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

in History, Music | June 18th, 2025

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.

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Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful

in History, Music, Religion | June 18th, 2025

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

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

in Music, Politics | June 16th, 2025

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

in Music | June 13th, 2025

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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Talking Heads Release the First Official Video for “Psycho Killer”: Watch It Online

in Music | June 6th, 2025

On social media, the Talk­ing Heads teased a major announce­ment on June 5th, lead­ing fans to won­der if a reunion—41 years after their last tour—might final­ly be in the off­ing. As one fan put it, “If this is a tour announce­ment, I am going to freak out!” Alas, we did­n’t quite get that. (Maybe next time!) Instead, we got the first offi­cial music video for “Psy­cho Killer.” Direct­ed by Mike Mills and star­ring Saoirse Ronan, the video helps com­mem­o­rate the band’s first show at CBGB 50 years ago. You can watch the video above, and footage from CBGB in 1975 here.

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 

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Talk­ing Heads Fea­tured on The South Bank Show in 1979: How the Ground­break­ing New Wave Band Made Nor­mal­i­ty Strange Again

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

 

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When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

in History, Music, Politics | June 5th, 2025

It’s been said that the Unit­ed States won the Cold War with­out fir­ing a shot — a state­ment, as P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, that doubt­less sur­prised vet­er­ans of Korea and Viet­nam. But it would­n’t be entire­ly incor­rect to call the long stare-down between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union a bat­tle of ideas. Dwight Eisen­how­er cer­tain­ly saw it that way, a world­view that inspired the 1956 cre­ation of the Pres­i­den­t’s Spe­cial Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram for Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, which aimed to use Amer­i­can cul­ture to improve the coun­try’s image around the world. (That same year, Eisen­how­er also signed off on the con­struc­tion of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem, such was the coun­try’s ambi­tion at the time.)

For an unam­bigu­ous­ly Amer­i­can art form, one could hard­ly do bet­ter than jazz, which also had the advan­tage of coun­ter­bal­anc­ing U.S.S.R. pro­pa­gan­da focus­ing on the U.S.’ trou­bled race rela­tions. And so the State Depart­ment picked a series of “jazz ambas­sadors” to send on care­ful­ly planned world tours, begin­ning with Dizzy Gille­spie and his eigh­teen-piece inter­ra­cial band (with the late Quin­cy Jones in the role of music direc­tor).

Start­ing in March of 1956, Gille­spie’s ten-week tour fea­tured dates all over Europe, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca. These would­n’t be his last State Depart­ment-spon­sored tours abroad: in the videos above, you can see a clip from his per­for­mance in Ger­many in 1960. This tour­ing even result­ed in live albums like Dizzy in Greece and World States­man.

Oth­er jazz ambas­sadors would fol­low: Louis Arm­strong (who quit over the high-school inte­gra­tion cri­sis in Lit­tle Rock), Duke Elling­ton, Ben­ny Good­man, and Dave Brubeck (whose dim view of the pro­gram inspired the musi­cal The Real Ambas­sadors). But none went quite so far in pur­su­ing their cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal inter­ests as Gille­spie, who announced him­self as a write-in can­di­date in the 1964 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He promised not only to rename the White House the Blues house, but also to appoint a cab­i­net includ­ing Miles Davis as Direc­tor of the CIA, Charles Min­gus as Sec­re­tary of Peace, Arm­strong as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, and Elling­ton as Sec­re­tary of State. This jazzed-up admin­is­tra­tion was, alas, nev­er to take pow­er, but the music itself has left more of a lega­cy than any gov­ern­ment could. Sure­ly the fact that I write these words in a café in Korea sound­tracked entire­ly by jazz speaks for itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

When Louis Arm­strong Stopped a Civ­il War in The Con­go (1960)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

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

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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Leonard Bernstein: The Greatest 5 Minutes in Music Education

in Education, Music | June 4th, 2025

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about one of Leonard Bernstein’s major works, The Unan­swered Ques­tion, the stag­ger­ing six-part lec­ture that the mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist gave as part of his duties as Har­vard’s Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor. Over 11 hours, Bern­stein attempts to explain the whith­er and the whence of music his­to­ry, notably at a time when Clas­si­cal music had come to a sort of cri­sis point of atonal­i­ty and anti-music, but was still pre-Merzbow.

But, as Bern­stein said “…the best way to ‘know’ a thing is in the con­text of anoth­er dis­ci­pline,” and these six lec­tures bring in all sorts of con­texts, espe­cial­ly Chomsky’s lin­guis­tic the­o­ry, phonol­o­gy, seman­tics, and more. And he does it all with fre­quent trips to the piano to make a point, or bring­ing in a whole orchestra—which Bern­stein kept in his back pock­et for times just like this.

