Pink Floyd Films a Concert in an Empty Auditorium, Still Trying to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

in Music | January 7th, 2020

It’s hard to imag­ine that in the late 60s, the band who would become the most famous of the psy­che­del­ic era was still an obscu­ri­ty to most U.S. lis­ten­ers. Nowa­days “Pink Floyd may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap,” writes Bill Wyman in a Vul­ture ret­ro­spec­tive of their entire cat­a­logue. Indeed, it’s pos­si­ble their sta­di­um-sized pop­u­lar­i­ty has been under­es­ti­mat­ed. Accord­ing to the data, they’ve actu­al­ly sold more albums world­wide than the Fab Four.

But they had to pay dues in the States. “In the last week of April 1973,” notes KQED’s Richie Unter­berg­er, Dark Side of the Moon “reached No. 1 on the Amer­i­can charts. In the last week of April 1970, though, they had yet to crack the U.S. Top 50 after three years of record­ing and per­form­ing.”

Their first singer/songwriter, and lat­er trag­ic muse, Syd Bar­rett, had come and gone after their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They were already well into what Wyman describes as the sec­ond phase of “four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

This ver­sion “was one of the founders of pro­gres­sive rock, a psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble.” They were excel­lent live musi­cians and mas­ters of mood and atmos­phere. But their exper­i­men­tal direc­tion didn’t sell. “At that point, they were real­ly anx­ious to have what­ev­er pub­lic­i­ty they could,” says Jim Far­ber, who co-pro­duced the hour-long TV con­cert film above for KQED, San Francisco’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

We did not have much of a bud­get. Pink Floyd did the per­for­mance and offered the rights for a cer­tain num­ber of air­ings for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. My mem­o­ry is we paid them $200.

The band played in the emp­ty Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um for a film crew. The venue wasn’t emp­ty because no one showed up. They could draw a crowd and had already played the Fill­more West and toured the U.S. three times. But, “for as strong an under­ground fol­low­ing as they were build­ing in the Unit­ed States,” writes Unter­berg­er, they “were so eager for an Amer­i­can audi­ence that they played a free con­cert at UCLA a week lat­er” after the KQED tap­ing.

The sta­tion, which in 1970 “was more known for Sesame Street than psy­che­del­ic rock,” had already begun to move into con­cert films. “Local icons” like “Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice all got air­time.” But Pink Floyd was some­thing dif­fer­ent indeed. The film, broad­cast in Jan­u­ary of ’71, “got an incred­i­bly pos­i­tive response when we aired it in San Fran­cis­co,” says Far­ber. “After that, it had two nation­al broad­casts on PBS.”

You can watch the full “Hour with Pink Floyd,” as the pro­gram was called, just above. At the top, see the band play “Astron­o­my Domine” in footage cut from the orig­i­nal broad­cast. Fur­ther up, see the six­teen minute “Atom Heart Moth­er,” a tes­ta­ment to how far out Pink Floyd could go, and how much a local pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion was will­ing to go with them. The track opens with five min­utes of aer­i­al footage of the San Joaquin Val­ley, the band nowhere in sight. When Pink Floyd final­ly arrives onscreen, the desert vis­tas con­tin­ue to weave in and out.

In “Grantch­ester Mead­ows,” below, for­est sounds and images intro­duce the song. The effect was to trans­late the mys­tique British lis­ten­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Pink Floyd to U.S. audi­ences just on the verge of being blown away by a very dif­fer­ent-sound­ing band who released Dark Side of the Moon three years lat­er.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

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

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Watch Peluca, the Student Film That Became the Cultural Phenomenon Napoleon Dynamite (2002)

in Film | January 7th, 2020

You could say that Jared and Jerusha Hess got lucky. When first the hus­band-and-wife team got the chance to make a fea­ture, it turned out to be Napoleon Dyna­mite, the movie that launched a mil­lion “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirts. But that visu­al­ly, nar­ra­tive­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly askew tale did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed into the the­aters. Nor did its title char­ac­ter, an extrav­a­gant­ly nerdy and sav­age­ly defen­sive high-school stu­dent in small-town Ida­ho. Napoleon Dyna­mite has a pre­de­ces­sor in Pelu­ca, the short film Jared Hess made for an assign­ment at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty’s film school. Napoleon Dyna­mite him­self has a pre­de­ces­sor in Seth, whose curly hair, enor­mous spec­ta­cles, severe awk­ward­ness, and pen­chant for thrift­ing and faux curs­ing will look famil­iar indeed.

