Hear the World’s Oldest Known Song, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” Written 3,400 Years Ago

Do you like old timey music?

Splen­did.

You can’t get more old timey than Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6, which was dis­cov­ered on a clay tablet in the ancient Syr­i­an port city of Ugar­it in the 1950s, and is over 3400 year old.

Actu­al­ly, you can — a sim­i­lar tablet mak­ing ref­er­ence to Lip­it-Ishtar, a hymn glo­ri­fy­ing the 5th king of the First Dynasty of Isin, in what is now Iraq, is old­er by some 600 years, but as CMUSE reports, it “con­tains lit­tle more than tun­ing instruc­tions for the lyre.”

Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 offers meati­er con­tent, and unlike five oth­er tablets dis­cov­ered in the same loca­tion, is suf­fi­cient­ly well pre­served to allow arche­ol­o­gists, and oth­ers, to take a crack at recon­struct­ing its song, though it was by no means easy.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of Assyri­ol­o­gy Anne Kilmer spent 15 years research­ing the tablet, before tran­scrib­ing it into mod­ern musi­cal nota­tion in 1972.

Hers is one of sev­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions YouTu­ber hochela­ga sam­ples in the above video.

While the orig­i­nal tablet gives spe­cif­ic details on how the musi­cian should place their fin­gers on the lyre, oth­er ele­ments, like tun­ing or how long notes should be held, are absent, giv­ing mod­ern arrangers some room for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Below archaeo­mu­si­col­o­gist Richard Dum­b­rill explains his inter­pre­ta­tion from 1998, in which vocal­ist Lara Jokhad­er assumes the part of a young woman pri­vate­ly appeal­ing to the god­dess Nikkal to make her fer­tile:

Here’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly love­ly clas­si­cal gui­tar spin, cour­tesy of Syr­i­an musi­col­o­gist Raoul Vitale and com­pos­er Feras Rada

And a haunt­ing piano ver­sion, by Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can com­pos­er Malek Jan­dali, founder of Pianos for Peace:

And who can resist a chance to hear Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 on a repli­ca of an ancient lyre by “new ances­tral” com­pos­er Michael Levy, who con­sid­ers it his musi­cal mis­sion to “open a por­tal to a time that has been all but for­got­ten:”

 I dream to rekin­dle the very spir­it of our ancient ances­tors. To cap­ture, for just a few moments, a time when peo­ple imag­ined the fab­ric of the uni­verse was woven from har­monies and notes. To lux­u­ri­ate in a gen­tler time when the fragili­ty of life was tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed and its every action was per­formed in the almighty sense of awe felt for the ancient gods.

Samu­rai Gui­tarist Steve Onotera chan­nels the mys­tery of antiq­ui­ty too, by com­bin­ing Dr. Dumbrill’s melody with Dr. Kilmer’s, try­ing and dis­card­ing a num­ber of approach­es — syn­th­wave, lo-fi hip hop, reg­gae dub (“an absolute dis­as­ter”) — before decid­ing it was best ren­dered as a solo for his Fend­er elec­tric.

Ama­ranth Pub­lish­ing has sev­er­al MIDI files of Hur­ri­an Hymn No 6, includ­ing Dr. Kilmer’s, that you can down­load for free here.

Open them in the music nota­tion soft­ware pro­gram of your choice, and should it please the god­dess, per­haps yours will be the next inter­pre­ta­tion of Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 to be fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

The Evo­lu­tion of Music: 40,000 Years of Music His­to­ry Cov­ered in 8 Min­utes

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Only Written Eye-Witness Account of Pompeii’s Destruction: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Letters on the Mount Vesuvius Eruption

Though my shocked soul recoils, my tongue shall tell. — Pliny the Younger

A great deal of what we know — or think we know — about the destruc­tion of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum in 79 AD comes fil­tered through mod­ern mytholo­gies like the 1834 nov­el The Last Days of Pom­peii. Writ­ten by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton (the first nov­el­ist to start a tale with “It was a dark and stormy night”), the book’s Roman­tic fas­ci­na­tion with civ­i­liza­tion­al decay was one stream of think­ing that blames Pom­pei­ians them­selves, in part, for their destruc­tion. That blame man­i­fests as explic­it, or more sub­tle, sug­ges­tions of divine pun­ish­ment. Or it can look like chid­ing imprac­ti­cal res­i­dents who did­n’t get out in time or took the wrong route out of town to avoid the heavy down­pour of molten rock and ash, as though a vol­canic erup­tion were a traf­fic jam in a thun­der­storm.…

Blame is a reflex­ive defense against the hor­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that the scream­ing fig­ures frozen in ash could be us. There’s lit­tle to counter our cer­tain­ty from Pom­pei­ians them­selves. Some­where between 10,000 to 12,000 peo­ple got out in time (approx­i­mate­ly 2,000 were killed), but there are no exist­ing accounts from the city’s for­mer res­i­dents-turned- refugees. If they had any­thing to say about it lat­er, we’ll nev­er know. We do, how­ev­er, have an eye­wit­ness account of the destruc­tion. Its author, Pliny the Younger, watched from a van­tage point above the imme­di­ate scenes of pan­ic and death: his vil­la across the bay of Naples in Mis­enum. He also hap­pened to be nephew to the great Roman nat­u­ral­ist and mil­i­tary cam­paign­er Pliny the Elder, and an adept writer and keen observ­er of nature him­self.

Pliny the Younger’s let­ters — pub­lished in 9 vol­umes dur­ing his life­time, 10 after­ward — hold more inter­est for his­to­ri­ans than their descrip­tions of Vesu­vius. In his long life, “he was a poet, a sen­a­tor, a pub­lic offi­cial,” Joan Aco­cel­la writes at The New York­er. He had first­hand knowl­edge of “cel­e­brat­ed crimes” among the Roman elite. But the destruc­tion of Pom­peii was for­ma­tive: his uncle died in an attempt­ed evac­u­a­tion of the city by sea, a major event for Pliny and for Roman arms and let­ters. While the Younger had been at leisure in Mis­enum, the Elder had been at work, “in active com­mand of the fleet,” his nephew writes in a let­ter to his friend, fel­low lawyer, and lat­er famed his­to­ri­an Pub­lius Cor­nelius Tac­i­tus. Pliny begins with an expla­na­tion, more or less, for why he’s still alive.

When his uncle saw the “cloud of unusu­al size and appear­ance” ris­ing over the bay, he “ordered a boat made ready, telling me I could come with him if I wished.” Had the cau­tious nephew accept­ed his invi­ta­tion, Pliny the Younger would prob­a­bly have died at the age of 18, some­thing he sure­ly med­i­tat­ed upon from time to time in lat­er life. In the let­ter, he styles his uncle as a “hero” for his res­cue attempts. Pliny was­n’t there him­self to see these events, but he imag­ines what his uncle said and did. He even describes Pliny the Elder’s dra­mat­ic col­lapse and death in Stabi­ae, sev­er­al miles away across the Bay. It’s hard to sift the facts from lit­er­ary embell­ish­ment, but Pliny’s descrip­tions of Vesu­vius itself are vivid and ter­ri­fy­ing. The moun­tain, he writes, was cov­ered in “broad sheets of fire and leap­ing flames… their bright glare empha­sized by the dark­ness of night.”

His obser­va­tions of the ini­tial erup­tion seem high­ly cred­i­ble giv­en his actu­al loca­tion:

It was not clear at that dis­tance from which moun­tain the cloud was ris­ing (it was after­wards known to be Vesu­vius); its gen­er­al appear­ance can best be expressed as being like an umbrel­la pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branch­es, I imag­ine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsup­port­ed as the pres­sure sub­sided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and grad­u­al­ly dis­persed. In places it looked white, else­where blotched and dirty, accord­ing to the amount of soil and ash­es it car­ried with it.

Pliny seems to want to write more about what he saw, but he oblig­es Tac­i­tus’ request to tell the sto­ry of his uncle’s death. “You will pick out of this nar­ra­tive what­ev­er is most impor­tant,” he con­cludes. “For a let­ter is one thing, a his­to­ry anoth­er; it is one thing writ­ing as a friend, anoth­er thing writ­ing to the pub­lic.” You can hear the let­ter read in full in the YouTube video above from Voic­es of the Past.

The line between pub­lic his­to­ry and pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence may not be so clear as Pliny imag­ined, espe­cial­ly when his let­ters are the only eye­wit­ness sources we have. In a sec­ond mis­sive to Tac­i­tus, per his friend’s request, Pliny describes the scene back in Mis­enum on the sec­ond day of the erup­tion. He and his moth­er had debat­ed what to do, and final­ly decid­ed to evac­u­ate. Here, writ­ing about events he expe­ri­enced first­hand, he strays from the nar­ra­tive con­ven­tions of his first let­ter, con­vey­ing the chaot­ic atmos­phere of ter­ror all around him as they left. The let­ter is har­row­ing, and worth quot­ing at length.

