New Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive Features More Than 27,000 Digitized Letters, Manuscript Pages, Photos & More

in Archives, Literature | December 13th, 2017

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in Ara­cat­a­ca, March 1966.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

When Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez died in 2014, it was said that only the Bible had sold more books in Span­ish than the Colom­bian writer’s work: Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patri­arch, Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, The Gen­er­al in His Labyrinth… and yes, of course, One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, the 1967 nov­el William Kennedy described in a New York Times review as “the first piece of lit­er­a­ture since the Book of Gen­e­sis that should be required read­ing for the entire human race.”

Gar­cía Márquez began to hate such ele­vat­ed praise. It raised expec­ta­tions he felt he couldn’t ful­fill after the enor­mous suc­cess of that incred­i­bly bril­liant, seem­ing­ly sui gener­is sec­ond nov­el. Every­one in South Amer­i­ca read the book. To avoid the crowds, the author moved to Spain (where Mario Var­gas Llosa wrote a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion on him). He needn’t have wor­ried.

Every­thing he wrote after­ward met with near-uni­ver­sal acclaim—bringing ear­li­er work like No One Writes to the Colonel, Leaf Storm, short sto­ry col­lec­tions like A Very Old Man with Enor­mous Wings, and decades of jour­nal­ism and non-fic­tion writing—to a much wider read­er­ship than he’d ever had before.

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s revised type­script of Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, 1980.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

After Gre­go­ry Rabassa’s 1970 trans­la­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, waves of “mag­i­cal real­ist” and Latin Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture from the 50s and 60s swept through the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, much of it in trans­la­tion for the first time. Gar­cía Márquez declared the Eng­lish ver­sion of his nov­el bet­ter than the orig­i­nal, and affec­tion­ate­ly called Rabas­sa, “the best Latin Amer­i­can writer in the Eng­lish lan­guage.” Upwards of 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide now know the sto­ry of the Buendía fam­i­ly. “Pub­lished in 44 lan­guages,” The Atlantic notes, “it remains the most trans­lat­ed lit­er­ary work in Span­ish after Don Quixote, and a sur­vey among inter­na­tion­al writ­ers ranks it as the nov­el that has most shaped world lit­er­a­ture over the past three decades.”

The sto­ry of the book’s com­po­si­tion is even more fas­ci­nat­ing. In the Democ­ra­cy Now trib­ute video below, you can hear Gar­cía Márquez him­self tell it. And at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, we can see arti­facts like the pho­to­graph of the author at the top, in his home­town of Ara­cat­a­ca, Colom­bia in March of 1966, dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude. We can see scanned images of type­script like the page above from Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told.


In all, the archive “includes man­u­script drafts of pub­lished and unpub­lished works, research mate­r­i­al, pho­tographs, scrap­books, cor­re­spon­dence, clip­pings, note­books, screen­plays, print­ed mate­r­i­al, ephemera, and an audio record­ing of Gar­cía Márquez’s accep­tance speech for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1982… approx­i­mate­ly 27,500 items from Gar­cía Márquez’s papers.” These doc­u­ments and pho­tos, like that fur­ther down of young jour­nal­ist Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro and, just below, of the sea­soned famous nov­el­ist, with her broth­er, tell the sto­ry of a writer who lived his life steeped in the pol­i­tics and his­to­ry of Latin Amer­i­ca, and who trans­lat­ed those sto­ries faith­ful­ly for the rest of the world.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Fidel Cas­tro, undat­ed.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Enter, search, and explore the archive here. This amaz­ing resource opens up to the gen­er­al pub­lic a wealth of mate­r­i­al pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able to schol­ars and librar­i­ans. The project fea­tures “text-search­able Eng­lish- and Span­ish-lan­guage mate­ri­als, took 18 months and involved the efforts of librar­i­ans, archivists, stu­dents, tech­nol­o­gy staff mem­bers and con­ser­va­tors.” Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, 18 months is the time it took Gar­cía Márquez to write One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, bar­ri­cad­ed in his office while he ran out of mon­ey, pulled for­ward by some irre­sistible force. “I did not stop writ­ing for a sin­gle day for 18 straight months, until I fin­ished the book,” he tells us. As always, we believe him.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro, 1957.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s Extra­or­di­nary Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech, “The Soli­tude Of Latin Amer­i­ca,” in Eng­lish & Span­ish (1982)

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Describes the Cul­tur­al Mer­its of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

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

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New Iranian Video Game, Engare, Explores the Elegant Geometry of Islamic Art

in Art, Video Games | December 13th, 2017

The inter­sec­tion of math­e­mat­ics and art holds out great poten­tial for not just end­less dis­cov­er­ies but deeply mem­o­rable cre­ations. The 20th-cen­tu­ry vision­ary M.C. Esch­er under­stood that, but so did the Islam­ic artists of cen­turies before that inspired him. They’ve also inspired the Iran­ian game devel­op­er Mah­di Bahra­mi, whose newest effort Engare stands at the cross of math­e­mat­ics, art, and tech­nol­o­gy, a puz­zle video game that chal­lenges its play­ers to com­plete the kind of bril­liant­ly col­or­ful, math­e­mat­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, and at once both strik­ing­ly sim­ple and strik­ing­ly com­plex pat­terns seen in tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic art and design.