Pelu­ca appears to have much the same to rela­tion­ship to Napoleon Dyna­mite as Wes Ander­son­’s Bot­tle Rock­et short has to the fea­ture ver­sion. Both were shot in black-and-white in locales their film­mak­ers clear­ly know well, both are mem­o­rably scored (Ander­son uses jazz, Hess uses Burt Bacharach), and both tell in a basic form sto­ries that would lat­er unfold to their full cin­e­mat­ic length.

Just as Bot­tle Rock­et, the short, stars Owen and Luke Wil­son, who would go on to reprise their roles and gain fame there­after, Jon Hed­er played Seth in Pelu­ca before play­ing Napoleon Dyna­mite. And just as there’s lit­tle obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions of the char­ac­ter besides their names, the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Hess’ cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty shows through in Pelu­ca just as it would, to a much wider audi­ence, in Napoleon Dyna­mite.

The Hess­es once drew fre­quent com­par­isons to Ander­son, though the past decade and a half has exposed their cin­e­mat­ic enter­pris­es as entire­ly dif­fer­ent. Their sec­ond fea­ture Nacho Libre, a Mex­i­can wrestling com­e­dy star­ring Jack Black, fit com­fort­ably enough into the Hol­ly­wood zone of ado­les­cent goofi­ness. But New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody saw some­thing deep­er, call­ing it “the strangest Amer­i­can reli­gious film since The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ,” one that “presents a case for noth­ing less than Catholic-Protes­tant rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” The Hess­es’ third fea­ture Gen­tle­men Bron­cos, the sto­ry of a young aspir­ing sci­ence-fic­tion writer in north­ern Utah, went almost com­plete­ly ignored, but Brody deemed it an “even more ecsta­t­ic and per­son­al explo­ration — in loopy, gross-out com­ic form — of the essence of faith in cos­mic reli­gious vision itself, and the ease with which those visions can be per­vert­ed to world­ly ends.”

Brody con­tin­ues to speak for the cinephiles who’ve paid to the work of Jared and Jerusha Hess ever more atten­tion, not less, since Napoleon Dyna­mite. 2015’s Don Verdean, about a crooked Bib­li­cal archae­ol­o­gist, is “a pur­er, stranger, and more dan­ger­ous reli­gious vision than the three films that pre­ced­ed it.” 2016’s Mas­ter­minds, a Hes­s­ian treat­ment of a real-life North Car­oli­na heist gone wrong due to sheer incom­pe­tence, “has the reli­gious inten­si­ty and spir­i­tu­al res­o­nance that marks all of Hess’s oth­er films” and “extends his vision into dark­er cor­ners of exis­tence than he had for­mer­ly con­tem­plat­ed.” Con­sid­er­ing that pic­ture, Brody sees “a wide-eyed frontal­i­ty to Hess’s film­mak­ing, includ­ing face-to-face set pieces and action scenes done in wide and sta­t­ic tableaux that sug­gest a kin­ship with the tran­scen­den­tal cin­e­ma of Robert Bres­son and Carl Theodor Drey­er.” And from the right crit­i­cal per­spec­tive, we can see it in Pelu­ca as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

Doo­dle­bug, Christo­pher Nolan’s First Short: What Came Before The Dark Night, Memen­to & Incep­tion (1997)

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Brief History of John Baldessari (RIP) Narrated by Tom Waits: A Tribute to the Late “Godfather of Conceptual Art”

in Art | January 6th, 2020

All mod­ern art is con­cep­tu­al in some way, bound to aes­thet­ic the­o­ries and com­bat­ive man­i­festoes against com­pla­cen­cy. But only in the move­ment known as cap­i­tal “C” Con­cep­tu­al Art do the ideas become more impor­tant than the objects. Con­cep­tu­al Art traces its his­to­ry to Mar­cel Duchamp and the Sur­re­al­ists who declared war on the bour­geois cul­tur­al sta­tus quo.

