” he said of the Northridge composition faculty, of which he is a 26-year veteran. “With all the different styles and ways of looking at things, we’ve been in harmony.

“Yet it was more simple back when I began--green was green and black was black. Now, the young faculty people are under tremendous pressures to fit in.”

According to De la Vega, too much emphasis is placed on success in the creative arts. “In America, there is a simple formula: If you’re successful, you must be good. And look what that desire for success does to people. Some will kill for it. They lie, they push others aside. I know I’ve had hidden enemies over the years. But I’ve stuck to my ideals.

“You must write the best you can, with complete disregard for the success of the moment. Remember that nothing is going to change the value of what one does. If a piece is no good, it will disappear. History does not make mistakes.”