“The leap from the bare bones pro­to­type to it becom­ing a game about cre­at­ing art was a small one, giv­en that Islam­ic art is steeped in math­e­mat­i­cal knowl­edge,” writes Kill Screen’s Chris Priest­man.

“The visu­al flair of Islam­ic art also helps to fur­ther ensure that Engare doesn’t ever feel ‘dry.’ Yes, it’s a game about math, but there are no dull equa­tions to solve. Yet, the same ideas that those equa­tions belong to are approached in Engare, just from a dif­fer­ent angle and one that Bahra­mi reck­ons can also evoke emo­tions. You can see this in mes­mer­iz­ing action in the game­play trail­er just above.

“There are geo­met­ri­cal shapes that make us feel hap­py, pat­terns that make some­one nervous/hypnotized, the tiling of a ceil­ing can make some­one feel lone­ly,” Priest­man quotes Bahra­mi as writ­ing. He’s done this sort of emo­tion­al think­ing about visu­al math­e­mat­ics before: his pre­vi­ous game Farsh “had you rolling out Per­sian car­pets in such a way as to cre­ate paths across the lev­els,” and his next one Tan­dis is “inspired by Celtic shapes, and is a wild and unpre­dictable exper­i­ment in topo­graph­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.” If you’d like to give Engare a try, you can get it from its web­site or on Steam. When the 21st cen­tu­ry’s M.C. Esch­er dis­cov­ers Islam­ic art, will he do it through the medi­um of video games?

via Kill Screen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Back to Bed: A New Video Game Inspired by the Sur­re­al Art­work of Esch­er, Dali & Magritte

Cal­i­forni­um: New Video Game Lets You Expe­ri­ence the Sur­re­al World of Philip K. Dick

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

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

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10 Reasons Why Hannibal’s Military Genius Still Captures Our Imagination Today

in History | December 13th, 2017

Note: This is a guest post from Patrick Hunt, author of the new book, Han­ni­bal.

Han­ni­bal Bar­ca, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Han­ni­bal, lived and waged war over two thou­sand years ago – but is he still rel­e­vant in a world where the Romans are long gone? His famous cross­ing of the Alps in win­ter with an intre­pid army and ele­phants is unfor­get­table, but are his bril­liant maneu­vers and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing still worth exam­in­ing? Despite the enig­ma of this great Carthagin­ian gen­er­al being unable to pre­serve Carthage after him, Hannibal’s tac­tics and meth­ods offer great lessons not only for mil­i­tary his­to­ry but also for civ­i­liza­tion at large. His­to­ry reveals the Romans had a des­tiny of world con­quest, but what is less well known is how much Han­ni­bal changed the ways in which the Romans con­duct­ed the wars that even­tu­al­ly brought them Pax Romana, a peace often forged out of vio­lence after a bru­tal expan­sion that killed and enslaved mil­lions, includ­ing Carthage a cen­tu­ry after Han­ni­bal.

Before Han­ni­bal, Rome was hemmed in by seas on almost all sides and could hard­ly expand except north­ward into Etr­uscan and Celtic ter­ri­to­ry; acquir­ing Sici­ly was Rome’s first step out­side its main­land. But Han­ni­bal forced Rome to fight a very dif­fer­ent kind of war; his vic­to­ries taught them how exploitable their mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was, and he pres­sured Rome to change for sur­vival. More rel­e­vant, while Han­ni­bal did­n’t invent spy­craft, he seem­ing­ly used it more effec­tive­ly than any oth­er ancient gen­er­al by his care­ful con­tin­gency plan­ning. Han­ni­bal set prece­dents for spy agen­cies and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and how to stage bat­tles in any kind of ter­rain and weather–templates that cur­rent nations still study and fol­low. Every mil­i­tary acad­e­my today offers detailed class­es and sem­i­nars on Hannibal’s tac­tics. I am fre­quent­ly invit­ed to lec­ture on Hannibal’s intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in venues like the U.S. Naval War Col­lege, where class­es are filled with Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force offi­cers along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. That is also why the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety spon­sored my Han­ni­bal field research – send­ing me to every Han­ni­bal bat­tle site and to Carthage in Tunisia, along with Spain, France, Italy and even Turkey where Han­ni­bal con­clud­ed his dra­mat­ic life — and also why Simon and Schus­ter pub­lished my biog­ra­phy Han­ni­bal this sum­mer. Here are some nuggets from 20 years of Han­ni­bal field­work found in this new book.

