The Complete “Everything is a Remix”: An Hour-Long Testament to the Brilliance & Beauty of Human Creativity

in Creativity, Film, Music | March 30th, 2023

Let me quote myself: “From 2010 to 2012, film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son released Every­thing is a Remix, a four-part series that explored art and cre­ativ­i­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. In the ini­tial series, Fer­gu­son focused on musi­cians, film­mak­ers, writ­ers and even video game mak­ers. Now, a lit­tle more than a decade lat­er, Fer­gu­son has resur­faced and released a fifth and final chap­ter in his series, with this episode focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent kind of artist: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” Above, you can watch the com­plete edi­tion of “Every­thing is a Remix,” with all parts com­bined into a sin­gle, hour-long video. A tran­script of the entire pro­duc­tion can be found here. Watch. Pon­der. Cre­ate.

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 

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Beethoven’s Genome Has Been Sequenced for the First Time, Revealing Clues About the Great Composer’s Health & Family History

in History, Music, Science | March 24th, 2023

Lud­wig van Beethoven died in 1827, a bit ear­ly to be sub­ject­ed to the kinds of DNA analy­sis that have become so preva­lent today. Luck­i­ly, the Ger­man-speak­ing world of the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry still adhered to the cus­tom of sav­ing locks of hair from the deceased — par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky for an archae­ol­o­gy stu­dent named Tris­tan Begg and his col­lab­o­ra­tors in the study “Genom­ic analy­ses of hair from Lud­wig van Beethoven,” pub­lished just this month in Cur­rent Biol­o­gy. In the video from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty just above, Begg intro­duces the research project and describes what new infor­ma­tion it reveals about the com­pos­er whose life and work have been so inten­sive­ly stud­ied for so long.

“Work­ing with an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists, I iden­ti­fied five genet­i­cal­ly match­ing, authen­tic locks of hair and used them to sequence Beethoven’s genome,” Begg says. “We dis­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant genet­ic risk fac­tors for liv­er dis­ease and evi­dence that Beethoven con­tract­ed the Hepati­tis B virus in, at the lat­est, the months before his final ill­ness.”

And “while we could­n’t pin­point the cause of Beethoven’s deaf­ness or gas­troin­testi­nal prob­lems, we did find mod­est genet­ic risk for Sys­temic Lupus Ery­the­mato­sus,” an autoim­mune dis­ease. His­to­ry remem­bers Beethoven as a not par­tic­u­lar­ly healthy man; now we have a clear­er idea of which con­di­tions he could have suf­fered.

But this study’s most rev­e­la­to­ry dis­cov­er­ies con­cern not what has to do with Beethoven, but what does­n’t. The famous lock of hair “once believed to have been cut from the dead com­poser’s head by the fif­teen-year-old musi­cian Fer­di­nand Hiller” turns out to have come from a woman. Nor was Beethoven him­self “descend­ed from the main Flem­ish Beethoven lin­eage,” which is shown by genet­ic evi­dence that “an extra­mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship result­ed in the birth of a child in Beethoven’s direct pater­nal line at some point between 1572 and 1770.” This news came as a shock to “the five peo­ple in Bel­gium whose last name is van Beethoven and who pro­vid­ed DNA for the study,” writes the New York Times’ Gina Kola­ta. But then, Beethoven’s music still belongs to them — just as it belongs to us all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

Beethoven’s Unfin­ished Tenth Sym­pho­ny Gets Com­plet­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Hear How It Sounds

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ativ­i­ty Machine Learns to Play Beethoven in the Style of The Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane”

Hear a “DNA-Based Pre­dic­tion of Nietzsche’s Voice:” First Attempt at Sim­u­lat­ing Voice of a Dead Per­son

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 ) |

Listen to Patti Smith’s Glorious Three Hour Farewell to CBGB’s on Its Final Night

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 24th, 2023

CBGB is a state of mind — Pat­ti Smith

All good things must come to an end, but it hurt when CBGB’s, New York City’s cel­e­brat­ed — and famous­ly filthy — music club shut­tered for good on Octo­ber 15th, 2006, a vic­tim of sky­rock­et­ing Low­er East Side rents.

