The Untold Story of Disco and Its Black, Latino & LGBTQ Roots

in Dance, Gender, History, Life, Music | December 5th, 2022

As a white Mid­west­ern child of the ‘70s, I received two mes­sages loud and clear: dis­co was a breath­tak­ing­ly glam­orous, sexy urban scene, and “dis­co sucks.”

Cul­tur­al­ly, the lat­ter pre­vailed.

It was the opin­ion voiced most loud­ly by the pop­u­lar boys.

Dis­senters pushed back at their own per­il.

I didn’t know what YMCA was about, and I’m not con­vinced the ski jack­et­ed, puka-neck­laced alpha males at my school did either.

(My father, who sang along joy­ful­ly when­ev­er it came on the car radio, def­i­nite­ly did.)

Disco’s been dead for a long time now.

In the four plus decades since dis­grun­tled Chica­go radio DJ Steve Dahl com­man­deered a base­ball sta­di­um for a Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night where fans tossed around homo­pho­bic and racist epi­thets while destroy­ing records, there’s been notable social progress.

This progress is the lens that makes Noah Lefevre’s Poly­phon­ic video essay The Untold His­to­ry of Dis­co, and oth­er inves­ti­ga­tions into the racial and sex­u­al under­pin­nings of dis­co pos­si­ble.

I cer­tain­ly nev­er heard of Stonewall as a kid, but many con­tem­po­rary view­ers, com­ing of age in a coun­try that is, on the whole, much more LGBTQ-friend­ly than the world of their par­ents and grand­par­ents, are famil­iar with it as a gay rights mile­stone.

Lefevre ties the birth of dis­co to the 1969 Stonewall Upris­ing, and a sub­cul­ture born of neces­si­ty, where­in gay men impro­vised under­ground dance clubs where they could cut freely loose with same sex part­ners.

Instead of live dance music, these venues boast­ed DJs, crate dig­gers open to any groove that would keep the par­ty going on the dance floor: psy­che­del­ic, clas­sic soul, pro­gres­sive soul, jazz fusion, Latin Amer­i­can dance music, African pop…

(Thus the name dis­cotheque)

A dis­co sound began to coa­lesce around exist­ing hits as the O‑jays’ Love Train and Isaac Hayes’ Theme from Shaft.

You can hear it in Jim­my Nolen’s chick­en scratch lead gui­tar for James Brown and ses­sion drum­mer Earl Young’s open high hat and four-to-the-floor beat on Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ The Love I Lost.

In the begin­ning, crowds were pri­mar­i­ly Black, Lati­no and gay at New York City dis­cos like The Loft, which start­ed out as a rent par­ty, and The Sanc­tu­ary, housed in a decon­se­crat­ed mid­town Ger­man Bap­tist church. Map­plethor­pe mod­el Leigh Lee recalled The Sanctuary’s cachet to the Vil­lage Voice’s Peter Braun­stein:

It was sup­posed to be a secret, but I don’t know how secret it could have been when fag­gots and les­bians can come out of a church from mid­night till sun­rise.

As dis­cotheque DJs began dri­ving the record charts, main­stream pro­duc­ers took note, open­ing the gates for such mon­ster hits as the Bar­ry White-helmed Love Unlim­it­ed Orchestra’s Love’s Theme, Don­na Summer’s Love to Love Ya, and Chic’s Le Freak.

A glit­ter-bedecked nude man rode a white horse into Bian­ca Jagger’s birth­day par­ty at Stu­dio 54 on the stroke of mid­night, while hin­ter­land squares did The Hus­tle at their local Hol­i­day Inns. 

By the time celebs like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stew­art start­ing horn­ing in on the act, dis­co had already reached its tip­ping point.

Lit­tle twerps like me, whose moth­ers wouldn’t let them see the R‑rated Sat­ur­day Night Fever bought Bee Gees 45s from our local Peach­es and sang along to Glo­ria Gaynor’s I Will Sur­vive, as did some of our dads…

(An unex­pect­ed plea­sure of Lefevre’s video is see­ing all those famil­iar record labels spin­ning just the way they did on our pre­cious stere­os — Atlantic! Casablan­ca! Poly­dor! RSO!  Some­body pass me a Dr. Pep­per and a yel­low plas­tic insert!)

