Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American musician, songwriter, composer, record producer, actor and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than 30160years, Zappa composed rock n roll, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrte works, and produced almost all of the more than sixty160albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. He also directed featurelength films and music videos, and designed album covers.

Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Rose Marie , was of Italian and French ancestry his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from Partinico, Sicily, with Greek and Arab ancestry. Zappa, the eldest of four children, was raised in an ItalianAmerican household where Italian was often spoken by his grandparents. The family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappas father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their homes proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home in case of an accident. This had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work.

Source: Wikipedia