Though Pliny him­self, at the end of the let­ter, pro­nounces it unwor­thy of inclu­sion in Tac­i­tus’ his­to­ry, it remains the one first­hand account to which we can turn when imag­in­ing the expe­ri­ence.

Ash­es were already falling, not as yet very thick­ly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was com­ing up behind us, spread­ing over the earth like a flood. ‘Let us leave the road while we can still see,’ I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down and tram­pled under­foot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We had scarce­ly sat down to rest when dark­ness fell, not the dark of a moon­less or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wail­ing of infants, and the shout­ing of men; some were call­ing their par­ents, oth­ers their chil­dren or their wives, try­ing to rec­og­nize them by their voic­es. Peo­ple bewailed their own fate or that of their rel­a­tives, and there were some who prayed for death in their ter­ror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imag­ined there were no gods left, and that the uni­verse was plunged into eter­nal dark­ness for ever­more.

There were peo­ple, too, who added to the real per­ils by invent­ing fic­ti­tious dan­gers: some report­ed that part of Mis­enum had col­lapsed or anoth­er part was on fire, and though their tales were false they found oth­ers to believe them. A gleam of light returned, but we took this to be a warn­ing of the approach­ing flames rather than day­light. How­ev­er, the flames remained some dis­tance off; then dark­ness came on once more and ash­es began to fall again, this time in heavy show­ers. We rose from time to time and shook them off, oth­er­wise we should have been buried and crushed beneath their weight. I could boast that not a groan or cry of fear escaped me in these per­ils, but I admit that I derived some poor con­so­la­tion in my mor­tal lot from the belief that the whole world was dying with me and I with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

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

Pink Lady and Jeff: Japan’s Biggest Pop Musicians Star in One of America’s Worst-Reviewed TV Shows (1980)

In 1963, Kyu Sakamo­to’s “Sukiya­ki” proved that a song sung in Japan­ese could top the charts in the Unit­ed States. Not that the Amer­i­can record­ing indus­try was quick to inter­nal­ize it: anoth­er Japan­ese sin­gle would­n’t break the Bill­board Top 40 for six­teen years, and even then it did so in Eng­lish. The song was “Kiss in the Dark” by Pink Lady, a pop duo con­sist­ing of Mit­suyo Nemo­to and Keiko Masu­da, bet­ter known as Mie and Kei. In 1978 they’d been the biggest pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non in their native coun­try, but the fol­low­ing year their star had begun unmis­tak­ably to fall. And so, like many passé West­ern acts who become “big in Japan,” Pink Lady attempt­ed to cross the Pacif­ic.

Mie and Kei made their Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion debut per­form­ing “Kiss in the Dark” on Leif Gar­ret­t’s CBS spe­cial in May 1979. Accounts dif­fer about what hap­pened next, but less than a year lat­er they had their own prime­time vari­ety show on NBC. Offi­cial­ly titled Pink Lady, it tends to be referred to these four decades lat­er as Pink Lady and Jeff. This owes to the role of its host, ris­ing (and NBC-con­tract­ed) young come­di­an Jeff Alt­man, who brought to the table not just his com­ic tim­ing and skill with impres­sions, but also his com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage. That last hap­pened not to be pos­sessed to any sig­nif­i­cant degree by Mie or Kei, who had to deliv­er both their songs and their jokes pho­net­i­cal­ly.

In the video at the top of the post, you can see a com­pi­la­tion of the high­lights of Pink Lady and Jeff’s entire run. Then again, “high­lights” may not be quite the word for a TV show now remem­bered as one of the worst ever aired. “Pink Lady and Jeff rep­re­sents an unpalat­able com­bi­na­tion of insti­tu­tions that were on their way out, like vari­ety shows, dis­co, and the tele­vi­sion empire of cre­ators and pup­peteers Sid and Mar­ty Krofft,” writes the AV Club’s Nathan Rabin. The Krofft broth­ers, cre­ators of H.R. Pufn­stuf and Land of the Lost, tell of hav­ing been tapped to devel­op a pro­gram around Mie and Kei by NBC pres­i­dent Fred Sil­ver­man, who’d hap­pened to see footage of one of their sta­di­um-fill­ing Tokyo con­certs on the news.