Radio DJ Rick Dees’ nov­el­ty hit with Dis­co Duck seemed so harm­less at the time, but it was sure­ly music to the main­stream “dis­co sucks” crowd’s ears. (Good luck to any punk who betrayed a fond­ness for Dis­co Duck )

Disco’s reign was brief — Lefevre notes that its end coin­cides with the begin­ning of the AIDS cri­sis — but its impact has been greater than many assume at first blush.

Disco’s empha­sis on turnta­bles and long play ver­sions influ­enced hip hop and elec­tron­ic dance music.

Near­ly half a cen­tu­ry after dis­co­ma­nia seized the land, its deep con­nec­tion to Black, Lati­no and LGBTQ his­to­ry must not be tossed aside light­ly.

Watch more of Noah Lefevre’s Poly­phon­ic video essays here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night: Scenes from the Night Dis­co Died (or Did It?) at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, 1979

Two Decades of Fire Island DJ Sets Get Unearthed, Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Stream 232 Mix­tapes Online (1979–1999)

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Her Indi­ana ties result­ed in an invi­ta­tion to Rick “Dis­co Duck” Dees’ 1977 wed­ding. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why Jorge Luis Borges Hated Soccer: “Soccer is Popular Because Stupidity is Popular”

in Literature, Sports | December 5th, 2022

Image by Grete Stern, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I will admit it: I’m one of those oft-maligned non-sports peo­ple who becomes a foot­ball (okay, soc­cer) enthu­si­ast every four years, seduced by the col­or­ful pageantry, cos­mopoli­tan air, nos­tal­gia for a game I played as a kid, and an embar­rass­ing­ly sen­ti­men­tal pride in my home coun­try’s team. I don’t lose all my crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties, but I can’t help but love the World Cup even while rec­og­niz­ing the cor­rup­tion, deep­en­ing pover­ty and exploita­tion, and host of oth­er seri­ous sociopo­lit­i­cal issues sur­round­ing it. And as an Amer­i­can, it’s sim­ply much eas­i­er to put some dis­tance between the sport itself and the jin­go­is­tic big­otry and violence—“sentimental hooli­gan­ism,” to use Franklin Foer’s phrase—that very often attend the game in var­i­ous parts of the world.

In Argenti­na, as in many soc­cer-mad coun­tries with deep social divides, gang vio­lence is a rou­tine part of fut­bol, part of what Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges termed a hor­ri­ble “idea of suprema­cy.” Borges found it impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the fan cul­ture from the game itself, once declar­ing, “soc­cer is pop­u­lar because stu­pid­i­ty is pop­u­lar.” As Shaj Math­ew writes in The New Repub­lic, the author asso­ci­at­ed the mass mania of soc­cer fan­dom with the mass fer­vor of fas­cism or dog­mat­ic nation­al­ism. “Nation­al­ism,” he wrote, “only allows for affir­ma­tions, and every doc­trine that dis­cards doubt, nega­tion, is a form of fanati­cism and stu­pid­i­ty.” As Math­ews points out, nation­al soc­cer teams and stars do often become the tools of author­i­tar­i­an regimes that “take advan­tage of the bond that fans share with their nation­al teams to drum up pop­u­lar sup­port [….] This is what Borges feared—and resented—about the sport.”

There is cer­tain­ly a sense in which Borges’ hatred of soc­cer is also indica­tive of his well-known cul­tur­al elit­ism (despite his roman­ti­ciz­ing of low­er-class gau­cho life and the once-demi­monde tan­go). Out­side of the huge­ly expen­sive World Cup, the class dynam­ics of soc­cer fan­dom in most every coun­try but the U.S. are fair­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed. New Repub­lic edi­tor Foer summed it up suc­cinct­ly in How Soc­cer Explains the World: “In every oth­er part of the world, soccer’s soci­ol­o­gy varies lit­tle: it is the province of the work­ing class.” (The inver­sion of this soc­cer class divide in the U.S., Foer writes, explains Amer­i­cans’ dis­dain for the game in gen­er­al and for elit­ist soc­cer dilet­tantes in par­tic­u­lar, though those atti­tudes are rapid­ly chang­ing). If Borges had been a North, rather than South, Amer­i­can, I imag­ine he would have had sim­i­lar things to say about the NFL, NBA, NHL, or NASCAR.

