I nev­er real­ly liked the­o­ry class­es very much. To be hon­est, I was nev­er that good at them. I’ve def­i­nite­ly learned more from using my ears rather than my brain.  

- Musi­cian Jacob Col­lier

I too, find music the­o­ry con­found­ing, but unlike musi­cal poly­math Col­lier, I don’t have much of an ear to fall back on.

Which is pos­si­bly why I learned so much from his appear­ance on Vox’s Ear­worm, above. He lent me his ears.

Ten min­utes in, I think I maybe, sort-of under­stand what chro­mati­cism is.

Rather than pull exam­ples from a num­ber of sources, Col­lier con­cen­trates on his “musi­cal crush” Ste­vie Won­der’s chart top­ping 1976 trib­ute to jazz leg­end Duke Elling­ton, “Sir Duke.” As Col­lier told Time Out Israel’s Jen­nifer Green­berg:

I believe that when you lis­ten to music, it gives you this periph­ery of great stuff in your ears and then when you sit down to make music of your own, those are your teach­ers, those are your guid­ing forces. It’s bet­ter to have Ste­vie Won­der as a ref­er­ence point than say “this text­book that I read in class” …Ste­vie is my num­ber one. As a kid, he rep­re­sent­ed every­thing that I real­ly loved about music: he had all the chops, he had all the chords, he had all the funky stuff, all the groove, but then had that voice and behind the voice, he had this soul and feel­ings, and he also had this sense of humor mixed with this human­i­ty.

Col­lier has the innate know-how to break down those grooves, from the big band feel of the open­ing drums to the Motown sound back­beat of the verse.

Aid­ed by series pro­duc­er Estelle Caswell and some graph­ics that visu­al­ize such fun­da­men­tal­ly aur­al con­cepts as har­mo­ny and the pen­ta­ton­ic scale, Col­lier artic­u­lates in pure­ly musi­cal terms what makes this endur­ing hit so catchy.

Cer­tain­ly, the exu­ber­ant shout cho­rus doesn’t hurt.

Col­lier has delved into Wonder’s cat­a­logue before, leap­ing on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to har­mo­nize with him­self.

That’s him above, at age 17, per­form­ing an a cap­pel­la “Isn’t She Love­ly,” his melod­i­ca stand­ing in for Won­der’s icon­ic har­mon­i­ca solo.

And Wonder’s “Don’t You Wor­ry ‘Bout A Thing,” below, pre­sent­ed his great­est chal­lenge as an arranger, due to such quirks as “unex­pect­ed sus­pen­sion chords” and the dia­ton­ic descend­ing melody. Hold on to your hats at the 2:26 mark when the screen splits into over a dozen sec­tions, in an attempt to con­tain all the tal­ent on dis­play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­cept of Musi­cal Har­mo­ny Explained in Five Lev­els of Dif­fi­cul­ty, Start­ing with a Child & End­ing with Her­bie Han­cock

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of the Bass Line for the Motown Clas­sic, “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Her hus­band was grat­i­fied to see Jacob Col­lier shares his affin­i­ty for Crocs. No shame. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

If you first heard the work of great Brazil­ian gui­tarist and singer João Gilber­to in a lit­tle tune called “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” you’re in the com­pa­ny of mil­lions, whose intro­duc­tion to Gilber­to and the sounds of bossa nova jazz came from that song, record­ed with sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz. When the L.A. Times’ Ran­dall Roberts com­pares their col­lab­o­ra­tive album Getz/Gilberto to the arrival of the Bea­t­les in the U.S., this may sound like an exag­ger­a­tion. But bossa nova, like rock and roll, was already huge­ly pop­u­lar, and sound of this record was a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion.

Gilber­to, who died this past Sat­ur­day at age 88, was “one of the most influ­en­tial musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” He and “his peer and col­lab­o­ra­tor Anto­nio Car­los Jobim helped cre­ate and pop­u­lar­ize bossa nova, a toned-down and roman­ti­cized take on Brazil­ian sam­ba music.” Jobim may have writ­ten “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” but Gilber­to first turned Amer­i­cans on to its charms, and to what Allmusic’s John Dougan calls “the sig­na­ture pop music of Brazil.”

Called O Mito, “the leg­end,” in his home coun­try, Gilberto’s influ­ence is incal­cu­la­ble and has “res­onat­ed in the work of artists includ­ing Cae­tano Veloso, Sade, Gal Cos­ta, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Stere­o­lab, Seu Jorge  and pret­ty much every Brazil­ian song­writer since 1960,” writes Roberts. His coun­try­man Veloso has said, “I owe João Gilber­to every­thing I am today. Even if I were some­thing else and not a musi­cian, I would say that I owe him every­thing.”

Many peo­ple have said sim­i­lar things over the years about John Lennon or George Har­ri­son, but an unas­sum­ing acoustic croon­er singing in Por­tuguese? Could he real­ly have that kind of cul­tur­al sway world­wide? It may be hard to see it now, but “bossa nova inte­grat­ed itself into the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion in much the same way rock ‘n’ roll did.” Yet instead of rebelling, it dressed up; rather than “upping the tem­po, atti­tude and ener­gy,” it “soothed and seduced.”

Bossa nova pro­vid­ed a coun­ter­point to the raw ener­gy of Amer­i­can and British rock, but not in the com­fort­ing, nos­tal­gic way of soft, soporif­ic music like that of Lawrence Welk. Rather—partly through its influ­ence on jazz musi­cians like Getz, Dizzy Gille­spie, and Char­lie Byrd—bossa nova became its own kind of hip pop­u­lar idiom, cool instead of hot, but still sexy and new. Elvis even tried to cash in on the music’s grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in 1963 with his “rol­lick­ing ‘Bossa Nova Baby’” from the movie Fun in Aca­pul­co.

The shoes didn’t quite fit. Bossa nova was sub­dued and sub­tle, a sound cre­at­ed for small spaces and small moves. It’s said that Gilberto’s qui­et style of play­ing “devel­oped in 1955 when he sequestered him­self inside of a bath­room at his sister’s house so as not to dis­turb her fam­i­ly,” writes Felix Con­tr­eras at NPR, “and to take advan­tage of the acoustics pro­vid­ed by the bath­room tiles.” This inti­mate ori­gin sto­ry aside, his was also a style that demar­cat­ed class lines in pop music.

Pop­u­lar among a slight­ly old­er set of lis­ten­ers, in Brazil bossa nova first attract­ed “a new mon­eyed class eager to move away from the more tra­di­tion­al sam­ba sound of explo­sive drums and group singing.” In its influ­ence on Amer­i­can jazz, bossa nova also telegraphed lux­u­ry, with its deeply relaxed atmos­phere and lush, unhur­ried tex­tures. It is the sound of sea­side resort hotels and upscale night­clubs, of yacht par­ties, art gal­leries, and pent­house apart­ments. “The Girl from Ipane­ma” sounds like the singing six­ties worlds of James Bond and Hugh Hefn­er, not Haight Ash­bury.

Nonethe­less, the song is an absolute clas­sic for good rea­son, with Gilberto’s then-wife Astrud “on a sul­try vocal” in Eng­lish, repeat­ing his under­stat­ed Por­tuguese, and a “now-icon­ic tenor sax solo” by Getz. “It was a world­wide hit and won the 1965 Gram­my for record of the year. Getz/Gilberto won album of the year and would go on to become one of the high­est-sell­ing jazz albums of all time.” For a time, bossa nova was every­where, then it gave way to the hard­er-edged Trop­i­calia move­ment of younger musi­cians like Veloso and Gilber­to Gil, and its vocab­u­lary became absorbed into so many dif­fer­ent kinds of music that we are hard­ly aware of its pres­ence any­more.

If “The Girl from Ipane­ma” was the first, and maybe, the last, you heard of João Gilber­to, you owe it to your­self to learn more of his work. And, if you’re already a life­long fan, you’ll appre­ci­ate all the more these live per­for­mances from Gilberto’s career. At the top, see him per­form “The Girl From Ipane­ma” with the song’s com­pos­er and his old col­lab­o­ra­tor Jobim; fur­ther up, Gilber­to plays “Desa­fi­na­do” and “Car­in­hoso” live in con­cert,” and, just above, see him play “Cor­co­v­a­do.”

Gilber­to was cut out of his biggest glob­al hit for the 1964 TV per­for­mance above. Pro­duc­ers opt­ed to make Astrud the face and voice of “The Girl from Ipane­ma.” But the mil­lions who bought the record heard his mes­mer­iz­ing vocal and gui­tar work, and then kept hear­ing their influ­ence on records released for decades after­ward around the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

The Strange His­to­ry of Smooth Jazz: The Music We All Know and Love … to Hate

The Exis­ten­tial Adven­tures of Icon­o­clas­tic Brazil­ian Musi­cian Tim Maia: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film

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

In 1939, Igor Stravin­sky emi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States, first arriv­ing in New York City, before set­tling in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he deliv­ered the Charles Eliot Nor­ton lec­tures at Har­vard dur­ing the 1939–40 aca­d­e­m­ic year. While liv­ing in Boston, the com­pos­er con­duct­ed the Boston Sym­pho­ny and, on one famous occa­sion, he decid­ed to con­duct his own arrange­ment of the “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner,” which he made out a “desire to do my bit in these griev­ous times toward fos­ter­ing and pre­serv­ing the spir­it of patri­o­tism in this coun­try.” The date was Jan­u­ary, 1944. And he was, of course, refer­ring to Amer­i­ca’s role in World War II.

As you might expect, Stravin­sky’s ver­sion on “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” was­n’t entire­ly con­ven­tion­al, see­ing that it added a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord to the arrange­ment. And the Boston police, not exact­ly an orga­ni­za­tion with avant-garde sen­si­bil­i­ties, issued Stravin­sky a warn­ing, claim­ing there was a law against tam­per­ing with the nation­al anthem. (They were mis­read­ing the statute.) Grudg­ing­ly, Stravin­sky pulled it from the bill.

You can hear Stravin­sky’s “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” above, appar­ent­ly per­formed by the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and con­duct­ed by Michael Tilson Thomas. The Youtube video fea­tures an apoc­ryphal mugshot of Stravin­sky. Despite the mythol­o­gy cre­at­ed around this event, Stravin­sky was nev­er arrest­ed.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Hear The Rite of Spring Con­duct­ed by Igor Stravin­sky Him­self: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1929

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Hear 46 Ver­sions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 3 Min­utes: A Clas­sic Mashup

“All smok­ers will recog­nise the mean­ing of the title — it refers to five leaves left near the end of a pack­et of cig­a­rette papers. It sounds poet­ic and so does com­pos­er, singer, and gui­tarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is inter­est­ing.” There, in its entire­ty, is Melody Mak­er’s review of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, which came out fifty years ago today. Drake now stands in music his­to­ry as some­thing of a doomed roman­tic hero, an artist who craft­ed a few dozen strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing songs and deliv­ered them into a world in which he nev­er felt at home. Unable to make that world appre­ci­ate his work, Drake depart­ed from it at the ear­ly age of 26, and only decades lat­er would Five Leaves Left and the oth­er two albums he record­ed in his life­time find their lis­ten­ers.

Sim­pli­fied though it is, that con­cep­tion adheres to the broad con­tours of Drake’s life. Born in Bur­ma to an Eng­lish civ­il engi­neer and the musi­cal­ly inclined daugh­ter of a high­er-up in the Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice, he played in school orches­tras and cov­er bands grow­ing up and signed to Island Records while still a stu­dent at Cam­bridge.

By that point, hav­ing expe­ri­enced the music of pre­de­ces­sors like Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son, stints in Moroc­co and the south of France, and the mind-alter­ing sub­stances pop­u­lar in the late 1960s, Drake had fash­ioned him­self into an acoustic gui­tar-play­ing singer-song­writer who must have seemed well suit­ed to the transat­lantic folk-music boom then in effect. He cer­tain­ly man­aged to impress Joe Boyd, the young Amer­i­can record pro­duc­er respon­si­ble for bring­ing acts like Fair­port Con­ven­tion, John Mar­tyn, and the Incred­i­ble String Band into the main­stream.

Boyd did­n’t need to hear much of Drake’s demo tape before he decid­ed to pro­duce a prop­er album, and in the 2014 event above he remem­bers the expe­ri­ence of bring­ing Drake into the stu­dio and record­ing what would become Five Leaves Left. Accom­pa­ny­ing Drake’s voice and gui­tar with a string sec­tion, the album show­cas­es all the qual­i­ties that set him apart from most singer-song­writ­ers then and still do now, from his unusu­al com­po­si­tion­al struc­tures and gui­tar tun­ings to the unapolo­getic Eng­lish­ness of his pro­nun­ci­a­tion and cadence. And unlike so many of the much big­ger records that came out in 1969, it all sounds like it could have been record­ed yes­ter­day — an achieve­ment whose tech­niques engi­neer John Wood has, for the past half-cen­tu­ry, declined to explain. But Drake’s shy­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty made him tem­pera­men­tal­ly unsuit­ed to live per­for­mance; he strug­gled to pro­mote him­self, and died of an anti­de­pres­sant over­dose five years and two albums lat­er.

For some time there­after it looked as if Drake’s music might have died with him. But Five Leaves Left and its fol­low-ups remained in Island’s back cat­a­log and by the ear­ly 1980s had built up a cult fol­low­ing, espe­cial­ly among oth­er musi­cians. (The Cure’s Robert Smith has cred­it­ed his band’s name to a line from Drake’s “Time Has Told Me.”) The 1997 pub­li­ca­tion of Patrick Humphries’ Nick Drake: The Biog­ra­phy opened the peri­od of wide-rang­ing dis­cov­ery of Nick Drake, fur­thered by the BBC Radio 2 doc­u­men­tary Fruit Tree: The Nick Drake Sto­ry, the BBC2 tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary Nick Drake: A Stranger Among Us, the Dutch doc­u­men­tary A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, and the many oth­er books about him pub­lished since. (Ten years ago, for Five Leaves Left’s 40th anniver­sary, I myself inter­viewed Humphries and two oth­er authors of books about Drake; you can down­load the pro­gram as an MP3 here.)

In 2004 BBC2 pro­duced a sec­ond radio doc­u­men­tary called Lost Boy: In Search Of Nick Drake, and to nar­rate it brought in a fan by the name of Brad Pitt. “I was intro­duced to Nick Drake’s music about five years ago, and am a huge admir­er of his records,” the actor said at the time, and it may not be a coin­ci­dence that the year 1999 saw the high­est-pro­file use of one of Drake’s songs by far — as the sound­track to a Volk­swa­gen com­mer­cial. Two decades after that big break, and near­ly 45 years after his death, Nick Drake is at the height of his pop­u­lar­i­ty, both in terms of how many lis­ten­ers claim his songs as favorites and how many cur­rent singer-song­writ­ers claim him as an influ­ence. Yet to this day, no oth­er per­former sounds quite like him; in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, none ever will. And no mat­ter how many times one has heard it, Five Leaves Left remains more “inter­est­ing” than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

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

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

89 Essen­tial Songs from The Sum­mer of Love: A 50th Anniver­sary Playlist

Joni Mitchell: Singer, Song­writer, Artist, Smok­ing Grand­ma

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.