Saint John Coltrane: The San Francisco Church Built On A Love Supreme

in Music, Religion | February 17th, 2021

Lit­tle of San Fran­cis­co today is as it was half a cen­tu­ry ago. But at the cor­ner of Turk Boule­vard and Lyon Street stands a true sur­vivor: the Church of St. John Coltrane. Though offi­cial­ly found­ed in 1971, the roots of this unique musi­cal-reli­gious insti­tu­tion (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) go back fur­ther still. “It was our first wed­ding anniver­sary, Sep­tem­ber 18, 1965 and we cel­e­brat­ed the occa­sion by going to the Jazz Work­shop,” write founders Fran­zo and Mari­na King on the Church’s web site. “When John Coltrane came onto the stage we could feel the pres­ence of the Holy Spir­it mov­ing with him.” Over­come with the sense that Coltrane was play­ing direct­ly to them, “we did not talk to each oth­er dur­ing the per­for­mance because we were caught up in what lat­er would be known as our Sound Bap­tism.”

Or as Mari­na puts it in this new short doc­u­men­tary from NPR’s Jazz Night in Amer­i­ca, “The holy ghost fell in a jazz club in 1965, and our lives were changed for­ev­er.” This was the year of Coltrane’s mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme, a jazz album that, in the words of The New York­er’s Richard Brody, “isn’t mere­ly a col­lec­tion of per­for­mances. It’s both one uni­fied com­po­si­tion and, in effect, a con­cept album. And the core of that con­cept is more than musi­cal — it’s the spir­i­tu­al, reli­gious dimen­sion.”

Coltrane, as the doc­u­men­tary tells it, com­posed the suite in iso­la­tion, deter­mined to go cold-turkey and kick the hero­in habit that got him fired from Miles Davis’ band. In the process he under­went a “spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing,” which con­vinced him that his music could have a much high­er pur­pose.

It was Coltrane’s ear­ly death in 1967 that clar­i­fied the Kings’ mis­sion in life, even­tu­al­ly prompt­ing them to con­vert the lat­est in a series of jazz spaces they’d been run­ning into a prop­er house of wor­ship. “John Coltrane became their Christ, their God,” writes NPR’s Anas­ta­sia Tsioul­cas. A Love Supreme “became their cen­tral text, and ‘Coltrane con­scious­ness’ became their guid­ing prin­ci­ple.” Over the past 50 years, their church has endured its share of hard­ships. In the ear­ly 1980s a life­line appeared in the form of the African Ortho­dox Church, whose lead­ers want­ed to bring it into the fold but had, as Fan­zo remem­bers it, one con­di­tion: “John Coltrane can­not be God, okay?” Then the Kings remem­bered a remark Coltrane con­ve­nient­ly made in a Japan­ese inter­view to the effect that, one day, he’d like to be a saint. Thence­forth, St. Coltrane it was: not bad at all for a sax play­er from North Car­oli­na.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

New Jazz Archive Fea­tures Rare Audio of Louis Arm­strong & Oth­er Leg­ends Play­ing in San Fran­cis­co

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear a Prehistoric Conch Shell Musical Instrument Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years

in History, Life, Music | February 15th, 2021

Pho­to by C. Fritz, Muséum d’His­toire naturelle de Toulouse

Bri­an Eno once defined art as “every­thing you don’t have to do.” But just because humans can live with­out art doesn’t mean we should—or that we ever have—unless forced by exi­gent cir­cum­stance. Even when we spent most of our time in the busi­ness of sur­vival, we still found time for art and music. Mar­soulas Cave, for exam­ple, “in the foothills of the French Pyre­nees, has long fas­ci­nat­ed researchers with its col­or­ful paint­ings depict­ing bison, hors­es and humans,”  Kather­ine Kornei writes at The New York Times. This is also where an “enor­mous tan-col­ored conch shell was first dis­cov­ered, an incon­gru­ous object that must have been trans­port­ed from the Atlantic Ocean, over 150 miles away.”

