Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda Creates a Playlist of Protest Music for Our Troubled Times

in Music | February 21st, 2017

Pho­to by Steve Jurvet­son, via Flickr Com­mons

In 1992 Ice‑T’s met­al band Body Count mas­tered the art of shock pol­i­tics when the song “Cop Killer” put them “at the cen­tre of a nation­al out­rage.” But their polit­i­cal feroc­i­ty may have seemed much dimin­ished when, in 2015, they released a tongue-in-cheek update of Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies’ “Insti­tu­tion­al­ized” in which Ice‑T rails against his wife, bad tech sup­port, and an inter­rupt­ed ham sand­wich while on the set of Law & Order.

The past year’s events have jolt­ed Body Count back into fight­ing form. Their recent release “No Lives Mat­ter” com­bines top­i­cal social cri­tique with “Cop Killer”-style con­fronta­tion in a pum­mel­ing track rem­i­nis­cent of anoth­er 90s rap-met­al activist stal­wart. Ice‑T may have moved on from L.A. gang life to com­fort­able TV star­dom, but few would deny him his street cred or his con­tin­ued abil­i­ty to size up the sit­u­a­tion of the Amer­i­can under­class.

Anoth­er rap­per-slash-actor (slash-poet-slash-com­pos­er) has entered the world of protest music from a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent sphere. Now inter­na­tion­al­ly famous for his musi­cal Hamil­ton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work doesn’t speak truth to pow­er as much as it makes pow­er speak its truth. Hamil­ton, writes Mary Grace Garis at Bus­tle, “is a sear­ing reminder that Amer­i­ca is very much found­ed by immi­grants fac­ing per­se­cu­tion, and that our free­dom, like­wise, was fought for by immi­grants.”

Their musi­cal venues and polit­i­cal visions may span a wide Venn dia­gram, but like Body Count’s lat­est, Hamil­ton draws on both con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal rhetoric and music from the hey­day of “con­scious” hip-hop and alter­na­tive. Miran­da has wide­ly shared his influ­ences in his HAMthol­o­gy Playlist, and he remade sev­er­al of the show’s songs with some of his idols on The Hamil­ton Mix­tape. Con­tin­u­ing his cura­to­r­i­al role, and hav­ing “learned how to use the Spo­ti­fy thingy on my day off,” Miran­da now brings his fans the playlist above, which he calls “Rise Up Eyes Up Wise Up.”

The new mix begins with The Hamil­ton Mix­tape’s “Immi­grants (We Get the Job Done)” and moves on to a thor­ough­ly eclec­tic but SFW mix of Green Day, Tal­ib Kweli, Regi­na Spek­tor, Bob Dylan, Ruben Blades, and many oth­ers. It’s down­tem­po protest music, overall—no Body Count or Rage Against the Machine. Even Green Day’s entry is a bal­lad, “Are We the Wait­ing” from Amer­i­can Idiot. But then again, Hamil­ton’s fans often tend toward the down­tem­po end of the spec­trum. Let a thou­sand protest songs bloom, I say.

Miran­da announced the playlist on a new Twit­ter account, where he’s received a cou­ple hun­dred replies, includ­ing one from a fan who put the mix on Google Play. For those so inspired to revis­it or hear for the first time Hamil­ton’s reimag­in­ing of the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment, find the orig­i­nal cast record­ing below. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

via Bus­tle

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miran­da Reimag­ines Hamil­ton as a Girl on Drunk His­to­ry

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

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

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Pixar & Khan Academy Offer a Free Online Course on Storytelling

in Animation, Film, K-12, Online Courses | February 20th, 2017

It doesn’t take much to spark a good sto­ry.

A tall man, a short woman, a set­ting that’s ster­ile to the point of soul­less, and a cou­ple dozen bananas…

It prac­ti­cal­ly writes itself!

If you’re slow to rec­og­nize the poten­tial in these extreme­ly potent ele­ments (culled from the above video’s open­ing shot), this free online course on sto­ry­telling, part of Khan Acad­e­my’s pop­u­lar Pixar In A Box series, might help strength­en those slack sto­ry­telling mus­cles.

The lessons will hold immense appeal for young Pixar fans, but adults stu­dents stand to gain too. Chil­dren are nat­u­ral­ly con­fi­dent sto­ry­tellers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, time can do a num­ber on both flu­en­cy and one’s belief in one’s own abil­i­ty to string togeth­er nar­ra­tives that oth­ers will enjoy.

