What’s the Essence of Music & Sound?: Meditations from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad Presented in a Short, Creative Film

in Music | July 6th, 2016

If you’ve ever lis­tened to Radi­o­lab, one of the most pop­u­lar and endur­ing pod­casts out there, you know how much music (and sound more gen­er­al­ly) plays a spe­cial role in the show’s pro­duc­tion. And that’s all large­ly the cre­ation of Radi­o­lab’s co-host, Jad Abum­rad. You know those “jaggedy sounds, lit­tle plurps and things, strange stac­ca­to, per­cus­sive things” that make the show so dis­tinc­tive? That’s all Abum­rad, who majored in exper­i­men­tal music com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion at Ober­lin Col­lege.

To get inside Abum­rad’s think­ing about music (what is sound? what is music? why do we orga­nize sound into music?) watch the video above. Mac Pre­mo inter­viewed Jad, then turned the con­ver­sa­tion into a short cre­ative film. Note: If you don’t react well to see­ing fast-mov­ing images, you might want to skip this one.

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!

The Prince Online Museum Archives 16 of Prince’s Official Web Sites, Spanning 20 Years

in Archives, Music | July 6th, 2016

In March of 2015, The Guardian pub­lished a piece on Prince’s vault, begun by his for­mer sound engi­neer Susan Rogers before his Pur­ple Rain super­star­dom: “It’s an actu­al bank vault, with a thick door,” she said, “in the base­ment of Pais­ley Park. When I left in 87, it was near­ly full.” That was 30 years ago. Com­pos­er and Prince orches­tra­tor Brent Fis­ch­er spec­u­lat­ed that “over 70% of the music we’ve worked on for Prince is yet to come out.” Already able to release “in a decade what most musi­cians couldn’t put out in a life­time,” Prince stored in his vaults enough to reveal him as thrice the pro­lif­ic genius we knew in life.

Now that Prince has depart­ed, the vault has been final­ly been opened. What’s in it? Spec­u­la­tion, rumor, and hoax­es abound; we could see a posthu­mous album a year for the next cen­tu­ry. As they trick­le out we’ll like­ly see more con­ven­tion­al, less Prince-like releas­ing strate­gies, now that he is no longer per­son­al­ly in con­trol of his out­put. This will sure­ly make it eas­i­er on his fans, but will also strip the music of much of its curi­ous mys­tique. “A stream­ing skep­tic before it was fash­ion­able,” writes August Brown at the L.A. Times, and “a born futur­ist,” Prince excelled at “cre­at­ing new dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems under his purview.” As an ear­ly adopter of web tech­nol­o­gy, he began giv­ing away and sell­ing his music and mer­chan­dise online as ear­ly as 1996, when he cre­at­ed his first offi­cial web­site, “The Dawn” (above).

Prince’s web debut hap­pened in the midst of his pitched bat­tle with Warn­er Broth­ers, and three years after he changed his name to the “Love Sym­bol.” Brows­ing through the his­to­ry of his inter­net strate­gies allows us to see how his per­son­al­ized dis­tri­b­u­tion approach­es and online iden­ti­ties evolved over the next two decades as he regained full cre­ative inde­pen­dence. We can eas­i­ly sur­vey that his­to­ry all in one place now, thanks to the Prince Online Muse­um, an archive of 16 of Prince’s var­i­ous web­sites, each one with its own pro­file writ­ten in Prince’s dis­tinc­tive idiom, with “tes­ti­mo­ni­als from the peo­ple who were involved in cre­at­ing and run­ning them for Prince,” writes The New York Times, and “links as well as screen shots and videos” of each site, none of them cur­rent­ly active.

There’s even a pre­cur­sor to Prince’s online world, Prince Inter­ac­tive, a 1994 CD-Rom “cou­pled with Prince’s under­ground film, The Beau­ti­ful Expe­ri­ence.” This ear­ly attempt makes clear that “Prince was fas­ci­nat­ed and excit­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of con­nect­ing direct­ly 2 his audi­ence through their com­put­ers. It would be sev­er­al years until that became a real­i­ty 4 him, but the idea start­ed here.” (See a slow video walk-through of the CD-Rom above). After 1996’s “The Dawn” came the first offi­cial online retail store, “1–800-NewFunk,” and an online lyric book, “Crys­tal Ball Online.” Suc­ces­sive sites each had a dis­tinc­tive focus: on Prince’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion with “Love 4 One Anoth­er”; on var­i­ous iter­a­tions of his “NPG Music Club,” an “online dis­tri­b­u­tion hub”—including the “vir­tu­al estate” of the 2003 iter­a­tion (see pic­ture fur­ther up); and on rebrand­ing efforts like “3121.com.”