While plen­ty of punk and New Wave lumi­nar­ies cut their teeth on the leg­endary venue’s stage — Talk­ing Heads, The Ramones, Blondie — final hon­ors went to Pat­ti Smith, a CBGB’s habitué, whose sev­en-week res­i­den­cy in 1975 earned her a major record deal.

In her Nation­al Book Award-win­ning mem­oir, Just Kids, Smith described her first impres­sions of the place, when she and her gui­tarist Lenny Kaye head­ed down­town to catch their friend Richard Hell’s band, Tele­vi­sion, fol­low­ing the pre­miere of the con­cert film, Ladies & Gen­tle­men, the Rolling Stones at the Ziegfeld:

CBGB was a deep and nar­row room along the right side, lit by over­hang­ing neon signs adver­tis­ing var­i­ous brands of beer. The stage was low, on the left-hand side, flanked by pho­to­graph­ic murals of turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry bathing belles. Past the stage was a pool table, and in back was a greasy kitchen and a room where the own­er, Hilly Krys­tal, worked and slept with his salu­ki, Jonathan…

It was a world away from the Ziegfeld. The absence of glam­our made it seem all the more famil­iar, a place that we could call our own. As the band played on, you could hear the whack of the pool cue hit­ting the balls, the salu­ki bark­ing, bot­tles clink­ing, the sounds of a scene emerg­ing. Though no one knew it, the stars were align­ing, the angels were call­ing.

Some 30 years lat­er, Kaye pre­pared to bid CBGB good­bye, telling the New York Times, “It’s like it’s grown its own bar­na­cles:”

 You couldn’t repli­cate the décor in a mil­lion years, and dis­man­tling all those lay­ers of archae­ol­o­gy of music in the club is a daunt­ing task.

The Vil­lage Voice observed that it was “a crazy, emo­tion­al night for every­one in the crowd and for every­one on the stage,” and the New York Times report­ed how Smith doc­u­ment­ed the club’s awning with a Polaroid, explain­ing, “I’m sen­ti­men­tal…”

But Smith, who active­ly encour­aged young fans to resist wor­ship­ing at the altar of the club’s rep­u­ta­tion when they could be start­ing scenes of their own, also pushed back against sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, telling the crowd, “It’s not a fuck­ing tem­ple — it is what it is.”

That may be, but her three-and-a-half-hour per­for­mance, above, was still one for the his­to­ry books, from the open­ing read­ing of Piss Fac­to­ry (I’m gonna be some­body, I’m gonna get on that train, go to New York City /I’m gonna be so bad I’m gonna be a big star and I will nev­er return) to the clos­ing in memo­ri­am recita­tion (Joe Strum­mer…John­ny Thun­ders…Stiv Bators…John­ny, Joey, and Dee Dee Ramone…)

Smith took care that oth­er artists who helped make the scene were rep­re­sent­ed in her below set lists, from Blondie and Lou Reed to Tele­vi­sion and the Dead Boys:

Piss Fac­to­ry  0:22

Kimberly/Tide is High 12:40

Pale Blue Eyes 20:30

Lou (Reed) had a gift of tak­ing very sim­ple lines, ‘Linger on, your pale blue eyes,’ and make it so they mag­ni­fy on their own. That song has always haunt­ed me. (The Asso­ci­at­ed Press)

Mar­quee Moon/We Three 29:02

Tele­vi­sion will help wipe out media. They are not the­atre. Nei­ther were the ear­ly Stones or the Yard­birds. They are strong images proc­duce from pain and speed and the fanat­ic desire to make it. They are also inspired enough below the belt to prove that SEX is not dead in rock ’n’ roll. (Rock Scene)

Dis­tant Fin­gers 38:48

With­out Chains 47:50

We had emo­tion­al duties, and I respect­ed that. But I also thought it was impor­tant to do a song like that. (Rolling Stone)

