Bertrand Russell Remembers His Face-to-Face Encounter with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

in History, Philosophy | April 30th, 2020

When the Bol­she­viks seized con­trol of Rus­sia in the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, Bertrand Rus­sell saw it as “one of the great hero­ic events of the world’s his­to­ry.”

A renowned philoso­pher and math­e­mati­cian, Rus­sell was also a com­mit­ted social­ist. As he would write in his 1920 book The Prac­tice and The­o­ry of Bol­she­vism:

By far the most impor­tant aspect of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion is as an attempt to real­ize Com­mu­nism. I believe that Com­mu­nism is nec­es­sary to the world, and I believe that the hero­ism of Rus­sia has fired men’s hopes in a way which was essen­tial to the real­iza­tion of Com­mu­nism in the future. Regard­ed as a splen­did attempt, with­out which ulti­mate suc­cess would have been very improb­a­ble, Bol­she­vism deserves the grat­i­tude and admi­ra­tion of all the pro­gres­sive part of mankind.

But despite his ear­ly admi­ra­tion for the “splen­did attempt,” Rus­sell found much in Sovi­et Rus­sia to be con­cerned about. Specif­i­cal­ly, he was appalled by the rigid­ly doc­tri­naire mind­set of the Bol­she­viks — their zeal for quot­ing Marx like it was Holy gospel — and the cru­el tyran­ny they were will­ing to impose.

In May of 1920, a few months before fin­ish­ing The Prac­tice and The­o­ry of Bol­she­vism, Rus­sell vis­it­ed Pet­ro­grad (Saint Peters­burg) and Moscow with a British Labour del­e­ga­tion. As he says in the book:

I went to Rus­sia a Com­mu­nist; but con­tact with those who have no doubts has inten­si­fied a thou­sand­fold my own doubts, not as to Com­mu­nism in itself, but as to the wis­dom of hold­ing a creed so firm­ly that for its sake men are will­ing to inflict wide­spread mis­ery.

As Rus­sell would lat­er write in the sec­ond vol­ume of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, his time in Sovi­et Rus­sia was one of “con­tin­u­al­ly increas­ing night­mare:”

Cru­el­ty, pover­ty, sus­pi­cion, per­se­cu­tion, formed the very air we breathed. Our con­ver­sa­tions were con­tin­u­al­ly spied upon. In the mid­dle of the night one would hear shots, and know that ide­al­ists were being killed in prison. There was a hyp­o­crit­i­cal pre­tence of equal­i­ty, and every­body was called ‘tovarisch’ [com­rade], but it was amaz­ing how dif­fer­ent­ly this word could be pro­nounced accord­ing as the per­son who was addressed was Lenin or a lazy ser­vant.

Soon after arriv­ing in Moscow, Rus­sell had a one-hour talk with Sovi­et leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at his spar­tan office in the Krem­lin. “Lenin’s room is very bare,” writes Rus­sell in The Prac­tice and The­o­ry of Bol­she­vism; “it con­tains a big desk, some maps on the walls, two book-cas­es, and one com­fort­able chair for vis­i­tors in addi­tion to two or three hard chairs. It is obvi­ous that he has no love of lux­u­ry or even com­fort.”

In the audio clip above, tak­en from a 1961 inter­view by John Chan­dos at Rus­sel­l’s home in north Wales, the old philoso­pher relates a pair of obser­va­tions of what he saw as Lenin’s two defin­ing traits: his rigid ortho­doxy, and what Rus­sell would lat­er call his “dis­tinct vein of imp­ish cru­el­ty.”

By the time of the inter­view, Rus­sel­l’s ear­ly ambiva­lence toward Sovi­et com­mu­nism had hard­ened into antipa­thy. “Marx’s doc­trine was bad enough, but the devel­op­ments which it under­went under Lenin and Stal­in made it much worse,” he writes in his 1956 essay “Why I am Not a Com­mu­nist.” “I am com­plete­ly at a loss to under­stand how it came about that some peo­ple who are both humane and intel­li­gent could find some­thing to admire in the vast slave camp pro­duced by Stal­in.”