The 18,000-year-old shell’s 1931 dis­cov­er­ers assumed it must have been a large cer­e­mo­ni­al cup, and it “sat for over 80 years in the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um of Toulouse.” Only recent­ly, in 2016, did researchers sus­pect it could be a musi­cal instru­ment. Philippe Wal­ter, direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Mol­e­c­u­lar and Struc­tur­al Arche­ol­o­gy at the Sor­bonne, and Car­ole Fritz, who leads pre­his­toric art research at the French Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­en­tif­ic Research, redis­cov­ered the shell, as it were, when they revised old assump­tions using mod­ern imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Fritz and her col­leagues had stud­ied the cave’s art for 20 years, but only under­stood the shell’s pecu­liar­i­ties after they made a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el. “When Wal­ter placed the conch into a CT scan,” writes Lina Zel­dovich at Smith­son­ian, “he indeed found many curi­ous human touch­es. Not only did the ancient artists delib­er­ate­ly cut off the tip, but they also punc­tured or drilled round holes through the shell’s coils, through which they like­ly insert­ed a small tube-like mouth­piece.” The team also used a med­ical cam­era to look close­ly at the shell’s inte­ri­or and exam­ine unusu­al for­ma­tions. Kornei describes the shell fur­ther:

This shell might have been played dur­ing cer­e­monies or used to sum­mon gath­er­ings, said Julien Tardieu, anoth­er Toulouse researcher who stud­ies sound per­cep­tion. Cave set­tings tend to ampli­fy sound, said Dr. Tardieu. “Play­ing this conch in a cave could be very loud and impres­sive.”

It would also have been a beau­ti­ful sight, the researchers sug­gest, because the conch is dec­o­rat­ed with red dots — now fad­ed — that match the mark­ings found on the cave’s walls.

The dec­o­ra­tion on the shell looks sim­i­lar to an image of a bison on the cave wall, sug­gest­ing it may have been played near that paint­ing for some rea­son. The conch resem­bles sim­i­lar “seashell horns” found in New Zealand and Peru, but it is much, much old­er. It may have orig­i­nat­ed in Spain, along with oth­er objects found in the cave, and may have trav­eled with its own­ers or been exchanged in trade, explains arche­ol­o­gist Mar­garet W. Con­key at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, who adds, writes Zel­dovich, that “the Mag­dalen­ian peo­ple also val­ued sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences, includ­ing those pro­duced by wind instru­ments.

Many thou­sands of years lat­er, we too can hear what those ear­ly humans heard in their cave: musi­col­o­gist Jean-Michel Court gave a demon­stra­tion, pro­duc­ing the three notes above, which are close to C, C‑sharp and D. The shell may have had more range, and been more com­fort­able to play, with its mouth­piece, like­ly made of a hol­low bird bone. The shell is hard­ly the old­est instru­ment in the world. Some are tens of thou­sands of years old­er. But it is the old­est of its kind. What­ev­er its pre­his­toric own­ers used it for—a call in a hunt, stage reli­gious cer­e­monies, or a cel­e­bra­tion in the cave—it is, like every ancient instru­ment and art­work, only fur­ther evi­dence of the innate human desire to cre­ate.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

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

Watch the Food for Love Benefit Concert: David Byrne, The Chicks & Many More Raise Money for New Mexico Food Banks

in Life, Music | February 14th, 2021

Ever since COVID-19 struck, pover­ty lev­els have reached a cri­sis point in New Mex­i­co, so much so that New Mex­i­co food banks have become over­loaded with requests, and they can’t keep up with demand. To pro­vide assis­tance, a star-stud­ded line­up of musi­cians band­ed togeth­er this week­end to stage the Food for Love Ben­e­fit Con­cert. Fea­tured in the five hour per­for­mance were David Byrne (he gives a dance les­son), Jack­son Brown, Shawn Colvin, The Chicks, Lyle Lovett, Kurt Vile, and many more. This video (above) will be avail­able for a lim­it­ed time–until mid­night MST on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 15. Dona­tions to sup­port New Mex­i­co’s food banks can be made here. To date, they’ve raised $704,000, or enough to pro­vide 2.8 mil­lion meals.