One of the most strik­ing of all of the var­i­ous sites, “Lotusflow3r” (top) con­tained “vibrant 3D imagery and ani­ma­tion con­nect­ed 2 the music” and design of the 3‑CD album set of the same name from 2009. The last entry in the archive, the “3rdEyeGirl” site from 2013, was cre­at­ed for Prince’s new band and “was anoth­er exam­ple of choos­ing 2 bypass tra­di­tion­al chan­nels and go his own way.” Each of these site pro­files act as “snap­shots in time to expe­ri­ence the Web sites just like when they were active,” writes Prince Online Muse­um direc­tor Sam Jen­nings. They also show­case “his fierce inde­pen­dence” and desire “to con­nect direct­ly with his audi­ence with­out any mid­dle­man.”

You can explore the Prince Online Muse­um here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Lit­tle Fin­ger (2004)

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

Four Video Essays Explain the Mastery of Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (RIP)

in Film | July 6th, 2016

With each film he made, the inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed Iran­ian film­mak­er Abbas Kiarosta­mi left crit­ics grasp­ing for superla­tives, and his death this past Mon­day has chal­lenged them to find ways to ful­ly describe the dis­tinc­tive nature of his cin­e­mat­ic mas­tery. In his New York­er obit­u­ary for Kiarosta­mi, Richard Brody calls him “sim­ply one of the most orig­i­nal and influ­en­tial direc­tors in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma,” as well as “the first Iran­ian film­mak­er who expand­ed the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma not mere­ly in a soci­o­log­i­cal sense but in an artis­tic one,” whose “tena­cious, bold, rest­less orig­i­nal­i­ty” brought the world to Iran­ian cin­e­ma and Iran­ian cin­e­ma to the world.

Brody nar­rat­ed video essays on two films of Kiarostami’s. He calls 1999’s The Wind Will Car­ry Us (above) “the great­est of Kiarostami’s Iran­ian films,” a show­case for his com­bi­na­tion of “patient and lov­ing atten­tion to char­ac­ters drawn from dai­ly life and to their land­scapes with a pre­cise, can­ny, and fierce dis­til­la­tion of con­crete phe­nom­e­na into bril­liant, ver­tig­i­nous, and lib­er­at­ing abstrac­tions.” In 2012’s Tokyo-set Like Some­one in Love, Kiarostami’s final film, he “found him­self freer than usu­al to depict such ordi­nary events as a woman, her hair uncov­ered, in a bed­room with a man. But, fac­ing the seem­ing­ly lim­it­less free­dom of depic­tion, Kiarosta­mi inge­nious­ly revers­es the equa­tion; start­ing with the title and con­tin­u­ing with the very first shot, he ques­tions the dif­fer­ence between sim­u­la­tion and real­i­ty, between imi­ta­tion and being.”

Audi­ences every­where thrilled to Kiarostami’s treat­ment of those con­cepts, poten­tial­ly abstruse in the hands of oth­er film­mak­ers but nev­er in his, when he put them at the cen­ter of 2010’s Juli­ette Binoche-star­ing Cer­ti­fied Copy, the first film he made out­side Iran. In his video essay “The Dou­ble Life of James and Juli­ette: Mys­ter­ies and Per­cep­tions in Kiarostami’s Cer­ti­fied Copy,” cin­e­ma schol­ar Peter Labuza breaks down this many-lay­ered, mul­ti­fac­eted, mul­ti­lin­gual work, in one sense a no-frills rela­tion­ship dra­ma about a man and a woman who may or may not be or have been mar­ried, and in anoth­er a “com­plete and total enig­ma” deeply con­cerned with “the nature and role of per­cep­tion.”

Gra­ham Bol­lard’s “The Min­i­mal­ist Cin­e­ma of Abbas Kiarosta­mi” focus­es on the direc­tor’s aes­thet­ic choic­es, such as often shoot­ing inside cars, whose space “helps define the main char­ac­ter’s point of view” and repeat­ing a shot in such a way that “we, the audi­ence, are forced to view it in dif­fer­ent ways that take on dif­fer­ent mean­ings,” draw­ing visu­al evi­dence from Kiarostami’s Iran­ian films like Taste of Cher­ry, Ten, and Close-Up, from which Hamid Dabashi’s book Close Up: Iran­ian Cin­e­ma, Past, Present, and Future takes its name. The essay ends with a quote from it, describ­ing Kiarostami’s work as “there to fil­ter the world and thus strip it of all its cul­tures, nar­ra­tiv­i­ties, author­i­ties, and ide­olo­gies” — no small accom­plish­ment for one life­time in cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside the Renais­sance of Iran­ian Cin­e­ma

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

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.

