When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the Netherlands

In the decades after the Sec­ond World War, many coun­tries faced the chal­lenge of rebuild­ing their hous­ing and infra­struc­ture while also hav­ing to accom­mo­date a fast-arriv­ing baby boom. The gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands got more cre­ative than most, putting mon­ey toward exper­i­men­tal hous­ing projects start­ing in the late nine­teen-six­ties. Hop­ing to hap­pen upon the next rev­o­lu­tion­ary form of dwelling, it end­ed up fund­ing designs that, for the most part, strayed none too far from estab­lished pat­terns. Still, there were gen­uine out­liers: by far the most dar­ing pro­pos­al came from artist and sculp­tor Dries Kreijkamp: to build a whole neigh­bor­hood out of Bol­wonin­gen, or “ball hous­es.”

The idea may bring to mind Buck­min­ster Fuller’s geo­des­ic domes, which enjoyed a degree of utopi­an vogue in the nine­teen-six­ties and sev­en­ties. Like Fuller and most oth­er vision­ar­ies, Kreijkamp labored under a cer­tain mono­ma­nia. His had to do with globes, “the most organ­ic and nat­ur­al shape pos­si­ble. After all, round­ness is every­where: we live on a globe, and we’re born from a globe. The globe com­bines the biggest pos­si­ble vol­ume with the small­est pos­si­ble sur­face area, so you need min­i­mum mate­r­i­al for it.” The 50 Bol­wonin­gen built in ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, bet­ter known as Den Bosch, were quick­ly fab­ri­cat­ed on-site out of glass fiber rein­forced con­crete. It was­n’t the poly­ester Kreijkamp had at first spec­i­fied, but then, poly­ester would­n’t have last­ed 40 years.

Since they were put up in 1984, the Bol­wonin­gen have been con­tin­u­ous­ly inhab­it­ed. In the video at the top of the post, Youtu­ber Tom Scott pays a vis­it to one of them, whose occu­pant seems rea­son­ably sat­is­fied. (It seems they’re “cozy” in the win­ter­time.)

Like geo­des­ic domes, their round walls make it dif­fi­cult to use their the­o­ret­i­cal­ly gen­er­ous inte­ri­or space effi­cient­ly, at least with­out com­mis­sion­ing cus­tom-made fur­ni­ture; leak­ing win­dows are also a peren­ni­al prob­lem. While each Bol­won­ing can com­fort­ably house one or even two sim­ple-liv­ing peo­ple, only the most utopia-mind­ed would attempt to raise a fam­i­ly in one of them. As with oth­er round or cir­cu­lar home designs, expan­sion would be phys­i­cal­ly imprac­ti­cal even if it were legal­ly pos­si­ble.

Used as social hous­ing by the local gov­ern­ment, the Bol­wonin­gen now enjoy a pro­tect­ed his­toric sta­tus. (As well they might, giv­en their con­nec­tion with the art and indus­try of Dutch glass­blow­ing: it was while work­ing in a glass fac­to­ry that Kreijkamp first began pros­e­ly­tiz­ing for spheres.) And unlike most aes­thet­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal hous­ing devel­op­ments, they haven’t gone to seed, but rather received the nec­es­sary main­te­nance over the decades. The result is an appeal­ing neigh­bor­hood for those whose lifestyles are suit­ed to its unusu­al struc­tures and its con­tained bucol­ic set­ting, of which you can get an idea in the walk­ing video tour just above. By the time Kreijkamp died in 2014, he per­haps felt a cer­tain degree of regret that mass-pro­duced glob­u­lar homes did­n’t prove to be the next big thing. But he did live to see the emer­gence of the “tiny house” move­ment, which should retroac­tive­ly adopt him as one of its lead­ing lights.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den City Built Entire­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Apart­ment Build­ing

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

The Engi­neer­ing of the Strand­beest: How the Mag­nif­i­cent Mechan­i­cal Crea­tures Have Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly Evolved

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Elementary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” & Other Rock Hits: A Cult Classic Recorded in 1976

In 1976 and 1977 an inspired music teacher in the small school dis­trict of Lan­g­ley Town­ship, British Colum­bia, a sub­urb of Van­cou­ver, record­ed his ele­men­tary school stu­dents singing pop­u­lar songs in a school gym. Two vinyl records were pro­duced over the two years, and fam­i­lies were invit­ed to pay $7 for a copy. The record­ings were large­ly for­got­ten — just anoth­er per­son­al memen­to stored away in a few homes in West­ern Cana­da — until a record col­lec­tor stum­bled across a copy in a thrift store in 2000.

Enthralled by what he heard, the col­lec­tor sent a sam­ple to a disc jock­ey at WFMU, an eclec­tic, lis­ten­er-sup­port­ed radio sta­tion in New Jer­sey. The sta­tion began play­ing some of the songs over the air­waves. Lis­ten­ers were touched by the haunt­ing, ethe­re­al qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances. In 2001, a small record com­pa­ny released a com­pi­la­tion called The Lan­g­ley Town­ship Music Project: Inno­cence & Despair.

