Weezer Covers Toto’s “Africa” & Makes a Young Fan’s Dream Come True: The Latest, Greatest Cover of the 1983 Song

in Music | June 14th, 2018

Last month, rock band Weez­er per­formed a remark­able bit of fan ser­vice: tak­ing a request from a fan’s Twit­ter and grant­i­ng it. A user called, appro­pri­ate­ly, “Weez­er Cov­er Africa by Toto,” has been bad­ger­ing the band since Decem­ber of 2017 to do just that. The per­son behind the account is 15-year-old Mary from Ohio, who is both a seri­ous fan of Weez­er and of “Africa,” which she first heard on an episode of “Stranger Things.”

Though the band decid­ed to help Mary out, they had a lit­tle bit of fun first, trolling her and cov­er­ing “Rosan­na,” Toto’s big­ger hit (it won Record of the Year at the 1983 Gram­mys ). A few days lat­er, they dropped “Africa”…and watched as it sailed to the top of the iTunes charts. (If you’re won­der­ing, the orig­i­nal reached the top spot in the Bill­board 100 back in 1983).

Now, if you know the orig­i­nal, Weezer’s cov­er is pret­ty note-for-note. One could argue that Toto, mocked for its smooth pop lean­ings, actu­al­ly rock hard­er than Weez­er, espe­cial­ly in the song’s cho­rus.
But Mary’s obses­sion with “Africa” doesn’t come out of nowhere. YouTube is full of odd cov­ers of the song.

Here’s a loop ped­al and piano ver­sion from Peter Bence:

Or how about a choral group’s ver­sion, com­plete with a ASMR-tas­tic recre­ation of a rain­storm.

You could also watch a rub­ber chick­en have a go:

But my cur­rent favorite is this very enthu­si­as­tic Nordic met­al cov­er from Leo Morac­chi­oli and friends:

Why do peo­ple more than ever love “Africa”? When it came out it was def­i­nite­ly a hit, but over 35 years or so it’s tran­scend­ed its cheesy pop sta­tus to become a “clas­sic” of pop con­struc­tion, filled with dynam­ic changes, mul­ti­part har­monies, and a com­plex arrange­ment. There’s noth­ing iron­ic in lov­ing it.

Annie Zales­ki, in her Salon arti­cle on the song’s endur­ing pow­er, describes its world music indul­gences and its rhythm:

With­out flash or fan­fare, “Africa” incor­po­rates con­gas, marim­bas, the gong and oth­er per­cus­sion flour­ish­es, giv­ing the song a tex­tured veloc­i­ty. Under­neath it all is a hyp­not­ic groove, resem­bling a con­stant, gen­tle push — one that keeps the song pul­sat­ing for­ward. When lis­ten­ing to “Africa,” it’s impos­si­ble to stay still; the song’s innate move­ment is infec­tious.

Co-writer David Paich (Toto’s key­boardist) explained the thoughts behind the lyrics in a Grant­land inter­view, explain­ing they stemmed from his days as a Catholic school­boy and hear­ing tales of mis­sion­ary work:

I had all these things rat­tling about in my brain when I was writ­ing the song. All these thoughts about priests and young social work­ers that have gone over there, devot­ing their lives to help­ing peo­ple, and hav­ing to choose what kind of life they’re going to have — whether to keep doing this, what I’m doing here, or can I have a life, get mar­ried, have kids, and do that kind of thing. So it was a life choice mixed in with a geo­graph­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion there.

But as he also says, the line “I bless the rains down in Africa” just popped out when he first start­ed work­ing on the cho­rus. The vers­es were writ­ten after to explain the mys­tery of the cho­rus. Also: the song was added at the last minute, clos­ing off the album, which opens with “Rosan­na,” per­fect book­ends which the rest of the album can’t reach.

And final­ly, if you’re still fas­ci­nat­ed with the song, Rick Beato checks out the indi­vid­ual mul­ti-tracks on his series “What Makes This Song So Great.” By the end, you might just have the answer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

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

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

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

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How to Film Thought: A Close Look at the Masterful Editing of Sherlock, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch

in Film, Television | June 13th, 2018

What has drawn Sher­lock, the BBC tele­vi­sion series star­ring a mod­ern-day ver­sion of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved con­sult­ing detec­tive, such great acclaim? Some of it, of course, has to do with the for­mi­da­ble act­ing skills of Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch in the title role. But if you believe Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the video essay­ist the Nerd­writer, much of the genius of this “intox­i­cat­ing­ly inven­tive TV show” lies in the edit­ing.

