Your sens­es do deceive you, my friends. This is not the lat­est, great­est video from RSA Ani­mate. No, this video comes to us via Pablo Morales de los Rios, a Span­ish artist, who has artis­ti­cal­ly nar­rat­ed the his­to­ry of music — or the His­to­ria de la Músi­ca – in a shade less than sev­en min­utes. 6:59, to be pre­cise. You don’t need much Span­ish under your belt to real­ize that the sto­ry starts 50,000 years ago, then moves quick­ly from the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyp­tians, to the trou­ba­dours of the Mid­dle Ages. The video gives dis­pro­por­tion­ate atten­tion to clas­si­cal music dur­ing the fol­low­ing peri­ods — Renacimien­to, Bar­ro­co, Clas­si­cis­mo and Roman­ti­cis­mo. But before wrap­ping up, we tack over to Amer­i­ca and wit­ness the birth of jazz and the blues, before head­ing back across the pond for the Invasión británi­ca. Artis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, it all cul­mi­nates in a pret­ty inter­est­ing way. But we’ll let you see how things play out.

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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:

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores Online

A Big Bach Down­load – All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant

Here’s a beau­ti­ful per­for­mance by Ella Fitzger­ald of “Sum­mer­time,” the famous lul­la­by from the 1935 George Gersh­win opera Por­gy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Hey­ward, who wrote the nov­el the opera is based on.

Sum­mer­time,
And the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cot­ton is high

Oh, your dad­dy’s rich
And your mam­ma’s good lookin’
So hush lit­tle baby
Don’t you cry

It was filmed on Feb­ru­ary 11, 1968 at the Deutsch­land­halle in Berlin. Fitzger­ald was on a 21-city tour of East­ern and West­ern Europe, pre­sent­ed by Nor­man Granz. She was accom­pa­nied by the Tee Car­son Trio, with Car­son on piano, Keter Betts on bass and Joe Har­ris on drums.

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:

Gersh­win Plays Gersh­win: The Piano Ver­sion of ‘Rhap­sody in Blue,’ 1925

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

The last time we looked, the singer-song­writer known as Beck con­tributed to the fall musi­cal pro­duc­tion, Rework: Philip Glass Remixed, before pub­lish­ing Song Read­er, a series of 20 songs released not as record­ed music, but as sheet music meant for oth­er musi­cians to inter­pret and per­form. (Lis­ten here to what the Port­land Cel­lo Project did with the Song Read­er col­lec­tion.) Now, Beck turns to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent project. On Sun­day night, the ver­sa­tile musi­cian appeared on a sound­stage at 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox in L.A., where he per­formed David Bowie’s 1977 song, “Sound and Vision,” backed by a 157-piece orches­tra con­duct­ed by his own father, the com­pos­er and arranger David Camp­bell. Accord­ing to Rolling Stone, the event was spon­sored by Lin­coln, the Detroit car­mak­er, who is using Beck­’s ver­sion of “Sound and Vision” for a new ad cam­paign. Hap­pi­ly, David Bowie gave his enthu­si­as­tic bless­ing to the project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Hear Beck’s Song Read­er Song­book Per­formed by the Port­land Cel­lo Project

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

We hold this truth to be self-evident—if every cit­i­zen spent a lit­tle bit of time play­ing the ukulele, the world would be a nicer place.

Such is the dec­la­ra­tion of the The Bea­t­les Com­plete on Ukulele, an online project that pret­ty much does what it says: com­piles ukulele cov­ers of every Bea­t­les song—individually or in album form—from a sur­pris­ing vari­ety of ama­teur and obscure artists. As an own­er, occa­sion­al strum­mer, and gen­er­al enthu­si­ast of the uke myself, I do believe these folks are onto some­thing with their vision of a “nicer place.” Just lis­ten to The Fort Green Children’s Choir’s cov­er of “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” and try to stop your­self from smil­ing. If sim­ply lis­ten­ing to the uke can make you calm and hap­py, imag­ine what play­ing one can do?