  1. Han­ni­bal stud­ied his oppo­nents very care­ful­ly, employ­ing every means of gath­er­ing intel­li­gence in ene­my camps, includ­ing spies from allied pop­u­la­tions who pro­vi­sioned the Romans.
  2. When nec­es­sary, Han­ni­bal paid for cred­i­ble intel­li­gence with sil­ver sup­plied from mines in Carthagin­ian Spain; as long as that sil­ver last­ed to pay for good intel, he was unbeat­able. Once Rome con­quered Spain’s sil­ver mines, Hannibal’s abil­i­ty to gath­er and exploit such mil­i­tary intel­li­gence was cut off. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion to Han­ni­bal’s access to sil­ver for intel or mer­ce­nary use and his bril­liant vic­to­ries.
  3. Han­ni­bal usu­al­ly went for the unpre­dictable sur­prise maneu­ver that had nev­er been seen before, includ­ing cross­ing the Alps in win­ter and forc­ing the Romans to fight in the dead of win­ter and at night.
  4. Han­ni­bal got into the minds of his ene­mies with psy-ops, expos­ing their weak­ness­es, trig­ger­ing their anger and van­i­ty, and mak­ing them fall into his traps; under­min­ing the con­fi­dence of the Roman foot sol­diers in big bat­tles and par­a­lyz­ing them with fear. Romans taught their chil­dren to fear Han­ni­bal as the bogey­man – always warn­ing in crises for cen­turies that “Han­ni­bal is at the Gates”.
  5. Han­ni­bal proved it’s not the size of your army but how well pre­pared it is. He epit­o­mizes the old adage, “Bet­ter 10 men wise­ly led than 100 with a fool at the head.” Even if aus­tere, Hannibal’s lead­er­ship was leg­en­dar­i­ly charis­mat­ic – he even slept with his men on the ground wrapped in a blan­ket. He taught his men the bru­tal­i­ty of war with like­ly less PTSD than his ene­mies because he always pre­pared them with ideas like “fight or die.” Much lat­er, Machi­avel­li even allud­ed to Han­ni­bal in The Prince with the con­cept that it’s “bet­ter to be feared than loved.”
  6. Han­ni­bal effec­tive­ly used the most mobile units pos­si­ble with his Numid­i­an cav­al­ry, often out­flank­ing the Roman infantry on mul­ti­ple cam­paigns, espe­cial­ly in his famous “dou­ble envel­op­ment” or where he fin­ished bat­tles with ambush­es from the rear where there was no escape.
  7. Because his armies were almost always small­er – espe­cial­ly after his dif­fi­cult Alps cross­ing when he lost many sol­diers – Han­ni­bal aug­ment­ed his arse­nal with weapons of nature: forc­ing the Romans to cross the frozen Treb­bia Riv­er, hid­ing his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, dri­ving cap­tured cat­tle with torch­es tied to their horns to fool the Romans into think­ing he was on the move at night at Voltur­nus, mak­ing the Romans face the blind­ing dust and sand blow­ing from Africa at Can­nae. He even con­fused the Romans at Can­nae with some of his troops out­fit­ted with cap­tured Roman gear.
  8. Sim­i­lar­ly, after study­ing ter­rain and topog­ra­phy, Han­ni­bal always chose his bat­tle sites when pos­si­ble for the best pos­si­ble advan­tage, espe­cial­ly con­strict­ing the larg­er Roman armies where they would be unable to out­flank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc., also choos­ing ter­rain where he could hide ambush­es in near­by forests.
  9. Han­ni­bal sage­ly exploit­ed the 2‑consul Roman alter­nat­ing com­mand rotat­ed one day between an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vet­er­an and the next day with a polit­i­cal appointee pop­ulist lead­ing. On at least three occa­sions, Han­ni­bal anni­hi­lat­ed the Romans on the days when fools were the sup­posed com­man­ders. The fol­low­ing Roman gen­er­a­tions learned the hard les­son from this and the Sen­ate cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al army com­mand­ed by vet­er­an lead­er­ship. Even­tu­al­ly Rome also amped up its cav­al­ry and became less depen­dent on infantry thanks to Han­ni­bal.
  10. Han­ni­bal taught his one for­mi­da­ble Roman oppo­nent Sci­pio how to imple­ment bril­liant tac­tics, how to mine data from mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and how to ben­e­fit from Spain’s mer­ce­nary sil­ver to bribe the Numid­i­ans to aban­don Carthage. Sci­pio – the only one to beat Han­ni­bal — respect­ed Han­ni­bal more than any oth­er Roman because he learned so much from him. It’s one of the great ironies in his­to­ry that Han­ni­bal is appar­ent­ly more famous than Sci­pio, and it’s not only because of cross­ing the Alps with ele­phants: ulti­mate­ly the Romans did­n’t appre­ci­ate a vic­to­ri­ous Sci­pio any more than the Carthagini­ans appre­ci­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous Han­ni­bal. Han­ni­bal will remain a pro­found enig­ma in that he could not ulti­mate­ly win the war with Rome, yet he could win so many bril­liant bat­tles with incred­i­bly mem­o­rable tac­tics still taught today.

The Roman book Strat­a­ge­ma­ta by Fron­ti­nus — a com­pi­la­tion of mil­i­tary strat­a­gems — has more clever rus­es of Han­ni­bal than any oth­er com­man­der up to that time. His­toric great com­man­ders or offi­cers who stud­ied or emu­lat­ed Han­ni­bal include but are not lim­it­ed to Julius Cae­sar, Belis­ar­ius, Charle­magne, Napoleon, Suvorov, Kutu­zov, von Clause­witz, Mont­gomery, Lid­dell Hart, Rom­mel, Pat­ton and Schwarzkopf, among many oth­ers. Even the term blitzkrieg allud­ed to Han­ni­bal’s clan (Bar­ca = “light­ning”) and his rapid advance in his inva­sion of Italy.”  So, of course, Han­ni­bal is at least as rel­e­vant as any oth­er mem­o­rable per­son in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in a time of world chaos and rethink­ing strate­gic alle­giances.