Nonethe­less, being Jorge Luis Borges, the writer did not sim­ply lodge cranky com­plaints, how­ev­er polit­i­cal­ly astute, about the game. He wrote a spec­u­la­tive sto­ry about it with his close friend and some­time writ­ing part­ner Adol­fo Bioy Casares. In “Esse Est Per­cipi” (“to be is to be per­ceived”), we learn that soc­cer has “ceased to be a sport and entered the realm of spec­ta­cle,” writes Math­ews: “rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sport has replaced actu­al sport.” The phys­i­cal sta­di­ums crum­ble, while the games are per­formed by “a sin­gle man in a booth or by actors in jer­seys before the TV cam­eras.” An eas­i­ly duped pop­u­lace fol­lows “nonex­is­tent games on TV and the radio with­out ques­tion­ing a thing.”

The sto­ry effec­tive­ly illus­trates Borges’ cri­tique of soc­cer as an intrin­sic part of a mass cul­ture that, Math­ews says, “leaves itself open to dem­a­goguery and manip­u­la­tion.” Borges’ own snob­beries aside, his res­olute sus­pi­cion of mass media spec­ta­cle and the coopt­ing of pop­u­lar cul­ture by polit­i­cal forces seems to me still, as it was in his day, a healthy atti­tude. You can read the full sto­ry here, and an excel­lent crit­i­cal essay on Borges’ polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy here.  For those inter­est­ed in explor­ing Franklin Foer’s book, see How Soc­cer Explains the World: An Unlike­ly The­o­ry of Glob­al­iza­tion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

via The New Repub­lic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Video: Bob Mar­ley Plays a Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges Draws a Self-Por­trait After Going Blind

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

The 100 Greatest Films of All Time According to 1,639 Film Critics & 480 Directors: See the Results of the Once-a-Decade Sight and Sound Poll

in Film | December 2nd, 2022

Chan­tal Aker­man’s Jeanne Diel­man, 23 quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles is a three-and-a-half hour film in which noth­ing hap­pens. That, in any case, will be the descrip­tion offered by many who will view it for the first time in the com­ing months. Their curios­i­ty will have been piqued by its tri­umph in the just-released results of Sight and Sound mag­a­zine’s crit­ics poll to deter­mine the great­est films of all time. Con­duct­ed just once per decade since 1952, it has only seen two oth­er top-spot upsets in that time: when Cit­i­zen Kane dis­placed Bicy­cle Thieves in 1962, and when Ver­ti­go dis­placed Cit­i­zen Kane half a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

The top ten on this year’s Sight and Sound crit­ics poll is as fol­lows:

1. Jeanne Diel­man 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles (Chan­tal Aker­man, 1975)
2. Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1958)
3. Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
4. Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jirō Ozu, 1953)
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1968)
7. Beau tra­vail (Claire Denis, 1998)
8. Mul­hol­land Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
9. Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
10. Sin­gin’ in the Rain (Gene Kel­ly and Stan­ley Donen, 1952)

Since 1992, the mag­a­zine has also run a sep­a­rate poll that col­lects the votes of not crit­ics but film direc­tors, which this year placed 2001 at num­ber one. Its top ten also includes such selec­tions as Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8½, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mir­ror, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up.

The direc­tors ranked Jeanne Diel­man at a respectable num­ber four, tied with Tokyo Sto­ry. “On the side of con­tent, the film charts the break­down of a bour­geois Bel­gian house­wife, moth­er and part-time pros­ti­tute over the course of three days,” writes film the­o­rist Lau­ra Mul­vey on Sight and Sound’s page for the film.

“On the side of form, it rig­or­ous­ly records her domes­tic rou­tine in extend­ed time and from a fixed cam­era posi­tion.” As you may already imag­ine, these ele­ments — as well as the fact that the title char­ac­ter is played by no less grand a movie star than Del­phine Seyrig — make for a sin­gu­lar view­ing expe­ri­ence.

That title isn’t with­out a cer­tain irony, giv­en how much of the film Aker­man devotes to straight­for­ward depic­tions of a mid­dle-aged woman per­form­ing house­hold chores — tak­ing us far indeed from the domain of, say, Jer­ry Bruck­heimer. “Shot in sta­t­ic, long takes, the film’s pace and tone may first seem slow or dull,” writes Adam Cook in the IndieWire video essay “Chan­tal Aker­man’s Jeanne Diel­man Is a True Action Movie,” but “in observ­ing these house­hold tasks free of periph­ery, they take on a dra­matur­gy of their own.” Only with time and rep­e­ti­tion do “the nuances in Del­phine Seyrig’s expres­sions con­vey vast­ly dif­fer­ent con­no­ta­tions” and “the small­est details take on nar­ra­tive pow­er and sig­nif­i­cance.”

