Faa Mai the elephant grew up at Elephant Nature Park in Thailand, where sanctuary founder Lek Chailet would sing lullabies to her. Years later, the park welcomed a new rescued baby elephant, Thong Ae, and Faa Mai took the youngster under her wing. Now keep track of this: Lek Chailert is the human. She has a lot to do, including showing visitors around the park. That's what she was doing when 9-year-old Faa Mai interrupted her last week.
Faa Mai clearly didn’t care that her friend was busy, and began to playfully push Chailert out into the field, tapping her with her trunk or even wrapping it around her whenever Chailert tried to stop.
“I wondered what it was that she really wanted,” Chailert said.
Chailert knows the pachyderms well, and figured it out. Faa Mai wanted her to sing a lullaby to the baby elephant, just like she did when Faa Mai was young. An elephant never forgets. -via Metafilter
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And there you go. Musicians are a minority. Frank Zappa is known to the vast majority who know him at all as a singer.
Sure he was a guitarist, a political activist, a composer and other things too. He was a multi-talented and multi-faceted gent, but ask most people what he was and they will say "singer" or maybe just "Frank Who?"
Arnie kinda beat me to it (the Zappa thing), but to expand a little bit: Frank Zappa is probably most well-known as an incredibly inventive and technical guitarist, at least among musicians. he was writing "prog rock" stuff before that genre was really a "thing", and Dweezil Zappa has been doing his "Zappa Plays Zappa" project for a few years now. Dweezil said he had to study and practice his dad's music for two years before he even put his touring band together, because it's so complicated!
Frank also wrote a lot of, um, "unique" lyrics, which he's also well-known for. while i'd consider Frank a good singer, that was probably most done out of necessity, to get his lyrics across.
so yeah, Frank was a composer, first and foremost; it was probably just a useful convenience that he could sing well, although his voice wasn't particularly unique (meaning that i doubt many people could identify Frank by his voice alone, especially compared to singers who have extremely identifiable voices, like Geddy Lee or Johnny Cash or Elvis.)
two more quick Frank Zappa fun facts: he actually appeared in the beginning of an episode of The Monkee's tv show (as himself), although his intro didn't really have anything to do with the episode at all. and despite popular belief, Frank actually didn't do ANY drugs at all!
I think what Dendoica means (and I could be wrong) is that Frank Zappa was also a composer. Just about any song you hear of his, he completely wrote the music, lyrics, etc.
I'm a fan of his and really familiar with his work but a lot of times I think of him as a singer because he is usually the main singer. So you're both right.
Also, I'm a fan of your talent. You've got great comedic timing.
I am definitely not an expert on Frank Zappa.
I did a voice-over gig once with Dweezel and I also did one with Moon Unit, his kids, they were both great.
But I thought Frank Zappa was a singer.
??????
That's almost as bad as an Elizabeethan era reviewer talking about part-time actor William Shakespeare.
I've certainly heard that said of the movies sudden ending.