Jok­ing aside, this is still a major schol­ar­ly work that has plen­ty inside to debate. That’s per­ti­nent a half a cen­tu­ry after the fact, espe­cial­ly when so much music feels like it has stopped advanc­ing, just recy­cling.

The above clip is just one of the gems to be found among the lec­tures, some­thing that one view­er found so stun­ning they record­ed it off the tele­vi­sion screen and post­ed to YouTube.

In the clip, Bern­stein uses the melody of “Fair Har­vard,” also known as “Believe Me, If All Those Endear­ing Young Charms” by Thomas Moore—recognizable to the young’uns as the fid­dle intro to “Come On, Eileen”—as a start­ing point. He assumes a pre­his­toric hominid hum­ming the tune, then the younger and/or female mem­bers of the tribe singing along an octave apart.

From this moment of musi­cal and human evo­lu­tion, Bern­stein brings in the fifth interval—only a few mil­lion years later—and then the fourth. Then polypho­ny is born out of that and…well, we don’t want to spoil every­thing. Soon Bern­stein brings us up to the cir­cle of fifths, com­press­ing them into the 12 tones of the scale, and then 12 keys.

Bern­stein can hear the poten­tial for chaos, how­ev­er, in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of “chro­mat­ic goulash,” and so ends with Bach, the mas­ter of “tonal con­trol” who bal­anced the chro­mat­ic (which uses notes out­side a key’s scale) with the dia­ton­ic (which doesn’t). (It all comes back to Bach, doesn’t it?)

And there the video ends, but you know where to find the rest. And final­ly we’ll leave you with this oth­er, more explo­sive, ren­der­ing of “Fair Har­vard.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bern­stein Explains What Makes His Play­ing So Great (1960)

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How John Lennon Wrote the Beatles’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life”

in Music | June 3rd, 2025

If you’re under 60, you prob­a­bly heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encoun­ter­ing the song it opens. Even after you dis­cov­ered the work of the Bea­t­les, it may have tak­en you some time to under­stand what, exact­ly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The “lucky man who made the grade” and “blew his mind out in a car” turn out to have been inspired by the young Guin­ness heir Tara Browne, who’d fatal­ly wiped out in his Lotus Elan. The fig­ure of 4,000 holes in the roads of Black­burn came from anoth­er page of the same edi­tion of the Dai­ly Mail. These are just two of the mem­o­rable images in “A Day in the Life,” which son­i­cal­ly recon­structs the fab­ric of the nine­teen-six­ties as the Bea­t­les knew it.

In his new video below, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, calls “A Day in the Life” “arguably the Bea­t­les’ best song.” Crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald is rather less ambigu­ous in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, pro­claim­ing it “their finest sin­gle achieve­ment.”

And if any sin­gle fac­tor shaped its devel­op­ment, that fac­tor was LSD. “A song about per­cep­tion — a sub­ject cen­tral both to late-peri­od Bea­t­les and the coun­ter­cul­ture at large — ‘A Day in the Life’ con­cerned ‘real­i­ty’ only to the extent that this had been revealed by LSD to be large­ly in the eye of the behold­er,” he writes. Lennon may have proven to be the group’s most ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­ast of that short­cut to enlight­en­ment. It’s worth not­ing, as Puschak does, that it was Browne who first “turned on” Paul McCart­ney.

Though pri­mar­i­ly John’s work, “A Day in the Life” would­n’t be what it is with­out Paul’s dou­ble-time bridge, whose jaun­ti­ly nar­ra­tive ordi­nar­i­ness makes the vers­es all the more tran­scen­dent. The need for some kind of tran­si­tion between these dis­parate John and Paul parts led to George Mar­tin’s com­mis­sion­ing a 40-piece orches­tra instruct­ed to play from the low­est notes up to the high­est, a col­lec­tive glis­san­do quadru­ple-record­ed and mixed to sound like the end of the world. In the­o­ry, per­haps, all this — to say noth­ing of Lennon’s ref­er­ences to the Albert Hall, the House of Lords, and his own role in Richard Lester’s How I Won the War — should­n’t work togeth­er. But the result, as Mac­Don­ald puts it, remains one of “the most pen­e­trat­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic reflec­tions of its era,” as expe­ri­enced by the young men stand­ing at its very cen­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

The Exper­i­men­tal Move­ment That Cre­at­ed The Bea­t­les’ Weird­est Song, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”

The Amaz­ing Record­ing His­to­ry of The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun”

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

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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