“When we see the husk, the body of a living being, we are seeing the outward manifestation of an internal spirit,” he told OneFinalNote.com in April 2001. “Sometimes it is very difficult for the spirit, which is light and ethereal, to move this body to do its bidding, and so we frequently make mistakes and bad choices in the physical realm, whereas the spirit is pure and radiant, and we must always strive to see past the physical to the spirit that pervades the body and this world that we see physically."
González left the physical world for the ethereal one on Tuesday. He died at age 67.
A jazz trumpeter and bandleader, González captured this belief in more than 35 albums, beginning with 1979’s Air Light, an album he self-produced and in which he played all instruments. In the liner notes, he wrote that the music was known as “intuitive improvisational swing” and claimed that it came from the earthy melodies of the Third World with influences from the music of China and India, American march music, bebop and the sound of nature.
“Most of the instruments I have never played before,” he said. “But I feel that as a musician opposed to a technician, I must always try to express my inner voices, which are always singing for the Eternal Lord.”
As a public school educator for decades in Dallas, González was always encouraging of creative movement within the strict musical forms he taught. He often let his students put “their own style, their own artistic stamp onto the music," as he told OneFinalNote.com. He valued his students’ individuality and wanted their music to sound like them. It was one of several reasons why he created La Rondalla, an Oak Cliff-based music nonprofit that provides students access to musical instruments.
“Another value I ‘hold dear,’ as you put it, is racial unity, racial harmony,” he wrote in an email to OneFinalNote.com. “My ensembles have always been multi-ethnic and interracial in their makeup. I’ve always been intrigued by the differences that make us all alike. When I teach languages, I stress the beauty of differences in ethnicity, in culture, in race, and how the synthesis of all these different colors is a living music in our lives.”
It’s these values that he also instilled into his sons, Aaron and Stefan, who spent decades playing jazz and experimental music with their father while “making tireless contributions to the community through education and youth programs,” as the Observer pointed out in a May 2015 article. They became known as the unofficial First Family of the Dallas music scene.
“I believe that family is so important,” González said in the 2015 interview. “If the student has no involvement from his or her family in his or her life, I show that student affection and guidance and tell that person that I'm there whenever I'm needed, the same way I'm available to my own two sons. Sometimes what is needed is just a listening ear, and I'm there for that too. … The message of my own music reverberates with togetherness, tolerance, kindness, beauty — all those values that have been lost in the 21st century.”
On Tuesday, his son Stefan announced the news of González's passing on social media.
“I'm so sorry to inform you all, family, friends, fans of the music, fellow creatives that our Father, Grandfather, husband, force of love and light, educator, musician, artist, and beloved Shaman, Dennis Gonzalez has left this plane of existence,” Stefan posted on Twitter. “He didn't do it without a fight and was channeling positivity until the very end. I'm crushed but in the end we must remain strong for each other.”
Raised in a Southern Baptist Church, which is unusual for a Mexican-American, González, who was born in Texas, became inspired by the music of the church which, in turn, came from Black Spirituals and Southern hymns inspired by African-American music. He held these hymns deep in his heart and spirit.
At 10 years old, he picked up the trumpet and began a love affair that would last for 50 years. He started as a “rock ’n roller” but shifted to jazz in the 1970s because he felt the spirit of the hymns from the jazz music he was consuming as a child, such as Stan Keaton’s records, which he called experimental for its time, and Sam Rivers’ Contours, which featured Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. These influences began showing up in his own music on stage.
Jazz legend Dennis González (middle), who died on Tuesday, posing with musician and The Kessler's artistic director Jeff Liles (left) and jazz artist Freddie Jones (right).
Jeff Liles
“I lived as a child in a small town, where most of my neighbors were poor Hispanics, almost all Mexicans, who depended on the Catholic Church for their spiritual needs,” González said in a March 2010 Q&A with Clean Feed Records.
“On Wednesday nights we went with my family to the Prayer Service in our Baptist Church and next to the church lived a Catholic family that sponsored the study of the Catechism for the children of the neighborhood," he added. "I, sitting in the pews of my church, listened with one ear to the minister who preached his sermon to us and to the old women who prayed their prayers … and with the other ear I listened to the Catechism repeated over and over again by the neighboring children and, for me, it was a mysterious and hidden symphony that I tried to put in a simple context, at a level that I could understand.”
At that time in the 1970s, Black Power and Black-Is-Beautiful movements had already been established. Black free jazz players were reluctant to work with Caucasians, yet they recognized that as a Latino, González was in a similar predicament because, as he told OneFinalNote.com, “‘My people’ were also struggling to be heard and recognized. We were also involved in the struggle to claim our civil rights, and they saw me as a ‘brother,’ not in color but in spirit.”
González began working with mostly-Black ensembles: John Purcell, Malachi Favors, Ahmed Abdullah, Charles Brackeen, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, “Kidd” Jordan, Alvin Fielder, Roy Hargrove, Louis Moholo and many others.
But he also worked with European musicians such as Elton Dean, Lado Jaksa and Svetlana Makarovic.
In the late ‘70s, González went to work for KERA when disc jockeys played a 12-hour jazz program at night and spent the next 21 years playing jazz from around the world on his music program Miles Out until management, which kept moving his program to different time slots, finally did away with jazz and focused on a news and talk radio after the North Texas NPR affiliate bought the station 81.7FM, KVTT from Convenant Education Media for $18 million, according to ArtandSeek.org.
Throughout his long musical career, González recorded more than 30 albums for prominent international jazz labels, including Clean Feed from Portugal, Not Two Records from Poland and Konnex Records from Germany. He also recorded albums for American record companies Furthermore Recordings, 8th Harmonic Breakdown, Silkheart Records and Koch Jazz as well as his own label Daagnim Records, which also functioned as the Dallas Association for Avant-Garde and Neo Impressionist Music organization and promoted musicians from around the world.
His latest offering was a collaboration with his sons called Yells At Eels. The band produced several albums, including 2001’s Home, 2011’s Resurrection and Life and 2014’s In Quiet Waters, which they had created to channel the health troubles and personal turmoil they had been facing, according to a May 20, 2015 Observer article. It seems González had suffered a heart attack in the classroom. As Observer writer Jeremy Hallock pointed out: “And the results of these personal struggles are beautifully manifested with In Quiet Waters.
“Labeling this music as free jazz is as lazy as the narrow perception many have of the complex genre itself. But nonetheless, the elements of free jazz are certainly at play on this album. Named after Federico Garcia Lorca, the great enigmatic Spanish poet, the opening track starts things off with a moody, cinematic dissonance. The elements start coming together throughout these first seven minutes, like a scattered mind slowly coming into focus through meditation. The opening track also serves as something of a microcosm for what is to be expected from the nine tracks that follow.”
In 2020, the jazz collective joined with Fort Worth drone rock duo Pinkish Black to create the psychedelic jazz album Vanishing Light in the Tunnel of Dreams. The Free Jazz Collective called it a perfect collaboration in a July 12, 2020 review.
“The atmosphere is dark, hypnotic, relentless, epic and full of inherent drama,” wrote music journalist Stef Gijssels. “The rock-solid rhythm section, the wall of sound created by the synths and the beautiful trumpet playing by Dennis González make this very infectious and compelling music. The musicianship is exceptionally good, coherent and the ensemble playing as tight as you can expect from family members.” González’s prose and poetry appeared in two books, Xi and Cu, and several anthologies. He told OneFinalNote that “good writing” about music required the writer to find a way “to plumb the depths of music and come up with a near-poetry that closely parallels the music one is writing about. Good writing about music should be mystical in quality, because music itself is a mystery.”
As a visual artist, González exhibited his artwork around the world. More recently, he began creating art with his granddaughter Isabella Anaïs Sisk-González, also known as “Issy.” They showcased their 5 Years of Collaborative Work on Nov. 12, 2021 at Top Ten Records in Dallas.
“She brings a lot of the innocence that I guess we have lost,” González told the Observer in November 2021. “You start learning too much, and your parents tell you don't do this and don't do that, and then pretty soon you're in school, and you kind of lose track of this imagination. … She actually is the one who's taught me how to come back and work on a new phase of my art”
His heart problems, though, continued to haunt him. González had heart surgery and started doing dialysis to treat his kidney problems, which allowed him to make a three-hour drive to Shreveport where they first introduced their exhibition.
The local music community took to social media to share tributes to the artist, and the Kessler Theatre changed its marquee to read," The Kessler Remembers Dennis González, musician, artist, mentor, RIP."
Fly with the spirits, my friend and inspiration. I hope I did a good job of letting you know how your life, your work, and your mission changed the course of my life.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) March 16, 2022
I'm fairly sure I did.
Dennis González (1954-2022), musician, artist, poet, shaman, teacher, magus, great soul. pic.twitter.com/wYNLT7rPbL
In the March 2010 interview with Clean Feed Records, González said: “My life, as much as my music, my visual art and my written work, is about a balance, a balance between form, structure and planning and spontaneity and improvisation. I think most of us are like that in this life, so why not be that way in the things that come out of it, like music and other expressions? People insist on putting rules to art and music to feel a certain control over the movements of their lives and thus their artistic movements are codified and formalized; and their lives lack contact with their inner selves.
"For me, the most delightful thing about this life is the sense that comes to me when I walk through the streets of some foreign city and the noises and music of that city get involved with the story of my life, the memories and give me a cinematic sensibility. This is how I want my music to be heard. This is how I want my listeners to get inside themselves so that they can let go of those rules that bind them so tightly to a cruel reality. I want to be the hero of my own legend and the way that is going to happen is to plan ahead and then let the mechanism unwind itself. If the forms are good and flexible, with discipline, there will be no problem with improvisation.”