The plot of each episode runs on how Sher­lock “gets from point A to point B, from prob­lem to solu­tion, mys­tery to clar­i­ty,” and just as Cum­ber­batch must con­vinc­ing­ly por­tray the fig­ur­ing-out process with his per­for­mance, so must the edi­tors with their cuts. Puschak illus­trates Sher­lock’s cre­ative, idea-dense way of doing this with just one sequence of three min­utes and 42 sec­onds. It comes trig­gered by a bout of with­draw­al from cocaine, a choice that stays true to the nature of the char­ac­ter Conan Doyle cre­at­ed, bril­liant but also a drug addict.

Dur­ing this sequence, Sher­lock arrives at just what every good detec­tive sto­ry needs: a rev­e­la­tion, a moment when both he and we see the pieces of infor­ma­tion the sto­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly pre­sent­ed from a new angle, in a way that reveals the cru­cial rela­tion­ship between them. And as essen­tial­ly a cin­e­mat­ic work, Sher­lock lit­er­al­ly shows it from not just one but many new angles, even from per­spec­tives impos­si­ble in real life. As with any well-craft­ed piece of edit­ing, you can only feel this sequence’s pow­er when you watch it, not when you read it described. Puschak takes full advan­tage of his own form, the video essay, to not just show it to us but break it down to its con­stituent ele­ments.

Conan Doyle’s orig­i­nal Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries won their wide and avid read­er­ship by offer­ing a glimpse into the work­ings of an unusu­al mind, mak­ing them leg­i­ble in text. Sher­lock goes a dimen­sion fur­ther by mak­ing them leg­i­ble in image and sound. The rela­tion­ship between the two par­al­lels the rela­tion­ship between the tra­di­tion­al essay and the video essay: the lat­ter, in this case, allows us to fol­low the process of Puschak’s thoughts about Sher­lock not just tex­tu­al­ly but audio­vi­su­al­ly as well. And with his chan­nel’s just hav­ing passed one mil­lion sub­scribers, he seems well on the way to achiev­ing a Sher­lock­ian lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Hear the Vin­tage Sher­lock Holmes Radio Dra­ma, Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son

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

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

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

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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Enter a Digitized Collection of 38,000 Pamphlets & Periodicals From the French Revolution

in History | June 13th, 2018

“What oth­er solu­tion but rev­o­lu­tion?” asks Jon­ah Wal­ters of the con­di­tions for most of the pop­u­la­tion in late-18th cen­tu­ry France. The major­i­ty lived in abject pover­ty; “the eco­nom­ic sub­ju­ga­tion in the coun­try­side was pro­found.” The urban workers—or sans-culottes—fared lit­tle bet­ter. “The cler­gy and nobil­i­ty,” on the oth­er hand, “com­pris­ing about 1.6 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, were doing just fine—most nobles lived in extreme opu­lence.” This out­line sketch­es the barest con­text for the resent­ment that fueled the vio­lence of the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions even­tu­al­ly car­ried out by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Tri­bunal.

Lawyer and ora­tor Georges Dan­ton, who had argued force­ful­ly for the killing of Louis XVI, pro­posed the Tri­bunal, in fact, as a means of stem­ming ter­ror. “I shall go so far as to say,” he declared, “that if a tri­bunal had been in exis­tence” in the years between 1789 and 1793, “the peo­ple, who have been so often and so cru­el­ly rebuked for the actions of these days, would not have cov­ered them with blood.” He advo­cat­ed that the tri­bunal “be ter­ri­ble in order that the peo­ple may be spared the neces­si­ty of being ter­ri­ble.” The fol­low­ing year, Dan­ton him­self was behead­ed, accused of lenien­cy and self-indul­gence.

Like his con­tem­po­raries Robe­spierre and Marat, Danton’s sto­ry illus­trates the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies’ elo­quent ide­al­ism and their com­mit­ment to the exe­cu­tion of roy­al­ists, coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, and thou­sands of accused crim­i­nals as a means of remak­ing the nation and ful­ly destroy­ing the Ancien Régime. Kingston University’s Marisa Lin­ton sums up the polit­i­cal cri­sis:

The French went almost overnight from being an absolute monar­chy to a polit­i­cal sys­tem in which the will of the peo­ple replaced that of the king. In the absence of tra­di­tions of par­lia­men­tary rule, the French fell back on uni­ver­sal­ist abstract prin­ci­ples and Enlight­en­ment rhetoric which were to prove increas­ing­ly divi­sive and leave no space for legit­i­mate oppo­si­tion. In this cli­mate, all polit­i­cal rivals had the poten­tial to be denounced as con­spir­a­tors against pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty.

