Academic Journal Devotes an Entire Issue to Prince’s Life & Music: Read and Download It for Free

in Music | December 12th, 2017

Image by Ann Alt­house, via Flickr Com­mons

For decades now, aca­d­e­mics have made pop­u­lar cul­ture a wor­thy area of study, from hip hop, com­ic books, and Hol­ly­wood film and tele­vi­sion to video games and inter­net cul­ture. And for just as long, there have been those who sneered at the dis­ci­plines emerg­ing around pop cul­ture stud­ies. But real­ly, what are we to do with some­one like Prince, some­one so clear­ly, pro­found­ly, a musi­cal genius, with such an out­sized impact on pop­u­lar cul­ture, that he can­not help being a major his­tor­i­cal fig­ure just a year and a half after his death?

Devote an entire jour­nal issue to him, of course, as the Jour­nal of African Amer­i­can Stud­ies did this past Sep­tem­ber. This is not, by far, Prince’s first appear­ance in a schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tion. And a slew of aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences devot­ed to the artist this past year has raised him to the aca­d­e­m­ic sta­tus achieved by oth­er megas­tars like Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd. This spe­cial jour­nal issue, how­ev­er, may be one of the most com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tions of Prince schol­ar­ship you’re like­ly to find online. And unlike the major­i­ty of aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles, these are all free. Just click the “Down­load PDF” link under each title found on this page.

The issue was pub­lished to coin­cide with the 40th anniver­sary of Prince’s sign­ing with Warn­er Broth­ers in 1977, the day he “turned pro.” The fol­low­ing year, he released the debut album For You, to mod­est crit­i­cal suc­cess. While it didn’t make him a star overnight, For You announced him as a vir­tu­oso, “as Prince played every instru­ment and sang all the vocals, some­thing unheard of, then and now.” Prince’s musi­cal skill could be tak­en for grant­ed. It is easy to do with an artist who recon­fig­ured cul­ture in so many ways that had noth­ing to do with play­ing gui­tar or piano.

Prince’s rad­i­cal, if very com­pli­cat­ed, rede­f­i­n­i­tion of gen­der and cul­tur­al expres­sion pro­vides an exam­ple, writes Deirdre T. Guion Peo­ples, of “Opti­mal Dis­tinc­tive­ness,” in the way he “nego­ti­at­ed his social iden­ti­ty.” He lived an ardent, con­sis­tent­ly utopi­an vision in his music and also in his life; and his “sin­gu­lar vision of utopia cast women as essen­tial to its cre­ation,” notes H. Zahra Cald­well. And Prince’s “cre­ative prac­tices,” James Gor­don Williams argues, “were linked to his covert, but avid, sup­port of social jus­tice ini­tia­tives that sup­port black human­i­ty.”

These ten arti­cles elab­o­rate things we thought we knew about Prince, but maybe didn’t, and intro­duce us to aspects of his life and work we’ve nev­er con­sid­ered. They are joined by sev­en essays and per­son­al reflec­tions and two book reviews. Read online or down­load the spe­cial Prince issue here.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd Get Their First Schol­ar­ly Jour­nals and Aca­d­e­m­ic Con­fer­ences

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

Brian Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Recording Studio Radically Changed Music: Hear His Influential Lecture “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool” (1979)

in Music | December 12th, 2017

The rapid devel­op­ment of stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy in the 1960s could seem like some­thing of an avalanche, start­ed, say, by Phil Spec­tor, expand­ed by Bri­an Wil­son, who spurred the Bea­t­les and George Mar­tin, who inspired dozens of artists to exper­i­ment in the stu­dio, includ­ing Jimi Hen­drix. By the time we get to the 70s it begins to seem like one man dri­ves for­ward the progress of stu­dio as instru­ment, Bri­an Eno—from his work with Robert Fripp, to the refine­ment of almost ful­ly syn­thet­ic ambi­ent music, to his ground­break­ing work on David Bowie’s “Berlin Tril­o­gy” and Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light in 1980.