Sid Krofft remem­bers declar­ing his ambi­tion to make Pink Lady “the strangest thing that’s ever been on tele­vi­sion.” The star­tled Sil­ver­man’s response: “Let’s do Don­ny and Marie.” Don­ny Osmond him­self end­ed up being one of the show’s high-pro­file guest stars, a line­up that also includ­ed Blondie, Alice Coop­er, Sid Cae­sar, Ted­dy Pen­der­grass, Roy Orbi­son, Jer­ry Lewis, and even Lar­ry Hag­man just a week before the epochal shoot­ing of his char­ac­ter on Dal­las. None of them helped Pink Lady find enough of an audi­ence to sur­vive beyond its ini­tial six episodes (all avail­able to watch on Youtube), a dis­com­fit­ing mélange of gener­ic com­e­dy sketch­es, unsuit­able musi­cal per­for­mances (with pre­cious few excep­tions, Mie and Kei weren’t per­mit­ted to sing their own Japan­ese songs), and broad ref­er­ences to sushi, samu­rai, and sumo.

The main prob­lem, Alt­man said in a more recent inter­view, was that “the vari­ety show had run the gaunt­let already, and real­ly was not a for­mat that was going to live in the hearts and homes of peo­ple across Amer­i­ca any­more.” Not only had that long and earnest tele­vi­sion tra­di­tion come to its igno­min­ious end, it would soon be replaced by the iron­ic, ultra-satir­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty of Alt­man’s col­league in com­e­dy David Let­ter­man. But here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, Alt­man guess­es, the time may be ripe “for a vari­ety-type show to come back.” We live in an era, after all, when a piece of for­got­ten eight­ies Japan­ese pop can become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. And how­ev­er dim the prospects of the vari­ety show as a form, Mie and Kie them­selves have since man­aged more come­backs than all but their most die-hard fans can count.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Famed Art Crit­ic Robert Hugh­es Hosts the Pre­miere of 20/20, Where Tabloid TV News Began (1978)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

“When We All Have Pocket Telephones”: A 1920s Comic Accurately Predicts Our Cellphone-Dominated Lives

Much has been said late­ly about jokes that “haven’t aged well.” Some­times it has do to with shift­ing pub­lic sen­si­bil­i­ties, and some­times with a gag’s exag­ger­a­tion hav­ing been sur­passed by the facts of life. As a Twit­ter user named Max Salt­man post­ed not long ago, “I love find­ing New York­er car­toons so dat­ed that the joke is lost entire­ly and the car­toons become just descrip­tions of peo­ple doing nor­mal things.” The exam­ples includ­ed a par­ty­go­er admit­ting that “I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve down­loaded it from the inter­net,” and a teacher admon­ish­ing her stu­dents to “keep your eyes on your own screen.”

All of those New York­er car­toons appear to date from the nine­teen-nineties. Even more pre­scient yet much old­er is the Dai­ly Mir­ror car­toon at the top of the post, drawn by artist W. K. Haselden at some point between 1919 and 1923. It envi­sions a time “when we all have pock­et tele­phones,” liable to ring at the most incon­ve­nient times: “when run­ning for a train,” “when your hands are full,” “at a con­cert,” even “when you are being mar­ried.” Such a com­ic strip could nev­er, as they say, be pub­lished today — not because of its poten­tial to offend mod­ern sen­si­tiv­i­ties, but because of its sheer mun­dan­i­ty.

For here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, we all, indeed, have pock­et tele­phones. Not only that, we’ve grown so accus­tomed to them that Haselden’s car­toon feels rem­i­nis­cent of the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the nov­el­ty and pres­tige of cell­phones (to say noth­ing of their grat­ing­ly sim­ple ring­tones) made them feel more intru­sive in day-to-day-life. Now, increas­ing­ly, cell­phones are day-to-day life. Far from the lit­er­al “pock­et tele­phones” envi­sioned a cen­tu­ry ago, they’ve worked their way into near­ly every aspect of human exis­tence, includ­ing those Haselden could nev­er have con­sid­ered.