“Her life is orga­nized to allow no gaps in the day,” Aker­man told a tele­vi­sion chat-show audi­ence in 1975, when Jeanne Diel­man had just come out. But “her very struc­tured uni­verse starts to unrav­el,” and “her sub­con­scious express­es itself through a series of lit­tle slip-ups.” In a 2009 inter­view for the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, Aker­man drew con­nec­tions between her char­ac­ter’s reg­i­men­ta­tion and the strict Jew­ish rit­u­als she her­self observed in child­hood: “Know­ing every moment of every day, what she must do the next moment, brings a sort of peace.” When the rou­tine is dis­rupt­ed, “a sus­pense builds, because I think that deep down, we know that some­thing’s going to hap­pen.” On this emo­tion­al lev­el, Jeanne Diel­man is more con­ven­tion­al than it may seem. And to those who can immerse them­selves in it, it feels like the only film in which any­thing does hap­pen.

See the Sight and Sound poll results here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

100 Over­looked Films Direct­ed by Women: See Selec­tions from Sight & Sound Magazine’s New List

103 Essen­tial Films By Female Film­mak­ers: Clue­less, Lost in Trans­la­tion, Ishtar and More

The Ten Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

The Ten Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

The Best 100 Movies of the 21st Cen­tu­ry (So Far) Named by 177 Film Crit­ics

The Top 100 Amer­i­can Films of All Time, Accord­ing to 62 Inter­na­tion­al Film Crit­ics

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.

Watch Neil Young & Crazy Horse Play & Record the New 15-Minute Track “Chevrolet” for the First Time

in Music | December 1st, 2022

“Chevro­let,” a new track on Neil Young’s 42nd stu­dio album World Record, takes you on a long, ram­bling road trip, cov­er­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent ter­rain over 15 min­utes, with some vers­es last­ing more than two min­utes. Above, you can watch Neil Young and Crazy Horse (Nils Lof­gren, Bil­ly Tal­bot and Ralph Moli­na) play the song for the very first time.  It’s also the same cut that appears on the album. It’s a pret­ty remark­able dis­play of musi­cian­ship, and a great new Neil Young track.

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

Neil Young Plays “Hey, Hey, My, My” with Devo: Watch a Clas­sic Scene from the Impro­vised Movie Human High­way (1980)

Neil Young Releas­es a Nev­er-Before-Heard Ver­sion of His 1979 Clas­sic, “Pow­derfin­ger”: Stream It Online

When Neil Young & Rick “Super Freak” James Formed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

“More Barn!” The Sto­ry of How Neil Young First Played Har­vest for Gra­ham Nash (1972)

Succession Star Brian Cox Teaches Hamlet’s Soliloquy to a 2‑Year-Old Child

in Theatre | December 1st, 2022

Per­haps you’ve seen Scot­tish actor Bri­an Cox per­form with the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny in crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed per­for­mances of The Tam­ing of The Shrew and Titus Andron­i­cus. Or, more like­ly, you’ve seen him in the block­buster HBO series, Suc­ces­sion. But there’s per­haps anoth­er role you haven’t seen him in: tutor of tod­dlers. A num­ber of years back, Cox taught Theo, then only 30 months old, the famous solil­o­quy from Ham­let, hop­ing to show there’s a Shake­speare­an actor in all of us. Lat­er, Cox talked to the BBC about his “mas­ter­class” with Theo and what he took away from the expe­ri­ence. Watch him muse right below:

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:

Watch Bri­an Cox of “Suc­ces­sion” Read Hunter S. Thompson’s Pro­fan­i­ty-Laden Let­ter

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

See 21 Historic Films by Lumière Brothers, Colorized and Enhanced with Machine Learning (1895–1902)

in Film, History | November 30th, 2022

Auguste and Louis Lumière thought that cin­e­ma did­n’t have a future. For­tu­nate­ly, they came to that con­clu­sion only after pro­duc­ing a body of work that com­pris­es some of the ear­li­est films ever made, as well as invalu­able glimpses of the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and the dawn of the twen­ti­eth, an era that has now passed out of liv­ing mem­o­ry. Using the motion-pho­tog­ra­phy sys­tem that they devel­oped them­selves, the Lumière broth­ers cap­tured life around them in not just their native France, but Switzer­land, Italy, Eng­land, the Unit­ed States, and even more exot­ic lands like Egypt, Turkey, and Japan — all of which you can see in the com­pi­la­tion video above.

