Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psychedelic Sesame Street Animation, Featuring Grace Slick, Teaches Kids to Count

in Animation, Music | April 10th, 2015

When asked for their favorite Sesame Street seg­ment, many chil­dren of the 70s and 80s point to Pin­ball Num­ber Count. Psy­che­del­ic ani­ma­tion, the Point­er Sis­ters, odd time signatures–what’s not to love? But for the seri­ous Sesame Street buff, the “Jazz Num­bers” series above deserves the sil­ver medal. It’s got free jazz, Yel­low Sub­ma­rine-style sur­re­al­is­tic ani­ma­tion, and a vocal from Grace Slick of Jef­fer­son Air­plane. How many young par­ents rec­og­nized her dis­tinc­tive voice, I won­der?

Also known as “Jazzy Spies,” this 1969 series of ani­ma­tions was devot­ed to the num­bers 2 through 10 (there was no film for “one” as it is the loneli­est num­ber that you’ll ever do), and was an essen­tial ele­ment in Sesame’s Street’s first sea­son. High­lights include the dream-like ele­va­tor door sequence of “2,” the Jack­son 5 ref­er­ence in “5,” and the rac­ing fans in “10.”

Slick got involved through her first hus­band, Jer­ry Slick, who pro­duced the seg­ments for San Fran­cis­co-based ani­ma­tion stu­dio Imag­i­na­tion, Inc. Head­ed by ani­ma­tor Jeff Hale, the com­pa­ny also pro­duced the Pin­ball seg­ments, as well as the famous anamor­phic “Type­writer Guy,” the Ring­mas­ter, and the Detec­tive Man. (Hale, by the way, has a cameo as Augie “Ben” Dog­gie in the well-loved Lucas par­o­dy Hard­ware Wars.) He passed away last month at 92.

The deliri­ous music was com­posed and per­formed by Colum­bia jazz artist Den­ny Zeitlin, who would go on to score the 1979 remake of Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers. Zeitlin plays both piano and clavinet; accom­pa­ny­ing him is Bob­by Natan­son on drums and Mel Graves on bass. Accord­ing to Zeitlin, Grace Slick over­dubbed her vocals lat­er.

This wasn’t Slick’s first encounter with Jim Hen­son. In 1968, she and oth­er mem­bers of Jef­fer­son Air­plane were part of a coun­ter­cul­ture doc­u­men­tary called Youth ’68, the trail­er for which you can groove on here.

Sesame Street, with all its pri­ma­ry col­ors, plas­tic mer­chan­dise, and Elmo infes­ta­tion, may have lost its edge, but these ear­ly works show its rev­o­lu­tion­ary foun­da­tions.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

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

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Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting The Scream Animated to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Animation, Art, Music | April 9th, 2015

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch, and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

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Edgar Allan Poe Animated: Watch Four Animations of Classic Poe Stories

in Animation, Literature | April 9th, 2015

I can well imag­ine that the inser­tion of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy into many of Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ries would have a tremen­dous ben­e­fit for those sto­ries’ vic­tims, and a dele­te­ri­ous effect on their mono­ma­ni­a­cal plots. In one of the ironies of cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion, the time­less qual­i­ty of Poe’s work seems to depend upon its use of delib­er­ate­ly ancient meth­ods of sur­veil­lance and tor­ture. In a fur­ther para­dox of sorts, Poe’s work nev­er suf­fers, but only seems to shine, when tech­nol­o­gy is applied to it.

Film­mak­ers as esteemed as Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Fed­eri­co Felli­ni have adapt­ed him; sin­gu­lar dra­mat­ic tal­ents like James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee, and Lou Reed and Willem Dafoe have made fine record­ings of his most famous poem; The Alan Par­sons Project record­ed a pret­ty amaz­ing prog rock ver­sion of “The Raven,” the first rock song to fea­ture a dig­i­tal vocoder.

