Music : eXindigo! Mixes Music, Politics in ‘Order’

Music and politics have always been a potent mixture, the purely emotional appeal of the one enforcing the seemingly logical propositions of the other. The contemporary music group eXindigo! showed once again how strong the combination can be, Saturday at Hermosa Beach Civic Theater, with premieres of two works whose messages one didn’t necessarily have to agree with to recognize the power they gained from musical statement.

“The New World Order” by Ed Bland proved deliberately provocative and disturbingly cynical. Setting his work in five titled movements for choir, piano and percussion, Bland uses rhythmic speech to make his points unambiguous, punctuating and underlining them with instrumental interjections.

In the movement “President Quayle,” for instance, Bland creates a martial tone with snare-drum riffs accompanying a choir marching in place, which reports crisply that “he didn’t serve in Vietnam but President Quayle is a military man.” In “Gimme That Tape,” the composer gives a pseudo-rap account of the Rodney King incident, the choir exhorting: “Get smart, brothers. Change gangs. Become a cop.”

The title-piece is a question and answer session, the asking done in monotones, the answering in a reasonable, factual manner--”Now that Russia is gone, we’re the only bully on the block.” Set with great skill and directness, Bland’s piece is a Machiavellian look, charged- up with rhythm and harmony, at present-day society. Laurie Gurman conducted, as throughout the evening, effectively.

The revised version of Ted Peterson’s “One, Two, Three, Four . . .” also received its premiere, its texts on the suffering of children given immediacy by the spareness of the forces--soprano, clarinet and nine-member choir--and the simplicity of its means, including rhythmic speech and spoken monologue.

Frederic Rzewski’s “Snacks,” for choir, clarinets, piano and percussion, by turns comic and tragic in its presentation of texts from Peter Farb’s “Consuming Passions,” completed the brief program.