Stream a Free 65-Hour Playlist of John Cage Music and Discover the Full Scope of His Avant-Garde Compositions

in Music | November 30th, 2015

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki Art

We might as well get the self-writ­ing joke about a 65-hour John Cage playlist out of the way up front: that’s a whole lot of silence! But of course, such a joke about the work of John Cage inevitably ends up as a joke about how lit­tle so many of us know about the work of John Cage. Most of us learn, at one time or anoth­er, of “4’33”,” his famous 1952 com­po­si­tion — or per­haps anti-com­po­si­tion — which instructs its play­ers to, for the length of time reflect­ed by its title, play noth­ing at all. But dig a lit­tle deep­er into Cage’s moti­va­tions, and you find that he want­ed the audi­ence of “4’33”” to lis­ten not to the silence, but to what­ev­er sounds hap­pen to remain in the absence of music — so that those inci­den­tal nois­es, in effect, become the music.

Many more such uncon­ven­tion­al com­po­si­tion­al ideas and result­ing lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences await you in John Cage: A Chrono­log­i­cal Col­lec­tion, this decid­ed­ly non-silent Spo­ti­fy playlist above (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware yet, down­load it here) by Ulysses Clas­si­cal, author of sev­er­al of our favorite playlists, includ­ing this 50-hour clas­si­cal com­pi­la­tion we fea­tured in August.

If you find your­self still in need of more of Cage’s salu­tary effect on your per­cep­tion of not just music and art but of the world itself, you can hear Ulysses Clas­si­cal’s playlist of only Cage’s “Num­ber Pieces” below, which “has a cleans­ing effect on the mind, as if it paints the walls of the room I’m sit­ting in with sooth­ing col­ors.”

Ulysses Clas­si­cal’s back­ground post on the big chrono­log­i­cal playlist opens with a quote from Cage that neat­ly incap­su­lates what we might call his phi­los­o­phy of com­po­si­tion, or maybe of life itself: “What I’m propos­ing, to myself and oth­er peo­ple, is what I often call the tourist atti­tude — that you act as though you’ve nev­er been there before. So that you’re not sup­posed to know any­thing about it. If you real­ly get down to brass tacks, we have nev­er been any­where before.” This playlist, which spans Cage’s six-decade career from 1932 to 1992, show­cas­es just what rich musi­cal places Cage found when he act­ed as though he’d nev­er been there before. Lis­ten­ing to it will cer­tain­ly take you to musi­cal places you’ve nev­er been before — and, assum­ing you’ve been to “4’33”,” it does­n’t take you there, but I sup­pose you can go to that par­tic­u­lar patch of musi­cal ter­ri­to­ry any time you like.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

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

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

People of Nowhere: Short, Powerful Film Captures the Human Dimension of the Syrian Refugee Crisis

in Current Affairs | November 30th, 2015

“The pro­pa­gan­dis­t’s pur­pose is to make one set of peo­ple for­get that cer­tain oth­er sets of peo­ple are human.”
–Aldous Hux­ley (1936)

Lior Speran­deo, who has pre­vi­ous­ly direct­ed short films called Peo­ple of Mum­bai, Peo­ple of Nepal, and Peo­ple of Sene­gal, returns with a film that resists focus­ing on a sense of place. Peo­ple of Nowhere cap­tures the plight of Syr­i­an refugees, flee­ing their worn-torn coun­try for a safer life in Europe. Explain­ing how he came to make the dra­mat­ic film, Speran­deo writes:

I have heard and read dif­fer­ent opin­ions about the wave of Syr­i­an refugees who try to make their way in to the EU. Then I went to Lesvos. 7 days on the Greek Island gave me a health­i­er, human per­spec­tive on the sit­u­a­tion.  See­ing the peo­ple behind the head­lines with my own eyes, and feel­ing their deep strug­gle, broke my heart.  Are they the ‘threat’ peo­ple talk about? All I saw were coura­geous peo­ple in a time of cri­sis, look­ing for hope.  I also got to meet brave vol­un­teers from all over the world who reach out to help all peo­ple regard­less of their reli­gion, race or back­ground. That inspired me.  My hope is that this video might tear down some of the walls of bad ideas and opin­ions we have built around our­selves.