Post­script: Han­ni­bal (Simon and Schus­ter 2017) has been acclaimed in reviews from The New York Times, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, a starred Kirkus Review and many oth­ers, and also nom­i­nat­ed in the Kirkus List of Best Non­fic­tion Books of 2017.

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Academic Journal Devotes an Entire Issue to Prince’s Life & Music: Read and Download It for Free

in Music | December 12th, 2017

Image by Ann Alt­house, via Flickr Com­mons

For decades now, aca­d­e­mics have made pop­u­lar cul­ture a wor­thy area of study, from hip hop, com­ic books, and Hol­ly­wood film and tele­vi­sion to video games and inter­net cul­ture. And for just as long, there have been those who sneered at the dis­ci­plines emerg­ing around pop cul­ture stud­ies. But real­ly, what are we to do with some­one like Prince, some­one so clear­ly, pro­found­ly, a musi­cal genius, with such an out­sized impact on pop­u­lar cul­ture, that he can­not help being a major his­tor­i­cal fig­ure just a year and a half after his death?

Devote an entire jour­nal issue to him, of course, as the Jour­nal of African Amer­i­can Stud­ies did this past Sep­tem­ber. This is not, by far, Prince’s first appear­ance in a schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tion. And a slew of aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences devot­ed to the artist this past year has raised him to the aca­d­e­m­ic sta­tus achieved by oth­er megas­tars like Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd. This spe­cial jour­nal issue, how­ev­er, may be one of the most com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tions of Prince schol­ar­ship you’re like­ly to find online. And unlike the major­i­ty of aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles, these are all free. Just click the “Down­load PDF” link under each title found on this page.

The issue was pub­lished to coin­cide with the 40th anniver­sary of Prince’s sign­ing with Warn­er Broth­ers in 1977, the day he “turned pro.” The fol­low­ing year, he released the debut album For You, to mod­est crit­i­cal suc­cess. While it didn’t make him a star overnight, For You announced him as a vir­tu­oso, “as Prince played every instru­ment and sang all the vocals, some­thing unheard of, then and now.” Prince’s musi­cal skill could be tak­en for grant­ed. It is easy to do with an artist who recon­fig­ured cul­ture in so many ways that had noth­ing to do with play­ing gui­tar or piano.

Prince’s rad­i­cal, if very com­pli­cat­ed, rede­f­i­n­i­tion of gen­der and cul­tur­al expres­sion pro­vides an exam­ple, writes Deirdre T. Guion Peo­ples, of “Opti­mal Dis­tinc­tive­ness,” in the way he “nego­ti­at­ed his social iden­ti­ty.” He lived an ardent, con­sis­tent­ly utopi­an vision in his music and also in his life; and his “sin­gu­lar vision of utopia cast women as essen­tial to its cre­ation,” notes H. Zahra Cald­well. And Prince’s “cre­ative prac­tices,” James Gor­don Williams argues, “were linked to his covert, but avid, sup­port of social jus­tice ini­tia­tives that sup­port black human­i­ty.”

These ten arti­cles elab­o­rate things we thought we knew about Prince, but maybe didn’t, and intro­duce us to aspects of his life and work we’ve nev­er con­sid­ered. They are joined by sev­en essays and per­son­al reflec­tions and two book reviews. Read online or down­load the spe­cial Prince issue here.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd Get Their First Schol­ar­ly Jour­nals and Aca­d­e­m­ic Con­fer­ences

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

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Brian Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Recording Studio Radically Changed Music: Hear His Influential Lecture “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool” (1979)

in Music | December 12th, 2017

The rapid devel­op­ment of stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy in the 1960s could seem like some­thing of an avalanche, start­ed, say, by Phil Spec­tor, expand­ed by Bri­an Wil­son, who spurred the Bea­t­les and George Mar­tin, who inspired dozens of artists to exper­i­ment in the stu­dio, includ­ing Jimi Hen­drix. By the time we get to the 70s it begins to seem like one man dri­ves for­ward the progress of stu­dio as instru­ment, Bri­an Eno—from his work with Robert Fripp, to the refine­ment of almost ful­ly syn­thet­ic ambi­ent music, to his ground­break­ing work on David Bowie’s “Berlin Tril­o­gy” and Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light in 1980.

Eno called him­self a “non-musi­cian” who val­ued the­o­ry over prac­tice. But we know this to be untrue. He’s a pro­found­ly hyp­not­ic, engag­ing com­pos­er, play­er, and even singer, as well as a vir­tu­oso prac­ti­tion­er of the stu­dio record­ing arts, which, by 1979, he had honed suf­fi­cient­ly to expound on in a lec­ture titled “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool.” By ’79, when Eno deliv­ered the talk cap­tured above at the Inau­gur­al New Music Amer­i­can Fes­ti­val in New York, he had already done so three times. In 1983, Down Beat mag­a­zine pub­lished the influ­en­tial lec­ture (read it here).