Lat­er exper­i­men­tal artists did the same by ele­vat­ing mass cul­ture to the sta­tus of high art: adver­tis­ing, com­ic books, Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle, and—in the past twen­ty-five years or so—the Inter­net: Pop Art fore­ground­ed con­cepts over objects by means of pas­tiche and meta­com­men­tary. The work of L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, for exam­ple, cen­ters slo­gans and clichés over ambigu­ous images that some­times look like stock desk­top back­grounds.

Both Duchamp and Ruscha were influ­ences on Amer­i­can Con­cep­tu­al­ist John Baldessari, who passed away yes­ter­day at age 88, leav­ing behind a lega­cy as “arguably America’s most influ­en­tial Con­cep­tu­al artist,” accord­ing to L.A. Times crit­ic Christo­pher Knight. Born of Euro­pean par­ents and raised in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Baldessari incor­po­rat­ed humor, satire, and Pop Art ele­ments into his work.

He did not begin his career, how­ev­er, as part of a move­ment, and he nev­er expect­ed to have much of an audi­ence. In the ear­ly six­ties, he was teach­ing high school art in San Diego and felt “total­ly iso­lat­ed,” he says in the inter­view with Knight below. Baldessari resigned him­self to a “nor­mal life,” paint­ing when he could on the week­ends. These con­di­tions inspired him to “try to fig­ure out what art meant for me, what was the bot­tom line.”

Baldessari answers the ques­tion, to laughs from the audi­ence, with typ­i­cal lacon­ic wit: “any­thing you put on can­vas is art.” Baldessari reversed Duchamp’s for­mu­la. Put a cin­derblock in a muse­um, he says, and it becomes art through con­text, but put a can­vas on the street and it doesn’t become some­thing else. It always retains its sta­tus as an art object. Such objects, for Baldessari, served main­ly as mate­r­i­al plat­forms for ideas.

“Pic­tures are not enough, Baldessari seems to sug­gest,” writes Alex Green­berg­er in an ART­news trib­ute. “Con­cepts mat­ter equal­ly, if not even more.” Baldessari has been called “the god­fa­ther of Con­cep­tu­al Art” for this insight, says Tom Waits says in his nar­ra­tion of “A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari” at the top. He’s also been called a “mas­ter of appro­pri­a­tion” and “Sur­re­al­ist for the dig­i­tal age.” He nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to just can­vas but worked in almost every medi­um of visu­al and tex­tu­al art.

Those media includ­ed cred­it card and iPhone app design. Art isn’t only mate­r­i­al: it is vir­tu­al, ephemer­al, and dis­pos­able. Baldessari demon­strat­ed his own com­mit­ment to destroy­ing the past when, in 1970, he burned all of the work he had made between 1953 and 1966 for a con­cep­tu­al piece called The Cre­ma­tion Project. But he wasn’t an art world anar­chist. As he toyed with and chal­lenged tra­di­tion, he also helped instill it.

Baldessari become famous enough to have war­rant­ed a guest spot on The Simp­sons (and was award­ed a Nation­al Medal of Arts). He became wealthy enough by far to quit his day job. But he nev­er stopped teach­ing, from high school to posts at CalArts, UCLA, and UC San Diego. “I’ve taught all my life,” he said in 2003, “Every­thing from grade school to col­lege to juve­nile delin­quents.”

We might be inclined to see in his teach­ing phi­los­o­phy a key to under­stand­ing his con­cep­tu­al uni­verse: “I set out to right all the things wrong with my own art edu­ca­tion. But I found that you can’t real­ly teach art, you can just sort of set the stage for it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

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

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Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Available as a Free AudioBook and eBook: Features Narrations by Paul Simon, Kristen Bell & Stephen Fry

in Audio Books, e-books, Life, Philosophy | January 6th, 2020

In 2009, Prince­ton philoso­pher Peter Singer pub­lished his prac­ti­cal handbook/manifesto The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Pover­ty. Bill and Melin­da Gates called it “a per­sua­sive and inspir­ing work that will change the way you think about philanthropy”–a book that “shows us we can make a pro­found dif­fer­ence in the lives of the world’s poor­est.”

Now, on its tenth anniver­sary, Singer has released an updat­ed ver­sion of The Life You Can Save. And he’s made it avail­able as a free ebook, and also as a free audio­book fea­tur­ing nar­ra­tions by Kris­ten Bell, Stephen Fry, Paul Simon and Natalia Vodi­ano­va, among oth­ers. You can get the down­loads here.

