Hear the First Jazz Record, Which Launched the Jazz Age: “Livery Stable Blues” (1917)

in Music | February 10th, 2017

Through turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca mean­dered blues, blue­grass, and “old time” music. Gospel hymns, waltzes, and march­es. Per­haps the first tru­ly nation­al musi­cal style, Rag­time took a lit­tle bit from all of these and fused them togeth­er, influ­enc­ing every­thing from the crud­est vaude­ville to the work of some of Europe’s most inno­v­a­tive com­posers, includ­ing Antonin Dvořák, Claude Debussy, and Erik Satie. But rag­time was still very much tied to the past, to its late 19th roots in min­strel­sy and march­es.

Then in 1917, a sound arrived that was so per­fect­ly in tune with the age that it became sin­gu­lar­ly evoca­tive of next decade to come. This was jazz, of course, or “jass,” as it was spelled on “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues,” the first record of such music ever released, com­posed and played by the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band. The music arrived with the force of the “garage rock of the 1960s…. It was sim­ple music played with so much irrev­er­ence that it proved irre­sistible” to Amer­i­cans caught up in the coun­try’s rapid urban­iza­tion and mod­ern­iz­ing.

The first jazz record was tran­si­tion­al music—not nec­es­sar­i­ly a jazz big bang moment; “loos­er and more spon­ta­neous than the rag­time that had swept the coun­try at the turn of the cen­tu­ry,” writes Geof­frey Himes at Smith­son­ian, “but lack­ing the impro­vised solos and elas­tic rhythm of jazz to come.” Just as in the emer­gence of rock and roll in the 1950s, most jazz fans first came to know white groups like the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band before they met the black New Orlea­ni­ans who invent­ed the music.

But imme­di­ate­ly after “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues” the mar­ket was awash with both “jass” and “jazz” releas­es, includ­ing the first by a black Amer­i­can jazz act, Wilbur Sweat­man and his Jass Band, and a jazz record from the leg­endary blues pio­neer W.C. Handy from Mem­phis. Between 1916 and 1917, jazz went nation­wide: New York, Chica­go, St. Louis, San Fran­cis­co, and just about every­where else in-between. As it spread its ori­gins became mud­dled. “Just how the Jazz Band orig­i­nat­ed and where it came from is very hard to say,” wrote the sleeve of one lat­er 1917 release.

Music his­to­ri­ans agree that jazz was born in the night­clubs and on the streets of New Orleans, the home town of the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band. But “the ques­tion of who did what first,” writes Scott Alexan­der, “and what was rag­time and what was jazz is often a divi­sive ques­tion among those who are inter­est­ed in ear­ly jazz.” Yet when it comes to mak­ing pop his­to­ry, “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues” had greater impact than some­what sim­i­lar-sound­ing records released around the same time. “The band was a sen­sa­tion” writes Himes. And almost overnight the sound of jazz became the sound of 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

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!

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz

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

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

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

in Animation, K-12, Life, Music, TED Talks | February 10th, 2017

Remem­ber lis­ten­ing to Peter and the Wolf as a child, how the nar­ra­tor would explain that cer­tain instru­ments cor­re­spond to par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ters:  the duck — an oboe, the wolf — three horns, and so on?

In the above TED-Ed les­son (mem­o­rably ani­mat­ed by Com­pote Col­lec­tive), music his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Schwarm ful­fills much the same role for The Four Sea­sons by Anto­nio Vival­di. (Stream it here.)

Why are we so drawn to this Baroque con­cer­to? Is it because we asso­ciate it with brunch?

The hun­dreds of movies and com­mer­cials that have fea­tured it?

(Direc­tor Robert Ben­ton chose Vival­di rather than an orig­i­nal com­pos­er for the score of Kramer vs. Kramer, argu­ing that “Con­cer­to in C Major for Man­dolin & Strings” cap­tured the trou­bled Man­hat­tan couple’s refined lifestyle far bet­ter than the John Williams-esque bom­bast the ear asso­ciates with some many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic hits of the peri­od. The 1979 film’s suc­cess sent “The Four Sea­sons” to the top of the charts.)

These pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions no doubt account for some of our fond­ness, but Pro­fes­sor Schwarm posits that the sto­ries con­tained in the melodies are what real­ly reel us in.

Basi­cal­ly, we’re in the thrall of a musi­cal weath­er report, rev­el­ing in the way Vival­di man­ages to bring to life both the birdies’ sun­ny spring song and the sud­den thun­der­storm that dis­rupts it.

Sum­mer rolls out the mete­o­ro­log­i­cal big guns with a hail­storm.

Autumn’s cool­er night­time tem­per­a­tures keep the wine-flushed peas­ants from turn­ing their har­vest cel­e­bra­tions into a full-on bac­cha­nal.

Win­ter? Well per­haps you’re tucked up con­tent­ed­ly in front of the fire­place right now, grat­i­fied to be hear­ing your own com­fort echoed in the largo sec­tion.

Inspired by the land­scape paint­ings of artist, Mar­co Ric­ci, Vival­di penned four poems that dri­ve the move­ments of his most famous work. Their trans­la­tions, below, are nowhere near as elo­quent to the mod­ern listener’s ear, but you’ll find that read­ing them along with your favorite record­ing of the Four Sea­sons will cor­rob­o­rate Pro­fes­sor Schwarm’s the­sis.

Spring – Con­cer­to in E Major

Alle­gro

Spring­time is upon us.

The birds cel­e­brate her return with fes­tive song,

and mur­mur­ing streams are soft­ly caressed by the breezes.

Thun­der­storms, those her­alds of Spring, roar, cast­ing their dark man­tle over heav­en,

Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charm­ing songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn mead­ow, with leafy branch­es rustling over­head, the goat-herd sleeps, his faith­ful dog beside him.

Alle­gro

Led by the fes­tive sound of rus­tic bag­pipes, nymphs and shep­herds light­ly dance beneath the bril­liant canopy of spring.

Sum­mer – Con­cer­to in g‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Beneath the blaz­ing sun’s relent­less heat

men and flocks are swel­ter­ing,

pines are scorched.

We hear the cuck­oo’s voice; then sweet songs of the tur­tle dove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air….but threat­en­ing north wind sweeps them sud­den­ly aside. The shep­herd trem­bles, fear­ful of vio­lent storm and what may lie ahead.

Ada­gio e piano — Presto e forte

His limbs are now awak­ened from their repose by fear of light­ning’s flash and thun­der’s roar, as gnats and flies buzz furi­ous­ly around.

Presto

Alas, his worst fears were jus­ti­fied, as the heav­ens roar and great hail­stones beat down upon the proud­ly stand­ing corn.

Autumn – Con­cer­to in F Major

Alle­gro

The peas­ant cel­e­brates with song and dance the har­vest safe­ly gath­ered in.

The cup of Bac­chus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slum­ber.

Ada­gio molto

The singing and the danc­ing die away

as cool­ing breezes fan the pleas­ant air,

invit­ing all to sleep

with­out a care.

Alle­gro

The hunters emerge at dawn,

ready for the chase,

with horns and dogs and cries.

Their quar­ry flees while they give chase.

Ter­ri­fied and wound­ed, the prey strug­gles on,

but, har­ried, dies

Win­ter – Con­cer­to in F‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Shiv­er­ing, frozen mid the frosty snow in bit­ing, sting­ing winds;

run­ning to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chat­ter­ing in the bit­ter chill.

Largo

To rest con­tent­ed­ly beside the hearth, while those out­side are drenched by pour­ing rain.

Alle­gro

We tread the icy path slow­ly and cau­tious­ly, for fear of trip­ping and falling.

Then turn abrupt­ly, slip, crash on the ground and, ris­ing, has­ten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolt­ed doors…

this is win­ter, which nonethe­less brings its own delights.

You can down­load the Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty Cham­ber Play­ers’ record­ing of Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons” for free here.

See how well you retained your TED-ED les­son with a mul­ti­ple choice quiz, then read more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in less than three weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Abstract: Netflix’s New Documentary Series About “the Art of Design” Premieres Today

in Design, Television | February 10th, 2017

All over the world, so many kids grow­ing up, stu­dents look­ing for a major, and even adults angling for a career change say they want to get into “design.” But what do they mean? The word encom­pass­es a bewil­der­ing­ly wide (and ever-expand­ing) range of dis­ci­plines, respect­ed and expe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­ers of eight of which the new Net­flix doc­u­men­tary series Abstract takes as its sub­jects: archi­tect Bjarke Ingels, illus­tra­tor Christoph Nie­mann, inte­ri­or design­er Ilse Craw­ford, stage design­er Es Devlin, graph­ic design­er Paula Sch­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Pla­ton, auto­mo­bile design­er Ralph Gilles, and shoe design­er Tin­ker Hat­field.

“I can guess what you’re think­ing, because I have watched a lot of design doc­u­men­taries,” writes Abstract cre­ator (and WIRED edi­tor-in-chief) Scott Dadich. “Restrained, pol­ished, pret­ty — so many of them look like a mov­ing ver­sion of a cof­fee table book. You’ve got soft­ly lit inter­views, eso­teric con­ver­sa­tions, and sub­tle track­ing shots of wide land­scapes beneath unob­tru­sive music. Most of it is clean, min­i­mal, and bor­ing as hell.”

Instead, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have matched each of the design­ers this series pro­files with a dif­fer­ent doc­u­men­tar­i­an with their own dis­tinct style: the direc­to­r­i­al ros­ter includes Mor­gan Neville (who made Best of Ene­mies, the recent doc­u­men­tary on Gore Vidal and William F. Buck­ley) and Bri­an Oakes (direc­tor of Jim: The James Foley Sto­ry).

Indiewire’s Liz Shan­non Miller describes the series as doc­u­ment­ing, among oth­er things, the work­spaces of these design­ers in a kind of detail “on the lev­el of MTV’s Cribs.” Though “per­son­al lives are kept rel­a­tive­ly out of the pic­ture, Abstract man­ages to get sur­pris­ing­ly inti­mate with the cre­ators at its cen­ter.” You can get a taste of that from the clip just above of Ingels’ episode in which he explains what his team want­ed to do with the game of “urban Tetris” that was build­ing the VM Hous­es in Copen­hagen. “It cre­at­ed a lot of noise,” he says of the hous­ing pro­jec­t’s dar­ing design, one that still catch­es the atten­tion of passers­by today.

All of Abstract’s episodes come out today, but before you binge on them (and if you don’t have a Net­flix mem­ber­ship, you can always sign up for their free one-month tri­al), you can read this Archi­tec­tur­al Digest inter­view on it with Ingels and Neville. “This show is about peo­ple who are intense­ly curi­ous and try­ing to under­stand, in a very prac­ti­cal way, how to make the world we live in a bet­ter place, whether it’s a more com­fort­able place or a more effi­cient place or a more egal­i­tar­i­an place,” says Neville. And what does that require? “Under­stand­ing that life is always evolv­ing, the world is always evolv­ing, and that means that yesterday’s answers might be the answers to a dif­fer­ent ques­tion than what the ques­tion is today,” says Ingels. “So it always starts with ask­ing ques­tions and refram­ing the ques­tion” — and of course, as you’ll wit­ness count­less times through­out the length of the show, ven­tur­ing an answer.

Abstract is a Rad­i­cal­Me­dia pro­duc­tion made in asso­ci­a­tion with Tremo­lo Pro­duc­tions. It was exec­u­tive pro­duced by Mor­gan Neville, Scott Dadich (Edi­tor in Chief of WIRED), and Dave O’Connor, Jon Kamen and Justin Wilkes.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Pow­ers of Ten: The 1968 Doc­u­men­tary by Leg­endary Design­ers Ray and Charles Eames

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Tears In the Rain: A Blade Runner Short Film–A New, Unofficial Prequel to the Ridley Scott Film

in Film, Sci Fi | February 9th, 2017

Christo­pher Grant Har­vey spent the bet­ter part of five years mak­ing Tears In The Rain: A Blade Run­ner Short Film. Unwill­ing to set­tle for some­thing mere­ly aver­age, Har­vey labored away, espe­cial­ly in post-pro­duc­tion, “try­ing to get the per­fect orig­i­nal visu­al effects and [a] fit­ting score to bring the sto­ry to life.” Set in the world of Philip K. Dick­’s nov­el Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? (1968) and the motion pic­ture Blade Run­ner (1982), Tears In The Rain is a loose pre­quel to Rid­ley Scot­t’s motion pic­ture, and it’s also a “what if” sto­ry. It asks what “if a ‘Blade Run­ner’ retired a human by mis­take, what hap­pens then?”

Here’s more on the plot:

In a dystopi­an Los Ange­les future, repli­cants or genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered humanoids are cre­at­ed to work forced labour on off-world colonies. The lat­est gen­er­a­tion, the Nexus 3 series, begins to dis­play errat­ic and vio­lent behav­iour. Repli­cants were not designed to expe­ri­ence com­plex emo­tions or devel­op long-term mem­o­ries. In the wake of cor­po­rate scan­dals of the pre­vi­ous decade, the Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion qui­et­ly attempts to remove Nexus 3 from cir­cu­la­tion.

John Kampff (Sean Cameron Michael), a senior engi­neer, heads up the Tyrell Retire­ment Divi­sion. With the pri­ma­ry objec­tives, detect and remove Repli­cants, John has sus­pect­ed Nexus 3 Andy Smith (Rus­sel Savadier) firm­ly in his sights. As John soon learns, Repli­cant detec­tion is near­ly impos­si­ble with­out spe­cial­ist equip­ment. The Voight-Kampff, a poly­graph-like machine used by retire­ment engi­neers to help in the test­ing of an indi­vid­ual to learn if they are a repli­cant, is a dis­tant thought in John Kampf­f’s mind.

The 11-minute film was made at a cost of $1500. Not too shab­by. Find more infor­ma­tion about Tears In The Rain here.

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!

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Browse Every Art Exhibition Held at MoMA Since 1929 with the New “MoMA Exhibition Spelunker”

in Archives, Art | February 9th, 2017

More and more, muse­ums around the world are open­ing up their vast archives for free on the inter­net. We can browse broad col­lec­tions, or dig down deep into col­lec­tions and exam­ine indi­vid­ual works, or we can down­load hi-res­o­lu­tion jpgs of famous works and slap them on our new desk­top as wall­pa­per. (Dis­cus­sion: does this triv­i­al­ize a work or help us appre­ci­ate it?)

Indeed, Open­Cul­ture has linked to many of these and I’ve fol­lowed. And I’ve often returned over­whelmed or dis­ap­point­ed, not by the art, but by bad web design. Good inten­tions are one thing, but insti­tu­tions often turn to coders first, not design­ers. And there’s a dif­fer­ence.

Recent­ly we told you how the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has put most of its near­ly 90 years of exhi­bi­tions online. Our own Col­in Mar­shall said:

The archive offers, in the words of Chief of Archives Michelle Ellig­ott, “free and unprece­dent­ed access to The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s ever-evolv­ing exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry” in the form of “thou­sands of unique and vital mate­ri­als includ­ing instal­la­tion pho­tographs, out-of-print exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues, and more, begin­ning with MoMA’s very first exhi­bi­tion in 1929.”

Yet the inter­face is quite lack­ing, show­ing a blank search bar with no clue to how much lies beneath. Where to start, if you just want to browse?

Enter the data visu­al­iza­tion firm of Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle, who excel at pre­sent­ing archives in dif­fer­ent ways. Com­mis­sioned by MoMA to make some­thing from the data, the firm’s “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er” offers 60 years of exhi­bi­tion data that can then be searched by “cura­tors, arrangers, design­ers, artists, and oth­ers” with con­nec­tions avail­able at every lev­el.

For exam­ple, the sec­ond ever MoMA exhib­it, “Painters by 19 Liv­ing Amer­i­cans” (1929 — 1930), fea­tured Edward Hop­per. The offi­cial archive will show you the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log and press release. But go spelunk­ing and we dis­cov­er that up until 1989 (the end of the archive for now), Hop­per was fea­tured in 61 exhi­bi­tions, includ­ing 1943 where he was fea­tured in four exhibits in one year. What were those exhibits? Well, down the rab­bit hole you go.

Coder (and, full dis­clo­sure, friend since high school) Phil Gyford spoke about his work on the page:
A spe­lunk­er, accord­ing to Cham­bers, is “a per­son who explores caves as a hob­by” and we aimed to explore MoMA’s raw data and make it more vis­i­ble and pen­e­tra­ble by every­one else. It’s hard to get a decent sense of the shape of lists of data so we set off to explore.

Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle have worked on oth­er sleek and min­i­mal sites, includ­ing a Net­flix rec­om­men­da­tion engine, a small­er spe­lunk­er for the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um, and a larg­er one for the British Muse­um.

But if you’re inter­est­ed in explor­ing a cen­tu­ry of exhi­bi­tions at MoMA, then spend as much time as you like with the “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Down­load 397 Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 65,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

A Sonic Introduction to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Minutes of 20th Century Art Music, Including Modernism, Futurism, Dadaism & Beyond

in Art, Music | February 9th, 2017

Avant-garde com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry have left a vex­ing lega­cy, begin­ning per­haps with one of the cen­tu­ry’s first min­i­mal­ists, Erik Satie (1866 –1925), whose career illus­trates a cen­tral para­dox of exper­i­men­tal music: it can seem to most of us total­ly inac­ces­si­ble, alien, and frus­trat­ing, yet it is also a per­va­sive influ­ence on the sound of our every­day life.

For exam­ple, we are like­ly to nev­er encounter, much less could most of us endure, the full mea­sure of Satie’s 1893 Vex­a­tions, a short piece “melan­cholic yet dead­pan, eccle­si­as­ti­cal yet demon­ic, strange­ly lack­ing direc­tion,” and meant, writes Nick Shave at The Guardian, to be “repeat­ed 840 times.” Long thought an iron­ic joke, in 1963 John Cage took up the chal­lenge and with a “relay team of pianists, includ­ing John Cale,” staged a marathon per­for­mance at the end of which only one per­son remained in the audi­ence.

Then we have the Satie of Gymnopédie No.1, a mov­ing com­po­si­tion we’ve heard count­less times in films, tele­vi­sion shows, din­ner par­ties, restau­rants, etc. This piece and oth­ers like it, argues WFMU’s Ken­neth Gold­smith, mark the birth of Ambi­ent music, or what Satie puck­ish­ly called Fur­ni­ture Music. “Today,” Gold­smith writes, “Fur­ni­ture Music is unavoid­able,” and every­one from Bri­an Eno to Aphex Twin to “the entire Muzak phe­nom­e­non… owes a debt to The Vel­vet Gen­tle­man.”

Both the acces­si­ble and dif­fi­cult strains of the eccen­tric French com­pos­er have been equal­ly influ­en­tial, and “just about every rad­i­cal musi­cal move­ment” of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry “can trace its roots back to Satie.” As we move through the century—encountering the work of Dada artists, Futur­ists, sym­phon­ic mod­ernists, and musique con­crète and ear­ly elec­tron­ic pioneers—we find an enor­mous breadth of exper­i­men­ta­tion, both strange­ly intim­i­dat­ing and often strange­ly famil­iar, giv­en how per­va­sive its influ­ence on film and “fur­ni­ture” music as well as on con­tem­po­rary com­posers.

If you’re new to the dis­so­nant and play­ful inno­va­tions of artists like Satie, F.T. Marinet­ti, Kurt Schwit­ters, Arnold Schoen­berg, Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, Györ­gy Ligeti and oth­er provo­ca­teurs and rad­i­cals of the ear­ly decades of the last cen­tu­ry, you could hard­ly do worse by way of intro­duc­tion than the dou­ble com­pi­la­tion album above from LTM Record­ings. Titled A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde and con­sist­ing of 26 tracks in total, the com­pi­la­tion includes an excerpt of Igor Stravinsky’s scandalous—for the time—1913 The Rite of Spring, and John Cage’s per­plex­ing 1952 work of silence, 4’33” and begins with a mer­ci­ful­ly brief 3‑minute ren­di­tion of Satie’s Vex­a­tions. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. If you have any prob­lems play­ing the embed­ded playlist, please click on this link.)

We also have music from names we typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate with visu­al art (Mar­cel Duchamp, Fran­cis Picabia) and film (Jean Cocteau). And you will sure­ly rec­og­nize the final piece, Ligeti’s “Atmos­pheres,” from Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The col­lec­tion, writes The Tre­buchet in their review, “sub­tly hints at the fact that film sound­tracks are the clos­est thing we have to grand com­po­si­tions these days, and in fact the seeds for change were plant­ed long ago dur­ing the era when Con­ti­nen­tal artists and musi­cians took an inter­est in the emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of auto­mo­biles, planes, and film.”

Then, of course, there were emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of sound. A Young Person’s Guide (pur­chase a copy online here) ends with Ligeti in 1961, and only hints at the elec­tron­ic avant-garde to come with a 1953 com­po­si­tion from Stock­hausen. This is a shame, since the elec­tron­ic rev­o­lu­tion in music opened doors for so many female exper­i­men­tal­ists like Pauline Oliv­eros, Daphne Oram, and Eliane Radigue. As it stands, the col­lec­tion gives us an all-male line­up of artists—and one sure to pro­voke excla­ma­tions of “What about [insert name here]!”

It’s an under­stand­able reac­tion to an ambi­tious but lim­it­ed sur­vey. For the ama­teur or “young per­son” just dis­cov­er­ing this musi­cal his­to­ry, how­ev­er, A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde offers a rich, com­pelling, and fre­quent­ly con­found­ing selec­tion that can serve as a stur­dy spring­board for fur­ther study and explo­ration. Those so inspired to hear more can find it in the mas­sive archive of The Avant-Garde Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

The Women of the Avant-Garde: An Intro­duc­tion Fea­tur­ing Audio by Gertrude Stein, Kathy Ack­er, Pat­ti Smith & More

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

Hunter S. Thompson Gets in a Gunfight with His Neighbor & Dispenses Political Wisdom: “In a Democracy, You Have to Be a Player”

in Life, Politics | February 9th, 2017

What would Hunter S. Thomp­son, in many ways the ulti­mate Amer­i­can, have made of his coun­try’s polit­i­cal scene today? Hav­ing lived, in the words of his 2005 sui­cide note, “17 years past 50. 17 more than I need­ed or want­ed,” the self-styled and always uncom­pro­mis­ing “gonzo jour­nal­ist” did­n’t stick around to observe much of the 21st cen­tu­ry, and even as grim­ly vivid a polit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion as his could hard­ly have fore­seen many of its devel­op­ments. Yet like the longer-gone Alex­is de Toc­queville, also very much a man of his own time, Thomp­son’s per­spec­tive on democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca has in some sense only grown more rel­e­vant over the years with­out him.

Thomp­son would, in life, offer this per­spec­tive on any and all occa­sions, includ­ing dur­ing a shootout with his neigh­bor. In his final decades, his bio­graph­i­cal blurbs ref­er­enced both a love of firearms and a 42.5‑acre “for­ti­fied com­pound,” known as Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, Col­orado.

One might assume that such a remote and seclud­ed loca­tion would rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­flicts with neigh­bors, but Thomp­son’s expe­ri­ence (as often it did) proved an excep­tion. In the recent­ly released footage above, we see him exchang­ing gun­fire with a new­ly arrived res­i­dent in a dis­pute hav­ing some­thing to do with live­stock. “If this son of a bitch wants to bitch about his cows over here and shoot at me, well… it’s our coun­try. It’s not theirs. It’s not a bunch of used car deal­ers from south­ern Cal­i­for­nia.”

No mat­ter how impul­sive or reck­less it might seem, Thomp­son’s behav­ior arose organ­i­cal­ly, from a foun­da­tion­al polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. “The peo­ple who did this Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the Con­sti­tu­tion were, uh, good peo­ple,” he says in voiceover as we watch him assume a com­bat stance and fire off a few rounds. “And it’s a good place. Here we are in the mid­dle of it, up on the moun­tain,” from his perch on which he came to see him­self as a kind of ultra-lib­er­tar­i­an defend­er of the mis­sion of the Found­ing Fathers, or at least the mis­sion of the Found­ing Fathers as he inter­pret­ed it. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ends by remind­ing Amer­i­cans of some­thing they tend to for­get until plunged into one cri­sis or anoth­er: “In a democ­ra­cy, you have to be a play­er.”

via red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Sets His Christ­mas Tree on Fire, Near­ly Burns His House Down (1990)

Play­ing Golf on LSD With Hunter S. Thomp­son: Esquire Edi­tor Remem­bers the Odd­est Game of Golf

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Makes 375,000 Images of Fine Art Available Under a Creative Commons License: Download, Use & Remix

in Art | February 8th, 2017

What do you need to make art? Why, art, of course: the works that have come before pro­vide inspi­ra­tion, estab­lish a tra­di­tion to fol­low and expand, and now, in our dig­i­tal age, even pro­vide the very mate­ri­als to work with. The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has assured us that we should feel free to “use, remix, and share” their lat­est batch of 375,000 dig­i­tized art­works of a vari­ety of forms and from a vari­ety of eras in any which way we like. In part­ner­ship with Cre­ative Com­mons, they’ve released them all under the lat­ter’s CC0, or “no rights reserved” license, which places them “as com­plete­ly as pos­si­ble in the pub­lic domain, so that oth­ers may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any pur­pos­es with­out restric­tion under copy­right or data­base law.”

But fea­tur­ing these sorts of projects often here on Open Cul­ture, we know that a trove of art images, no mat­ter how open, is only as good as its search tools. A new search tool comes new­ly devel­oped by Cre­ative Com­mons, and in fact they still describe it as “in beta,” but it shows promise as a means to, as pro­mot­ed, “explore this beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion, cre­ate con­tent lists, share, col­lab­o­rate, and learn.” You can get start­ed using it here, but if you want to focus specif­i­cal­ly on the con­tents of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art col­lec­tion, make sure to uncheck the oth­er search options, which include the New York Pub­lic Library and the Rijksmu­se­um. Or you can first have a look at three curat­ed gal­leries, one of mas­ter­piece paint­ings, one of Impres­sion­ism and Post-Impres­sion­ism, and one “cabal of cats from the Met’s cab­i­nets, com­piled by the curi­ous cura­tors of the col­lec­tion.”

You can also assem­ble and share gal­leries of your own, in just the way you might on oth­er image-ori­ent­ed social-media sites such as Pin­ter­est, which, along with Wiki­me­dia, Art­stor, and the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca, also calls itself a part­ner in the Met’s broad­er Open Access Ini­tia­tive, and which offers its own users the abil­i­ty to search this dig­i­tal col­lec­tion. (The Met has also cre­at­ed a pub­lic GitHub repos­i­to­ry.) And giv­en the ever-expand­ing breadth of the art­works already dig­i­tized and made free, you’ll sure­ly find many you’re inter­est­ed in — but its real rev­o­lu­tion­ary appeal lies in what you’ll find, and what you’ll do with, the art you don’t know you’re inter­est­ed in yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Did Plato’s Republic Predict the Rise of Donald Trump?: A Chilling Animated Video Narrated by Andrew Sullivan

in Philosophy, Politics | February 8th, 2017

We stand, per­haps, at the thresh­old of the sin­gu­lar­i­ty, that great event when machine intel­li­gence over­takes our own. The writhing of late cap­i­tal­ism may in fact be the death throes of West­ern moder­ni­ty and, for both good and ill, much of its Enlight­en­ment lega­cy. Insti­tu­tions like the press and the polling indus­try have stum­bled bad­ly. No amount of denial­ism will stop the cli­mate cri­sis. Some­thing entire­ly new seems poised for its emer­gence into the world, though what it might be no one seems ful­ly equipped to say. Why, then, should we look back to Pla­to to explain our epoch, a philoso­pher who had no famil­iar­i­ty with mod­ern weapon­ry, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, or infor­ma­tion sys­tems?

Per­haps a bet­ter ques­tion is: do we and should we still val­ue the con­tri­bu­tions of Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy in con­tem­po­rary life? If so, then we must allow that Pla­to may be per­pet­u­al­ly rel­e­vant to learned dis­course. Alfred North White­head famous­ly char­ac­ter­ized “the Euro­pean philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion” as “a series of foot­notes to Pla­to.” Sug­gest­ing his agree­ment with the sen­ti­ment, Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci titled his reg­u­lar col­umn at The Philosopher’s Mag­a­zine, “Foot­notes to Pla­to.” Though he did not invent his mode of inquiry, and often got it very wrong, Pla­to, he writes, “is a tow­er­ing fig­ure for an entire way of think­ing about fun­da­men­tal ques­tions.”

There may be few ques­tions more fun­da­men­tal than those we now ask in the U.S. about tyran­ny, its ori­gins and remedy—about how we arrived at where we are and what eth­i­cal and prac­ti­cal mat­ters lie in the hands of the cit­i­zen­ry. These ques­tions were cen­tral to the thought of Socrates, Plato’s men­tor and pri­ma­ry char­ac­ter in his dia­logues, who had some sur­pris­ing­ly con­trar­i­an ideas on the mat­ter in The Repub­lic. Here, as Andrew Sul­li­van tells us in the BBC News­night video above, Socrates the­o­rizes that “Tyran­ny is prob­a­bly estab­lished out of no oth­er regime than democ­ra­cy.”

The state­ment shocks us, but it also ran counter to the Athen­ian sen­ti­ments of Plato’s day. The pic­ture Socrates paints of democracy’s ills finds its echo in the con­tem­po­rary conservative’s world­view, but we should point out that Sul­li­van mis­rep­re­sents the text he reads as one con­tin­u­ous pas­sage, when it is actu­al­ly a series of excerpt­ed quo­ta­tions. And as always, we should be care­ful not to try and see our own par­ti­san divides in ancient thought. Socrates also had many oth­er things to say the mod­ern right finds tru­ly objec­tion­able.

The prob­lem with democ­ra­cy, Socrates thought, was too much free­dom. Its “free­doms mul­ti­ply,” he says,

until it becomes a many-col­ored clock dec­o­rat­ed in all hues. Men are inter­change­able with women, and all their nat­ur­al dif­fer­ences for­got­ten. Ani­mals have rights. For­eign­ers can come and work just like cit­i­zens. Chil­dren boss their par­ents around. Teach­ers are afraid of their stu­dents. The rich try to look just like the poor.

Soon every kind of inequal­i­ty is despised. The wealthy are par­tic­u­lar­ly loathed. And elites in gen­er­al are treat­ed as sus­pect, per­pet­u­at­ing inequal­i­ty and rep­re­sent­ing injus­tice.

Under such pre­sum­ably deca­dent con­di­tions, “a would-be tyrant would seize his moment”:

He is usu­al­ly of the elite but is in tune with the time. Giv­en over to ran­dom plea­sures and whims. Feast­ing on food, and espe­cial­ly sex.

He makes his move by tak­ing over a par­tic­u­lar­ly obe­di­ent mob, and attack­ing his wealthy peers as cor­rupt. He is a trai­tor to his class, and soon his elite ene­mies find a way to appease him or are forced to flee.

Even­tu­al­ly he stands alone, offer­ing the addled, dis­tract­ed, self-indul­gent cit­i­zens a kind of relief from democ­ra­cy’s end­less choic­es and inse­cu­ri­ties.

He rides a back­lash to suc­cess. Too much free­dom seems to change into noth­ing but too much slav­ery. He offers him­self as the per­son­i­fied answer to all prob­lems. To replace the elites, and rule alone on behalf of the mass­es. And as the peo­ple thrill to him as a kind of solu­tion, a democ­ra­cy will­ing­ly, impetu­ous­ly, repeals itself.

The grim, dra­mat­ic ani­mat­ed video that accom­pa­nies Sullivan’s nar­ra­tion of this chill­ing­ly pre­scient ancient text is not sub­tle about the mod­ern par­al­lels. We can hearti­ly debate the diag­no­sis of “too much free­dom” as the cause of democracy’s yield­ing to tyran­ny. But what­ev­er democ­ra­cy’s fail­ings, the effects Pla­to describes above are as evi­dent today as they were almost 2300 years ago, though we may flat­ter our­selves in think­ing that the mechan­ics of our polit­i­cal sys­tems have evolved since then. In any case, our tech­no­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion means that unlike in Pla­to’s day, the rise of a tyrant like Don­ald Trump, as Sul­li­van wrote last year, may be “an extinc­tion-lev­el event.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course 

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

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

Introduction to Political Philosophy: A Free Yale Course

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Politics | February 8th, 2017

Taught by pro­fes­sor Steven B. Smith, this course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty offers an Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, and cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

This course is intend­ed as an intro­duc­tion to polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy as seen through an exam­i­na­tion of some of the major texts and thinkers of the West­ern polit­i­cal tra­di­tion. Three broad themes that are cen­tral to under­stand­ing polit­i­cal life are focused upon: the polis expe­ri­ence (Pla­to, Aris­to­tle), the sov­er­eign state (Machi­avel­li, Hobbes), con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment (Locke), and democ­ra­cy (Rousseau, Toc­queville). The way in which dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal philoso­phies have giv­en expres­sion to var­i­ous forms of polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions and our ways of life are exam­ined through­out the course.

You can watch the 24 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it this Yale web­site.

The main texts used in this course include the fol­low­ing. You can find them in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

• Pla­to, Tri­al and Death of Socrates
• Pla­to, Repub­lic
• Aris­to­tle, Pol­i­tics
• Machi­avel­li, The Prince
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
• John Locke, Sec­ond Trea­tise of Gov­ern­ment
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Polit­i­cal Writ­ings
• Alex­is de Toc­queville, Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

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!