Ghost Dance 55:30

Bird­land 1:00:08

Son­ic Reduc­er 1:11:52

Redon­do Beach 1:16:00

Free Mon­ey 1:20:44

Piss­ing in a Riv­er 1:28:27

Gimme Shel­ter 1:33:50

I was think­ing about the words to that: “War, chil­dren, it’s just a shot away.” To me, a song like that is more mean­ing­ful than ever. (Rolling Stone)

Space Mon­key 1:43

Blitzkrieg Bop / Beat on the Brat / Do You Remem­ber Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio? / Sheena Is a Punk Rocker 1:48:30

Ain’t It Strange 1:55:20

So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star 2:02:11

Babelogue/Rock n Roll N — - — - — - 2:10:17 

Hap­py Birth­day to Flea 2:21:38

For Your Love 2:22:15

My Gen­er­a­tion 2:27:22

Land/Gloria 2:36:51

Even though I wrote the poem at the begin­ning of “Glo­ria” in 1970, it took all those years to evolve, to merge into “Glo­ria.” And that was pret­ty much done at CBGB. We record­ed Hors­es in 1975, and did all the ground­work at CBGB. (Rolling Stone)

Elegie 2:55:57

As I was read­ing that lit­tle list, those peo­ple seemed in that moment — because of the intense emo­tion­al ener­gy in that room — to be alive. Every­one in the room knew or heard of or loved one of those peo­ple. That col­lec­tive love and sor­row and recog­ni­tion made those peo­ple seem as alive as any of us. (Rolling Stone)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Pat­ti Smith Plays at CBGB In One of Her First Record­ed Con­certs, Joined by Sem­i­nal Punk Band Tele­vi­sion (1975)

NYC’s Icon­ic Punk Club CBG­Bs Comes Alive in a Bril­liant Short Ani­ma­tion, Using David Godlis’ Pho­tos of Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones & More

Beau­ti­ful New Pho­to Book Doc­u­ments Pat­ti Smith’s Break­through Years in Music: Fea­tures Hun­dreds of Unseen Pho­tographs

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Hear the Oldest Song in the World: A Sumerian Hymn Written 3,400 Years Ago

in Music | March 23rd, 2023

In the ear­ly 1950s, archae­ol­o­gists unearthed sev­er­al clay tablets from the 14th cen­tu­ry BCE. Found, WFMU tells us, “in the ancient Syr­i­an city of Ugar­it,” these tablets “con­tained cuneiform signs in the hur­ri­an lan­guage,” which turned out to be the old­est known piece of music ever dis­cov­ered, a 3,400 year-old cult hymn. Anne Draf­fko­rn Kilmer, pro­fes­sor of Assyri­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, pro­duced the inter­pre­ta­tion below in 1972. (She describes how she arrived at the musi­cal notation—in some tech­ni­cal detail—in this inter­view.) Since her ini­tial pub­li­ca­tions in the 60s on the ancient Sumer­ian tablets and the musi­cal the­o­ry found with­in, oth­er schol­ars of the ancient world have pub­lished their own ver­sions.

The piece, writes Richard Fink in a 1988 Arche­olo­gia Musi­calis arti­cle, con­firms a the­o­ry that “the 7‑note dia­ton­ic scale as well as har­mo­ny exist­ed 3,400 years ago.” This, Fink tells us, “flies in the face of most musi­col­o­gists’ views that ancient har­mo­ny was vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent (or even impos­si­ble) and the scale only about as old as the Ancient Greeks.”

Kilmer’s col­league Richard Crock­er claimed that the dis­cov­ery “rev­o­lu­tion­ized the whole con­cept of the ori­gin of west­ern music.” So, aca­d­e­m­ic debates aside, what does the old­est song in the world sound like? Lis­ten to a midi ver­sion below and hear it for your­self. Doubt­less, the midi key­board was not the Sume­ri­ans instru­ment of choice, but it suf­fices to give us a sense of this strange com­po­si­tion, though the rhythm of the piece is only a guess.