Radio vs. Podcasting: A Discussion with Jason Bentley (KCRW, The Backstory) on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #81

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Radio | February 11th, 2021

Jason was music direc­tor at KRCW, the LA NPR sta­tion, is also a DJ with a lot of expe­ri­enced inter­view­ing musi­cians, and now hosts a new pod­cast, The Back­sto­ry. He joins Mark and Eri­ca to dis­cuss the cre­ative and busi­ness pos­si­bil­i­ties of pod­cast­ing in com­par­i­son to radio, what their futures may hold, and his own jour­ney between the two media.

Fol­low Jason @thejasonbentley. Lis­ten to his Back­sto­ry inter­view with Kris­ten Bell and his cur­rent radio show, Metrop­o­lis.

Here’s some com­par­i­son data and oth­er basic infor­ma­tion on radio and pod­casts:

• “Audio and Pod­cast­ing Fact Sheet” from journalism.org
• “Pod­cast vs Radio: What Is the Dif­fer­ence?” from Buz­zsprout
• “New Pod­cast Lis­ten­ers Are Com­ing from Radio, Not Music” by Bill Rosen­blatt
• “Is Radio Dying?” by Kather­ine Luck

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access 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.

The “Academic Tarot”: 22 Major Arcana Cards Representing Life in the Academic Humanities Under COVID-19

in Current Affairs, Education, Life | February 10th, 2021

“Spec­u­la­tions about the cre­ators of Tarot cards include the Sufis, the Cathars, the Egyp­tians, Kab­bal­ists, and more,” writes “expert car­tomancer” Joshua Hehe. All of these sup­po­si­tions are wrong, it seems. “The actu­al his­tor­i­cal evi­dence points to north­ern Italy some­time in the ear­ly part of the 1400s,” when the so-called “major arcana” came into being. “Con­trary to what many have claimed, there is absolute­ly no proof of the Tarot hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in any oth­er time or place.”

A bold claim, yet there are prece­dents much old­er than tarot: “A few decades before the Tarot was born, ordi­nary play­ing cards came to Europe by way of Arabs, arriv­ing in many dif­fer­ent cities between 1375 and 1378. These cards were an adap­ta­tion of the Islam­ic Mam­luk cards,” with suits of cups, swords, coins, and polo sticks, “the lat­ter of which were seen by Euro­peans as staves.”

Whether the play­ing cards invent­ed by the Mam­luks were used for div­ina­tion may be a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. The his­to­ry and art of the Mam­luk sul­tanate itself is a sub­ject wor­thy of study for the tarot his­to­ri­an. Orig­i­nal­ly a slave army (“mam­luk” means “slave” in Ara­bic) under the Ayyu­bid sul­tans in Egypt and Syr­ia, the Mam­luks over­threw their rulers and cre­at­ed “the great­est Islam­ic empire of the lat­er Mid­dle Ages.”

What does this have to do with tarot read­ing? These are aca­d­e­m­ic con­cerns, per­haps, of lit­tle inter­est to the aver­age tarot enthu­si­ast. But then, the aver­age tarot enthu­si­ast is not the audi­ence for the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Tarot,” a project of the Vision­ary Futures Col­lec­tive, or VFC, a group of 22 schol­ars “fight­ing for what high­er edu­ca­tion needs most,” Stephanie Malak writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “a bring­ing togeth­er of thinkers who ‘believe in the trans­for­ma­tion­al pow­er and vital impor­tance of the human­i­ties.’”

To that end, the Aca­d­e­m­ic Tarot fea­tures exact­ly the kinds of char­ac­ters who love to chase down abstruse his­tor­i­cal questions—characters like the low­ly, con­fused Grad Stu­dent, stand­ing in here for The Fool. It also fea­tures those who can make aca­d­e­m­ic life, with its end­less rounds of meet­ings and com­mit­tees, so dif­fi­cult: fig­ures like The Pres­i­dent (see here), doing duty here as the Magi­cian, and pic­tured shred­ding “cam­pus-wide COVID results.”

The VFC, found­ed in the time of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and “in the midst of the long-over­due nation­al reck­on­ing led by the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment,” aims to “trace the con­tours of things that define our shared human con­di­tion,” says Col­lec­tive mem­ber Dr. Bri­an DeGrazia. In the case of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Tarot, the con­di­tions rep­re­sent­ed are shared by a spe­cif­ic sub­set of humans, many of whom respond­ed to “feel­ings sur­veys” put out by the VFC in a biweek­ly newslet­ter.

The sur­veys have been used to make art that reflects the expe­ri­ences of the grad stu­dents, pro­fes­sors, and pro­fes­sion­al staff work­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties at this time:

VFC artist-in-res­i­dence Claire Chenette, a Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed Knoxville Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra musi­cian fur­loughed due to COVID-19, brought the tarot cards to life. What began as a three-card project to com­ple­ment the VFC newslet­ter grew in spir­it and in num­ber. 

“In tarot, the cards read us,” the VFC writes, “telling a sto­ry about our­selves that can pro­vide clar­i­ty, guid­ance and hope.” What sto­ry do the 22 Major Arcana cards in the Aca­d­e­m­ic Tarot tell? That depends on who’s ask­ing, as always, but one gets the sense that unless the quer­ent is famil­iar with life in a high­er-ed human­i­ties depart­ment, these cards may not reveal much. For those who have seen them­selves in the cards, how­ev­er, “the images made them laugh out loud,” says Chenette, or “they hit hard. Or… they even made them cry, but… it need­ed to hap­pen.”

Strug­gling through yet anoth­er pan­dem­ic semes­ter of attempt­ing to teach, research, write, and gen­er­al­ly stay afloat? The Aca­d­e­m­ic Tarot cards are cur­rent­ly sold out, but you can pre-order now for the sec­ond run.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Divine Decks: A Visu­al His­to­ry of Tarot: The First Com­pre­hen­sive Sur­vey of Tarot Gets Pub­lished by Taschen

Behold the Sola-Bus­ca Tarot Deck, the Ear­li­est Com­plete Set of Tarot Cards (1490)

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Sur­re­al­ism in a Clas­sic Tarot Card Deck

Carl Jung: Tarot Cards Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious, and Maybe a Way to Pre­dict the Future

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

Little Kid Merrily Grooves to ZZ Top While Waiting for the Bus

in Music | February 7th, 2021

A musi­cian in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia took to the streets and busked some ZZ Top, much to the delight of a young child wait­ing for the bus. From the moment he starts play­ing “La Grange,” the child bops up and down, then twirls in a cir­cle, los­ing her­self in the song. On YouTube he writes, “I don’t often see this, but when it hap­pens it’s always 99% kids that are doing it. Before they become jad­ed (age 8), they still have that spon­ta­neous spark, that reac­tion to music that we all used to have. Emo­tion is no.1 pri­or­i­ty and they express it with­out shame.”

If this bright­ens your day, even a lit­tle, con­sid­er giv­ing the busker a tip on Pay­pal or Patre­on. As he explains on YouTube, he’s had–like many of us–a rough year. He writes:

1) I’m glad every­one is enjoy­ing this video but I want to men­tion a few things.

Street play­ing is not all fun and games and danc­ing kids. Doing this for 7 years. I reg­u­lar­ly face not only ver­bal abuse, but phys­i­cal assault as I work a few blocks from down­town east­side Van­cou­ver. I’m sur­round­ed by addicts, drunks, and peo­ple who should be in men­tal homes.

2) I’m unem­ployed. All live music includ­ing busk­ing, is banned. I lost all work last year and received ZERO com­pen­sa­tion. I had a very bad year in 2020 and only recent­ly came out of a depres­sion.

3) I make ZERO from youtube no mat­ter how many views I get. I don’t run ads. And more impor­tant­ly, even if I did, most of my videos are instant­ly copy­right­ed and auto mon­e­tized by record labels because they are COVERS. If you see an ad, it’s the record label col­lect­ing. If you liked the per­for­mance, please think about sup­port­ing me on patreon/paypal tip/bandcamp.

4) I’m a musi­cian that writes his own music and has been doing it for 20 years. Check out my band­camp page to see what I can real­ly do with a gui­tar.

5) It’s a lot of unpaid work to post these videos all the time so please try to help me keep the chan­nel going. Many thanks to those that have sup­port­ed me! It means a lot!

6) I get asked this 100 times a day so here’s the answer: I play on the street and not in a band because all the clubs closed years ago. I used to lead many bands from 2006 to 2018. That’s all gone. Live music is dead, as well as banned. It’s also a lot more has­sle, and less mon­ey, to run a band than play by myself.

Any­one who has music work to offer can con­tact me at sh***************@***oo.com

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ital­ian Street Musi­cian Plays Amaz­ing Cov­ers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pan­theon in Rome

Crowd Breaks into Singing Bon Jovi in the Park: The Pow­er of Music in 46 Sec­onds

80s Pop Singer Jim­my Somerville Sur­pris­es Ger­man Street Musi­cian as the Busker Sings Somerville’s Hit

Lenny Kravitz Over­hears High School Kids Play­ing His Music and Sur­pris­es Them by Join­ing In

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki Celebrated in a Glorious Concert Arranged by Film Composer Joe Hisaishi

in Music | February 5th, 2021

Direc­tor Hayao Miyazaki’s work­ing rela­tion­ship with com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi is up there with the oth­er great film pair­ings: Ser­gio Leone with Ennio Mor­ri­cone, Alfred Hitch­cock with Bernard Her­rmann, David Lynch with Ange­lo Badala­men­ti. Work­ing togeth­er they attain a sym­bio­sis of sound and vision, one of the rea­sons their work has become part of film his­to­ry. But it’s also rare that a film com­pos­er gets to cel­e­brate that rela­tion­ship with a stun­ner of a ret­ro­spec­tive con­cert like the one above.

In 2008, Hisaishi con­duct­ed and per­formed at a two-hour ret­ro­spec­tive of 25 years work­ing with Miyaza­ki at Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. This mam­moth per­for­mance at the 14,000-seat Tokyo Budokan was big in every way: six fea­tured vocal­ists, the 200-mem­ber New Japan Phil­har­mon­ic World Dream Orches­tra, the 800 com­bined voic­es of the Ippan Koubo, Rit­suyuukai and Lit­tle Singers of Tokyo choirs, along with a 160-piece march­ing band made up of mem­bers from four high schools.

The con­cert fea­tures selec­tions from Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of Wind, Princess Mononoke, My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, Spir­it­ed Away, Por­co Rosso, and what would have been his most recent score at the time, Ponyo. For those won­der­ing when the march­ing band and col­or guard turn up, it’s 50 min­utes in, play­ing selec­tions from Lapu­ta, Cas­tle in the Sky.

Hayao Miyaza­ki met Joe Hisaishi in 1983, when his record com­pa­ny rec­om­mend­ed him to score Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind. They became true friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors, and the direc­tor him­self appears just after an hour in to speak to the audi­ence.

“After [our first] meet­ing,” Miyaza­ki says (accord­ing to a trans­la­tion in the com­ments) “he sent me some piano sketch­es, which are used in many scenes in Nau­si­caä any­way, and those were so amaz­ing that I played tapes of them on my desk over and over again while I was working…I have been work­ing thanks to so many pieces of luck, and meet­ing him is def­i­nite­ly one of them. I guess I couldn’t wish for bet­ter luck than that.”

For some­one whose music is often roman­tic, beau­ti­ful, and relaxed, the com­pos­er says the work doesn’t come easy.

“The most painful ele­ment of my life is com­pos­ing because some­times noth­ing comes to mind,” he told the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. “It is very hard and very dif­fi­cult. Some­times the result is zero, but I go to bed and I feel some­thing and some idea is born. So in the end there might be a com­po­si­tion, but the expe­ri­ence is often most painful.” For those who have recent­ly seen sim­i­lar memes of Miyaza­ki being super hard on him­self, it’s no won­der the two are friends.

A few in the YouTube com­ment sec­tion actu­al­ly attend­ed the con­cert, and this quote from “Love W” sums up what was an emo­tion­al con­cert for Ghi­b­li and Hisaishi fans:

“It was also qui­et after­wards. No one was talk­ing very loud­ly, even with hun­dreds of peo­ple stream­ing out of the build­ing. I think every­one were just too touched and want­ed to reflect over what they had seen.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Watch 36 Short Animations That Tell the Origin Stories of Mexico’s Indigenous Peoples in Their Own Languages

in Animation, Language, Travel | February 2nd, 2021

In our efforts to pre­serve endan­gered species we seem to over­look some­thing equal­ly impor­tant. To me it is a sign of a deeply dis­turbed civ­i­liza­tion where tree hug­gers and whale hug­gers in their weird­ness are accept­able while no one embraces the last speak­ers of a lan­guage.

 — Wern­er Her­zog, Encoun­ters at the End of the World

Trees and whales aside, we sus­pect the ever quotable Her­zog would warm to fel­low direc­tor Gabriela Badil­lo’s 68 Voic­es, 68 Hearts, a series of one-minute ani­ma­tions that pre­serve indige­nous Mex­i­can sto­ries with nar­ra­tion pro­vid­ed by native speak­ers.

“It was cre­at­ed in order to help fos­ter pride, respect, and the use of indige­nous Mex­i­can lan­guages between speak­ers and non-speak­ers, as well as to help reduce dis­crim­i­na­tion and fos­ter a sense of pride towards all com­mu­ni­ties and cul­tures that are part of the cul­tur­al rich­ness that makes up Mex­i­co,” Badil­lo says in an inter­view with Awasqa.

The project stemmed from a real­iza­tion in the wake of the death of her grand­fa­ther, a Max­canu from Yucatan:

Aside from los­ing a loved one, I real­ized that an enor­mous wis­dom had also been lost: a lan­guage, sto­ries, tra­di­tions and cus­toms, a whole world had dis­solved with him.

Each ani­ma­tion involves col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nation­al Insti­tute of Indige­nous Lan­guage and the com­mu­ni­ty whose sto­ry is being shared. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers choose the sub­ject, then sup­ply nar­ra­tion and trans­la­tion. Their chil­dren draw scenes from the select­ed sto­ry, which steers the style of ani­ma­tion.

Pri­or to being released to the gen­er­al pub­lic, each film is pre­sent­ed to its com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin, along with a book­let of sug­gest­ed edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties for par­ents and teach­ers to use in con­junc­tion with screen­ings. Box­es of post­cards fea­tur­ing art­work from the series are donat­ed to the com­mu­ni­ty school.

Some of the entries, like the above About Earth­quakes and the Ori­gin of Life on Earth, nar­rat­ed in Ch’ol by Euge­nia Cruz Mon­te­jo, pack a mas­sive amount of sto­ry into the allot­ted minute:

They say many years ago Ch’u­j­ti­at, the Heav­en’s lord, cre­at­ed the Earth with 12 immor­tal men to car­ry it. And it is when they get tired that the Earth moves, pro­vok­ing earth­quakes.

At the same time he cre­at­ed the first men, who were ungrate­ful, so Ch’u­j­ti­at sent the flood and turned the sur­vivors into mon­keys, and the inno­cent chil­dren into stars. He then cre­at­ed our first par­ents, na’al, Ixic y Xun’Ok, who mul­ti­plied and pop­u­lat­ed the Earth. 

That’s how life on Earth began.That’s how the Ch’oles tell it.

Vari­ants of “that’s how we tell it” are a com­mon refrain, as in the Cora (also known as Náay­eri) sto­ry of how the Moth­er God­dess cre­at­ed earth (and oth­er gods), nar­rat­ed by Pedro Muñiz López.

Here is the writ­ten ver­sion, in Cora:

E’itɨ tiuséi­jre cháana­ka

Yaapú ti’nyúukari tɨkɨn a’najpú ɨtyáj nái­mi ajnáana Náa­sisaa, Téijkame jemín ɨ cháana­ka ajtá ɨ máxkɨrai, góutaaguaka’a ɨ tabóu­jsimua yaati’xáata tɨkɨn mata’a já guatéchaɨn majtá tyuipuán iyakúi cháana­ka japuá.

Muxáj kɨmen­pú góutaaguaka’a tɨ’kí nájkɨ’ta gojoutyáj­tua. Áuna me’séira aɨjme tabou­jsimua matákua’naxɨ.

Tɨ’kí aɨj­na tanáana Náa­sisaa, ukɨpuapú guatákɨɨnitya’a, yán guajaikagua’xɨjre uyóu­j­mua matɨ’jmí jet­sán guatyáakɨ yán miye’ntiné tajapuá. Kapú aɨn jé’i, matákua’naxɨ máj akábibɨɨ yán juté’e, makaupɨxɨɨ ujet­sé matɨ’jmí chuéj kɨj ten­tyóu metya’úrara, ajtá ɨ Taja’as xu’rabe’táana tiuɨrɨj tyau­tyáj­tua ajpúi tanáana Náa­sisaa tsíikɨri guatyákɨs­ta­ka ukɨpuá kɨmen. Japuan­pú aɨj­na chuéj utía­j­ka tɨ’kí goutaíjte aɨjme tabóu­jsimua guatái­jte máj atapa’tsaren metya’tanya’tɨkɨ’káa ayaapú tiutéjbe máj tiunéi­tan.

Ayaapú tiuséi­jre cháana­ka. Ayáj tigua’nyúukari Náay­eri.

Badillo’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion is well served by one of our favorites, The Ori­gin of the Moun­tains. In addi­tion to moun­tains, this Cucapá sto­ry, nar­rat­ed by Inocen­cia González Sainz, delves into the ori­gin of oceans and the Col­orado Riv­er, though fair warning—it may be dif­fi­cult to restore class­room order once the stu­dents hear that tes­ti­cles and ear­wax fig­ure promi­nent­ly.

To watch a playlist of the 36 ani­ma­tions com­plet­ed so far with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, click here.

68 Voic­es, 68 Heart’s Kick­starter page has more infor­ma­tion about this ongo­ing project. Con­tri­bu­tions will go toward ani­mat­ing sto­ries in the three lan­guages that are at the high­est risk of dis­ap­pear­ing—Akateko, Popolo­ca, and Ku’ahl.

As Badil­lo writes:

When a lan­guage dis­ap­pears, not only a sound, a way of writ­ing, a let­ter or a word goes away. Some­thing much deep­er than just a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­ap­pears — a way of see­ing and con­ceiv­ing the world, sto­ries, tales, a way of nam­ing and relat­ing to things, an enor­mous knowl­edge that we should relearn because of its deep respect with nature.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Peru­vian Schol­ar Writes & Defends the First The­sis Writ­ten in Quechua, the Main Lan­guage of the Incan Empire

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Japanese Violinist Covers Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption”: Metal Meets Classical Again

in Music | February 2nd, 2021

In a 1992 jour­nal arti­cle “Erup­tions: heavy met­al appro­pri­a­tions of clas­si­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty,” musi­col­o­gist Robert Walser explored the link between heavy met­al and clas­si­cal music–the way in which met­al gui­tarists stud­ied clas­si­cal music and cre­at­ed “a new kind of gui­tar vir­tu­os­i­ty.” Pub­lished by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Walser’s essay comes to focus on Eddie Van Halen’s “Erup­tion,” the “solo that trans­formed rock gui­tar.” He writes: “Released in 1978 on Van Halen’s first album, ‘Erup­tion’ [see an extend­ed live ver­sion below] is one minute and twen­ty-sev­en sec­onds of exu­ber­ant and play­ful vir­tu­os­i­ty, a vio­lin­ist’s pre­cise and showy tech­nique inflect­ed by the vocal rhetoric of the blues and rock ’n’ roll irrev­er­ence.” The solo fea­tures rhyth­mic pat­terns rem­i­nis­cent of J. S. Bach’s famous ‘Pre­lude in C major’, while “the har­mon­ic pro­gres­sions of ‘Erup­tion’ lead the lis­ten­er along an aur­al adven­ture,” much like you’d find in the music of Vival­di. None of this was an acci­dent. As a young­ster, Eddie Van Halen was raised on a diet of Mozart and Beethoven.

Above, you can watch “Jill,” a mem­ber of the Japan­ese met­al band Unlucky Mor­pheus, per­form a vio­lin-dri­ven ver­sion of “Erup­tion.” It’s clas­si­cal meets met­al once again, except this time a clas­si­cal instru­ment takes the lead. Enjoy.