You can watch Lior’s film, a reminder that real lives are stake in the slow-mov­ing geno­cide in Syr­ia, on Vimeo here. And vis­it his Vimeo Chan­nel here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

300 Kate Bush Impersonators Pay Tribute to Kate Bush’s Iconic “Wuthering Heights” Video

in Comedy, Literature, Music | November 27th, 2015

Heath­cliff, it’s me–Cathy.

(and 300 Kate Bush imper­son­ators…)

Let (us) in-a-your win­do-o-ow!

I will nev­er for­get my first hear­ing of singer-song­writer Kate Bush’s “ Wuther­ing Heights.” My col­lege boyfriend was a fan, but noth­ing he told me in advance pre­pared me for the shock­ing lunatic squeak of that voice.

Was that how Emi­ly Bron­të con­ceived of her oth­er­world­ly Goth­ic hero­ine, Cather­ine Earn­shaw?

Sure­ly no.

Had such an unholy screech issued from the lips of Mer­le Oberon in the 1939 film adap­ta­tion, Lawrence Olivi­er would have bolt­ed for the moors…

It’s an acquired taste, but a last­ing one. Bush’s debut sin­gle, writ­ten on a full moon night at the ten­der age of 18, has become a clas­sic in its own right.  (SPOILER: its life span has proved longer than Heath­cliff’s).

It’s weird, trag­ic, com­pelling… just like the nov­el that inspired it.

It’s also peren­ni­al­ly ripe for par­o­dy. Not just because of the voice. Two music videos Bush released seal that deal.

The UK ver­sion, above, fea­tures the sort of over-the-top the­atrics rarely dis­played out­side the pri­va­cy of bed­room mir­rors, as Bush pirou­ettes, cart­wheels, and emotes in a gauzy white frock.

(Some young teens of my acquain­tance nailed that one at sum­mer camp, with lit­tle more than white bed sheets and fif­teen min­utes of advance prepa­ra­tion.)

When it came time for the Amer­i­can release, below, Bush paint­ed her nails, rouged her lips, and took to the great out­doors in a bright red gown and tights, below.

Come­di­an Noel Field­ing camped his way through that ver­sion in 2011, rais­ing mon­ey for char­i­ty with a near­ly 30-year-old ref­er­ence.

But for sheer num­bers, noth­ing trumps the Sham­bush! stunt at the top of the page. In May, 2013, the self-pro­claimed “ludi­crous per­for­mance troupe” invit­ed all inter­est­ed Bush fans to join them in a Brighton park to recre­ate the famous video en masse. (Gowns and wigs were avail­able onsite.)

More than 300 par­tic­i­pants heed­ed the call, allow­ing Sham­bush! to achieve its goal of set­ting the world’s record for the most num­ber of peo­ple dressed as Kate Bush. (As one of the orga­niz­ers point­ed out, they would’ve set the world’s record even if it had only been the three of them.)

What a won­der­ful, ridicu­lous moment in music his­to­ry to be a part of!

For those inspired to recre­ate the mad­ness with their own crew, Sham­bush! breaks down (and names) some of the most icon­ic moves in an instruc­tion­al video, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2009 Kate Bush Doc­u­men­tary Dubs Her “Queen of British Pop”

Ai Weiwei’s Par­o­dy of ‘Gang­nam Style’

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

Albert Einstein On God: “Nothing More Than the Expression and Product of Human Weakness”

in Physics, Religion | November 27th, 2015

With depend­able fre­quen­cy, the reli­gious views of Albert Ein­stein get revised and re-revised accord­ing to some re-dis­cov­ered or re-inter­pret­ed quo­ta­tion from his sci­en­tif­ic work or per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence. It’s not espe­cial­ly sur­pris­ing that Ein­stein had a few things to say on the sub­ject. As the pre-emi­nent the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist of his age, he spent his days pon­der­ing the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse. As one of the most famous pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als in his­to­ry, and an immi­grant to a coun­try as high­ly reli­gious as the Unit­ed States, Ein­stein was often called on to voice his reli­gious opin­ions. Like any one of us over the course of a life­time, those state­ments do not har­mo­nize into a neat and tidy con­fes­sion of belief, or unbe­lief. Instead, at times, Ein­stein explic­it­ly aligns him­self with the pan­the­ism of Baruch Spin­oza; at oth­er times, he express­es a much more skep­ti­cal atti­tude. Often he seems to stand in awe of a vague deist notion of God; Often, he seems max­i­mal­ly agnos­tic.

Ein­stein reject­ed the athe­ist label, it’s true. At no point in his adult life, how­ev­er, did he express any­thing at all like a belief in tra­di­tion­al reli­gion. On the con­trary, he made a par­tic­u­lar point of dis­tanc­ing him­self from the the­olo­gies of Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty espe­cial­ly. Though he did admit to a brief peri­od of “deep reli­gious­ness” as a child, this phase, he wrote “reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve.” As he writes in his Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Notes, after a “fanat­ic orgy of free­think­ing,” brought on by his expo­sure to sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, he devel­oped a “mis­trust of every kind of author­i­ty… a skep­ti­cal atti­tude toward the con­vic­tions that were alive in any spe­cif­ic social environment—an atti­tude that has nev­er left me, even though, lat­er on, it has been tem­pered by a bet­ter insight into the causal con­nec­tions.” In con­trast to the “reli­gious par­adise” of his youth, Ein­stein wrote that he had come to find anoth­er kind of faith—in the “huge world… out yon­der… which stands before us like a great rid­dle.”

Einstein’s rejec­tion of a per­son­al God was unde­ni­ably final, such that in 1954, a year before his death, he would write the let­ter above to philoso­pher Erik Gutkind after read­ing Gutkind’s book Choose Life: The Bib­li­cal Call to Revolt on the rec­om­men­da­tion of a mutu­al friend. The book, Ein­stein tells its author, is “writ­ten in a lan­guage inac­ces­si­ble to me.” He goes on to dis­par­age all reli­gion as “the most child­ish super­sti­tion”:

The word God is for me noth­ing more than the expres­sion and prod­uct of human weak­ness, the Bible a col­lec­tion of hon­or­able, but still pure­ly prim­i­tive, leg­ends which are nev­er­the­less pret­ty child­ish. No inter­pre­ta­tion, no mat­ter how sub­tle, can change this for me. For me the Jew­ish reli­gion like all oth­er reli­gions is an incar­na­tion of the most child­ish super­sti­tion. And the Jew­ish peo­ple to whom I glad­ly belong, and whose think­ing I have a deep affin­i­ty for, have no dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty for me than all oth­er peo­ple. As far as my expe­ri­ence goes, they are also no bet­ter than oth­er human groups, although they are pro­tect­ed from the worst can­cers by a lack of pow­er…

You can read a full tran­script at Let­ters of Note, who include the let­ter in their sec­ond vol­ume of fas­ci­nat­ing cor­re­spon­dence from famous fig­ures, More Let­ters of Note. The let­ter went up for auc­tion in May of 2008, and a much more dog­mat­i­cal­ly anti-reli­gious sci­en­tist had a keen inter­est in acquir­ing it: “Unsur­pris­ing­ly,” Let­ters of Note point out, “one of the unsuc­cess­ful bid­ders was Richard Dawkins.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

Albert Einstein​ & Sig­mund Freud​ Exchange Let­ters and Debate How to Make the World Free from War (1932)

Free Online Physics Cours­es

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

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

A Rollicking French Animation on the Perils of Drinking a Little Too Much Coffee

in Animation, Food & Drink | November 26th, 2015

Mod­er­ate cof­fee con­sump­tion may decrease your risk of dying pre­ma­ture­ly from car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, reduce your risk of let­ting colon can­cer take you to the grave, pos­si­bly help you stave off demen­tia, and maybe, writes The New York Times, dodge a num­ber of oth­er bul­lets–“Type 2 dia­betes, basal cell car­ci­no­ma (the most com­mon skin can­cer), prostate can­cer, oral can­cer and breast can­cer recur­rence.” Pour me a cup, please.

These days, I’m feel­ing pret­ty good about my last remain­ing vice. But, as always, too much of any­thing is not a good thing. And that includes cof­fee too. Just ask Hon­oré de Balzac, who, accord­ing to leg­end, met an untime­ly death by drink­ing 50 cups per day. Or ask the fel­low fea­tured in the French ani­ma­tion called Le café–or sim­ply Cof­fee in Eng­lish. Up top, you can find a sub­ti­tled ver­sion of the riotous film direct­ed by Stephanie Mar­guerite and Emi­lie Taras­cou. Beneath, we have a non-sub­ti­tled but high­er res­o­lu­tion ver­sion. Enjoy, and remem­ber to drink cof­fee respon­si­bly.

More cre­ative shorts can be found in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Terry Gilliam on the Difference Between Kubrick & Spielberg: Kubrick Makes You Think, Spielberg Wraps Everything Up with Neat Little Bows

in Film | November 26th, 2015

Fit­ting, I sup­pose, that the only cre­ative meet­ing of the minds between two of the twen­ti­eth century’s best-known film direc­tors took place on a project about the prob­lem of non­hu­man intel­li­gence and the dan­ger­ous excess­es of human inge­nu­ity. For both Stan­ley Kubrick and Steven Spiel­berg, these were con­flicts rich with inher­ent dra­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty. One of the many impor­tant dif­fer­ences between their approach­es, how­ev­er, is a stark one. As many crit­ics of AI: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence—the film Kubrick had in devel­op­ment since the 70s, then hand­ed off to Spiel­berg before he died—have point­ed out, Kubrick mined con­flict for philo­soph­i­cal insights that can leave view­ers intrigu­ing­ly puz­zled, if emo­tion­al­ly chilled; Spiel­berg push­es his dra­ma for max­i­mum emo­tion­al impact, which either warms audi­ences’ hearts or turns their stom­achs, depend­ing on their dis­po­si­tion.

In the lat­ter camp, we can firm­ly place Mon­ty Python alum­nus and cult direc­tor Ter­ry Gilliam. In the short clip at the top of the post, Gilliam expli­cates “the main dif­fer­ence” as he sees it between Spiel­berg and Kubrick. Spielberg’s films are “com­fort­ing,” they “give you answers, always, the films are… answers, and I don’t they’re very clever answers.” Kubrick’s movies, on the oth­er hand, always leave us with unan­swer­able questions—riddles that linger indef­i­nite­ly and that no one view­er can sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly solve. So says Gilliam, an infa­mous­ly quixot­ic direc­tor whose pur­suit of a vision unique­ly his own has always trumped any com­mer­cial appeal his work might have. Most suc­cess­ful films, he argues, “tie things up in neat lit­tle bows.” For Gilliam, this is a car­di­nal sin: “the Kubricks of this world, and the great film­mak­ers, make you go home and think about it.” Cer­tain­ly every fan of Kubrick will admit as much—as will those who don’t like his films, often for the very same rea­sons.

To make his point, Gilliam quotes Kubrick him­self, who issued an inci­sive cri­tique of Spielberg’s Nazi dra­ma Schindler’s List, say­ing that the movie “is about suc­cess. The Holo­caust was about failure”—the “com­plete fail­ure,” Gilliam adds, “of civ­i­liza­tion.” Not a sub­ject one can, or should, even attempt to spin pos­i­tive­ly, one would think. As an exam­ple of a Kubrick film that leaves us with an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al vor­tex, Gilliam cites the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pic­ture the great direc­tor did fin­ish, 2001: A Space Odyssey. To see in action how these two direc­tors’ approach­es great­ly diverge, watch the end­ings of both Schindler’s List and 2001, above. Of course the genre and sub­ject mat­ter couldn’t be more different—but that aside, you’ll note that nei­ther could Kubrick and Spielberg’s visu­al lan­guages and cin­e­mat­ic atti­tudes, in any of their films.

Despite this vast divide—between Spielberg’s “neat lit­tle bows” and Kubrick’s headtrips—it might be argued that their one col­lab­o­ra­tion, albeit a posthu­mous one for Kubrick, shows them work­ing more close­ly togeth­er than seems pos­si­ble. Or so argues Noel Mur­ray in a fas­ci­nat­ing crit­i­cal take on AI, a film that per­haps deserves greater appre­ci­a­tion as an “unnerv­ing,” exis­ten­tial­ist, and Kubrick-ian turn for Spiel­berg, that mas­ter of hap­py end­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spiel­berg & Meryl Streep)

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

French Vending Machines Fill Your Mind with Nourishing Short Stories, Not Your Body with Junk Food

in Literature | November 26th, 2015

If you’re thirsty, a vend­ing machine is usu­al­ly close by. (Espe­cial­ly if you’re in Japan. You’re prob­a­bly stand­ing right next to one right now!) But what if you have time to kill and you’re thirsty for lit­er­a­ture? Then the Short Édi­tion vend­ing machine might be for you. Choose one of three buttons—one min­utes, three min­utes, or five minutes—and the cylin­dri­cal machine, cur­rent­ly avail­able in France, will print out an appro­pri­ate­ly-long short sto­ry to read on a receipt-like piece of paper.

Short Édi­tion co-founder Quentin Ple­ple says the idea came to him, where else, at a vend­ing machine, while on break with co-work­ers.“We thought it would be cool to have it for short sto­ries. Then, a cou­ple of days lat­er we decid­ed to hack a pro­to­type.”

Though peo­ple spend a lot of their free time on their pock­et devices, the Short Édi­tion is anoth­er attempt–like the short sto­ries Chipo­tle print­ed on the side of its drink­ing cups–to free us from a life of star­ing at glow­ing rec­tan­gles. It’s tan­gi­ble yet dis­pos­able at the same time.

At the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry automa­tion and vend­ing machines looked to be the wave of the future, where every­thing would be done for us on com­mand. And that has hap­pened in a total­ly dif­fer­ent way, through the micro­proces­sor. It just did­n’t hap­pen through the vend­ing machine, at least not in Amer­i­ca, where they most­ly dis­pense food, drink, and cig­a­rettes. Like high speed rail, Japan has picked up the slack and made the world rethink the machine’s pos­si­bil­i­ties all over again. It now looks like France and Poland (where you can find Haru­ki Muraka­mi nov­els being sold in vend­ing machines) are catch­ing on.

The Short Édi­tion vend­ing machines, cur­rent­ly only avail­able in eight loca­tions in Greno­ble, France, draw from a data­base of 600 sto­ries cho­sen by the com­mu­ni­ty at Short Édition’s web­site, which counts 1,100 authors as mem­bers. Pre­sum­ably, all these sto­ries are in French.

While new, the machines have gath­ered enough media atten­tion to attract inquiries from Italy and the Unit­ed States. So look out, you might find one in your area soon.

via Huff Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sup­port “Green Reads,” a Pro­gram That Finances Libraries by Dis­trib­ut­ing Used Books in Eco-Friend­ly Vend­ing Machines

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Nov­els Sold in Pol­ish Vend­ing Machines

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

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.

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Buddy Guy & B.B. King

in Music | November 25th, 2015

“I start­ed play­ing the gui­tar about 6 or 7, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I was influ­enced by every­thing at the same time, that’s why I can’t get it togeth­er now.”

When you lis­ten to Jimi Hen­drix, one of the last things you’re ever like­ly to think is that he couldn’t “get it togeth­er” as a gui­tarist. Hen­drix made the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mod­est state­ment in 1968, in a free form dis­cus­sion about his influ­ences with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wen­ner and Baron Wol­man. “I used to like Bud­dy Hol­ly,” he said, “and Eddie Cochran and Mud­dy Waters and Elvin James… B.B. King and so forth.” But his great love was Albert King, who “plays com­plete­ly and strict­ly in one way, just straight funk blues.”

Since Hendrix’s death and sub­se­quent enshrine­ment in pop cul­ture as the undis­put­ed mas­ter of psy­che­del­ic rock gui­tar, a num­ber of posthu­mous releas­es have per­formed a kind of revi­sion­ism that sit­u­ates him not strict­ly in the con­text of the hip­pie scene but rather in the blues tra­di­tion he so admired and that, in a sense, he came of age with­in as a ses­sion and back­ing gui­tarist for dozens of blues and R&B artists in the ear­ly 60s.

In 1994 came the straight­for­ward­ly-titled com­pi­la­tion album Blues, which cel­e­brat­ed the fact that “more than a third of [Hendrix’s] record­ings were blues-ori­ent­ed,” writes All­mu­sic’s Richie Unter­berg­er, whether orig­i­nals like “Red House” and “Hear My Train a Comin’” or cov­ers of his heroes Mud­dy Waters and Albert King. Mar­tin Scors­ese devot­ed a seg­ment of his doc­u­men­tary series The Blues to Hen­drix, and an ensu­ing 2003 album release fea­tured even more Hen­drix blues orig­i­nals (with “pret­ty cool” lin­er notes about his blues record col­lect­ing habits). Pro­lif­ic direc­tor Alex Gib­ney has a doc­u­men­tary forth­com­ing on Hen­drix on the Blues.

It’s safe to say that Hendrix’s blues lega­cy is in safe hands, and it may be safe to say he would approve, or at least that he would have pre­ferred to be linked to the blues, or clas­si­cal music, than to what he called “freak-out psy­che­del­ic” music, as a Guardian review of Hen­drix auto­bi­og­ra­phy Start­ing at Zero quotes; “I don’t want any­body to stick a psy­che­del­ic label around my neck. Soon­er Bach and Beethoven.” Or soon­er, I’d imag­ine, blues leg­ends like Albert King, Bud­dy Guy, and B.B. King, of whom Hen­drix sat in awe. At the top of the post, you can see Hen­drix flex his Delta blues mus­cles on a 12-string acoustic gui­tar. Then in the video below it from 1968, Hen­drix gets the chance to jam with Bud­dy Guy, after watch­ing Guy work his mag­ic from the audi­ence. (Hen­drix joins Guy onstage to jam at 6:24.) Beneath, see Guy and King rem­i­nisc­ing a few years ago about those days of meet­ing and play­ing with Hen­drix.

Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, you’ll learn where Hen­drix picked up one of his stage tricks, play­ing the gui­tar behind his head—and learn how lit­tle Guy knew about Hen­drix the rock star, com­ing to know him instead as a great blues gui­tarist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Plays “Hey Joe” & “Wild Thing” on The Band’s Very First Tour: Paris, 1966

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

Free Speech Bites: Nigel Warburton, Host of Philosophy Bites, Creates a Spin Off Podcast Dedicated to Freedom of Expression

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Politics, Religion | November 25th, 2015

In osten­si­bly lib­er­al democ­ra­cies in the West, atti­tudes towards free speech vary wide­ly giv­en dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal con­texts, and can shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly over time. We’re liv­ing in the midst of a gen­er­a­tional shift on the issue in the U.S.; a recent Pew sur­vey found that 40 per­cent of millennials—18–34 year olds—favor gov­ern­ment bans on offen­sive speech. The usu­al caveats apply when read­ing this data; New York magazine’s Sci­ence of Us blog breaks down the demo­graph­ics and points out prob­lems with def­i­n­i­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly with that of the word “offen­sive.” They write, “plen­ty of folks freak out about anti-cop sen­ti­ments but are fine with racial­ly loaded language—or insert your own exam­ples.” As com­men­ta­tors note almost dai­ly, var­i­ous free speech advo­cates show all man­ner of par­tial­i­ty when it comes to whose speech they choose to defend and whose they, unwit­ting­ly per­haps, sup­press.

Euro­pean coun­tries, of course, already have all sorts of laws that curb offen­sive speech and impose harsh penal­ties, from large fines to jail time. Those laws are extend­ing to the inter­net as well, a speech domain long cen­sored by Chi­nese author­i­ties.

Whether Euro­pean mea­sures against racist and xeno­pho­bic speech actu­al­ly lessen racism and xeno­pho­bia is an open ques­tion, as is the prob­lem of excep­tions to the laws that seem to allow cer­tain kinds of prej­u­dices as they strong­ly cen­sor oth­ers. Much more extreme exam­ples of the sup­pres­sion of free speech have recent­ly come to light under auto­crat­ic regimes in the Mid­dle East. In Syr­ia, soft­ware devel­op­er and free speech advo­cate Bas­sel Kharta­bil has been held in prison since 2012 for his activism. In Sau­di Ara­bia, artist, poet, and Pales­tin­ian refugee Ashraf Fayadh has been sen­tenced to death for “renounc­ing Islam.”

We could add to all of these exam­ples hun­dreds of oth­ers, from all over the world, but in addi­tion to the sta­tis­tics and the dis­turb­ing indi­vid­ual cas­es, it is worth ask­ing broad­er, more philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions about free speech as we draw our own con­clu­sions about the issues. What exact­ly do we mean by “free speech”? Should all speech be pro­tect­ed, even that meant to libel indi­vid­u­als or whole groups or to delib­er­ate­ly incite vio­lence? Should we tol­er­ate a pub­lic dis­course made up of lies, mis­in­for­ma­tion, prej­u­di­cial invec­tive, and per­son­al attacks? Should cit­i­zens and the press have the right to ques­tion offi­cial gov­ern­ment nar­ra­tives and to demand trans­paren­cy?

To help us think through these polit­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly fraught dis­cus­sions, we could lis­ten to Free Speech Bites, a pod­cast spon­sored by the Index on Cen­sor­ship and host­ed by free­lance philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, who also hosts the pop­u­lar pod­cast Phi­los­o­phy Bites. The for­mat is iden­ti­cal to that long-stand­ing show, but instead of short con­ver­sa­tions with philoso­phers, War­bur­ton has brief, live­ly dis­cus­sions with free speech advo­cates, includ­ing authors, artists, politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, come­di­ans, car­toon­ists, and aca­d­e­mics. In the episode above, War­bur­ton talks with DJ Tay­lor, biog­ra­ph­er of the man con­sid­ered almost a saint of free speech, George Orwell.

Of his sub­ject, Tay­lor remarks, “I think it’s true to say that most of Orwell’s pro­fes­sion­al life, large amounts of the things that he wrote, are to do with the sup­pres­sion of the indi­vid­ual voice.” At the same time, he points out that Orwell’s “view of free speech is by no means clear cut.” The “whole free speech issue became much more del­i­cate­ly shad­ed than it would oth­er­wise have been” dur­ing the extra­or­di­nary times of the Span­ish Civ­il War and World War II. Tay­lor refers to the “clas­sic lib­er­al dilem­ma: how far do we tol­er­ate some­thing that, if tol­er­at­ed, will cease to tol­er­ate us…. If you are liv­ing in a democ­ra­cy and somebody’s putting out fas­cist pam­phlets encour­ag­ing the end of that democ­ra­cy, how much rope do you give them?”

In anoth­er episode, Irshad Manji—feminist, self-described “Mus­lim refusenik,” and author of The Trou­ble with Islam Today—talks free speech and reli­gion, and offers a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than what we’re used to hear­ing report­ed from Islam­ic thinkers. When War­bur­ton says that Islam and free expres­sion sound “like two incom­pat­i­ble things,” Man­ji coun­ters that as a “per­son of faith” she believes “free expres­sion is as much a reli­gious oblig­a­tion as it is a human right.” In her esti­ma­tion, “no human being can legit­i­mate­ly behave as if he or she owns a monop­oly on truth.” Any­thing less than a soci­ety that tol­er­ates civ­il dis­agree­ment, she says, means that “we’re play­ing God with one anoth­er.” In her reli­gious per­spec­tive, “devot­ing your­self to one god means that you must defend human lib­er­ty.” Man­ji sounds much more like Enlight­en­ment Chris­t­ian reform­ers like John Locke than she does many inter­preters of Islam, and she is well aware of the unpop­u­lar­i­ty of her point of view in much of the Islam­ic world.

Address­ing the ques­tion of why free speech mat­ters, broad­cast­er and writer Jonathan Dimbleby—former chair of the Index on Censorship—inaugurated the pod­cast in 2012 with a more clas­si­cal­ly philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion of John Stu­art Mill’s On Lib­er­ty and the lib­er­al argu­ment against cen­sor­ship Mill and oth­ers artic­u­lat­ed. For Dim­ble­by, “free­dom of expres­sion [is] not only a right but a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of what it means to be a civ­i­lized indi­vid­ual.” It’s a view he holds “very strong­ly,” but he admits that the valid excep­tions to the rule are “where the dif­fi­cult ter­ri­to­ry starts.” Dim­ble­by points to “very obvi­ous cir­cum­stances when you don’t have free­dom of expres­sion and should not have free­dom of expres­sion.” One of the excep­tions involves “laws that say that if you express your­self freely, you are direct­ly putting some­one else’s life at risk.” This is not as clear-cut as it seems. The “dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry,” he argues, begins with cir­cum­scrib­ing lan­guage that incites anger or offense in oth­ers. We are back to the ques­tion of offense, and it is not a uncom­pli­cat­ed one. Although activists very often need to be unciv­il to be heard at all, there’s also a nec­es­sary place for pub­lic dis­cus­sions that are as thought­ful and care­ful as we can man­age. And for that rea­son, I’m grate­ful for the inter­ven­tion of Free Speech Bites and the inter­na­tion­al vari­ety of views it rep­re­sents.

For more of those views, see the Index on Censorship’s web­site to stream or down­load sev­en more Free Speech Bites pod­casts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Great Writ­ers on Free Speech and the Envi­ron­ment

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

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

in Film, Poetry | November 25th, 2015

Hav­ing moved to Korea a cou­ple weeks ago, I won’t have the chance to par­take this year in the beloved insti­tu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture known as Thanks­giv­ing. (Korea has its own Thanks­giv­ing, but it hap­pened two months ago.) Maybe you live in the Unit­ed States and thus almost cer­tain­ly have a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner of some kind, big or small, com­ing soon. Or maybe you, like me, live else­where in the world, and thus in a place with­out the same tra­di­tion. Either way, you can sure­ly par­take this Thanks­giv­ing in the beloved insti­tu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture known as the work of William S. Bur­roughs.

Here we have a short film of Bur­roughs, best known as the author of a body of con­tro­ver­sial and exper­i­men­tal lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing books like Junky and Naked Lunch, shot by Gus Van Sant, best known as the direc­tor of films like Good Will Hunt­ing, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, and Drug­store Cow­boy, the last of which includes a mem­o­rable appear­ance by Bur­roughs him­self.

It cap­tures Bur­roughs read­ing his poem “Thanks­giv­ing Day, Nov. 28, 1986,” also known as his “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer.” Van Sant shot it two Thanks­giv­ings after that one, in 1988, the year before Drug­store Cow­boy (and six years after adapt­ing Bur­rough’s sto­ry “The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.” into an ear­ly short film).

Bur­roughs, a life­long crit­ic of Amer­i­ca, fills his prayer with bit­ter­ly sar­cas­tic “thanks” for things like “a con­ti­nent to despoil and poi­son,” “Indi­ans to pro­vide a mod­icum of chal­lenge and dan­ger,” “the KKK,” and “Pro­hi­bi­tion and the war against drugs” (about which his char­ac­ter in Drug­store Cow­boy had some par­tic­u­lar­ly choice words). He ends by express­ing iron­ic, Great Gats­by-quot­ing grat­i­tude for “the last and great­est betray­al of the last and great­est of human dreams.”

Like him — like most every­body — I have my own, if less deep-seat­ed, frus­tra­tions with our home­land, and per­haps in leav­ing I sub­con­scious­ly emu­lat­ed his stretch­es of expa­tri­atism in Mex­i­co, Eng­land, France, and Moroc­co. But I sin­cere­ly doubt that I’ve had my last Thanks­giv­ing on U.S. soil; for all its fail­ings, Amer­i­ca remains too inter­est­ing to stay away from entire­ly. After all, what oth­er coun­try could pos­si­bly pro­duce a writer, a per­son­al­i­ty, or a crit­ic like William S. Bur­roughs?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Sto­ry by William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.