OBSESSIONS come in degrees. If you're lucky, whatever you love will prove deep enough to hold your interest all of your life. If you're determined, you'll find a way to make a living in the pursuit of it so that there is no troublesome boundary between vocation and avocation.
It doesn't have to stop there. One day you may feel the need to build a house to hold your passions. Tom Schnabel's single-minded love of the world's music has taken him just that far.
To reach the root of the story, we wind the clock back half a century. There was a song at the beginning, naturally. It was a 78 rpm vinyl record with a catchy tune for a second-grader, his twin sister and his older brother living in Santa Monica Canyon. When mom and dad stepped out, the record was slapped down on the Magnavox turntable:
\o7Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,
Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop bam boom!
\f7At full volume, Little Richard's wailing hit from the 1950s sent the children running wild in what was then called the rumpus room. By whatever magic these things happen, the synapses in young Tom's formative mind clamped down on his destiny. From there, it was a natural stair step: At 15, John Coltrane opened the door on modern jazz, and, my, what an awakening. "I didn't know music could make you feel that way," Schnabel recalls. "It was incredible. It was trance music."
Today, Schnabel is a familiar personality to listeners of KCRW-FM (89.9). He was the station's music director for 11 years, and now produces and hosts the station's Sunday two-hour "Cafe L.A." program of world music. He also is world music program director for the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a music consultant to Hollywood and to the advertising industry, a recorded music producer for airlines as well as a teacher and writer.
All of which eventually grew into a problem, or a challenge, if you prefer.
Pursuing the planet's music over the decades inevitably means collecting a lot of it. A staggering volume of recordings, in fact. And that barely says enough.
Schnabel found himself smothered by the thing he loved.
"Overabundance," he explains knowingly, "is the enemy of organization."
Fittingly, a musical event brought about a solution. At a concert by the Brazilian guitarist Dori Caymmi in 1988, Schnabel met architect Bob Ramirez.
"Bob understands music; Bob understands architecture," says Schnabel.
