Electronic composer eager to change Pittsburgh’s live music scene

When Sachem Orenda takes the stage, he likes to sing about ethics and diversity over heavy… When Sachem Orenda takes the stage, he likes to sing about ethics and diversity over heavy synthesizers and pulsing dance beats.

Audience members often give him confused looks and don’t know how to react to his unconventional style, long, swinging locks, signature black cowboy hat and random card throwing.

And he likes it.

“I like to make sure they’re actively involved in what’s going on,” he said. “When you go to see live music, I think the performance and the live activity on the stage are more important than the music.”

Sachem Orenda Clark, who prefers to be called simply Sachem Orenda, majored in music and philosophy at Pitt before graduating this past spring. While at the University, he earned a reputation among some students and professors for writing music with thoughtful lyrics. In his last year at Pitt, he started the Pittsburgh Electronic Musicians student organization to bring together electronic composers and disc jockeys and break down stereotypes about electronic music.

He is currently enrolled in a one-year music management program at Point Park University and hopes to help the club and Pittsburgh’s electronic music scene develop.

Orenda performs solo with a sequencer that plays his beats and percussion. He sings to all of his music, often plays guitar and dances a sort of crab walk with his audience.

His most striking feature is his pale blond hair that cascades down to his lower back. He said that he’s only had two small trims in his life.

Orenda, 21, said that his father surrounded him with American Indian culture, particularly those of the Seneca and Lenape tribes. That’s why his name is Sachem, an American Indian title comparable to a modern day senator, and why he wears his hair long.

“I thought about cutting it many times in my life, but eventually it came to the point where it just was me. It’s who I’ve been my entire life,” he said, leaning back on a black couch in his spacious apartment in North Oakland.

He added that the prejudice he felt because of his long hair funneled into his lyrics.

“I think a lot of people have no clue how much prejudice there is against men with long hair in our country. In Pittsburgh, it’s not been much of an issue,” he said, stopping, as he typically did, to choose his words carefully. “But where I grew up, it was a big issue, and I stood out very much.”

Orenda was born in Butler County, Pa., but he grew up in the small town of Adah, Pa., about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

He said that he wound up at Pitt because its music program didn’t require an audition, and he didn’t think he could pass a guitar audition at other schools. In hindsight, he said, he thinks that the faculty created a fitting intellectual atmosphere for his style of composing.

During his freshman year, he worked in the music building, but in his sophomore year he became its doorman. He held that position until he graduated and got to know the music department’s faculty and students well.

Roger Zahab, a professor of music composition and theory, never had Orenda in class but supported him as an artist and played piano to the tune of the Depeche Mode’s “Walking in My Shoes” for Orenda’s senior recital.

“I always enjoy seeing him, talking to him, working with him. He’s a very honest kind of artist, and that’s increasingly rare. There’s a sense of vulnerability that every human can connect to, and I think a lot of musicians try to hide that,” Zahab said.

Orenda said that he is vulnerable on stage because he is adventurous, experimenting in different genres.

“How can I be cocky about something I don’t know how people will react to?” he said. “It’s very [much] mine and mine alone. When you have a bad show in a band, you share that shame with four or five other guys.”

Orenda draws much of his inspiration from the Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, pop and Michael Jackson.

Paul Contento, a friend and member of the Pittsburgh Electronic Musicians, said that Orenda’s progressive style could hurt his mainstream appeal.

“I think to get people to dance you need to have a consistent style. So he has a problem since he has his unique mesh of styles. It’s hard for him to get people out there and to stay out there,” he said.

Zahab said he understands Orenda’s struggle.

“He works in a genre in which the listeners try to hear the same thing, but he’s trying to push the boundaries,” Zahab said.

Orenda’s music is very personal, and he rarely changes music after people critique it. He released his latest album, Ethical Atheist, on his father’s record label, Primal Pulse, but said that he doesn’t seek his father’s approval.

Orenda works hard to not fall into a genre or an image.

“My music stemmed from industrial music, which is kind of involved with the goth scene. And I don’t like scenes at all. In particular, cliques and the way people dress and act, I think it actually hurts individuality,” he said.

He said that Pittsburgh’s love for classic rock cover bands and familiar tunes stifles the spread of new material. However, he said that he likes the challenge of playing for people who aren’t fans of electronic music.“

When I play a show like that, it’s like I’m doing work. I’m trying to make these goals and change people’s minds,” he said. “A lot of people hate electronic music because they think it’s fake or something. A lot of those people are listening to electronic music and not realizing it.”

Orenda considers moving to a city with a thriving electronic music scene, like New York City or Los Angeles, but he said that it sounds cliché. But he feels like he could have a hand in the revitalization of Pittsburgh’s live music scene.

“I shouldn’t just go where things are better. I should work on Pittsburgh’s scene,” he said. “I’d feel like a complete cop-out moving.”