Yet this was­n’t the first time any­one had imag­ined such a thing. “Rumors of a ‘pock­et phone’ had been ring­ing around the world since 1906,” writes Laugh­ing Squid’s Lori Dorn. “A man named Charles E. Alden claimed to have cre­at­ed a device that could eas­i­ly fit inside a vest pock­et and used a ‘wire­less bat­tery.’ ” In the event, it would take near­ly eight decades for the first cell­phone to arrive on the mar­ket, and three more on top of that for them to become indis­pens­able in the West. Now the “pock­et tele­phone” has become the defin­ing device of our era all over the world, though the social norms around its use do remain a work in progress.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Cell­phone: Dis­cov­er Motorola’s DynaT­AC 8000X, a 2‑Pound Brick Priced at $3,995 (1984)

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Brilliantly Nightmarish Art & Troubled Life of Painter Francis Bacon

The paint­ings of Fran­cis Bacon con­tin­ue to trou­ble their view­ers, not least those view­ers who try to slot his work into a par­tic­u­lar genre or move­ment. Bacon rose to promi­nence paint­ing the human body, hard­ly an uncom­mon sub­ject, but he did so in the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, just when abstrac­tion had achieved near-com­plete dom­i­na­tion of West­ern art. Though his work may not have been delib­er­ate­ly fash­ion­able, it was­n’t straight­for­ward­ly real­is­tic either. Even as they incor­po­rat­ed human­i­ty, his artis­tic visions twist­ed it out of shape, often in com­pli­cat­ed­ly grotesque or bloody ways. What could have inspired such endur­ing­ly night­mar­ish work?

That ques­tion under­lies Fran­cis Bacon: A Brush with Vio­lence, the 2017 BBC Two doc­u­men­tary above. Some answers are to be found in the painter’s life, whose frag­ile and asth­mat­ic ear­ly years were shad­owed by the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence of the elder Bacon, a Boer War vet­er­an and race­horse train­er. As Bacon’s friend and deal­er Lord Gowrie says, “His father got his sta­ble boys to whip him, and I think that start­ed one or two things off.” Like many stud­ies, the film draws con­nec­tions between Bacon’s har­row­ing art­works and his even more har­row­ing sex life, con­duct­ed in shad­owy under­worlds at great — and to him, seem­ing­ly thrilling — risk of phys­i­cal harm.

Bacon pro­ceed­ed down his long life’s every avenue in the same delib­er­ate­ly reck­less man­ner. As with men, mon­ey, and drink, so with art: he would gam­ble every­thing, as anoth­er inter­vie­wee puts it, on the next brush­stroke. His impul­sive cre­ation often pre­ced­ed equal­ly impul­sive destruc­tion, as evi­denced by one assis­tan­t’s mem­o­ries of fol­low­ing the artist’s orders to destroy a great many paint­ings that would now com­mand seri­ous prices at auc­tion. When Bacon real­ized what he need­ed to paint — a process that began with a youth­ful trip to Paris, where he first encoun­tered the work of Pablo Picas­so — he knew he could accept noth­ing else.

Those paint­ings attract ever more intense crit­i­cal scruti­ny, an enter­prise that has recent­ly pro­duced Fran­cis Bacon: A Taint­ed Tal­ent, the four-part doc­u­men­tary series just above from Youtube chan­nel Blind Dweller (recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for a video essay on Jean-Michel Basquiat). Almost whol­ly untrained in the clas­si­cal sense, Bacon devel­oped not just a dis­tinc­tive set of tech­niques for mak­ing vis­i­ble his tan­ta­liz­ing­ly appalling inner world, but also kept refin­ing those tech­niques to make his work ever less out­ward­ly shock­ing yet ever more affect­ing on sub­tler lev­els. In his life­time, this made him the high­est-paid artist in the world; more than thir­ty years after his death, he remains a move­ment of one.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fran­cis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

William Bur­roughs Meets Fran­cis Bacon: See Nev­er-Broad­cast Footage (1982)

Art His­to­ry School: Learn About the Art & Lives of Toulouse-Lautrec, Gus­tav Klimt, Frances Bacon, Edvard Munch & Many More

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Orson Welles Reads the Abolitionist John Brown’s Final Speech After Being Sentenced to Death

Orson Welles was only 25 years old when he direct­ed and starred in Cit­i­zen Kane, a film still wide­ly con­sid­ered the best ever made. Even then, he’d already been a house­hold name for at least three years, since his con­tro­ver­sial­ly real­is­tic radio adap­ta­tion of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. But Welles’ high pro­file at a young age came as a result of seri­ous work at an even younger one. His ear­li­er efforts include March­ing Song, a nev­er-pro­duced stage play about the abo­li­tion­ist John Brown, which he co-wrote with his for­mer school­mas­ter Roger Hill when he was just sev­en­teen years old.