The Pixar direc­tors and sto­ry artists draft­ed to serve as instruc­tors for this course are as deft at encour­age­ment as they are at their craft. They’ll help you move that rub­ber tree plant… for free.

Each short, exam­ple-packed video les­son is fol­lowed with an activ­i­ty in which the view­er is asked to parse his or her favorite sto­ries.

One of the most com­pelling aspects of the series is hear­ing about the sto­ries that mat­ter deeply to the teach­ers.

Mark Andrews, who wrote and direct­ed Brave, recalls his vis­cer­al response to the injus­tice of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s Island of Mis­fit Toys.

Domee Shi who sto­ry­board­ed Inside Out had to bail on The Lion King, she was so effect­ed by Simba’s dis­cov­ery of his dead father.

Rata­touille ani­ma­tor San­jay Patel, whose obser­va­tions con­sis­tent­ly struck me as the most pro­found and out of the box, went with The Killing Fields, a title that’s prob­a­bly not on the radar of those most square­ly in Pixar’s demo­graph­ic.

The first install­ment stress­es the impor­tance of pro­vid­ing a rich set­ting for well-devel­oped char­ac­ters to explore, though the teach­ers are divid­ed on which should come first.

Direc­tor Pete Doc­ter, whose daughter’s tweenage pas­sage into the Reviv­ing Ophe­lia-land inspired Inside Out, stress­es “writ­ing what you know” need not pin you to the nar­row con­fines of your own back­yard. He was well into pro­duc­tion on Mon­sters, Inc. when he real­ized it wasn’t so much a tale of a mon­ster whose job is scar­ing lit­tle kids as a sto­ry of his own jour­ney to father­hood.

As you may have guessed, exam­ples from the Pixar canon abound.

Khan Acad­e­my will be tak­ing the whole of 2017 to roll out Pixar in a Box’s five remain­ing Sto­ry­telling units

You can com­plete the first unit here, then revis­it their pre­vi­ous course on mak­ing ani­ma­tions, while wait­ing for the rest of the cur­ricu­lum to drop.

Find more free cours­es in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling … Makes for an Addic­tive Par­lor Game

George Saun­ders Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­telling in a Short Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

John Berg­er (RIP) and Susan Son­tag Take Us Inside the Art of Sto­ry­telling (1983)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er, whose new play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in less than two weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation that Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

in Design, Maps | February 20th, 2017

Last week we brought you news of a world map pur­port­ed­ly more accu­rate than any to date, designed by Japan­ese archi­tect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the Autha­Graph, updates a cen­turies-old method of turn­ing the globe into a flat sur­face by first con­vert­ing it to a cylin­der. Win­ner of Japan’s Good Design Grand Award, it serves as both a bril­liant design solu­tion and an update to our out­mod­ed con­cep­tions of world geog­ra­phy.

But as some read­ers have point­ed out, the Autha­Graph also seems to draw quite heav­i­ly on an ear­li­er map made by one of the most vision­ary of the­o­rists and design­ers, Buck­min­ster Fuller, who in 1943 applied his Dymax­ion trade­mark to the map you see above, which will like­ly remind you of his most rec­og­niz­able inven­tion, the Geo­des­ic Dome, “house of the future.”

Whether Narukawa has acknowl­edged Fuller as an inspi­ra­tion I can­not say. In any case, 73 years before the Autha­Graph, the Dymax­ion Map achieved a sim­i­lar feat, with sim­i­lar moti­va­tions. As the Buck­min­ster Fuller Insti­tute (BFI) points out, “The Fuller Pro­jec­tion Map is [or was] the only flat map of the entire sur­face of the Earth which reveals our plan­et as one island in the ocean, with­out any visu­al­ly obvi­ous dis­tor­tion of the rel­a­tive shapes and sizes of the land areas, and with­out split­ting any con­ti­nents.”

Fuller pub­lished his map in Life mag­a­zine, as a cor­rec­tive, he said, “for the lay­man, engrossed in belat­ed, war-taught lessons in geog­ra­phy…. The Dymax­ion World map is a means by which he can see the whole world fair­ly at once.” Fuller, notes Kelsey Campell-Dol­laghan at Giz­mo­do, “intend­ed the Dymax­ion World map to serve as a tool for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between nations.”

Fuller believed, writes BFI, that “giv­en a way to visu­al­ize the whole plan­et with greater accu­ra­cy, we humans will be bet­ter equipped to address chal­lenges as we face our com­mon future aboard Space­ship Earth.” Was he naïve or ahead of his time?