Eno dis­plays the crit­i­cal acu­men of Wal­ter Ben­jamin in dis­cussing the his­to­ry and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of his art form, with philo­soph­i­cal­ly punchy lines like his take on jazz: “the inter­est­ing thing about impro­vi­sa­tions is that they become more inter­est­ing as you lis­ten to them more times. What seemed like an almost arbi­trary col­li­sion of events comes to seem very mean­ing­ful on relis­ten­ing.” A very Eno-like obser­va­tion, under­lin­ing his cen­tral the­sis, which he deliv­ers in a mea­sured series of claus­es to con­struct a sen­tence as long as some of his com­po­si­tions, but one, nonethe­less, with per­fect clar­i­ty:

In this lec­ture, I want to indi­cate that record­ed music, in cer­tain of its aspects, is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent art form from tra­di­tion­al music, and that the con­tem­po­rary com­pos­er, peo­ple like me, those who work direct­ly in rela­tion to stu­dios and mul­ti-track­ing and in rela­tion to record­ing tape, are, in fact, engaged in a dif­fer­ent, a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, busi­ness, from tra­di­tion­al com­posers.

How does Eno make his case? Record­ed music sub­sti­tutes the “space dimen­sion” for the “time dimen­sion,” and thus has a “detach­able aspect,” it’s portable—and nev­er more so than now. Eno seems to antic­i­pate the cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal moment in 1979 when he says, “not only is the whole his­to­ry of our music with us now, in some sense, on record, but the whole glob­al musi­cal cul­ture is also avail­able.” This results in a break with the Euro­pean clas­si­cal tra­di­tion as com­posers acquire “a cul­ture unbound­ed, both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly.”

Before the devel­op­ment of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, lim­i­ta­tions of time and space ensured that every musi­cal per­for­mance was a one of a kind event, over for­ev­er when it end­ed. In the 20th cen­tu­ry, not only could record­ing engi­neers repro­duce a per­for­mance infi­nite­ly, but with the medi­um of tape, they could cut, splice, rearrange, manip­u­late, and oth­er­wise edit it togeth­er. With mul­ti-track­ing, they could cre­ate a uni­fied whole from sev­er­al dis­parate record­ings, often from dif­fer­ent times and places. And, as the audi­ence for record­ed music was a mass con­sumer mar­ket, pop­u­lar musi­cal tastes, to some extent, began to shift the kind of music that got made. (Eno has since expressed high­ly neg­a­tive crit­i­cism of con­tem­po­rary music that relies too heav­i­ly on stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy.)

Eno begins rather dri­ly, but once he gets going, the lec­ture becomes total­ly engross­ing. He cov­ers the mix­ing of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s Fresh, dis­cuss­es Sly Dun­bar and Lee “Scratch” Perry’s stu­dio inven­tions, and those of his own Anoth­er Green World and Music for Air­ports. He offers a crash course on basic stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy, and describes own­ing a record­ing of a record­ed tele­phone mes­sage from Ger­many that sought appre­hen­sion of the Baad­er Mein­hoff gang by play­ing a record­ing of one of their voic­es. He may be one of the most cool­ly dis­pas­sion­ate artists in mod­ern pop­u­lar music, but Bri­an Eno is nev­er bor­ing. Read a tran­script of the lec­ture here.

via Techcrunch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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

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Stream 74 Sun Ra Albums Free Online: Decades of “Space Jazz” and Other Forms of Intergalactic, Afrofuturistic Musical Creativity

in Music | December 12th, 2017

He was born Her­man Poole Blount, but the many who appre­ci­ate his music and the oth­er­world­ly phi­los­o­phy behind it know him only as Sun Ra. Or rather, they don’t just appre­ci­ate it but find them­selves trans­port­ed to oth­er places by it, even places locat­ed far beyond this Earth. Often space, as the title of the 1975 Afro­fu­tur­ist sci­ence-fic­tion film that stars Sun Ra states, is the place, and if you seek to take such an inter­stel­lar jour­ney through jazz music your­self, doing so has become eas­i­er than ever: just steer your ship over to Band­camp, where you can stream the music of Sun Ra and his ever-shift­ing “Arkestra” for free.

Since you’ll have no few­er than 74 albums to choose from, you might con­sid­er chart­ing your voy­age with Band­camp Dai­ly’s guide to Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s pro­lif­ic and var­ied out­put.

It begins with his “Chica­go Space Jazz” years in the 1950s, many of the record­ings from which “sound a lot like jazz with tra­di­tion­al forms, rich ensem­ble writ­ing, and plen­ty of swing,” but which already show such char­ac­ter­is­tic choic­es and tools as “pecu­liar inter­vals and jux­ta­po­si­tions, the new­ly-devel­oped elec­tric piano, lots of per­cus­sion, extra bari­tone sax, group shouts, and so forth,” as well as the influ­ence of “exot­i­ca and mood music,” the Bible, “occult phi­los­o­phy,” and cos­mol­o­gy.

