Blank on Blank has worked their mag­ic again, this time ani­mat­ing a 1968 inter­view with the singer-song­writer and civ­il rights activist, Nina Simone. As always, Blank on Blank’s visu­al work is a treat. But what stands out for me here is the audio record­ing. Tak­en from a 1960s radio show host­ed by Lil­ian Ter­ry, the audio orig­i­nal­ly aired in Italy in the 1960s. And, until now, it has nev­er been heard in the Unit­ed States. Ter­ry is nowa­days work­ing on an audio­book project called Voic­es from the Jazz Dimen­sion that “chron­i­cles her remark­able col­lec­tion of inter­views with jazz leg­ends from Nina to Duke Elling­ton.” We can hard­ly wait for that project to take final shape. You can find more Blank on Blank ani­ma­tions, all of which revive vin­tage audio clips, in our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nina Simone Sings Her Break­through Song, ‘I Loves You Por­gy,’ in 1962

Free Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Jazz on the Tube: An Archive of 2,000 Clas­sic Jazz Videos (and Much More)

I’ve been play­ing gui­tar off and on for most of my life, and I’d be the first to admit that I’m not the most spec­tac­u­lar musi­cian. I do it for joy and don’t sweat my musi­cal lim­i­ta­tions too much. This is a good thing; oth­er­wise I might find myself seething with mad envy—like F. Mur­ray Abraham’s Salieri—upon real­iz­ing that in 15 life­times I’d nev­er be as good as young French prodi­gy Tina S is at 15 years of age. Tina has sent gui­tar nerds every­where flee­ing to their bed­rooms, work­ing their fin­gers bloody in furi­ous efforts to match her speed and accu­ra­cy. Watch her flaw­less­ly rip through Yng­wie Malmsteen’s “Arpeg­gios from Hell” above, ye mighty shred­ders, and despair. See her destroy Steve Vai’s “Pagani­ni 5th Caprice (Cross­roads)” below, ye mon­sters of rock, and rend your den­im vests asun­der with grief.

The baroque speed met­al of Malm­steen and Vai aren’t real­ly my bag, but I have to say, there’s maybe a lit­tle Salieri voice cack­ling into the void in the back of my mind when I watch Tina’s videos. Maybe she’s a one-trick-pony, it tells me, play­ing arpeg­gios all day like a few hun­dred oth­er gui­tarists in the audi­tion line for a hun­dred met­al bands in a hun­dred cities a day—players who couldn’t slow down and play the blues if they were heav­i­ly med­icat­ed.

So says my inner Salieri. But no, there she is below, flaw­less­ly pulling off the “Com­fort­ably Numb” solo, her bends and slides so impec­ca­bly timed I could close my eyes and almost swear it’s David Gilmour. Sigh and alas.

But can she do Van Halen, you right­ly ask? Because, you know, any­one can play Malm­steen, Vai, and Gilmour, but Eddie Van Halen, c’mon…. Yet there she is below, with a sear­ing ren­di­tion of “Erup­tion,” a song gui­tarists who learn Van Halen often avoid for rea­sons that will like­ly become evi­dent when you see Tina play it. Is she too much tech­nique, too lit­tle soul, you say? Yeah, well, she’s 15, and bet­ter than most of us are at twice that age. Com­ments on her videos include the fol­low­ing: “I want to throw my gui­tar out the win­dow” and “This makes me want to kill myself.” In all seri­ous­ness, I hope any­one who gen­uine­ly feels this way seeks help. Also in all seri­ous­ness, don’t despair. Do what you do and enjoy it. And maybe after many long life­times you’ll be reborn as a Parisian gui­tar prodi­gy.

That Tina S has obvi­ous nat­ur­al abil­i­ty in no way means she hasn’t had to work hard for this lev­el of skill. On the con­trary, any­one this good gets there through end­less reg­u­lar prac­tice and the guid­ance of a tal­ent­ed teacher (in this case, French gui­tarist Renaud Louis-Ser­vais). Tina post­ed her first video in 2008 at the ten­der age of 8, play­ing a com­po­si­tion by gui­tarist Maria Lin­ne­mann. You can see her below hon­ing the clas­si­cal chops that she lat­er put to ludi­crous­ly fast use on a met­al trib­ute to Vival­di.

But does she do Mozart? Not so far on her Youtube chan­nel, where you’ll find more ear­ly acoustic per­for­mances, like “Let it Be” and “Hotel Cal­i­for­nia,” and more recent shred­fests like Jason Becker’s “Alti­tudes.” To learn just how Tina views her own musi­cian­ship and sees her future as a gui­tarist, read this inter­view with her on the Gui­tar Chan­nel. “I have not yet start­ed my career as a gui­tarist,” she dead­pans. Many would-be Salieris have already sworn to end theirs after watch­ing her videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

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

Update: Neil deGrasse Tyson just put it right. Now we know what it sounds like when doves cry.