As in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion a few years ear­li­er, these debates took place in pub­lic via speech­es, peri­od­i­cals, and pam­phlets, which were print­ed by the tens of thou­sands. Chicago’s New­ber­ry Library French Rev­o­lu­tion Col­lec­tion hous­es on the Inter­net Archive “more than 30,000” such pam­phlets and “more than 23,000 issues of 180 peri­od­i­cals pub­lished between 1780 and 1810…. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents the opin­ions of all the fac­tions that opposed and defend­ed the monar­chy dur­ing the tur­bu­lent peri­od between 1789 and 1799 and also con­tains innu­mer­able ephemer­al pub­li­ca­tions of the ear­ly Repub­lic.”

Much of the impres­sive New­ber­ry col­lec­tion, “among the most com­pre­hen­sive in the world,” has been dig­i­tized and made freely avail­able via the French Rev­o­lu­tion Pam­phlets Dig­i­tal Ini­tia­tive. Addi­tion­al­ly, the New­ber­ry has an open project for trans­lat­ing these pam­phlets into Eng­lish “in order to broad­en access, aid class­room instruc­tion, and sup­port schol­ar­ship.” The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the mate­ri­als are, of course, in French, but some few are also in Latin and oth­er lan­guages.

The pam­phlet at the top is one of sev­er­al trans­lat­ed by the stu­dents of DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Pas­cale-Anne Brault. This doc­u­ment announces the ver­dict of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Court against Jean-Bap­tiste Car­ri­er, a for­mer deputy of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion who stood accused of hor­rif­ic atroc­i­ties in the com­mis­sion of his duties, includ­ing “drown­ing men, women, chil­dren” and “assas­si­nat­ing a large num­ber of peo­ple and burn­ing towns, where men and women had their throats cut and girls were raped.” The judg­ment claims that “Nero was less blood­thirsty” than Car­ri­er and his accom­plices.

Fur­ther up, we see the first page of a pam­phlet writ­ten by René Louis Delagueulle, a mem­ber of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion, detail­ing plans for “a Repub­li­can Edu­ca­tion of the Peo­ple.” Delagueulle begins his pro­pos­al with a set of jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, among them the need for full employ­ment. “This mea­sure equal­ly oblig­es all cit­i­zens to learn,” he writes, “at a set age, an art, a trade or a pro­fes­sion capa­ble of procur­ing them the means of sub­sis­tence. We have decreed equal­i­ty: we wish it not to be an emp­ty name, that it remain illu­so­ry & with­out real­i­ty; for in a demo­c­ra­t­ic & pop­u­lar Repub­lic, the law of equal­i­ty is the only law that can bring about com­mon hap­pi­ness.”

Just above, see a pam­phlet titled “The Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Women,” penned in 1792 by an anony­mous col­lec­tive of female French cit­i­zens writ­ing under the pseu­do­nym Phi­laletes (Greek for “lover of truth”). The pam­phlet con­sists of sev­en­teen arti­cles enu­mer­at­ing the rights of free speech for French women. “Women are born, live, and die with the right to speak,” states the first arti­cle. “They are equal in their ambi­tion in this regard.” The doc­u­ment ends with a “Ded­i­ca­tion Epis­tle to Female Cit­i­zens,” which begins, “for too long the Assem­blée Nationale has made you wait for the dec­la­ra­tion of your rights; it is essen­tial and urgent that they be pro­claimed.”

These fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ments rep­re­sent just a tiny sam­pling of the thou­sands of pam­phlets avail­able, though most of them remain to be trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. You can vol­un­teer to help with the trans­la­tion ini­tia­tive here. And enter the enor­mous archive of near­ly 40,000 pam­phlets, orga­nized by year, sub­ject, cre­ator, col­lec­tion, and lan­guage, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Explore 5,300 Rare Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized by the Vat­i­can: From The Ili­ad & Aeneid, to Japan­ese & Aztec Illus­tra­tions

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

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

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The Causes & Prevalence of Suicide Explained by Two Videos from Alain de Botton’s School of Life

in Life, Philosophy | June 13th, 2018

“Sui­cide,” writes Albert Camus in “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” has nev­er been dealt with except as a social phe­nom­e­non.” And yet, as Alain de Bot­ton argues in his School of Life video above, at least when it comes to media and gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties, con­tem­po­rary soci­eties pre­fer to hard­ly deal with the prob­lem at all, even though it claims the lives of some 800,000 peo­ple every year. “It remains entire­ly strange,” says De Bot­ton, “that through the media we should hear so much about killers and so lit­tle about those who take their own lives.”

Giv­en that so much mass media seems to spe­cial­ize in pro­duc­ing a fear of oth­ers, per­haps this is not so strange after all. How­ev­er, when it comes to the allo­ca­tion of gov­ern­ment resources, most “in the wealthy nations tend over­whelm­ing­ly to direct their efforts to deal­ing with pover­ty, ill­ness, and aging,” and devote lit­tle to the prob­lem of sui­cide. This may be due to social stig­ma. “Sui­cide is the supreme reminder of our intense psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” and in high­ly reli­gious soci­eties, like the Unit­ed States, it car­ries an added stigma­ti­za­tion as a “sin.”

Nonethe­less, “giv­en that more peo­ple die by sui­cide than are col­lec­tive­ly mur­dered, die in traf­fic acci­dents, or are killed by ani­mals,” it should stand to rea­son that we would expend more effort on find­ing out why. Per­haps over and above phi­los­o­phy and the social sci­ences, De Bot­ton argues that lit­er­a­ture alerts us to the impor­tance of sev­er­al qual­i­ties that make our lives mat­ter, includ­ing “love, self accep­tance, mean­ing, hope, sta­tus, pride, for­give­ness.” Such intan­gi­bles have no price or val­ue in the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­places that increas­ing­ly dom­i­nate our lives.

The triv­i­al­iza­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal needs leads to anoth­er com­mon fea­ture of suicide—the “ele­ment of sur­prise.” The sui­cide of those we know, or thought we knew, near­ly always comes as a shock, which De Bot­ton takes as “evi­dence of an unwit­ting neglect of one anoth­er (and of our­selves).” It does not serve us at all to live in denial of suf­fer­ing or push despair to the mar­gins of thought. “We should always be mind­ful,” Arthur Schopen­hauer wrote in 1818, “of the fact that no man is ever very far from the state in which he would read­i­ly want to seize a sword or poi­son in order to bring his exis­tence to an end.”

Schopenhauer’s grim uni­ver­sal­iz­ing state­ment, how­ev­er, does not accord with the vast dif­fer­ences in sui­cide rates across soci­eties. Cer­tain coun­tries, like Kuwait, have rates close to zero, or 0.1 in 100,000. By con­trast, Chi­na has the high­est rate of all, at 25.6 in 100,000. One sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence, De Bot­ton argues, has to do with the “inter­pre­ta­tion and accep­tance of dif­fi­cul­ty,” includ­ing “a greater accep­tance of fail­ure, a high­er role for for­give­ness,” and “a sta­tus sys­tem that hon­ors intrin­sic val­ue over achieve­ment.”

The dif­fer­ence in sui­cide rates between nations does not have any­thing to do, how­ev­er, with wealth. “One of the most sur­pris­ing aspects of sui­cide,” De Bot­ton observes in the video above, is that rates tend to rise “marked­ly the rich­er and more devel­oped a soci­ety becomes,” a phe­nom­e­non that might appear to “negate the whole pur­pose of eco­nom­ic growth”—that is, if we assume the pur­pose is the max­i­miza­tion of human well-being. The sui­cide rate of an “unde­vel­oped coun­try like the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go,” he notes, “is a frac­tion of the rate of a devel­oped coun­try like South Korea.”

De Bot­ton does not address the prob­lem of inequal­i­ty with­in wealthy soci­eties. The Unit­ed States, for exam­ple, the wealth­i­est coun­try in record­ed his­to­ry, also has the great­est degree of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in his­to­ry. Here, sui­cide rates have risen an aston­ish­ing 25% over­all and over 30% in half of the states since 1999. De Botton’s cul­tur­al expla­na­tion for wide­ly vary­ing sui­cide rates between dif­fer­ent kinds of soci­eties may help us under­stand that alarm­ing increase.

Para­phras­ing the work of soci­ol­o­gist Emile Durkheim, he tells us that “the cru­cial fac­tor behind people’s deci­sion to end their lives is not real­ly wealth or pover­ty…. It’s the extent to which the sur­round­ing cul­ture ascribes respon­si­bil­i­ty for fail­ure to indi­vid­u­als” rather than to exter­nal fac­tors beyond our con­trol. Ide­olo­gies of indi­vid­u­al­ism and mer­i­toc­ra­cy cre­ate gross­ly exag­ger­at­ed beliefs about our abil­i­ty to influ­ence events in our favor, and gross­ly exag­ger­ate the shame and stig­ma heaped upon us when we can­not do so.

This makes high-pro­file celebri­ty sui­cides seem to us the ulti­mate conun­drum, since such peo­ple appear, at least super­fi­cial­ly, to have it “all”: wealth, pow­er, tal­ent, sta­tus, and acclaim. But the celebri­ty cul­ture that ele­vates some peo­ple beyond the reach of ordi­nary mor­tals can also be pro­found­ly iso­lat­ing, cre­at­ing illu­sions of hap­pi­ness rather than gen­uine ful­fill­ment. We can nev­er tru­ly know what pri­vate griefs and per­son­al feel­ings of fail­ure and sor­row oth­er peo­ple live with. Tend­ing to our emo­tion­al needs, in spite of soci­etal pres­sures and nar­ra­tives, is crit­i­cal for sui­cide pre­ven­tion and can great­ly deep­en our care and com­pas­sion for our­selves and those around us.

Sui­cide is one of the top 10 caus­es of death in the U.S. right now. Call 1–800-273-TALK (8255) for help and sup­port.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

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

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How Dr. Martens’ Boots Are Made

in Fashion | June 13th, 2018

In recent months, we’ve high­light­ed how Dr. Martens, the icon­ic boot mak­er, has tried to rein­vent itself by cre­at­ing more artis­ti­cal­ly inspired boots, some actu­al­ly adorn­ing the art­work of William Blake, Hierony­mus Bosch, and tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese artists. These aren’t your grand­fa­ther’s Doc Martens, to be sure.

But how­ev­er dif­fer­ent Docs may now look on the out­side, they haven’t changed much on the inside. Just watch the video above, which takes you on a tour of “Dr. Martens’ only UK fac­to­ry on Cobbs Lane in Wol­las­ton, Northamp­ton­shire.” The fac­to­ry “employs 50 work­ers that make about 100,000 pairs of boots per year,” all in the com­pa­ny’s tried and true way.…

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:

Doc Martens Now Come Adorned with William Blake’s Art, Thanks to a Part­ner­ship with Tate Britain

Doc Martens Boots Adorned with Hierony­mus Bosch’s “Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights”

Doc Martens Boots Now Come Adorned with Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Art

 

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Optical Scanning Technology Lets Researchers Recover Lost Indigenous Languages from Old Wax Cylinder Recordings

in History, Science, Technology | June 12th, 2018

In an 1878 North Amer­i­can Review descrip­tion of his new inven­tion, the phono­graph, which tran­scribed sound on wax-cov­ered met­al cylin­ders, Thomas Edi­son sug­gest­ed a num­ber of pos­si­ble uses: “Let­ter writ­ing and all kinds of dic­ta­tion with­out the aid of a stenog­ra­ph­er,” “Phono­graph­ic books” for the blind, “the teach­ing of elo­cu­tion,” and, of course, “Repro­duc­tion of music.” He did not, vision­ary though he was, con­ceive of one extra­or­di­nary use to which wax cylin­ders might be put—the recov­ery or recon­struc­tion of extinct and endan­gered indige­nous lan­guages and cul­tures in Cal­i­for­nia.

And yet, 140 years after Edison’s inven­tion, this may be the most cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant use of the wax cylin­der to date. “Among the thou­sands of wax cylin­ders” at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy, writes Hyperallergic’s Alli­son Meier, “are songs and spo­ken-word record­ings in 78 indige­nous lan­guages of Cal­i­for­nia. Some of these lan­guages, record­ed between 1900 and 1938, no longer have liv­ing speak­ers.”

Such is the case with Yahi, a lan­guage spo­ken by a man called “Ishi,” who was sup­pos­ed­ly the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of his cul­ture when anthro­pol­o­gist Alfred Kroe­ber met him in 1911. Kroe­ber record­ed near­ly 6 hours of Ishi’s speech on 148 wax cylin­ders, many of which are now bad­ly degrad­ed.

