Maybe you’re jad­ed, maybe you think it’s time for heavy met­al to final­ly hang up its spikes, maybe you think there’s nowhere else for the world’s most the­atri­cal­ly angry music to go but maybe blue­grass…. Or maybe Mon­go­lia, where folk met­al band The Hu have been invent­ing what they call “Hun­nu Rock,” a style com­bin­ing West­ern head­bang­ing with instru­ments like the horse­head fid­dle (morin khu­ur) and Mon­go­lian gui­tar (tovshu­ur). “It also involves singing in a gut­tur­al way,” Katya Cen­gel points out at NPR—no, not like this, but in the man­ner of tra­di­tion­al Mon­go­lian throat singers.

Now YouTube sen­sa­tions with mil­lions of views of its two videos for “Yuve Yuve Yu” and “Wolf Totem,” the band plans to release its first album this spring, after sev­en years of hard work. The Hu are not flash-in-the-pan inter­net fame seek­ers but seri­ous musi­cians who didn’t quite expect this degree of atten­tion, or so they say. “When we do this,” said gui­tarist Tem­ka, “we try to spir­i­tu­al­ly express this beau­ti­ful thing about Mon­go­lian music. We think we will talk to everyone’s soul through our music. But we didn’t expect this fast, peo­ple just pop­ping up every­where.”

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin’s Kip Hutchins, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy, has tak­en an inter­est in the band and thinks their appeal, writes Cen­gel, has to do with how “the sto­ry of Mon­go­lia has been writ­ten in the West. Nomadism and horse cul­ture has been roman­ti­cized, and the empha­sis on free­dom and heroes tends to appeal to the stereo­typ­i­cal male heavy met­al fan.” The band’s themes focus on past nation­al tri­umphs, the leg­endary rule of Genghis Khan, and the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the nomadic warrior’s life.

Or so it would seem to West­ern­ers pars­ing their lyrics in Eng­lish. It may also be hard to read “Hey you trai­tor! Kneel down!” in a song about “tak­ing our Great Mon­gol ances­tors names in vain” and not think about metal’s role in a few vio­lent ultra-nation­al­ist scenes. Some sug­gest the songs are iron­ic or trans­late dif­fer­ent­ly to Mon­go­lian lis­ten­ers. Or that the band might be a sophis­ti­cat­ed satire, like Laibach, using nation­al­ist themes, cos­tumes, and dra­mat­ic set­tings on the steppes to cri­tique nation­al­ist nar­ra­tives.

One observ­er who knows the cul­ture sug­gests it’s more com­pli­cat­ed. The Hu are not mock­ing tra­di­tion­al Mon­go­lian cul­ture and his­to­ry, far from it. “The graph­ic visu­als used in the video cer­tain­ly evoke pride in our nomadic cul­ture,” writes Bat­shan­das Altan­sukh, “but the lyric is quite the con­trary. It’s very polit­i­cal and high­ly crit­i­cal of today’s Mon­go­lian soci­ety” and what the band sees as their country’s propen­si­ty for “emp­ti­ly boast­ing about the past” rather than actu­al­ly learn­ing about and respect­ing it (with motor­cy­cle gangs rid­ing across the plains).

The lyrics we read in trans­la­tion are appar­ent­ly “too west­ern­ized or sim­pli­fied” to real­ly get their point across and slo­gans like “tak­ing our great Mon­gol ances­tors names in vain,” Cen­gel points out, “are almost exact­ly what was sung in the late 1980s dur­ing the tran­si­tion to democracy”—a means of fierce­ly assert­ing an inde­pen­dent cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty against the hege­mon­ic Sovi­et Union. Mon­go­lian folk rock and jazz bands picked up the sen­ti­ment and Mon­go­lian hip hop acts pro­mote respect for the country’s tra­di­tions with new dance moves.

