The History of the Guitar & Guitar Legends: From 1929 to 1979

in Music | September 19th, 2018

In the age of the Clas­si­cal Edu­ca­tion, stu­dents pored over and mem­o­rized the works of “author­i­ties,” exem­plars of gram­mar, rhetoric, log­ic, etc. Con­stel­la­tions in the night sky of igno­rance, so to speak, these writ­ers and thinkers showed the way to knowl­edge through their excel­lence. The method may have fall­en out of favor in mod­ern ped­a­gogy, but it sur­vives in pop­u­lar cul­ture, and in the videos here, pro­duc­er and musi­cian Rick Beato employs it as a way of teach­ing the his­to­ry of gui­tar.

In the episode above, he names gui­tar play­ers from 1929–1969 that “every seri­ous gui­tarist should know.” Below, he does the same for the decade of the sev­en­ties. These gui­tarists exem­pli­fy Clas­si­cal, Blues, Jazz, Coun­try and Rock & Roll gui­tar, accord­ing to Beato, and yes, he knows he prob­a­bly left off your favorite play­ers, so go ahead and men­tion them in the com­ments.

Beato includes a brief film or audio clip of each play­er, with the unspo­ken assump­tion that seri­ous stu­dents will seek out more of their record­ed music and become more famil­iar with what made them unique. In the list below, you can see the 48 names he lists in his first video.

1. Andres Segovia
2. Julian Bream
3. Charley Pat­ton
4. Robert John­son
5. Light­nin Hop­kins
6. Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son
7. Lead­bel­ly 8. Elmore James
9. Mud­dy Waters
10. Fred­die King
11. Albert King
12. B.B. King
13. Bud­dy Guy
14. Otis Rush
15. Djan­go Rein­hardt
16. Char­lie Chris­t­ian
17. Wes Mont­gomery
18. Joe Pass
19. George Ben­son
20. Bar­ney Kessel
21. Herb Ellis
22. George Van Eps
23. Ken­ny Bur­rell
24. Jim Hall
25. Grant Green
26. Tal Far­low
27. Anto­nio Car­los Jobim
28. Les Paul and Mary Ford
29. Chuck Berry
30. Hank Mar­vin
31. Dick Dale
32. George Har­ri­son
33. Kei­th Richards
34. Steve Crop­per
35. Chet Atkins
36. Jer­ry Reed
37. Glen Camp­bell
38. Jimi Hen­drix
39. Eric Clap­ton
40. Jim­my Page
41. Jeff Beck
42. Peter Green
43. Mike Bloom­field
44. John­ny Win­ter
45. Car­los San­tana
46. Jer­ry Gar­cia
47. Ritchie Black­more
48. Frank Zap­pa

The peri­od of 1970–1979 saw “some of the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments for the role of the gui­tar,” brought about by the British Inva­sion, the influ­ence of the blues, and the “son­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances of the gui­tar.” The peri­od began with two great loss­es in the gui­tar world: jazz great Wes Mont­gomery in 1968 and Jimi Hen­drix in 1970. But many more greats soon came to promi­nence, such as clas­si­cal gui­tarists Christo­pher Parken­ing and John Williams and jazz adven­tur­ers Pat Methe­ny and Joe Pass.

Beato namechecks sev­er­al gui­tarists well-known to most of the lis­ten­ing pub­lic and many more you may nev­er have heard before. His rapid intro­duc­tion will like­ly inspire gui­tarists to learn what they can from these author­i­ties of the instru­ment, broad­en­ing both their his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge and their tech­nique. He promis­es more videos like this in the future, each cov­er­ing a new decade. Who will Beato choose as most influ­en­tial play­ers of the eight­ies, nineties, and oughties? Sub­scribe to his chan­nel to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rock Musi­cal­ly Told in 100 Gui­tar Riffs and 100 Bass Riffs

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

How to Build a Cus­tom Hand­craft­ed Acoustic Gui­tar from Start to Fin­ish: The Process Revealed in a Fas­ci­nat­ing Doc­u­men­tary

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 16 ) |

Get a First Listen to David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti’s Long-Lost Album, Thought Gang

in Film, Music, Television | September 19th, 2018

All of David Lynch’s movies, tele­vi­sion shows, music videos, and com­mer­cials — and also his paint­ings, pho­tographs, and com­ic strips — express a con­sis­tent, and con­sis­tent­ly Lynchi­an, vision. But that vision depends on more than just the visu­al: the son­ic has also played a vital part in its devel­op­ment at least since the night­mar­ish­ly intri­cate sound design of Lynch’s 1977 debut fea­ture Eraser­head. And just imag­ine how much impact lat­er Lynch projects like Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks, The Straight Sto­ry, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve would have lost with­out the rich and often haunt­ing scores of Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, a com­pos­er with whom Lynch has worked at seem­ing­ly every oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Lynch made his own offi­cial debut as a record­ing artist sev­en years ago with Crazy Clown Time, and this Novem­ber he and Badala­men­ti will release their first col­lab­o­ra­tive album Thought Gang. Accord­ing to its Band­camp page, this “eso­teric jazz side­ project of David Lynch and Ange­lo Badala­men­ti evolved from the seeds of Twin Peaks’ trade­mark slow cool jazz and blos­somed into more exper­i­men­tal pas­tures: hori­zon­less vis­tas of acid­-soaked free­jazz, laced with spo­ken word nar­ra­tives and sprawl­ing nois­escapes.” If that sounds good to you, you can get a first taste of the album from the track “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships” above.

The Thought Gang ses­sions hap­pened 25 years ago, between the end of Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son and the pro­duc­tion of the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk with Me. Out of those ses­sions came a quan­ti­ty of music that Lynch describes as “sort of like jet-­fu­eled jazz in a weird way… but it’s all based on sto­ries.” Two of those tracks, “A Real Indi­ca­tion” and “The Black Dog Runs at Night,” appeared on the sound­track of the movie, and two oth­ers, “Frank 2000” and “Sum­mer Night Noise,” (as well as the instru­men­tal mix of anoth­er, “Log­ic and Com­mon Sense”) fea­ture in Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Show­time last year. More con­nec­tions to Lynch’s oth­er work sur­face in “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships,” begin­ning with its title, which adorned a Lynch-themed, seem­ing­ly nev­er-devel­oped CD-ROM game twen­ty years ago.

Much of the Lynchi­an imagery that fills the song — talk-sung by Badala­men­ti him­self, who, says the Band­camp page, sum­moned “such a vio­lent laugh­ter­-fueled excite­ment from Lynch that he lit­er­al­ly induced a her­nia” — may also sound famil­iar. A char­ac­ter called Pete “saw the girl next door take off her clothes last night and walk through her house nude.” At a din­er, “he heard a man say that the doc­tors had cut him down his neck and into his chest.” A “grey man with big ears lit a big cig­ar” and “smoke drift­ed over Pete’s apple pie.” Badala­men­ti at one point declares that “things aren’t mak­ing sense. For instance, why is that boy bleed­ing from the mouth?” True fans will rec­og­nize that line as the title of one of Lynch’s paint­ings. And so the grand Lynchi­an project con­tin­ues, some­how get­ting both weird­er and more coher­ent all the time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Paul McCartney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Questions in Two New Videos

in Music | September 18th, 2018

Paul McCart­ney has played it safe for decades, rely­ing on the bril­liance of his song­writ­ing and musi­cian­ship, which no one ever doubts and so he nev­er has to prove. His songs usu­al­ly fall into a for­mu­la famil­iar from Bea­t­les’ days: “sil­ly love songs,” writes Stephen Ear­lewine at Pitch­fork, “mini-suites… polite polit­i­cal protests, and old-fash­ioned rock­ers.” But while the Bea­t­les had each oth­er, the exper­i­ments of George Mar­tin, LSD, tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, and a moment of per­fect cul­tur­al kismet to twist and warp their music into all sorts of weird shapes, McCartney’s solo releas­es tend to stick to his estab­lished strengths, some­times to the detri­ment of what can hap­pen when he moves out of his com­fort zone to get deep­er and more vul­ner­a­ble.

