The 17th Century Japanese Samurai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Citizen

in History | November 29th, 2021

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We learn about intre­pid Euro­peans who sought, and some­times even found, trade and mis­sion­ary routes to Chi­na and Japan dur­ing the cen­turies of explo­ration and empire. Rarely, if ever, do we hear about vis­i­tors from the East to the West, espe­cial­ly those as well-trav­eled as 17th-cen­tu­ry samu­rai Haseku­ra Tsune­na­ga. Sent on a mis­sion to Europe and Amer­i­ca by his feu­dal lord, Date Masumune, Haseku­ra “set off on a quest to earn rich­es and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance,” Andrew Milne writes at All that’s Inter­est­ing. “He cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the globe, became part of the first Japan­ese group in Cuba, met the Pope, helped begin a branch of Japan­ese set­tlers in Spain (still thriv­ing today), and even became a Roman cit­i­zen.”

Haseku­ra was a bat­tle-test­ed samu­rai who had act­ed on the daimyo’s behalf on many occa­sions. His mis­sion to the West, how­ev­er, was first and fore­most a chance to redeem his hon­or and save his life. In 1612, Haseku­ra’s father was made to com­mit sep­puku after an indict­ment for cor­rup­tion. Stripped of lands and title, Haseku­ra could only avoid the same fate by going West, and so he did, just a few years before the peri­od of sakoku, or nation­al iso­la­tion, began in Japan. Trav­el­ing with Span­ish mis­sion­ary Luis Sote­lo, Haseku­ra embarked from the small Japan­ese port of Tsuki­noura in 1613 and first reached Cape Men­do­ci­no in Cal­i­for­nia, then part of New Spain.

“Sev­en years before the Mayflower head­ed to the New World,” Mar­cel Ther­oux writes at The Guardian, Haseku­ra “crossed the Pacif­ic, trav­eled over­land through Mex­i­co, then sailed all the way to Europe. He was accom­pa­nied by about 20 fel­low coun­try­men — in all like­li­hood, the first Japan­ese to cross The Atlantic.” They set sail on a Japan­ese-built galleon — called Date Maru, then lat­er San Juan Bautista by the Span­ish. “The expe­di­tion spent sev­en years trav­el­ing one-third of the globe,” notes PBS in a descrip­tion of  “A Samu­rai in the Vat­i­can,” an episode of Secrets of the Dead.

Sote­lo and Haseku­ra made for­mal requests for more mis­sion­ar­ies in Japan, deliv­er­ing let­ters from from Haseku­ra’s lord, the daimyo of Sendai, to the King of Spain and Pope Paul V. But the samu­rai’s most press­ing pur­pose was the estab­lish­ment of trade links between Japan, New Spain (Mex­i­co), and Europe. In his 1982 nov­el, The Samu­rai, Shusaku Endo dra­ma­tized the exchange the Span­ish mis­sion­ar­ies made for such intro­duc­tions, hav­ing a priest say: “In order to spread God’s teach­ing in Japan… there is only one pos­si­ble method. We must cajole them into it. Espana must offer to share its prof­its from trade on the Pacif­ic with the Japan­ese in return for sweep­ing pros­e­ly­tiz­ing priv­i­leges. The Japan­ese will sac­ri­fice any­thing else for the sake of prof­its.” This was not to be, of course.

The Span­ish gam­bled on trade open­ing up Japan for the kind of mis­sion­ary col­o­niza­tion they had achieved else­where, using Haseku­ra’s mis­sion as a proxy. Haseku­ra gam­bled on a Chris­t­ian mis­sion to save his life. Though his own accounts are lost, it seems he came to gen­uine­ly embrace the faith, becom­ing a con­firmed Catholic under the name Philip Fran­cis Fax­e­cu­ra. Dur­ing his mis­sion, how­ev­er, the Shogun, Toku­gawa Ieya­su, banned Chris­tian­i­ty in Japan on penal­ty of death, in advance of the expul­sion of the Span­ish and Por­tuguese by his grand­son, Toku­gawa Iemit­su, in 1623. What became of the explor­er samu­rai when he returned to Japan in 1620 is unknown, but his dece­dents were exe­cut­ed for prac­tic­ing his new­found faith. He would be the last vis­i­tor to the West from Japan until the Toku­gawa Shogu­nate sent the so-called “First Japan­ese Embassy to Europe” in 1862, over 200 years lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Cook­book Ryori Mono­gatari (1643)