The smooth col­or footage you see here is not, of course, what the Lumière broth­ers showed to their wide-eyed audi­ences well over a cen­tu­ry ago. It all comes spe­cial­ly pre­pared by Youtu­ber Denis Shi­rayev, who spe­cial­izes in enhanc­ing old film with cur­rent tech­nolo­gies, some of them dri­ven by machine learn­ing.

If this sounds famil­iar, it may be because we’ve fea­tured a good deal of Shi­rayev’s work here on Open Cul­ture before, includ­ing his restored ver­sions of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Belle Epoque Paris, New York City in 1911, Ams­ter­dam in 1922, Tokyo at the start of the Taishō era — and even the Lumière broth­ers’ famous movie of a train arriv­ing at La Cio­tat Sta­tion.

For this com­pi­la­tion video’s first four and half min­utes, Shi­rayev explains how he does it. But first, he offers a dis­claimer: “Some peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly think that the col­ors in this video are the orig­i­nal source col­ors, or that the source mate­r­i­al had audio, or that the enhanced faces are real.” All that was in fact added lat­er, and that’s where the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence comes in: even in the absence of direct his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, it can “guess” what the real details not cap­tured by the Lumière both­ers’ cam­era might have looked like. This is part of a process that also includes upscal­ing, sta­bi­liza­tion, and con­ver­sion to 60 frames per sec­ond — a form of motion smooth­ing, in recent years the sub­ject of a cin­e­mat­ic con­tro­ver­sy the Lumière broth­ers cer­tain­ly could­n’t have imag­ined.

After Shi­rayev’s remarks, you can start watch­ing 21 Lumière broth­ers films after the 4:30 mark.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Around the World in 1896: 40 Min­utes of Real Footage Lets You Vis­it Paris, New York, Venice, Rome, Budapest & More

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumière Broth­ers to Google Glass

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.

Deep Fried Coffee: A Very Disturbing Discovery

in Food & Drink | November 30th, 2022

Deep fried cof­fee. Yes, it’s a thing, and cof­fee con­nois­seur James Hoff­mann decid­ed to give it a go. How did it turn out? We won’t spoil it for you–other than to say, don’t be sur­prised if deep fried cof­fee makes its way into a future edi­tion of Hoff­man­n’s book, The World Atlas of Cof­fee.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

15-Year-Old Picasso Paints His First Masterpiece, “The First Communion”

in Art, Religion | November 29th, 2022

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a life­time to paint like a child. — Pablo Picas­so

We think it’s safe to say that most of us have a pre­con­ceived notion of Picas­so’s style, and The First Com­mu­nion, above, isn’t it.

Picas­so was just 15 when he com­plet­ed this large-scale oil, hav­ing lost his 7‑year-old sis­ter, Con­chi­ta, to diph­the­ria one year before.

The strick­en young artist had attempt­ed to bar­gain with God, vow­ing to give up paint­ing if she was spared. As Ari­an­na Huff­in­g­ton writes in the biog­ra­phy Picas­so: Cre­ator and Destroy­er:

…he was torn between want­i­ng her saved and want­i­ng her dead so that his gift would be saved. When she died, he decid­ed that God was evil and des­tiny an ene­my. At the same time, he was con­vinced that it was his ambiva­lence that had made it pos­si­ble for God to kill Con­chi­ta. His guilt was enormous—the oth­er side of his belief in his pow­ers to affect the world around him. And it was com­pound­ed by his almost mag­i­cal con­vic­tion that his lit­tle sis­ter’s death had released him to be a painter and fol­low the call of the pow­ers he had been giv­en, what­ev­er the con­se­quences.

If there’s evil at work in the “First Com­mu­nion,” he keeps it under wraps. All eyes are on the rapt young com­mu­ni­cant, embod­ied in his sur­viv­ing sis­ter, Lola, in a snowy veil and gown.

Their father, painter and draw­ing pro­fes­sor José Ruiz y Blas­co, assumes the part of the girl’s father or god­fa­ther, a solemn wit­ness to this rite of pas­sage.

Ruiz y Blas­co pro­vid­ed instruc­tion and cham­pi­oned his son’s gift. He encour­aged him to enter the “First Com­mu­nion,” and lat­er, “Sci­ence and Char­i­ty” (in which he appears as the doc­tor) in the Exposi­cion de Bel­las Artes, a com­pe­ti­tion and exhi­bi­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty for emerg­ing artists.

Picas­so lat­er remarked that “every time I draw a man, I think of my father.  To me, man is Don José, and will be all my life…”

Ruiz y Blas­co, con­vinced that Picasso’s tal­ent would bring suc­cess as a nat­u­ral­is­tic painter of clas­si­cal scenes and por­traits, was deeply dis­ap­point­ed when his teenaged son began blow­ing off class at Madrid’s pres­ti­gious Acad­e­mia Real de San Fer­nan­do. 

Just imag­ine how he react­ed to the scan­dalous Cubist vision of “Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon,” unveiled a mere eleven years after the “First Com­mu­nion.”

The rest is his­to­ry.

Just for fun, we invit­ed the free online AI image gen­er­a­tor Craiy­on (for­mer­ly known as DALL‑E Mini) to have a go using the prompt “Picas­so First Com­mu­nion”.

The results should sur­prise no one. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

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

8th Century Englishwoman Scribbled Her Name & Drew Funny Pictures in a Medieval Manuscript, According to New Cutting-Edge Technology

in Books, History | November 29th, 2022

Most of us have doo­dled in the mar­gins of our books at one time or anoth­er, and some of us have even dared to write our own names. But very of few us, pre­sum­ably, would have expect­ed our hand­i­work to be mar­veled at twelve cen­turies hence. Yet that’s just what has hap­pened to the mar­gin­a­lia left by a medieval Eng­lish­woman we know only as Ead­burg, who some time in the eighth cen­tu­ry com­mit­ted her name — as well as oth­er sym­bols and fig­ures — to the pages of a Latin copy of the Acts of the Apos­tles.

Ead­burg did this with such secre­cy that only advanced twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has allowed us to see it at all. That the read­ers in the Mid­dle Ages some­times jot­ted in their man­u­scripts isn’t unheard of.

But unlike most of them, Ead­burg seems to have favored a dry­point sty­lus — i.e., a tool with noth­ing on it to leave a clear mark — which would have made her writ­ing near­ly impos­si­ble to notice with the naked eye. To see all of them neces­si­tat­ed the use of a tech­nique called “pho­to­met­ric stereo,” which Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bodleian Library Senior Pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Bar­rett explains in this blog post.

The scan­ning process col­lects images that “map the direc­tion and height of the original’s sur­face, and are processed into ren­ders show­ing only the relief of the orig­i­nal with the tone and col­or removed.” Sub­se­quent steps of fil­ter­ing and enhance­ment result in a dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion of “the three-dimen­sion­al sur­face of the page,” which, with the prop­er enhance­ments, final­ly allows dry­point inscrip­tions to be seen. Ead­burg’s name, reports the Guardian’s Don­na Fer­gu­son, was found “pas­sion­ate­ly etched into the mar­gins of the man­u­script in five places, while abbre­vi­at­ed forms of the name appear a fur­ther ten times.”

Oth­er new dis­cov­er­ies in the man­u­scrip­t’s pages include “tiny, rough draw­ings of fig­ures — in one case, of a per­son with out­stretched arms, reach­ing for anoth­er per­son who is hold­ing up a hand to stop them.” What Ead­burg meant by it all remains a mat­ter of active inquiry, but then, so does her very iden­ti­ty. “Char­ter evi­dence sug­gests that a woman called Ead­burg was abbess of a female reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty at Min­ster-in-Thanet, in Kent from at least 733 until her death some­time between 748 and 761,” writes Bar­rett, but she was­n’t the only Ead­burg who could’ve pos­sessed the book. All this con­tains a les­son for today’s mar­gin­a­lia-mak­ers: if you’re going to sign your name, sign it in full.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Medieval Doo­dler Draws a “Rock­star Lady” in a Man­u­script of Boethius’ The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy (Cir­ca 1500)

When Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Recy­cled & Used to Make the First Print­ed Books

160,000+ Medieval Man­u­scripts Online: Where to Find Them

Dis­cov­er Nüshu, a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Chi­nese Writ­ing Sys­tem That Only Women Knew How to Write

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

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.

