Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

in Music | April 20th, 2018

Why is it, as Bri­an Gilmore writes at Jaz­zTimes, that “even peo­ple who hard­ly lis­ten to jazz adore this album”? Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue hard­ly needs an intro­duc­tion. Many thou­sands of words have been writ­ten about its leg­endary com­po­si­tion and record­ing, about the extra­or­di­nary ensem­ble respon­si­ble for its existence—Davis, John Coltrane, “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, Paul Cham­bers, Jim­my Cobb, and a young Bill Evans—and about the year of its release, 1959, a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of jazz, and of near­ly all mod­ern music.

“It’s no longer nec­es­sary to remind music lovers that Kind of Blue is essen­tial lis­ten­ing,” argues The Guardian’s John Ford­ham, “and that every­body who wants to make sense of the music of our time ought to have at least some idea of what’s good about it.” Should your edu­ca­tion in Kind of Blue be lack­ing, you can get caught up on the basics in the Poly­phon­ic video just above, which quick­ly gets to the heart of Davis’ musi­cal inno­va­tion: mak­ing the defin­i­tive break with bebop and set­ting the stan­dard for modal jazz, and thus the explo­sion of free jazz inno­va­tions to come.

Where most forms of jazz had built increas­ing­ly com­plex chord changes over which soloists impro­vised, Davis shift­ed to using modes (the sev­en modes of mod­ern music) as the basis for song struc­ture. With­out need­ing to get over­ly tech­ni­cal with music the­o­ry, you can under­stand imme­di­ate­ly upon lis­ten­ing to the album that modal com­po­si­tion allowed Davis and his band to slow down, sim­pli­fy, and cre­ate sub­tle, com­plex shifts in mood that can be at once lilt­ing, cool, and kind of… blue. Davis had exper­i­ment­ed with blues-based modal forms before. Here, he inte­grates that knowl­edge with clas­si­cal ideas and impro­visato­ry bril­liance.

“As is now part of jazz folk­lore,” notes Ford­ham, “the New York ses­sions that pro­duced this remark­able album were com­plet­ed in a hand­ful of takes over just a few hours, with a min­i­mum of com­po­si­tion­al mate­ri­als.” From there, a rev­o­lu­tion. It is “The most exquis­ite­ly refined of ambi­ent music,” writes Richard Williams in his defin­i­tive mono­graph The Blue Moment, and the one record many music fans would res­cue “from a burn­ing house.” It may be the best-sell­ing jazz album of all time. Steely Dan’s Don­ald Fagen called it “the Bible.” Quin­cy Jones called his “orange juice,” because he lis­tens to it every day

“No one could dis­agree with Williams when he con­nects this with the devel­op­ments of John Coltrane,” writes Sholto Byrnes, from his “shock­ing demo­li­tion of the dain­ty brick­work of Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein’s ‘My Favorite Things,’ ” to his mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme. Its influ­ence, accord­ing to Williams, runs through the work of Ornette Cole­man Steve Reich, John Cale, the Vel­vet Under­ground, James Brown, Sly Stone, Soft Machine, Bri­an Eno, Moby, and so on and so on. If you’ve nev­er quite under­stood what makes Kind of Blue so great, get a crash course in the video explain­er above. Then sit down and lis­ten to it a few hun­dred times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Miles Davis Dish­es Dirt on His Fel­low Jazz Musi­cians: “The Trom­bone Play­er Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trum­pet”

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

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

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Watch Choirs Around the World Simulate the Rainstorm in Toto’s “Africa” Using Only Their Hands

in K-12, Music, Travel | April 20th, 2018

The Los Ange­les-based choir, Angel City Chorale, above, cap­tured the Internet’s imag­i­na­tion in a big way with their 2013 cov­er of Toto’s 1982 hit, “Africa,” in which the group’s 160 per­form­ers cre­at­ed a real­is­tic-sound­ing thun­der­storm using only their hands.

Delight­ful! And more com­mon than you may at first think.

The Chorale acknowl­edges that they owe a great debt to Sloven­ian vocal group Per­petu­um Jazz­ile’s thun­der­ous 2008 ren­di­tion. Stage­hands accus­tomed to cre­at­ing cred­i­ble thun­der­claps by wav­ing wig­gly sheets of alu­minum back­stage may want to switch to hun­dreds of feet hop­ping up and down in uni­son, as heard at the 1‑minute mark, below.

Go a bit fur­ther back to find an actu­al African choir’s fin­ger-snap­ping, thigh-smack­ing “Africa.”

The Kearsney Col­lege Choir is based near Dur­ban, South Africa, and they appear to have been the first to open this num­ber with the now-famous rain­storm effect. Its mem­bers are school boys rang­ing in age from 13 to 18. The video below shows them per­form­ing the tune in the 2008 World Choir Games, an annu­al com­pe­ti­tion that will be tak­ing place on their home turf this year.

Inter­est­ing­ly, there’s not that much rain in the orig­i­nal. Over the years Toto’s song­writ­ers, David Paich and Jeff Por­caro have made var­i­ous state­ments about its origins—a guy trans­fixed by images of suf­fer­ing Africans on TV, a lone­ly mis­sion­ary, a vis­it to the 1964 World’s Fair’s Africa pavil­ion …

There’s a bit of rain to be seen in the very 80’s offi­cial music video, but noth­ing that rivals the choirs’ spec­tac­u­lar down­pours.

If you’re moved to whip up a tem­pest of your own, Jbrary’s chil­dren’s librar­i­ans, Dana Hor­rocks and Lind­sey Krabben­hoft, have cre­at­ed an instruc­tion­al video that shows just how sim­ple the effect is to mas­ter. The real trick is enlist­ing 100s of friends to do it at the same time.

Buy Per­petu­um Jazz­ile’s “Africa” CD and vocal arrange­ments here.

Down­load Angel City Chorale’s “Africa” sin­gle on iTunes or CDBa­by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Delight­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

What Makes This Song Great?: Pro­duc­er Rick Beato Breaks Down the Great­ness of Clas­sic Rock Songs in His New Video Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Feynman Lectures on Physics, The Most Popular Physics Book Ever Written, Is Now Completely Online

in e-books, Physics | April 19th, 2018

Image by Tamiko Thiel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In years past, we let you know that Cal­tech and The Feyn­man Lec­tures Web­site joined forces to cre­ate an online edi­tion of The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics. They start­ed with Vol­ume 1. And they’ve since fol­lowed up with Vol­ume 2 and Vol­ume 3, mak­ing the col­lec­tion com­plete.

First pre­sent­ed in the ear­ly 1960s at Cal­tech by the Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist Richard Feyn­man, the lec­tures were even­tu­al­ly turned into a book by Feyn­man, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The text went on to become arguably the most pop­u­lar physics book ever writ­ten, sell­ing more than 1.5 mil­lion copies in Eng­lish, and get­ting trans­lat­ed into a dozen lan­guages.

The new online edi­tion makes The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics avail­able in HTML5. The text “has been designed for ease of read­ing on devices of any size or shape,” and you can zoom into text, fig­ures and equa­tions with­out degra­da­tion. Dive right into the lec­tures here. And if you’d pre­fer to see Feyn­man (as opposed to read Feyn­man), we would encour­age you to watch ‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law,’ Feynman’s  sev­en-part lec­ture series record­ed at Cor­nell in 1964.

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics is now list­ed in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Text­books.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in August, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es (part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties)

Free Physics Text­books

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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Cornell Creates a Database of Fugitive Slave Ads, Telling the Story of Those Who Resisted Slavery in 18th & 19th Century America

in History, Life | April 19th, 2018

While the val­ue of slaves in the U.S. from the colo­nial peri­od to the Civ­il War rose and fell like oth­er mar­ket goods, for the most part, enslaved peo­ple con­sti­tut­ed the most valu­able kind of prop­er­ty, typ­i­cal­ly worth even more than land and oth­er high­ly val­ued resources. In one study, three Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas his­to­ri­ans esti­mate that dur­ing most of the 18th cen­tu­ry in South Car­oli­na, slaves “made up close to half of the per­son­al wealth record­ed in pro­bate inven­to­ry in most decades.” By the 19th cen­tu­ry, slave­hold­ers had begun tak­ing out insur­ance poli­cies on their slaves as Rachel L. Swarns doc­u­ments at The New York Times.

“Alive,” Swarns writes, “slaves were among a white man’s most prized assets. Dead, they were con­sid­ered vir­tu­al­ly worth­less…. By 1847, insur­ance poli­cies on slaves account­ed for a third of the poli­cies in a firm”—New York Life—“that would become one of the nation’s For­tune 100 com­pa­nies.” Giv­en the huge eco­nom­ic incen­tives for per­pet­u­at­ing the sys­tem of chat­tel slav­ery, the fact that peo­ple did not want to be held in forced labor for life—and to con­demn their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren to the same—presented slave­hold­ers with a seri­ous prob­lem.

For over 250 years, count­less num­bers of enslaved peo­ple attempt­ed to escape to free­dom. And thou­sands of slave­own­ers ran news­pa­per ads to try and recov­er their invest­ments. These ads are like­ly famil­iar from text­books and his­tor­i­cal arti­cles on slav­ery; they have long been used singly to illus­trate a point, “but they have nev­er been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly col­lect­ed,” notes Cor­nell University’s Free­dom on the Move project, which intends to “com­pile all North Amer­i­can slave run­away ads and make them avail­able for sta­tis­ti­cal, geo­graph­i­cal, tex­tu­al, and oth­er forms of analy­sis.” While the data­base is still in progress, exam­ples of the ads are being shared on the @fotmproject Twit­ter account.

The ongo­ing project presents a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for his­tor­i­cal schol­ars of the peri­od. “If we could col­lect and col­late all of these ads,” the project’s researchers write, “we would cre­ate what might be the sin­gle rich­est source of data pos­si­ble for under­stand­ing the lives of the approx­i­mate­ly eight mil­lion peo­ple who were enslaved in the U.S.” It is esti­mat­ed that 100,000 or more such ads sur­vive “from the colo­nial and pre-Civ­il War U.S.,” though they might rep­re­sent a frac­tion of those pub­lished, and of the num­ber of attempt­ed, and suc­cess­ful, escapes.

Many of the ads casu­al­ly reveal evi­dence of bru­tal treat­ment, list­ing scars and brands, miss­ing fin­gers, speech imped­i­ments, and halt­ing walks. They show many of the escaped slaves to have been skilled in sev­er­al trades and speak mul­ti­ple lan­guages. A large num­ber of the escapees are chil­dren. As Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans his­to­ri­an Mary Niall Mitchell tells Hyper­al­ler­gic, “iron­i­cal­ly, in try­ing to retrieve their property—the peo­ple they claimed as things—enslavers left us mounds of evi­dence about the human­i­ty of the peo­ple they bought and sold.” (Mitchell is one of the projects three lead researchers, along with Uni­ver­si­ty of Alabama’s Joshua Roth­man and Cornell’s Edward Bap­tist, author of The Half Has Nev­er Been Told.)

The slave­hold­ers who ran ads also left evi­dence of what they made them­selves believe in order to hold peo­ple as prop­er­ty. One ad describes a run­away slave named Bil­ly as hav­ing been “per­suad­ed to leave his mas­ter by some vil­lain,” as though Bil­ly must sure­ly have been con­tent­ed with his lot. In the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of cas­es, we will nev­er know with cer­tain­ty what most peo­ple thought about being enslaved. Yet the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands attempt­ed to escape at great per­son­al risk, often with­out any help—to such a degree that extreme, inflam­ma­to­ry mea­sures like the Fugi­tive Slave Act were even­tu­al­ly deemed necessary—should offer suf­fi­cient tes­ta­ment, if the rel­a­tive­ly few writ­ten nar­ra­tives aren’t enough. “For some” of the peo­ple in the ads, says Mitchell, “this may be the only place some­thing about them sur­vives, in any detail, in the writ­ten record,”

Free­dom on the Move, writes Hyperallergic’s Alli­son Meier, “expands on the his­to­ry of resis­tance against slav­ery in the 18th and 19th cen­turies.” It offers a com­pelling pic­ture of two intol­er­a­bly irre­solv­able views—those of slave­hold­ers who viewed enslaved peo­ple as pro­pri­etary invest­ments; and those of the enslaved who refused to be reduced to objects for oth­ers’ plea­sure and prof­it.