We may have had a good laugh at a recent repli­ca of Fuller’s near­ly undrive­able, “scary as hell,” 1930 Dymax­ion Car, one of his first inven­tions. Many of Fuller’s con­tem­po­raries also found his work bizarre and imprac­ti­cal. Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert at The New York­er sums up the recep­tion he often received for his “schemes,” which “had the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry qual­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with sci­ence fic­tion (or men­tal hos­pi­tals).” The com­men­tary seems unfair.

Fuller’s influ­ence on archi­tec­ture, design, and sys­tems the­o­ry has been broad and deep, though many of his designs only res­onat­ed long after their debut. He thought of him­self as an “antic­i­pa­to­ry design sci­en­tist,” rather than an inven­tor, and remarked, “if you want to teach peo­ple a new way of think­ing, don’t both­er try­ing to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of think­ing.” In this sense, we must agree that the Dymax­ion map was an unqual­i­fied suc­cess as an inspi­ra­tion for inno­v­a­tive map design.

In addi­tion to its pos­si­bly indi­rect influ­ence on the Autha­Graph, Fuller’s map has many promi­nent imi­ta­tors and sparked “a rev­o­lu­tion in map­ping,” writes Camp­bell-Dol­laghan. She points us to, among oth­ers, the Cryos­phere, fur­ther up, a Fuller map “arranged based on ice, snow, glac­i­ers, per­mafrost and ice sheets”; to Dubai-based Emi­rates airline’s map show­ing flight routes; and to the “Google­spiel,” an inter­ac­tive Dymax­ion map built by Rehab­stu­dio for Google Devel­op­er Day, 2011.

And, just above, we see the Dymax­ion Woodocean World map by Nicole San­tuc­ci, win­ner of 2013’s DYMAX REDUX, an “open call to cre­ate a new and inspir­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Map.” You’ll find a hand­ful of oth­er unique sub­mis­sions at BFI, includ­ing the run­ner-up, Clouds Dymax­ion Map, below, by Anne-Gaelle Amiot, an “absolute­ly beau­ti­ful hand-drawn depic­tion of a real­i­ty that is almost always edit­ed from our maps: cloud pat­terns cir­cling above Earth.”

via Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­ers May Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­rate Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

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

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Rarely Seen, Very Early Godard Film Surfaces on YouTube

in Film | February 20th, 2017

Jean-Luc Godard, that liv­ing embod­i­ment of the nou­velle vague who did so much to tear down and rebuild the rela­tion­ship between cin­e­ma and its view­ers, has kept push­ing the bound­aries of his art form well into his eight­ies. But even he had to start some­where, and up until very recent­ly indeed, Godard enthu­si­asts looked to his first film Opéra­tion béton, a short 1955 doc­u­men­tary on the con­struc­tion of a Swiss dam that we fea­tured a few years ago, as the start­ing point of his career as a film­mak­er. But most of them sure­ly had more inter­est in Un Femme coquette, Godard­’s sec­ond and no doubt more for­ma­tive first fic­tion film, a nine-minute adap­ta­tion of a Mau­pas­sant sto­ry hard­ly ever seen until just last week.

“Une Femme coquette is the most elu­sive rar­i­ty of the French New Wave, and pos­si­bly the most dif­fi­cult-to-see film by a name film­mak­er that isn’t believed to be irre­triev­ably lost,” wrote A.V. Club crit­ic Ignatiy Vish­n­evet­sky in a 2014 piece on his search for it. And so, for decades, near­ly every­one who want­ed to see Un Femme coquette had to make do with mere descrip­tions. In his Godard biog­ra­phy Every­thing Is Cin­e­ma, New York­er crit­ic Richard Brody high­lights not only how the film­mak­er, in adapt­ing this “tale about a woman who, see­ing a pros­ti­tute beck­on to pass­ing men, decides to try the ges­ture her­self [ … ] turns the neces­si­ty of film­ing cheap­ly and rapid­ly, with­out movie lights, into an aes­thet­ic virtue,” but also how this “film about watch­ing, about try­ing to live with what one has watched, and about the inher­ent dan­gers of doing so” evokes “the per­ilous path [Godard] was tak­ing as he sought to enter the cin­e­ma and antic­i­pates the moral dan­gers that await­ed him there.”