“The exist­ing ver­sions” of these arti­facts “sound ter­ri­ble,” says Berke­ley lin­guist Andrew Gar­rett in the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion video at the top, but through dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion much of this rare audio can be restored. Gar­rett describes the project—supported joint­ly by the NSF and NEH—as a “dig­i­tal repa­tri­a­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage.” Using an opti­cal scan­ning tech­nique, sci­en­tists can recov­er data from these frag­ile mate­ri­als with­out fur­ther dam­ag­ing them. You can see audio preser­va­tion­ist Carl Haber describe the advanced meth­ods above.

The project rep­re­sents a sci­en­tif­ic break­through and also a stark reminder of the geno­cide and humil­i­a­tion of indige­nous peo­ple in the Amer­i­can west. When he was found, “starv­ing, dis­ori­ent­ed and sep­a­rat­ed from his tribe,” writes Jes­si­ca Jimenez at The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian, Ishi was “believed to be the last Yahi man in exis­tence because of the Three Knolls Mas­sacre in 1866, in which the entire Yahi tribe was thought to have been slaugh­tered.” (Accord­ing to anoth­er Berke­ley schol­ar his sto­ry may be more com­pli­cat­ed.) He was “put on dis­play at the muse­um, where out­siders could watch him make arrows and describe aspects of Yahi cul­ture.” He nev­er revealed his name (“Ishi” means “man”) and died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1916.

The wax cylin­ders will allow schol­ars to recov­er oth­er lan­guages, sto­ries, and songs from peo­ples destroyed or dec­i­mat­ed by the 19th cen­tu­ry “Indi­an Wars.” Between 1900 and 1940, Kroe­ber and his col­leagues record­ed “Native Cal­i­for­ni­ans from many regions and cul­tures,” the Berke­ley project page explains, “speak­ing and singing; recit­ing his­to­ries, nar­ra­tives and prayers, list­ing names for places and objects among many oth­er things, all in a wide vari­ety of lan­guages. Many of the lan­guages record­ed on the cylin­ders have trans­formed, fall­en out of use, or are no longer spo­ken at all, mak­ing this col­lec­tion a unique and invalu­able resource for lin­guists and con­tem­po­rary com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers hop­ing to learn about or revi­tal­ize lan­guages, or retrieve impor­tant piece of cul­tur­al her­itage.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

1,000+ Haunt­ing & Beau­ti­ful Pho­tos of Native Amer­i­can Peo­ples, Shot by the Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Edward S. Cur­tis (Cir­ca 1905)

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

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Visualizing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Drawings of Dante’s Inferno from the Renaissance Through Today

in Art, Literature, Maps | June 12th, 2018

The light was depart­ing. The brown air drew down
     all the earth’s crea­tures, call­ing them to rest
     from their day-rov­ing, as I, one man alone,

pre­pared myself to face the dou­ble war
     of the jour­ney and the pity, which mem­o­ry
     shall here set down, nor hes­i­tate, nor err.

Read­ing Dante’s Infer­no, and Divine Com­e­dy gen­er­al­ly, can seem a daunt­ing task, what with the book’s wealth of allu­sion to 14th cen­tu­ry Flo­ren­tine pol­i­tics and medieval Catholic the­ol­o­gy. Much depends upon a good trans­la­tion. Maybe it’s fit­ting that the proverb about trans­la­tors as trai­tors comes from Ital­ian. The first Dante that came my way—the unabridged Car­lyle-Okey-Wick­steed Eng­lish translation—renders the poet’s terza rima in lead­en prose, which may well be a lit­er­ary betray­al.

Gone is the rhyme scheme, self-con­tained stan­zas, and poet­ic com­pres­sion, replaced by wordi­ness, anti­quat­ed dic­tion, and need­less den­si­ty. I labored through the text and did not much enjoy it. I’m far from an expert by any stretch, but was much relieved to lat­er dis­cov­er John Ciardi’s more faith­ful Eng­lish ren­der­ing, which imme­di­ate­ly impress­es upon the sens­es and the mem­o­ry, as in the descrip­tion above in the first stan­zas of Can­to II.