Singer’s web­site fea­tures a page where you can find the best char­i­ties that address glob­al pover­ty. Each char­i­ty has been “rig­or­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed to help you make the biggest impact per dol­lar.” If you are look­ing for an effi­cient approach, you can also make one sin­gle dona­tion to sup­port all of the char­i­ties vet­ted and rec­om­mend­ed by Singer’s orga­ni­za­tion.

The audio ver­sion of The Life You Can Save will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life You Can Save in 3 Min­utes, by Peter Singer

Peter Singer’s Course on Effec­tive Altru­ism Puts Phi­los­o­phy Into World­ly Action

The Jour­nal of Con­tro­ver­sial Ideas, Co-Found­ed by Philoso­pher Peter Singer, Will Pub­lish & Defend Pseu­do­ny­mous Arti­cles, Regard­less of the Back­lash

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Inter­views with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

 

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A Brief Animated History of Alcohol

in Animation, Food & Drink, History, TED Talks | January 6th, 2020

Almost any­thing can be pre­served in alco­hol, except health, hap­pi­ness and mon­ey…

Rod­er­ick Phillips’ Ted-Ed les­son, a Brief His­to­ry of Alco­hol, above, opens with a bon mot from ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry quote maven Mary Wil­son Lit­tle, after which, an unwit­ting chim­panzee quick­ly dis­cov­ers the intox­i­cat­ing effects of over­ripe plums.

His eyes pin­wheel, he falls off a branch, and grins, drunk as a monkey’s uncle.

And though the sub­ject is alco­hol, this pri­mate is the only char­ac­ter in Anton Bogaty’s 5‑minute ani­ma­tion who could be hauled in on a drunk and dis­or­der­ly charge.

The oth­ers take a more sober, indus­tri­ous approach, illus­trat­ing alcohol’s promi­nent role in ear­ly med­i­cine, reli­gious rit­u­als, and glob­al trad­ing.

Ancient Egyp­tians har­vest the cere­al grains that will pro­duce beer, includ­ed as part of work­ers’ rations and avail­able to all class­es.

A native of South Amer­i­ca stirs a ket­tle of chicha, a fist­ful of hal­lu­cino­genic herbs held at the ready.

A Greek physi­cian tends to a patient with a gob­let of wine, as a near­by poet pre­pares to deliv­er an ode on its cre­ative prop­er­ties.

Stu­dents with an inter­est in the sci­ence of alco­hol can learn a bit about the fer­men­ta­tion process and how the inven­tion of dis­til­la­tion allowed for much stronger spir­its.

Alco­hol was a wel­come pres­ence aboard sea­far­ing ves­sels. Not only did this valu­able trad­ing com­mod­i­ty spark live­ly par­ties on deck, it san­i­tized the sailors’ drink­ing water, mak­ing longer voy­ages pos­si­ble.

Cheers to that.

Edu­ca­tors can cus­tomize the les­son here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

How Carl Jung Inspired the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC tongight, Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties (1920) by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Vatican Library Goes Online and Digitizes Tens of Thousands of Manuscripts, Books, Coins, and More

in Books, History | January 6th, 2020

If any one of us ran our own coun­try, we’d sure­ly dri­ve no small amount of resources toward build­ing an impres­sive nation­al library. That would be true even if we ran a coun­try the size of the Vat­i­can, the small­est sov­er­eign state in the world — but one that, unsur­pris­ing­ly, punch­es well above its weight in terms of the size and his­tor­i­cal val­ue of its hold­ings. “It was in 1451 when Pope Nicholas V, a renowned bib­lio­phile him­self, attempt­ed to re-estab­lish Rome as an aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ter of glob­al impor­tance,” writes Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza. That for­mi­da­ble task involved first “build­ing a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est library of over 1,200 vol­umes, includ­ing his per­son­al col­lec­tion of Greek and Roman clas­sics and a series of texts brought from Con­stan­tino­ple.”

The Vat­i­can Apos­tolic Library, known as “VAT,” has grown a bit over the past five and a half cen­turies. Today it con­tains around 75,000 codices and 85,000 incunab­u­la (which Esparza defines as “edi­tions made between the inven­tion of the print­ing press and the 16th cen­tu­ry”) amid a total of over one mil­lion vol­umes.