We’re just get­ting the sad news that the artist Prince Rogers Nelson–otherwise sim­ply known as Prince–has appar­ent­ly died at the age of 57. Here you can watch him per­form some of his ear­li­est hits, back in 1982. In the hours to come, we’ll have more on Prince and his influ­en­tial career.

The empire of Prince is a tight­ly con­trolled king­dom, ruled by an enig­mat­ic and eccen­tric musi­cal genius with a leg­en­dar­i­ly con­tentious rela­tion­ship with the music indus­try. For most of the nineties, he was referred to as “the artist for­mer­ly known as Prince,” hav­ing changed his name to an unpro­nounce­able sym­bol to spite his label Warn­er Bros. “Dur­ing that time,” writes Rolling Stone, “sales of his new music slowed down sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but he still man­aged to get his point across.”

You have to admire an artist—even one as wealthy and suc­cess­ful as Prince—willing to take a finan­cial hit for the sake of prin­ci­ple. In his most recent stand (though it prob­a­bly won’t cost him any­thing worth men­tion­ing in stream­ing rev­enue), Prince removed all of his music this past sum­mer from every stream­ing ser­vice except Jay‑Z’s Tidal. So we’re very lucky to have the black-and-white taped live per­for­mance here from 1982 at New Jersey’s Capi­tol The­atre (released by The Music Vault), two years before he hit his 80s peak with the release of Pur­ple Rain the film and album.

What­ev­er you think of Pur­ple Rain the movie (actress Apol­lo­nia Kotero was nom­i­nat­ed for a Razz­ie for worst new star, and her Prince-penned song “Sex Shoot­er” for worst orig­i­nal song), no one can deny the absolute pop bril­liance of the album. It’s hard to pick a favorite; most of us can sing the cho­rus­es to “Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” or “I Would Die 4 U” in our sleep. That said, Prince had already released some of the finest music of his career by the time he appeared at this New Jer­sey con­cert, includ­ing one of my per­son­al favorites, “Con­tro­ver­sy” (top) from the 1981 album of the same name and “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” (above) from 1979’s Prince.

We don’t get any­thing from the year’s ground­break­ing 1999, the first album to fea­ture the Rev­o­lu­tion, but we do get clas­sics of the sleazy sex-god first phase of the Pur­ple One’s career, includ­ing “Jack U Off,” above, in which Prince pulls out some clas­sic male-strip­per-does-jazzer­size dance moves while the band rips through the rau­cous stom­per of a tune at almost punk tem­po and vol­ume. These three songs rep­re­sent three of facets Prince as an artist: There’s the agi­tat­ed social com­men­ta­tor, the sen­si­tive, pin­ing lover, and the unre­pen­tant horn­dog. He’s empha­sized one or anoth­er of these per­sona over the course of his career, mod­u­lat­ing them with the funked-up futur­ist char­ac­ter he evolved into as the decade pro­gressed.

Prince’s attempts at film star­dom most­ly fall into the so-bad-they’re-good cat­e­go­ry, begin­ning with rock opera Pur­ple Rain. But few know that he intend­ed to release his first cel­lu­loid effort around the time of this con­cert. It was to be called The Sec­ond Com­ing, to accom­pa­ny a scrapped album of the same name. Hear him sing the unre­leased, gospel-inspired title song above, whose lyrics recall one of Michael Jackson’s social­ly con­scious anthems and include the line “How many more good men must die before there’s gun con­trol.” To learn more about that ill-fat­ed film project, read this inter­view with the pro­posed direc­tor Chuck Statler, the “god­fa­ther of the music video,” here. And to see the full Capi­tol The­atre show, check it out on Youtube here, or right down below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

35 Years of Prince’s Hair­styles in 15 Glo­ri­ous Sec­onds!

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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

To say that most polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions on social media lack nuance seems tan­ta­mount to point­ing out that most pornog­ra­phy lacks romance. The thrusts, par­ries, and asides of the Face­book com­ment skir­mish and the Twit­ter­fight gen­er­al­ly con­sti­tute per­for­ma­tive acts rather than thought­ful inter­per­son­al engage­ment. It’s more the nature of the medi­um than the fault of the par­tic­i­pants; ever-churn­ing con­tro­ver­sy keeps the machines run­ning. One con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject now trend­ing on a net­work near you is the issue of Cul­tur­al Appropriation—broadly defined as the use of the sym­bols, lan­guage, dress, hair­styles, music, art, and oth­er sig­ni­fiers of one cul­ture by anoth­er.

A prob­lem aris­es when we leave the sub­ject broad­ly defined. Pow­er dynam­ics are key, but to con­demn all acts of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion as theft leaves us in a bind. How do we gen­er­ate cul­ture with­out it? Not all acts of bor­row­ing are equal­ly respect­ful, but with­out them, we could not have had the musi­cal rev­o­lu­tions of rock and roll—with its appro­pri­a­tion of the blues—or of hip-hop, with its appro­pri­a­tion of dis­co, pop, Kung Fu movies, and every­thing else in a DJ’s record and video col­lec­tion. Neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive exam­ples can eas­i­ly get jum­bled togeth­er under these rubrics. To avoid get­ting tan­gled in ana­lyt­i­cal bram­bles, why don’t we turn instead to what I would con­sid­er a pos­i­tive exam­ple of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion: the pieces you hear in the videos here, inter­pre­ta­tions of blues songs per­formed by musi­cian Luna Lee on a Gayageum, a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an zither-like instru­ment.

We’ve fea­tured Luna’s Gayageum cov­ers before—of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” and Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s take on Hendrix’s “Lit­tle Wing.” Both Hen­drix songs demon­strate the degree to which the rock gui­tarist bor­rowed heav­i­ly from blues idioms. Tra­di­tion­al blues artists them­selves, of course, cre­at­ed and inno­vat­ed through bor­row­ing from each oth­er and from myr­i­ad tra­di­tion­al sources. Are Luna’s blues per­for­mances any dif­fer­ent? She clear­ly demon­strates a love and respect for the source mate­r­i­al, and she plays it with deft­ness and skill, tak­ing plea­sure in musi­cian­ship, not sales­man­ship. Her blues cov­ers don’t seem to have much com­mer­cial appeal, but they great­ly appeal to lis­ten­ers judg­ing by the num­ber of peo­ple her videos reach.

At the top of the post, you can hear her play John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Below it, we have Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” and above, B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone.”  Low­er down, hear Mud­dy Waters “Rollin’ and Tum­blin’” (first record­ed by Ham­bone Willie New­born) and Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom.” Each inter­pre­ta­tion relies on mul­ti­track recording—Luna is either accom­pa­nied by a gener­ic back­ing track or accom­pa­nies her­self with a rhythm track that she plays over. Her cov­ers of Amer­i­can blues clas­sics on a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an instru­ment bring to the fore the inter­cul­tur­al acces­si­bil­i­ty of the songs and their adapt­abil­i­ty to an instru­men­tal con­text we might also con­sid­er “roots.” But as you can see from Luna’s Youtube chan­nel, she doesn’t only adapt “roots” music. She also cov­ers Radio­head, Frank Sina­tra, Led Zep­pelin, and AC/DC.

It’s like­ly my own bias for the blues—and for more tra­di­tion­al blues in particular—that makes me say so, but I think the cov­ers rep­re­sent­ed here are her most suc­cess­ful. (Whether Messrs Hook­er, King, King, Waters, and James would approve, I can­not say.) There’s some­thing about hear­ing the Gayageum in dia­logue with these songs that feels… well, if not exact­ly authen­tic at least less gim­micky than than a cov­er of One Repub­lic. But ulti­mate­ly, what­ev­er your pref­er­ence, if you can appre­ci­ate Luna’s instru­men­tal skill and devo­tion to her source mate­r­i­al, you’ll find some­thing to love on her page.

She’s not in it for the mon­ey, but like every strug­gling artist, Luna has dreams and bills to pay. To sup­port her work, vis­it her Patre­on page and help con­tribute to her goal of play­ing music full time and hir­ing addi­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tors. In the pitch video below, Luna gives us some of her musi­cal back­ground and explains how she adapt­ed the tra­di­tion­al­ly acoustic Gayageum for more rock­ing con­tem­po­rary tunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Led Zep­pelin, Rolling Stones & The Bea­t­les Played on a 3‑String Elec­tric Moun­tain Dul­cimer

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

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki Art

We might as well get the self-writ­ing joke about a 65-hour John Cage playlist out of the way up front: that’s a whole lot of silence! But of course, such a joke about the work of John Cage inevitably ends up as a joke about how lit­tle so many of us know about the work of John Cage. Most of us learn, at one time or anoth­er, of “4’33”,” his famous 1952 com­po­si­tion — or per­haps anti-com­po­si­tion — which instructs its play­ers to, for the length of time reflect­ed by its title, play noth­ing at all. But dig a lit­tle deep­er into Cage’s moti­va­tions, and you find that he want­ed the audi­ence of “4’33”” to lis­ten not to the silence, but to what­ev­er sounds hap­pen to remain in the absence of music — so that those inci­den­tal nois­es, in effect, become the music.

Many more such uncon­ven­tion­al com­po­si­tion­al ideas and result­ing lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences await you in John Cage: A Chrono­log­i­cal Col­lec­tion, this decid­ed­ly non-silent Spo­ti­fy playlist above (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware yet, down­load it here) by Ulysses Clas­si­cal, author of sev­er­al of our favorite playlists, includ­ing this 50-hour clas­si­cal com­pi­la­tion we fea­tured in August.