The sole advan­tage, per­haps, of the trans­la­tion I first encoun­tered lies in its use of illus­tra­tions, maps, and dia­grams. While read­ers can fol­low the poem’s vivid action with­out visu­al aids, these lend to the text a kind of imag­i­na­tive mate­ri­al­i­ty: say­ing yes, of course, this is a real place—see, it’s right here! We can sus­pend our dis­be­lief, per­haps, in Catholic doc­trine and, dou­bly, in Dante’s weird­ly offi­cious, com­i­cal­ly bureau­crat­ic, scheme of hell.

Indeed, read­ers of Dante have been inspired to map his Infer­no for almost as long as they have been inspired to trans­late it into oth­er languages—and we might con­sid­er these maps more-or-less-faith­ful visu­al trans­la­tions of the Infer­no’s descrip­tions. One of the first maps of Dante’s hell (top) appeared in San­dro Botticelli’s series of nine­ty illus­tra­tions, which the Renais­sance great and fel­low Flo­ren­tine made on com­mis­sion for Loren­zo de’Medici in the 1480s and 90s.

Botticelli’s “Chart of Hell,” writes Deb­o­rah Park­er, “has long been laud­ed as one of the most com­pelling visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions… a panop­tic dis­play of the descent made by Dante and Vir­gil through the ‘abysmal val­ley of pain.’” Below it, we see one of Anto­nio Manetti’s 1506 wood­cut illus­tra­tions, a series of cross-sec­tions and detailed views. Maps con­tin­ued to pro­lif­er­ate: see print­mak­er Anto­nio Maretti’s 1529 dia­gram fur­ther up, Joannes Stradanus’ 1587 ver­sion, above, and, below, a 1612 illus­tra­tion below by Jacques Cal­lot.

Dante’s hell lends itself to any num­ber of visu­al treat­ments, from the pure­ly schemat­ic to the broad­ly imag­i­na­tive and inter­pre­tive. Michelan­ge­lo Caetani’s 1855 cross-sec­tion chart, below, lacks the illus­tra­tive detail of oth­er maps, but its use of col­or and high­ly orga­nized label­ing sys­tem makes it far more leg­i­ble that Callot’s beau­ti­ful but busy draw­ing above.

Though we are with­in our rights as read­ers to see Dante’s hell as pure­ly metaphor­i­cal, there are his­tor­i­cal rea­sons beyond reli­gious belief for why more lit­er­al maps became pop­u­lar in the 15th cen­tu­ry, “includ­ing,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra, “the gen­er­al pop­u­lar­i­ty of car­tog­ra­phy at the time and the Renais­sance obses­sion with pro­por­tions and mea­sure­ment.”

Even after hun­dreds of years of cul­tur­al shifts and upheavals, the Infer­no and its humor­ous and hor­rif­ic scenes of tor­ture still retain a fas­ci­na­tion for mod­ern read­ers and for illus­tra­tors like Daniel Heald, whose 1994 map, above, while lack­ing Botticelli’s gild­ed bril­liance, presents us with a clear visu­al guide through that per­plex­ing val­ley of pain, which remains—in the right trans­la­tion or, doubt­less, in its orig­i­nal language—a plea­sure for read­ers who are will­ing to descend into its cir­cu­lar depths. Or, short of that, we can take a dig­i­tal train and esca­la­tors into an 8‑bit video game ver­sion.

See more maps of Dante’s Infer­no here, here, and here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

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

Hear Dante’s Infer­no Read Aloud by Influ­en­tial Poet & Trans­la­tor John Cia­r­di (1954)

Robert Rauschenberg’s 34 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Infer­no (1958–60)

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

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James Hill Plays Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on the Ukulele: Watch One Musician Become a Complete Band

in Music | June 12th, 2018

James Hill, an award-win­ning ukulele play­er and song­writer from Cana­da, has been called a “ukulele wun­derkind,” and an artist who “gives the ukulele its dig­ni­ty back with­out ever tak­ing him­self too seri­ous­ly.” The video above puts Hill’s lighter side and wun­derkind tal­ents on full dis­play.

Per­form­ing live for a crowd in Cal­i­for­nia, Hill and his “imag­i­nary band” per­form an enchant­i­ng ver­sion of Michael Jack­son’s “Bil­lie Jean.” With just a uke, Hill plays the bass line, per­cus­sion, and piano parts. Put it all togeth­er, and you have a fas­ci­nat­ing one-man ukulele per­for­mance. But wait until you see what he can do with a uke, chop­sticks and comb…

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:

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

19-Year-Old Russ­ian Gui­tarist Plays an Inge­nious Cov­er of Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean”

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

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