And in the case of increas­ing­ly many of these doc­u­ments, you no longer have to make the jour­ney to Vat­i­can City to see them. Thanks to an ongo­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion project launched a decade ago, increas­ing­ly many have become search­able and down­load­able on Digi­VatLib, a data­base of the Vat­i­can Library’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tions includ­ing not just the afore­men­tioned codices and incunab­u­la but “archival mate­ri­als and inven­to­ries as well as graph­ic mate­ri­als, coins and medals.”

Back in 2016 we fea­tured a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of 5,300 rare man­u­scripts dig­i­tized by the col­lec­tion, includ­ing the Ili­ad and Aeneid as well as Japan­ese and Aztec illus­tra­tions. The VAT’s scan­ning, upload­ing, and orga­niz­ing has con­tin­ued apace since, and though it pri­or­i­tizes man­u­scripts “from the Mid­dle Age and Human­is­tic peri­od,” its mate­ri­als tak­en togeth­er have a wider his­tor­i­cal and indeed cul­tur­al sweep, one that only gets wider with each page added. You can get start­ed explor­ing this wealth of doc­u­ments by scrolling down a lit­tle on Digi­VatLib’s front page, in the mid­dle of which you’ll find the lat­est dig­i­tized mate­ri­als as well as a host of select­ed man­u­scripts, a few of whose pages you see above. The VAT has enjoyed its sta­tus as one of the chief repos­i­to­ries of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion longer than any of us has been alive, but we can count our­selves in the first gen­er­a­tion of human­i­ty to see it open up to the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

How the Mys­ter­ies of the Vat­i­can Secret Archives Are Being Revealed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Explore 5,300 Rare Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized by the Vat­i­can: From The Ili­ad & Aeneid, to Japan­ese & Aztec Illus­tra­tions

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors

in Archives, History, Museums | January 3rd, 2020

The suc­cess­es of the Freedman’s Bureau, ini­ti­at­ed by Abra­ham Lin­coln in 1865 and first admin­is­tered under Oliv­er Howard’s War Depart­ment, are all the more remark­able con­sid­er­ing the intense pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to the agency. Under Lincoln’s suc­ces­sor, impeached South­ern Demo­c­rat Andrew John­son, the Bureau at times became a hos­tile enti­ty to the very peo­ple it was meant to aid and protect—the for­mer­ly enslaved, espe­cial­ly, but also poor whites dev­as­tat­ed by the war. After years of defund­ing, under­staffing, and vio­lent insur­gency the Freedman’s Bureau was offi­cial­ly dis­solved in 1872.

In those first few years after eman­ci­pa­tion, how­ev­er, the Bureau built sev­er­al hos­pi­tals and over a thou­sand rur­al schools in the South, estab­lished the His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and “cre­at­ed mil­lions of records,” notes the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture (NMAAHC), “that con­tain the names of hun­dreds of thou­sands of for­mer­ly enslaved indi­vid­u­als and South­ern white refugees.” Those records have enabled his­to­ri­ans to recon­struct the lives of peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have dis­ap­peared from the record and helped geneal­o­gists trace fam­i­ly con­nec­tions that might have been irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken.

As we not­ed back in 2015, those records have become part of a dig­i­ti­za­tion project named for the Bureau and spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints, whose Fam­il­y­Search is the largest geneal­o­gy orga­ni­za­tion in the world. “Using mod­ern, dig­i­tal and web-based tech­nol­o­gy and the pow­er of [over 25,000!] vol­un­teers,” says Hol­lis Gen­try, a genealog­i­cal spe­cial­ist at the NMAAHC, the Freedman’s Bureau Project “is unlock­ing infor­ma­tion from a trans­for­ma­tive era in the his­to­ry of African Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can nation.”

That infor­ma­tion is now avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, “glob­al­ly via the web” here, as of June 20th, 2016, allow­ing “all of us to enlarge our under­stand­ing of the past.” More specif­i­cal­ly, the Freedman’s Bureau Project and Fam­il­y­Search allows African Amer­i­cans to recov­er their fam­i­ly his­to­ry in a data­base that now includes “the names of near­ly 1.8 mil­lion men, women and chil­dren” record­ed by Freedman’s Bureau work­ers and entered by Freedman’s Bureau Project vol­un­teers 150 years lat­er. This incred­i­ble data­base will give mil­lions of peo­ple descend­ed from both for­mer slaves and white Civ­il War refugees the abil­i­ty to find their ances­tors.