Pub­lished only in 2019, March­ing Song proves that Welles had been work­ing in the frag­ment­ed-biog­ra­phy nar­ra­tive form well before Cit­i­zen Kane. It also shows the depth of his fas­ci­na­tion with the fig­ure of John Brown. As research, Welles and Hill vis­it­ed his­tor­i­cal sites includ­ing Harper’s Fer­ry, the Vir­ginia town in which Brown, in Octo­ber of 1859, led the raid on a fed­er­al armory meant as the first blow in a large-scale slave-lib­er­a­tion move­ment. As every Amer­i­can learns in school, Brown’s rebel­lion did not go as planned — not only did he lose more men than he’d expect­ed to, he also gained the coop­er­a­tion of few­er slaves than he’d expect­ed to — and brought the coun­try clos­er to civ­il war.

About two months lat­er, Brown became the first per­son exe­cut­ed for trea­son in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States. That the ver­dict did­n’t take him by sur­prise is evi­denced by the elo­quence of his last speech, deliv­ered extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly after his con­vic­tion. Devout­ly reli­gious, he used it to make a final appeal to a high­er author­i­ty. “This court acknowl­edges, as I sup­pose, the valid­i­ty of the law of God,” he said. “I see a book kissed here which I sup­pose to be the Bible, or at least the New Tes­ta­ment. That teach­es me that ‘all things what­so­ev­er I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them.’ It teach­es me, fur­ther, to ‘remem­ber them that are in bonds, as bound with them.’ I endeav­ored to act up to that instruc­tion.”

He then added, “I am yet too young to under­stand that God is any respecter of per­sons” — with the clear irony that he was at that point 59 years old, not to men­tion inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the Bible. The grav­i­ty of the occa­sion, and of Brown’s demeanor, might have been too much for the teenage Welles to embody. But when he got old­er he did well indeed by the text of Brown’s last speech, a per­for­mance cap­tured in the video above. He’d also man­aged, writes Mass Live’s Ray Kel­ly, to “stage Mac­beth with an all-black cast in Harlem in 1936,” pro­duce “the con­tro­ver­sial Native Son on Broad­way,” and use radio “to seek jus­tice for blind­ed African-Amer­i­can vet­er­an Isaac Woodard Jr.” Welles nev­er had to face the gal­lows for his con­vic­tions, but could cer­tain­ly chan­nel the spir­it of a man who was pre­pared to.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Albert Ein­stein Explains How Slav­ery Has Crip­pled Everyone’s Abil­i­ty to Think Clear­ly About Racism

The Anti-Slav­ery Alpha­bet: 1846 Book Teach­es Kids the ABCs of Slavery’s Evils

How Karl Marx Influ­enced Abra­ham Lin­coln and His Posi­tion on Slav­ery & Labor

When Orson Welles Became a Speech & Joke Writer for Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt

Orson Welles Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Para­ble About How Xeno­pho­bia & Greed Will Put Amer­i­ca Into Decline (1971)

When Orson Welles Crossed Paths With Hitler (and Churchill): “He Had No Per­son­al­i­ty…. I Think There Was Noth­ing There.”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusual Windows Tell Us About His Architectural Genius

There could be few more Amer­i­can styles of dwelling than the tract house, and few more Amer­i­can archi­tects than Frank Lloyd Wright. But Wright, of course, nev­er designed a tract house. Each of his dwellings, to say noth­ing of his pub­lic build­ings, was in every sense a one-off, not just in its lay­out and its details but in its rela­tion­ship to its con­text. Wright believed, as he declared in his book The Nat­ur­al House, that a build­ing should be “as dig­ni­fied as a tree in the midst of nature.” This he held true even for rel­a­tive­ly mod­est res­i­dences, as evi­denced by the series of “Uson­ian hous­es” he began in the late nine­teen-thir­ties.

The Vox video above fea­tures the “cypress-and-brick mas­ter­piece” that is Pope-Leighey House in Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia, which Wright com­plet­ed in 1941. “Bound­ed by the hum­ble bud­get of the Pope fam­i­ly” — Loren Pope, its head was work­ing as a news­pa­per copy edi­tor at the time — “this struc­ture nonethe­less exhibits the dis­tinct fea­tures char­ac­ter­is­tic of his for­mi­da­ble vision and style.”