Yet as near­ly every crit­ic has so far not­ed of his newest album, Egypt Sta­tion—which he heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed, for exam­ple, with an appear­ance on Car­pool Karaoke and a “secret” show at Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion—McCart­ney lets lis­ten­ers in on some sur­pris­ing con­fes­sion­al dark­ness. The Nick Drake-like lyrics of open­er “I Don’t Know” show him earnest­ly con­fronting aging, mor­tal­i­ty, and depres­sion, with­out any of the usu­al sun­ni­ness or comedic turns of phrase: “I got crows at my window/Dogs at my door/I don’t think I can take any­more.” The can­did admis­sion, Erlewine writes, “would be star­tling in any con­text, but what stings most is the tac­it acknowl­edg­ment that 76-year-old McCart­ney real­izes he’s near­ing the end of his long, wind­ing road.”

In inter­views, like his lat­est with Rolling Stone, how­ev­er, McCart­ney sounds as upbeat as ever. He describes sit­ting in Apple meet­ings after the breakup of the Bea­t­les as “like see­ing the death of your favorite pet,” but he also enthus­es about his patched-up rela­tion­ship with Yoko (“Now it’s like we’re mates”), love for his band—who have now been play­ing togeth­er longer than both the Bea­t­les and Wings—and his pride in his musi­cal lega­cy (“It’s a damn good job I did”). He sounds just as pleased to be onstage in his mid-70s as he was in his 20s—the gen­uine love of per­form­ing and engag­ing with fans hasn’t dulled one bit with age, just as his abil­i­ty to write and sell hit records remains sol­id.

As for his time-test­ed for­mu­la, Erlewine com­ments, it only “makes the moments where Paul attempts some­thing slight­ly new seem all the more appar­ent.” One new thing he’s game­ly tried in recent years is mak­ing online videos for fans. A few years back, he dropped a few lessons show­ing how to play the bass and gui­tar parts on “Ever Present Past” from 2007’s Mem­o­ry Almost Full. This year, McCartney’s fan ser­vice includes the two videos here. First at the top, he spends almost a half an hour dis­cussing the best-known songs in his 60-year-career for GQ: “I Lost My Lit­tle Girl,” “Yes­ter­day,” “I Saw Her Stand­ing There,” “And I Love Her,” “Eleanor Rig­by,” “A Day in the Life,” “Hey Jude,” “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” “Black­bird,” “Let It Be,” “Hi Hi Hi,” “Here Today,” “Jet,” and Egypt Sta­tion’s “I Don’t Know.”

Above, McCart­ney accept’s Wired’s “auto­com­plete chal­lenge,” answer­ing the internet’s most searched ques­tions about him­self, such as “Why is Paul McCartney’s nick­name ‘Mac­ca’?” and “Why did Paul McCart­ney write ‘Let it Be’?” (Answers: “Cause I’m from Liv­er­pool, and they abbre­vi­ate every­thing in Liv­er­pool” and he was “a bit stressed out”—and a lit­tle high—and his moth­er came to him in a dream with the advice: “just let it be.”) Is there always more learn about Paul McCart­ney? Yes, appar­ent­ly there is. But even when he repeats him­self, he’s still great fun to watch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever

in Music, Technology | September 17th, 2018

There is a scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke Sky­walk­er defeats the mon­strous, man-eat­ing Ran­cor, crush­ing its skull with a por­tullis, and we see the beast’s keep­er, a port­ly shirt­less gen­tle­man in leather breech­es and head­gear, weep­ing over the loss of his beloved friend. I think of this scene when I read about a night in 1974 at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room when Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart walked on the stage and found the band’s sound engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley stand­ing in front of “a sol­id wall of over 600 speak­ers.”