Eno called him­self a “non-musi­cian” who val­ued the­o­ry over prac­tice. But we know this to be untrue. He’s a pro­found­ly hyp­not­ic, engag­ing com­pos­er, play­er, and even singer, as well as a vir­tu­oso prac­ti­tion­er of the stu­dio record­ing arts, which, by 1979, he had honed suf­fi­cient­ly to expound on in a lec­ture titled “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool.” By ’79, when Eno deliv­ered the talk cap­tured above at the Inau­gur­al New Music Amer­i­can Fes­ti­val in New York, he had already done so three times. In 1983, Down Beat mag­a­zine pub­lished the influ­en­tial lec­ture (read it here).

Eno dis­plays the crit­i­cal acu­men of Wal­ter Ben­jamin in dis­cussing the his­to­ry and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of his art form, with philo­soph­i­cal­ly punchy lines like his take on jazz: “the inter­est­ing thing about impro­vi­sa­tions is that they become more inter­est­ing as you lis­ten to them more times. What seemed like an almost arbi­trary col­li­sion of events comes to seem very mean­ing­ful on relis­ten­ing.” A very Eno-like obser­va­tion, under­lin­ing his cen­tral the­sis, which he deliv­ers in a mea­sured series of claus­es to con­struct a sen­tence as long as some of his com­po­si­tions, but one, nonethe­less, with per­fect clar­i­ty:

In this lec­ture, I want to indi­cate that record­ed music, in cer­tain of its aspects, is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent art form from tra­di­tion­al music, and that the con­tem­po­rary com­pos­er, peo­ple like me, those who work direct­ly in rela­tion to stu­dios and mul­ti-track­ing and in rela­tion to record­ing tape, are, in fact, engaged in a dif­fer­ent, a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, busi­ness, from tra­di­tion­al com­posers.

How does Eno make his case? Record­ed music sub­sti­tutes the “space dimen­sion” for the “time dimen­sion,” and thus has a “detach­able aspect,” it’s portable—and nev­er more so than now. Eno seems to antic­i­pate the cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal moment in 1979 when he says, “not only is the whole his­to­ry of our music with us now, in some sense, on record, but the whole glob­al musi­cal cul­ture is also avail­able.” This results in a break with the Euro­pean clas­si­cal tra­di­tion as com­posers acquire “a cul­ture unbound­ed, both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly.”

Before the devel­op­ment of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, lim­i­ta­tions of time and space ensured that every musi­cal per­for­mance was a one of a kind event, over for­ev­er when it end­ed. In the 20th cen­tu­ry, not only could record­ing engi­neers repro­duce a per­for­mance infi­nite­ly, but with the medi­um of tape, they could cut, splice, rearrange, manip­u­late, and oth­er­wise edit it togeth­er. With mul­ti-track­ing, they could cre­ate a uni­fied whole from sev­er­al dis­parate record­ings, often from dif­fer­ent times and places. And, as the audi­ence for record­ed music was a mass con­sumer mar­ket, pop­u­lar musi­cal tastes, to some extent, began to shift the kind of music that got made. (Eno has since expressed high­ly neg­a­tive crit­i­cism of con­tem­po­rary music that relies too heav­i­ly on stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy.)

Eno begins rather dri­ly, but once he gets going, the lec­ture becomes total­ly engross­ing. He cov­ers the mix­ing of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s Fresh, dis­cuss­es Sly Dun­bar and Lee “Scratch” Perry’s stu­dio inven­tions, and those of his own Anoth­er Green World and Music for Air­ports. He offers a crash course on basic stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy, and describes own­ing a record­ing of a record­ed tele­phone mes­sage from Ger­many that sought appre­hen­sion of the Baad­er Mein­hoff gang by play­ing a record­ing of one of their voic­es. He may be one of the most cool­ly dis­pas­sion­ate artists in mod­ern pop­u­lar music, but Bri­an Eno is nev­er bor­ing. Read a tran­script of the lec­ture here.

via Techcrunch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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

