An Interview With Cordoba

A haunting vibe emanates off the songs of Specter, a fitting soundtrack to the season, in more ways than one. Another crossroads for our culture draws days away and Cordoba has produced a record of poetic journeys wrapped in warnings, protests, coping, and twisted hypnotic sonics that didn’t need a national catastrophe to be topical. Recorded and produced pre-pandemic, Specter is the debut full-length from the local sextet who were set to do a full release schedule in the Spring before the virus grabbed the world by the short hairs. Full of their distinct genre blend, Cordoba weaves a dark jazzy odyssey punctuated with Brianna Tong’s vocal range, that can zoom from dulcet croon to soaring poetics to punky growl.

We spoke to guitarist and composer Cam Cunningham about the early days of Cordoba, their collaborative and improvisational songwriting, and how he’d love to visit the Aztecs if he had a time machine. 

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Cordoba

Brianna Tong - Vocals
Eric Novak - Vocals, Saxophone, Flute, Oboe, Bass Clarinet
Cam Cunningham - Guitar
Zach Bain-Selbo (BS) - Keys
Khalyle Hagood - Bass
Zach Upton-Davis (UD) - Drums  

CC: Cam Cunningham

Chicago has a long history of experimental music. How did Cordoba form and what about Chicago has made it home? 

CC: The first iteration of Cordoba formed at the University of Chicago where I met Zach UD and Brianna Tong. None of us started as music majors, but we all had an interest in jazz and experimental music. Zach UD and I initially met in a composition class, and all three of us studied with Mwata Bowden, who led the Jazz department at UChicago and is an incredible musician.

The vast majority of UChicago students don’t stick around Chicago. My friends from school live in New York, California, Berlin, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and everywhere in between. But Zach, Brianna, and I were all drawn to the city. We all got involved with local radical politics. I think we admired the working class history of the city and its history as a center of leftwing politics. We also fell in love with both the jazz and the DIY scenes. We would drive up to venues on the Northwest Side like Constellation, The Whistler, or California Clipper (RIP) from Hyde Park on at least a weekly basis to see local jazz musicians like Dana Hall, Justefan, Scott Hesse (my teacher), Bobby Broom, Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell, and so many more. I can remember feeling that Chicago was a special place for music every time I heard them play. I felt then and still feel today that it's one of the only places in the world I could imagine myself living the life I want to live.

Cordoba's music has been described as genre-bending, reflecting influences from jazz to hip-hop to R&B and beyond. If you had to boil down the essence of Cordoba, how would you describe the music without using genre labels? 

CC: Our music has a few consistent elements that drive and structure our compositions. I think most important is the commitment to playing groove music. We often play in odd times, but almost all of our tunes have a strong backbeat. I think this is the most hip-hop / rock element present in our music. Our jazz leanings really show in our use of improvisation and interaction, especially in a live setting. We want to play music that isn’t completely scripted; we want to tell a different story each time. I think Brianna and Eric’s voices differentiate us from a lot of other jazz / hip-hop bands. We play longish tunes with plenty of improvisation, but we often use more pop / R&B structures to keep the music grounded. A verse, a chorus, or a bridge don’t often repeat verbatim in our tunes, but the presence of these “pop” elements place us sort of out of the jazz orbit.

Do you all split duties or is there specific duties for each member where songwriting is concerned? 

CC: We have a formula most of the tunes tend to follow: I write a few sections to a song and sketch them out in Ableton with midi instruments and then I write at least the guitar, bass, keys, and sax part out in music notation and send the demos and charts off to the band. Everyone learns their part more or less and then at rehearsal we play through and edit. People mess with the parts that I sketched out on their own instruments, and we turn the discrete sections into more fluid tunes. Brianna usually writes her vocal part to the music I compose, but sometimes she will write lyrics first, and I’ll write to those. She also wrote most of the main instrumental part for “No Answer” on this record. Eric also wrote his vocal part and lyrics to the two tunes he sings on the record - “Crimson” and “Diluvian”. “No Horizon” and “Outcry” are the oldest tunes on the record. They have really evolved a lot as we experimented with them at live shows. I think tour[ing] is a great time to try different things out because you get sick of playing the same thing the same way every night, and you have a crowd full of guinea pigs that will let you know if your edits are working or not.

Can you tell us a bit about the recording process of Specter, was it done before quarantine or did you record with pandemic protocol?  

CC: So this is an old record. We started working on writing most of it in 2018, but I think “No Horizon” and “Outcry” go back even before that. We laid down the ensemble horns, strings, and rhythm section parts with Doug Malone at Jamdek in Spring/Summer 2019. I remember we all heard “Old Town Road” for the first time at the studio. We loved working with Doug. We’re also super lucky to have an incredible engineer in the band in Zach Bain-Selbo. He recorded a lot of our overdubs and mixed the record in the second half of 2019. We had it completely finished, mastered and everything, in February [2020]. We mastered it with Greg Obis of Chicago Mastering Service, and we really loved how everything turned out on that end.

We were planning to release it in Spring 2020. Once COVID hit, we naively thought that if we delayed for a couple months we could release the record with a proper album release show and a supporting tour and all that. Lmao. We decided just to go ahead and drop it because it feels like we live in a failed society that is completely incapable of taking care of its citizens in the best of times and has been criminally negligent during COVID. It’s not clear when (or if?) things will go back to normal. We thought releasing it around Halloween would be thematically appropriate, so we decided just to pull the trigger and share it with the world.

Protest songs have always existed; however, with Cordoba it isn't just the lyrics bucking the system, but the music itself is pushing the boundaries of expectation and societal form. What drives the band to seek new ways of extending sonic limits?     

CC: Man, I just get bored as a player doing what I’ve heard done before. I really want to create something that reflects how I see music in my own way. I think other members of the band are that way, too, and I feel like that is what has drawn a lot of us together. Zach UD doesn’t want to play the same drum grooves everyone has heard; Eric wants to create new timbres and harmonic spaces that people aren’t used to hearing; Brianna has punk and emo roots that you don’t often find in jazz vocalists; Khalyle is on a quest to make bass sounds no one has heard before with an ever evolving rotation of pedals; and Zach Bain-Selbo has so many great ways of turning the studio into an instrument itself in ways you don’t typically hear in a band like ours. I like how our own voices come together to push sonic limits in this band.

And none of this is a knock on people who don’t have the same musical aspirations as we do. I love simple, beautiful music. I grew up playing and listening to great, simple songs with my family in Cincinnati. My most listened to artists over quarantine include Hank Williams, John Prine, Waylon Jennings, and other country musicians who play a raw and simple style. I love the authenticity and the universality of their music - that’s just not what I want to do with this project.

There are so many layers and precision moments within Specter. Which track was the most difficult to nail down? 

CC: “Diluvian”. If you had the whole band in a room and asked us, you would hear six voices say “Diluvian” in unison. I have no idea why the rest of Cordoba continues to play the wild and difficult shit I write.

Cordoba has a history in the D.I.Y. scene. How does the D.I.Y. arena differ from the club racket, and if money wasn't a factor which would you prefer? 

CC: I do love playing a lot of the bars/traditional venues in the city like Cole’s, Cafe Mustache, Hideout, Empty Bottle, Hungry Brain, etc, but there is a special energy to DIY shows. I love the fact that people (including myself) just show up to the venue knowing that there will be good music but not really knowing any of the bands. It’s a really fun audience to play for, and I think we get to play for a lot more people that aren’t familiar with our music than we would at a lot of clubs where you are expected to turn out your fans.

I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are also serious issues with abusers in DIY spaces that have come to light during COVID. I think at one point most of us in Cordoba would have said that we also love DIY spaces because they felt like home, that they felt safe. But evidently this is not the case. A lot of people have bravely come forward during the pandemic and talked about their experience as victims of sexual violence in DIY spaces including by some men who used to run DIY spaces. We have to do better as a community. I’m hoping that once we are able to have shows again, we will be able to create spaces that are truly safe and hold those who threaten members of our community accountable or cut them out before they victimize members of our DIY community. And a huge shoutout to all the incredible DIY spots that have been vigilant from day one and don’t tolerate this type of behavior in their spaces.

You're given a time machine and you could pick only one time to visit, what era would you choose?

CC: So I have to give a disclaimer that I’m a huge history nerd. I have spent an embarrassing number of hours during the pandemic reading history books. Recently, I read 1491 - a book about Pre-Columbian North America. The author covers cultures from Beringia to Tierra del Fuego. I really love how he humanizes and brings to life the really diverse and rich cultures of the Americas that were basically obliterated by colonialism and then written out of history. I think if I could pick any place and time it would be Teotihuacan near current day Mexico City around 400 AD (assuming I wouldn’t bring Old World diseases with me and wipe out 90% of the population or be a sacrificial victim). It was an incredible city - its Aztec name literally means birthplace of the gods. It was larger than any city in the Americas until the 1800s including all of the Aztec and Incan cities. It has the third largest pyramid in the world. And I think most interesting to me, it’s history has been mostly lost. It was the Rome of its time and place, and we know so little about it. 🤓