On new album, Chilly Gonzales' tackles cancel culture vs antisemitism

What defines art and can it coexist with commercialism? How should we deal with artists who no longer meet our moral standards?

These are some of the themes Chilly Gonzales tackles in his latest album, "Gonzo," set for release on Friday.

In an introspective turn, the Canadian-born artist, wrestles with thoughts about his creative journey and the nature of being an artist today.

After years of focusing on instrumental compositions, Gonzales shifts gears with "Gonzo," to deliver an album rich with lyrics - allowing him to voice the thoughts he's been mulling about art, identity and integrity.

"The first time that I entertained was the first time that I felt sane." This is the first line of the album, the first line of the song "Gonzo", accompanied by the sound of strings.

"I started writing lyrics again the beginning of 2022. And these are the songs that came out with the most power , " the Canadian musician, who has been living in Cologne for years now, told dpa.

"I don't think about my audience. I just produce as much as I can. I try to have a clear line to my unconscious and go as far as I can. And I follow the lyrics where they take me. And it's at a much later stage when I'm like, 'Okay, now I'm going into an entertainer mode'."

The 52-year-old singer, pianist, producer and entertainer, whose real name is Jason Charles Beck, dedicates the album's most monumental song to the artistic creation process.

"Neoclassical Massacre," a rhymed rant about artists who make music just to conform to the algorithmic logic of playlists and thus achieve the greatest possible (commercial) success.

"The role of the artist is not to let the algorithm dictate what we make, but. But to then, once we've made something, to then use the algorithm to our benefit."

F*ck Wagner

Perhaps the most concise, but certainly the most provocative of the 11 songs on the new album is "F*ck Wagner."

"I'm not the first person to draw attention to Wagner's hateful rhetoric, but I just want to say it goes hand in hand with me being a fan of his music and also hand in hand with being fascinated by the way he lived his life dramatically."

Since he was a teenager, his father exposed him to the music of German composer Richard Wagner, encouraging him to read and memorise the texts and their translations, and he had also been to the Bayreuth Festival very early in his life.

The world-famous music festival is held annually in Bayreuth, Germany and features operatic works by Wagner.

"I asked my father, 'Hey, you're a Jewish man ... I didn't realize that this man wrote this book'," he recalls about Wagner and his anti-Semitic writings.

"'And yet now for years, you've been playing his music non-stop and taking your three kids to the temple of his music. How do you feel about this?'"

Gonzales' father responded: "We have to separate the art from the artist."

"So this has been a kind of mantra in my mind ever since. Wagner was the first artist that created this question in my mind, and my father was the first one to provide some kind of answer, and it's been with me ever since," Gonzales says.

"What do we do with art that we love made by either imperfect people, but maybe people who are imperfect to such an extreme that we would call them monsters?"

Tina Turner instead of Richard Wagner

He has started a petition to rename a Richard Wagner street in Cologne as Tina Turner Street - also to draw attention to this area of tension.

Wagner, "a monstrous human being," has little to with Cologne itself, the campaign argues - unlike the late Tina Turner, who made this western German city her home for nine years.

"The reason I started my campaign is not because I'm woke and think all street names of imperfect people should be changed, because then we have no more street names," he says.

Gonzales says he's not a "cancel culture warrior," and believes we should all still listen to Wagner's music, just the way we do with other problematic artists - like Kanye West.

"I can't stop listening to Kanye. I have emotional connections to the music that were important to me in a time of my life that inspired me as an artist, as a person, that maybe even helped me in certain moments."

Gonzales sums it up with the sentiment of his new album: "It's hard to boycott something that you love, but it's easy if you hate it."