Meet Honey Lantree, the Trailblazing 1960s Female Drummer

in Gender, History, Music | November 28th, 2022

Quick, who’s your favorite female drum­mer?

Hard­ly a strange ques­tion!

(Yes, you are allowed to pick more than one favorite.)

Things were decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent when drum­mer Hon­ey Lantree, the only female mem­ber of the 60s British Inva­sion group the Hon­ey­combs, took up the sticks.

Drums were not her orig­i­nal instru­ment. Her boyfriend, employ­er, and even­tu­al band­mate Mar­tin Mur­ray was giv­ing her a gui­tar les­son when she asked if she could take a whirl at his kit.

Mur­ray recalled his sur­prise when she start­ed whal­ing away like a vet:

She was just a born, nat­ur­al drum­mer; she hadn’t played before and just went for it. I was aghast, star­ing at her, and said, “All right, you’re our new drum­mer.”

Lantree’s gen­der helped the Hon­ey­combs secure press.

She snagged a celebri­ty endorse­ment for Carl­ton drums and turned 21 with a cake fes­tooned with marzi­pan bees, and, more impor­tant­ly, a #1 sin­gle, “Have I the Right.”

Of course, her gen­der also ensured that most of the cov­er­age would focus on her appear­ance, with scant, if any men­tion of her musi­cal tal­ent.

Lantree was not the only mem­ber of the Hon­ey­combs to find this galling.

As lead singer Denis D’Ell told the Record Mir­ror in 1965:

How can it be a gim­mick just because we have a girl, Hon­ey, on drums? Hon­ey plays with us pure­ly and sim­ply because she is the right drum­mer for the job. If she wasn’t any good, she wouldn’t hold down the job.

On tour, we don’t have any trou­bles by hav­ing a girl with us. We just oper­ate as a group. Per­haps it is that the nov­el­ty has worn off — we hope that fans soon will for­get all about this so-called gim­mick.

The fol­low­ing year, he quit, along with lead gui­tarist Alan Ward and Peter Pye, who had replaced Mur­ray on rhythm gui­tar. Lantree and her broth­er, Hon­ey­combs’ bassist John, sol­diered on with new per­son­nel until the 1967 death of pro­duc­er Joe Meek.

Still, for a brief peri­od, the Hon­ey­combs’ record­ings, tours, tele­vi­sion appear­ances, and yes, press cov­er­age made Lantree the most famous female drum­mer in the world.

Admit­ted­ly, the field was not par­tic­u­lar­ly crowd­ed. Just chal­leng­ing in ways that out­stripped the dis­pro­por­tion­ate focus on fig­ures, boyfriends, and beau­ty tips.

Male fans dragged Lantree off­stage dur­ing a con­cert in Corn­wall, lead­ing her to remark, “You expect this sort of thing but it’s still ter­ri­fy­ing.”

Around the same time, anoth­er British band, the all-female Liv­er­birds, were invit­ed to cross the pond for a cov­et­ed gig in Las Vegas…provided they’d play it top­less. “Can you imag­ine me on the drums play­ing top­less,” Sylvia Saun­ders, who short­ly there­after was forced to choose between the drums and a high risk preg­nan­cy, gasped.

Although she is said to have inspired a num­ber of young female musi­cians, includ­ing Karen Car­pen­ter, Lantree, who died in 2018 at the age of 75, rarely shows up on curat­ed lists of notable female drum­mers.

In a strange way, that spells progress — there are many more female drum­mers today than there were in the mid 60s, and mer­ci­ful­ly more oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as musi­cians.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent

Meet Vio­la Smith, the World’s Old­est Drum­mer: Her Career Start­ed in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

Meet the Liv­er­birds, Britain’s First Female (and Now For­got­ten) Rock Band

The Women of Rock: Dis­cov­er an Oral His­to­ry Project That Fea­tures Pio­neer­ing Women in Rock Music

Meet Fan­ny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colos­sal and Won­der­ful, and Nobody’s Ever Men­tioned Them”

The Woman Who Invent­ed Rock n’ Roll: An Intro­duc­tion to Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

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