So says the house­’s page at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion, which adds that “the archi­tec­tur­al ele­ment of com­pres­sion and release, the can­tilevered roofs, and the win­dows that open to the out­side cre­ate an imme­di­ate inter­ac­tion with the sur­round­ing land­scape.”

Video pro­duc­er Phil Edwards pays spe­cial atten­tion to those win­dows. He cites Wright’s con­vic­tion that “the best way to light a house is God’s way — the nat­ur­al way, as near­ly as pos­si­ble in the day­time and at night as near­ly like the day as may be, or bet­ter.” In the case of the Pope-Leighey house, achiev­ing this ide­al involved the use of not just near­ly floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows, but also cleresto­ry win­dows per­fo­rat­ed in a dis­tinc­tive geo­met­ric pat­tern and posi­tioned so as to cast “light hung like pic­tures on the wall.” The effect is so strong that the house­’s two relo­ca­tions appear not to have dimin­ished it — and so sin­gu­lar that, despite the enthu­si­asm of post-war tract-house devel­op­ers for Wright’s inno­va­tions in hous­ing, it nev­er did make it into Levit­town.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tour of Tal­iesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Per­son­al Home & Stu­dio

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

How Insu­lat­ed Glass Changed Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion to the Tech­no­log­i­cal Break­through That Changed How We Live and How Our Build­ings Work

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Photo That Triggered China’s Disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966)

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap For­ward. Eight years lat­er, he announced the begin­ning of the Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion. Between those two events, of course, came the Great Chi­nese Famine, and his­to­ri­ans now view all three as being “great” in the same pejo­ra­tive sense. Though Chair­man Mao may not have under­stood the prob­a­ble con­se­quences of poli­cies like agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tiviza­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal purifi­ca­tion, he did under­stand the impor­tance of his own image in sell­ing those poli­cies to the Chi­nese peo­ple: hence the famous 1966 pho­to of him swim­ming across the Yangtze Riv­er.

By that point, “the Chi­nese leader who had led a peas­ant army to vic­to­ry in the Chi­nese Civ­il War and estab­lished the com­mu­nist Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na in 1949 was get­ting old.” So says Cole­man Lown­des in the Vox Dark­room video above. Worse, Mao’s Great Leap For­ward had clear­ly proven calami­tous. The Chair­man “need­ed to find a way to seal his lega­cy as the face of Chi­nese com­mu­nism and a new rev­o­lu­tion to lead.” And so he repeat­ed one of his ear­li­er feats, the swim across the Yangtze he’d tak­en in 1956. Spread far and wide by state media, the shot of Mao in the riv­er tak­en by his per­son­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er illus­trat­ed reports that he’d swum fif­teen kilo­me­ters in a bit over an hour.

This meant “the 72-year-old would have shat­tered world speed records,” a claim all in a day’s work for pro­pa­gan­dists in a dic­ta­tor­ship. But those who saw pho­to­graph would­n’t have for­got­ten what hap­pened the last time he took such a well-pub­li­cized dip in the Yangtze. “Experts feared that Mao was on the verge of kick­ing off anoth­er dis­as­trous peri­od of tur­moil in Chi­na. They were right.” The already-declared Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, now wide­ly known as the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, saw mil­lions of Chi­nese youth — osten­si­bly rad­i­cal­ized by the image of their beloved leader in the flesh — orga­nize into “the fanat­i­cal Red Guards,” a para­mil­i­tary force bent on extir­pat­ing, by any means nec­es­sary, the “four olds”: old cul­ture, old ide­ol­o­gy, old cus­toms, and old tra­di­tions.

As with most attempts to ush­er in a Year Zero, Mao’s final rev­o­lu­tion wast­ed lit­tle time becom­ing an engine of chaos. Only his death end­ed “a decade of destruc­tion that had ele­vat­ed the leader to god-like lev­els and result­ed in over one mil­lion peo­ple dead.” The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist’s Par­ty has sub­se­quent­ly con­demned the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion but not the Chair­man him­self, and indeed his swim remains an object of year­ly com­mem­o­ra­tion. “Had Mao died in 1956, his achieve­ments would have been immor­tal,” once said CCP offi­cial Chen Yun. “Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?” Per­haps that, had the aging Mao drowned in the Yangtze, Chi­nese his­to­ry might have tak­en a hap­pi­er turn.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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