The sud­den appear­ance of Un Femme coquette on “the dig­i­tal back chan­nels fre­quent­ed by obscure movie enthu­si­asts,” as Vish­n­evet­sky puts it, and com­plete with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles at that, would thrill even a casu­al Godard fan. As for the Breath­less, Alphav­ille, and Week­end direc­tor’s die-hard exegetes, one can only imag­ine the feel­ings they, or at least the ones who’ve yet brought them­selves to cast eyes upon this sacred text, have expe­ri­enced while watch­ing it. No mat­ter our lev­el of famil­iar­i­ty with Godard and his work, we can all feel the charge cin­e­ma his­to­ry has giv­en his shoe­string-bud­get­ed and at times rough-look­ing black-and-white short. But who, watch­ing it at one of its sparse ear­ly screen­ings, could have imag­ined what an aes­thet­ic rev­o­lu­tion­ary its direc­tor, screen­writer, and one-man crew would short­ly become — who, that is, besides Jean-Luc Godard?

via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

The Entire­ty of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less Art­ful­ly Com­pressed Into a 3 Minute Film

Jean-Luc Godard’s Debut, Opéra­tion béton (1955) — a Con­struc­tion Doc­u­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Listen to Presidential, The Washington Post’s Podcast Exploring Each & Every U.S. President

in History, Podcasts | February 20th, 2017

A quick heads up on Pres­i­den­t’s Day: The Wash­ing­ton Post presents Pres­i­den­tial, a pod­cast that explores how “each Amer­i­can pres­i­dent reached office, made deci­sions, han­dled crises and rede­fined the role of com­man­der-in-chief.” Nat­u­ral­ly, it starts with George Wash­ing­ton. Hear that episode below.

Pres­i­den­tial is host­ed by Wash­Po edi­tor Lil­lian Cun­ning­ham and fea­tures Pulitzer Prize-win­ning his­to­ri­ans like David McCul­lough and jour­nal­ists like Bob Wood­ward. Right now you can get all 45 episodes (each about 30–50 min­utes long) on iTunes, Sound­cloud and Stitch­er.

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

Watch Online Every Pres­i­den­tial Debate Since 1960–and Revis­it America’s San­er Polit­i­cal Days

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

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A Hypnotic Look at How Tennis Balls Are Made

in Sports | February 20th, 2017

Over the years, we’ve shown you var­i­ous house­hold objects being made–everything from crayons and ink, to vinyl records, old fash­ioned books and paper. Today, you can get a mes­mer­iz­ing glimpse into how ten­nis balls are made. Cre­at­ed by Bene­dict Red­grove for ESPN, the short film above shows “the man­u­fac­tur­ing process of [Wil­son] ten­nis balls for the US Open.” Com­bined, it takes 24 dif­fer­ent process­es to make the final ball. And it’s fun to watch.

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:

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

How Ink is Made: A Volup­tuous Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Learn How Crayons Are Made, Cour­tesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Art of Mak­ing Old-Fash­ioned, Hand-Print­ed Books

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

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Japanese Priest Tries to Revive Buddhism by Bringing Techno Music into the Temple: Attend a Psychedelic 23-Minute Service

in Music, Religion | February 17th, 2017

Many reli­gious lead­ers would like to liv­en up their ser­vices to attract a younger, hip­per flock, but few have the nec­es­sary back­ground to pull it off in a tru­ly impres­sive way. Not so for the Japan­ese Bud­dhist priest Gyōsen Asaku­ra, who answered the high­er call­ing after a career as a DJ but evi­dent­ly nev­er lost his feel for the unstop­pable pulse of elec­tron­ic music. Get­ting behind his decks and don­ning his head­phones once again, he has begun using sound, light, and the orig­i­nal splen­dor of Fukui City’s Shō-onji tem­ple to hold “tech­no memo­r­i­al ser­vices.” You can see and hear a bit of one such audio­vi­su­al spir­i­tu­al spec­ta­cle in the video just above, shot at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice last fall.

“Bud­dhism may be approach­ing some­thing of a cri­sis point in Japan,” reports Bud­dhist­door’s Craig Lewis, “with 27,000 of the country’s 77,000 Bud­dhist tem­ples fore­cast to close over the next 25 years, reflect­ing shrink­ing pop­u­la­tions in small rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and a loss of faith in orga­nized reli­gion among the country’s pop­u­la­tion as a whole.”

He also sites an Asahi Shim­bun sur­vey that found 434 tem­ples closed over the past decade and 12,065 Japan­ese Bud­dhist tem­ples cur­rent­ly with­out res­i­dent monks. Can this tem­ple in a small city, itself known for its phoenix-like rise from the ash­es of the Sec­ond World War, do its part to reverse the trend?

