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.

All 80 Issues of the Influential Zine Punk Planet Are Now Online & Ready for Download at the Internet Archive

in Magazines, Music | February 4th, 2021

Punk did­n’t die, it evolved, since its incep­tion in the 70s to the ethos of major­ly influ­en­tial fig­ures like Kath­leen Han­na and Ian MacK­aye in the 90s, two of the most promi­nent faces of pro­gres­sive DIY punk in the U.S. Then, as before, scenes came togeth­er around zines, sites of cul­tur­al recog­ni­tion, dis­sem­i­na­tion, and record­ing for pos­ter­i­ty in the archives of phys­i­cal print. One zine crit­i­cal to the social­ly con­scious punk that emerged at the time, Punk Plan­et, has recent­ly been dig­i­tized in all 80 issues by the Inter­net Archive.

Based in Chica­go and found­ed by edi­tor Dan Sinker (whom you may know from his pres­ence on Twit­ter), Punk Plan­et ran from 1994 to 2007, focus­ing “most of its ener­gy on look­ing at punk sub­cul­ture,” the Inter­net Archive writes, “rather than punk as sim­ply anoth­er genre of music to which teenagers lis­ten. In addi­tion to cov­er­ing music, Punk Plan­et also cov­ered visu­al arts and a wide vari­ety of pro­gres­sive issues—including media crit­i­cism, fem­i­nism, and labor issues.”

Punk Plan­et “tran­scend­ed stereo­types to chron­i­cle the pro­gres­sive under­ground com­mu­ni­ty, from thought­ful band inter­views to excep­tion­al­ly thor­ough inves­tiga­tive fea­tures,” wrote the A.V. Club’s Kyle Ryan in an inter­view with Sinker the year of the magazine’s demise.

“Over the course of 13 years, Punk Plan­et became heav­i­ly influ­en­tial beyond the increas­ing­ly small world of inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing.” Arguably, that influ­ence can be felt in online mag­a­zines like Rook­ie as well as music-focused stal­warts like Pitch­fork, who note that Punk Plan­et’s “issues includ­ed inter­views with Sleater-Kin­ney, Nick Cave, Ralph Nad­er, and count­less oth­er cul­tur­al icons.”

The mag­a­zine fold­ed for the usu­al rea­sons, as Utne not­ed in a farewell, leav­ing a “gap­ing hole in the land­scape of inde­pen­dent mag­a­zines…. The deck was stacked against Punk Plan­et, though, and the hard knocks of inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing final­ly became too much to bear.” Sinker says he saw the end as part of a big­ger pic­ture and “start­ed look­ing at the larg­er issues that were also affect­ing us. Things like, ‘Hey, wow, record labels are going under because no one is pay­ing for music!’ And, ‘Hey, look at this, peo­ple are going to these Inter­net sites because peo­ple can pick up a record review the same day the record came out!’”

It’s a moot point now—2020 has not made it any eas­i­er for small pub­li­ca­tions and inde­pen­dent musi­cians to sur­vive. But the con­tin­ued exis­tence of Punk Plan­et online for new gen­er­a­tions to dis­cov­er promis­es to fos­ter the con­ti­nu­ity that car­ried the spir­it of punk rock through decades of evo­lu­tion­ary change. Enter the Punk Plan­et archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

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

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

in Music | February 4th, 2021

House, trance, techno—any DJ play­ing a four-on-the-floor groove can drop Don­na Sum­mer and Gior­gio Moroder’s “I Feel Love” into a set and instant­ly mes­mer­ize the crowd. It has been hap­pen­ing since 1977. The dis­co hit doesn’t just hold up as a clas­sic moment of nos­tal­gia: it’s still one of the great­est dance tracks ever pro­duced. “‘I Feel Love’ was and remains an aston­ish­ing achieve­ment,” Jon Sav­age writes at The Guardian. “A futur­is­tic record that still sounds fan­tas­tic 35 years on. With­in its mod­u­la­tions and puls­es, it achieves the per­fect state of grace that is the ambi­tion of every dance record: it oblit­er­ates the tyran­ny of the clock.”

DJ Jim Stan­ton puts it this way: “It is safe to say [‘I Feel Love’] was the blue­print for all elec­tron­ic dance music today. It still has a mas­sive impact every time I play it.”

The song was not only a “rad­i­cal break­through” at the time but it was explic­it­ly meant to be one, an exper­i­men­tal stu­dio col­lab­o­ra­tion between Moroder, Pete Bel­lotte, drum­mer Kei­th Forsey, and engi­neer Rob­by Wedel, who was clas­si­cal com­pos­er Eber­hard Schoener’s assis­tant and was hired because he was the only one who knew how to work Schoener’s bor­rowed Moog Mod­u­lar 3P. Wedel cooked up the bassline and Moroder and Bel­lotte pieced the track togeth­er from twen­ty to thir­ty-sec­ond snip­pets, since the Moog “would go out of tune every few min­utes,” Moroder remem­bered. “It was quite a job.”

Bel­lotte and Sum­mer wrote the lyrics and Sum­mer, fresh off an impor­tant call with her astrologer about her love life, “turned up to the stu­dio,” Bill Brew­ster writes at Mix­mag, “and deliv­ered the song in one take.” Upon hear­ing “I Feel Love” on its release, dur­ing the Berlin ses­sions for David Bowie’s Low, no less a shaper of the future than Bri­an Eno imme­di­ate­ly real­ized its poten­tial, run­ning into the stu­dio to pro­claim, “I have heard the sound of the future. This is it, look no fur­ther. This sin­gle is going to change the sound of club music for the next fif­teen years.” He was not wrong.

“Until ‘I Feel Love,’” Brew­ster writes, “syn­the­siz­ers had either been the province of seri­ous musi­cians like Kei­th Emer­son, Jean-Michel Jarre or Tan­ger­ine Dream or used as a nov­el­ty prop in throw­away songs.” They had gained respect in the clas­si­cal world, thanks to Wendy Car­los’ Switched on Bach, and by the late sev­en­ties they popped up in the mix of rock and funk often. Moroder’s cre­ation, how­ev­er, put the instru­ment at the cen­ter of a dance track for the first time. “‘I Feel Love’ was a rejec­tion of the intel­lec­tu­al­iza­tion of the syn­the­siz­er in favour of pure plea­sure.”

The song killed on Soul Train and “went to No 1 in the UK dur­ing the high sum­mer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks—filling dance floors every­where,” writes Sav­age. “Like David Bowie’s Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tir­ing of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next gen­er­a­tion of UK elec­tron­i­ca.” It didn’t chart in the U.S. but became “an all-time gay clas­sic,” and hence a sta­ple of the pre‑A.I.D.S. house music era. Remix­es appeared imme­di­ate­ly, includ­ing Patrick Cowley’s psy­che­del­ic 15-minute ver­sion, “which real­ly does go on for ever and ever with­out trashing—even enhancing—the con­cept of the orig­i­nal.”

Indeed, “I Feel Love” is as near a pure arche­type of the dance track as we’re ever going to find, so time­less it oblit­er­ates time, stretch­ing out to 30 min­utes in the “Dis­co Purr­fec­tion” ver­sion below, the first song to “ful­ly uti­lize the poten­tial of elec­tron­ics, replac­ing lush dis­co orches­tra­tion with the hyp­not­ic pre­ci­sion of machines,” and ush­er­ing in the age of New Order, Depeche Mode, and count­less clas­sic house and tech­no records from Chica­go, New York, and Detroit, none of which hold up as well Moroder and Summer’s slick, sul­try “I Feel Love.”

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

A Soul Train-Style Detroit Dance Show Gets Down to Kraftwerk’s “Num­bers” in the Late 80s

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

The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson & Beatles Producer George Martin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Greatest Song Ever Written”

in Music | February 3rd, 2021

As an Eng­lish­man of a cer­tain age, George Mar­tin could, real­is­ti­cal­ly, choose only one means of con­veyance in Los Ange­les: a red Coupe de Ville con­vert­ible, and a gen­uine 1950s mod­el at that. But what­ev­er that era’s glo­ries of auto­mo­bile design, its music was still in the dark ages — at least accord­ing to the mil­lions upon mil­lions of Bea­t­les fans around the world today. The pop-cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that band ignit­ed in the ear­ly 1960s owes, by some reck­on­ings, as much to Mar­t­in’s work as it does to that of the Fab Four them­selves. In his capac­i­ty as a pro­duc­er and arranger — not to men­tion as the man who signed them to Par­lophone records — Mar­tin arguably led the Bea­t­les to dis­cov­er their own musi­cal poten­tial. And once they’d become a phe­nom­e­non, they also felt pres­sure to sur­pass them­selves from oth­er sources.

One was a young Amer­i­can singing group called the Beach Boys, who in less than five years had gone from putting out sim­ple, repet­i­tive tunes about surf­ing and root beer to craft­ing the teenage-sym­phon­ic mas­ter­piece Pet Sounds. That album, so pop-music his­to­ry tells it, picked up the gaunt­let thrown down by the Bea­t­les’ Rub­ber Soul, and in response to it came Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, an era-defin­ing release since pop­u­lar­ly thought to have won the bands’ friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion.

But with his ear for com­po­si­tion, Mar­tin sure­ly knew that Pet Sounds would nev­er tru­ly be defeat­ed, thanks in large part to “God Only Knows,” which Mar­tin describes as “one of my favorite Beach Boys songs.” He does so in the clip at the top of the post, of a 1997 vis­it to Los Ange­les in which he pilots his Cadil­lac to the home of the group’s musi­cal mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son.

The two then enter the stu­dio and pull out the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes of “Got Only Knows” to lis­ten to its com­po­nents one by one. You can see and hear more of what went into its record­ing ses­sions through this two-part video from Behind the Sounds that presents raw tracks from the stu­dio with notes on the var­i­ous tech­niques and play­ers (includ­ing the famous “Wreck­ing Crew,” with bassist Car­ol Kaye) involved. “What Bri­an had done was to write a beau­ti­ful song full of unusu­al changes,” says Mar­tin, “and then devise a tapes­try of sounds to enhance it.” As Mar­tin rebuilds the tracks on the con­sole, Wil­son says he’s “mak­ing a bet­ter mix of this than I did in the mas­ter.” It’s quite a com­pli­ment, con­sid­er­ing the source — but then so is the dec­la­ra­tion of “God Only Knows “as “the great­est song ever writ­ten,” issued as it was by a cer­tain Paul McCart­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

The Mak­ing (and Remak­ing) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Great­est Rock Album of All Time

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

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.

How Vaccines Improved Our World In One Graphic

in Biology, Science | February 3rd, 2021

In 1796, the British doc­tor Edward Jen­ner devel­oped the first vac­cine to fight a con­ta­gious disease–in this par­tic­u­lar case, the small­pox virus. Since then vac­cines have helped erad­i­cate, or firm­ly con­trol, a long list of diseases–everything from diph­the­ria and the measles, to rubel­la and polio. Designed by Leon Far­rant in 2011, the info­graph­ic above reminds us of the mir­a­cles brought by vac­cines, show­ing the degree to which they’ve tamed 14 crip­pling dis­eases. Before too long, we hope COVID-19 will be added to the list.

For the data used to make the graph­ic, vis­it this doc­u­ment online.

via @NeilGaiman

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:

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daugh­ter to Measles, Writes a Heart­break­ing Let­ter about Vac­ci­na­tions: “It Real­ly Is Almost a Crime to Allow Your Child to Go Unim­mu­nised”

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

How Fast Can a Vac­cine Be Made?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Bauhaus Chess Set Where the Form of the Pieces Artfully Show Their Function (1922)

in Art, Games, History | February 3rd, 2021

Learn­ing to play chess first neces­si­tates learn­ing how each piece moves. This is hard­ly the labor of Her­cules, to be sure, though it does come down to pure mem­o­riza­tion, unaid­ed by any ver­bal or visu­al cues. Does the name “pawn,” after all, sound par­tic­u­lar­ly like some­thing that can only step for­ward? And what about the shape of the knight sug­gests the shape of the knight’s move? The form of a chess piece, in oth­er words, does­n’t fol­low its func­tion — and under cer­tain sets of aes­thet­ic prin­ci­ples, there could be few greater crimes. Leave it to a mem­ber of the Bauhaus, the art school and move­ment that aimed to uni­fy not just form and func­tion but art, craft, and design — to bring them all into line.

Brought into the Bauhaus in 1921 by its founder Wal­ter Gropius, the sculp­tor Josef Hartwig began work on his redesigned chess set the fol­low­ing year. In all its iter­a­tions, the pieces takes on forms made of sim­ple shapes: “The sphere, dou­ble cube, and three sizes of block, singly or com­bined, yield pieces that, despite their high­ly geo­met­ric styl­iza­tion, are strong­ly sug­ges­tive of their rank or pow­er,” says the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, own­er of one of one of Hartwig’s orig­i­nal sets.

“The bish­ops are clear­ly implied by the cross out­line, and the rooks by the sim­ple sta­bil­i­ty of a cube. Most inge­nious of all are the knights, formed of three dou­ble cubes joined in such a fash­ion that each face of the result­ing form shows two cubes one above the oth­er and a third on the side, an embod­i­ment of the knight’s move.”