Vis­it Free­dom on the Move and find out more.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Boston Pub­lic Library Launch­es a Crowd­sourced Project to Tran­scribe 40,000 Doc­u­ments from Its Anti-Slav­ery Col­lec­tion: You Can Now Help

The His­to­ry of the U.S. Civ­il War Visu­al­ized Month by Month and State by State, in an Info­graph­ic from 1897

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

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Martin Scorsese Teaches His First Online Course on Filmmaking: Features 30 Video Lessons

in Film, Online Courses | April 19th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Last Sep­tem­ber, online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class announced that they’d soon launch Mar­tin Scors­ese’s very first online course, “Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es Film­mak­ing.” Now it has opened for enroll­ment, at the usu­al Mas­ter­class cost of $180 for an all-access pass to the 85 cours­es on the site, a list that also includes Spike Lee and Wern­er Her­zog’s takes on the same sub­ject. For a com­pa­ny that has quick­ly made its name by enlist­ing famous instruc­tors, they could hard­ly do bet­ter than Scors­ese, whose own name has become a byword for auteurism in late 20th- and ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cin­e­ma.

“If you’re intrigued by moviemak­ing as a career, this isn’t the class for you,” Scors­ese says in the class’ trail­er above. “But if you need to make movies, if you feel like you can’t rest until you’ve told this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry that you’re burn­ing to tell, then I could be speak­ing to you.” Its 30 lessons, which cov­er every­thing from his life and edu­ca­tion to devel­op­ing a style to cast­ing actors to shoot­ing on a low bud­get, might also appeal to those who sim­ply love Scors­ese’s movies.

He illus­trates his instruc­tion­al points by draw­ing on his own for­mi­da­ble fil­mog­ra­phy and the vast expe­ri­ence that has gone into it (includ­ing the phys­i­cal ill­ness that descends upon him before view­ing each rough cut), a process that no doubt pro­vides count­less insights into what makes his work so pow­er­ful.

But the cur­ricu­lum also goes well beyond Scors­ese-on-Scors­ese, as one might expect from a man unabashed­ly dri­ven by a pure love of cin­e­ma — of, seem­ing­ly, all of cin­e­ma. In the final sec­tion of the course, Scors­ese breaks down scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Bar­ry Lyn­don, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, François Truf­faut’s Jules and Jim, Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go, and Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8 1/2, exam­in­ing the tech­ni­cal ele­ments that fill them with their dis­tinc­tive mag­ic. His enthu­si­asm has sure­ly inspired almost as many of his fans to go into film­mak­ing as has his work itself, but even those who lack the burn­ing desire to tell cin­e­mat­ic sto­ries them­selves know that if there’s any view­ing expe­ri­ence as com­pelling as watch­ing a Scors­ese movie, it’s watch­ing Scors­ese talk about movies. Learn more about Scors­ese’s course here.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Spike Lee to Teach an Online Course on Film­mak­ing; Get Ready By Watch­ing His List of 95 Essen­tial Films

Aaron Sorkin, Cre­ator of The West Wing & The Social Net­work, Teach­es Screen­writ­ing in an Online Class

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

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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How the Iconic Eames Lounge Chair Is Made, From Start to Finish

in Art | April 18th, 2018

In 1956, Charles and Ray Eames unveiled a lounge chair that did some­thing spe­cial. It took mod­ern design and made it com­fort­able. It placed “the sit­ter into a volup­tuous lux­u­ry that few mor­tals since Nero have known.” Below, you can revis­it the orig­i­nal unveil­ing of the Eames Lounge Chair, which took place on the Home Show, an Amer­i­can day­time TV pro­gram host­ed by Arlene Fran­cis. And above, you can watch the mak­ing of the Eames Lounge Chair, which remains very much in pro­duc­tion and demand today. It’s still a sta­ple of the Her­man Miller fur­ni­ture col­lec­tion. Some aspects of the pro­duc­tion have got­ten a bit more high tech, of course. And the orig­i­nal Brazil­ian rose­wood has been replaced by a more sus­tain­able Pal­isander rose­wood. But the high-touch process remains oth­er­wise large­ly the same. Orig­i­nal­ly priced at $310, the Eames Lounge Chair will now set you back $5,295.

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:

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Lounge Chair Debuts on Amer­i­can TV (1956)

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

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Dress Like an Intellectual Icon with Japanese Coats Inspired by the Wardrobes of Camus, Sartre, Duchamp, Le Corbusier & Others

in Design, Fashion | April 18th, 2018

If you fol­low men’s style in the 21st cen­tu­ry, you know that the same names tend to come up as ref­er­ences again and again, from actors like Cary Grant and Steve McQueen to busi­ness­men like Gian­ni Agnel­li and roy­al­ty like Prince Charles. But what if we looked to oth­er, less con­ven­tion­al realms of cul­ture for inspi­ra­tion on what to wear and, more impor­tant­ly, how to wear it? Over the past few years, Japan­ese label Cohérence has done just that, design­ing coats mod­eled after those worn by the likes of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mar­cel Duchamp, and Le Cor­busier — and improv­ing upon them with new mate­ri­als and details.

“I love Dada and Sur­re­al­ism, jazz music, writ­ers con­nect­ed to the Lost Gen­er­a­tion, and New Wave cin­e­ma. Along with the art and cul­ture, there were also the clothes – the heav­ier fab­rics and fuller sil­hou­ettes,” says Cohérence design­er Ken­taro Nak­ago­mi as quot­ed by men’s style blog­ger Derek Guy of Die, Work­wear! “They were clas­sic, but also mod­ern at the same time.”

If it strikes you as odd that a Japan­ese oper­a­tion would ded­i­cate itself to the styles of par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al moments in the West, know that mod­ern Japan has quite a his­to­ry of not just repli­cat­ing them but rein­vent­ing them, told most recent­ly by W. David Marx in his book Ame­to­ra: How Japan Saved Amer­i­can Style. Amer­i­cans, thus far, haven’t con­sti­tut­ed a major pres­ence in Cohérence’s col­lec­tions, though the jazz sax­o­phon­ist, clar­inetist, and com­pos­er Sid­ney Bechet did inspire a Bal­macaan.

Though French­men (also includ­ing The Lit­tle Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and writer-artist-film­mak­er Jean Cocteau) dom­i­nate the label’s list of inspi­ra­tions, it has also made sev­er­al coats in hon­or of Léonard Tsug­uharu Fou­ji­ta, the Japan­ese painter and print­mak­er who in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry brought the artis­tic tech­niques of his ances­tral home­land to his adopt­ed home­land of France. In a way, Fou­ji­ta stands as a sym­bol of the whole project, premised as it is on the union of clas­si­cism and moder­ni­ty as well as exchange between Japan and Europe. And were he around today, Fou­ji­ta, like Cohérence, would sure­ly also have made good use of Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Recall­ing Albert Camus’ Fash­ion Advice, Noam Chom­sky Pans Glenn Greenwald’s Shiny, Pur­ple Tie

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Vin­tage Lit­er­ary T‑Shirts

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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John Lennon Extols the Virtues of Transcendental Meditation in a Spirited Letter Written to a Beatles Fan (1968)

in Letters, Music, Religion | April 18th, 2018

An Indi­an guru trav­els to the West with teach­ings of enlight­en­ment, world peace, and lib­er­a­tion from the soul-killing mate­ri­al­ist grind. He attracts thou­sands of fol­low­ers, some of them wealthy celebri­ties, and founds a com­mer­cial empire with his teach­ings. No, this isn’t the sto­ry of Bhag­wan Shree Rajneesh, the head of the reli­gious move­ment in Wild Wild Coun­try. There was no mirac­u­lous city in the Ore­gon wilds or fleet of Lear­jets and Rolls Royces. No stock­pile of auto­mat­ic weapons, planned assas­si­na­tions, or mass poi­son­ings. Decades before those strange events, anoth­er teacher, Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi inspired mass devo­tion among stu­dents around the world with the peace­ful prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion.

Rolling Stone’s Claire Hoffman—who grew up in a TM com­mu­ni­ty—writes of the move­ment with ambiva­lence. For most of his dis­ci­ples, he was a “Wiz­ard of Oz-type char­ac­ter,” she says, dis­tant and mys­te­ri­ous. But much of what we pop­u­lar­ly know about TM comes from its most famous adher­ents, includ­ing Jer­ry Sein­feld, Katy Per­ry, David Lynch, the Beach Boys, and, of course, The Bea­t­les, who famous­ly trav­eled to India in 1968, med­i­tat­ed with Mia Far­row, Dono­van, and Mike Love, and wrote some of their wildest, most inven­tive music after a cre­ative slump fol­low­ing the huge suc­cess of Sgt. Pepper’s.

“They stayed in Rishikesh,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings, “a small vil­lage in the foothills of the Himalayas, con­sid­ered the cap­i­tal of yoga. Immersed in this peace­ful com­mu­ni­ty and nur­tured by an inten­sive dai­ly med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, the Fab Four under­went a cre­ative growth spurt—the weeks at Rishikesh were among their most fer­tile song­writ­ing and com­pos­ing peri­ods, pro­duc­ing many of the songs on The White Album and Abbey Road.” Unlike most of the Maharishi’s fol­low­ers, The Bea­t­les got a per­son­al audi­ence. The Indi­an spir­i­tu­al teacher “helped them through the shock” of their man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein’s death, and helped them tap into cos­mic con­scious­ness with­out LSD.

They left on a sour note—there were alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety, and Lennon, being Lennon, got a bit nasty, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ing The White Album’s “Sexy Sadie” with the lyrics “Maharishi—what have you done? You made a fool of every­one.” But before their falling out with TM’s founder, before even the trip to India, all four Bea­t­les became devot­ed med­i­ta­tors, sit­ting for two twen­ty-minute ses­sions a day and find­ing gen­uine peace and happiness—or “ener­gy,” as Lennon and Har­ri­son describe it in a 1967 inter­view with David Frost. The next year, hap­pi­ly prac­tic­ing, and fever­ish­ly writ­ing, in India, Lennon received let­ters from fans, and respond­ed with enthu­si­asm.

In answer to a let­ter from a fan named Beth, evi­dent­ly a devout Chris­t­ian and appar­ent­ly threat­ened by TM and con­cerned for the bands’ immor­tal souls, Lennon wrote the fol­low­ing (see his hand­writ­ten reply at the top):

Dear Beth:

Thank you for your let­ter and your kind thoughts. When you read that we are in India search­ing for peace, etc, it is not that we need faith in God or Jesus — we have full faith in them; it is only as if you went to stay with Bil­ly Gra­ham for a short time — it just so hap­pens that our guru (teacher) is Indi­an — and what is more nat­ur­al for us to come to India — his home. He also holds cours­es in Europe and Amer­i­ca — and we will prob­a­bly go to some of these as well — to learn — and to be near him.

Tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion is not opposed to any reli­gion — it is based on the basic truths of all reli­gions — the com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Jesus said: “The King­dom of Heav­en is with­in you” — and he meant just that — “The King­dom of Heav­en is at hand” — not in some far dis­tant time — or after death — but now.

Med­i­ta­tion takes the mind down to that lev­el of con­scious­ness which is Absolute Bliss (Heav­en) and through con­stant con­tact with that state — “the peace that sur­pass­es all under­stand­ing” — one grad­u­al­ly becomes estab­lished in that state even when one is not med­i­tat­ing. All this gives one actu­al expe­ri­ence of God — not by detach­ment or renun­ci­a­tion — when Jesus was fast­ing etc in the desert 40 days & nights he would have been doing some form of med­i­ta­tion — not just sit­ting in the sand and pray­ing — although me it will be a true Chris­t­ian — which I try to be with all sin­cer­i­ty — it does not pre­vent me from acknowl­edg­ing Bud­dha — Mohammed — and all the great men of God. God bless you — jai guru dev.

With love,
John Lennon

This hard­ly sounds like the man who imag­ined no reli­gion. A fan in India wrote Lennon less to inquire and more to acquire, name­ly mon­ey for a trip around the world so that he could “dis­cov­er the ‘huge trea­sure’ nec­es­sary for achiev­ing inner peace.” Lennon respond­ed with a brief rebuke of the man’s mate­r­i­al aspi­ra­tions, then rec­om­mend­ed TM, “through which all things are pos­si­ble.” (He signs both let­ters with “jai guru dev,” or “I give thanks to the Guru Dev,” the Maharishi’s teacher. The phrase also appears as the refrain in his “Across the Uni­verse.”)

The let­ters come from an excel­lent col­lec­tion of his cor­re­spon­dence, The John Lennon Let­ters, which includes oth­er mis­sives extolling the virtues of tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion. We might take his word for it based on the strength of the cre­ative work he pro­duced dur­ing the peri­od. We could also take the word of David Lynch, who describes med­i­ta­tion as the way he catch­es the cre­ative “big fish.” Or we could go out and find our own meth­ods for expand­ing our minds and tap­ping into cre­ative poten­tial.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

Watch John Lennon’s Last Live Per­for­mance (1975): “Imag­ine,” “Stand By Me” & More

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

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