As Enmore Audio tells it:

Tears streamed down his face and he whis­pered to the mass of wood, met­al, and wiring, with the ten­der­ness of any par­ent wit­ness­ing their child’s first recital, “I love you and you love me—how could you fail me?”

The sto­ry sums up Owsley’s total ded­i­ca­tion to what became known as “The Wall of Sound,” a feat of tech­ni­cal engi­neer­ing that “changed the way tech­ni­cians thought about live engi­neer­ing.” The “three-sto­ry behe­moth… was free of all dis­tor­tion… served as its own mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and solved many, if not all of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems that sound engi­neers faced at that time.” But, while it had required much tri­al and error and many refine­ments, it did not fail, as you’ll learn in the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Live sound prob­lems not only bedev­iled engi­neers but bands and audi­ences as well. Through­out the six­ties, rock con­certs grew in size and scope, audi­ences grew larg­er and loud­er, yet ampli­fi­ca­tion did not. Low-wattage gui­tar amps could hard­ly be heard over the sound of scream­ing fans. With­out mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, bands could bare­ly hear them­selves play. This “noise cri­sis,” writes Moth­er­board, “con­front­ed musi­cians who went elec­tric at the height of the war in Viet­nam,” but it has been “rou­tine­ly snuffed from the annals of mod­ern music.”

In dra­mat­ic recre­ations of the peri­od, drums and gui­tars boom and wail over the noise of sta­di­um and fes­ti­val crowds. For ears accus­tomed to the pow­er of mod­ern sound sys­tems, the actu­al expe­ri­ence, by con­trast, would have been under­whelm­ing. Most Bea­t­les fans know the band quit tour­ing in 1966 because they couldn’t hear them­selves over the audi­ence. Things improved some­what, but the Dead, “obsessed with their sound to com­pul­sive degrees,” could not abide the noisy, feed­back-laden, under­pow­ered sit­u­a­tion. Still, they weren’t about to give up play­ing live, and cer­tain­ly not with Owsley on board.

“A Ken­tucky-born crafts­man and for­mer bal­let dancer”—and a man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­uter of “mass quan­ti­ties of high-grade LSD,” whose prof­its financed the Dead for a time—Owsley applied his obses­sion with “sound as both a con­cept and a phys­i­cal thing.” To solve the noise cri­sis for the Dead, he first built an inno­v­a­tive sound sys­tem in 1973 (after serv­ing a cou­ple stints in prison for sell­ing acid). The fol­low­ing year, he sug­gest­ed putting the PA sys­tem behind the band, “a crazy idea at the time.”

His exper­i­ments in ‘74 evolved to include line arrays—“columns of speak­ers… designed to con­trol the dis­per­sion of sound across the fre­quen­cy range”—noise-canceling micro­phones to clear up mud­dy vocals, six sep­a­rate sound sys­tems that could iso­late eleven chan­nels, and a quadra­phon­ic encoder for the bass, “which took a sig­nal,” Enmore notes, “from each string and pro­ject­ed it through its own set of speak­ers.” The mas­sive Wall of Sound could not last long. It had to be stream­lined into a far more man­age­able and cost-effec­tive tour­ing rig. All the same, Owsley and the band’s will­ing­ness take ideas and exe­cu­tion to extreme lengths changed live sound for­ev­er for the bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Played by 28 Trombone Players

in Music | September 14th, 2018

28 trom­bone play­ers got togeth­er and played Queen’s beloved 1975 hit, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” They call it, “Bone­hemi­an Rhap­sody.” Enjoy.