Stream 74 Sun Ra Albums Free Online: Decades of “Space Jazz” and Other Forms of Intergalactic, Afrofuturistic Musical Creativity

in Music | December 12th, 2017

He was born Her­man Poole Blount, but the many who appre­ci­ate his music and the oth­er­world­ly phi­los­o­phy behind it know him only as Sun Ra. Or rather, they don’t just appre­ci­ate it but find them­selves trans­port­ed to oth­er places by it, even places locat­ed far beyond this Earth. Often space, as the title of the 1975 Afro­fu­tur­ist sci­ence-fic­tion film that stars Sun Ra states, is the place, and if you seek to take such an inter­stel­lar jour­ney through jazz music your­self, doing so has become eas­i­er than ever: just steer your ship over to Band­camp, where you can stream the music of Sun Ra and his ever-shift­ing “Arkestra” for free.

Since you’ll have no few­er than 74 albums to choose from, you might con­sid­er chart­ing your voy­age with Band­camp Dai­ly’s guide to Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s pro­lif­ic and var­ied out­put.

It begins with his “Chica­go Space Jazz” years in the 1950s, many of the record­ings from which “sound a lot like jazz with tra­di­tion­al forms, rich ensem­ble writ­ing, and plen­ty of swing,” but which already show such char­ac­ter­is­tic choic­es and tools as “pecu­liar inter­vals and jux­ta­po­si­tions, the new­ly-devel­oped elec­tric piano, lots of per­cus­sion, extra bari­tone sax, group shouts, and so forth,” as well as the influ­ence of “exot­i­ca and mood music,” the Bible, “occult phi­los­o­phy,” and cos­mol­o­gy.

The guide con­tin­ues on to Sun Ra’s time in New York in the 1960s, where “the ‘space jazz’ or quirky hard-bop of the Arkestra’s Chica­go days starts to morph, reflect­ing the new ‘free jazz’ ideas being devel­oped lit­er­al­ly all around them by Albert Ayler, Ornette Cole­man, John Coltrane, and oth­ers.” This peri­od cul­mi­nates in The Mag­ic City, “a near­ly 28-minute tone poem, col­lec­tive­ly impro­vised under Ra’s cues and direc­tion, with­out pre­con­ceived themes; at times it is brood­ing and spare, at oth­ers it is full-on screech­ing sax­o­phones.” There­after came a time of solo and small-group work, and then of mind-bend­ing live per­for­mances that the Arkestra, under the direc­tion of long­time sax­o­phon­ist Mar­shall Allen, con­tin­ues to put on to this day.

Sun Ra him­self ascend­ed to anoth­er plane almost a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, but if you believe the elab­o­rate mythol­o­gy that remains insep­a­ra­ble from his musi­cal work, he still exists, in some form and in some galaxy, no doubt imag­in­ing new kinds of jazz that the mere human mind may nev­er suf­fi­cient­ly evolve to com­pre­hend. Stream­ing these dozens of albums that Sun Ra left us on this Earth, you may not imme­di­ate­ly think to com­pare them with the music of David Bowie, but as far as 20th-cen­tu­ry out­er space-ori­ent­ed self-rein­ven­tors go, those two are in a class of their own. As Blount became Sun Ra in the 1940s, so David Jones trans­formed from Zig­gy Star­dust into the Thin White Duke into Aladdin Sane in the 1970s. Both remained musi­cal exper­i­menters all their lives, as their discogra­phies will always attest, but when Sun Ra rein­vent­ed him­self, he stayed rein­vent­ed.

Stream Sun Ra’s albums at Band­camp, and know that you can also pur­chase dig­i­tal down­loads of these albums (in MP3 and FLAC for­mats) for a rea­son­able price.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Togeth­er in Con­cert (1986)

A Col­lec­tion of Sun Ra’s Busi­ness Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This 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.