The record became an under­ground hit. The Wash­ing­ton Post called it “an album that seems to cap­ture noth­ing less than the sound of falling in love with music.” Spin said the album “seems to sum up all the rea­sons music is holy.” And Dwight Gamer of The New York Times wrote that the music was “mag­ic: a kind of celes­tial pep ral­ly.” Lis­ten­ers were moved by the ingen­u­ous­ness of the young voic­es, the strange authen­tic­i­ty of per­for­mances by chil­dren too young to under­stand all of the adult themes in the lyrics. As Hans Fenger, the music teacher who made the record­ings, writes in the lin­er notes:

The kids had a grasp of what they liked: emo­tion, dra­ma, and mak­ing music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was tra­di­tion­al­ly taught. But then I nev­er liked con­ven­tion­al “chil­dren’s music,” which is con­de­scend­ing and ignores the real­i­ty of chil­dren’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These chil­dren hat­ed “cute.” They cher­ished songs that evoked lone­li­ness and sad­ness.

You can learn the sto­ry of Fenger’s extra­or­di­nary music project in the 2002 VH1 doc­u­men­tary above, which includes inter­views and a reunion with some of the stu­dents. And lis­ten below for a few sam­ples of that touch­ing qual­i­ty of lone­li­ness and sad­ness Fenger and oth­ers have been talk­ing about.

David Bowie’s ‘Space Odd­i­ty’:

One of the most wide­ly praised songs from Inno­cence & Despair is the 1976 record­ing of David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” In a 2001 inter­view with Mike Appel­stein for Scram mag­a­zine, Fenger explained the sound effects in the record­ing. “When I first taught ‘Space Odd­i­ty,’ ” he said, “the first part I taught after the song was the kids count­ing down. They loved that: they’d go ‘TEN!’ They could­n’t say it loud enough; the count­down in the song was the big win­ner. But as soon as they got to zero, noth­ing hap­pened. So I brought this old steel gui­tar. Well, one of the lit­tle guys whose name I’ve for­got, I put him on this thing and said, ‘Now lis­ten, when they get to zero, you’re the rock­et. So make a lot of noise on this. He’s fool­ing around with this steel gui­tar, and I did­n’t even think of this, but he intu­itive­ly took out a Coke bot­tle from his lunch and start­ed doing this (imi­tates a bot­tle run­ning up and down the fret­board). I just cranked up the vol­ume and turned down the mas­ter vol­ume so it was real­ly dis­tort­ed. And that was the ‘Space Odd­i­ty’ sound effect.”

The Beach Boys’ ‘In My Room’:

The chil­dren record­ed “In My Room” by the Beach Boys in 1977. Fenger told Appel­stein it was the ulti­mate chil­dren’s song. “It’s the per­fect intro­spec­tive song for a nine-year-old,” he said, “just as ‘Dust in the Wind’ is the per­fect phi­los­o­phy song for a nine-year-old. Adults may think it’s dumb, but for a child, it’s a very heavy, pro­found thought. To think that there is noth­ing, and it’s expressed in such a sim­ple way.”

The Eagles’ ‘Des­per­a­do’:

Sev­er­al of the record­ings fea­ture soloists. A young girl named Sheila Behman sang the Eagles’ “Des­per­a­do” in 1977. “With ‘Des­per­a­do,’ ” said Fenger, “you can see it as a cow­boy roman­tic sto­ry, but that’s not the way Sheila heard it. She could­n’t artic­u­late metaphor­i­cal­ly what the song was about, but in that sense, I think it was pur­er because it was unaf­fect­ed. It’s not as if the kids were try­ing to be some­body else. They were just try­ing to be who they were, and they’re doing this music and falling in love with it.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Bowie Urges Kids to READ in a 1987 Poster Spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion

David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good & Bad of the Inter­net in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

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Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online

5 Little PIgs

We can learn much about how a his­tor­i­cal peri­od viewed the abil­i­ties of its chil­dren by study­ing its chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Occu­py­ing a space some­where between the pure­ly didac­tic and the non­sen­si­cal, most children’s books pub­lished in the past few hun­dred years have attempt­ed to find a line between the two poles, seek­ing a bal­ance between enter­tain­ment and instruc­tion. How­ev­er, that line seems to move clos­er to one pole or anoth­er depend­ing on the pre­vail­ing cul­tur­al sen­ti­ments of the time. And the very fact that children’s books were hard­ly pub­lished at all before the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry tells us a lot about when and how mod­ern ideas of child­hood as a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry of exis­tence began.

ABCs

“By the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry,” writes New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor M.O. Gren­by, “children’s lit­er­a­ture was a flour­ish­ing, sep­a­rate and secure part of the pub­lish­ing indus­try in Britain.” The trend accel­er­at­ed rapid­ly and has nev­er ceased—children’s and young adult books now dri­ve sales in pub­lish­ing (with 80% of YA books bought by grown-ups for them­selves).

Gren­by notes that “the rea­sons for this sud­den rise of children’s lit­er­a­ture” and its rapid expan­sion into a boom­ing mar­ket by the ear­ly 1800s “have nev­er been ful­ly explained.” We are free to spec­u­late about the social and ped­a­gog­i­cal winds that pushed this his­tor­i­cal change.

Afloat with Nelson

Or we might do so, at least, by exam­in­ing the children’s lit­er­a­ture of the Vic­to­ri­an era, per­haps the most inno­v­a­tive and diverse peri­od for children’s lit­er­a­ture thus far by the stan­dards of the time. And we can do so most thor­ough­ly by sur­vey­ing the thou­sands of mid- to late 19th cen­tu­ry titles at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Florida’s Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture. Their dig­i­tized col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly holds over 10,000 books free to read online from cov­er to cov­er, allow­ing you to get a sense of what adults in Britain and the U.S. want­ed chil­dren to know and believe.

Zig Zag

Sev­er­al gen­res flour­ished at the time: reli­gious instruc­tion, nat­u­ral­ly, but also lan­guage and spelling books, fairy tales, codes of con­duct, and, espe­cial­ly, adven­ture stories—pre-Hardy Boys and Nan­cy Drew exam­ples of what we would call young adult fic­tion, these pub­lished prin­ci­pal­ly for boys. Adven­ture sto­ries offered a (very colo­nial­ist) view of the wide world; in series like the Boston-pub­lished Zig Zag and Eng­lish books like Afloat with Nel­son, both from the 1890s, fact min­gled with fic­tion, nat­ur­al his­to­ry and sci­ence with bat­tle and trav­el accounts. But there is anoth­er dis­tinc­tive strain in the children’s lit­er­a­ture of the time, one which to us—but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to the Victorians—would seem con­trary to the impe­ri­al­ist young adult nov­el.

Bible Picture Book

For most Vic­to­ri­an stu­dents and read­ers, poet­ry was a dai­ly part of life, and it was a cen­tral instruc­tion­al and sto­ry­telling form in children’s lit. The A.L.O.E.’s Bible Pic­ture Book from 1871, above, presents “Sto­ries from the Life of Our Lord in Verse,” writ­ten “sim­ply for the Lord’s lambs, rhymes more read­i­ly than prose attract­ing the atten­tion of chil­dren, and fas­ten­ing them­selves on their mem­o­ries.” Chil­dren and adults reg­u­lar­ly mem­o­rized poet­ry, after all. Yet after the explo­sion in children’s pub­lish­ing the for­mer read­ers were often giv­en infe­ri­or exam­ples of it. The author of the Bible Pic­ture Book admits as much, beg­ging the indul­gence of old­er read­ers in the pref­ace for “defects in my work,” giv­en that “the vers­es were made for the pic­tures, not the pic­tures for the vers­es.”

Elfin Rhymes

This is not an author, or per­haps a type of lit­er­a­ture, one might sus­pect, that thinks high­ly of children’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties.  We find pre­cise­ly the oppo­site to be the case in the won­der­ful Elfin Rhymes from 1900, writ­ten by the mys­te­ri­ous “Nor­man” with “40 draw­ings by Car­ton Moorepark.” Who­ev­er “Nor­man” may be (or why his one-word name appears in quo­ta­tion marks), he gives his read­ers poems that might be mis­tak­en at first glance for unpub­lished Christi­na Ros­set­ti vers­es; and Mr. Moorepark’s illus­tra­tions rival those of the finest book illus­tra­tors of the time, pre­sag­ing the high qual­i­ty of Calde­cott Medal-win­ning books of lat­er decades. Elfin Rhymes seems like a rare odd­i­ty, like­ly pub­lished in a small print run; the care and atten­tion of its lay­out and design shows a very high opin­ion of its read­ers’ imag­i­na­tive capa­bil­i­ties.

Elfin Rhymes 2

This title is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an emerg­ing genre of late Vic­to­ri­an children’s lit­er­a­ture, which still tend­ed on the whole, as it does now, to fall into the trite and for­mu­la­ic. Elfin Rhymes sits astride the fan­ta­sy boom at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, her­ald­ed by huge­ly pop­u­lar books like Frank L. Baum’s Wiz­ard of Oz series and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. These, the Har­ry Pot­ters of their day, made mil­lions of young peo­ple pas­sion­ate read­ers of mod­ern fairy tales, rep­re­sent­ing a slide even fur­ther away from the once quite nar­row, “remorse­less­ly instruc­tion­al… or deeply pious” cat­e­gories avail­able in ear­ly writ­ing for chil­dren, as Gren­by points out.

All Around the Moon

Where the bound­aries for kids’ lit­er­a­ture had once been nar­row­ly fixed by Latin gram­mar books and Pilgrim’s Progress, by the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the influ­ence of sci­ence fic­tion like Jules Verne’s, and of pop­u­lar super­nat­ur­al tales and poems, pre­pared the ground for com­ic books, YA dystopias, magi­cian fic­tion, and dozens of oth­er children’s lit­er­a­ture gen­res we now take for grant­ed, or—in increas­ing­ly large numbers—we buy to read for our­selves. Enter the Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture here, where you can browse sev­er­al cat­e­gories, search for sub­jects, authors, titles, etc, see full-screen, zoomable images of book cov­ers, down­load XML ver­sions, and read all of the over 10,000+ books in the col­lec­tion with com­fort­able read­er views.

Note: This is an updat­ed ver­sion of a post that orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658’s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Hayao Miyaza­ki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

The 100 Great­est Children’s Books of All Time, Accord­ing to 177 Books Experts from 56 Coun­tries

A Dig­i­tal Archive of 1,800+ Children’s Books from UCLA

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear the Letter of Gratitude That Albert Camus Wrote to His Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize, as Read by Footballer Ian Wright

When Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize, he wrote a let­ter to one of his old school­teach­ers. “I let the com­mo­tion around me these days sub­side a bit before speak­ing to you from the bot­tom of my heart,” the let­ter begins. “I have just been giv­en far too great an hon­or, one I nei­ther sought nor solicit­ed. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my moth­er, was of you.” For it was from this teacher, a cer­tain Louis Ger­main, that the young, father­less Camus received the guid­ance he need­ed. “With­out you, with­out the affec­tion­ate hand you extend­ed to the small poor child that I was, with­out your teach­ing and exam­ple, none of all this would have hap­pened.”

Camus ends the let­ter by assur­ing Mon­sieur Ger­main that “your efforts, your work, and the gen­er­ous heart you put into it still live in one of your lit­tle school­boys who, despite the years, has nev­er stopped being your grate­ful pupil.”

In response, Ger­main recalls his mem­o­ries of Camus as an unaf­fect­ed, opti­mistic pupil. “I think I well know the nice lit­tle fel­low you were, and very often the child con­tains the seed of the man he will become,” he writes. What­ev­er the process of intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic evo­lu­tion over the 30 years or so between leav­ing the class­room and win­ning the Nobel, “it gives me very great sat­is­fac­tion to see that your fame has not gone to your head. You have remained Camus: bra­vo.”

It isn’t hard to under­stand why Camus’ let­ter to his teacher would res­onate with the foot­baller Ian Wright, who reads it aloud in the Let­ters Live video at the top of the post. A 2005 doc­u­men­tary on his life and career pro­duced the ear­ly viral video above, a clip cap­tur­ing the moment of Wright’s unex­pect­ed reunion with his own aca­d­e­m­ic father fig­ure, Syd­ney Pig­den. Com­ing face to face with his old men­tor, who he’d assumed had died, Wright instinc­tive­ly removes his cap and address­es him as “Mr. Pig­den.” In that moment, the stu­dent-teacher rela­tion­ship resumes: “I’m so glad you’ve done so well with your­self,” says Pig­den, a sen­ti­ment not dis­sim­i­lar to the one Mon­sieur Ger­main expressed to Camus. Most of us, no mat­ter how long we’ve been out of school, have a teacher we hope to do proud; some of us, whether we know it or not, have been that teacher.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Albert Camus’ Exis­ten­tial­ism, a Phi­los­o­phy Mak­ing a Come­back in Our Dys­func­tion­al Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch Bob Dylan Play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in Color at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival

It was at the 1965 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val that Bob Dylan famous­ly “went elec­tric,” alien­at­ing cer­tain adher­ents to the folk scene through which he’d come up, but also set­ting a prece­dent for the kind of quick-change musi­cal adap­ta­tion that he’s kept up into his eight­ies. At the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, how­ev­er, all that lay in the future. Yet even then, the young Dylan was­n’t shy of mak­ing con­tro­ver­sial choic­es. Take, for exam­ple, the choice to play “Mr. Tam­bourine Man,” a song that — how­ev­er redo­lent of the mid-nine­teen-six­ties when heard today — would hard­ly have been top­i­cal enough to meet the expec­ta­tions of folk fans who regard­ed the music’s top­i­cal­i­ty as its main strength.

At the top of the post, you can watch col­orized footage of Dylan’s per­for­mance of “Mr. Tam­bourine Man” at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val; the orig­i­nal black-and-white clip appears below. Con­sid­er the res­o­nances it could have set off in the minds of his youth­ful, clean-cut audi­ence: Rim­baud? Felli­ni? Lord Buck­ley? Mar­di Gras? Con­fes­sions of an Eng­lish Opi­um-Eater? Dyla­nol­o­gists have sug­gest­ed all these sources of inspi­ra­tion and oth­ers. It is pos­si­ble, of course, that — as Dylan him­self once said — the lyrics’ cen­tral image is that of gui­tarist Bruce Lang­horne, who played on the song as record­ed for Bring­ing It All Back Home, a musi­cian then known for his own­er­ship of a gigan­tic tam­bourine.

Despite its lack of ref­er­ences to the issues of the day, “Mr. Tam­bourine Man” reflects its his­tor­i­cal moment with a clar­i­ty that few songs ever have. (Some would say that’s even truer of The Byrds’ cov­er ver­sion, a radio hit that came out just a month after Dylan’s orig­i­nal.) Dylan him­self must have sensed that it marked not just the peak of an era, but also that of his own com­po­si­tion­al and per­for­ma­tive efforts in this par­tic­u­lar musi­cal style. Though he did attempt to write a fol­low-up to the song, its fail­ure to cohere showed him the way for­ward. Dylan still plays it in con­cert today, and to enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion from his audi­ences, but in such a way as to rein­vent it each time — know­ing that he both is and is not the same man who took the stage at New­port those six­ty years ago, and that “Mr. Tam­bourine Man” both is and is not the same song.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s His­toric New­port Folk Fes­ti­val Per­for­mances, 1963–1965

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in Col­orized 1963 Footage

How Bob Dylan Kept Rein­vent­ing His Song­writ­ing Process, Breath­ing New Life Into His Music

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Com­pare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Com­plete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

“Mr. Tam­bourine Man” & Oth­er Bob Dylan Clas­sics, Sung Beau­ti­ful­ly by Kids

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful

Reli­gions take the cast and hue of the cul­tures in which they find root. This was cer­tain­ly true in Tibet when Bud­dhism arrived in the 7th cen­tu­ry. It trans­formed and was trans­formed by the native reli­gion of Bon. Of the many cre­ative prac­tices that arose from this syn­the­sis, Tibetan Bud­dhist music ranks very high­ly in impor­tance.

As in sacred music in the West, Tibetan music has com­plex sys­tems of musi­cal nota­tion and a long his­to­ry of writ­ten reli­gious song. “A vital com­po­nent of Tibetan Bud­dhist expe­ri­ence,” explains Google Arts & Cul­tures Bud­dhist Dig­i­tal Resource Cen­ter, “musi­cal nota­tion allows for the trans­fer­ence of sacred sound and cer­e­mo­ny across gen­er­a­tions. A means to mem­o­rize sacred text, express devo­tion, ward off fer­al spir­its, and invoke deities.”

Some of these fea­tures may be alien to sec­u­lar West­ern Bud­dhists focused on mind­ful­ness and silent med­i­ta­tion, but to vary­ing degrees, Tibetan schools place con­sid­er­able val­ue on the aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of extra-human realms. As Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa musi­col­o­gist John Pow­ell writes, “the use of sacred sound” in Tibetan Bud­dhism, a “Mantrayana” tra­di­tion, acts “as a for­mu­la for the trans­for­ma­tion of human con­scious­ness.”

Tibetan musi­cal nota­tions, Google points out, “sym­bol­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent the melodies, rhythm pat­terns, and instru­men­tal arrange­ments. In har­mo­ny with chant­i­ng, visu­al­iza­tions, and hand ges­tures, [Tibetan] music cru­cial­ly guides rit­u­al per­for­mance.” It is char­ac­ter­ized not only by its inte­gra­tion of rit­u­al dance, but also by a large col­lec­tion of rit­u­al instruments—including the long, Swiss-like horns suit­ed to a moun­tain environment—and unique forms of poly­phon­ic over­tone singing.

The exam­ples of musi­cal nota­tion you see here came from the appro­pri­ate­ly-named Twit­ter account Musi­cal Nota­tion is Beau­ti­ful and type­face design­er and researcher Jo De Baerde­maek­er. At the top is a 19th cen­tu­ry man­u­script belong­ing to the “Yang” tra­di­tion, “the most high­ly involved and regard­ed chant tra­di­tion in Tibetan music,” notes the Schoyen Col­lec­tion, “and the only one to rely on a sys­tem of nota­tion (Yang-Yig).”

The curved lines rep­re­sent “smooth­ly effect­ed ris­es and falls in into­na­tion.” The nota­tion also “fre­quent­ly con­tains detailed instruc­tions con­cern­ing in what spir­it the music should be sung (e.g. flow­ing like a riv­er, light like bird song) and the small­est mod­i­fi­ca­tions to be made to the voice in the utter­ance of a vow­el.” The Yang-Yig goes all the way back to the 6th cen­tu­ry, pre­dat­ing Tibetan Bud­dhism, and “does not record nei­ther the rhyth­mic pat­tern nor dura­tion of notes.” Oth­er kinds of music have their own types of nota­tion, such as that in the piece above for voice, drums, trum­pets, horns, and cym­bals.

Though they artic­u­late and elab­o­rate on reli­gious ideas from India, Tibet’s musi­cal tra­di­tions are entire­ly its own. “It is essen­tial to rethink the entire con­cept of melody and rhythm” to under­stand Tibetan Bud­dhist chant, writes Pow­ell in a detailed overview of Tibetan music’s vocal and instru­men­tal qual­i­ties. “Many out­side Tibetan cul­ture are accus­tomed to think of melody as a sequence of ris­ing or falling pitch­es,” he says. “In Tibetan Tantric chant­i­ng, how­ev­er, the melod­ic con­tent occurs in terms of vow­el mod­i­fi­ca­tion and the care­ful con­tour­ing of tones.”  Hear an exam­ple of tra­di­tion­al Tibetan Bud­dhist chant just above, and learn more about Tibetan musi­cal nota­tion at Google Arts & Cul­ture.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Breath­tak­ing­ly-Detailed Tibetan Book Print­ed 40 Years Before the Guten­berg Bible

The World’s Largest Col­lec­tion of Tibetan Bud­dhist Lit­er­a­ture Now Online

Free Online Course: Robert Thurman’s Intro­duc­tion to Tibetan Bud­dhism (Record­ed at Colum­bia U)

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

The Old­est Book Print­ed with Mov­able Type is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Teach­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994)

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Most sci­en­tists are pre­pared to answer ques­tions about their research from oth­er mem­bers of their field; rather few­er have equipped them­selves to answer ques­tions from the gen­er­al pub­lic about what Dou­glas Adams called life, the uni­verse, and every­thing. Carl Sagan was one of that minor­i­ty, an expert “sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor” before sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion was rec­og­nized as a field unto itself. In pop­u­lar books and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions, most notably Cos­mos and its accom­pa­ny­ing series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, he put him­self out there in the mass media as an enthu­si­as­tic guide to all that was known about the realms beyond our plan­et. More than a few mem­bers of his audi­ence might well have asked them­selves where does God fit into all this.

One such per­son actu­al­ly put that ques­tion to Sagan, at a Q&A ses­sion after the lat­ter’s 1994 “lost lec­ture” at Cor­nell, titled “The Age of Explo­ration.” The ques­tion­er, a grad­u­ate stu­dent, asks, “Is there any type of God to you? Like, is there a pur­pose, giv­en that we’re just sit­ting on this speck in the mid­dle of this sea of stars?”

In response to this dif­fi­cult line of inquiry, Sagan opens a more dif­fi­cult one: “What do you mean when you use the word God?” The stu­dent takes anoth­er tack, ask­ing, “Giv­en all these demo­tions” — defined by Sagan him­self as the con­tin­u­al hum­bling of human­i­ty’s self-image in light of new sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies — “why don’t we just blow our­selves up?” Sagan comes back with yet anoth­er ques­tion: “If we do blow our­selves up, does that dis­prove the exis­tence of God?” The stu­dent admits that he guess­es it does not.

The ques­tion even­tu­al­ly gets Sagan con­sid­er­ing how “the word ‘God’ cov­ers an enor­mous range of dif­fer­ent ideas.” That range “runs from an out­sized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sit­ting in a throne in the sky, busi­ly tal­ly­ing the fall of every spar­row,” for whose exis­tence Sagan knows of no evi­dence, to “the kind of God that Ein­stein or Spin­oza talked about, which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the uni­verse,” and as such, whose exis­tence even Sagan would have to acknowl­edge. There’s also “the deist God that many of the found­ing fathers of this coun­try believed in,” who’s held to have cre­at­ed the uni­verse and then removed him­self from the scene. With such a broad range of pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tions, the con­cept of God itself becomes use­less except as “social lubri­ca­tion,” a means of seem­ing to “agree with some­one else with whom you do not agree.” Terms of that mal­leable kind do have their advan­tages, if not to the sci­en­tif­ic mind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

150 Renowned Sec­u­lar Aca­d­e­mics & 20 Chris­t­ian Thinkers Talk­ing About the Exis­tence of God

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Bertrand Rus­sell on the Exis­tence of God & the After­life (1959)

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

What Is Reli­gion Actu­al­ly For?: Isaac Asi­mov and Ray Brad­bury Weigh In

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Free Yale Course on Medieval History: 700 Years in 22 Lectures

In 22 lec­tures, Yale his­to­ri­an Paul Freed­man takes you on a 700-year tour of medieval his­to­ry. Mov­ing from 284‑1000 AD, this free online course cov­ers “the con­ver­sion of Europe to Chris­tian­i­ty, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the ‘Dark Ages,’ Charle­magne and the Car­olin­gian renais­sance, and the Viking and Hun­gar­i­an inva­sions.” And let’s not for­get St. Augus­tine and the “Splen­dor of Byzan­tium.”

You can stream all of the lec­tures above. Or find them on YouTube and this Yale web­site.

The Ear­ly Mid­dle Ages: 284‑1000 will be added to our list of Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. Below, we’ve added a list of the key texts used in the course:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

160,000+ Medieval Man­u­scripts Online: Where to Find Them

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction

In his life­time, Jack­son Pol­lock had only one suc­cess­ful art show. It took place at the Bet­ty Par­sons Gallery in New York in Novem­ber 1949, and after­ward, his fel­low abstract expres­sion­ist Willem de Koon­ing declared that “Jack­son has final­ly bro­ken the ice.” Per­haps, accord­ing to Louis Menand’s book The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he meant that “Pol­lock was the first Amer­i­can abstrac­tion­ist to break into the main­stream art world, or he might have meant that Pol­lock had bro­ken through a styl­is­tic log­jam that Amer­i­can painters felt blocked by.” What­ev­er its intent, de Koon­ing’s remark annoyed art crit­ic and major Pol­lock advo­cate Clement Green­berg, who “thought that it reduced Pol­lock to a tran­si­tion­al fig­ure.”

It was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a reduc­tion: as Menand sees it, “all fig­ures are tran­si­tion­al. Not every fig­ure, how­ev­er, is a hinge, some­one who rep­re­sents a moment when one mode of prac­tice swings over to anoth­er.” Pol­lock was such a hinge, as, in his way, was Green­berg: “After Pol­lock, peo­ple paint­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. After Green­berg, peo­ple thought about paint­ing dif­fer­ent­ly.”

When they made their mark, “there was no going back.” Gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne exam­ines the nature of that mark in the new Great Art Explained video above, the first of a mul­ti-part series on Pol­lock­’s art and the fig­ures that made its cul­tur­al impact pos­si­ble. Even more impor­tant than Green­berg, in Payne’s telling, is Pol­lock­’s fel­low artist — and, in time, wife — Lee Kras­ner, whose own work he also gives its due.

We also see the paint­ings of Amer­i­can region­al­ist Thomas Hart Ben­ton, Pol­lock­’s teacher; Mex­i­can mural­ist David Alfaro Siqueiros, in whose work­shop Pol­lock par­tic­i­pat­ed; and even Pablo Picas­so, who exert­ed sub­tle but detectable influ­ences of his own on Pol­lock­’s work. Oth­er, non-artis­tic sources of inspi­ra­tion Payne explores include the psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ry of Carl Gus­tav Jung, with whose school of ther­a­py Pol­lock engaged in the late nine­teen-thir­ties and ear­ly for­ties. It was in those ses­sions that he pro­duced the “psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic draw­ings,” one of sev­er­al cat­e­gories of Pol­lock­’s work that will sur­prise those who know him only through his large-can­vas, whol­ly abstract drip paint­ings. Each rep­re­sents one stage of a com­plex evo­lu­tion­ary process: Pol­lock may have been the ide­al artist for the new, post-war Amer­i­can world, but he hard­ly came ful­ly formed out of Wyoming.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Watch “Jack­son Pol­lock 51,” a His­toric Short Film That Cap­tures Pol­lock Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art on a Sheet of Glass

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Soviet Union Creates a List of 38 Dangerous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Village People & More (1985)

Image by Mario Cas­ciano via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Music is dan­ger­ous and pow­er­ful, and can be, with­out intend­ing to, a polit­i­cal weapon. All author­i­tar­i­an regimes have under­stood this, includ­ing repres­sive ele­ments in the U.S. through­out the Cold War. I remem­ber hav­ing books hand­ed to me before the Berlin Wall came down, by fam­i­ly friends fear­ful of the evils of pop­u­lar music—especially punk rock and met­al, but also pret­ty much every­thing else. The descrip­tions in these para­noid tracts of the bands I knew and loved sound­ed so ludi­crous and hyper­bol­ic that I couldn’t help sus­pect that each was in fact a work of satire. They were at the very least anachro­nis­tic, yet ide­al, types of Poe’s Law.

Such may be your reac­tion to a list pub­lished in 1985 by the Kom­so­mol, the Sovi­et youth orga­ni­za­tion formed as the All-Union Lenin­ist Young Com­mu­nist League in 1918. (Find it below.) Con­sist­ing of thir­ty-eight punk, rock, met­al, dis­co, and New Wave bands, the list is not at all unlike the mate­ri­als print­ed around the same time by cer­tain youth orga­ni­za­tions I came into con­tact with.

The mech­a­nisms of state repres­sion in the Sovi­et Union on the eve of per­e­stroi­ka over­matched com­par­a­tive­ly mild attempts at music cen­sor­ship made by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, but the pro­pa­gan­da mech­a­nisms were sim­i­lar. As in the alarmed pam­phlets and books hand­ed to me in church­es and sum­mer camps, the Kom­so­mol list describes each band in obtuse and absurd terms, each one a cat­e­go­ry of the “type of pro­pa­gan­da” on offer.

Black Sab­bath, a legit­i­mate­ly scary—and polit­i­cal­ly astute—band gets pegged along with Iron Maid­en for “vio­lence” and “reli­gious obscu­ran­tism.” (Nazareth is sim­i­lar­ly guilty of “vio­lence” and “reli­gious mys­ti­cism.”) A great many artists are charged with only “vio­lence” or with “sex,” which in some cas­es was kind of their whole méti­er. A hand­ful of punk bands—the Sex Pis­tols, the Clash, the Stranglers—are cit­ed for vio­lence, and also sim­ply charged with “punk,” a crime giv­en as the Ramones’ only offense. There are a few odd­ly spe­cif­ic charges: Pink Floyd is guilty of a “dis­tor­tion of Sovi­et for­eign pol­i­cy (‘Sovi­et aggres­sion in Afghanistan’)” and Talk­ing Heads endorse the “myth of the Sovi­et mil­i­tary threat.” A cou­ple hilar­i­ous­ly incon­gru­ous tags offer LOLs: Yazoo and Depeche Mode, two of the gen­tlest bands of the peri­od, get called out for “punk, vio­lence.” Kiss and the Vil­lage Peo­ple (above), two of the sil­li­est bands on the list, are said to prop­a­gate, “neo­fas­cism” and “vio­lence.”

  1. Sex Pis­tols: punk, vio­lence
  2. B‑52s: punk, vio­lence
  3. Mad­ness: punk, vio­lence
  4. Clash: punk, vio­lence
  5. Stran­glers: punk, vio­lence
  6. Kiss: neo­fas­cism, punk, vio­lence
  7. Cro­cus: vio­lence, cult of strong per­son­al­i­ty
  8. Styx: vio­lence, van­dal­ism
  9. Iron Maid­en: vio­lence, reli­gious obscu­ri­tanism
  10. Judas Priest: anti­com­mu­nism, racism
  11. AC/DC: neo­fas­cism, vio­lence
  12. Sparks: neo­fas­cism, racism
  13. Black Sab­bath: vio­lence, reli­gious obscu­ri­tanism
  14. Alice Coop­er: vio­lence, van­dal­ism
  15. Nazareth: vio­lence, reli­gious mys­ti­cism
  16. Scor­pi­ons: vio­lence
  17. Gengis Khan: anti­com­mu­nism, nation­al­ism
  18. UFO: vio­lence
  19. Pink Floyd (1983): dis­tor­tion of Sovi­et for­eign pol­i­cy (“Sovi­et agres­sion in Afghanistan”)***
  20. Talk­ing Heads: myth of the Sovi­et mil­i­tary threat
  21. Per­ron: eroti­cism
  22. Bohan­non: eroti­cism
  23. Orig­i­nals: sex
  24. Don­na Sum­mer: eroti­cism
  25. Tina Turn­er: sex
  26. Junior Eng­lish: sex
  27. Canned Heat: homo­sex­u­al­i­ty
  28. Munich Machine: eroti­cism
  29. Ramones: punk
  30. Van Halen: anti-sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da
  31. Julio Igle­sias: neo­fas­cism
  32. Yazoo: punk, vio­lence
  33. Depeche Mode: punk, vio­lence
  34. Vil­lage Peo­ple: vio­lence
  35. Ten CC: neo­fas­cism
  36. Stooges: vio­lence
  37. Boys: punk, vio­lence
  38. Blondie: punk, vio­lence

The list cir­cu­lat­ed for “the pur­pose of inten­si­fy­ing con­trol over the activ­i­ties of dis­cothe­ques.” It comes to us from Alex­ei Yurchak’s Every­thing Was For­ev­er, Until It Was No More: The Last Sovi­et Gen­er­a­tion, which cites it as an exam­ple, writes one read­er, of “the con­tra­dic­to­ry nature of Sovi­et life, where as cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pat­ed in the rit­u­al­ized, pro for­ma ide­o­log­i­cal dis­course, this very dis­course allowed them to carve out what they called ‘nor­mal mean­ing­ful life’ that went beyond the state’s ide­ol­o­gy.” A large part of that “nor­mal” life involved cir­cu­lat­ing bootlegs of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sus­pect music on impro­vised mate­ri­als like dis­card­ed and stolen X‑Rays. The Kom­so­mol even­tu­al­ly wised up. As Yur­chak doc­u­ments in his book, they co-opt­ed local ama­teur rock bands and pro­mot­ed their own events as a counter-attack on the influ­ence of bour­geois cul­ture. You can prob­a­bly guess how much suc­cess they had with this strat­e­gy.

See the full list of thir­ty-eight bands and their “type of pro­pa­gan­da” above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Whether the Gov­ern­ment Should Cen­sor Music in a Heat­ed Episode of Cross­fire: Why Are Peo­ple Afraid of Words? (1986)

The Sovi­ets Who Boot­legged West­ern Music on X‑Rays: Their Sto­ry Told in New Video & Audio Doc­u­men­taries

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

The His­to­ry of Sovi­et Rock: From the 70s Under­ground Rock Scene, to Sovi­et Punk & New Wave in the 1980s

Young Pat­ti Smith Rails Against the Cen­sor­ship of Her Music: An Ani­mat­ed, NSFW Inter­view from 1976

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket Symphony

This week, Bri­an Wil­son became the last of the Wil­son broth­ers to shuf­fle off this mor­tal coil. Den­nis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in 1983 — but not before offer­ing this mem­o­rable assess­ment of the fam­i­ly musi­cal project: “Bri­an Wil­son is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We’re his mes­sen­gers. He is all of it. Peri­od. We’re noth­ing.” That was a bit harsh: Den­nis may not have been a vir­tu­oso drum­mer, but Beach Boys enthu­si­asts all cred­it his faint­ly despair­ing songs with enrich­ing the band’s sig­na­ture emo­tion­al land­scape. Bri­an may have writ­ten “God Only Knows,” but he did so with his broth­er Car­l’s voice in mind. And could even Bri­an’s oth­er mas­ter­piece “Good Vibra­tions” have made the same impact with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of his much-resent­ed cousin Mike Love?

Still, with­out Bri­an’s orches­tra­tion, the oth­er Beach Boys’ voic­es would nev­er have come togeth­er in the pow­er­ful way they did, to say noth­ing of the con­tri­bu­tions of the count­less stu­dio musi­cians who played on their record­ings. Before “Good Vibra­tions,” nev­er had a pop song owed so much to so many musi­cians — and, at the same time, even more to the fer­tile and uncon­ven­tion­al son­ic imag­i­na­tion of just one man.

Labo­ri­ous­ly craft­ed over sev­en months in four dif­fer­ent stu­dios, it came out in Octo­ber of 1966 as the most expen­sive sin­gle ever pro­duced. Its then-epic length of 3:35 filled Capi­tol Records with doubts about its radio via­bil­i­ty, but that turned out to be an aston­ish­ing­ly brief run­ning time to con­tain the sheer com­po­si­tion­al inten­si­ty that soon got the song labeled a “pock­et sym­pho­ny.”

“Good Vibra­tions” and its myr­i­ad intri­ca­cies are scru­ti­nized to this day, most recent­ly in video essays like the ones you see here. On his Youtube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic, Noah Lefevre calls it “dense enough that you could teach an entire music course on it.” David Hart­ley grants it the sta­tus of “prob­a­bly the most com­plex song ever record­ed,” and even “the first song ever cre­at­ed using copy and paste.” Long before the era of dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions, Bri­an Wil­son used whol­ly ana­log stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy to string togeth­er “feels,” his name for the dis­parate frag­ments of music in his mind. His method con­tributed to the sym­phon­ic con­struc­tion of “Good Vibra­tions,” and his will­ing­ness to fol­low the mood wher­ev­er it led result­ed in the song’s dis­tinc­tive use of an Elec­tro-Theremin. Despite all this, some lis­ten­ers still ques­tion his cen­tral­i­ty to the Beach Boys’ music; for them, there will always be “Koko­mo.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Lost Stu­dio Footage of Bri­an Wil­son Con­duct­ing “Good Vibra­tions,” The Beach Boys’ Bril­liant “Pock­et Sym­pho­ny”

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

Enter Bri­an Wilson’s Cre­ative Process While Mak­ing The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds 50 Years Ago: A Fly-on-the Wall View

Paul McCart­ney vs. Bri­an Wil­son: A Rival­ry That Inspired Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pep­per, and Oth­er Clas­sic Albums

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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