Lenin died on Jan­u­ary 21, 1924 — less than four years after his meet­ing with Rus­sell. A few days lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished an essay, “Lenin: An Impres­sion,” in The New Leader. And although Rus­sell once again men­tions the man’s nar­row ortho­doxy and ruth­less­ness, he paints a rather glow­ing pic­ture of Lenin as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure:

The death of Lenin makes the world poor­er by the loss of one of the real­ly great men pro­duced by the war [World War I]. It seems prob­a­ble that our age will go down to his­to­ry as that of Lenin and Ein­stein — the two men who have suc­ceed­ed in a great work of syn­the­sis in an ana­lyt­ic age, one in thought, the oth­er in action. Lenin appeared to the out­raged bour­geoisie of the world as a destroy­er, but it was not the work of destruc­tion that made him pre-emi­nent. Oth­ers could have destroyed, but I doubt whether any oth­er liv­ing man could have built so well on the new foun­da­tions. His mind was order­ly and cre­ative: he was a philo­soph­ic sys­tem-mak­er in the sphere of prac­tice.… States­men of his cal­iber do not appear in the world more than about once in a cen­tu­ry, and few of us are like­ly to live to see his equal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekov, the Romanovs & More

When IBM Created a Typewriter to Record Dance Movements (1973)

in Dance, History, Technology | April 28th, 2020

Increas­ing­ly many of us in the 21st cen­tu­ry have nev­er used a type­writer — indeed, have nev­er seen one in real life. But despite being deep into its obso­les­cence, the machine has a long cul­tur­al half-life. See­ing type­writ­ers in clas­sic and peri­od films, for exam­ple, keeps an idea of their look and feel in our minds. Nat­u­ral­ly it gets entan­gled with the romance of the writer, or rather the Writer, whom we imag­ine pound­ing away on a cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic mod­el: an Under­wood, an Olvetti. “If Olivet­tis could talk, you’d get the nov­el­ist naked,” writes Philip Roth in The Anato­my Les­son. From the then-new elec­tric IBM type­writ­ers, how­ev­er, you’d hear “only the smug, puri­tan­i­cal work­man­like hum telling of itself and all its virtues: I am a Cor­rect­ing Selec­tric II. I nev­er do any­thing wrong.”

Yet we under­es­ti­mate the influ­ence of the IBM Selec­tric, on not just writ­ing but late-20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can life in gen­er­al, at our per­il. Intro­duced in 1961, this tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary type­writer replaced the old “type­bars” — those thin met­al arms that whack a let­ter onto the page with each key­stroke — with a “type­ball,” a “com­pact unit con­tain­ing all the let­ters and sym­bols of a key­board, rotat­ed and piv­ot­ed to the cor­rect posi­tion before strik­ing.”

So writes IBM’s Jus­tine Jablon­s­ka in an essay on the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the type­ball, which could be swapped out and mod­i­fied accord­ing to the needs of the user. In 1973, IBM could say even to those users who need­ed to type out not words, sen­tences, and para­graphs but dances that, yes, there’s a type­ball for that.

Devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with New York City’s Dance Nota­tion Bureau, this unusu­al type­ball “had spe­cial Laban­o­ta­tion sym­bols, devel­oped in the 1920s by Hun­gar­i­an dancer/choreographer Rudolf Laban to ana­lyze and record move­ment and dance.” Each sym­bol­’s loca­tion “showed which part of the body — arm, leg, tor­so — was to be used. The symbol’s shape indi­cat­ed direc­tion. The symbol’s shad­ing showed the lev­el of an arm or leg. And its length con­trolled the time val­ue of a move­ment.” In total, writes Karen Hill at Zip­py Facts, Laban­o­ta­tion had “88 dif­fer­ent sym­bols, which could be arranged to form a com­plete vocab­u­lary for record­ing move­ment of any kind, from bal­let and mod­ern to eth­nic, even folk.” Beyond dance, the sys­tem could also record “move­ments in areas like sports, behav­ioral sci­ences, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, and even indus­tri­al oper­a­tions.”

This par­tic­u­lar type­ball show­cased the Selec­tric’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, but some had high­er hopes. In a 1975 paper, dance schol­ar Drid Williams com­pares its poten­tial impact to that of “Guten­berg’s inven­tion sev­er­al cen­turies ago,” sig­nal­ing that “the graph­ic lin­guis­tic sign can now be joined by its obvi­ous coun­ter­part, the print­ed human action sign.” But she also express­es regret that “ ‘the ball’ is being looked on by many as a mere prac­ti­cal aid to record­ing human move­ment and it is being asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cial­ist fields like dance. As usu­al, con­cern with the syn­tag­ma­ta obscures the real issues of the par­a­digms.” Indeed. A more prac­ti­cal-mind­ed assess­ment comes from Charles Ditchen­dorf, employed at the time at IBM’s Office Prod­ucts Divi­sion. “To the best of my knowl­edge,” Jablon­s­ka quotes him as say­ing, I didn’t sell one.” But then, when has dance ever been enslaved to the mar­ket?

via Ted Gioia on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Arnold Schoen­berg, Avant-Garde Com­pos­er, Cre­ates a Sys­tem of Sym­bols for Notat­ing Ten­nis Match­es

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

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.