The Future of Blues Is in Good Hands: Watch 12-Year-Old Toby Lee Trade Riffs with Chicago Blues Guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks

in Music | December 12th, 2017

Ear­li­er this year, we high­light­ed some footage from 1989, show­ing then 12-year-old Joe Bona­mas­sa wow­ing crowds and announc­ing his arrival on the blues scene. Years from now, we might look back in sim­i­lar fash­ion at this footage of 12-year-old blues prodi­gy Toby Lee. Record­ed last month at the Blues Heav­en Fes­ti­val in Den­mark, this video fea­tures Lee trad­ing riffs with Chica­go blues gui­tarist Ron­nie Bak­er Brooks. It runs a good five minutes–enough to con­vince you that the future of the blues is in good hands.

By the way, Toby has a Youtube chan­nel where you can watch him evolve as a musi­cian. Below, see one of his ear­li­er clips, where, as a 9 or 10-year-old, he pounds out some Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an in a cow­boy hat and tiger suit.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 12-Year-Old Joe Bona­mas­sa Shred the Blues as He Opens for B.B. King in 1989

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

Depression & Melancholy: Animated Videos Explain the Crucial Difference Between Everyday Sadness and Clinical Depression

in Animation, Poetry, Psychology, TED Talks | December 11th, 2017

“Depres­sion,” the TED-Ed video above informs us, “is the lead­ing cause of dis­abil­i­ty in the world.” This may be a hard fact to swal­low, the prod­uct, we might think, of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal adver­tis­ing. We all feel down from time to time, we think. “Then cir­cum­stances change, and those sad feel­ings dis­ap­pear.” Isn’t it like this for every­one? It is not. “Clin­i­cal depres­sion is dif­fer­ent. It’s a med­ical dis­or­der, and it won’t go away just because you want it to.”

Depres­sion can linger for up to two weeks, and become so debil­i­tat­ing that suf­fer­ers can­not work or play. It inter­feres with impor­tant rela­tion­ships and “can have a lot of dif­fer­ent symp­toms: a low mood, loss of inter­est in things you’d nor­mal­ly enjoy, changes in appetite, feel­ing worth­less or exces­sive­ly guilty,” rest­less­ness and insom­nia, or extreme lethar­gy, poor con­cen­tra­tion, and pos­si­ble thoughts of sui­cide. But sure­ly we can hear a paid pro­mo­tion­al voice when the nar­ra­tor states, “If you have at least 5 of those symp­toms, accord­ing to psy­chi­atric guide­lines, you qual­i­fy for a diag­no­sis of depres­sion.”

What we don’t typ­i­cal­ly hear about in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ads are the mea­sur­able phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes depres­sion writes in the brain, includ­ing decreased brain mat­ter in the frontal lobe and atro­phy of the hip­pocam­pus. These effects are mea­sur­able in humans and rats, in study after study after study. But while most of us know the names of a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter or two these days, not even neu­ro­sci­en­tists ful­ly under­stand the biol­o­gy of depres­sion. They do know that some com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion, ther­a­py, and, in extreme cas­es elec­tro­con­vul­sive treat­ment, can allow peo­ple to more ful­ly expe­ri­ence life.

Peo­ple in treat­ment will still feel “down” on occa­sion, just like every­one does. But depres­sion, the explain­er wants us to under­stand, should nev­er be com­pared to ordi­nary sad­ness. Its effects on behav­ior and brain health are too wide-rang­ing, per­va­sive, per­sis­tent, and detri­men­tal. These effects can be invis­i­ble, which adds to an unfor­tu­nate social stig­ma that dis­suades peo­ple from seek­ing treat­ment. The more we talk about depres­sion open­ly, rather than treat­ing as it as a shame­ful secret, the more like­ly peo­ple at risk will be to seek help.

Just as depres­sion can­not be alle­vi­at­ed by triv­i­al­iz­ing or ignor­ing it, the con­di­tion does not respond to being roman­ti­cized. While, indeed, many a famous painter, poet, actor, etc. has suf­fered from clin­i­cal depression—and made it a part of their art—their exam­ples should not sug­gest to us that artists shouldn’t get treat­ment. Sad­ness is nev­er triv­ial.