But whether or not The Hu’s pol­i­tics get wrong­ly inter­pret­ed, or ignored, by their mil­lions of new fans, it’s clear that peo­ple get it at the uni­ver­sal lev­el of metal’s com­mu­nal fre­quen­cies: long hair, leather, gui­tars, growl­ing, and epic medieval badassery.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins of the Death Growl in Met­al Music

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

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

Would you look at this video? Here we have the orig­i­nal line-up of the Beast­ie Boys (when they had a fourth, female mem­ber, Kate Schel­len­bach) play­ing a Christ­mas-time gig in 1983. And you just wan­na scream: LOOK HOW YOUNG THEY ARE! Adam Yauch is prob­a­bly 17 at the time, Michael Dia­mond younger, and Adam Horowitz is younger still, and they are plain­ly enjoy­ing them­selves while also being a bit ner­vous and unsure. (Ad-Rock blanch­es when he has to brag about the size of his mem­ber, while Adam Yauch shows he had flow very ear­ly on.) I doubt any­body in the audi­ence was think­ing these white kids would go on to be one of the great­est rap groups of all time. Some were won­der­ing what hap­pened to the hard­core punk music they usu­al­ly played. And some were just hav­ing a blast.

The track they’re per­form­ing is “Cooky Puss,” their very first attempt at rap and, as it hap­pens, their very first 12” sin­gle release. To their sur­prise the record start­ed get­ting played in clubs.

For those who picked up the delight­ful, thor­ough, and very heavy Beast­ie Boys Book–we told you about it just recent­ly–the ori­gin of “Cook­ie Puss” is out­lined in detail. A friend of a friend got the young band a chance to record in a stu­dio usu­al­ly reserved for com­mer­cial jin­gles for two days. The first day the band played a selec­tion of orig­i­nals and cov­ers, but on play­back “we real­ized they were pret­ty bad,” writes Ad-Rock. “They weren’t hard­core songs, they were odd­ly Goth-ish and just sort of, well…pretty bad.”

With a sec­ond day at their dis­pos­al they returned, and based on a beat from Schel­len­bach, “Cooky Puss” was born, along with anoth­er orig­i­nal, “Beast­ie Rev­o­lu­tion.” The cen­ter­piece of the stu­dio ver­sion is a prank phone call between Ad-Rock, a tele­phone oper­a­tor, and a work­er at Carvel ice cream, which the adult Horowitz now cringes in mem­o­ry over. (“Can I for­mal­ly apol­o­gize right here and now? I’m sor­ry.”)

The Beast­ie Boys had start­ed as a hard­core band, fea­tur­ing Schel­len­bach on drums, and had record­ed an e.p., Pol­ly­wog Stew which final­ly got released, along with the Cooky Puss e.p. in 1994 as Some Old Bull­shit. But rap was every­where and, as Horowitz tells it, Mal­colm McLaren’s “Buf­fa­lo Gals” was the record that put hip hop on the map. “Cooky Puss” was their affec­tion­ate par­o­dy of that track. (Schel­len­bach, by the way, went on to form Lus­cious Jack­son)

As for the actu­al Cooky Puss, it was a weird ice cream cake sold by Carvel (with its own char­ac­ter and back­sto­ry), and pro­mot­ed on local TV with a set of ads fea­tur­ing the voice of own­er Tom Carvel him­self. Check out the won­der of the Cooky Puss and its plush toy com­pan­ion. Call now…they hon­or most major cred­it cards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Beast­ie Boys on Being Stu­pid’: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­view From 1985

Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Com­mem­o­rates the Beast­ie Boys’ Leg­endary Music Video

Librar­i­ans Pay Trib­ute to Clas­sic Beast­ie Boys Video; Name Hen­ry Rollins Keynote Speak­er at Con­fer­ence

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

Cred­it­ed with ignit­ing the 90s grunge craze and putting Pacif­ic North­west punk and indie scenes on the map, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” has eclipsed hun­dreds of rock hits as “the most icon­ic song of all time”—at least accord­ing to the ana­lyt­ics of com­put­er sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

What­ev­er that des­ig­na­tion means, it’s with­out a doubt the most icon­ic Nir­vana song of all time, a tune whose influ­ence may be impos­si­ble to mea­sure. Kurt Cobain might have grown weary of it, but fans nev­er stopped clam­or­ing for the hit (his mom loved it, too). An anthem for a gen­er­a­tion dis­af­fect­ed with cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing and major label pan­der­ing, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” is also—like the decade it came to define—a nest­ing doll of irony.