If you find your­self still in need of more of Cage’s salu­tary effect on your per­cep­tion of not just music and art but of the world itself, you can hear Ulysses Clas­si­cal’s playlist of only Cage’s “Num­ber Pieces” below, which “has a cleans­ing effect on the mind, as if it paints the walls of the room I’m sit­ting in with sooth­ing col­ors.”

Ulysses Clas­si­cal’s back­ground post on the big chrono­log­i­cal playlist opens with a quote from Cage that neat­ly incap­su­lates what we might call his phi­los­o­phy of com­po­si­tion, or maybe of life itself: “What I’m propos­ing, to myself and oth­er peo­ple, is what I often call the tourist atti­tude — that you act as though you’ve nev­er been there before. So that you’re not sup­posed to know any­thing about it. If you real­ly get down to brass tacks, we have nev­er been any­where before.” This playlist, which spans Cage’s six-decade career from 1932 to 1992, show­cas­es just what rich musi­cal places Cage found when he act­ed as though he’d nev­er been there before. Lis­ten­ing to it will cer­tain­ly take you to musi­cal places you’ve nev­er been before — and, assum­ing you’ve been to “4’33”,” it does­n’t take you there, but I sup­pose you can go to that par­tic­u­lar patch of musi­cal ter­ri­to­ry any time you like.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

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

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

See the Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

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

“I start­ed play­ing the gui­tar about 6 or 7, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I was influ­enced by every­thing at the same time, that’s why I can’t get it togeth­er now.”

When you lis­ten to Jimi Hen­drix, one of the last things you’re ever like­ly to think is that he couldn’t “get it togeth­er” as a gui­tarist. Hen­drix made the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mod­est state­ment in 1968, in a free form dis­cus­sion about his influ­ences with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wen­ner and Baron Wol­man. “I used to like Bud­dy Hol­ly,” he said, “and Eddie Cochran and Mud­dy Waters and Elvin James… B.B. King and so forth.” But his great love was Albert King, who “plays com­plete­ly and strict­ly in one way, just straight funk blues.”

Since Hendrix’s death and sub­se­quent enshrine­ment in pop cul­ture as the undis­put­ed mas­ter of psy­che­del­ic rock gui­tar, a num­ber of posthu­mous releas­es have per­formed a kind of revi­sion­ism that sit­u­ates him not strict­ly in the con­text of the hip­pie scene but rather in the blues tra­di­tion he so admired and that, in a sense, he came of age with­in as a ses­sion and back­ing gui­tarist for dozens of blues and R&B artists in the ear­ly 60s.

In 1994 came the straight­for­ward­ly-titled com­pi­la­tion album Blues, which cel­e­brat­ed the fact that “more than a third of [Hendrix’s] record­ings were blues-ori­ent­ed,” writes All­mu­sic’s Richie Unter­berg­er, whether orig­i­nals like “Red House” and “Hear My Train a Comin’” or cov­ers of his heroes Mud­dy Waters and Albert King. Mar­tin Scors­ese devot­ed a seg­ment of his doc­u­men­tary series The Blues to Hen­drix, and an ensu­ing 2003 album release fea­tured even more Hen­drix blues orig­i­nals (with “pret­ty cool” lin­er notes about his blues record col­lect­ing habits). Pro­lif­ic direc­tor Alex Gib­ney has a doc­u­men­tary forth­com­ing on Hen­drix on the Blues.

It’s safe to say that Hendrix’s blues lega­cy is in safe hands, and it may be safe to say he would approve, or at least that he would have pre­ferred to be linked to the blues, or clas­si­cal music, than to what he called “freak-out psy­che­del­ic” music, as a Guardian review of Hen­drix auto­bi­og­ra­phy Start­ing at Zero quotes; “I don’t want any­body to stick a psy­che­del­ic label around my neck. Soon­er Bach and Beethoven.” Or soon­er, I’d imag­ine, blues leg­ends like Albert King, Bud­dy Guy, and B.B. King, of whom Hen­drix sat in awe. At the top of the post, you can see Hen­drix flex his Delta blues mus­cles on a 12-string acoustic gui­tar. Then in the video below it from 1968, Hen­drix gets the chance to jam with Bud­dy Guy, after watch­ing Guy work his mag­ic from the audi­ence. (Hen­drix joins Guy onstage to jam at 6:24.) Beneath, see Guy and King rem­i­nisc­ing a few years ago about those days of meet­ing and play­ing with Hen­drix.

Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, you’ll learn where Hen­drix picked up one of his stage tricks, play­ing the gui­tar behind his head—and learn how lit­tle Guy knew about Hen­drix the rock star, com­ing to know him instead as a great blues gui­tarist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Plays “Hey Joe” & “Wild Thing” on The Band’s Very First Tour: Paris, 1966

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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