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:

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Watch Some of Eddie Van Halen’s (RIP) Great­est Per­for­mances: “Shred­ding Was Eddie’s Very Essence”

The Great Illus­tra­tion That Accom­pa­nied Eddie Van Halen’s Appli­ca­tion to the U.S. Patent and Trade­mark Office (1987)

15-Year-Old French Gui­tar Prodi­gy Flaw­less­ly Rips Through Solos by Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, Yng­wie Malm­steen & Steve Vai

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

The Internet Archive Now Digitizing 1,000,000+ Objects from a Massive Cinema History Library

in Archives, Film, History, Internet Archive | February 1st, 2021

Major motion pic­tures need the work of writ­ers, direc­tors, actors, cin­e­matog­ra­phers, and a slew of oth­er pro­fes­sion­als besides. That group also includes researchers, whose role has until recent­ly gone prac­ti­cal­ly uncel­e­brat­ed out­side the indus­try. In 2015, film­mak­er Daniel Raim brought the work of the film researcher to light with Harold and Lil­lian: A Hol­ly­wood Love Sto­ry, about pro­duc­tion design­er Harold Michel­son and his researcher wife Lil­lian. “In Raim’s doc­u­men­tary, she talks about work­ing on Fid­dler on the Roof and the film­mak­ers need­ed to know what a Jew­ish wom­an’s under­gar­ments looked like in the 1890s,” writes The Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s Emi­ly Hilton. How could she find such obscure infor­ma­tion?

“Michel­son sat on a bench at Fair­fax and Bev­er­ly near a Jew­ish deli and spoke to women who were about the right age to have been alive in that era.” One of these women “ran home and grabbed a sewing pat­tern for her to ref­er­ence. This research inspired the out­fits that Τevye’s daugh­ters wear in the num­ber: knee length bloomers with scal­loped edges.”

As yet, this pat­tern has­n’t appeared in the Michel­son Cin­e­ma Research Library, now host­ed online at the Inter­net Archive. But it may yet, as the project of dig­i­ti­za­tion and upload­ing has hard­ly begun: it was just last year that the nona­ge­nar­i­an Lil­lian Michel­son donat­ed to the Archive her for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion of research mate­ri­als, amassed over her long career.

“After near­ly six decades serv­ing film­mak­ers first at Samuel Gold­wyn, then the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute, Zoetrope Stu­dio, Para­mount and Dream­Works,” writes the Los Ange­les Times’ Mary McNa­ma­ra, “the library filled 1,594 box­es: tens of thou­sands of books, pho­tographs, mag­a­zines and a panoply of oth­er visu­al resources. All of this had been sit­ting for five years in a stor­age facil­i­ty, paid for by friends who could not bear to see it all destroyed.” Now that the dig­i­tal archival process is under­way, you can browse the first 1,300 or so entries at the Inter­net Archive, which allows users to vir­tu­al­ly check out the Michel­son Cin­e­ma Research Library’s books on sub­jects rang­ing from the­atri­cal cos­tumes and vin­tage cin­e­ma lob­by cards to places like Japan and Paris to less expect­ed top­ics like the Amaz­ing Kre­skin and the exter­nals of the Catholic Church.

But then, a Hol­ly­wood researcher must be pre­pared to learn about any­thing, and by all accounts Lil­lian Michel­son was per­haps the great­est of them all. In addi­tion to its com­pre­hen­sive­ness, her library became a hang­out of choice for a vari­ety of stu­dio pro­fes­sion­als and celebri­ties includ­ing Tom Waits. (“I wouldn’t be sur­prised if that’s how he found some time to unwind,” says Raim, “just drink­ing tea there.”) The Inter­net Archive describes her col­lec­tion as con­sist­ing of “5,000 books, 30,000 pho­tographs, and more than 1,000,000 clip­pings, scrap­books and ephemera,” more of which will come online as time goes by. Even­tu­al­ly the site will con­tain all the mate­ri­als from which Michel­son drew vital knowl­edge for film­mak­ers like Roman Polan­s­ki, Alfred Hitch­cock, and Stan­ley Kubrick. And if her research mate­ri­als sat­is­fied those three, they’re more than good enough for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Good Movies as Old Books: 100 Films Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.