Cobain played this up to a degree—the irony of an indie band announc­ing the sec­ond com­ing of charged DIY punk rock with a song that net­ted them a major label deal and put him on the path to super­star­dom. When Nir­vana debuted their soon-to-be icon­ic hit live at Seattle’s OK Hotel on April 17th, 1991, the usu­al­ly tac­i­turn front­man intro­duced him­self by say­ing, “Hel­lo. We’re major label cor­po­rate rock sell­outs.”

Giv­en his sar­don­ic sense of humor, fans have gen­er­al­ly assumed some kind of anti-cap­i­tal­ist in-joke in the title of the song, with its ref­er­ence to a pop­u­lar brand of deodor­ant. But in a more dra­mat­ic irony, Cobain had no idea when he wrote and record­ed it that “Teen Spir­it was a prod­uct, aimed at teenage girls.” The song’s title, as you’ll learn in the short, ani­mat­ed back­sto­ry in the video above, orig­i­nat­ed with Biki­ni Kill singer Kath­leen Han­na, who scrawled it on Cobain’s wall with a Sharpie after the two shared a night of heavy drink­ing and polit­i­cal­ly right­eous van­dal­ism.

Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett and ani­mat­ed by Drew Christie, the award-win­ning short “Drawn & Record­ed: Teen Spir­it” con­dens­es the song’s sto­ry (which you can read about in more depth here) into two and a half min­utes of pop cul­ture his­to­ry and com­men­tary. Upon wak­ing up and see­ing Hanna’s mes­sage on the wall, Cobain was imme­di­ate­ly flat­tered: “Kurt thought it meant he was a rad­i­cal, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, a fem­i­nist, a punk, an anti-author­i­tar­i­an, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, anar­chist cru­sad­er.” He got right to work on the song’s cho­rus.

But Han­na main­ly meant to say he lit­er­al­ly smelled like Teen Spir­it, which hap­pened to be the brand of deodor­ant his then-girlfriend—Bikini Kill drum­mer Tobi Vail—used. “I didn’t know that the deodor­ant spray exist­ed until six months after the sin­gle came out,” he told Michael Azer­rad in the biog­ra­phy Come as You Are. He didn’t intend to write an adver­tise­ment, of course. But in yet anoth­er grim twist, “after the song came out,” Bur­nett monot­o­nes, “sales of Teen Spir­it went through the roof.”

The les­son, maybe? “Cap­i­tal­ism is very resilient”? Cobain under­stood this all too well though he may have inad­ver­tent­ly become the last thing he ever want­ed, a prod­uct pitch­man. But his cre­ative mis­read­ing of Han­na’s joke also made music his­to­ry.

Above, you can watch Han­na tell the ori­gin sto­ry her­self. The scene was record­ed at Joes Pub in NYC, back in Decem­ber 2010.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Nir­vana Plays an Angry Set & Refus­es to Play ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ After the Crowd Hurls Sex­ist Insults at the Open­ing Act (Buenos Aires, 1992)

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (1991)

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

By now, you’ve hope­ful­ly seen David Bowie and Bing Cros­by’s unlike­ly encounter in 1977, where they sang a hasti­ly pre­pared med­ley of “Peace On Earth/Little Drum­mer Boy.” It’s a curi­ous Christ­mas clas­sic, and now the sub­ject of a trib­ute by The Flam­ing Lips. Above, watch their psy­che­del­ic take on the mashup. And if you need to revis­it the orig­i­nal, just head here.

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 and BlueSky.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Christ­mas Was Legal­ly Banned for 22 Years by the Puri­tans in Colo­nial Mass­a­chu­setts

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

The Sto­ry of The Pogues’ “Fairy­tale of New York,” the Boozy Bal­lad That Has Become One of the Most Beloved Christ­mas Songs of All Time