Unlike phys­i­cal pain, it is dif­fi­cult, for exam­ple, to pin­point the direct caus­es of sad­ness. As the short video above demon­strates, the assump­tion that sad­ness is caused by exter­nal events arose rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly. The humoral sys­tem of the ancient Greeks treat­ed all sad­ness as a bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Greek physi­cians believed it was an expres­sion of black bile, or “melaina kole,” from which we derive the word “melan­choly.” It seems we’ve come full cir­cle, in a way. Ancient humoral the­o­rists rec­om­mend­ed nutri­tion, med­ical treat­ment, and phys­i­cal exer­cise as treat­ments for melan­cho­lia, just as doc­tors do today for depres­sion.

But melan­choly is a much broad­er term, not a sci­en­tif­ic des­ig­na­tion; it is a col­lec­tion of ideas about sad­ness that span thou­sands of years. Near­ly all of those ideas include some sense that sad­ness is an essen­tial expe­ri­ence. “If you’ve nev­er felt melan­choly,” the nar­ra­tor says, “you’ve missed out on part of what it means to be human.” Thinkers have described melan­cho­lia as a pre­cur­sor to, or inevitable result of, acquir­ing wis­dom. One key exam­ple, Robert Burton’s 1621 text The Anato­my of Melan­choly, “the apogee of Renais­sance schol­ar­ship,” set the tone for dis­cus­sions of melan­choly for the next few cen­turies.

The scientific/philosophical/literary text argues, “he that increaseth wis­dom, increaseth sor­row,” a sen­ti­ment the Roman­tic poets turned on its head. Before them came John Mil­ton, whose 1645 poem Il Penseroso address­es melan­choly as “thou God­des, sage and holy… Sober, sted­fast, and demure.” The deity Melan­choly over­sees the con­tem­pla­tive life and reveals essen­tial truths through “Gor­geous Tragedy.”

One of the poem’s lofti­est themes showed the way for­ward for the Roman­tics: “The poet who seeks to attain the high­est lev­el of cre­ative expres­sion must embrace the divine,” write Mil­ton schol­ars Kather­ine Lynch and Thomas H. Lux­on, “which can only be accom­plished by fol­low­ing the path set out in Il Penseroso.” The divine, in this case, takes the form of sad­ness per­son­i­fied. Yet this poem can­not be read in iso­la­tion: its com­pan­ion, L’Allegro, prais­es Mirth, and of sad­ness says, “Hence loathed Melan­choly / Of Cer­berus, and black­est mid­night born, in Sty­gian Cave for­lorn / ‘Mongst hor­rid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

Rather than con­tra­dict each oth­er, these two char­ac­ter­i­za­tions speak to the ambiva­lent atti­tudes, and vast­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, humans have about sad­ness. Fleet­ing bouts of melan­choly can be sweet, touch­ing, and beau­ti­ful, inspir­ing art, music, and poet­ry. Sad­ness can force us to reck­on with life’s unpleas­ant­ness rather than deny or avoid it. On the oth­er hand, in its most extreme, chron­i­cal­ly intractable forms, such as what we now call clin­i­cal depres­sion, sad­ness can destroy our capac­i­ty to act, to appre­ci­ate beau­ty and learn impor­tant lessons, mark­ing the crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between a uni­ver­sal exis­ten­tial con­di­tion and a, thank­ful­ly, treat­able phys­i­cal dis­ease.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

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

Watch “The “Art of Flying,” a Short Film Capturing the Wondrous Murmurations of the Common Starling

in Nature | December 11th, 2017

In the tra­di­tion of Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dish, we start the week–before it even gets a bit hectic–with a Men­tal Health break. Above, watch The Art of Fly­ing, Jan van Ijken’s short film that cap­tures the mys­te­ri­ous flights–or murmurations–of the Com­mon Star­ling. A blurb accom­pa­ny­ing the film adds a bit more con­text:

It is still unknown how the thou­sands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms with­out col­lid­ing. Every night the star­lings gath­er at dusk to per­form their stun­ning air show. Because of the rel­a­tive­ly warm win­ter of 2014/2015, the star­lings stayed in the Nether­lands instead of migrat­ing south­wards. This gave film­mak­er Jan van IJken the oppor­tu­ni­ty to film one of the most spec­tac­u­lar and amaz­ing nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na on earth.

