How Baking, Cooking & Other Daily Activities Help Promote Happiness and Alleviate Depression and Anxiety

Image by Beth MacKen­zie, via Flickr Com­mons

Most healthy peo­ple prac­tice at least some form of what we call these days “self-care,” whether it be yoga, med­i­ta­tion, run­ning, writ­ing, art, music, ther­a­py, col­or­ing books, or what-have-you. And if you’re func­tion­ing tol­er­a­bly well in the mad­ness of our times, you’re prob­a­bly dip­ping reg­u­lar­ly into the well of at least one restora­tive dis­ci­pline, in addi­tion to what­ev­er larg­er beliefs you may hold.

But per­haps you feel at loose ends—unable to find the time or mon­ey for yoga class­es or paint­ing, feel­ing too rest­less to sit motion­less for half an hour or more a day.… The activ­i­ties that sus­tain our psy­ches should not feel unat­tain­able. One need not be a yogi, Zen monk, marathon­er, or Impres­sion­ist to find reg­u­lar ful­fil­ment in life. Per­haps reg­u­lar, ordi­nary activ­i­ties have the pow­er to make us just as hap­py.

Recent research sug­gests that tasks such as “knit­ting, cro­chet­ing and jam-mak­ing” can “work won­ders for well­be­ing,” writes Tom Ough at The Tele­graph, as can oth­er cre­ative prac­tices like “cook­ing, bak­ing, per­form­ing music, paint­ing, draw­ing, sketch­ing, dig­i­tal design and cre­ative writ­ing.” All may have pro­found effects on emo­tion­al health. This list might expand indef­i­nite­ly to include any hands-on activ­i­ty with mea­sur­able results, from wood­work­ing to bee­keep­ing.

A 2016 study of 658 stu­dents at New Zealand’s Ota­go Uni­ver­si­ty found that engag­ing in small cre­ative pur­suits on a dai­ly basis pro­duces enthu­si­asm and feel­ings of “flourishing”—“a men­tal health term describ­ing hap­pi­ness and mean­ing.” The results of, say, mak­ing a loaf of bread or a scarf, don’t sim­ply ben­e­fit us in the moment, but car­ry over into the future. As the study’s lead author Tam­lin Con­nor notes, “engag­ing in cre­ative behav­iour leads to increas­es in well-being the next day, and this increased well-being is like­ly to facil­i­tate cre­ative activ­i­ty on the same day.”

The more we bake, the more we’ll want to bake, the hap­pi­er we’ll feel.

Does focus­ing our atten­tion on small, achiev­able dai­ly tasks lead to the kind of meta­phys­i­cal ful­fil­ment most peo­ple seem to crave—what Vik­tor Fran­kl called “man’s search for mean­ing”? Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, no. “Recent research sug­gests,” notes Daisy Gre­w­al at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, “that while hap­pi­ness and a sense of mean­ing often over­lap, they also diverge in impor­tant and sur­pris­ing ways.” Fran­kl may not be wrong about the need for mean­ing, but even he admit­ted that seek­ing it out is not iden­ti­cal to the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.

In a 2013 study pub­lished in The Jour­nal of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy, Roy Baumeis­ter, Kath­leen Vohs, Jen­nifer Aak­er, and Emi­ly Garbin­sky found that hap­pi­ness, “flour­ish­ing,” or emo­tion­al well-being cor­re­late strong­ly with “sat­is­fy­ing one’s needs and wants” as well as with “being a giv­er rather than a tak­er.” Phi­los­o­phy, pol­i­tics, reli­gion, and art may seek truth or coher­ence, but while “con­cerns with per­son­al iden­ti­ty and express­ing the self con­tributed to mean­ing,” they have lit­tle last­ing effect on hap­pi­ness, as many a philoso­pher, priest, or poet may tell you. On the oth­er hand, while hav­ing com­fort­able eco­nom­ic means does mea­sur­ably improve hap­pi­ness, it does not con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to a sense of larg­er pur­pose (that which, Fran­kl argued stren­u­ous­ly, can save our lives in times of cri­sis).