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

Watch John Cage’s 4′33″ Played by Musicians Around the World

in Music | November 29th, 2021

Make sure to watch the video above with the sound on. In it musi­cians from around the world all play a well-known com­po­si­tion: 4′33″ by John Cage. “I spent weeks ask­ing strangers on the inter­net to send me their rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions, and boy did they deliv­er,” writes the video’s cre­ator Sam Vladimirsky. “My inbox filled with adap­ta­tions by an Aus­tri­an death met­al band, a marim­ba play­er, a bun­ny rab­bit, the Muse­um of Musi­cal Instru­ments in Phoenix, a mid­dle school music teacher, a ver­sion played on Gui­tar Hero and over Zoom.” Though orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for piano, 4′33″ is eas­i­ly trans­posed to all these instru­ments and oth­ers, call­ing as it does for their play­ers to do the very same thing: noth­ing.

“Inspired by Zen Bud­dhism, the Dada move­ment and Cage’s strong dis­taste for the ubiq­ui­tous muzak of the time,” says Aeon, “its score instructs per­form­ers not to play their instru­ments for the piece’s four-minute, thir­ty-three-sec­ond dura­tion.” The result is not silence but “the unique ambi­ent sound­scape of the envi­ron­ment in which it’s per­formed, reflect­ing Cage’s belief that music is ever-present.”

Here the sub­mit­ted per­for­mances take place in such envi­ron­ments as a class­room, a bed­room, a court­yard, a dri­ve­way, a bus, and a sub­way sta­tion. Vladimirsky pairs the videos, allow­ing us to enjoy not just par­al­lel view­ing expe­ri­ences but a lay­ered lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of these ambi­ent sound­scapes.

“Stuck inside,” writes Vladimirsky, “pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians, ded­i­cat­ed ama­teurs, awk­ward teens and col­lege stu­dents found 4′33″ to be the music of our moment.” If the Rolling Stones could play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in lock­down, each from his sep­a­rate home, then who’s to say this isn’t the next log­i­cal step? Each per­for­mance of 4′33″ reflects not just its imme­di­ate set­ting but its cul­tur­al peri­od: com­pare the clip just above, in which Cage him­self plays it in Har­vard Square in 1973. Most of us haven’t seen the inside of a con­cert hall in quite some time, let alone heard the ambi­ent sounds pro­duced with­in it in the absence of prop­er music. But each of us can, at least, per­form 4′33″ for our­selves when­ev­er and wher­ev­er we like — one way of doing it being sim­ply to play the video at the top of the post with the sound off.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John Cage Play His “Silent” 4’33” in Har­vard Square, Pre­sent­ed by Nam June Paik (1973)

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

The 4’33” App Lets You Cre­ate Your Own Ver­sion of John Cage’s Clas­sic Work

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

The Vir­tu­al Choir: Watch a Choir Con­duc­tor Dig­i­tal­ly Unite 3500 Singers from Around the World

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

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

Watch Hilarious Spoofs of Classic Film Genres: Film Noir, Spaghetti Westerns, Scandinavian Crime Dramas, Time Travel Films & More

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Television | November 29th, 2021

Come­di­an Alas­dair Beck­ett-King has a keen ear for enter­tain­ment tropes and sub­scribes to the belief that “putting too much effort into things makes them fun­nier.”

The result is a series of one-minute videos in which he spoofs the con­ven­tions of a par­tic­u­lar genre or long run­ning series, with per­fect visu­als, meta dia­logue, and faith­ful­ly ren­dered per­for­mance styles.

Beck­ett-King put his Lon­don Film School train­ing to use with this project dur­ing lock­down, spend­ing “absolute­ly ages putting togeth­er some­thing very tiny.”

Wit­ness his take on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, in which the cap­tain of the ship, a Patrick Stew­art dop­pel­gänger and “veg­e­tar­i­an space social­ist who is always right” nego­ti­ates with a “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a kind of iffy alien race not nec­es­sar­i­ly based on a spe­cif­ic human eth­nic­i­ty.” As Beck­ett-King told Eric John­son, host of Fol­low Fri­day pod­cast:

That one was very, very hard work because I had to do a CGI bald cap for myself because I have long, long flow­ing hair. I had to try and do an impres­sion of Cap­tain Picard of the Star­ship Enter­prise… it’s not that good. There’s so much work that went into it.

Before I post­ed it, I was con­vinced I’d wast­ed my time. Then luck­i­ly it did quite well and peo­ple real­ly liked it. Peo­ple kept say­ing, “When are you doing Cap­tain Picard again?” I’m like, “I’m not! because it took ages to do the bald head, and you’ve seen it now.” I think what’s nice about it though, is you get to try some­thing, com­mit to it and then see if it’s fun­ny after­wards. It’s quite like doing live standup.

(Beckett-King’s part­ner Rachel Anne Smith gets cred­its for the non-CGI cos­tumes.)

Some oth­er favorites:

Every Sin­gle Scan­di­na­vian Crime Dra­ma: The killer could be any­one in Hel­ga­sund. That’s over sev­en peo­ple.

Every Sin­gle Spooky Pod­cast: The frozen soil was lit­tered with what appeared to be dis­card­ed Casper mat­tress­es and Bom­bas socks.

Every Sin­gle Spaghet­ti West­ern: Yeah, well your lips don’t synch…

Every Haunt­ed House Movie: It’s the per­fect place for me to quit drink­ing, fin­ish my nov­el, and real­ly come to terms with that deer we hit on the way over.

Every Episode of Pop­u­lar Time Trav­el Show: Help us, Doc­tor. The intran­si­gent Implaca­blons are poised to destroy us.

How Every Film Noir Ends: Talk your way out of a snub nosed pis­tol held at waist height.

Should you find your­self at loose ends, wait­ing for the next Beck­ett-King “every sin­gle…” episode to drop, try  bid­ing your time with his Art House Movie Spoil­ers and North East of Eng­land spin on Jaws.

Buy a Cof­fee for Alas­dair Beck­ett-King here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The Time When Nation­al Lam­poon Par­o­died Mad Mag­a­zine: A Satire of Satire (1971)

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

Blade Runner and Alien TV Shows Confirmed by Ridley Scott

in Film | November 26th, 2021

Rid­ley Scott is 83, and good on him for not slow­ing down. The Last Duel came and went, but it actu­al­ly exist­ed and was an orig­i­nal idea, based on a true his­tor­i­cal event, and with a script from Nicole Holofcener, and fea­tured a re-team­ing up of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And as of this writ­ing, House of Guc­ci is set to open and give us some sala­cious scan­dal and mur­der among the hoity and toit, just in time for Oscar sea­son. He’s even recent­ly dropped some hot takes against the super­hero movie fac­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood. So Scott’s doing well. Then why does this lat­est announce­ment feel so under­whelm­ing?

Accord­ing to a BBC inter­view on Mon­day, Scott is also devel­op­ing a 10-episode lim­it­ed series based on Blade Run­ner *and* a lim­it­ed series based on Alien, this time set on earth.

It’s not total­ly clear how much Scott is active­ly involved.

“We [have already] writ­ten the pilot for ‘Blade Run­ner’ and the bible,” he says, refer­ring to the mas­ter plan of the 10 episodes. “So, we’re already pre­sent­ing ‘Blade Run­ner’ as a TV show, the first 10 hours.” But who his co-cre­ators are, we don’t know right now. And there are sim­i­lar ques­tions in the upcom­ing Alien series, which has been rumored since 2020. Noah Haw­ley, who turned the Coen Bros. Far­go into some­thing like a jazz riff on the Coen’s films spread across sev­er­al decades, is set to be the showrun­ner.

The Blade Run­ner announce­ment has sent the pop media press into a tizzy, try­ing to guess where and when the new series will be set. After all, the 1982 film was set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2019, and the Denis Vil­leneuve sequel was set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2049. And it was only because of this announce­ment that I even knew of the Adult Swim ani­mat­ed series, Blade Run­ner: Black Lotus, which is set in a bleak, dystopi­an 2032. Times have changed, but the Los Ange­les of the future sure hasn’t. So when will it take place? Who knows?

Look, the two new series might be good, they might be meh, but Scott’s sud­den promi­nence at the end of 2021 feels like an encap­su­la­tion of media’s diver­gent paths. On one hand you have his two films, both orig­i­nal con­tent, one that might have a sec­ond life on stream­ing on and anoth­er that feels like it will have some buzz and lead peo­ple back to the cin­e­ma. Either way, they tell sto­ries with begin­nings, mid­dles, and ends. On the oth­er hand you have the con­tin­u­al fran­chise-ment of cul­ture, revis­it­ing and rehash­ing two excel­lent films from the ear­ly ‘80s that exist per­fect­ly well as stand­alone sto­ries. Do we real­ly need more sto­ries about the xenomorph? Do we need more sto­ries about a very damp Los Ange­les and its repli­cants? Is cul­ture at a stand­still? Are we doomed to recy­cle every­thing from the 1980s onward?

How­ev­er, if any­body should be mak­ing mon­ey off of Rid­ley Scott’s lega­cy it’s Scott him­self. Leave your thoughts in the com­ments below, while I put on this Van­ge­lis sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence Blade Run­ner Like You Nev­er Have Before Through a Fea­ture-Length Remas­tered Sound­track

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

Three Blade Run­ner Pre­quels: Watch Them Online

What is a Blade Run­ner? How Rid­ley Scott’s Movie Has Ori­gins in William S. Bur­roughs’ Novel­la, Blade Run­ner: A Movie

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.

The Drugs Used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans

in History, Psychology | November 26th, 2021

Many of us liv­ing in the parts of the world where mar­i­jua­na has recent­ly been legal­ized may regard our­selves as par­tak­ing of a high­ly mod­ern plea­sure. And giv­en the ever-increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of the grow­ing and pro­cess­ing tech­niques that under­lie what has become a for­mi­da­ble cannabis indus­try, per­haps, on some lev­el, we are. But as intel­lec­tu­al­ly avid enthu­si­asts of psy­choac­tive sub­stances won’t hes­i­tate to tell you, their use stretch­es far­ther back in time than his­to­ry itself. “For as long as there has been civ­i­liza­tion, there have been mind-alter­ing drugs,” writes Sci­ence’s Andrew Lawler. But was any­one using them in the pre­de­ces­sors to west­ern civ­i­liza­tion as we know it today?

For quite some time, schol­ars believed that unlike, say, Mesoamer­i­ca or north Africa, “the ancient Near East had seemed curi­ous­ly drug-free.” But now, “new tech­niques for ana­lyz­ing residues in exca­vat­ed jars and iden­ti­fy­ing tiny amounts of plant mate­r­i­al sug­gest that ancient Near East­ern­ers indulged in a range of psy­choac­tive sub­stances.”

The lat­est evi­dence sug­gests that, already three mil­len­nia ago, “drugs like cannabis had arrived in Mesopotamia, while peo­ple from Turkey to Egypt exper­i­ment­ed with local sub­stances such as blue water lily.” That these habits seem to have con­tin­ued in ancient Greece and Rome is sug­gest­ed by archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sum­ma­rized in the video above.

In 2019, archae­ol­o­gists unearthed a few pre­cious arti­facts from a fourth-cen­tu­ry Scythi­an bur­ial mound near Stavropol in Rus­sia. There were “gold­en arm­bands, gold­en cups, a heavy gold ring, and the great­est trea­sure of all, two spec­tac­u­lar gold­en ves­sels,” says nar­ra­tor Gar­rett Ryan, who earned a PhD in Greek and Roman His­to­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. The inte­ri­ors of those last “were coat­ed with a sticky black residue,” con­firmed in the lab to be opi­um with traces of mar­i­jua­na. “The Scythi­ans, in oth­er words, got high” — as did “their Greek and Roman neigh­bors.” Ryan, author of Naked Stat­ues, Fat Glad­i­a­tors, and War Ele­phants: Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans, goes on to make intrigu­ing con­nec­tions between scat­tered but rel­e­vant pieces of archae­o­log­i­cal and tex­tu­al evi­dence. We know that some of our civ­i­liza­tion­al fore­bears got high; how many, and how high, are ques­tions for future scholas­tic inquiry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Pipes with Cannabis Traces Found in Shakespeare’s Gar­den, Sug­gest­ing the Bard Enjoyed a “Not­ed Weed”

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

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

Dueling as a Film Trope: Pretty Much Pop #109 Considers The Last Duel and Its Genre

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 26th, 2021

In light of the release of The Last Duel (which you need­n’t have watched), we talk about the trope of the hon­or-resolv­ing duel in movies and TV. Mark and guest co-host Dylan Casey of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life are joined by Clif Mark, host of the Good in The­o­ry pod­cast who wrote his polit­i­cal the­sis and a 2018 Aeon arti­cle on the his­to­ry and log­ic of duel­ing.

Since we’re all phi­los­o­phy pod­cast­ers on this one (our enter­tain­ment pod­cast­er guest dropped out at the last minute), we bring in philoso­phers like Hegel and Niet­zsche in as need­ed, the cir­cle of eth­i­cal con­cern (who gets moral sta­tus and so is wor­thy to duel?), and of course the rel­e­vant class and gen­der cri­tiques.

We also touch on The Duelists (inci­den­tal­ly, Rid­ley Scot­t’s direct­ing debut, where The Last Duel is his lat­est), The Duelist and The Duel (two 2016 films), A Knight’s Tale, The Princess Bride, Dune, Hamil­ton, Bridger­ton, The Karate Kid, and more.

For more infor­ma­tion on the specter of duel­ing in pol­i­tics, read about Justin Trudeau and Trump/Biden.

Some arti­cles that fed our dis­cus­sion (in addi­tion to Clif’s “What Is Offen­sive”) include:

• “The Last Duel: Cin­e­ma’s 11 Best Show­downs” by Nicholas Bar­ber
• “‘The Last Duel’ Is More Than Just Unsuc­cess­ful Oscar Bait” by Adam Nay­man
• “The True His­to­ry Behind ‘The Last Duel’” by Meilan Sol­ly
• “Duelling Films” by Howard G. Brown

Fol­low Clif @Clifton_Mark.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. 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 Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

in Music | November 25th, 2021

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion. Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to every­one who plans to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day today.

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:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Sar­cas­tic “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

William Shat­ner Raps About How to Not Kill Your­self Deep Fry­ing a Turkey

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Jazz Virtuoso Oscar Peterson Gives Dick Cavett a Dazzling Piano Lesson (1979)

in Jazz, Music, Television | November 24th, 2021

Duke Elling­ton once called Oscar Peter­son the “Mahara­ja of the Key­board” for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and abil­i­ty to play any style with seem­ing ease, a skill he first began to learn as a clas­si­cal­ly trained child prodi­gy. Peter­son was intro­duced to Bach and Beethoven by his musi­cian father and old­er sis­ter Daisy, then drilled in rig­or­ous fin­ger exer­cis­es and giv­en six hours a day of prac­tice by his teacher, Hun­gar­i­an pianist Paul de Marky. “I only first real­ly heard jazz some­where between the ages of sev­en and 10,” said the Cana­di­an jazz great. “My old­er broth­er Fred, who was actu­al­ly a bet­ter pianist than I was, start­ed play­ing var­i­ous new tunes — well they were new for me, any­way…. Duke Elling­ton and Art Tatum, who fright­ened me to death with his tech­nique.”

Despite his own prodi­gious tal­ent, Peter­son found Tatum “intim­i­dat­ing,” he told Count Basie in a 1980 inter­view. He respond­ed to the fear by learn­ing how to play like Tatum, and like every­one else he admired, while adding his own melod­ic twists to stan­dards and orig­i­nals. At 14, he won a nation­al Cana­di­an music com­pe­ti­tion and left school to become a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian.

He record­ed his first album in 1945 at age 20. “Since his ‘dis­cov­ery’ in 1947 by Nor­man Granz,” wrote Inter­na­tion­al Musi­cian in 2002, five years before the pianist’s death, “Peter­son has amassed an incred­i­ble lega­cy of record­ed work with Louis Arm­strong, Ella Fitzger­ald, Count Basie, Fred Astaire, Dizzy Gille­spie, Cole­man Hawkins, and Char­lie Park­er, among count­less oth­er greats.”

In the video at the top of the post from the Dick Cavett Show in 1979, Peter­son shows off his ele­gant tech­nique and demon­strates the “styl­is­tic trade­marks” of the greats he admired, and that oth­ers have heard expressed in his own style. He begins with his alba­tross, Tatum’s “stride piano,” a style that requires a good deal of left hand artic­u­la­tion and which, done right, can “put the rhythm sec­tion out of busi­ness,” Cavett jokes. Peter­son then shows off the “the two-fin­gered per­cus­sive­ness of Nat Cole,” the “lyric octave work of Erroll Gar­ner,” and dou­ble octave melody lines, a very dif­fi­cult two-hand maneu­ver.

It’s a daz­zling les­son that shows, in just a few short min­utes, why Peter­son became known for his “stun­ning vir­tu­os­i­ty as a soloist,” as one biog­ra­phy notes. In the video above, pro­duc­er and YouTube per­son­al­i­ty Rick Beato explains why he thinks Peter­son played the “Great­est Solo of All Time” in the 1974 ren­di­tion of “Boo­gie Blues Study” fur­ther up. As David Funk, who post­ed the Cavett video clip to YouTube, puts it, “What more can you say?” To under­stand why Louis Arm­strong called Peter­son “the man with four hands,” we sim­ply need to watch him play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Music Unites Us All: Her­bie Han­cock & Kamasi Wash­ing­ton in Con­ver­sa­tion

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

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

The Secrets of Beethoven’s Fifth, the World’s Most Famous Symphony

in Animation, K-12, Music, TED Talks | November 24th, 2021

Revered by music lovers of tem­pera­ments as var­ied as Peanuts’ Schroed­er and A Clock­work Orange’s Alex, Lud­wig van Beethoven is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed com­posers in the West­ern clas­si­cal music canon.

Sym­pho­ny No. 5 in C minor is sure­ly one of his most rec­og­nized, and fre­quent­ly per­formed works, thanks in large part to its dra­mat­ic open­ing motif –

dun-dun-dun-DAH!

Music edu­ca­tor Hanako Sawa­da’s enter­tain­ing TED-Ed les­son, ani­mat­ed by Yael Reis­feld above, delves into the sto­ry behind this sym­pho­ny, “one of the most explo­sive pieces of music ever com­posed.”

Mid­dle and high school music teach­ers will be glad to know the cre­ators lean into the height­ened emo­tions of the piece, depict­ing the com­pos­er as a tor­tured genius whose pierc­ing gaze is bluer than Game of Thrones’ Night King.

Beethoven was already enjoy­ing a suc­cess­ful rep­u­ta­tion at the time of the symphony’s 1808 pre­miere, but not because he toiled in the ser­vice of reli­gion or wealthy patrons like his peers.

Instead, he was an ear­ly-19th cen­tu­ry bad ass, pri­or­i­tiz­ing self-expres­sion and pour­ing his emo­tions into com­po­si­tions he then sold to var­i­ous music pub­lish­ers.

With the Fifth, he real­ly shook off the rigid struc­tures of pre­vail­ing clas­si­cal norms, embrac­ing Roman­ti­cism in all its glo­ri­ous tur­moil.

The famous open­ing motif is repeat­ed to the point of obses­sion:

Through­out the piece, the motif is passed around the orches­tra like a whis­per, grad­u­al­ly reach­ing more and more instru­ments until it becomes a roar.

Besot­ted teenagers, well acquaint­ed with this feel­ing, are equipped with the inter­nal trom­bones, pic­co­los, and con­tra­bas­soons of the sort that make the piece even more urgent in feel.

Just wait until they get hold of Beethoven’s Immor­tal Beloved let­ters, writ­ten a few years after the sym­pho­ny, when the hear­ing loss he was wrestling with had pro­gressed to near total deaf­ness.

Whether or not it was the com­pos­er (and not his biog­ra­ph­er) who char­ac­ter­ized the cen­tral motif as the sound of “Fate knock­ing at the door,” it’s an apt, and riv­et­ing notion.

Take a quiz, par­tic­i­pate in a guid­ed dis­cus­sion, and cus­tomize Hanako Sawada’s les­son, “The Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Sym­pho­ny,” here.

Lis­ten to the sym­pho­ny in its entire­ty below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Unfin­ished Tenth Sym­pho­ny Gets Com­plet­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Hear How It Sounds

Did Beethoven Use a Bro­ken Metronome When Com­pos­ing His String Quar­tets? Sci­en­tists & Musi­cians Try to Solve the Cen­turies-Old Mys­tery

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quar­tets: An Ear­ly Cel­e­bra­tion of the 250th Anniver­sary of His Birth

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. 

In 1997, Wired Magazine Predicts 10 Things That Could Go Wrong in the 21st Century: “An Uncontrollable Plague,” Climate Crisis, Russia Becomes a Kleptocracy & More

in Current Affairs, History, Magazines | November 23rd, 2021

Hydro­gen-pow­ered cars. Bio­log­i­cal, then quan­tum com­put­ing. Gene-ther­a­py can­cer treat­ments. An end to the War on Drugs. Reli­able auto­mat­ic trans­la­tion. The impend­ing end of the nation-state. Man set­ting foot on Mars. These are just a few of the devel­op­ments in store for our world by the year 2020 — or so, at any rate, pre­dicts “The Long Boom,” the cov­er sto­ry of a 1997 issue of Wired mag­a­zine, the offi­cial organ of 1990s tech­no-opti­mism. “We’re fac­ing 25 years of pros­per­i­ty, free­dom, and a bet­ter envi­ron­ment for the whole world,” declares the cov­er itself. “You got a prob­lem with that?”

Since the actu­al year 2020, this image has been smirk­ing­ly re-cir­cu­lat­ed as a prime exam­ple of blink­ered End-of-His­to­ry tri­umphal­ism. From the van­tage of 2021, it’s fair to say that the pre­dic­tions of the arti­cle’s authors Peter Schwartz and Peter Ley­den (who expand­ed their the­sis into a 2000 book) went wide of the mark.

But their vision of the 21st cen­tu­ry has­n’t proven ris­i­ble in every aspect: a ris­ing Chi­na, hybrid cars, video calls, and online gro­cery-shop­ping have become famil­iar enough hard­ly to mer­it com­ment, as has the inter­net’s sta­tus as “the main medi­um of the 21st cen­tu­ry.” And who among us would describe the cost of uni­ver­si­ty as any­thing but “absurd”?

Schwartz and Ley­den do allow for dark­er pos­si­bil­i­ties than their things-can-only-get-bet­ter rhetoric make it seem. Some of these they enu­mer­ate in a side­bar (remem­ber side­bars?) head­lined “Ten Sce­nario Spoil­ers.” Though not includ­ed in the arti­cle as archived on Wired’s web site, it has recent­ly been scanned and post­ed to social media, with viral results. A “new Cold War” between the U.S. and Chi­na; a “glob­al cli­mate change that, among oth­er things, dis­rupts the food sup­ply”; a “major rise in crime and ter­ror­ism forces the world to pull back in fear”; an “uncon­trol­lable plague — a mod­ern-day influen­za epi­dem­ic or its equiv­a­lent”: to one degree or anoth­er, every sin­gle one of these ten dire devel­op­ments seems in our time to have come to pass.

“We’re still on the front edge of the great glob­al boom,” we’re remind­ed in the piece’s con­clu­sion. “A hell of a lot of things could go wrong.” You don’t say. Yet for all of the 21st-cen­tu­ry trou­bles that few rid­ing the wave of first-dot-com-boom utopi­anism would have cred­it­ed, we today run the risk of see­ing our world as too dystopi­an. Now as then, “the vast array of prob­lems to solve and the sheer mag­ni­tude of the changes that need to take place are enough to make any glob­al orga­ni­za­tion give up, any nation back down, any rea­son­able per­son curl up in a ball.” We could use a fresh infu­sion of what Schwartz and Ley­den frame as the boom’s key ingre­di­ent: Amer­i­can opti­mism. “Amer­i­cans don’t under­stand lim­its. They have bound­less con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems. And they have an amaz­ing capac­i­ty to think they real­ly can change the world.” In that par­tic­u­lar sense, per­haps we all should become Amer­i­cans after all.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Author William Gib­son Pre­dicts in 1997 How the Inter­net Will Change Our World

Why 1999 Was the Year of Dystopi­an Office Movies: What The Matrix, Fight Club, Amer­i­can Beau­ty, Office Space & Being John Malkovich Shared in Com­mon

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

Futur­ist from 1901 Describes the World of 2001: Opera by Tele­phone, Free Col­lege & Pneu­mat­ic Tubes Aplen­ty

From the Annals of Opti­mism: The News­pa­per Indus­try in 1981 Imag­ines its Dig­i­tal Future

167 Pieces of Life & Work Advice from Kevin Kel­ly, Found­ing Edi­tor of Wired Mag­a­zine & The Whole Earth Review

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