The guide con­tin­ues on to Sun Ra’s time in New York in the 1960s, where “the ‘space jazz’ or quirky hard-bop of the Arkestra’s Chica­go days starts to morph, reflect­ing the new ‘free jazz’ ideas being devel­oped lit­er­al­ly all around them by Albert Ayler, Ornette Cole­man, John Coltrane, and oth­ers.” This peri­od cul­mi­nates in The Mag­ic City, “a near­ly 28-minute tone poem, col­lec­tive­ly impro­vised under Ra’s cues and direc­tion, with­out pre­con­ceived themes; at times it is brood­ing and spare, at oth­ers it is full-on screech­ing sax­o­phones.” There­after came a time of solo and small-group work, and then of mind-bend­ing live per­for­mances that the Arkestra, under the direc­tion of long­time sax­o­phon­ist Mar­shall Allen, con­tin­ues to put on to this day.

Sun Ra him­self ascend­ed to anoth­er plane almost a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, but if you believe the elab­o­rate mythol­o­gy that remains insep­a­ra­ble from his musi­cal work, he still exists, in some form and in some galaxy, no doubt imag­in­ing new kinds of jazz that the mere human mind may nev­er suf­fi­cient­ly evolve to com­pre­hend. Stream­ing these dozens of albums that Sun Ra left us on this Earth, you may not imme­di­ate­ly think to com­pare them with the music of David Bowie, but as far as 20th-cen­tu­ry out­er space-ori­ent­ed self-rein­ven­tors go, those two are in a class of their own. As Blount became Sun Ra in the 1940s, so David Jones trans­formed from Zig­gy Star­dust into the Thin White Duke into Aladdin Sane in the 1970s. Both remained musi­cal exper­i­menters all their lives, as their discogra­phies will always attest, but when Sun Ra rein­vent­ed him­self, he stayed rein­vent­ed.

Stream Sun Ra’s albums at Band­camp, and know that you can also pur­chase dig­i­tal down­loads of these albums (in MP3 and FLAC for­mats) for a rea­son­able price.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Togeth­er in Con­cert (1986)

A Col­lec­tion of Sun Ra’s Busi­ness Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This World

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

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The Future of Blues Is in Good Hands: Watch 12-Year-Old Toby Lee Trade Riffs with Chicago Blues Guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks

in Music | December 12th, 2017

 

Ear­li­er this year, we high­light­ed some footage from 1989, show­ing then 12-year-old Joe Bona­mas­sa wow­ing crowds and announc­ing his arrival on the blues scene. Years from now, we might look back in sim­i­lar fash­ion at this footage of 12-year-old blues prodi­gy Toby Lee. Record­ed last month at the Blues Heav­en Fes­ti­val in Den­mark, this video fea­tures Lee trad­ing riffs with Chica­go blues gui­tarist Ron­nie Bak­er Brooks. It runs a good five minutes–enough to con­vince you that the future of the blues is in good hands.

By the way, Toby has a Youtube chan­nel where you can watch him evolve as a musi­cian. Below, see one of his ear­li­er clips, where, as a 9 or 10-year-old, he pounds out some Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an in a cow­boy hat and tiger suit.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 12-Year-Old Joe Bona­mas­sa Shred the Blues as He Opens for B.B. King in 1989

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

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Depression & Melancholy: Animated Videos Explain the Crucial Difference Between Everyday Sadness and Clinical Depression

in Animation, Poetry, Psychology, TED Talks | December 11th, 2017

“Depres­sion,” the TED-Ed video above informs us, “is the lead­ing cause of dis­abil­i­ty in the world.” This may be a hard fact to swal­low, the prod­uct, we might think, of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal adver­tis­ing. We all feel down from time to time, we think. “Then cir­cum­stances change, and those sad feel­ings dis­ap­pear.” Isn’t it like this for every­one? It is not. “Clin­i­cal depres­sion is dif­fer­ent. It’s a med­ical dis­or­der, and it won’t go away just because you want it to.”

Depres­sion can linger for up to two weeks, and become so debil­i­tat­ing that suf­fer­ers can­not work or play. It inter­feres with impor­tant rela­tion­ships and “can have a lot of dif­fer­ent symp­toms: a low mood, loss of inter­est in things you’d nor­mal­ly enjoy, changes in appetite, feel­ing worth­less or exces­sive­ly guilty,” rest­less­ness and insom­nia, or extreme lethar­gy, poor con­cen­tra­tion, and pos­si­ble thoughts of sui­cide. But sure­ly we can hear a paid pro­mo­tion­al voice when the nar­ra­tor states, “If you have at least 5 of those symp­toms, accord­ing to psy­chi­atric guide­lines, you qual­i­fy for a diag­no­sis of depres­sion.”

What we don’t typ­i­cal­ly hear about in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ads are the mea­sur­able phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes depres­sion writes in the brain, includ­ing decreased brain mat­ter in the frontal lobe and atro­phy of the hip­pocam­pus. These effects are mea­sur­able in humans and rats, in study after study after study. But while most of us know the names of a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter or two these days, not even neu­ro­sci­en­tists ful­ly under­stand the biol­o­gy of depres­sion. They do know that some com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion, ther­a­py, and, in extreme cas­es elec­tro­con­vul­sive treat­ment, can allow peo­ple to more ful­ly expe­ri­ence life.

