KSUA Radio Host Spotlight — Manny Melendez — Absolute Vibrant Consciousness
By Nóra McIntyre
The KSUA Radio Host Spotlight strives to get to know our local radio hosts and to find out more about the shows they put on. I sat down to chat with Manny Melendez, the host of Absolute Vibrant Consciousness, to discuss music and life. The following is a partial transcript of our conversation.
M: My name is Manny Melendez. I’m an MFA student here. I study poetry— ideally. My show, Absolute Vibrant Consciousness is about making a playlist that keeps people listening because they don’t know what genre, or type of music is going to play next. [It plays on] Monday nights from 9:15-10:15pm, but usually a little earlier depending on when I get there after class.
N: What kind of music did your parents play in the house when you were a kid, and what was the first song that you were really obsessed with?
M: My parents played all kinds of music within the context of being stuck in Communist Cuba, so there wasn’t that much access really, to a wide variety of music genres. But, I listened to Jazz, Cuban Folk music, Pop— Spanish and English, Rock and Roll. In essence, they tried to get as much musical diversity into the household but I didn’t really experience that diversity in full force until I got here to the U.S. As for the first song— there’s a song by this Cuban group called Moncada and they have a song called “Mama Hue,” and I remember being really obsessed with that song, and so I would play my dad’s vinyl over and over and over again. That was like, the very first song that I was obsessed with. That was a very long time ago.
N: So then, when did music come into your life in a big way, and start to have a big influence on you?
M: Oh, I would say that it was always influential, but it didn’t have the influence that you’re talking about until I moved here, and I realized that listening to music that I had listened to when I was in Cuba provoked memories about Cuba. So I understood that music was a way to store memories too. It was like another piece of luggage that I had carried. And when you open it— all of a sudden it’s like I can listen to a song and it instantly- you know everything crystallized about that moment when I had listened to it, or the other moment, or this or that. So it became important to me as a way of keeping the people I had just left, and then I realized I could do that perpetually, and so I did. When I was about eight years old, eight or nine, in New Jersey, that’s when I started to understand the actual power of music, especially in memory.
N: And do you think that influences your art, or your poetry?
M: One hundred percent. I don’t actually write anything without music, even if I revise in silence or if I do specific paragraphs— I can do those in silence, but there’s always music playing in my head or I’m actively playing loops of music or songs while writing.
N: Do you have a specific playlist for writing?
M: No, which goes with the playlist for my show. It depends on what it is I’m writing. For example, in this workshop that I have this semester, I have this very tiny musical loop from just a trailer, and I loop it, and I write a short story, and I will revise my short story to that loop, and maybe like two other pieces. But for the longer piece I’ve turned in, that I’m workshopping for the first time next week, it was just a sound loop from Alien, with very minimal music, and then a little bit of “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush. And so I try to keep up with musical trends as far as that goes, and it helps me. Also— it’s a weird thing to say out loud, but if you understand how music is used in pop culture, then you understand the structure it creates for people when they read or view something, and then you can emulate it. If I know how to do that, all I have to do is watch it again and again, and I can understand that structure and copy it, but make it my own because it’s my voice and my characters. So it’s actually useful to me.
N: So, you’re really into movies and movie soundtracks?
M: Yes, absolutely. Those were the first CDs I ever wanted to buy. This is a true story— my dad was like, “what do you want for Christmas?” I think I was like nine or ten. I was like, “oh I want The Fifth Element soundtrack,” which was like $17.98 or something, at a store, back when you had actual CD stores that you could go to. He said okay. But I was a very impatient person, and my friend at school, her name was Mariana, lovely, lovely person, she’s like, “what do you want for Christmas?” And because I didn’t know any better I [answered], “I want The Fifth Element soundtrack”— just telling everybody, like just give it to me! But, she did! That was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me, and when I showed it to my dad all happy, he then showed me that he had already bought it, but he had been keeping it in a drawer for Christmas, and so he returned his copy, and I felt kind of bad, but at the same time it was like he understood, he really understood in that moment, one, how important music was to me, and secondly, that when I wanted something, I was going to go out and get it. (Laughter)
N: What’s your favorite movie then? Kind of off topic but on topic question.
M: That’s kind of hard to answer.
N: Maybe favorite movie at this exact moment in time.
M: I think my favorite movie at this exact moment in time is probably— no, you know what, it’s always gonna be The Fifth Element. (Laughter)
N: I guess that’s easy then! Is that your favorite movie soundtrack too?
M: Not quite. When I was a kid for sure, but now I’ve moved on. But The Fifth Element will always be a perfect movie to me. My movies are like my kids, I have like 600 Blu-rays and whatnot. I have them because they’re all important to me in some way.
