There’s some­thing dark and apoc­a­lyp­tic about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 song, “Gimme Shel­ter”–from the lyrics (“Oh, a storm is threat’n­ing. My very life today. If I don’t get some shel­ter. Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away”), to the grim cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the record­ing of the track, released on the album Let It Bleed. A sense of dread runs through­out the Stones’ orig­i­nal song. Less so the ver­sion above, cre­at­ed by the mul­ti­me­dia project Play­ing for Change, which strives to cre­ate world peace through music. Record­ed back in 2011, this cov­er brings togeth­er artists from around the world: India, Italy, Jamaica, Brazil, Mali, Sier­ra Leone, Sene­gal, and the US. And it’s just one of 21 songs that appears on the DVD/CD com­bo, Songs Around the World.  Oth­er videos by Play­ing for Change can be found in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

When “Stand By Me” Trav­els Around the World

If you ever find your­self in Zadar, Croa­t­ia, pay a vis­it to The Sea Organ, the exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ment cre­at­ed by the archi­tect Niko­la Bašić. Unveiled in 2005, the organ–made of 35 poly­eth­yl­ene pipes tucked under white mar­ble steps–turns the wind and the waves into a nev­er-end­ing stream of avant-garde sounds. In 2006, the Sea Organ won the 2006 Euro­pean Prize for Urban Pub­lic Space. Hear it make its music above.

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Come gath­er ’round peo­ple, wher­ev­er you roam. Bob Dylan is get­ting ready to release his 37th stu­dio album. And before you can buy it on Ama­zon, iTunes, and the oth­er usu­al places, you can stream it free online for a lim­it­ed time, thanks to NPR. Fall­en Angels–much like Shad­ows in the Night from 2015–features Dylan singing clas­sic Amer­i­can songs, which gen­er­al­ly have one thing in com­mon: They were all (save one, “Sky­lark”) sung by Frank Sina­tra back in the day. And now Dylan takes a turn with them in 2016. Enjoy giv­ing them an ear­ly lis­ten.

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:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist PoemThe Waste Land

Hear A Young Bob Dylan Sing 11 Songs and Tell Tall Tales on a 1962 Radio Show

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Dur­ing his child­hood in the Japan of the 1930s, Isao Tomi­ta would have bare­ly had the chance to hear West­ern music. But when the Sec­ond World War came to an end, the intro­duc­tion of local U.S. Army broad­casts must have felt like the open­ing of a son­ic flood­gate: “I thought I was lis­ten­ing to music from out­er space,” remem­bered the man that child grew up to become a respect­ed com­pos­er as well as a pio­neer of elec­tron­ic music known for his cut­ting-edge, inter­galac­ti­cal­ly-mind­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of the work of such West­ern pre­de­ces­sors as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravin­sky, and Gus­tav Holst.

That telling quote comes from Tomi­ta’s New York Times obit­u­ary of this past Wednes­day, which describes some of the com­poser’s strug­gles to not just mas­ter but press into a new kind of artis­tic ser­vice the prac­ti­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal ana­log syn­the­siz­ers with which he made his best-known albums, like 1974’s Snowflakes Are Danc­ing and The Plan­ets. Just get­ting his first Moog syn­the­siz­er past Japan­ese cus­toms proved a strug­gle (“I told them that it was an instru­ment, and they didn’t believe me”), let alone fig­ur­ing out how to use the new device “to even gen­er­ate some­thing that’s not just noise.”

Tomi­ta had lit­tle in the way of prece­dent besides Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach, which had come out in 1968 (and whose cov­er Tomi­ta had held up before those cus­toms inspec­tors, try­ing in vain to pro­vide evi­dence of his strange import­ed machine’s nature). He fol­lowed suit in 1972 with his own first album Elec­tric Samu­rai: Switched on Rock, on which he elec­tron­i­cal­ly cov­ered songs like “Let It Be,” “Jail House Rock,” and “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water.” Then came his Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed best­selling Debussy trib­ute Snowflakes Are Danc­ing, which showed the lis­ten­ing world what he could do: specif­i­cal­ly, rein­ter­pret­ing the clas­si­cal canon with sounds few had ever heard before.

You can dis­cov­er some of his music by lis­ten­ing to albums avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, one Tomi­ta’s 1978 album Kos­mos and the oth­er a great­est-hits col­lec­tion. (Find both above. If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.) Or peruse an even wider-rang­ing Youtube playlist. We have, of course, now had around half a cen­tu­ry to get used to elec­tron­ic music, and the gear has made enor­mous evo­lu­tion­ary leaps since Tomi­ta first sat down amid his unwieldy “thick­et” of fil­ters, oscil­la­tors, gen­er­a­tors, ampli­fiers, con­trollers, mod­u­la­tors, recorders, mix­ers, echo units, and phasers. But his music still retains its fas­ci­na­tion, espe­cial­ly now in our dig­i­tal world where its ana­log sounds seem to come from the past, the future, and out­er space all at once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

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