Con­trib­u­tors in the video above include:

Jig­gs Whigh­am — Glenn Miller, Stan Ken­ton

Den­son Paul Pol­lard — Met Opera / Jacobs School of Music

Jen­nifer Whar­ton — Leader Bone­gasm — https://jenniferwharton.com/

Thomas Hultén — Hous­ton Grand Opera/Houston Bal­let

Josi­ah Williams — Blast: The Music of Dis­ney

Joseph L. Jef­fer­son — South­east Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty — http://www.josephljefferson.com/

Ger­ry Pagano — Sym­pho­ny — http://gerrypagano.org/

Javier Stup­pard — Fresh2Def Horns/ Rath Artist

Peter Moore — Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Mar­shall Gilkes — New Album! https://www.marshallgilkes.com/

Mar­tin McCain — Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty — https://www.martinmccain.com/

Zsolt Szabo — West­ern Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty

Jere­my Wil­son — Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty — https://jeremywilsonmusic.com/

Isabelle Lavoie — Thun­der Bay Sym­pho­ny

Aman­da Stew­art — St. Louis Sym­pho­ny — http://amandatrombone.com/

Dr. Natal­ie Man­nix — UNT — http://www.nataliemannix.com/

Zoltan Kiss — Mnzoil Brass — http://www.zoltankiss.com/

Matyas Veer — Essen­er Phil­har­moniker Saat­sop­er Stuttgart — http://www.matyasveer.com/

Paul The Trom­bon­ist — The Inter­net — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6e…

Karen Marston — Mt San Anto­nio College/Omni Brass

Javier Nero — Jazz Soloist / Com­pos­er — https://www.javiernero.com/

Dr. Deb Scott — Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty — https://sfatrombones.wordpress.com/

Tol­ga Akman — Lätzsch Per­form­ing Artist

Domeni­co Cata­lano — Slide­Sticks Trio/Basel Symphony/Haag Artist

José Mil­ton Vieira — Orches­tra Brazil

Györ­gy Gyivic­san — Szeged Trom­bone Ensem­ble — http://szegedtrombones.com/en

Bri­an Hecht — Atlanta Sym­pho­ny — http://www.brianhecht.com/

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Tom Waits Releases a Timely Cover of the Italian Anti-Fascist Anthem “Bella Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

in Music, Politics | September 14th, 2018

“La Com­plaine du Par­ti­san,” a song about the French Resis­tance writ­ten in 1943 by Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie with music by Anna Marly, was adapt­ed into Eng­lish as “The Par­ti­san” by Hy Zaret, author of the Right­eous Brother’s “Unchained Melody.” Cov­ered by artists like Joan Baez and, most famous­ly, Leonard Cohen, the song’s folk melody and melan­choly lyri­cism have become so close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Cohen that it has often been cred­it­ed to him. Even Cohen him­self remarked “I kind of re-intro­duced [“The Par­ti­san”] into the world of pop­u­lar music. I feel I wrote it, but I actu­al­ly didn’t.”

Now anoth­er artist of Cohen’s stature, Tom Waits, may do the same for those who have nev­er heard the World War II Ital­ian anti-fas­cist song, “Bel­la Ciao,” which has been cov­ered for decades in many lan­guages and now appears as the first release on gui­tarist and com­pos­er Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resis­tance: 1942–2018, an album of protest music that comes out today and fea­tures guest vocals by Waits, Steve Ear­le, Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo, Justin Vivian Bond, and more. You can stream and buy the album here at Ribot’s Band­camp page. Waits’ track is the first song he has released in two years, and it’s a hel­lu­va return.

The song comes from an old Ital­ian folk bal­lad that was “revised and re-writ­ten dur­ing World War II for the Ital­ian anti-fas­cist resis­tance fight­ers,” notes Sam Barsan­ti at The Onion’s A.V. Club. It has “since become an anthem of sorts for any­one look­ing to stick it to fas­cists.” Ribot and his col­lab­o­ra­tors fit the descrip­tion. Waits’ “Bel­la Ciao” was released with a video, direct­ed by Jem Cohen, “that makes its par­al­lels with mod­ern life very explic­it,” Barsan­ti writes, “pair­ing Waits’ vocals with footage of police and sol­diers guard­ing bar­ri­cades at anti-Trump protests. It may sound heavy-hand­ed, but fuck it, nobody said fight­ing fas­cists had to be sub­tle.”

Sub­tle it isn’t, but nei­ther is the ban­ning of Mus­lim refugees, the kid­nap­ping and deten­tion in camps of hun­dreds of migrant chil­dren, the trans­fer of $169 mil­lion dol­lars from oth­er pro­grams—includ­ing FEMA and the Coast Guard dur­ing yet anoth­er fatal hur­ri­cane season—for even more camps and ICE raids, the lying denial that thou­sands were left to die in Puer­to Rico last year, and so on and so on.

Oth­er songs on the album draw from the U.S. civ­il rights move­ment and Mex­i­can protest bal­lads. At his site, Ribot acknowl­edges the peren­ni­al prob­lem of the protest song. “There’s a lot of con­tra­dic­tion in doing any kind of polit­i­cal music, how to act against some­thing with­out becom­ing it, with­out resem­bling what you detest… I imag­ine we’ll make mis­takes,” he avows, but says the stakes are too high not to speak out. “From the moment Don­ald Trump was elect­ed,” he decid­ed “I’m not going to play down­town scene Furt­wan­gler to any orange-comb-over dic­ta­tor wannabe.” (The ref­er­ence is to Wil­helm Furtwän­gler, lead­ing clas­si­cal con­duc­tor in Ger­many under the Nazi regime.)

Like so many folk songs, “Bel­la Ciao” has a com­plex and murky his­to­ry: the orig­i­nal ver­sion, a peas­ant work song, may have a Yid­dish ori­gin, or in any case—explains the blog Poe­mas del rio wang—emerged from a region “where Jews, Roma­ni­ans, Rusyns, Gyp­sies, Ukra­ni­ans, Hun­gar­i­ans, Ital­ians, Rus­sians, Slo­va­kians, Pol­ish, Czech, Arme­ni­ans, [and] Taters lived togeth­er” and where “melodies did not remain the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of only one eth­nic group.” This sub­merged back­ground gives the re-writ­ten “Bel­la Ciao” an even deep­er res­o­nance with the anti-fas­cism of the 1940s and that of today.

See the video and hear Waits and Ribot’s hag­gard yet deter­mined “Bel­la Ciao (Good­bye Beau­ti­ful)” at the top; hear Ital­ian singer Gio­van­na Daffini’s record­ing above (hear her ver­sion of the orig­i­nal folk song here); read more about the song’s long his­to­ry here; and read Waits’ lyrics, slight­ly revised from ear­li­er ver­sions to be even more explic­it­ly anti-fas­cist, below. All pro­ceeds from Ribot’s album will be donat­ed to the Indi­vis­i­ble Project.

One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
o bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao, ciao, ciao
One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
to find the fas­cists at my door

Oh par­ti­giano
take me with you
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
oh par­ti­giano
please take me with you
I’m not afraid any­more

And if I die
a par­ti­giano
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
Bury me
up on that moun­tain
beneath the shad­ow of the flower

So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
will say: “What a beau­ti­ful flower”

This is the flower
of the par­ti­san
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao
this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Rebec­ca Sol­nit Picks 13 Songs That Will Remind Us of Our Pow­er to Change the World, Even in Seem­ing­ly Dark Times

Stream All of Tom Waits’ Music in a 24 Hour Playlist: The Com­plete Discog­ra­phy

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

94-Year-Old Stroke Survivor Plays Jazz Piano for the First Time in Years

in Life, Music | September 14th, 2018

French musi­cian Fred Yon­net post­ed on Insta­gram an ever so poignant video. He writes: “Great day today — took my men­tor Don Bur­rows to vis­it our old mate Julian Lee in Moss­vale 🎺🎹. He hasn’t played piano for many years since his stroke — he turns 95 this year and we share the same birth­day.”