Peo­ple in treat­ment will still feel “down” on occa­sion, just like every­one does. But depres­sion, the explain­er wants us to under­stand, should nev­er be com­pared to ordi­nary sad­ness. Its effects on behav­ior and brain health are too wide-rang­ing, per­va­sive, per­sis­tent, and detri­men­tal. These effects can be invis­i­ble, which adds to an unfor­tu­nate social stig­ma that dis­suades peo­ple from seek­ing treat­ment. The more we talk about depres­sion open­ly, rather than treat­ing as it as a shame­ful secret, the more like­ly peo­ple at risk will be to seek help.

Just as depres­sion can­not be alle­vi­at­ed by triv­i­al­iz­ing or ignor­ing it, the con­di­tion does not respond to being roman­ti­cized. While, indeed, many a famous painter, poet, actor, etc. has suf­fered from clin­i­cal depression—and made it a part of their art—their exam­ples should not sug­gest to us that artists shouldn’t get treat­ment. Sad­ness is nev­er triv­ial.

Unlike phys­i­cal pain, it is dif­fi­cult, for exam­ple, to pin­point the direct caus­es of sad­ness. As the short video above demon­strates, the assump­tion that sad­ness is caused by exter­nal events arose rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly. The humoral sys­tem of the ancient Greeks treat­ed all sad­ness as a bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Greek physi­cians believed it was an expres­sion of black bile, or “melaina kole,” from which we derive the word “melan­choly.” It seems we’ve come full cir­cle, in a way. Ancient humoral the­o­rists rec­om­mend­ed nutri­tion, med­ical treat­ment, and phys­i­cal exer­cise as treat­ments for melan­cho­lia, just as doc­tors do today for depres­sion.

But melan­choly is a much broad­er term, not a sci­en­tif­ic des­ig­na­tion; it is a col­lec­tion of ideas about sad­ness that span thou­sands of years. Near­ly all of those ideas include some sense that sad­ness is an essen­tial expe­ri­ence. “If you’ve nev­er felt melan­choly,” the nar­ra­tor says, “you’ve missed out on part of what it means to be human.” Thinkers have described melan­cho­lia as a pre­cur­sor to, or inevitable result of, acquir­ing wis­dom. One key exam­ple, Robert Burton’s 1621 text The Anato­my of Melan­choly, “the apogee of Renais­sance schol­ar­ship,” set the tone for dis­cus­sions of melan­choly for the next few cen­turies.

The scientific/philosophical/literary text argues, “he that increaseth wis­dom, increaseth sor­row,” a sen­ti­ment the Roman­tic poets turned on its head. Before them came John Mil­ton, whose 1645 poem Il Penseroso address­es melan­choly as “thou God­des, sage and holy… Sober, sted­fast, and demure.” The deity Melan­choly over­sees the con­tem­pla­tive life and reveals essen­tial truths through “Gor­geous Tragedy.”

One of the poem’s lofti­est themes showed the way for­ward for the Roman­tics: “The poet who seeks to attain the high­est lev­el of cre­ative expres­sion must embrace the divine,” write Mil­ton schol­ars Kather­ine Lynch and Thomas H. Lux­on, “which can only be accom­plished by fol­low­ing the path set out in Il Penseroso.” The divine, in this case, takes the form of sad­ness per­son­i­fied. Yet this poem can­not be read in iso­la­tion: its com­pan­ion, L’Allegro, prais­es Mirth, and of sad­ness says, “Hence loathed Melan­choly / Of Cer­berus, and black­est mid­night born, in Sty­gian Cave for­lorn / ‘Mongst hor­rid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

Rather than con­tra­dict each oth­er, these two char­ac­ter­i­za­tions speak to the ambiva­lent atti­tudes, and vast­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, humans have about sad­ness. Fleet­ing bouts of melan­choly can be sweet, touch­ing, and beau­ti­ful, inspir­ing art, music, and poet­ry. Sad­ness can force us to reck­on with life’s unpleas­ant­ness rather than deny or avoid it. On the oth­er hand, in its most extreme, chron­i­cal­ly intractable forms, such as what we now call clin­i­cal depres­sion, sad­ness can destroy our capac­i­ty to act, to appre­ci­ate beau­ty and learn impor­tant lessons, mark­ing the crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between a uni­ver­sal exis­ten­tial con­di­tion and a, thank­ful­ly, treat­able phys­i­cal dis­ease.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

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

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Watch “The “Art of Flying,” a Short Film Capturing the Wondrous Murmurations of the Common Starling

in Nature | December 11th, 2017

In the tra­di­tion of Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dish, we start the week–before it even gets a bit hectic–with a Men­tal Health break. Above, watch The Art of Fly­ing, Jan van Ijken’s short film that cap­tures the mys­te­ri­ous flights–or murmurations–of the Com­mon Star­ling. A blurb accom­pa­ny­ing the film adds a bit more con­text:

It is still unknown how the thou­sands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms with­out col­lid­ing. Every night the star­lings gath­er at dusk to per­form their stun­ning air show. Because of the rel­a­tive­ly warm win­ter of 2014/2015, the star­lings stayed in the Nether­lands instead of migrat­ing south­wards. This gave film­mak­er Jan van IJken the oppor­tu­ni­ty to film one of the most spec­tac­u­lar and amaz­ing nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na on earth.

