Image by LivePict, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

How­ev­er many shades of dis­gust that may have run through me when a cer­tain world leader referred to Haiti and coun­tries in Africa as “shit­holes,” with­in hours, my head was turned in every direc­tion by defi­ant, cre­ative respons­es to the moral­ly bank­rupt com­ment that exposed the think­ing behind it as com­plete­ly void of knowl­edge and respect for the vibran­cy of the coun­tries in ques­tion. How­ev­er weary­ing this dis­play of igno­rance, it only threw into high­er relief the vital­i­ty and resilien­cy of African and Caribbean coun­tries.

Few Amer­i­can artists have been as tuned into, and influ­enced by, that vital­i­ty as deeply and for as long as David Byrne. His decades-span­ning engage­ment with African, Caribbean, and Latin Amer­i­can music and his found­ing of world music label Lua­ka Bop give him as much cred­i­bil­i­ty on the sub­ject as any “col­o­niz­er” (as a cer­tain Black Pan­ther char­ac­ter might teas­ing­ly say). Byrne wrote on his web­site in sad­ness and anger in response to the infa­mous com­ment. In an attempt to co-opt the word, he shared a playlist of African and Caribbean music that he called “The Beau­ti­ful Shit­holes.” The ref­er­ence may seem triv­i­al­iz­ing, but his pur­pose was seri­ous, as he out­lined in his full com­ments.

The ques­tion Byrne asks is whether music can “help us empathize with its mak­ers?” Many cul­tur­al crit­ics might look around and shake their heads. Byrne leaves the ques­tion open. His angry note is direct and direc­tive, but even he admits that it’s a moment to vent, not to resolve a moral cri­sis. “Got that off my chest,” he con­cludes, “now maybe I can lis­ten to some music.” What­ev­er degree of pow­er we may or may not have to change cru­el, big­ot­ed poli­cies, we always have the choice to turn our backs to xeno­phobes and racists and our faces to the rest of the world. Byrne invites us to do just that.

The playlist starts with four tracks from Lua­ka Bop com­pi­la­tion albums of Cuban music, whose “Afro-Cuban musi­cal iden­ti­ty remained rec­og­niz­able,” the label’s descrip­tion notes, for “almost 500 years.” Then we’re off into 32 tracks of clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary African and Caribbean music from well-known leg­ends like Fela Kuti and Amadou & Miri­am, young upstarts like Niger­ian Afrobeat prodi­gy Wiz­Kid, and the relent­less­ly funky Tuareg rock stars Tinari­wen. Byrne has always seemed to believe in music as a site of uni­ver­sal cul­tur­al exchange. His curat­ed playlist and its unspar­ing title remind us that, while out­rage, and action, over injus­tice is war­rant­ed, we can also find solu­tions in cel­e­bra­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne Launch­es the “Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful” Web Site: A Com­pendi­um of News Meant to Remind Us That the World Isn’t Actu­al­ly Falling Apart

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

New Doc­u­men­tary Brings You Inside Africa’s Lit­tle-Known Punk Rock Scene

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

Image by NASA, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In Aspen, Col­orado they hold a music fes­ti­val every year and, in 1995, Stephen Hawking—who joined the cos­mos this week—was there. This is where he first heard Fran­cis Poulenc’s Glo­ria, con­sid­ered by many the composer’s mas­ter­piece.

“You can sit in your office in the physics cen­tre there and hear the music with­out ever buy­ing a tick­et,” he said. “But on this occa­sion I was actu­al­ly in the tent to hear the Glo­ria. It is one of a small num­ber of works I con­sid­er great music.”

In 1992, the physi­cist was a guest on BBC Radio4’s long-run­ning “Desert Island Discs” pro­gram to nar­row down a list of music he’d take to the myth­i­cal island. Except for two pop songs, he chose clas­si­cal works. You can lis­ten to a Spo­ti­fy playlist we’ve made con­tain­ing the works below, or lis­ten to the full inter­view with excerpts of the music here.

“I first became aware of clas­si­cal music when I was 15,” he said in a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty inter­view. “LPs had recent­ly appeared in Britain. I ripped out the mech­a­nism of our old wind-up gramo­phone and put in a turntable and a three-valve ampli­fi­er. I made a speak­er cab­i­net from an old book case, with a sheet of chip-board on the front. The whole sys­tem looked pret­ty crude, but it didn’t sound too bad.”

“At the time LPs were very expen­sive so I couldn’t afford any of them on a school­boy bud­get. But I bought Stravinsky’s Sym­pho­ny Of Psalms because it was on sale as a 10” LP, which were being phased out. The record was rather scratched, but I fell in love with the third move­ment, which makes up more than half the sym­pho­ny.” How­ev­er, on the BBC broad­cast, he says the first record he bought was Brahms’ Vio­lin Con­cer­to in D Major, and he made that one of his Island selec­tions.

The whole broad­cast is worth lis­ten­ing to for Hawking’s very per­son­al con­nec­tions to all his choic­es, from Wag­n­er to the Bea­t­les to his all-time favorite, Mozart’s Requiem. Final­ly the show also asks for Hawking’s favorite book—George Eliot’s Mid­dle­march—and a Lux­u­ry Choice, for which he choos­es creme brulee.

His two main plea­sures in life, he said, are physics and music.

But his final choice is the most poignant and sums up a life well lived, espe­cial­ly since doc­tors told him he had two years left…in 1963. He proved them wrong, and then some. As Edith Piaf sings, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion
Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

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.