N: Yeah— gear shift! How have your aesthetic tastes changed over the years, from your Fifth Element soundtrack days, to now?
M: I used to be very impatient with classical music. My dad always taught me that I should learn to love classical music because it’s the birth of music. It’s where a lot of musical origins have taken place. But I just couldn’t get past a lot of the movements because they were so slow. So as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten slower. So I’ve been able to appreciate things that don’t necessarily have easy melodies or rhythms, like atonal music even. John Adams is one of my favorite composers, he can write really atonal music. I didn’t used to like hip hop as much when I was a kid, but within the last six or seven years, I’ve started to really enjoy how hip hop music and rap can actually— they do duality really well. You have a strong driving force in a beat, but then the lyrics are really not driving anything at all but an emotional center. So they can be really sad or depressing but the music is a counterpoint to that. And in pop it’s not always like that— a ballad is a ballad because it starts slow and the lyrics are sad or romantic, but in rap or hip hop a lot of times you don’t really get that. It’s a lot of juxtaposition and paradox, and I like that. Music that’s weird is really good too. Dissonance— I really like Björk. She’s great, she does whatever she wants, and then I’ll just listen to it regardless. Her last album was really great.
N: What songs do you have on repeat these days?
M: So I have two that I’ve been playing a lot. One is a symphonic suite from Princess Mononoke, and then the other is this trance, kind of electronica song, called “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing),” and it’s from a DJ called Fred Again. I played it on my show last week actually. It has a— not a speech but kind of like a dialogue that the Blessed Madonna had through a video during the pandemic talking about how people can’t go dancing anymore. So she was proclaiming that we’ve lost dancing. So he cut the loop and made it into a really, really bangin’ dance track. I love it.
N: So, you’ve already kind of answered this question, you know, what kind of vibe you’re creating with your radio show. But who should listen to your show?
M: People who are new to music should listen to it. I feel like people who don’t know anything about music would get a lot out of my show because it plays into as many genres as I can fit into a fifty-five minute block. People who are snotty or pretentious about music probably wouldn’t get as much out of my show because it’s not catering to gatekeeping niche genres or artists. It’s not really for that. It’s about highlighting the music that changed my life and the music that I like now, within a completely chaotic context, so people understand that all music is valid and we can keep all of that chaos within us. That makes everything more interesting. Do you want to be known as the person who only listens to indie rock? I don’t ever want to be known as someone who only listens to that, or they use the word “only” to describe what they’re interested in. I’m not limiting like that.
N: What do you see as the value of radio in our contemporary time, what with streaming and all? Where does radio fit in?
M: I think a lot of it is nostalgia. With streaming, obviously radios don’t need to be in that same sense that they needed to be back when my parents— back even when I was in the 90s. We needed radio to listen to music. I used to take tapes and have to manage recording of the song that was coming on in order to make my mixtapes— like actually mixed tapes, you know? But I also think that radio is a way to keep a line of communication open between different people and different places, should streaming go by the wayside, should it ever go down. Like, what if there’s no internet? You still have radio. Radio waves will always be with us, so it seems silly not to put them to use. There’s no reason for us to not have radio stations, just because of streaming. They’re not mutually opposed to each other. And there’s something really cozy about being in a little room and knowing that you can connect to just about anyone you want, especially with the technology now. It’s even better when you think of it as a marriage. You can send out a signal full of music and joy to them, and you’ll never know if they’ll hear it, but you sent it out, so you did your job.
N: It’s like you’re the alien sending out your waves.
M: Right. I mean, that’s why Steven Spielberg decided that his aliens in Close Encounters would communicate through music. We’re all aliens.
N: We’re all aliens! Now, what is your dream concert?
M: My first dream concert would be intimate, set in the most beautiful, ruined palace I can think of, an Enya concert where she would play at least twenty five of her songs, and I would create the playlist for her, and she would automatically love it, and not criticize it. She’d say “absolutely, this is what I’m going to do”. And then my second concert would probably be— it’s so hard to say— honestly it would probably be one of those festivals, but I would just have the voices of the women that I love in rock and roll. So it would be like Tina Turner, Annie Lennox, Madonna, Cher, Ana Torroja, who is the lead singer of my favorite band of all time, Mecano. And then you can have some Broadway in there— Idina Menzel, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand. And then you’d have like Patti LuPone. You’d have Joan Baez, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Lorena McKennitt. I could go on and on— Mama Cass, Faye Wong. I really love Faye Wong, she’s a huge star in China [and] Asia. For me, female voices are more important to my ear, it’s just the way it is. Male voices don’t do as much for me, so most of my voices identify as female.
N: Well thank you!