Like many Bauhaus works, Hartwig’s chess set found a dual exis­tence as both a piece of art and a con­sumer good. The artist him­self also “made a poster to talk about his prod­uct” and “a box to pack­age it,” says cua­tor Anne Monier in the video above, “so we real­ly are in a total cre­ation around a game of chess.” In addi­tion to mak­ing the game’s move­ments eas­i­er to learn, it also con­sti­tutes a visu­al demon­stra­tion of what it means for form to fol­low func­tion. The idea, says Monier, is “to spread the ideas of the Bauhaus in peo­ple’s every­day life, to be able in fact to change the liv­ing envi­ron­ment, to take part in cre­at­ing a new soci­ety.” The video comes from Bauhaus Move­ment, an online shop where you can invite the spread into your home by order­ing a repli­ca Hartwig chess set. It’ll set you back €495, but ideals, now as in the hey­day of the Bauhaus, don’t come cheap.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

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.

Do We Need Yet More Films About Time Loops? A Pretty Much Pop Discussion (#80) of Groundhog Day and its Descendents

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | February 2nd, 2021

Tine loop­ing, where a char­ac­ter is doomed to repeat the same day (or hour, or longer peri­od) is a sci-fi trope dat­ing back more than a cen­tu­ry, but real­ly entered Amer­i­can con­scious­ness with the 1993 Bill Mur­ray film Ground­hog Day. Since then, and espe­cial­ly in the last five years, there have been numer­ous iter­a­tions of this idea in var­i­ous gen­res from racial police-shoot­ing dra­ma to teen sex com­e­dy. But do we need more of this? What are the philo­soph­i­cal ideas involved, and how do these change with tweaks to the sce­nario?

Mark, Eri­ca, Bri­an, and return­ing guest Ken Ger­ber dis­cuss not only the very recent and pop­u­lar for­ays into this genre with Hulu’s Palm Springs and Net­flix’s Russ­ian Doll, but also touch on Edge of Tomor­row, Repeaters, 12:01 PM, Before I Fall, The Fare, and episodes of The Twi­light Zone, Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery, The X‑Files, and Rick & Morty.

There are of course oth­er film and TV uses of this trope. For a rel­a­tive­ly full list, you can see this wiki page list­ing time loop films and this oth­er wiki page dis­cussing lit­er­ary antecedents. Also see the “Ground­hog Day” Loop page on tvtropes.org, and here’s a rel­e­vant red­dit thread.

Here are more arti­cles:

• “Catch a Movie About Time Loops” by Noel Mur­ray (This came out after we record­ed, so we missed out on Source Code and Final Girls.)
• “From Ground­hog Day to Russ­ian Doll, the Inescapable Pow­er of the Time Loop” by  Jen Chaney
• “Time-Loop Sto­ries Are About Being Stuck, but the Genre Keeps Mov­ing For­ward” by Karen Han
• “How the ‘Palm Springs’ Team Found a New Wrin­kle in the Time-Loop Movie” by Jake Kring-Schreifels
• “What the Ambigu­ous End­ing of Net­flix’s ‘Russ­ian Doll’ Means for the Show” by Esther Zuck­er­man (Yes, there is a sea­son 2 com­ing out this year)
• “Behind the Scenes of New Short Film, ‘Two Dis­tant Strangers,’ About Police Killings in Amer­i­ca” by Degen Pen­er

Watch the 12:01 PM 1990 short film. This bonus episode of the 11.22.63 pod­cast had a great dis­cus­sion of time loop media includ­ing the Ken Grim­wood nov­el Replay and the short sto­ry “12:01 P.M.” and its sequels. You can read the 1941 Mal­colm Jame­son sto­ry “Dou­bled and Redou­bled” online. As a fore­run­ner to the time loop idea, check out the very short 1892 chil­dren’s sto­ry “Christ­mas Every Day” by William Dean How­ells, where time does move for­ward with its con­se­quences, but it’s always Christ­mas!

We talked a lit­tle about Hap­py Death Day with its cos­tume design­er in our ep. 38 and got into time trav­el more gen­er­al­ly with Ken in ep. 22 and into “weird sit­u­a­tions” in our Twi­light Zone ep. 52. You may also enjoy Wes Alwan’s (sub)Text pod­cast dis­cussing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Ground­hog Day.

Check out the time loop movie bin­go card that Bri­an put togeth­er (with ground­hog pic­ture by Ken):

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.

Tony Bennett Duets with Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse & Other Musicians, Passing on the Great American Songbook

in Music | February 2nd, 2021

I was pos­sessed with a won­der­ful exam­ple of my Ital­ian Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. They would come over and join us every Sun­day, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them. I was 10 years old, and I was just say­ing, “Who am I? What am I sup­posed to do?” And they told me that they love the way I sang. It cre­at­ed a pas­sion in my life that exists to this moment as I speak to you, that is stronger now at 89 than in my whole life. I still feel that I can get bet­ter some­how. And I search for it all of the time. —Tony Ben­nett, Week­end Edi­tion inter­view, Octo­ber 10, 2015

Tony Ben­nett “is not just an artist for the ages, but an artist for all ages,” the Library of Con­gress wrote in its announce­ment of the icon­ic singer as the 2017 Gersh­win Prize Win­ner. Bennett’s life and career have tru­ly been extra­or­di­nary. The gold­en-voiced croon­er from Queens “has been on the front lines of his­to­ry” as a World War II vet­er­an who “fought in the Bat­tle of the Bulge and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lib­er­a­tion of a con­cen­tra­tion camp.” He “marched with Mar­tin Luther King in Sel­ma to sup­port civ­il rights,” then went on to win 19 Gram­mys, sell 10 mil­lion records, per­form “for 11 U.S. pres­i­dents,” and become a pro­lif­ic visu­al artist who “con­tin­ues to paint every day, even as he tours inter­na­tion­al­ly.”

When he received the Gersh­win hon­or, Ben­nett had already been diag­nosed with Alzhiemers dis­ease, a diag­no­sis just revealed to the pub­lic by Bennett’s wife, Susan Benedet­to. He had been show­ing signs all the way back in 2014 when he released Cheek to Cheek, an album of jazz stan­dards record­ed with Lady Gaga. When AARP’s John Colap­in­to vis­it­ed him at his New York City apart­ment recent­ly, “there was lit­tle doubt that the dis­ease had pro­gressed.”

But Bennett’s gold­en voice and insa­tiable desire to get bet­ter remain. He still paints every day and rehears­es twice a week, and even as his symp­toms wors­ened over the past few years, he per­formed and record­ed with younger artists, deter­mined to pass on the tra­di­tion of the “Great Amer­i­can Song­book” in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Bennett’s advo­ca­cy for jazz singing through his duets with singers like Lady Gaga and Amy Wine­house may turn out to be his most endur­ing lega­cy. 2011’s Duets II began the col­lab­o­ra­tions with Lady Gaga. Dur­ing the record­ing of Cheek to Cheek, Ben­net enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly told NPR that “It’s the first time that young peo­ple that love [her] so much will fall in love with George Gersh­win, with Cole Porter, with Irv­ing Berlin.” She added, “Tony’s real­ly open­ing up a whole new gen­er­a­tion.” The two then got togeth­er again four years lat­er, going into the stu­dio between 2018 and 2020. “Tony was a con­sid­er­ably more mut­ed pres­ence dur­ing the record­ing of the new album,” writes Colap­in­to. “In raw doc­u­men­tary footage of the ses­sions, he speaks rarely, and when he does his words are halt­ing; at times he seems lost and bewil­dered.” It may “very well be the last Tony Ben­nett record.”

This sense of final­i­ty is why Benedet­to and their son Dan­ny “have joint­ly decid­ed to break the silence around his con­di­tion, a deci­sion they have, nec­es­sar­i­ly, had to make with­out Tony’s input, since he is, Susan said, inca­pable of under­stand­ing the dis­ease.” Nonethe­less, the new album of duets, due out this spring, promis­es to show Ben­nett in the fine form he has main­tained through­out the pro­gres­sion of his dis­ease, exer­cis­ing his voice to keep the worst symp­toms at bay. “He is doing so many things, at 94, that many peo­ple with­out demen­tia can­not do,” says Bennett’s neu­rol­o­gist Gay­a­tri Devi. “He real­ly is the sym­bol of hope for some­one with a cog­ni­tive dis­or­der.” Benedet­to is open about what’s been lost. “There’s a lot about him that I miss,” she says. “Because he’s not the old Tony any­more. … But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”

See Ben­nett in clas­sic duets with Amy Wine­house and Lady Gaga above, includ­ing the stun­ning live ver­sion of “Any­thing Goes” with Gaga, just above, from 2014. “I feel very val­i­dat­ed by this,” she said that year. “You know, he’s giv­en my fans a gift by say­ing to them that he likes the way I sing jazz.” See those fans look on with rapt atten­tion, absorb­ing the songs Ben­nett loved so much through a new gen­er­a­tion of singers inspired by his incred­i­ble lega­cy. Just below, see sev­er­al more career-cap­ping duets from Duets II, and even more at the YouTube playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

Christo­pher Walken Reads Lady Gaga

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

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”