Kilmer and Crock­er pub­lished an audio book on vinyl (now on CD) called Sounds From Silence in which they nar­rate infor­ma­tion about ancient Near East­ern music, and, in an accom­pa­ny­ing book­let, present pho­tographs and trans­la­tions of the tablets from which the song above comes. They also give lis­ten­ers an inter­pre­ta­tion of the song, titled “A Hur­ri­an Cult Song from Ancient Ugar­it,” per­formed on a lyre, an instru­ment like­ly much clos­er to what the song’s first audi­ences heard. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for that ver­sion, you’ll have to make a pur­chase, but you can hear a dif­fer­ent lyre inter­pre­ta­tion of the song by Michael Levy below, as tran­scribed by its orig­i­nal dis­cov­er­er Dr. Richard Dum­b­rill.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014. It’s old but gold. So we hope you enjoy revis­it­ing it again.

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:

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara 

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch 13 Levels of Drumming, from Easy to Complex, Explained by Snarky Puppy Drummer Larnell Lewis

in Music | March 22nd, 2023

Above, Snarky Pup­py drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis explains drum­ming in 13 lev­els of dif­fi­cul­ty, from easy to com­plex, show­ing how “drum tech­niques build upon each oth­er as the eas­i­est lev­els incor­po­rate the hi-hat, bass and snare drums, and more dif­fi­cult lev­els include polyrhythms, the floor tom, ride cym­bals, syn­co­pa­tion and much more.” It’s fun to watch. In anoth­er video from the same series pro­duced by Wired mag­a­zine, musi­cian Jacob Col­lier explains the con­cept of har­mo­ny with increas­ing dif­fi­cul­ty to five dif­fer­ent peo­ple– a child, a teen, a col­lege stu­dent, a pro­fes­sion­al, and jazz leg­end Her­bie Han­cock. Enjoy…

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 

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Health Ben­e­fits of Drum­ming: Less Stress, Low­er Blood Pres­sure, Pain Relief, and Altered States of Con­scious­ness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

David Byrne Picks Up His Big Suit from the Dry Cleaners and Gets Ready for Stop Making Sense to Return to Theaters

in Music | March 20th, 2023

First released in 1984, Jonathan Dem­me’s acclaimed con­cert film Stop Mak­ing Sense fea­tured the Talk­ing Heads at the height of their cre­ative and musi­cal pow­ers. The film starts with David Byrne, alone on a bare stage, with a boom­box and his big white suit, per­form­ing “Psy­cho Killer.” Then, with each new song, he’s joined by dif­fer­ent band­mates and an assem­blage of gear and lights, all show­ing, step-by-step, how a con­cert gets made. It’s an inven­tive film. And it’s com­ing back to the­aters this August, restored no less in 4K res­o­lu­tion.

Above, in the offi­cial trail­er, watch Byrne retrieve his over­sized suit from the dry clean­ers some 40 years late, then try it on for size. Turns out, it still fits.…

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 

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Talk­ing Heads Songs Become Mid­cen­tu­ry Pulp Nov­els, Mag­a­zines & Adver­tise­ments: “Burn­ing Down the House,” “Once in a Life­time,” and More

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

New Order’s 1983 Classic “Blue Monday” Played with Obsolete 1930s Instruments

in Music | March 18th, 2023

Released 40 years ago this week, New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” (hear the orig­i­nal EP ver­sion here) became, accord­ing to the BBC, “a cru­cial link between Sev­en­ties dis­co and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eight­ies.” If you fre­quent­ed a dance club dur­ing the 1980s, you know the song.

The orig­i­nal “Blue Mon­day” nev­er quite won me over. I’m much more Rolling Stones than New Order. But I’m tak­en with the adap­ta­tion above. Cre­at­ed by the “Orkestra Obso­lete,” this ver­sion tries to imag­ine what the song would have sound­ed like in 1933, using only instru­ments avail­able at the time— for exam­ple, writes the BBC, the theremin, musi­cal saw, har­mo­ni­um and pre­pared piano. Quite a change from the Pow­ertron Sequencer, Moog Source syn­the­siz­er, and Ober­heim DMX drum machine used to record the song in the 80s. Enjoy this lit­tle thought exper­i­ment put into action.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiooooo: A Musi­cal Time Machine That Lets You Hear What Played on the Radio in Dif­fer­ent Times & Places