There’s still more work to be done. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NMAAHC, the Smith­son­ian Tran­scrip­tion Cen­ter is cur­rent­ly rely­ing on vol­un­teers to tran­scribe all of the dig­i­tal scans pro­vid­ed by Fam­il­y­Search. “When com­plet­ed, the papers will be key­word search­able. This joint effort will help increase access to the Freedmen’s Bureau col­lec­tion and help the pub­lic learn more about the Unit­ed States in the Recon­struc­tion Era,” a crit­i­cal time in U.S. his­to­ry that is woe­ful­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or delib­er­ate­ly white­washed in text­books and cur­ric­u­la.

“The records left by the Freed­men’s Bureau through its work between 1865 and 1872 con­sti­tute the rich­est and most exten­sive doc­u­men­tary source avail­able for inves­ti­gat­ing the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the post-Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion eras,” writes the Nation­al Archives. Soon, all of those doc­u­ments will be pub­licly avail­able for every­one to read. For now, those with roots in the U.S. South can search the Freedman’s Bureau Project data­base to dis­cov­er more about their fam­i­ly her­itage and his­to­ry.

And while the Smithsonian’s tran­scrip­tion project is under­way, those who want to learn more can vis­it the Freedman’s Bureau Online, which has tran­scribed hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, includ­ing labor records, nar­ra­tives of “out­rages com­mit­ted on freed­men,” and mar­riage reg­is­ters.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

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

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38 Major Pop Songs Played with the Exact Same Four Chords: Watch a Captivating Medley Performed by the Axis of Awesome

in Comedy, Music | January 3rd, 2020

When we call music a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, it’s usu­al­ly under­stood to be a metaphor. In its purest the­o­ret­i­cal form, music may be more like math—a tru­ly uni­ver­sal language—but in its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the real world, it resem­bles more the great diver­si­ty of tongues around the globe. Each region­al, nation­al, and glob­al music has its gram­mar of scales, rhythms, and chords, each its syn­tax of melodies and har­monies, though these share some impor­tant com­mon­al­i­ties.

The syn­tax of pop music, like its blues pre­de­ces­sor, con­sists of stan­dard chord pro­gres­sions, eas­i­ly swapped from song to song: repeat­able units that form a range of avail­able emo­tion­al expres­sion. Want to see that range on full dis­play, in a brava­do per­for­mance by an Aus­tralian com­e­dy rock band? Look no fur­ther: just above, the Axis of Awe­some per­form their live ren­di­tion of “4 Chord Song,” a stun­ning med­ley of pop hits from Jour­ney to Mis­sy Hig­gins that all use the same four-chord sequence.

With the excep­tion of an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, “Bird­plane,” the ensemble’s selec­tion of 38 songs includes some of the biggest hits of the past few decades. The tonal breadth is sur­pris­ing, as we leap from “Don’t Stop Believ­ing” to “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to “With or With­out You” to Aqua’s “Bar­bie Girl” and Lady Gaga’s “Pok­er Face.” Imag­ine Natal­ie Imbruglia, Green Day, and Toto trad­ing licks, or Pink, the Bea­t­les, and A‑Ha. Maybe these artists have more in com­mon, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, than we thought. Or, as one of the Axis of Awe­some band­mem­ber asks, mock-incred­u­lous­ly, “You can take those four chords, repeat them, and pop out every pop song ever?”

Well, maybe not every pop song. One could choose oth­er pro­gres­sions and make sim­i­lar com­pi­la­tions. These par­tic­u­lar four chords have some­thing of a melan­choly sound, and tend to come up music with an under­cur­rent of sad­ness (yes, even “Bar­bie Girl”). One can quib­ble with some of the par­tic­u­lars here. “Don’t Stop Believ­ing,” for exam­ple, throws a dif­fer­ent chord into the sec­ond phrase of its pro­gres­sion. But the ubiq­ui­ty of this melody in pop is quite reveal­ing, and amus­ing in this musi­cal mashup. See the Axis of Awe­some in a pol­ished video ver­sion of “4 Chord Song,” above, and con­sid­er all the oth­er ways pop music recy­cles and reuses the same ele­ments over and over to con­vey its range of feel­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

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

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