Now, if you’re think­ing of the whole thing as Tiny Tim in the tulips, think again. Sure, there’s a nov­el­ty aspect to the idea, as the goofy video above—with The Cars’ key­boardist Greg Hawkes’ doing his ren­di­tion of “Eleanor Rigby”—attests; but as it also attests, these cov­ers can be ful­ly real­ized and quite beau­ti­ful arrange­ments (Hawkes record­ed an entire album of Bea­t­les songs on the uke).

While the ukulele’s humor­ous­ly small size and fre­quent use in prop com­e­dy, faux-Hawai­ian surf movies, and twee indie folk revival­ism has ren­dered it a lit­tle ridicu­lous, this image deceives. Make no mis­take, the tiny Poly­ne­sian four-string gui­tar (which comes in four sizes and reg­is­ters: sopra­no, con­cert, tenor, and bari­tone) is a seri­ous­ly ver­sa­tile instru­ment with a full range of tim­bres and tones. If you’re still uncon­vinced, then pre­pare to be blown away by renowned vir­tu­oso uke-play­er Jake Shimabukuro’s take on George Har­rison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (below).

As you can see, the ukulele is suit­ed to the task of inter­pret­ing the Bea­t­les’ cat­a­logue, espe­cial­ly since the band them­selves had such a high regard for ukes. Har­ri­son loved the instru­ment, as Paul McCart­ney tells us in the video below. Watch as Macca—live, in trib­ute to Harrison—strums out a love­ly ver­sion of “Some­thing” on his ukulele.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

The Mak­ing of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows,” The Bea­t­les’ Song That Aired on an His­toric Episode of Mad Men

Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

The most impres­sive of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s pieces, musi­cophiles may have told you, will knock you over with their inge­nious­ness, or at least their sheer com­plex­i­ty. Indeed, the music of Bach has, over the past two and a half cen­turies, pro­vid­ed meat and drink to both pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur stu­dents of the rela­tion­ship between inge­nious­ness and com­plex­i­ty. It’s no mis­take, for instance, that the com­pos­er has offered such a rich source of intel­lec­tu­al inspi­ra­tion to Gödel, Esch­er, Bach author Dou­glas R. Hof­s­tadter, well beyond hav­ing giv­en him a word to fill out the book’s title. Lis­ten to the first canon from Bach’s Musi­cal Offer­ing, and you’ll hear what sounds like a sim­ple begin­ning devel­op into what sounds like quite a com­plex mid­dle. You may hear it and instinc­tive­ly under­stand what’s going on; you may hear it and have no idea what’s going on beyond your sus­pi­cion that some­thing is hap­pen­ing.

If you process things more visu­al­ly than you do aural­ly, pay atten­tion to the video above, a visu­al­iza­tion of the piece by math­e­mat­i­cal image-mak­er Jos Leys. You can fol­low the score, note for note, and then watch as the piece revers­es itself, run­ning back across the staff in the oth­er direc­tion. So far, so easy, but anoth­er lay­er appears: Bach wrote the piece to then be played simul­ta­ne­ous­ly back­wards as well as for­wards. But pre­pare your­self for the mind-blow­ing coup de grâce when Leys shows us at a stroke just what the impos­si­ble shape of the Möbius strip has to do with the form of this “crab canon,” mean­ing a canon made of two com­ple­men­tary, reversed musi­cal lines. Hof­s­tadter had a great deal of fun with that term in Gödel, Esch­er, Bach, but then, he has one of those brains — you’ll notice many Bach enthu­si­asts do — that explodes with con­nec­tions, trans­po­si­tions, and per­mu­ta­tions, even in its unal­tered state. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you con­sid­er your­self a con­scious­ness-bend­ing psy­cho­naut, feel free get into your pre­ferred frame of mind, watch Bach’s crab canon visu­al­ized, and call me in the morn­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.