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear De La Soul’s Highly Acclaimed & Influential Hip-Hop Albums Streaming Free for the First Time

in Music | March 7th, 2023

If you don’t lis­ten to rap, you’ve heard the same ques­tions over and over in response to that con­fes­sion. One of the most com­mon is “But have you heard De La Soul?” — which in recent years was eas­i­er said than done, at least on stream­ing plat­forms. “What kept De La’s tunes out of rota­tion was a frus­trat­ing morass of out­dat­ed con­tracts and record label par­si­mo­ny,” writes Oliv­er Wang at NPR. One com­pli­ca­tion had to do with sam­pling, a stan­dard hip hop prac­tice con­duct­ed in such a far-reach­ing, free­wheel­ing, and elab­o­rate man­ner by De La Soul that the prospect of rene­go­ti­at­ing each and every son­ic snip­pet they’d cleared in the CD-and-tape era inspired untold cor­po­rate intran­si­gence.

But as of this month, “all this has final­ly been rec­ti­fied. The group’s most impor­tant record­ings are now legal­ly avail­able on the inter­net.” None of them is more impor­tant than their debut, 3 Feet High and Ris­ing, orig­i­nal­ly released in 1989 and added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry in 2010.

As Wang writes, the album “reshaped the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion of what hip-hop could be. The core trio — Pos­d­nu­os, Tru­goy and DJ Pase­mas­ter Mase — assist­ed by mentor/producer Prince Paul all came straight out­ta the wilds of sub­ur­ban Long Island, rap­ping about advice-spout­ing croc­o­diles, Mar­t­ian trans­mis­sions, and an artis­tic meta-con­cept they dubbed The D.A.I.S.Y. (Da Inner Soul, Y’all) Age.”

Clear­ly, De La Soul had a set of artis­tic pri­or­i­ties all their own. “Sam­ple-hun­gry rap pro­duc­ers had spent the pre­vi­ous few years min­ing the James Brown and P‑Funk cat­a­logs and though De La sam­pled from both on their debut, they were more like­ly to cre­ate mem­o­rable musi­cal moments from chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion songs (‘The Mag­ic Num­ber’), obscure doo-wop sin­gles (‘Plug Tunin”) and clas­sic ’80s pop hits (‘Say No Go’),” to say noth­ing of a learn-at-home French record. The first time I remem­ber hear­ing De La Soul was when an ear­ly-morn­ing col­lege-radio DJ put on the 3 Feet High track “Eye Know,” which sam­ples Steely Dan — as well as the Mad Lads, Lee Dorsey, and Otis Red­ding.

As if 3 Feet High and Ris­ing weren’t enough of a cav­al­cade of won­ders, it comes as only one of six De La Soul albums new­ly avail­able to stream. On the group’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel and oth­er stream­ing plat­forms, you can also hear De La Soul Is Dead (1991), Buhloone Mind­state (1993), Stakes Is High (1996), and the Art Offi­cial Intel­li­gence pair Thump and Bion­ix (2001), each of which marks an expan­sion of the group’s already con­sid­er­able ambi­tions. They all join the already-stream­able albums released over the twen­ty years up to the death of found­ing mem­ber David “Tru­goy” Joli­coeur last month, an event that may put end to De La Soul as a record­ing enti­ty. But if you do lis­ten through their expan­sive and inven­tive body of work, be pre­pared for anoth­er ques­tion: have you heard A Tribe Called Quest?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

How Jazz Became the “Moth­er of Hip Hop”

150 Songs from 100+ Rap­pers Get Art­ful­ly Woven into One Great Mashup: Watch the “40 Years of Hip Hop”

How Sam­pling Trans­formed Music and Cre­at­ed New Tapes­tries of Sound: An Inter­ac­tive Demon­stra­tion by Producer/DJ Mark Ron­son

The Birth of Hip Hop: How DJ Kool Herc Used Turnta­bles to Change the Musi­cal World (1973)

Enter the The Cor­nell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion of Hip Hop Pho­tos, Posters & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 ) |

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