Pink Floyd Streaming Free Classic Concert Films, Starting with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Performance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

in Music | April 20th, 2020

If you’re feel­ing a lit­tle stressed today—maybe a lot stressed today, maybe severe­ly-rationing-your-social-media stressed—it might do you some good to get com­fort­ably numb. And unless the laws of your local­i­ty pre­vent it, you can reach a safe state of bliss at home with his­toric live con­cert films from Pink Floyd. “Fol­low­ing the lead of Radio­head and Metal­li­ca and launch­ing a YouTube con­cert series,” notes Con­se­quence of Sound, “the band will release unseen, rare, or archived mate­r­i­al from their vault and stream it for free” over the next few weeks.

It may or may not be nec­es­sary to qual­i­fy that Pink Floyd these days con­sists of only two peo­ple, David Gilmour and drum­mer Nick Mason, key­boardist Richard Wright hav­ing passed away in 2008 and bassist/rock opera impre­sario Roger Waters hav­ing stormed off to make his own records in 1985, nev­er to return. Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the first film the band has released is 1994’s Pulse, a 22-song set from the Divi­sion Bell tour, the sec­ond stu­dio album made with­out Waters. But it’s got quite a lot to rec­om­mend it despite his absence.

“Filmed at London’s now-defunct Earls Court dur­ing the band’s record-break­ing 14-night res­i­den­cy,” this show is notable par­tic­u­lar­ly for “the inclu­sion of the first-ever film record­ing of Pink Floyd play­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in full.” The 1972 album’s sar­don­ic rumi­na­tions on the banal­i­ty of mod­ern life in an econ­o­my that can­not stop its con­stant grind might strike us as par­tic­u­lar­ly grim while we’re fac­ing such huge col­lec­tive loss­es of life and liveli­hood. But as always, the band knows how to make its med­i­cine go down with some sweet eye and ear can­dy.

Mixed in 5.1 sur­round sound and dig­i­tal­ly re-mas­tered by James Guthrie, Pulse also includes some of orig­i­nal screen films used for the 1970s con­cert per­for­mances of The Dark Side of the Moon (which were nev­er filmed) as well as the visu­al com­po­nents for the piece which were remade for the 1994 tour.

On their Face­book page, the band promis­es more “inter­est­ing and divert­ing images, music and video to help us all get through this”—as best as we can, in any case. And if you run out of Pink Floyd to help you get through a tough time of day, head over to see anoth­er band bring­ing blues-based psych-rock, Amer­i­can style, to the shut-in mass­es this spring. The Grate­ful Dead have their own week­ly stream­ing series of full con­cert films. Of the first con­cert post­ed, they write, “Its excel­lence is indis­putable and is some­thing that we think pret­ty much every­one will enjoy in the absence of actu­al­ly being able to see live con­certs.”

Take an hour or two to relax with some clas­sic live shows from clas­sic bands of yore, and maybe make a list of all the cur­rent bands you want to go out and sup­port as soon as you get out of quar­an­tine. Some­thing tells me after all this livestream­ing, there’ll be waves of renewed appre­ci­a­tion for live music. Good­ness knows, musi­cians every­where will need it.

Vis­it the Pink Floyd Youtube chan­nel for more lives streams in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Dead & Com­pa­ny Announces Couch Tour, Let­ting You Stream Free Con­certs at Home

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

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

Banksy Debuts His COVID-19 Art Project: Good to See That He Has TP at Home

in Art | April 20th, 2020

“Who is Banksy?” asked an Art­net roundup of pos­si­ble sus­pects in 2016. One might well respond, “who cares?”—a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion Artnet’s Hen­ri Neuen­dorf answers. At least a few years ago, before some oth­er things got seri­ous­ly out of hand, the iden­ti­ty of the noto­ri­ous gueril­la street artist turned inter­na­tion­al man of mys­tery was “an obses­sion that seems to have gripped the world.”

One answer, assessed by cura­tor and street art expert Car­lo McCormick, was arrived at through the use of geo­graph­ic pro­fil­ing, a “sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis tech­nique used in crim­i­nol­o­gy to locate repeat offend­ers.” McCormick rates its con­clu­sion as prob­a­ble, but also finds it “scary” to bend such meth­ods to such ends, an anx­i­ety res­o­nant with con­cerns over sur­veil­lance tech used to track COVID-19 vec­tors.

Anoth­er ques­tion is whether it mat­ters who Banksy is. “The improb­a­bly ornate fic­tion is always going to be more com­pelling than the sim­ple mun­dane truth.” Do we real­ly need to ruin the illu­sion? If those who want to remain anony­mous can be tracked with algorithms—while the rest of us vol­un­teer our per­son­al data dai­ly in a cul­ture of com­pet­i­tive oversharing—is there any room left for pri­va­cy? Now that we’re trapped inside for days on end with fam­i­lies, room­mates, part­ners, pets, maybe our only per­son­al space is in the loo (where we’re still inclined to bring our phones).

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

. . My wife hates it when I work from home.

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on Apr 15, 2020 at 10:45am PDT

Banksy’s lat­est work, post­ed on Insta­gram, plays with all of these themes and shows he doesn’t have a prob­lem defac­ing his own prop­er­ty, and shar­ing an inti­mate por­trait with his mil­lions of fol­low­ers. Hell, it’s almost a self­ie, minus the preen­ing, duck-faced self.

As Daria Harp­er writes at Art­sy:

The noto­ri­ous­ly elu­sive street artist Banksy debuted his lat­est work in a rather pecu­liar place: his bath­room. With much of the world on lock­down due to the COVID-19 cri­sis, artists like Banksy have been forced to get inno­v­a­tive with their artis­tic prac­tices. The artist post­ed pho­tos of the new art­work on his Insta­gram page yes­ter­day with the cap­tion: “My wife hates it when I work from home.”

Is this real­ly Banksy work­ing from home? (“One par­tic­u­lar­ly baf­fled com­menter,” notes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “wrote: ‘You are one of the world’s most famous artists… and THAT’S YOUR shit­ty lit­tle BATHROOM????’”)

Is there real­ly a Mrs. Banksy? Lit­tle Banksies run­ning around the yard, wear­ing coro­n­avirus face­masks and hood­ies? Is he on the verge of out­ing him­self? At least we know he’s still got toi­let paper.

Maybe you find this tan­ta­liz­ing win­dow on the artist’s inner sanc­tum cred­i­ble evi­dence of his mun­dane real life. Maybe the sig­na­ture rats destroy­ing his crap­per are his cab­in-fever dream. Or maybe, as usu­al, he’s just tak­ing the piss with this cre­ative instal­la­tion. We await com­ment from Mrs. Banksy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

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

See Web Cams of Surreally Empty City Streets in Venice, New York, London & Beyond

in Current Affairs, Travel | April 16th, 2020

The lack of human pres­ence in major­ly pol­lut­ed cities these past cou­ple months has had some peo­ple see­ing utopias as the skies begin to clear. But emp­ty cities seem a lit­tle more dystopi­an to me. Dystopias are “a kind of sur­re­al­ism,” writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son. They unearth the dream­like dread beneath the veneer of the nor­mal. No mat­ter when they’re set, dystopias don’t depict the future so much as “the feel­ing of the present… height­ened by exag­ger­a­tion to a kind of dream or night­mare.” The events in dystopi­an fic­tion approach the truth of someone’s sit­u­a­tion some­where in the world and make vis­i­ble what has been hid­den.

We know ghost cities exist as ancient dis­as­ters like Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum and mod­ern ones like Pripy­at, Ukraine, out­side Cher­nobyl. But there are more of them than many of us know. Gleam­ing cities like Ash­ga­bat, Turk­menistan, which broke ground in 1991 and con­tains the largest num­ber of mar­ble build­ings in the world.

The 4.5 mil­lion square meter metrop­o­lis has almost no inhab­i­tants, an enor­mous gov­ern­ment fol­ly. Towns and cities around the world have been aban­doned for for all sorts of rea­sons, and they con­tin­ue to as sea lev­els rise. Which is what makes view­ing live cam­era footage of some of the world’s most icon­ic streets—almost com­plete­ly emp­tied by the pan­dem­ic at the height of tourist season—so… sur­re­al.

It’s true that peo­ple haven’t fled these cities, but made cozy bunkers of their apart­ments. Yet see­ing the vacant streets live on cam­era, in Venice, Lon­don, New York, and else­where in the world,  I get the uncan­ny feel­ing of look­ing at pro­to-sur­re­al­ist painter Gior­gio de Chirico’s The Enig­ma of a Day, a depic­tion of a shad­owy, unin­hab­it­ed street through which we expect the Ital­ian ver­sion of a tum­ble­weed to roll. Sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy has inad­ver­tent­ly become a medi­um of mod­ernist art.

There is so much beau­ty in the live view at the top of the Ponte delle Guglie in Venice from the Hotel Filù Venezia, and there is also such lone­ly melan­choly, depend­ing on the time of day and where the shad­ows fall. See a live view of Times Square, above, and anoth­er Times Square view at Earth­Cam, where you can also catch a feed of a most­ly emp­ty Abbey Road (some times of day emp­ti­er than oth­ers, as in the ear­ly-morn­ing screen­shot below). Sky­line Web­cams hosts even more live cam­era views of Venice, includ­ing feeds from the Rial­to Bridge and the Piaz­za San Mar­co, as well as live feeds from sev­er­al sites in Pad­ua and oth­er places in Italy.

These real-time visions are trans­port­ing in their strange­ness. Are we liv­ing in the present or the future? In a dystopi­an world, there isn’t any dif­fer­ence. All futures are fore­closed by cat­a­stro­phe, “all dis­tances in time and space are shrink­ing,” wrote Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, a thinker who under­stood dis­as­ter, and who fell in line behind it. In that same essay, “The Thing” (as trans­lat­ed by Albert Hof­s­tad­er), the Ger­man philoso­pher made his famous com­ment, “the ter­ri­ble has already hap­pened.”

The ter­ri­ble that has hap­pened to us is not only a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The virus is not like­ly to dis­ap­pear on its own; who knows how long this will go on? But not far behind the cur­rent cri­sis are more cli­mate events that threat­en to emp­ty streets. If we emp­ty cities not only as indica­tive of tem­porar­i­ly social dis­tanc­ing, but as images of the pos­si­ble near-future, maybe we’ll be far less inclined to come out of this sur­re­al expe­ri­ence and get right back to busi­ness-as-usu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

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

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curated Playlists of Arabic, Brazilian, Bollywood, Soviet & Turkish Music

in Music | April 14th, 2020

Just as the cat­e­go­ry of “For­eign Lan­guage Film” has seri­ous prob­lems, so too does that of “World Music,” which names so many kinds of music that it names noth­ing at all. World music “might best be described by what it is not,” not­ed a 1994 Music Library Asso­ci­a­tion report. “It is not West­ern art music, nei­ther it is main­stream West­ern folk or pop­u­lar music.” The report adds some vague qual­i­fi­ca­tions about “eth­nic or for­eign ele­ments” then gives away the game: “It is sim­ply not our music, it is their music, music which belongs to some­one else.”

Per­haps one can see why the idea is now regard­ed by some as “out­dat­ed and offen­sive.” As the Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota’s Tim­o­thy Bren­nan argues in a his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the term, “world music does not exist” except “as an idea in the mind of jour­nal­ists, crit­ics, and the buy­ers of records.”

But to whom can music belong? If Japan­ese musi­cians play jazz, are they play­ing Amer­i­can-owned music? Is it “Japan­ese jazz” or just jazz? Must it have Japan­ese instru­ments for it to be “World Music”?

How these ques­tions get answered can deter­mine whether most lis­ten­ers ever encounter the record­ed out­put of jazz musi­cians from Japan, such as that in an excel­lent thir­ty-minute sam­pler from the 1970s that we fea­tured just a few days back. In this mix, DJ Zag Erlat show­cas­es names that “will sound famil­iar,” wrote Open Culture’s Col­in Mar­shall, “to those of us who’ve spent years dig­ging crates around the world for Japan­ese jazz on vinyl.” That’s a select group, indeed, and one you may be inspired to join once you’ve heard Erlat’s mix.

The Turk­ish DJ has fur­ther done his part to dis­am­biguate World Music on his YouTube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal. Here, you’ll find Erlat spin­ning sets of “Brazil­ian Grooves,” “Ara­bic Grooves,” “African Grooves,” “Bol­ly­wood Grooves,” and so much more—including a set of Jazz from the USSR in his tenth episode that is quite a reveal­ing lis­ten. Who knew such music exist­ed in the Sovi­et Union? Well, except for those Sovi­et jazz crate-dig­gers.

Now you know too, and you’ll learn a lot more about what the world’s been up to, music-wise. These are also, obvi­ous­ly, very broad cat­e­gories, and one might rea­son­ably object to them. But it’s a great start for get­ting to know some clas­sic pop sounds from spe­cif­ic regions in the world. Erlat does get more spe­cif­ic in some sets, as in his Japan­ese jazz from the 70s. (I’d espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend his “Turk­ish Female Singers from the 70s” mix.)

This is music of the mod­ern world—not “ours” or “theirs”—its basic ele­ments embed­ded in a glob­al cul­tur­al mar­ket­place. “It is 25 years since the con­cept of world music was cre­at­ed by enthu­si­asts in a north Lon­don pub,” wrote The Guardian’s Ian Bir­rell in 2012. “Per­haps it made sense then, as a mar­ket­ing device to pro­mote the sounds of the world that were lost in record shops and on the radio. But not now. Not in this mixed-up, messy and shrunk­en world.” Per­haps it did­n’t make sense then, when artists like Fela Kuti or Os Mutantes made music that was as much “West­ern” as it was African or South Amer­i­can.

It becomes increas­ing­ly impos­si­ble to seg­re­gate artists from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Genre mashups rule, and the more furi­ous­ly artists from around the world pick up and put down glob­al styles, the more they attract the pos­i­tive notice of fans and crit­ics in pop music. But per­haps we’ll con­tin­ue to refer to indige­nous folk tra­di­tions as “World Music,” and per­haps that’s what the label has always been meant to describe. In that case, as one writer for the Grammy’s offi­cial blog put it, “some­thing tells me that the rest of the world has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion.”

Get famil­iar with sev­er­al oth­er groovy musics from else­where at Erlat’s My Ana­log Jour­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 30-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japan­ese Whisky, It’s Under­rat­ed, But Very High Qual­i­ty

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

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

A 30-Minute Introduction to Japanese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japanese Whisky, It’s Underrated, But Very High Quality

in Music | April 10th, 2020

“Jazz and Japan shouldn’t mix,” says All-Japan: The Cat­a­logue of Every­thing Japan­ese. “After all, the essence of jazz lies in impro­vi­sa­tion — a con­cept large­ly absent from both tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music and Japan­ese soci­ety as a whole. Japan may adapt, but it does not impro­vise.” And yet, as the book goes on to tell, jazz and Japan do indeed mix, and they began doing so even before the Sec­ond World War. Japan­ese jazz dates back to the 1920s, when it drew inspi­ra­tion from vis­it­ing Fil­ipino bands who had picked the music up from their Amer­i­can occu­piers. In the cen­tu­ry since then, devot­ed Japan­ese play­ers (and their even more devot­ed Japan­ese lis­ten­ers) have devel­oped per­haps the most robust jazz cul­ture in the world.

But please, don’t believe me: have a lis­ten to the mix of 1970s Japan­ese jazz on vinyl above. Spun by Turk­ish DJ Zag Erlat on his Youtube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal, it show­cas­es such musi­cians as trom­bon­ist Hiroshi Suzu­ki, sax­o­phon­ist Mabu­mi Yam­aguchi, and gui­tarist Kiyoshi Sug­i­mo­to. These names will sound famil­iar — though not over-famil­iar — to those of us who’ve spent years dig­ging crates around the world for Japan­ese jazz on vinyl.

Thanks to Youtube, they’re now becom­ing bet­ter-known among jazz fans of all stripes: just like the 1980s Japan­ese high-tech dis­co-funk now known as city pop, Japan­ese jazz owes much of its mod­ern recog­ni­tion to the algo­rithm. As a result, actu­al Japan­ese jazz albums like the ones non­cha­lant­ly dis­played by Erlat in the video have become a hot­ter com­mod­i­ty than they used to be.

Like all of Erlat’s “cof­fee break ses­sions” (oth­ers of which focus on Japan­ese dra­ma funk, Turk­ish female singers from the 70s, and “USSR grooves”), this mix runs a brisk 33 min­utes. If you enjoy the taste enough to go back for more, allow me to sug­gest the work of such Japan­ese jazzmen as Teruo Naka­mu­ra, Masayoshi Takana­ka, and Teru­masa Hino — much of which comes from the 1970s, an era that enthu­si­asts across the world now see as some­thing of a gold­en age. You’ll still only have skimmed the sur­face of Japan­ese jazz, one of the many West­ern inven­tions tak­en to anoth­er lev­el of mas­tery, and exhil­a­rat­ing new direc­tions, in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. As one com­menter on Youtube puts it, “Japan­ese Jazz is like Japan­ese whisky: under­rat­ed, but very high qual­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Stream Loads of “City Pop,” the Elec­tron­ic-Dis­co-Funk Music That Pro­vid­ed the Sound­track for Japan Dur­ing the Roar­ing 1980s

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

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.

Customize Your Zoom Virtual Background with Free Works of Art

in Art, Technology | April 6th, 2020

Lim­i­ta­tions stim­u­late cre­ativ­i­ty. While that phras­ing is cred­it­ed to busi­ness-man­age­ment schol­ar Hen­ry Mintzberg, the idea itself has a long his­to­ry. We know we work more fruit­ful­ly when we work with­in bound­aries, and we’ve known ever since our capa­bil­i­ties were lim­it­ed in ways bare­ly imag­in­able today. With the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hav­ing tem­porar­i­ly redrawn the bound­aries of our lives, many of us have already begun to redis­cov­er our own cre­ativ­i­ty. Some have even done it on Zoom, the tele­con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware used by busi­ness­es and insti­tu­tions to keep their meet­ings and class­es going even in a time of social dis­tanc­ing.

Instead of their bed­rooms or offices, stu­dents and office work­ers have start­ed appear­ing in set­tings like a 1970s dis­co, the Taj Mahal, and the star­ship Enter­prise. The tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing this pos­si­ble is the “vir­tu­al back­ground,” explained in the offi­cial Zoom instruc­tion­al video down below.

Word of the vir­tu­al back­ground’s pos­si­bil­i­ties has spread through insti­tu­tions every­where. It cer­tain­ly has at the Get­ty, whose dig­i­tal edi­tor Caitlin Sham­berg notes that “the Getty’s Open Con­tent pro­gram includes over 100,000 images that are free and down­load­able. This means they’re also fair game to use as your own cus­tom back­ground.”

From the Get­ty’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion Sham­berg offers such works suit­able for Zoom as Van Gogh’s Iris­es, Turn­er’s Van Tromp, going about to please his Mas­ters, Ships a Sea, get­ting a Good Wet­ting, and oth­er can­vass­es of such reli­ably pleas­ing set­tings as 18th-cen­tu­ry Venice and a 16th-cen­tu­ry for­est with a rab­bit. The Verge’s Natt Garun recent­ly round­ed up a few resources where you can find more promis­ing vir­tu­al-back­ground mate­r­i­al, from bin­go cards to beach­es to “pop cul­ture homes” includ­ing “Car­rie Bradshaw’s apart­ment from Sex and the City, your favorite Friends lofts, Sein­feld liv­ing rooms, and more.”

Here at Open Cul­ture, we’ll point you to the thir­ty world-class muse­ums that have put two mil­lion works of art online, many of which insti­tu­tions have made them avail­able for down­load. In this post appears, from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s Under the Wave off Kana­gawa (whose evo­lu­tion to the sta­tus of an icon­ic ukiyo‑e print we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered); from the Get­ty, an 18th-cen­tu­ry room “orig­i­nal­ly used as a bed­room or large cab­i­net in a pri­vate Parisian home at num­ber 18 place Vendôme”; and from the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, George Bel­lows’ The Com­ing Storm.

That last work, pic­tured above, has a cer­tain metaphor­i­cal res­o­nance with the sit­u­a­tion the world now finds itself in, hop­ing though we are that the storm of COVID-19 is now pass­ing rather than still com­ing. But while we’re shel­ter­ing from it — and con­tin­u­ing to car­ry on busi­ness as usu­al as best we can — we might as well get take every oppor­tu­ni­ty to get artis­tic. Find many more artis­tic images to down­load here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Get­ty Dig­i­tal Archive Expands to 135,000 Free Images: Down­load High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of Paint­ings, Sculp­tures, Pho­tographs & Much Much More

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

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.

HBO Is Streaming 500 Hours of Shows for Free: The Sopranos, The Wire, and More

in Television | April 3rd, 2020

We live, one often hears, in a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion. But when did this age begin? Schol­ars of pres­tige TV dra­ma — a field that, for both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs, has expand­ed in recent years — tend to point to The Sopra­nos, which pre­miered in 1999. In its eight-year run, David Chase’s series about a depressed New Jer­sey mafia boss, a pro­tag­o­nist ana­lyzed in the Behind the Cur­tain video essay above, set new stan­dards in its medi­um for craft and com­plex­i­ty. To under­stand how much of a depar­ture The Sopra­nos marked from every­thing else on tele­vi­sion, sim­ply com­pare it to what was air­ing on major broad­cast net­works in the 1990s, most of which now looks unwatch­ably sim­plis­tic and repet­i­tive.

Of course, The Sopra­nos did­n’t air on a major broad­cast net­work: it aired on HBO. Orig­i­nal­ly launched as “Home Box Office” in 1972, the old­est pre­mi­um cable chan­nel of them all has long since expand­ed its man­date from air­ing sec­ond-run movies to cre­at­ing orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming of its own.

Its mid-1990s slo­gan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO” reflects an intent to go beyond what was pos­si­ble on con­ven­tion­al tele­vi­sion net­works, an enter­prise whose promise The Sopra­nos sig­naled to the world. Crit­ics lav­ished even more praise on The Wire, David Simon’s dra­mat­ic exam­i­na­tion and indict­ment of Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions that ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008. In the video essay just above, Thomas Flight explains what makes The Wire, whose fans include every­one from Barack Oba­ma to Slavoj Žižek, “one of the most bril­liant TV shows ever.”

If you haven’t seen these or the oth­er acclaimed HBO shows that have done so much to gild this tele­vi­su­al age, now’s your chance to catch up. That’s true not just for the obvi­ous rea­son — the threat of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keep­ing so many shut in at home — but also because HBO will make 500 hours of its pro­gram­ming free to stream on its HBO Now and HBO Go plat­forms. If you’re in the Unit­ed States or anoth­er area served by HBO online, you can watch not just The Sopra­nos and The Wire in their entire­ty, but the vam­pire-themed True Blood, the under­tak­ing-themed Six Feet Under, and such comedic takes on Amer­i­can busi­ness and pol­i­tics as Sil­i­con Val­ley and Veep, a video essay from The Take on whose “satire in the age of Trump” appears above. Of all the ways we can define HBO-style pres­tige tele­vi­sion, isn’t “TV shows good enough to inspire video essays” the most apt? Get start­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

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.

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #37

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 2nd, 2020

Why has a chil­dren’s toy become a brand attached to vir­tu­al­ly every media type, part­ner­ing with the most ubiq­ui­tous fran­chis­es, and serv­ing as a pas­time for many adult hob­by­ists who will gut you if you call LEGO a “chil­dren’s toy.”

Bri­an Hirt (our res­i­dent AFOL, i.e. adult fan of LEGO) talks with co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres and Mark Lin­sen­may­er about cre­ative play vs. fol­low­ing the print­ed direc­tions, build­ing purists vs. anthro­po­mor­phiz­ers, LEGO qua cor­po­rate over­lord, the LEGO films and com­pet­i­tive build­ing TV show, and more.

Bri­an’s LEGO designs that we react to are the Man­del­brot frac­tal, baby Yoda, drei­del, and swim­ming pool. “AFOL” is but the first of many LEGO-spe­cif­ic ini­tialisms; see the glos­sary.

Here are some arti­cles we drummed up to pre­pare:

• “ ‘The Cult of LEGO’: Inside the World of a Devot­ed Com­mu­ni­ty” by Maria Popo­va
• “If You’re an Adult Play­ing With Legos, Just Don’t. Here’s Why.” by Seth Gar­ben
• “Lego Is the Per­fect Toy Even if no one can real­ly agree on what kind of toy it is any­more” by Genevieve Smith
•  “Why Adults Are Using Lego to Bat­tle Stress” from Game­Cen­tral
• “LEGO Writer Arie Kaplan Dis­cuss­es Click­ing with Star Wars and Bat­man” by Michal Schick
• “The LEGO Bat­man Movie Turns Bat Mythol­o­gy Into a Giant Toy­box” by Jesse Has­sen­ger
• “Can LEGO Be Con­sid­ered Art” by John Baich­tal
• “How Does Some­one Become a Full-Time LEGO Artist?” by Mari­ah Eakin
• “LEGO Turned Itself Around by Ana­lyz­ing Over­bear­ing Par­ents” by Mikkel Ras­mussen
• “Min­neso­ta Pro­fes­sor Explores Link Between Phi­los­o­phy and Lego” by Richard Chin
• “Top 5 LEGO Pod­casts You Must Fol­low in 2020” from Feedspot

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.