Baumeis­ter and his col­leagues obtained their find­ings by sur­vey­ing around 400 Amer­i­can adults over a peri­od of three weeks, dur­ing which time the par­tic­i­pants mon­i­tored a vari­ety of dai­ly activ­i­ties. In one read­ing of the Ota­go Uni­ver­si­ty study, Daisy Mea­ger at Vice focus­es spe­cial­ly on bak­ing as a means to ward off a “shit­ty mood.” It may be a mat­ter of taste—some may pre­fer mak­ing sauces to cakes. The effects are the same, “a com­mon cure,” writes Dan­ny Lewis at Smith­son­ian, “for stress or feel­ing down.”

Mea­ger points to work done by Julie Ohana, a “culi­nary ther­a­pist” who uses the kitchen to help patients com­bat “depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and oth­er men­tal health issues.” Vice’s Jack­son Con­nor describes his per­son­al expe­ri­ence of how cook­ing “alle­vi­ates symp­toms of stress and anx­i­ety almost imme­di­ate­ly,” as well as over time. And no less an author­i­ty than food the­o­rist Michael Pol­lan makes the per­sua­sive case for “how cook­ing can change your life” in the short ani­mat­ed video below (see his full talk at the RSA here).

Fur­ther argu­ing, how­ev­er, for bak­ing as a spe­cial form of “flour­ish­ing,” Julie Thom­son at Huff­Po describes the act as “a pro­duc­tive form of self-expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion” and con­sults with experts like Ohana and Don­na Pin­cus, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­cho­log­i­cal and brain sci­ences at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, who told Thom­son, “Bak­ing has the ben­e­fit of allow­ing peo­ple cre­ative expres­sion.” Peo­ple who may not be nat­ur­al artists, writ­ers, or musi­cians. Yet bak­ing is also a kind of prob­lem-solv­ing as well as a cre­ative act, and “actu­al­ly requires a lot of full atten­tion.”

You have to mea­sure, focus phys­i­cal­ly on rolling out dough. If you’re focus­ing on smell and taste, on being present with what you’re cre­at­ing, that act of mind­ful­ness in that present moment can also have a result in stress reduc­tion.

The ref­er­ence to mind­ful­ness is apt. (Go ahead and read about a course on “Brea­d­i­ta­tion,” make fun of it, then try it at home.) I know not a few peo­ple who swear they can­not med­i­tate to save their lives, but who will hap­pi­ly spend a cou­ple hours on a Sat­ur­day evening bak­ing brioche or plates of cook­ies. But there’s more to it than the med­i­ta­tive absorp­tion that comes from mind­ful activ­i­ty. Bak­ing, says Pincus—and cook­ing in general—is a form of altru­ism. “The nice thing about bak­ing,” she ways, “is that you have such a tan­gi­ble reward at the end and that can feel very ben­e­fi­cial to oth­ers.”

So the research sug­gests that—whatever activ­i­ties one grav­i­tates toward—finding hap­pi­ness on a dai­ly basis involves more than using Pin­ter­est boards and mag­a­zines to craft a cozy, styl­ish new life. Though any sus­tained cre­ative activ­i­ty may do the trick, we approach clos­er to last­ing hap­pi­ness as well as greater fulfillment—to meaning—when we direct activ­i­ty to a “con­nec­tion with oth­er peo­ple” through gen­eros­i­ty.

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

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

How to Get Start­ed with Yoga: Free Yoga Lessons on YouTube

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

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

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

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

A Free Course on Machine Learning & Data Science from Caltech

Right now, Machine Learn­ing and Data Sci­ence are two hot top­ics, the sub­ject of many cours­es being offered at uni­ver­si­ties today. Above, you can watch a playlist of 18 lec­tures from a course called Learn­ing From Data: A Machine Learn­ing Course, taught by Cal­tech’s Feyn­man Prize-win­ning pro­fes­sor Yas­er Abu-Mostafa. The course is sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:

This is an intro­duc­to­ry course in machine learn­ing (ML) that cov­ers the basic the­o­ry, algo­rithms, and appli­ca­tions. ML is a key tech­nol­o­gy in Big Data, and in many finan­cial, med­ical, com­mer­cial, and sci­en­tif­ic appli­ca­tions. It enables com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tems to adap­tive­ly improve their per­for­mance with expe­ri­ence accu­mu­lat­ed from the observed data. ML has become one of the hottest fields of study today, tak­en up by under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents from 15 dif­fer­ent majors at Cal­tech. This course bal­ances the­o­ry and prac­tice, and cov­ers the math­e­mat­i­cal as well as the heuris­tic aspects. The lec­tures fol­low each oth­er in a sto­ry-like fash­ion.

A real Cal­tech course (it’s not watered down at all), the course assumes a famil­iar­i­ty with basic prob­a­bil­i­ty, matri­ces, and cal­cu­lus.

Start your future with a Data Science Certificate.

The lec­tures can be found on YouTubeiTunes U and this Cal­tech web­site, which hosts slides and oth­er course mate­ri­als. The pro­fes­sor wrote the course text­book, also called Learn­ing from Data.

Learn­ing From Data will be per­ma­nent­ly added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, part of our ever-grow­ing 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.

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:

Down­load 243 Free eBooks on Design, Data, Soft­ware, Web Devel­op­ment & Busi­ness from O’Reilly Media

The Pio­neer­ing Physics TV Show, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Com­plete Episodes from Cal­tech

The Neu­ronal Basis of Con­scious­ness Course: A Free Online Course from Cal­tech

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The History of the World in 20 Odd Minutes

Last year, we flagged Bill Wurtz’s “His­to­ry of Japan,” an idio­syn­crat­ic video that cov­ered 40,000 years of Japan­ese his­to­ry in 9 minutes–everything from the rise of tech­nol­o­gy and reli­gion, to the influ­ence of Chi­na on Japan’s lan­guage and brand of bud­dhism, the emer­gence of the samu­rai, the country’s vexed rela­tion­ship with the West, and the bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki and Hiroshi­ma. Although quan­ti­ty isn’t every­thing, the video clocked more than 25 mil­lion views on YouTube–pretty impres­sive con­sid­er­ing that Wurtz cre­at­ed the video as “a pro­to­type to see if I could do a long video in the first place.”

Now comes his new, more expan­sive video–His­to­ry of the World in 20 min­utes. Released on Wednes­day, the video has already sur­passed 4.5 mil­lions views (sure­ly more by the time you read this), and it may teach you a thing … or two … about world his­to­ry. Have fun with it. And if you’re look­ing for meati­er media that cov­ers the big sweep of his­to­ry, check out the items in the Relat­eds below.

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.

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:

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

The Frida Kahlo Action Figure

Ear­li­er this week, an orga­ni­za­tion called “Today Is Art Day” launched a Kick­starter cam­paign to pro­duce the lat­est in a line of action fig­ures. First came the Vin­cent van Gogh action fig­ure. Now, join­ing him in the ‘Art His­to­ry Heroes Col­lec­tion,’ there will be a Fri­da Kahlo fig­ure. (Yes, they’ve already raised $19,490, sur­pass­ing their $14,585 goal.) Stand­ing 5 inch­es tall, made of high qual­i­ty plas­tic, Fri­da will come with a mon­key attached to her back, and a detach­able sur­re­al­ist heart. Expect deliv­ery in Sep­tem­ber.

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.

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:

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

The Artist as Artist’s Mod­el: Au Naturel Por­traits of Fri­da Kahlo Tak­en by Art Patron Julien Levy (1938)

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Alfred Hitchcock Recalls Working with Salvador Dali on Spellbound: “No, You Can’t Pour Live Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!”

In 1945 Alfred Hitch­cock had to explain one of Hol­ly­wood’s unwrit­ten rules to Sal­vador Dalí: No, you can’t pour live ants all over Ingrid Bergman! Hitch­cock had approached Dalí for help with a dream sequence in his upcom­ing thriller, Spell­bound, star­ring Bergman and Gre­go­ry Peck. He was unhap­py with the fuzzi­ness of Hol­ly­wood dream sequences. “I want­ed to con­vey the dream with great visu­al sharp­ness and clarity–sharper than film itself,” Hitch­cock recalled in a 1962 inter­view with François Truf­faut. “I want­ed Dali because of the archi­tec­tur­al sharp­ness of his work. Chiri­co has the same qual­i­ty, you know, the long shad­ows, the infin­i­ty of dis­tance and the con­verg­ing lines of per­spec­tive. But Dali had some strange ideas. He want­ed a stat­ue to crack like a shell falling apart, with ants crawl­ing all over it. And under­neath, there would be Ingrid Bergman, cov­ered by ants! It just was­n’t pos­si­ble.” The result you can watch below:

Note: This video first appeared on our site in 2011. See­ing that it’s Dal­i’s birth­day today, we’re bring­ing it back!

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.

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:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

How Filmmakers Tell Their Stories: Three Insightful Video Essays Demystify the Craft of Editing, Composition & Color

Every­one knows that if you want to make a movie, you first have to write down its sto­ry. Many of us have tried our hands at writ­ing movie sto­ries our­selves — as treat­ments, screen­plays, or whichev­er oth­er forms the indus­try has come up with — and some have made careers out of it. But even if a film begins on the page, it does­n’t, of course, remain there; up on screen, the final prod­uct has to tell its sto­ry visu­al­ly as much as it does with words, and usu­al­ly even more so. Lewis Bond, the video essay­ist behind the cin­e­ma-ana­lyz­ing Youtube chan­nel Chan­nel Criswell, under­stands that bet­ter than most, hence his three essays ded­i­cat­ed to the three most impor­tant ele­ments of visu­al sto­ry­telling, the first chap­ter of which, “Colour in Sto­ry­telling,” we fea­tured a cou­ple months ago here on Open Cul­ture.

The sec­ond, “Com­po­si­tion in Sto­ry­telling,” explores the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in arrang­ing peo­ple, places, and things with­in a shot. “Decid­ing the place­ment of sub­jects through the viewfind­er of a cam­era isn’t mere­ly a tech­ni­cal deci­sion,” says Bond, “it’s an expres­sive one.”

Beyond show­ing the audi­ence what they need to see to under­stand the sto­ry, film­mak­ers have relied on “tried and test­ed for­mu­las to make an image pleas­ing to the eye” such as the rule of thirds, the gold­en ratio, and tri­an­gu­lar com­po­si­tion. But beyond those basics opens up the vast cre­ative space of com­pos­ing images in order to care­ful­ly guide the audi­ence’s atten­tion, craft sym­bols and sub­texts, and make the pow­er of a scene felt — all as depen­dent upon what gets left out of the pic­ture as what gets put in.

Final­ly, “Edit­ing in Sto­ry­telling” cov­ers the step of the film­mak­ing process wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant, even more so than writ­ing the sto­ry in the first place. “Beyond the basic func­tion of putting a film togeth­er,” says Bond, “the crafts­man­ship of edit­ing can be dealt with such sub­tle­ty that it can be the foun­da­tion of a film’s pace, its atmos­phere — it can even be the enrich­ing ingre­di­ent to strength­en all the film’s themes, and you may not even notice.” Though the edi­tor holds “total manip­u­la­tion over our emo­tions,” decid­ing what we see, when we see it, and how we see it, they also labor under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of know­ing the film will stand or fall on their skill. Watch Chan­nel Criswell’s entire visu­al sto­ry­telling essay tril­o­gy and you’ll notice all their tech­niques much more eas­i­ly while watch­ing movies — espe­cial­ly if you start watch­ing them, as you might well find your­self inspired to do, with the sound off.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

How Film­mak­ers Like Kubrick, Jodor­owsky, Taran­ti­no, Cop­po­la & Miyaza­ki Use Col­or to Tell Their Sto­ries

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

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.

Timelapse Film Shows How the British Library Digitized the World’s Largest Atlas, the 6‑Foot Tall “Klencke Atlas” from 1660

As a way of cur­ry­ing favor with a monarch, Johannes Klencke’s gift to Charles II (1630–1685) was one of the most auda­cious and beau­ti­ful objects ever offered. Klencke was a Dutch sug­ar mer­chant and knew that the king loved maps, and hoped that his gift would land him a favor­able trad­ing deal. (It did. He got knight­ed.)

The gift, the 1660 Klencke Atlas, is one of the world’s biggest books at near­ly six feet tall and near­ly sev­en and a half feet wide when open, and it con­tains 41 wall maps of var­i­ous accu­ra­cy. We first post­ed about the Klencke Atlas back in 2015, where you can see a short BBC doc on the British Library’s care of the book. But only recent­ly has the library been able to scan the maps so the pub­lic can now access them for free in high res­o­lu­tion.

The above video, which the British Library post­ed by way of Daniel Crouch Rare Books, shows a time-lapse of the mul­ti­ple day shoot, which took sev­er­al peo­ple, a very large room, sev­er­al lights, and a spe­cial­ly designed stand to hold the heavy vol­ume.

The pub­lic domain images are now part of the Library’s Pic­tur­ing Places web­site, which holds many exam­ples of rare maps, land­scapes, and large scale tech­ni­cal draw­ings.

The book itself, as huge as it might be, is actu­al­ly very frag­ile, so now the pub­lic and schol­ars can ful­ly explore these maps at leisure while the orig­i­nal goes back into stor­age.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Largest Atlas in the World: The Six-Foot Tall Klencke Atlas from 1660

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Browse & Down­load 1,198 Free High Res­o­lu­tion Maps of U.S. Nation­al Parks

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Hear Aerobic Exercise: When Soviet Musicians Recorded Electronic Music for a Subversive Home Fitness Record (1984)

Last year, Josh Baines at dance music site Thump revis­it­ed the 2004 video for “Call on Me,” a dance­floor anthem built around a high­ly rec­og­niz­able loop from Steve Winwood’s 1987 hit, “Valerie.” Draw­ing on the song’s inher­ent nos­tal­gia fac­tor, the video—which Baines calls, with­out exag­ger­a­tion, “the sex­i­est video of all time”—stages a ridicu­lous­ly lewd, sweaty aer­o­bics class, recall­ing the close asso­ci­a­tion dur­ing the 1980s fit­ness craze between sexy aer­o­bics videos and dance music, in adver­tise­ments, TV shows, MTV, movies like Hard­bod­ies and its even more ludi­crous sequel—and, of course, John Tra­vol­ta and Jamie Lee Curtis’s hilar­i­ous Per­fect, which direct­ly inspired “Call on Me.”

The “Call on Me” video is so sala­cious, in fact, that it near­ly caused then British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair to fall off his row­ing machine while watch­ing it, a scene that would fit right in to any 80s work­out sex com­e­dy. Might we imag­ine sim­i­lar scenes of mid­dle-aged Sovi­et min­is­ters and appa­ratchiks los­ing their cool while sweat­ing to Russ­ian elec­tro and watch­ing fit­ness videos like “Rhythm,” at the top? Or per­haps even the far-less-sexy morn­ing pro­gram above from 1987, with its syn­th­pop sound­track, bag­gy sweat­suits, and what look like futon mat­tress­es for exer­cise mats?

In anoth­er exam­ple of Sovi­et aer­o­bics and dance music, one must rely upon imag­i­na­tion to get the moves right. This record, Aer­o­bic Exer­cis­es by a col­lec­tion of obscure artists, was meant for more than just home work­outs, as impor­tant as they are.

The record label Melodiya—the only record label in Sovi­et Russia—and the album’s artists man­aged to get 1984’s Aer­o­bic Exer­cis­es cer­ti­fied by the “USSR Sports Com­mit­tee,” who, writes Ter­ry Matthew at 5 Mag­a­zine, “envi­sioned these records as a sort of robot replac­ing ath­let­ic train­ers.” “I don’t know if bureau­crats dream,” writes Matthew, “but if they do, I can imag­ine them envi­sion­ing a whole nation of com­rades in leg­warm­ers, rhyth­mi­cal­ly jog­ging and touch­ing their toes in time with some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing Ita­lo-sound­ing tracks of the era.”

There is a rea­son the music sounds so inter­est­ing, though some of it, Matthews admits, is “out­right putrid.” Most of the artists were well-known engi­neers and pro­duc­ers record­ing under pseu­do­nyms. These were peo­ple already work­ing in a long tra­di­tion of Sovi­et music that stretched back to Leon Theremin but also drew influ­ence from Europe and the U.S.—“a Funk move­ment in the Sovi­et Union, and one for Dis­co, and an elec­tron­ic music move­ment too, both offi­cial & above ground and under­ground and some­where in between.” Many of those artists only man­aged to get records made “through luck, through com­pro­mise and some­times through sub­terfuge.” Records like Aer­o­bic Exer­cise rep­re­sent some com­bi­na­tion of the last two cat­e­gories, “inge­nious­ly and absurd­ly” dis­guis­ing short orig­i­nal tracks as fit­ness mood music.

You’ll notice that there’s lit­tle instruc­tion on some of these tracks, and it’s in the vocal con­tri­bu­tions that much of the music’s “Ita­lo roots are exposed” notes Matthew, refer­ring to the grand tra­di­tion of most­ly non­sen­si­cal Ita­lo-dis­co, a term for a vari­ety of elec­tron­ic dance music made in Italy through­out the late 70s and 80s. These tracks “abide and gen­er­al­ly adhere to the super­fi­cial but abid­ing prin­ci­ple of Italo—that it’s less impor­tant what words mean com­pared to how they sound.” (Russ­ian speak­ers will have to con­firm this con­tention, though one doesn’t need to stretch to dis­cern the com­mands “Left, Right, Left Right!”) If some of this music sounds strik­ing­ly hip, that’s because it draws from the same Euro-dis­co well as so many con­tem­po­rary retro-elec­tro acts. (I couldn’t help but think of Mira Aroyo’s Bul­gar­i­an con­tri­bu­tions to Ladytron.)

Aer­o­bic Exer­cise was appar­ent­ly a suc­cess, such that Melodiya “launched an entire series of records in the style of the album called Sport and Music,” a four LP-col­lec­tion with much less focus and qual­i­ty con­trol. Mov­ing away from the aer­o­bics theme, the sec­ond of these albums fea­tured “some kind of com­pet­i­tive skate­board­er on the cov­er” and some “pret­ty dread­ful Hol­ly­wood Lite inci­den­tal music. By the third vol­ume, for­mer jazz musi­cians were beat­ing out 3rd rate riffs with vague­ly elec­tron­ic-sound­ing over­tones.” As with any fad, deriv­a­tive copies over sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions will always be sub­ject to seri­ous aes­thet­ic degra­da­tion. But for seri­ous fans of Sovi­et dance music, of 80s fit­ness, or, ide­al­ly, of both, Aer­o­bic Exer­cise rep­re­sents some­thing tru­ly spe­cial.

via 5 Mag­a­zine,

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sovi­ets Who Boot­legged West­ern Music on X‑Rays: Their Sto­ry Told in New Video & Audio Doc­u­men­taries

Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

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

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