Poe also appears as an ani­mat­ed pup­pet, along­side Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky, in a suc­cess­ful Frank Capra-direct­ed sci­ence edu­ca­tion film. This role belongs to a rich tra­di­tion of Poe in ani­mat­ed film. “The Raven” inspired one of Tim Burton’s first ani­mat­ed films, Vin­cent, at the top, about a boy who wants to be Vin­cent Price (nar­rat­ed of course by Vin­cent Price). The poem was also adapt­ed by The Simp­sons (above). South Park has fea­tured the mor­bid 19th cen­tu­ry writer, and Poe’s “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum” birthed an award-win­ning ani­mat­ed short, as well as an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal com­ic book.

Even before his screen time in Capra’s film, shared with famous actor Eddie Albert, Poe appeared in ani­mat­ed film with movie stars. In the 1953 adap­ta­tion of “The Tell Tale Heart” above, a men­ac­ing­ly suave James Mason nar­rates the sto­ry. This take on Poe’s tale of mad­ness per­fect­ly cap­tures its near­ly gid­dy air of dread. The film, we wrote in 2011, “was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion” upon release, gar­ner­ing an “X” rating—the first ani­mat­ed film to do so—in the UK. The British Board of Film Cen­sors deemed the film “unsuit­able for adult audi­ences.” That said, it was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film.

Above (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles) in a much lat­er work, a less famous but no less men­ac­ing, actor, Bil­ly Dra­go, nar­rates a stark retelling of “The Raven,” with a cen­tral char­ac­ter drawn like one of the homi­ci­dal creeps Dra­go typ­i­cal­ly plays on screen. Argen­tin­ian film­mak­er Mar­i­ano Cat­ta­neo remarks that he and fel­low direc­tor Nic Loreti focused on the idea that the speaker’s mys­te­ri­ous­ly lost love Lenore “might have been mur­dered and wants to come back,” cit­ing their influ­ences as “Ger­man expres­sion­ist films” and film­mak­ers like “Sam Rai­mi, George A. Romero, Tim Bur­ton, Robert Rodriguez, John Car­pen­ter and even Stephen King.” If not all of these cre­ators’ work is evi­dent, the influ­ence of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist film, par­tic­u­lar­ly The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, cer­tain­ly is.

In anoth­er inter­na­tion­al adap­ta­tion, acclaimed Czech stop-motion ani­ma­tor Jan Svankma­jer uses high-con­trast, dra­mat­ic light­ing to very dif­fer­ent, impres­sion­ist effect to recre­ate the chill­ing despair of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er.  It is inter­est­ing that Poe’s work—obsessed with iso­la­tion and book­ish­ness and history—should have the effect it has on mod­ern media, par­tic­u­lar­ly on ani­ma­tion. But then again, Poe him­self was a tech­ni­cian, inter­est­ed not in the past for its own sake but in its use­ful­ness in achiev­ing a vivid “uni­ty of effect.” That his almost clock­work tales would make such excel­lent mate­r­i­al for such tech­ni­cal means of sto­ry­telling as ani­mat­ed film makes per­fect sense. But should you wish to return to the source of these humor­ous and grim adap­ta­tions, vis­it our list of the com­plete works of Edgar Allan Poe, in free eBook and audio book form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Sev­en Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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

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Charles Darwin Creates a Handwritten List of Arguments for and Against Marriage (1838)

in History, Life | April 9th, 2015

Darwin Marriage Arguments

Plen­ty of us strug­gle, in the age when so many tra­di­tions in so many parts of the world now seem per­pet­u­al­ly up for revi­sion, with the choice of whether to get mar­ried. It even con­found­ed no less a mind than that from which On the Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion flowed. This hap­pened back in 1838, over twen­ty years before the pub­li­ca­tion of that most impor­tant book in biol­o­gy. And, for a moment, it must have seemed almost as vex­ing as the ques­tion of how all the species came about.

Lists of Note tells us that the “29-year-old nat­u­ral­ist Charles Dar­win found him­self fac­ing a dif­fi­cult deci­sion: whether or not to pro­pose to the love of his life, Emma Wedg­wood. This was his hand­writ­ten solu­tion — a list of the pros and cons of mar­riage that includes such gems as ‘bet­ter than a dog any­how’ and ‘not forced to vis­it rel­a­tives.’ ” (See orig­i­nal doc­u­ment above. Or click here to view it in a larg­er for­mat, and read a com­plete tran­scrip­tion.)

Of the tan­ta­liz­ing claims of the sin­gle life, Dar­win also includes “free­dom to go where one liked,” “con­ver­sa­tion of clever men at clubs,” free­dom from the “expense & anx­i­ety of chil­dren,” and no risk of the awful pos­si­bil­i­ty that “per­haps my wife won’t like Lon­don.” But mat­ri­mo­ny presents a strong case of its own, in the form of a “con­stant com­pan­ion, (& friend in old age) who will feel inter­est­ed in one,” “some­one to take care of house,” “charms of music & female chit-chat.” (And note his writ­ing of “Chil­dren — (if it Please God)” under the pros, an inter­est­ing phras­ing giv­en the sorts of debates his name gets hauled into today.)

And so Dar­win reach­es his con­clu­sion: “My God, it is intol­er­a­ble to think of spend­ing ones whole life, like a neuter bee, work­ing, work­ing, & noth­ing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imag­ine liv­ing all one’s day soli­tar­i­ly in smoky dirty Lon­don House. — Only pic­ture to your­self a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music per­haps.” He would indeed mar­ry and spend the rest of his life with Wedg­wood, a union that pro­duced ten chil­dren (one of whom, Fran­cis, would go on to infor­mal­ly illus­trate On the Ori­gin of Species man­u­script pages).

You can peruse the full list, even in Dar­win’s own hand­writ­ing (if you can deci­pher it), at Dar­win Online. If he went on to write a list of his secrets of a suc­cess­ful mar­riage, Dar­win schol­ars haven’t yet dis­cov­ered it, but I think we can safe­ly say that it would include at least this rec­om­men­da­tion: think the deci­sion through, but don’t let it keep you from your life’s work.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Darwin’s Son Draws Cute Pic­tures on the Man­u­script of On the Ori­gin of Species

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Watch Dar­win, a 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Paper Animation Tells Curious Story of How a Meteorologist Theorized Pangaea & Continental Drift (1910)

in Animation, Science | April 9th, 2015

Over a cen­tu­ry ago, the Ger­man mete­o­rol­o­gist Alfred Wegen­er (1880–1930) put forth a the­o­ry that changed how we look at an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline — geol­o­gy. He argued that the con­ti­nents once formed a sin­gle land­mass called “Pan­gaea,” and that con­ti­nen­tal drift moved them apart slow­ly but ever so sure­ly. The sto­ry of how a mete­o­rol­o­gist changed the face of geol­o­gy gets told in a nice paper ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by The New York Times. It comes nar­rat­ed by Mott Greene (author of the forth­com­ing book Alfred Wegen­er: Sci­ence, Explo­ration and the The­o­ry of Con­ti­nen­tal Drift) and Nao­mi Oreskes, Pro­fes­sor of the His­to­ry of Sci­ence at Har­vard. You can read the NYTimes arti­cle asso­ci­at­ed with the edu­ca­tion­al video here. Cours­es on geol­o­gy can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Notebook on Cities and Culture’s Yearlong Podcast Exploration of Seattle Is Kickstarting Now

in Podcasts, Travel | April 8th, 2015

 

Just about as long as I’ve writ­ten here at Open Cul­ture, I’ve also host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a world-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Over five sea­sons so far, I’ve record­ed each and every inter­view “on loca­tion,” from Los Ange­les to Kyoto to Lon­don to Port­land to Mex­i­co City to Copen­hagen to Van­cou­ver to Seoul. Next comes the show’s sixth and most in-depth sea­son yet: A Year in Seat­tle.

Think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, of grunge, of Microsoft and Ama­zon, of the Space Nee­dle, of Frasi­er Crane, of Bud­dy Bradley, of Archie McPhee, of sleep­less­ness, of Star­bucks. But hav­ing spent my own ado­les­cence hang­ing out there, I know Seat­tle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more inter­est­ing since I’ve grown up. Now to explore the Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture way, through a year of in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with Seattle’s nov­el­ists, jour­nal­ists, com­ic artists, film­mak­ers, broad­cast­ers, explor­ers, gourmets, aca­d­e­mics, archi­tects, plan­ners, cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

ncc-season-six-logo-med

As with every sea­son, I’m rais­ing the bud­get for Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Year in Seat­tle on Kick­starter. If feel so inclined, you can have a look at its Kick­starter page and find out how you can help make it a hap­pen, receive post­cards from Seat­tle, or even get your project or mes­sage men­tioned at the top of every show.

And as a spe­cial pre­view, I’ve just post­ed an inter­view with com­ic artist Peter Bagge, cre­ator of the leg­endary alt-com­ic series Hate, author of the graph­ic nov­els Apoc­a­lypse Nerd, Oth­er Lives, Reset, Woman Rebel: The Mar­garet Sanger Sto­ry, and just about as Seat­tle a fig­ure as they come. There are 51 more where that came from — but only if we can suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start the sea­son by this Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 10:00, Pacif­ic time.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Artists Illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Botticelli, Mœbius & More

in Art, Literature | April 8th, 2015

Dore Satan

For a book about medieval the­ol­o­gy and tor­ture, filled with learned clas­si­cal allu­sions and obscure char­ac­ters from 13th cen­tu­ry Flo­ren­tine soci­ety, Dante Alighieri’s Infer­no, first book of three in his Divine Com­e­dy, has had con­sid­er­able stay­ing pow­er, work­ing its way into pop cul­ture with a video game, sev­er­al films, and a bale­ful appear­ance on Mad Men. While the Mad Men ref­er­ence may be the more lit­er­ary, the for­mer two may hint at the more promi­nent rea­son the Infer­no has cap­ti­vat­ed read­ers, play­ers, and view­ers for ages: the lengthy poem’s intense­ly visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of human extrem­i­ty makes for some unfor­get­table images. Like Achilles drag­ging Hec­tor behind his char­i­ot in Homer, who can for­get the lake of ice Dante encoun­ters in the ninth cir­cle of Hell, in which (in John Ciardi’s mod­ern trans­la­tion), he finds “souls of the last class,” which “shone below the ice like straws in glass,” and, frozen to his chest, “the Emper­or of the Uni­verse of Pain,” almost too enor­mous for descrip­tion and as hideous as he once was beau­ti­ful.

Like the rest of us, artists have been drawn to Dante’s extra­or­di­nary images and exten­sive fan­ta­sy geog­ra­phy since the Divine Com­e­dy first appeared (1308–1320). In pro­lif­ic French artist Gus­tave Doré’s ren­der­ing of the ninth cir­cle scene, above, Satan is a huge, beard­ed grump with wings and horns. Doré so des­per­ate­ly want­ed to illus­trate the Divine Com­e­dy (find in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free eBooks) that he financed the first book in 1861 with his own mon­ey.

After­wards, as Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on Dore’s illus­tra­tions, his pub­lish­er Louis Hachette agreed to put out the next two books with the telegram, “Suc­cess! Come quick­ly! I am an ass!” Doré’s eerie, beau­ti­ful draw­ings are just one such set of famous illus­tra­tions we’ve fea­tured on the site pre­vi­ous­ly.

Blake Inferno

Anoth­er artist per­fect­ly suit­ed to the task, William Blake, whose own poet­ry braved sim­i­lar heights and depths as Dante’s, took on the Infer­no at the end of his life. While he didn’t live to com­plete the engrav­ings, his unset­tling, yet high­ly clas­si­cal, ren­der­ings of the poet the Ital­ians call il Som­mo Poeta—“The Supreme Poet”—certainly do jus­tice to the vivid­ness and hor­ror of Dante’s descrip­tions. Above, see Blake’s 1827 inter­pre­ta­tion of the thief Agno­lo Brunelleschi attacked by a six-foot­ed ser­pent in Can­to twen­ty-five, a scene reprint­ed many times in col­or.

 

Boticelli Inferno

Cen­turies ear­li­er, Renais­sance mas­ter San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li made an attempt at all three books, though he fell short of fin­ish­ing them. See his “Pan­der­ers, Flat­ter­ers” above, the only draw­ing he made in col­or, and more black and white illus­tra­tions here.

Moebius-Paradiso

Like the mak­ers of films and video games, artists have main­ly cho­sen to focus on the most bizarre and har­row­ing of the three books, the Infer­no. One mod­ern artist who undoubt­ed­ly would have had a fas­ci­nat­ing take on Dante’s hell instead illus­trat­ed his heav­en, being cho­sen to imag­ine Par­adiso by the Milan’s Nuages Gallery in 1999. I refer to graph­ic artist Jean Giraud, known in the world of fan­ta­sy, sci-fi, and comics as Mœbius. Despite some arguable artis­tic mis­cast­ing (Mœbius did after all make films like Alien and Tron “even weird­er”), the French artist took what may be the least visu­al­ly inter­est­ing of Dante’s three Divine Com­e­dy books and cre­at­ed some incred­i­bly strik­ing images. See one above, and more at our pre­vi­ous post.

Martini Inferno

Oth­er artists, like Alber­to Mar­ti­ni, who worked on his Divine Com­e­dy for over forty years, have pro­duced ter­ri­fy­ing images (above) and high­ly styl­ized ones—like these medieval illu­mi­na­tions from a 1450 man­u­script. The range of inter­pre­ta­tions all have one thing in common—their sub­ject mat­ter seems to allow artists almost unlim­it­ed free­dom to imag­ine Dante’s weird cos­mog­ra­phy. No vision of the Infer­no or the lofti­er realms above it can go too far, it seems, even in the absurd video game finale you real­ly have to see to believe. Some­how, I think Dante would approve… well… most­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

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

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Langston Hughes Reveals the Rhythms in Art & Life in a Wonderful Illustrated Book for Kids (1954)

in Books, Music, Poetry | April 8th, 2015

Rhythms

If you have to ask what jazz is, Louis Arm­strong sup­pos­ed­ly said, you’ll nev­er know. But the poet Langston Hugh­es, who in his 1955 First Book of Jazz reveals him­self as a great enthu­si­ast of Arm­strong indeed, seems to have oper­at­ed on a very dif­fer­ent premise. Hugh­es pitched that book, which we fea­tured last month, toward chil­dren, an audi­ence that, at their best, embod­ies inquis­i­tive­ness: they have to ask what every­thing is. And before Hugh­es could explain jazz to them, he had to explain rhythm.

Rhythm2

“Rhythm is some­thing we share in com­mon, you and I,” Hugh­es writes in 1954’s The First Book of Rhythm, “with all the plants and ani­mals and peo­ple in the world, and with the stars and moon and sun, and all the whole vast won­der­ful uni­verse beyond this won­der­ful earth which is our home.” It does­n’t just belong in music, he says; it belongs pret­ty much every­where, from the realm of nature to those of ath­let­ics, machines, fur­ni­ture — every­thing in “this won­der­ful world,” in his view, has its own rhythm.

Rhythm3

If explain­ing jazz to kids strikes you as a daunt­ing task, then just imag­ine explain­ing this more abstract foun­da­tion­al qual­i­ty of jazz, find­ing it in a host of dif­fer­ent domains, and then lay­ing it all out in terms that will engage an ele­men­tary school­er. But only such a mas­ter of lan­guage and lover of sound like Hugh­es could do it with such over­all vital­i­ty and con­ci­sion, even if the sub­ject, as Ariel S. Win­ter writes at We Too Were Chil­dren, Mr. Bar­rie, moves Hugh­es to get “too lyri­cal, too abstract, caught up in his song of the world,” some­how drift­ing from an obser­va­tion of the rhythm of knit­ting nee­dles to the con­clu­sion that every­one “should arrange her hair to suit the shape of her face.”

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You can read The First Book of Rhythm in its entire­ty, and gaze upon Robin King’s detailed and well-inte­grat­ed illus­tra­tions, in this Flickr pho­to set. (You can also buy old copies on Ama­zon.) Per­haps you once wrote your­self off as hope­less­ly rhythm­less, unable even to say for sure that you know what rhythm is. If so, Langston Hugh­es has writ­ten the book for you — no mat­ter your age, just your curios­i­ty.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Langston Hugh­es Read Poet­ry from His First Col­lec­tion, The Weary Blues (1958)

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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