Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain

in Music | July 16th, 2012

Flash­mob per­for­mances haven’t been a fresh con­cept for some time. And they’ve been some­what tak­en over by cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing recent years. But that does­n’t stop view­ers from enjoy­ing the per­for­mances, whether in per­son or on the web. Take this recent exam­ple orches­trat­ed by the finan­cial­ly-chal­lenged Span­ish bank, Ban­co Sabadell.

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the bank brought togeth­er 100 musi­cians and singers from the Orches­tra Sim­fon­i­ca del Valles,Amics de l’Opera de Sabadell,Coral Belles Arts, and Cor Lieder Cam­era to per­form the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. It all hap­pens in the Plaça de Sant Roc in Sabadell, Spain, a lit­tle north of Barcelona. Per­haps this will put a smile on your face. Maybe you’ll even shed a tear. One way or anoth­er, make sure you turn up your speak­ers.…

For more flash­mob clas­si­cal per­for­mances see:

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Sta­tion

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Grieg’s Peer Gynt in the Sub­way

Opera in the Fruit & Veg­gie Mar­ket

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 40 ) |

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Printed Circa 1652

in History | July 16th, 2012

The sto­ry of cof­fee goes back to the 13th cen­tu­ry, when it came out of Ethiopia, then spread to Egypt and Yemen. It reached the Mid­dle East, Turkey, and Per­sia dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry, and then Europe dur­ing the ear­ly 17th, though not with­out con­tro­ver­sy. In Venice, some called it the ‘bit­ter inven­tion of Satan,’ but the Pope, upon tast­ing it, gave it his bless­ing. By 1652, St. Michael’s Alley, the first cafe in Lon­don opened its doors, bring­ing cof­fee to Eng­land, thanks to a Sicil­ian immi­grant, Pasqua Rosée.

Today, the British Muse­um hous­es a hand­bill that may well be the first adver­tise­ment for cof­fee in Eng­land. It proves remark­able for a cou­ple of rea­sons. First, the ad intro­duced Brits to what’s now a sta­ple of the West­ern diet, and even­tu­al­ly they’d bring it to North Amer­i­ca. And, what’s more, you can see anoth­er instance of the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Adver­tis­ing is adver­tis­ing, and then, as now, bev­er­ages were sold on their taste and health prop­er­ties. And, of course, you were encour­aged to con­sume the prod­uct not once, but twice a day. You can find a tran­scrip­tion of the text, cour­tesy of Vin­tage Ads, below the jump. via Boing­Bo­ing

More cof­fee bonus items can be found here:

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

(more…)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

Our Big List of 500 Free Courses Featured by The Young Turks

in Online Courses | July 14th, 2012

Yes­ter­day, the team at The Young Turks Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a lit­tle video seg­ment pro­mot­ing our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. As they right­ly explain, the list lets you down­load free cours­es from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and UC Berke­ley. And when you dive in, you’ll dis­cov­er 55 cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy, 50 in His­to­ry, 50 in Com­put­er Sci­ence, and 35 in Physics, plus lec­tures from famous intel­lec­tu­als like Richard Feyn­man, Leo Strauss, Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault and Richard Dawkins. Final­ly, you can usu­al­ly access the cours­es from mul­ti­ple sources — YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites. So what are you wait­ing for? Dive right into the com­plete list here and start using your leisure time in a pro­duc­tive way.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Woody Guthrie at 100: Celebrate His Amazing Life with a BBC Film

in History, Music | July 13th, 2012

Sat­ur­day marks the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, the great­ly influ­en­tial folk singer whose music was insep­a­ra­ble from the hard cir­cum­stances of his life and his deep sense of social jus­tice.

“A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it,” Guthrie once said, “or it could be who’s hun­gry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and where the job is or who’s broke and where the mon­ey is or who’s car­ry­ing a gun and where the peace is.”

To help mark the mile­stone we bring you rare footage, above, of Guthrie singing “The Ranger’s Com­mand” in 1945. The clip is from the 1988 BBC Are­na doc­u­men­tary, Woody Guthrie, which can be seen in its entire­ty below. The film is a vivid por­trait of the singer, with rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing, along with inter­views with Alan Lomax, Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers. As BBC Are­na edi­tor Antho­ny Wall writes of the film’s sub­ject:

“This land is your land”, sang Woody Guthrie, his mis­sion to reclaim the true Amer­i­ca from the lawyers and politi­cians and thugs and return it to the peo­ple. He said he was just try­ing ‘to tell peo­ple what they already know’. Orig­i­nal­ly from a com­fort­ably-off fam­i­ly in Okla­homa, he took to the road and rails to chron­i­cle in song the depres­sion and dust­bowl. A fab­u­lous exam­ple of Amer­i­can self-inven­tion, ‘Guthrie came with the dust and he went with the wind’

For more on the Woody Guthrie Cen­ten­ni­al, vis­it Woody100.com. The Web site fea­tures a biog­ra­phy with pho­tographs and oth­er mate­ri­als, a “song of the day,” and a 2012 cal­en­dar of events. This week­end there are sev­er­al big events in New York, includ­ing a birth­day par­ty Sat­ur­day on Coney Island, with appear­ances by Bil­ly Bragg, Steve Ear­le and Guthrie’s daugh­ter, Nora, along with a free screen­ing the film “Bound For Glo­ry” on the beach. On Sun­day, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers in the Guthrie fam­i­ly will give a free con­cert in Cen­tral Park.

And for more Guthrie resources, go to:

  • SoundPortraits.org to down­load audio of Alan Lomax’s 1940 inter­view with Guthrie, along with a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion.
  • CulturalEquity.org, host of the Alan Lomax Archives, for sev­er­al short but inter­est­ing takes of Guthrie singing polit­i­cal songs in 1948, includ­ing “If Dewey Gets Elect­ed” and “The Road is Rocky.”
  • NPR.org for a 40-minute radio pro­gram, “Fresh Air Cel­e­brates Woody Guthrie at 100.” Ter­ry Gross inter­views Guthrie biog­ra­ph­er Ed Cray and Smith­son­ian Folk­ways archivist Jeff Place, who co-pro­duced the new box set Woody at 100.
  • DemocracyNow.org for a one-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial, “On Woody Guthrie’s Cen­ten­ni­al, Cel­e­brat­ing the Life, Pol­i­tics & Music of the ‘Dust Bowl Trou­ba­dour.’ ” Hosts Amy Good­man and Juan Gon­za­lez inter­view Woody’s daugh­ter Nora Guthrie, author of the new book, My Name is New York: Ram­blin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town, and his grand­daugh­ter Anna Canoni, along with musi­cian Steve Ear­le. The show also fea­tures rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Ban­jo Play

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Henry Rollins Remembers the Life-Changing Decision That Brought Him From Häagen-Dazs to Black Flag

in Life, Music | July 13th, 2012

Metafil­ter recent­ly fea­tured this Big Think clip of Hen­ry Rollins telling the sto­ry of his most life-chang­ing deci­sion. This choice, of course, was the one that brought him to the front of punk rock band Black Flag. Before he made it, he could call him­self only a col­lege dropout assis­tant-man­ag­ing a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Häa­gen-Dazs. In 1981, after catch­ing one of Black Flag’s New York shows — dur­ing which he hap­pened to climb onstage and sing a song with them — he decid­ed to try out to become the group’s actu­al singer. When Rollins ditched the ice cream game for the day (a for­feit, he recalls, of no more than $21) to audi­tion, Black Flag went from his favorite band to his band. Think­ing back, he real­izes he had lit­tle to lose: if he did­n’t give it a shot, he’d find him­self look­ing down the bar­rel of a long, hard exis­tence on his feet, answer­ing to cus­tomers all day, every day. If he gave it a shot and did­n’t make it, he’d at worst feel humil­i­at­ed, but, as he puts it, “humil­i­a­tion and young peo­ple kind of go togeth­er.”

“I don’t have tal­ent,” Rollins insists. “I have tenac­i­ty. I have dis­ci­pline. There was no choice for me but to work real­ly hard.” You may recall him mak­ing a sim­i­lar point in his pre­vi­ous Big Think video we fea­tured, in which he rec­om­mend­ed going at one’s pur­suits with a “monas­tic obses­sion.” But this time, he adds a note of fear. He talks about com­ing to under­stand that, with­out rely­ing on his four pil­lars of “appli­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline, focus, rep­e­ti­tion,” an enti­ty he calls “the Amer­i­ca” would have got­ten the bet­ter of him. This term seems to refer to the con­stant threat of crush­ing medi­oc­rity he feels in the Unit­ed States. “Every moment I am alive is because I have not been mur­dered by the Amer­i­ca,” he says in anoth­er inter­view. “The tasks I set out for myself are what I do to beat the per­fect point­less­ness of life.” Even if you don’t con­ceive of your own sit­u­a­tion quite so grim­ly, Rollins offers a per­spec­tive worth con­sid­er­ing. Per­haps his recruit­ment into Black Flag strikes you as a lucky break; he cer­tain­ly con­sid­ers it one. But as Bri­an Eno, anoth­er cul­tur­al fig­ure as well known for his point of view as his music, once said, “Luck is being ready.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens Debates Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig (2009)

in Philosophy, Religion | July 12th, 2012

When we talk about reli­gion around here, we often end up talk­ing about some­thing that falls between agnos­ti­cism and athe­ism. That’s because pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who com­ment on reli­gion fre­quent­ly fall into those camps. Here and there, the­ists polite­ly call us on it. They ask us to con­sid­er show­ing The Four Horse­men (Hitchens/Dawkins/Dennett/Harris) in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with reli­gious thinkers. It would be a step toward cre­at­ing some bal­ance, they say. We’ve done some of that before. But it has been a while. So we’re bring­ing you today the 2009 debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher. It was held at Bio­la Col­lege, a school that offers a “Bib­li­cal­ly Cen­tered Edu­ca­tion,” which puts Craig on the home court.

The basic ques­tion fram­ing the debate is “Does God Exist?,” and the answers are all ground­ed in phi­los­o­phy, though that did­n’t stop the con­ver­sa­tion from veer­ing into biol­o­gy, physics, cos­mol­o­gy, and moral the­o­ry. You might be sur­prised that Hitchens does­n’t take the stri­dent athe­ist posi­tion that would have let more sparks fly. No, he ends up in a more agnos­tic place, and there’s a kind of a humil­i­ty to his posi­tion, an accep­tance that we just can’t know the answers to the big ques­tions, at least not yet. That speaks to me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. But I’m sure oth­ers will see things dif­fer­ent­ly.

If you’re hun­ger­ing for more, you can watch Craig debate Sam Har­ris here. We thank Tay­lor for send­ing these videos along.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Cinecitta Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

in Film, History | July 12th, 2012

Italy’s Cinecit­ta Luce pos­sess­es more than 100,000 films dat­ing back to 1927. Any­one with an inter­est in Ital­ian cul­ture, his­to­ry, or cin­e­ma will sure­ly want to take a look at them, and now, thanks to a part­ner­ship between Cinecit­ta Luce and Google, they can. As those 100,000 films under­go dig­i­ti­za­tion, they’ll make their way to Cinecit­ta Luce’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, which offers, to rough­ly trans­late the Ital­ian on the page, “sev­en­ty years of Ital­ian his­to­ry and social life from the twen­ties to the nineties,” the “price­less pat­ri­mo­ny of our visu­al mem­o­ry.” So far, the chan­nel has bro­ken the films into sev­en cat­e­gories: art, sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture; the Sec­ond World War; movie stars and the cat­walk; pro­tag­o­nists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry; the “dust archive” (which seems mis­cel­la­neous); mate­r­i­al relat­ed to Cinecit­ta Luce’s cur­rent film fes­ti­vals; and la dolce vita (a phrase, I would argue, bet­ter pre­sent­ed in the orig­i­nal).

At the top of this post, you’ll find a two-and-a-half-minute sequence show­cas­ing the kind of his­to­ry in motion to be found in Cinecit­ta Luce’s archive: musi­cal per­for­mances, beau­ty pageants, culi­nary fes­ti­vals, sport­ing events, movie pre­mieres, impor­tant moments in pol­i­tics and indus­try, and — for what­ev­er rea­son — all sorts of march­es. Just above this para­graph, we’ve embed­ded some news­reel footage of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni fresh off his Best For­eign-Lan­guage Film Acad­e­my Award win for 8½. But the hours of mate­r­i­al now on Cinecit­ta Luce’s Youtube chan­nel rep­re­sent only the tip of the ice­berg. We hard­ly need tell Italophiles that they’ll want to con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing, so as not to miss more from an archive the Hol­ly­wood Reporter describes as “rich in videos from the Vat­i­can, the 1960 Olymics in Rome, and sceners from gen­er­a­tions of every-day life in Rome.” And giv­en that Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed the Cinecit­ta film stu­dios and the Luce archives as engines of pro­pa­gan­da, they still retain the world’s largest col­lec­tion of Mus­soli­ni-relat­ed film. Schol­ars of dic­ta­tor­ships, take spe­cial note!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mus­soli­ni Sends a Hap­py Mes­sage to Amer­i­ca, Helps Change Cin­e­ma His­to­ry (1927)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Learn Ital­ian for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.