Dada
Dada or Dadaism was an early 20th-century avant-garde art movement, founded in 1916 in Switzerland. It set out to create anti-art, often humorous, shocking and very absurd. A classic example is Marcel Duchamp painting a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and exhibiting an urinal as art.
The most important representatives were artists Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters and Tristan Tzara. They were an important precursor to later art movements like Surrealism (Salvador Dali) and Pop Art.
Louise Varèse was also a member of Dada.
Dada also influenced The Bonzo Dog Band, Captain Beefheart, David Bowie and Kurt Cobain.
Frank Zappa and Dadaism
Frank Zappa was strongly inspired by the surreal, humorous and randomness of Dadaism. He adapted it into his personal motto AAAFNRAA (Anything, Anytime, Anywhere, For No Reason At All").
"INTERCONTINENTAL ABSURDITIES (founded 1968) is a company dedicated to Dada in Action. In the early days, I didn't even know what to call the stuff my life was made of. You can imagine my delight when I discovered that someone in a distant land had the same idea -- AND a nice, short name for it." - The Real Frank Zappa Book
In Data For Sensitive or Critical-sensitive Position, Zappa named Buffalo Bob his favorite Dadaist and/or Surrealist. However, he didn't mean Buffalo Bob Smith, the actor from the children's TV show Howdy Doody, but Buffalo Bob, a notable figure in the 1960s freak scene in L.A, whom Zappa also reffered to in Rolling Stone Interview, 1988.
Zappa also liked musician Moondog for his "dada clockwork".
"In Detroit, we did a television show where we were asked to do something perverted: "lip-sync our hit." We didn't have a 'hit,' but the producer said, "Lip-sync your hit -- or else."So I asked, "Do you have a prop department here?" Fortunately, there was one. From it, I gathered an assortment of random objects and built a set. We had been asked to pretend to play either "How Could I Be Such a Fool?" or "Who Are the Brain Police?" so I suggested that each member of the group choose a repeatable physical action, not necessarily in sync with (or even related to) the lyrics, and do it over and over until our spot on the show was concluded -- Detroit's first whiff of homemade prime-time Dada." - The Real Frank Zappa Book
"You know, that was what was great about the '20s, the way you could combine the concept of working class with Dada. God, they don't know what they missed in those days. (...) I've always appreciated Dada and I keep trying to get Ahmet to read about it, because that's him in the flesh, he's a genetic carrier of that particular gene that has been pretty much bred out of the species. It's like Stravinsky says, It's not enough to want, you have to be. There are people that wish they were Dada but they'll never make it. He doesn't even know what it means, but he exudes it." - Frank Zappa, The Last Days of Frank Zappa, Ben Watson, Mojo Magazine, March 1994.
"A long time ago, the music business was Dada - it used to be absurd. It used to be any kind of world. Now the music business is people who make endorsements for liquids with bubbles in them." - Frank Zappa, Father Of Invention (1993), People Magazine, 20 December 1993.