Gyōsen Asaku­ra frames his tech­no memo­r­i­al ser­vices, how­ev­er incon­gru­ous they might at first seem, as in keep­ing with the tra­di­tions of his branch of Pure Land Bud­dhism. “Orig­i­nal­ly, gold­en dec­o­ra­tions in the tem­ple are expres­sions of par­adise light,” he told THUMP. “How­ev­er, the light of a tra­di­tion­al tem­ple has not changed its form from 1000 years ago to use can­dle­light, even after elec­tric­i­ty was invent­ed. I felt doubt­ful about that, and then I thought about express­ing par­adise with the lat­est stage light­ing such as 3D map­ping.”

After all, as he said to Japankyo, “peo­ple used to use the most advanced tech­nolo­gies avail­able to them at the time in order to orna­ment tem­ples with gold leaf,” so why not har­ness today’s tech­nol­o­gy to evoke the Bud­dhist “world of light” as well? And in any case, ecsta­t­ic sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences are noth­ing new in the realm of faith, though ecsta­t­ic sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences of Gyōsen Asaku­ra’s kind do cost mon­ey to put togeth­er. And so he, in the way of most reli­gious projects the world over, has asked for dona­tions to fund them, using not a bowl but the crowd­fund­ing site Ready­for. Judg­ing by 383,000 yen (more than $3300 U.S. dol­lars) he’s already raised, quite a few tech­no-heads have seen the light.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Edward Snow­den & Jean-Michel Jarre Record a Tech­no Protest Song, “Exit”

Hear the Great­est Hits of Isao Tomi­ta (RIP), the Father of Japan­ese Elec­tron­ic Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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!

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Rufus Harley, the First Jazz Musician to Make the Bagpipes His Main Instrument, Performs on I’ve Got a Secret (1966)

in Jazz, Music, Television | February 17th, 2017

Musi­cian Rufus Harley did the peo­ple of Scot­land a great favor when he took up the bag­pipes. Like the Loch Ness Mon­ster and hag­gis, out­side its coun­try of ori­gin, the nation­al instru­ment has evolved into a hack­neyed punch­line.

What bet­ter, more unex­pect­ed ambas­sador for its expand­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties than a cer­ti­fied Amer­i­can jazz cat?

He cer­tain­ly stumped the all-white celebri­ty pan­el when he appeared on Steve Allen’s pop­u­lar TV game show, “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1966.

Politi­cian and for­mer Miss Amer­i­ca Bess Myer­son’s open­ing ques­tion feels a bit impolitic from a 50 year remove:

Is it how well you play it that’s unusu­al?

“Yes, def­i­nite­ly,” Harley agrees.

Hav­ing quick­ly sussed out that the instru­ment in ques­tion is a wood­wind, the pan­el cycles through a list of can­di­dates — flute?

Oboe?

Clar­inet?

No?

A…sweet pota­to?

Once they start bat­ting around sax­o­phones, Allen issues a brisk cor­rec­tive:

He wouldn’t be here tonight if he, you know, just played the sax­o­phone and that was his secret because that wouldn’t be too good a secret. 

Point tak­en.

Some­thing tells me a white guy in a suit and a tie would have elicit­ed less won­der from the pan­el upon the rev­e­la­tion that the instru­ment they failed to guess was the bag­pipes.

On the oth­er hand, here is a per­son of col­or com­mand­ing atten­tion and respect on nation­al tele­vi­sion in 1966, two days after the Black Pan­ther Par­ty was offi­cial­ly found­ed.

Harley had had pro­fes­sion­al train­ing in the sax­o­phone, oboe, trum­pet and flute, but as a bag­piper he was self-taught. As the com­ments on the video above demon­strate, his unortho­dox han­dling of the instru­ment con­tin­ues to con­found more tra­di­tion­al pipers. No mat­ter. The sounds he coaxed out of that thing are unlike any­thing you’re like­ly to hear on the bon­ny, bon­ny banks of Loch Lomond.

At the end of the seg­ment, Harley joined his back up musi­cians onstage for a live, Latin-inflect­ed cov­er of “Feel­ing Good.”

Spo­ti­fy lis­ten­ers can enjoy more of Harley’s dis­tinc­tive pip­ing here.

And just for fun, check out this list of bag­pipe terms.There’s more to this instru­ment than its asso­ci­a­tion with Groundskeep­er Willy might sug­gest.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Intro­duc­tion to the Great Amer­i­can Art Form (1956)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er whose lat­est play, Zam­boni Godot, is open­ing in New York City on March 2. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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