Also, over at janvanijken.com, you’ll find a longer sev­en-minute ver­sion of this film, fea­tur­ing “won­der­ful close-ups and a spec­tac­u­lar final scene.” The €2,99 fee for watch­ing that full-length film goes toward sup­port­ing van Ijken’s work as an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er.

Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Bird Bal­let in South­ern France

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The Proof That Mel Blanc–the Voice Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Porky Pig–Was a Genius

in Animation, Comedy, Film | December 11th, 2017

Bugs Bun­ny is a tal­ent­ed mim­ic.

His effort­less imper­son­ations of the celebri­ties of his day are not always politic (see Al Jol­son) but  there’s no deny­ing that his impres­sions of Lib­er­ace, Edgar G. Robin­son, Bing Cros­by, and Hol­ly­wood Bowl con­duc­tor Leopold Stokows­ki intro­duced these per­son­ages to sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

Clear­ly he was not work­ing alone. In the 1981 inter­view with David Let­ter­man below, Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn and many oth­er ani­mat­ed favorites demon­strat­ed his ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Blanc shaped the char­ac­ters from the get go, invent­ing voic­es for char­ac­ter sketch­es and sto­ry­boards, though it was clear to him that tough nut Bugs should have an equal­ly tough  accent — either Brook­lyn or the Bronx. (Rather than split hairs, he invent­ed a hybrid.)

Hank Azaria, who is as cen­tral to The Simp­sons’ mythol­o­gy as Blanc is to Warn­er Broth­ers, mar­vels (up top) at Blanc’s abil­i­ty to mim­ic one char­ac­ter imi­tat­ing anoth­er, as Bugs and Daffy Duck do above.

Region­al­ism steered many of Blanc’s most mem­o­rable cre­ations, from Foghorn Leghon’s Texas drawl to French lover­boy, Pepe Le Pew.

Nice Mau­rice Cheva­lier, Bugs…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Per­forms the Voic­es of Bugs Bun­ny and Oth­er Car­toon Leg­ends

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Map of Biology: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Biology Fit Together

in Biology | December 11th, 2017

Of all the sci­ence class­es required through­out pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school, most stu­dents seem to like biol­o­gy the best. Maybe, deal­ing as it does with such famil­iar things as plants, ani­mals, and human beings, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of biol­o­gy has to do with its clear rel­e­vance to their life — or more to the point, to life itself. But any biol­o­gy-lov­ing young­ster who decides to go take their stud­ies more deeply into their favorite sub­ject must soon­er or lat­er make a dif­fi­cult choice: what kind of biol­o­gy will they focus on? Bio­physics, cel­lu­lar biol­o­gy, ecol­o­gy, envi­ron­men­tal biol­o­gy, bio­me­chan­ics, mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, bio­chem­istry, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy… the list seems end­less.

So instead of look­ing at the world of biol­o­gy as a list, why not look as it as a map? Domain of Sci­ence, the Youtube chan­nel pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for their map of math­e­mat­ics, map of physics, map of chem­istry, and map of com­put­er sci­ence, have just recent­ly put togeth­er one for biol­o­gy, a video tour of which appears above.

It begins with “the most basic unit in the foun­da­tion of all life,” the cell, con­tin­ues on to mol­e­c­u­lar, chem­i­cal, and phys­i­cal process­es, then to genes, pop­u­la­tions, anato­my, the immune sys­tem, genet­ic engi­neer­ing, pale­on­tol­ogy, and even the search for life in out­er space, with many oth­er stops along the way besides.

“If there’s one word that describes biol­o­gy, it’s com­plex­i­ty,” says series cre­ator and nar­ra­tor Dominic Wal­li­man. “There’s a huge amount we still don’t under­stand about how life works, how it start­ed, and how it end­ed up with intel­li­gent apes like us who are able to look back and try and work out. I feel like we’ll be mak­ing new bio­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies for many, many years to come.” Encour­ag­ing words for those stu­dents now con­sid­er­ing going into one of the many bio­log­i­cal sci­ences, although they’ll still have to decide exact­ly which bio­log­i­cal sci­ence to go into — bear­ing in mind how many of those sub­fields have yet to emerge. It does­n’t take that intel­li­gent an ape to under­stand that, before long, biol­o­gy’s going to need a big­ger map.

You can pur­chase Domain of Sci­ence’s maps as posters here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Com­put­er Sci­ence: New Ani­ma­tion Presents a Sur­vey of Com­put­er Sci­ence, from Alan Tur­ing to “Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty”

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Physics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Physics Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Chem­istry: New Ani­ma­tion Sum­ma­rizes the Entire Field of Chem­istry in 12 Min­utes

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

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

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