Also, over at janvanijken.com, you’ll find a longer sev­en-minute ver­sion of this film, fea­tur­ing “won­der­ful close-ups and a spec­tac­u­lar final scene.” The €2,99 fee for watch­ing that full-length film goes toward sup­port­ing van Ijken’s work as an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er.

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:

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Bird Bal­let in South­ern France

The Proof That Mel Blanc–the Voice Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Porky Pig–Was a Genius

in Animation, Comedy, Film | December 11th, 2017

Bugs Bun­ny is a tal­ent­ed mim­ic.

His effort­less imper­son­ations of the celebri­ties of his day are not always politic (see Al Jol­son) but  there’s no deny­ing that his impres­sions of Lib­er­ace, Edgar G. Robin­son, Bing Cros­by, and Hol­ly­wood Bowl con­duc­tor Leopold Stokows­ki intro­duced these per­son­ages to sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

Clear­ly he was not work­ing alone. In the 1981 inter­view with David Let­ter­man below, Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn and many oth­er ani­mat­ed favorites demon­strat­ed his ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Blanc shaped the char­ac­ters from the get go, invent­ing voic­es for char­ac­ter sketch­es and sto­ry­boards, though it was clear to him that tough nut Bugs should have an equal­ly tough  accent — either Brook­lyn or the Bronx. (Rather than split hairs, he invent­ed a hybrid.)

Hank Azaria, who is as cen­tral to The Simp­sons’ mythol­o­gy as Blanc is to Warn­er Broth­ers, mar­vels (up top) at Blanc’s abil­i­ty to mim­ic one char­ac­ter imi­tat­ing anoth­er, as Bugs and Daffy Duck do above.

Region­al­ism steered many of Blanc’s most mem­o­rable cre­ations, from Foghorn Leghon’s Texas drawl to French lover­boy, Pepe Le Pew.

Nice Mau­rice Cheva­lier, Bugs…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Per­forms the Voic­es of Bugs Bun­ny and Oth­er Car­toon Leg­ends

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Country (and Will Change Your Mental Picture of the World)

in Maps | December 8th, 2017

We all under­stand, on some lev­el, that as adults we must go back and cor­rect the over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions we learned as school­child­ren. But for a sense of how large the scale of those qua­si-truths, you must imag­ine the whole world: that is, you must imag­ine how you imag­ine the whole world, a men­tal pic­ture prob­a­bly tak­en straight from the map hung on the class­room wall. And the lines of that map came straight, in a sense, from the work of 16th-cen­tu­ry car­tog­ra­ph­er Ger­ar­dus Mer­ca­tor.

Though Mer­ca­tor’s world-map­ping method came as a rev­o­lu­tion, it has also giv­en gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion very much the wrong idea about how big the world’s coun­tries actu­al­ly are. Mer­ca­tor Pro­jec­tion, as City­met­ric describes it, “re-imag­ines the earth as the sur­face of a cylin­der.

When laid out flat, it’s pleas­ing­ly rec­tan­gu­lar, and its east­ern and west­ern edges line up neat­ly.” But while “in real­i­ty, lines of lon­gi­tude con­verge at the poles; on the map, they’re par­al­lel. As a result, the clos­er you get to the poles, the more dis­tort­ed the map becomes, and the big­ger things look rel­a­tive to their actu­al size.”

Hence the need for such re-imag­in­ings of the world map as The True Size, “a web­site that lets you com­pare the size of any nation or US state to oth­er land mass­es, by allow­ing you to move them around to any­where else on the map.” Just search for any coun­try in the box in the map’s upper-left cor­ner, and that coun­try’s bor­ders will appear high­light­ed in col­or. When you click and drag those bor­ders to anoth­er part of the world, specif­i­cal­ly a part of the world at a dif­fer­ent lat­i­tude, you’ll notice that the shape of the dragged coun­try seems to deform.