The scene that unfolds will make your day…

via @TedGioia

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:

81-Year-Old Man Walks into a Gui­tar Shop & Starts Play­ing a Sub­lime Solo: Ignore the Tal­ents of the Elder­ly at Your Own Per­il

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

Dis­cov­er the Retire­ment Home for Elder­ly Musi­cians Cre­at­ed by Giuseppe Ver­di: Cre­at­ed in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Behold Mystical Photographs Taken Inside a Cello, Double Bass & Other Instruments

in Art, Music, Photography | September 13th, 2018

“If God had designed the orches­tra,” remarks a char­ac­ter in Rick Moody’s Hotels of North Amer­i­ca, “then the cel­lo was His great­est accom­plish­ment.” I couldn’t agree more. The cel­lo sounds sub­lime, looks state­ly… even the word cel­lo evokes regal poise and grace. If orches­tral instru­ments were chess pieces, the cel­lo would be queen: shape­ly and dig­ni­fied, prime mover on the board, majes­tic in sym­phonies, quar­tets, cham­ber pop ensem­bles, post rock bands….

With all its many son­ic and aes­thet­ic charms, I didn’t imag­ine it was pos­si­ble to love the cel­lo more. Then I saw Roman­ian artist Adri­an Bor­da’s mag­nif­i­cent pho­tos tak­en from inside one. The pho­to above, Bor­da tells us at his Deviant Art page, was tak­en from inside “a very old French cel­lo made in Napoleon’s times.” It looks like the bel­ly of the HMS Vic­to­ry mat­ed with the nave of Chartres Cathe­dral. The light descend­ing through the f‑holes seems of some divine ori­gin.

Bor­da has also tak­en pho­tos from inside an old dou­ble bass (above), as well as a gui­tar, sax, and piano. The stringed orches­tral instru­ments, he says, yield­ed the best results. He was first inspired by a 2009 ad cam­paign for the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker that “cap­tured the insides of instru­ments,” writes Twist­ed Sifter, “reveal­ing the hid­den land­scapes with­in.” With­out any sense of how the art direc­tor cre­at­ed the images, Bor­da set about exper­i­ment­ing with meth­ods of his own.

He was lucky enough to have a luthi­er friend who had a con­tra­bass open for repairs. Lat­er he trav­eled to Amiens, where he found the French cel­lo, also open. “To achieve these shots,” Twist­ed Sifter notes, “Bor­da fit a Sony NEX‑6 cam­era equipped with a Samyang 8mm fish­eye lens inside the instru­ment and then used a smart remote so he could pre­view the work­flow on his phone.” Depend­ing on the angle and the play of light with­in the instru­ment, the pho­tos can look eerie, somber, omi­nous, or angelic—mirroring the cello’s expres­sive range.

Bor­da gives the cel­lo inte­ri­or shot above the per­fect title “A Long, Lone­ly Time….” Its play of smoke and light is ghost­ly noir. His pho­to below, of the inside of a sax­o­phone, pulls us into a haunt­ed, alien tun­nel. If you want to know what’s on the oth­er side, con­sid­er the strange sur­re­al­ist worlds of Borda’s main gig as a sur­re­al­ist painter of warped fan­tasies and night­mares. Unlike these pho­tos, his paint­ings are full of lurid, vio­lent col­or, but they are also filled with mys­te­ri­ous musi­cal motifs. See more of Bor­da’s inte­ri­or instru­ment pho­tos at Deviant Art and Twister Sifter.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Luthi­er Birth a Cel­lo in This Hyp­not­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Nine Tips from Bill Mur­ray & Cel­list Jan Vogler on How to Study Intense­ly and Opti­mize Your Learn­ing

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast