Download 10,000 of the First Recordings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

in Music, Technology | March 14th, 2018

Three min­utes with the min­strels / Arthur Collins, S. H. Dud­ley & Ancient City. Edi­son Record. 1899.

Long before vinyl records, cas­sette tapes, CDs and MP3s came along, peo­ple first expe­ri­enced audio record­ings through anoth­er medi­um — through cylin­ders made of tin foil, wax and plas­tic. In recent years, we’ve fea­tured cylin­der record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry that allow you to hear the voic­es of Leo Tol­stoy, Tchaikovsky, Otto von Bis­mar­ck and oth­er tow­er­ing fig­ures. Those record­ings were orig­i­nal­ly record­ed and played on a cylin­der phono­graph invent­ed by Thomas Edi­son in 1877. But those were obvi­ous­ly just a hand­ful of the cylin­der record­ings pro­duced at the begin­ning of the record­ed sound era.

Thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara Cylin­der Audio Archive, you can now down­load or stream a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of more than 10,000 cylin­der record­ings. “This search­able data­base,” says UCSB, “fea­tures all types of record­ings made from the late 1800s to ear­ly 1900s, includ­ing pop­u­lar songs, vaude­ville acts, clas­si­cal and oper­at­ic music, comedic mono­logues, eth­nic and for­eign record­ings, speech­es and read­ings.” You can also find in the archive a num­ber of “per­son­al record­ings,” or “home wax record­ings,” made by every­day peo­ple at home (as opposed to by record com­pa­nies).

If you go to this page, the record­ings are neat­ly cat­e­go­rized by genre, instru­ment, subject/theme and ethnicity/nation of ori­gin. You can lis­ten, for exam­ple, to record­ings of Jazz, Rag­time, Operas, and Vaude­ville acts. Or hear record­ings fea­tur­ing the Man­dolin, Gui­tar, Dul­cimer and Ban­jo, among oth­er instru­ments. Plus there are the­mat­i­cal­ly-arranged playlists here.

Host­ed by UCSB (UC San­ta Bar­bara), the archive is sup­port­ed by fund­ing from the Insti­tute of Muse­um and Library Ser­vices, the Gram­my Foun­da­tion, and oth­er donors.

Above, hear a record­ing called “Three min­utes with the min­strels,” by Arthur Collins, released in 1899. Below that is “Alexan­der’s rag­time band med­ley,” fea­tur­ing the ban­jo play­ing of Fred Van Eps, released in 1913.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Beer Bot­tle Gets Turned Into a 19th Cen­tu­ry Edi­son Cylin­der and Plays Fine Music

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edison’s Record­ings of Leo Tol­stoy: Hear the Voice of Russia’s Great­est Nov­el­ist

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)

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Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chronological Playlist of Live Grateful Dead Performances (1966–1995)

in Music | March 14th, 2018

I am not a Dead­head nor an expert on the Grate­ful Dead, by any means. I am an occa­sion­al lis­ten­er and, one might say, occa­sion­al enthu­si­ast of Dead­head cul­ture, in that I find it equal parts mys­ti­fy­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing. I men­tion all these qual­i­fiers ful­ly aware that thou­sands upon thou­sands of ded­i­cat­ed fans have spent life­times lis­ten­ing to, fol­low­ing, and tap­ing the Dead. It is pos­si­ble that those peo­ple have absolute­ly no need of what fol­lows below, a chrono­log­i­cal playlist of 346 hours of live Grate­ful Dead, track­ing the band’s career on stage after stage, from their very begin­nings in 1966 with the tal­ent­ed and trag­ic Pig­pen to their trag­ic end with the death of Jer­ry Gar­cia in 1995.

Com­pletists may scoff and quibble—I can’t tell what’s miss­ing here. I speak for those who kind of get it and kind of don’t—somewhere between peo­ple “who believe that the Dead only ever stum­bled,” as Nick Paum­garten writes at The New York­er, and those who “believe that they only ever soared.” Some­times, maybe a lot of times, the Grate­ful Dead just sound­ed awful, and I dare any­one to prove oth­er­wise. But the same could be said of a lot of great bands, who have all had far less longevi­ty and pro­fi­cien­cy.

And so much depends on the qual­i­ty of the record­ing, to be fair, not a giv­en in most Dead tapes. Then there’s the “copi­ous drug use, an aver­sion to rehearsal, and a gen­uine anar­chic streak.” But when they were in phase and in time, and some­times even when they weren’t, they could be “glo­ri­ous”:

The chance at musi­cal tran­scen­dence amid a ten­den­cy toward some­thing less—was what kept us com­ing back. This argu­ment is a lit­tle like the East Coaster’s on behalf of his weath­er: the nice days are nicer when there are crap­py ones in between.

Writ­ing, he says, as an “apol­o­gist,” Paum­garten claims that the Dead’s ups and downs were large­ly the result of their most tal­ent­ed and “charis­mat­ic fig­ure” Jer­ry Garcia’s errat­ic per­for­mances. “When he had a bad night, you knew it. The oth­ers, when they were off, could sort of hide.” When he was on, his “iri­des­cent gui­tar leads” were trans­port­ing (check out his effort­less coun­try licks at the top in “Big Riv­er”). But his strength waned, and the band lost much of its ener­gy in lat­er years.

Anoth­er Dead fan, Marc Wein­garten, writes at Slate in praise of the “famous­ly var­ied… archi­tec­ture of band leader Jer­ry Garcia’s fre­quent­ly tran­scen­dent gui­tar work,” and blames not Gar­ci­a’s decline for the band’s decline in gen­er­al but, you prob­a­bly guessed it, Dead­head fans, who har­bor an “a pri­ori assump­tion… that Dead shows were always mag­ic and that the mag­ic could be rou­tine­ly sum­moned on a night­ly basis.”

Per­haps unfair. Some­times fans could make a bad show mag­i­cal… ish. And it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the Grate­ful Dead with­out their rabid fan­base, who cru­cial­ly allowed the band to grow, expand, and exper­i­ment, always assured of a packed house. But a large part of the Dead’s appeal, to casu­al fans, at least, is that they were only human. Dudes you could total­ly get high with (on the pow­er of music!). That’s right, I’ll say it, take a long strange trip. Come back in 346 hours and tell us what you found.

Stream the “Grate­ful Dead Full Live Chronol­o­gy” playlist above, or find it on Spo­ti­fy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Ulti­mate Boot­leg” Now Online & Added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry

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

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An Archive of 20,000 Movie Posters from Czechoslovakia (1930–1989)

in Art, Film | March 14th, 2018

We could­n’t pos­si­bly ignore, here at Open Cul­ture, the glo­ry of movie posters: from the film noir era, from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s pre­dictably siz­able col­lec­tion, and even the deeply askew inter­pre­ta­tions seen out­side the the­aters of Ghana. But some­how, the visu­al art-inclined cinephile’s atten­tion returns again and again to one region of the world: East­ern Europe, espe­cial­ly in the Cold War era. Poland’s movie posters have long since accrued a fan­dom around the world, but we should­n’t neglect the equal pro­mo­tion­al won­ders of its neigh­bor­ing Czecho­slo­va­kia.

Or rather, as the even mild­ly geo­graph­i­cal­ly astute will note, the neigh­bor­ing Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia. But in this case, we real­ly do mean Czecho­slo­va­kia, the movie posters fea­tured here hav­ing hung in its movie hous­es between 1930 and 1989.

Ter­ry Posters offers a col­lec­tion of more than 20,000 such works of cap­ti­vat­ing com­mer­cial art to browse (with some avail­able to buy), most of them inter­pret­ing for­eign motion pic­tures for the pre­sumed sen­si­bil­i­ties of the local audi­ence: the films of  auteurs like Alfred Hitch­cock, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Andrei Tarkovsky (then, of course, a fel­low Sovi­et), Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, and many more besides.

You can also browse Ter­ry’s Czecho­slo­va­kian col­lec­tion by year, by artist, by genre, by actor, and by the film’s coun­try of ori­gin. How­ev­er you explore them, these posters offer a reminder of the way that cin­e­ma cul­ture used to vary most stark­ly from region to region, even when deal­ing with the exact same movies. The “glob­al­iza­tion” process in effect over the past thir­ty years has done much to make seri­ous cinephil­ia pos­si­ble every­where (not least by defeat­ing var­i­ous once-for­mi­da­ble forms of cen­sor­ship and sup­pres­sion) but it may have brought an end to the mul­ti­plic­i­ty and vari­ety of images on dis­play here, all espe­cial­ly vivid pieces of a fad­ed cul­ture — and of a dis­man­tled coun­try. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Design­er Reimag­ines Icon­ic Movie Posters With Min­i­mal­ist Designs: Reser­voir Dogs, The Matrix & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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70,000+ Religious Texts Digitized by Princeton Theological Seminary, Letting You Immerse Yourself in the Curious Works of Great World Religions

in Archives, Religion | March 13th, 2018

It is maybe easy for those unfa­mil­iar with the study of reli­gion to reduce the aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline to a pon­der­ous exercise—self-serious, obsessed with tra­di­tion, ren­dered sus­pect by his­to­ries of vio­lence and high­ly implau­si­ble, con­tra­dic­to­ry claims. But this is a mis­take. For one thing, as schol­ar of reli­gion Wil­fred Cantwell Smith once wrote, “the study of reli­gion is the study of persons”—quite broad­ly, he sug­gests, to study reli­gion is to study human­i­ty: anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, art, lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy, mythol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, etc. Study­ing reli­gion can also be—contrary to cer­tain stereotypes—a great deal of fun.

In what oth­er schol­ar­ly pur­suit, after all, can one read Regi­nald Scot, Esquire’s 1584 The Dis­cov­er­ie of Witch­craft, L. Aus­tine Waddell’s 1805 The Bud­dhism of Tibet, and J.G. Frazer’s 1894 The Gold­en Bough, inspi­ra­tion for T.S. Eliot’s poet­ry and spir­i­tu­al ances­tor to Joseph Campbell’s pop­u­lar com­par­a­tive work The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces?

But of course, not many an advanced schol­ar would find him or her­self immersed in all of these texts, spe­cial­iz­ing, as they must, in one par­tic­u­lar area. Those of us who are mere­ly curi­ous, how­ev­er, or insa­tiably curi­ous, can do as we please in the the­ol­o­gy library, thumb­ing through what­ev­er strikes our fan­cy.

We may do so from the com­fort of wher­ev­er we can get wifi thanks to Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Seminary’s The­o­log­i­cal Com­mons’ project with the Inter­net Archive, which has dig­i­tized over 70,000 texts from the Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Library, span­ning hun­dreds of years and near­ly every con­ceiv­able reli­gious sub­ject. Yes, there are shelves of hym­nals, hard­ly the kind of thing to gen­er­ate much inter­est among any but the most devout or the most deeply-down-a-schol­ar­ly-rab­bit-hole. But there are also many fas­ci­nat­ing gems like Jacob Grimm’s 1882–88 Teu­ton­ic Mythol­o­gy in four vol­umes (trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish), like E.A. Wal­lis Budge’s beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed 1911 Osiris and the Egypt­ian Res­ur­rec­tion, and like Wes­leyan min­is­ter Charles Roberts’ 1899 The Zulu-Kafir Lan­guage Sim­pli­fied for Begin­ners.

Like many texts writ­ten by colo­nial observers and Ori­en­tal­ist schol­ars, some of these books may tell us as much or more about their authors than about the pur­port­ed subjects—we encounter in reli­gious schol­ar­ship no more nor less bias than in any oth­er field, though piety is giv­en license to take more overt forms. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as Cantwell Smith wrote, “the tra­di­tion­al form of West­ern schol­ar­ship in the study of oth­er men’s reli­gion was that of an imper­son­al pre­sen­ta­tion of an ‘it.’” But these out­dat­ed views are them­selves instructive—as part of a process towards a wider human­ist under­stand­ing, “the grad­ual recog­ni­tion of what was always true in prin­ci­ple, but was not always grasped.”

For stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­al schol­ars, the Prince­ton dig­i­tal library is obvi­ous­ly, well… a god­send. For the merely—or insatiably—curious, it is an open invi­ta­tion to explore strange new worlds, so to speak, and to real­ize, again and again, that they’re all the same world, seen in innu­mer­ably dif­fer­ent ways. In this archive, you’ll find pri­ma­ry texts and com­men­taries on Islam, Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Judaism, Zoroas­tri­an­ism, Greek and Egypt­ian reli­gions, indige­nous faiths of all kinds, and, of course, giv­en the source, plen­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty (like the 1606, pre-King James Bible at the top). “The next step,” writes Cantwell Smith, in mov­ing the study of reli­gion for­ward, “is a dia­logue.… If there is lis­ten­ing and mutu­al­i­ty… the cul­mi­na­tion of this progress is when ‘we all’ are talk­ing with each oth­er about ‘us.’”

Enter the online Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Launch­es a Free Online Course to Pro­mote Reli­gious Tol­er­ance & Under­stand­ing

Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion: A Free Online Course 

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es 

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

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IDEO.org’s Free Design Course on Prototyping Starts Today

in Design, Online Courses | March 13th, 2018

A quick fyi: IDEO.org, the non-prof­it arm of the famous Cal­i­for­nia design firm IDEO, is launch­ing a free 4‑week course on Pro­to­typ­ing.

As you might recall, we fea­tured sev­er­al months back A Crash Course in Design Think­ing from Stanford’s Design School. If that piqued your inter­est in design and design think­ing, then IDEO.org’s course might hold appeal.

Design Kit: Pro­to­typ­ing will help you learn how to build pro­to­types in “a low-cost and risk-averse way to get your ideas into the hands of the peo­ple you’re try­ing to change.” Run­ning from March 12 through April 17, the course will teach you best prac­tices for pro­to­typ­ing prod­ucts, ser­vices, inter­ac­tions, and envi­ron­ments.

More free cours­es 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.

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 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

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Buckminster Fuller’s Collaboration with The North Face Culminates with a New Geodesic Dome Tent, the Geodome 4

in Architecture, Design | March 13th, 2018

Most any­one who reg­u­lar­ly spends time in nature knows the name The North Face. For fifty years now, the com­pa­ny has fur­nished out­doors­men and out­door­swomen with not just appar­el but much else of the equal­ly rugged gear they might con­ceiv­ably need to go hik­ing, camp­ing, or per­ma­nent­ly off the grid. Some of their prod­uct designs have remained basi­cal­ly the same through the decades, while oth­ers have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Even ear­ly in the com­pa­ny’s life it knew that a bet­ter tent, for instance, would get the out­doorsy world beat­ing a path to its door: hence its engage­ment of no less a design thinker than R. Buck­min­ster Fuller.

Bruce Hamil­ton, who worked for the com­pa­ny from 1970 to 1989, recent­ly wrote a few posts (part one, part two, part three) telling the sto­ry of the North Face/Buckminster Fuller con­nec­tion. It began in his first year on the job, when the com­pa­ny’s own­er Hap Klopp asked a friend whose fam­i­ly had con­nec­tions to Fuller to send the already world-famous archi­tect-sys­tems the­o­rist-inven­tor a let­ter. Describ­ing The North Face as “a small com­pa­ny that pro­duces what I believe to be the finest equip­ment present­ly avail­able,” the friend asked Fuller for ideas on how to improve the “archa­ic designs” then used to con­struct tents. “I have thought a great deal in the past about your sub­ject of the com­pact, light­weight, back-pack­able envi­ron­ment con­trol­ling device,” Fuller replied. “I am accept­ing your chal­lenge.”

Hamil­ton, a fan of Fuller’s work, had already been think­ing about how to use the prin­ci­ples of the light but stur­dy tri­an­gle-and-dome-based “tenseg­ri­ty struc­tures” Fuller so often wrote and (as in the clip above) talked about. One day Hamil­ton showed Klopp a mod­el of a Ful­ler­ian geo­des­ic sphere, and “it was at that moment that he con­nect­ed me with Bucky and with his dri­ve to bring a new tent to life.” The result, the Oval Inten­tion tent, first appeared in The North Face’s Fall 1975 cat­a­log, accom­pa­nied by a pho­to of Hamil­ton relax­ing inside one and a typ­i­cal­ly sweep­ing quote from Fuller him­self: “It is no aes­thet­ic acci­dent that nature encased our brains and regen­er­a­tive organs in com­pound­ly curvi­lin­ear struc­tures. There are no cubi­cal heads, eggs, nuts, or plan­ets.”

The North Face kept incor­po­rat­ing Fuller’s ideas into their tents, and they ham­mered out the terms of  direct col­lab­o­ra­tion on a new mod­el in 1983, a month before Fuller died. Judg­ments about oth­er tenseg­ri­ty struc­tures — geo­des­ic dome homes, for exam­ple — have var­ied over the years, but the Oval Inten­tion lives on in the form of the new Geodome 4. “Thanks to the most spa­tial­ly effi­cient shape in archi­tec­ture, it can with­stand winds of up to 60 mph as the force is spread even­ly across the struc­ture whilst even pro­vid­ing enough height for a six-foot per­son to stand com­fort­ably inside,” writes Arch­dai­ly’s Ella Thorns. “The extreme­ly effi­cient design has allowed the tent to weigh not much more than 11kg and com­prise of 5 main poles and the equa­tor for fast and easy assem­bly and stor­age.”

If this already has you excit­ed about your improved prospects for more geo­met­ri­cal­ly and struc­tural­ly effi­cient camp­ing on the sur­face of our Space­ship Earth, do be warned: at the moment The North Face has only made the Geodome 4 avail­able in Japan (see its Japan­ese page here), and with a price tag equiv­a­lent to $1,635 at that. Even so, one hopes that Bucky — as Hamil­ton and many of the oth­ers who knew him called him — looks on with pride from whichev­er space­ship he now finds him­self aboard.

via Arch Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Design­er Cre­ates Origa­mi Card­board Tents to Shel­ter the Home­less from the Win­ter Cold

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Marjorie Eliot Has Held Free Jazz Concerts in Her Harlem Apartment Every Sunday for the Past 25 Years

in Jazz, Music | March 13th, 2018

I spent a good part of a decade-long sojourn through New York City in Harlem—at the neighborhood’s thresh­old at the top of Cen­tral Park, just a short walk from its his­toric main attrac­tions: jazz haunts, famed restau­rants, the­aters, archi­tec­tur­al splen­dor and wide, vibrant avenues. After a while, I thought I knew Harlem well enough. Then I moved to Sug­ar Hill, at the very edge of the island, across the water from Yan­kee Sta­di­um. Usu­al­ly over­looked, leafy street after street of state­ly brown­stones and pre-World War I apart­ment build­ings, some­times worse for wear but always regal. A few avenue blocks from my build­ing: St. Nick’s Pub, which I became con­vinced, for good rea­son, was the city’s true remain­ing heart of jazz.

Shut­tered, to the neighborhood’s dis­may, in 2012, the hum­ble bar—where, on any giv­en night, Afro-jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and clas­sic swing ensem­bles of the very finest musi­cians per­formed from dusk till dawn, pass­ing the hat to an always appre­cia­tive crowd—was, as a New York Times obit­u­ary for the deceased nightspot wrote, “sim­ply mag­i­cal… one of the few remain­ing jazz clubs in Harlem.”  But then, I didn’t vis­it Mar­jorie Eliot’s apart­ment. I remem­ber see­ing her play at St. Nick’s a time or two, but nev­er made it over to 555 Edge­combe Avenue, Apart­ment 3‑F. This was to my great loss.

It’s not too late. Since 1994, Ms. Eliot, a jazz pianist, has car­ried on a grand tra­di­tion of Harlem’s from its gold­en ages, with week­ly house con­certs in her par­lor, “Harlem’s secret jazz queen of Sug­ar Hill,” writes Ange­li­ka Pokov­ba, “sin­gle-hand­ed­ly uphold­ing the musi­cal lega­cy of a neigh­bor­hood that nur­tured leg­ends like Duke Elling­ton and Bil­lie Hol­i­day.”

Except she isn’t sin­gle-hand­ed, as you can see in the videos here, but always joined by a tal­ent­ed crew of play­ers whom she hand­picks and pays out of pock­et. The hat is passed, but no one’s oblig­at­ed to pay, there are no tick­ets, door charges, or drink min­i­mums; all you’ve got to do is show up at 3:30 on a Sun­day after­noon.

Mar­jorie greets each guest at the door. A full house is a crowd of up to 50 peo­ple. The atmos­phere is reserved and fam­i­ly friend­ly, a far cry from the riotous rent par­ties of leg­end. But this is the place to be, say both the reg­u­lars and the musi­cians, like sax­o­phon­ist Cedric Show Croon, who told NPR, “When you play here you have to be hon­est. You can only play in an hon­est way, you know.” You can get a small taste of the inti­ma­cy here, but to tru­ly expe­ri­ence Par­lor Jazz at Mar­jorie Eliot’s—as a Harlem cul­ture guide notes—you’ve got to trav­el uptown your­self.

“Rain or shine, with no vaca­tions,” the free con­certs have gone on for 25 years now, begin­ning, as you’ll see in the video above, with a tragedy, the death of Eliot’s son Philip in 1992. The fol­low­ing year, on the anniver­sary of his death, she arranged an out­door con­cert on the lawn of Mor­ris-Jumel Man­sion in Wash­ing­ton Heights. Then, the next year, the memo­r­i­al moved to her apart­ment and became a week­ly gig that car­ried her through more ter­ri­ble loss—the death of anoth­er son and the dis­ap­pear­ance of a third.

Eliot refused to give up on the music that kept her going, cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ty in an easy­go­ing, open-heart­ed way. “This idea of shar­ing and cel­e­brat­ing the music came real ear­ly,” she told NPR. “So I don’t do any­thing dif­fer­ent now than when Aunt Mar­garet is com­ing over and come show what you did in your lessons.” As you’ll see in the videos here—and expe­ri­ence in full, no doubt, if you can make the trip: Par­lor Jazz at Mar­jorie Eliot’s is any­thing but an ordi­nary Sun­day after­noon with Aunt Mar­garet.

Via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Dis­cov­er Langston Hugh­es’ Rent Par­ty Ads & The Harlem Renais­sance Tra­di­tion of Play­ing Gigs to Keep Roofs Over Heads

1,000 Hours of Ear­ly Jazz Record­ings Now Online: Archive Fea­tures Louis Arm­strong, Duke Elling­ton & Much More

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

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

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The Periodic Table of David Bowie: A Visualization of the Seminal Artist’s Influence and Influences

in Museums, Music, Science | March 12th, 2018

Mick Jag­ger …

Dada poet Tris­tan Tzara …

Chair­man Mao…

What do these 20th-cen­tu­ry icons have in com­mon?

Cor­rect! They’re also all ele­ments on artist Paul Robert­son’s Peri­od­ic Table of Bowie.

The late musi­cian David Bowie was a skin-shed­ding chameleon, and a remark­ably sta­ble iso­tope. His cre­ative influ­ences were var­ied.

Robert­son’s table debuted in 2013 as part of the Vic­to­ria & Albert David Bowie is exhi­bi­tion, three years before rock­’s sem­i­nal Star­man exit­ed the plan­et. Fol­low­ing a 12-city tour, it’s tak­ing its final bow at the Brook­lyn Muse­um.

“I’m not an idiot,” the artist con­fid­ed in an inter­view. “I know that peo­ple are most­ly inter­est­ed in it because it’s David Bowie. But I think it’s still a valid art­work.”

In addi­tion to posi­tion­ing such influ­ences as col­lab­o­ra­tor John Lennon, film­mak­er Stan­ley Kubrick, and for­mer room­mate Iggy Pop as atom­ic num­bers, Robert­son’s table allows for artists who came after.

“Fly My Pret­ties Fly (Thank You. We’ll Take It From Here)” includes Lady Gaga, Pulp front­man Jarvis Cock­er, and fel­low dandy, Mor­ris­sey, while Bowie’s 90s-era cos­tumer, design­er Alexan­der McQueen and artist Jeff Koons hold down “His­to­ry Is a Choice the Future Decides Upon.”

Fit­ting­ly, author Oscar Wilde appears in the Hydro­gen slot.

Buy a print of the Peri­od­ic Table of Bowie here.

Explore David Bowie is in per­son at the Brook­lyn Muse­um through July 15.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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