But that appear­ance of dis­tor­tion is only rel­a­tive to the shapes and sizes we’ve long inter­nal­ized from the Mer­ca­tor map: when you move Aus­tralia up and it cov­ers a third of Rus­sia, or when you move the vast-look­ing Green­land down and it does­n’t even cov­er Argenti­na, you’re look­ing — per­haps for the first time — at a geo­graph­i­cal­ly accu­rate size com­par­i­son. Does that (to quote the humor­less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Car­tog­ra­phers for Social Equal­i­ty in the West Wing episode cit­ed as one inspi­ra­tion for the True Size Map) blow your mind?

Explore the True Size Map here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­ers May Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­rate Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Why Mak­ing Accu­rate World Maps Is Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly Impos­si­ble

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

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.

Meet Mandy Harvey, the Deaf Singer Songwriter Who Performs Barefoot & Feels the Music Through Vibrations in the Ground

in Biology, Creativity, Music | December 8th, 2017

Attrac­tive young female singer-song­writ­ers who shuck their shoes onstage some­times find that this small attempt to pass them­selves off as folksy and “real” has the oppo­site effect.

Mandy Har­vey, how­ev­er, is above reproach. The deaf singer-song­writer per­forms bare­foot out of neces­si­ty, using her unclad soles to pick up on the vibra­tions of var­i­ous instru­ments through the floor­boards. It allows her to keep time and, in so doing, helps her to stay emo­tion­al­ly con­nect­ed to the oth­er musi­cians with whom she’s per­form­ing, as she told NPR ear­li­er this year, when she was one of 10 final­ists on Amer­i­ca’s Got Tal­ent.

“I’ll feel and con­cen­trate on the drums through the floor, through my feet and then the bass through your chest,” she said in an inter­view with Col­orado Pub­lic Radio. “And then if a sax­o­phone play­er is next to me then it will be on my arm. So you just des­ig­nate dif­fer­ent parts of your body so you can con­cen­trate on who’s play­ing what and when.”

Born with near per­fect pitch and a con­nec­tive tis­sue dis­or­der that impaired her hear­ing, she was able to pur­sue her love of music by rely­ing on hear­ing aids and lip read­ing until 18, when she final­ly lost her hear­ing for good, as a fresh­man Vocal Music Edu­ca­tion major at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty.

While she has nev­er heard fel­low song­birds Adele or Tay­lor Swift, she has got­ten over the stage fright that plagued her when she still retained some hear­ing. Vocal­ly, she turns to mus­cle mem­o­ry and visu­al tuners to see her through.

Her tal­ent is such that some lis­ten­ers are con­vinced her deaf­ness is a pub­lic­i­ty stunt, a mis­per­cep­tion that eats at Wayne Con­nell, founder of the Invis­i­ble Dis­abil­i­ties Asso­ci­a­tion, a non-prof­it with whom Har­vey is active:

We’ve cre­at­ed an idea [of] how peo­ple are sup­posed to look when they’re bro­ken and so when you don’t fit that imag­i­nary mold, then it’s a trick, or you’re a liar — or you’re not real­ly bro­ken, so you should­n’t be doing cer­tain things.

See Har­vey per­form­ing bare­foot at the Kennedy Cen­ter on the 23rd anniver­sary of the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

How Inge­nious Sign Lan­guage Inter­preters Are Bring­ing Music to Life for the Deaf: Visu­al­iz­ing the Sound of Rhythm, Har­mo­ny & Melody

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Meet the Characters Immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Factory Scene

in Art, Music | December 8th, 2017

Lou Reed weath­ered his share of bad press in the decades after leav­ing one of the most influ­en­tial bands in rock history—either for his famed iras­ci­bil­i­ty or his spells of lack­lus­ter song­writ­ing. Some­how, he always had a way of bounc­ing back, prov­ing again and again his cul­tur­al rel­e­vance. For exam­ple, when it seemed like he had cashed in all his cred­i­bil­i­ty with the godaw­ful “Orig­i­nal Rap­per” in the mid-eight­ies, he returned in 1989 with the grit­ty clas­sic rock and roll of New York (and played the White House at the request of his long­time fan and friend Vaclav Hav­el). Reed was a true sur­vivor of a down­town scene that claimed more casu­al­ties than it made stars, and he most­ly made sur­vival look pret­ty good.

When he released his first solo album after quit­ting the Vel­vet Under­ground in 1972, how­ev­er, it seemed like­ly Reed was head­ed for obscu­ri­ty. Lou Reed is most­ly a great col­lec­tion of (most­ly over­pro­duced) songs, “but it isn’t a ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing” record, writes Mark Dem­ing at All­mu­sic, “and it stands today more as a his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty than any­thing else” for its ear­ly ver­sions of songs like “Berlin.” Not so the fol­low-up, Trans­former, an album boast­ing what may well be some of the best record­ings Reed ever made, like “Per­fect Day” and “Satel­lite of Love.” What made the dif­fer­ence? The influ­ence of David Bowie, who pro­duced with Mick Ron­son, didn’t hurt one bit.

Trans­former also hap­pens to con­tain the only song that broke Reed “through to the main­stream,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, the “rock clas­sic” hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.” The song draws its nar­ra­tive strength and its “incred­i­bly sub­ver­sive” nature from its sub­ject: the 60s Fac­to­ry scene sur­round­ing Andy Warhol, which, in effect, made Lou Reed, Lou Reed when Warhol took the Vel­vet Under­ground under his wing. The song reminds us that Reed was at his strongest when he told the tales of his milieu, whether that be the world of junkies, hus­tlers, and sex­u­al out­siders, or of fringe down­town artists unafraid to exper­i­ment with new iden­ti­ties and per­sonas.

These were shared worlds, and Reed knew them well enough to cap­ture them in a lit­er­ary frame pro­vid­ed by Nel­son Algren’s nov­el A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). Rather than cre­ate an adap­ta­tion of the book as he first intend­ed, Reed wrote about six com­pelling Fac­to­ry char­ac­ters, “Super­stars” in Warhol’s coterie, who embod­ied the edgy, coura­geous cool Reed made his theme. First up is Hol­ly Wood­lawn, a trans­gen­der woman who moved to New York from Mia­mi to escape dis­crim­i­na­tion. Warhol dis­cov­ered Wood­lawn work­ing the streets, and put her in films, “where she thrived,” the video notes, becom­ing “an impor­tant fig­ure in LGBTQ his­to­ry and, thanks to Lou Reed, in music his­to­ry, too.”

The next verse intro­duces us to anoth­er impor­tant mem­ber of Warhol’s inner cir­cle, Can­dy Dar­ling, who was also trans­gen­der and a star of Warhol’s films, and who inspired not only “Walk on the Wild Side” but “Can­dy Says” and, quite pos­si­bly, the Kinks’ “Lola.” Dar­ling is already famil­iar to those who know the Fac­to­ry scene, as is the sub­ject of the third vignette, Joe Dalle­san­dro, whom Warhol turned into a cult star in films like Flesh, and who—unlike most of the Fac­to­ry artists—actually achieved main­stream suc­cess, with roles in The Cot­ton Club and The Limey. (He also served as the crotch mod­el on the cov­er of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fin­gers and the “top­less tor­so” on the cov­er of The Smiths’ debut album.)

As the video out­lines brief biogra­phies of each “Walk on the Wild Side” muse, we see that Reed wasn’t only pay­ing homage to his artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin, he also was also pre­serv­ing a pan­theon of cul­tur­al fig­ures who were impor­tant to the gay rights move­ment in one way or anoth­er, as well as to the 60s Warhol aes­thet­ic and the birth of glam rock in the 70s. “Walk on the Wild Side,” notes Poly­phon­ic, “gives us a great lit­tle glimpse into a his­tor­i­cal scene, and it helps us under­stand the peo­ple around Lou Reed that influ­enced the great artist he was.” With­out a doubt, Reed’s most endur­ing work comes from his sym­pa­thet­ic por­traits of the artists and hang­ers-on who made the world he wrote of so sexy, dan­ger­ous, com­plex, and intrigu­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

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