How Jazz-Loving Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resisted Conformity in Nazi Germany

in History, Jazz | July 5th, 2016

Near­ly every West­ern youth sub­cul­ture in exis­tence even­tu­al­ly gets its own Hol­ly­wood film. Like most such films, 1993’s Swing Kids—which tells the sto­ry of jazz-lov­ing Ger­man youth dur­ing the rise of the Third Reich—managed to be both inac­cu­rate and crit­i­cal­ly reviled. Roger Ebert hat­ed the film’s cel­e­bra­tion of “a very small foot­note to a very large his­tor­i­cal event,” and com­pared the Swing Kids to “Nero, who fid­dled while Rome burned.” Ebert’s reac­tion is unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of him; he writes crit­i­cal­ly of the film, but he also seemed to find its subject—the kids themselves—repellant.

The review prompts us to ask: Were these kids—dubbed Swingju­gend by the Nazis—participating in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act of cul­tur­al resis­tance, or were they no more than typ­i­cal, naive teenagers who pre­ferred to “lis­ten to big bands than enlist in the mil­i­tary”? (After all, writes Ebert, “who wouldn’t?”) But the ques­tion about the Swing Kids’ polit­i­cal moti­va­tions may be less rel­e­vant than one about whether their pur­suit of a care­free, jazz-scored lifestyle under Nazism con­sti­tutes a “small foot­note” in his­to­ry. Should we know and care about the Swing Kids, and if so, why?

A Ger­man site called Swingstyle com­piles infor­ma­tion about the sub­cul­ture and admits that “the real Swing Kids were polit­i­cal­ly unso­phis­ti­cat­ed.” Despite being seen as a “youth prob­lem” by Nazi author­i­ties, they “actu­al­ly cared lit­tle for con­test­ing offi­cial poli­cies toward Jews or oth­er mat­ters. They just want­ed to have fun at a dark time in their country’s his­to­ry, and avoid the war if pos­si­ble.” Or, rather, most of them want­ed to avoid join­ing the Hitler Youth, man­dat­ed for all young peo­ple in 1939: “We must remem­ber the age of most swing kids was between 12 and 16 or 17.”

But as you can see in the short doc­u­men­tary clip at the top, the Swing Kids’ resis­tance to the by-now famil­iar­ly dis­turb­ing, para­mil­i­tary reg­i­men­ta­tion of Ger­man young peo­ple (see above), was in its way a rad­i­cal act. “Their casu­al, fun-lov­ing atti­tude made a mock­ery of Nazi con­trol,” the doc­u­men­tary nar­ra­tor says. They embraced what was “con­sid­ered ‘degen­er­ate music’ by Nazi ide­ol­o­gy,” writes Mes­syNChic, “because it was often per­formed by black and Jew­ish musi­cians and pro­mot­ed free love.”

We can­not assume the Swing Kids’ love of the music extend­ed to a love for the peo­ple who made it. It’s more so the case that the Swing Kids “admired the British and Amer­i­can way of life,” and the free-spirit­ed­ness uni­ver­sal­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the time by jazz in Amer­i­can and British films and records, to which Ger­man youth had some lim­it­ed access. But in their bat­tle for “self-deter­mi­na­tion and free­dom,” infor­mal groups like the Edel­weiss Pirates, the Trav­el­ing Dudes, and the Nava­jos resist­ed sub­or­di­na­tion into a homog­e­nized Aryan mass—the mech­a­nism by which Hitler turned ordi­nary Ger­mans into loy­al abet­tors of mass mur­der.

Through fash­ion and music, the Swing Kid clubs—like the rock­ers or punks of the U.S. and U.K. in lat­er decades—formed in con­scious resis­tance to social and polit­i­cal con­for­mi­ty. The Nava­jos wrote the fol­low­ing song, for exam­ple:

Hitler’s dic­tates make us small,
we’re yet bound in chains.
But one day we’ll again walk tall,
no chain can us restrain.
For hard are our fists,
Yes! And knives at our wrists,
for youth to be free,
Nava­jos lay siege.

The ref­er­ences to vio­lence weren’t pure­ly sym­bol­ic. Swing Kid gangs fought Hitler Youth in the streets. Some Swing Kids, writes Mes­syNChic, became known for “tag­ging pub­lic walls with anti-Nazi slo­gans like ‘Down with Hitler!’ and ‘Medals for Mur­der!’. Throw­ing bricks through win­dows and sab­o­tag­ing cars of Nazi offi­cials… raid­ing mil­i­tary bases… derail­ing trains… even plan­ning to blow up the Gestapo HQ in Cologne.” And as the edu­ca­tion­al site Music and the Holo­caust doc­u­ments, the Gestapo fought back “with spe­cial cru­el­ty” against Swing Boys and Swing Girls.

In Ham­burg, Swing Kids “had to endure dis­crim­i­nat­ing inter­ro­ga­tions, tor­ture and deten­tion.” They land­ed in youth con­cen­tra­tion camps, and adult and Jew­ish “swing mem­bers… were deport­ed” to death camps in Bergen-Bel­son, Buchen­wald, Auschwitz, and else­where. Mes­syNChic claims that “a file com­piled by the Gestapo is said to have con­tained more than 3,000 names [of Swing Kids] already by the end of the 1930’s in Cologne alone. In terms of num­bers, that would mean these youths rep­re­sent­ed a much larg­er resis­tance poten­tial than any oth­er oppo­si­tion group in Ger­many made up by adults.”

Again, none of this orga­nized resis­tance con­sti­tut­ed an explic­it polit­i­cal pro­gram. “The Swing Kids them­selves nev­er intend­ed to have any polit­i­cal effects,” writes Swingstyle, “they did not under­stand pol­i­tics” and “they turned their backs on the real­i­ty around them: the Jew­ish roundups, the death camps and the steady stream of man­pow­er reserves dis­ap­pear­ing into the caul­drons of Rus­sia and France.” Swing was a means of escapism and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the more relaxed, per­mis­sive “par­adis­es” of Amer­i­ca and Britain.

Like teenagers liv­ing under any regime, Swing Kids were main­ly moti­vat­ed by sex and the search for a good time. But per­haps the anar­chic strength of their most pri­mal instincts made these young peo­ple some of the most effec­tive resis­tance fight­ers against the Nazi obses­sion with puri­ty and order. Their lives—choreographed to the tunes of Count Basie and Ben­ny Goodman—were “in com­plete oppo­si­tion to the per­ceived Nation­al Social­ist con­cept of youth,” con­cludes Swingstyle: “To the extent that the Swing Kids assumed Amer­i­can ideals of per­son­al free­dom, relaxed liv­ing, and appre­ci­a­tion of the ‘low­er races’… they were a grave threat to the upside-down phi­los­o­phy of Nazism that sought to insu­late Ger­many from the rest of the world.”

Their embrace of an inter­na­tion­al, racial­ly-mixed culture—jazz—was itself a rad­i­cal polit­i­cal act in Nazi Ger­many, even if they had no the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts of what that embrace meant for the future of their coun­try. And their vio­lent rejec­tion of the Hitler Youth makes them even more com­pelling. It seems to me that the Swing Kids do indeed deserve a cel­e­bra­to­ry place in history—and maybe they deserve a bet­ter film as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

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

Amazon to Launch Amazon Inspire, a Platform Offering Free Educational Resources for K‑12 Teachers

in K-12 | July 5th, 2016

A quick heads up on a new open edu­ca­tion­al resource (OER) ini­tia­tive…

Last week, Ama­zon announced that it will launch Ama­zon Inspire, “a free ser­vice for the search, dis­cov­ery, and shar­ing of dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion­al resources.” Once up and run­ning this fall, Inspire will help edu­ca­tors quick­ly find resources they need in the classroom–for exam­ple, free les­son plans, teach­ing mod­ules, work­sheets, dig­i­tal texts, and more. In large part, much of the con­tent will be pro­vid­ed by schools and edu­ca­tors them­selves. Then Ama­zon will use its ser­vices to organize–or even curate–the con­tent, allow­ing instruc­tors to find appro­pri­ate mate­ri­als in an effi­cient way. In a press release, Ama­zon enu­mer­at­ed some of the ser­vices the plat­form will pro­vide. It reads:

• Smart search — With smart search, teach­ers can explore resources by grade lev­el, stan­dard or even from a par­tic­u­lar dis­trict. Edu­ca­tors can fil­ter search results using more than 10 cri­te­ria to find great resources that best fit their needs.
• Col­lec­tions — Edu­ca­tors can group resources into col­lec­tions. They can describe the col­lec­tion, curate the resources in it, rec­om­mend an order for going through the resources and share the col­lec­tion with oth­er teach­ers.
• Sim­ple upload — Ama­zon Inspire offers an easy to use and intu­itive upload inter­face. Edu­ca­tors can drag and drop files they want to share, add basic meta­da­ta such as title, descrip­tion, grade and sub­ject, and pub­lish the con­tent on the ser­vice, all in a few min­utes.
• Cus­tomer reviews — Teach­ers can rate and review resources on Ama­zon Inspire, help­ing their col­leagues around the coun­try select the best resources for their needs.

• Acces­si­bil­i­ty sup­port — Ama­zon Inspire has built in acces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures. For exam­ple, edu­ca­tors can nav­i­gate Ama­zon Inspire using pop­u­lar screen read­ers and users are also able to indi­cate the acces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures of resources they upload.

Although Inspire is cur­rent­ly in a closed beta, K‑12 edu­ca­tors can fill out a form here to get ear­ly access to the ser­vice.

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:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion.

The Haunting Background Vocals on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter:” Merry Clayton Recalls How They Came to Be

in Music | July 5th, 2016

The ques­tion of what an artist is will­ing to give up for her art is unan­swer­able until the moment of sac­ri­fice arrives, and she must make a choice—safety, com­fort, fam­i­ly, etc, or the leap into a cre­ative endeav­or whose out­come is uncer­tain? Then there are those artists—often just as tal­ent­ed and ambitious—who make these choic­es for oth­er people’s art: the pop star’s dance troupe, the Broad­way cho­rus mem­bers, and the rock and roll back-up singers, some of whom we got to know in the 2014 doc­u­men­tary 20 Feet from Star­dom, includ­ing the great Mer­ry Clay­ton, who con­tributed her haunt­ing gospel chops to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter.”

For the work­ing back­up singers in the doc­u­men­tary, the choic­es between every­day secu­ri­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty aren’t bina­ry. They often present them­selves instead as the kind of seem­ing­ly ordi­nary com­pro­mis­es we all make to some degree: do I go on this lucra­tive tour or attend my daughter’s recital? Do I turn down this job—and paycheck—or miss a birth­day, a fam­i­ly din­ner, a night’s sleep? Clay­ton had to make such a spur-of-the-moment deci­sion late one night, while just get­ting ready for bed at her L.A. home. She got a call from pro­duc­er Jack Niet­zsche, she tells us in a clip from the doc­u­men­tary above, whom she remem­bers say­ing: “There’s a group of guys in town called… the Rolling… Some­bod­ies… and they need some­body that will sing with them.”

Clay­ton had no idea who the Stones were, but at her husband’s urg­ing, she took the gig. She was, after all, a pro. As Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the Stones’ side of the sto­ry, Clay­ton “made her pro­fes­sion­al debut at age 14, record­ing a duet with Bob­by Darin. She went on to work with The Supremes, Elvis Pres­ley and many oth­ers, and was a mem­ber of Ray Charles’s group of back­ing singers, The Raelettes.” When she got to the stu­dio, she had some reser­va­tions when Richards and Jag­ger asked her to sing “Rape, murder/It’s just a shot away,” but when the band explained the gist of the song, she said “Oh, okay, that’s cool,” and total­ly went for it, as you can hear in her iso­lat­ed part above.

Deter­mined to “blow them out of this room,” she did three increas­ing­ly intense takes, pitch­ing it up an octave and push­ing her voice till it cracked. The results give the song its chill­ing apoc­a­lyp­tic urgency, and they also came at a great per­son­al cost to Clay­ton. Preg­nant at the time of record­ing, “the phys­i­cal strain of the intense duet with Mick Jag­ger,” notes the Los Ange­les Times, “result­ed in a mis­car­riage after the ses­sion.” As Mike Springer wrote in his post, the Stones’ song, and the entire Let It Bleed album, cap­tured a par­tic­u­lar­ly dark time for the band—as Bri­an Jones dete­ri­o­rat­ed into addic­tion and men­tal illness—and for the world, com­ing as it did after the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and the Kennedys and the esca­la­tion of the Viet­nam War. “Gimme Shel­ter” also came to rep­re­sent, Clay­ton told the L.A. Times, “a dark, dark peri­od for me,” though she couldn’t have known the price she’d pay for that ses­sion when she agreed to do it.

But she “turned it around,” she says: “I took it as life, love and ener­gy and direct­ed it in anoth­er direc­tion so it doesn’t real­ly both­er me to sing ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ now. Life is too short as it is and I can’t live on yes­ter­day.” Watch her above take the lead in an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful recent ren­di­tion of the song at the Gib­son Amphithe­atre in Uni­ver­sal City, CA. The per­for­mance fur­ther proves, I think, that, just as much as Richards’ gui­tar lines and Jagger’s lyrics, her voice played a cru­cial, star­ring role in the clas­sic record­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Gimme Shel­ter: Watch the Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary of the Rolling Stones’ Dis­as­trous Con­cert at Alta­mont

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

Hear Electronic Ladyland, a Mixtape Featuring 55 Tracks from 35 Pioneering Women in Electronic Music

in Music | July 5th, 2016

Giv­en that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two doc­u­men­taries on elec­tron­ic music pio­neer Delia Der­byshire, an intro­duc­tion to four oth­er female com­posers who pio­neered elec­tron­ic music (Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros), and sev­en hours of elec­tron­ic music made by women between 1938 and 2014, no loy­al Open Cul­ture read­er could claim igno­rance on the theme of this new mix­tape, Elec­tron­ic Lady­land. It comes from the French musi­cal project Aran­del, whose mem­bers remain anony­mous and could there­fore be of any gen­der, but who, in these 45 min­utes (made of 55 dif­fer­ent tracks by 35 female com­posers), dis­play a mas­tery of the field.

“We real­ized that an uncon­scious fem­i­nine elec­tron­ic music Inter­na­tionale has exist­ed through­out the ages and we won­dered whether a secret intu­ition might have gath­ered around shared research,” says Aran­del in a trans­lat­ed inter­view. “Was their mutu­al desires achieved dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, with dif­fer­ent tools in dif­fer­ent time­zones? The idea was to see what would hap­pen if we gath­ered them in the same fic­ti­tious room for 45 min­utes, and built a choir from all their pro­duc­tions.”

Aran­del’s inter­view­er describes the musi­cians in the mix as com­ing from “very dif­fer­ent musi­cal hori­zons: we find aca­d­e­m­ic learned musi­cians, research music com­posers and exper­i­menters who used to do DIY works com­posed for adver­tis­ing or tele­vi­sion in a pop or easy lis­ten­ing con­text, some eccen­tric women like The Space Lady or Ruth White.” We also hear from famous names like Lau­rie Ander­son and Wendy Car­los, and Delia Der­byshire. “What she accom­plished is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Aran­del of Der­byshire, “as is lis­ten­ing to her talk about her inter­est­ing work in doc­u­men­taries,” and they’ve also includ­ed work from Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Eliane Radigue, and Pauline Oliveiros, sub­jects of the oth­er doc­u­men­taries we’ve post­ed here.

Elec­tron­ic Lady­land drops you right into a retro-futur­is­tic son­ic land­scape equal­ly dance­able and haunt­ing, one with great vari­ety as well as an unex­pect­ed con­sis­ten­cy. It pro­vides not just a kind of brief overview of what cer­tain gen­er­a­tions of female com­posers dis­cov­ered with their new and then-strange elec­tron­ic instru­ments and oth­er devices, but one you may well want to keep in your library for fre­quent lis­ten­ing. It will also, accord­ing to Aran­del, make you think: “There is an almost mag­ic link between women and elec­tron­ic music, from the 50’s / 60’s. Have you asked your­self the ques­tion of social, artis­tic, maybe mag­ic rea­sons behind this link?” Hit the play but­ton, and you may start. Find the list of tracks below.

1. Gly­nis Jones : Mag­ic Bird Song (1976)

2. Doris Nor­ton : Nor­ton Rythm Soft (1986)

3. Colette Mag­ny : « Avec » Poème (1966)

4. Daphne Oram : Just For You (Excerpt 1)

5. Lau­rie Spiegel : Clock­works (1974)

6. Pauline Oliveiros : Bog Bog (1966)

7. Megan Roberts — I Could Sit Here All Day (1977)

8. Suzanne Ciani : Paris 1971

9. Lau­rie Ander­son : Tape Bow Trio (Say Yes) (1981)

10. Gly­nis Jones : Schlum Rooli (1975)

11. Ruth White : Mists And Rains (1969)

12. Wendy Car­los : Spring (1972)

13. Ann McMil­lan : Syrinx (1978)

14. Delia Der­byshire : Rest­less Relays (1969)

15. Mag­gi Payne : Flights Of Fan­cy (1986)

16. Else Marie Pade : Syv Cirkler (1958)

17. Daniela Casa : Ricer­ca Del­la Mate­ria (1975)

18. The Space Lady : Domine, Libra Nos (1990)

19. Johan­na Bey­er : Music Of The Spheres [1938]

20. Mad­dale­na Fagan­di­ni : Inter­val Sig­nal (1960)

21. Eliane Radigue : Chryp­tus I (1970)

22. Ruth White : Owls (1969)

23. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Spe­ichen (1979)

24. Beat­riz Fer­reyra — Demeures Aqua­tiques (1967)

25. Doris Nor­ton : War Mania Analy­sis (1983)

26. Tera De Marez Oyens : Safed (1967)

27. Daphne Oram : Rhyth­mic Vari­a­tion II (1962)

28. Mireille Chamass-Kyrou : Etude 1 (1960)

29. Lau­rie Spiegel : Drums (1983)

30. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Stom­a­co 2 (1972)

31. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Esofa­go 1 (1972)

32. Suzanne Ciani : Fourth Voice: Sound Of Wet­ness (1970)

33. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Expan­sion (1979)

34. Alice Shields : Sac­ri­fice (1993)

35. Megan Roberts and Ray­mond Ghi­rar­do : ATVO II (1987)

36. Lau­rie Ander­son : Drums (1981)

37. Doris Hays : Som­er­sault Beat (1971)

38. Lily Green­ham : Tillid (1973)

39. Ruth Ander­son : Points (1973–74)

40. Pril Smi­ley : Kolyosa (1970)

41. Cather­ine Chris­ter Hen­nix : The Elec­tric Harp­si­chord (1976)

42. Joan La Bar­bara : Solo for Voice 45 (from Song­books) (1977)

43. Sla­va Tsuk­er­man, Bren­da Hutchin­son & Clive Smith : Night Club 1 (1983)

44. Monique Rollin : Motet (Etude Vocale) (1952)

45. Sofia Gubaiduli­na : Vivente – Non Vivente (1970)

46. Ruth White : Spleen (1967)

47. Doris Hays : Scared Trip (1971)

48. Daphne Oram : Pulse Perse­phone (Alter­nate Parts For Mix­ing)

49. Mag­gi Payne : Game­lan (1984)

50. Lau­rie Spiegel : The Unques­tioned Answer (1980)

51. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Homöo­stat (1985)

52. Wendy Car­los : Sum­mer (1972)

53. Suzanne Ciani : Princess With Orange Feet

54. Pauline Oliveiros : Poem Of Change (1993)

55. Suzanne Ciani : Thir­teenth Voice: And All Dreams Are Not For Sale (1970)

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

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

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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.

Rufus Wainwright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

in Music | July 4th, 2016

We’ve seen 1999 mem­bers of Choir! Choir! Choir! per­form “When Doves Cry,” a mov­ing, mass trib­ute to Prince. And they’re now back, 1500 strong, with Rufus Wain­wright at the helm, singing Leonard Cohen’s beloved and oft-cov­ered song, Hal­lelu­jah.” Per­formed at the Hearn Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Toron­to, it must have been a won­der­ful thing to expe­ri­ence live in per­son.

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!

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Happens When We Die

in History, Life | July 4th, 2016

Elie Wiesel not only sur­vived the Holo­caust but went on to live a full life with a pro­lif­ic career, the fruits of which includ­ed 57 books, most famous­ly 1960’s Night, a short and for­mal­ly dis­tinc­tive work drawn from his expe­ri­ence in the con­cen­tra­tion camps. “The only role I sought was that of wit­ness,” he wrote in 1978. “I believed that hav­ing sur­vived by chance, I was duty-bound to give mean­ing to my sur­vival, to jus­ti­fy each moment of my life.” And even before his death this past Sat­ur­day at age 87, the Nobel Peace Prize win­ner had learned much about what it means to come to life’s end.

“The body is not eter­nal, but the idea of the soul is,” Wiesel writes in Open Heart, the 2012 mem­oir he wrote after under­go­ing anoth­er brush with death, late in life, which neces­si­tat­ed emer­gency open-heart surgery. “The brain will be buried, but mem­o­ry will sur­vive it.” Oprah Win­frey reads those words back to him in an inter­view from that same year, a clip from which you can see above. “Now that you’ve had all this time to think about it,” she asks, “what do you think hap­pens when we die?”

“Some­how,” he replies, “I will become a child. Child­hood, for me, is a theme in all my work. Will I meet my par­ents again? I want to know that.” Win­frey express­es spe­cial inter­est in the visions of his own fam­i­ly he had in the hos­pi­tal, such as that of his father who had died at Buchen­wald, just weeks before the cam­p’s lib­er­a­tion, and the sight of whose face he had pre­vi­ous­ly glimpsed, just for a moment, dur­ing his Nobel award cer­e­mo­ny in 1986. His father’s sec­ond posthu­mous appear­ance made him think death might not be so bad after all, but “that is the dan­ger. You feel it’s so good to be with the dead, then why not join them?”

But Wiesel, who had done so much already, felt he “had more and more things to do. I haven’t even begun.” Indeed, con­tin­u­ing in his capac­i­ty as the “Con­science of the World,” he received four more awards and hon­ors between 2012 and 2014, made many appear­ances, and sure­ly wrote pages that will see pub­li­ca­tion in the years, or even decades, to come. But for all his accom­plish­ments, he him­self found noth­ing more unusu­al, as he said to Win­frey in a pre­vi­ous talk six­teen years ago, than his own nor­mal­i­ty, “that I sur­vived the Holo­caust and went on to love beau­ti­ful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnor­mal.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor (Thanks to the Pow­er of Music), Dies at 110

Bertrand Rus­sell on the Exis­tence of God & the After­life (1959)

Is There an After­life? Christo­pher Hitchens Spec­u­lates in an Ani­mat­ed Video

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.

Change Your Life! Learn the Japanese Art of Decluttering, Organizing & Tidying Things Up

in How to Learn for Free, Life, Random, Video - Politics/Society | July 4th, 2016

Cus­tom dic­tates that you should observe July 4th—Amer­i­ca’s Inde­pen­dence Day—out­doors, eat­ing hot dogs, drink­ing beer, wav­ing tiny flags on Main Street, and view­ing fire­works.

Why not lib­er­ate your­self from the tyran­ny of the tra­di­tion­al by spend­ing a por­tion of the day indoors, com­mu­ni­cat­ing affec­tion to your cloth­ing, as orga­ni­za­tion­al expert, Marie Kon­do, author of the best sell­ing book, The Life-Chang­ing Mag­ic of Tidy­ing Up, does in the instruc­tion­al video, above?

Most of us who dwell in small New York City apart­ments are already famil­iar with her teach­ings. Hers is a take-no-pris­on­ers approach to clut­ter con­trol. Any item that doesn’t “spark joy”—be it a pair of stretched-out sweat­pants, a long ago grad­u­a­tion present, a ream of children’s art­work, or a near­ly full bot­tle of slight­ly funky-smelling conditioner—must be dis­card­ed imme­di­ate­ly.

(Note to self: ask Mom what­ev­er became of my Spir­it of ’76 water­col­or. She had it framed because it won a prize. Best Bicen­ten­ni­al Obser­vance by a 4th Grad­er or some such. Things like that don’t just van­ish into thin air, unless…)

The total makeover Kon­do pro­pos­es is an ardu­ous, oft-emo­tion­al, week-long task. Don’t blow your entire July 4th hol­i­day try­ing to com­plete the job.

Instead, take an hour or two to refold your clothes. New York­ers’ draw­ers are where Kondo’s influ­ence is felt most deeply. Whether or not we sub­scribe to her prac­tice of treat­ing each gar­ment like a trea­sured friend, our under­wear def­i­nite­ly has more room to breathe, when not on active duty.

See below for a graph­ic demon­stra­tion of how to best fold shirts, pants, and sev­er­al species of undies, using Kondo’s Kon-Marie method.

And don’t be tempt­ed to decamp to the back­yard bar­be­cue when you run across chal­lenges like over­alls or baby one­sies. Watch below as Kon­do tack­les a shirt with kimono sleeves, a pair of Edo-style mata hike pants, and a sweater with a marked resem­blance to a Thneed.

If you’re begin­ning to feel like fire­works may be over­rat­ed, Kon­do deliv­ers a 45-minute overview of her phi­los­o­phy as part of the Talks at Google pro­gram below. Or lose your­self to an entire playlist of Kon­do fold­ing videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be read­ing from her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late at Indy Reads Books in down­town Indi­anapo­lis, Thurs­day, July 7. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday