Kanye Lectures at Oxford University on Genius, Class & a Whole Lot More

in Education, Music | December 10th, 2015

Kanye West annoys a lot of peo­ple because of his ego, and because he doesn’t rely on oth­ers to call him a genius. He’ll tell you right away that he is one, and a mis­un­der­stood one at that. But is that entire­ly a bad thing? Con­sid­er Picas­so, who Kanye men­tions in this off-the-cuff, occa­sion­al­ly ram­bling, very Kanye talk record­ed at the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in March of 2015. Picas­so was a man round­ly con­sid­ered by biog­ra­phers and fel­low artists (not to men­tion the women who mod­eled for him) as a rag­ing ego­ma­ni­ac. He thought he was God, but for­tu­nate­ly Picas­so didn’t have Twit­ter to announce it. (Kanye, how­ev­er, wrote “I Am a God”). Time and dis­tance and death have soft­ened what to many peo­ple was a rep­re­hen­si­ble blowhard because of the beau­ty and mag­nif­i­cence he left behind. So what about Kanye?

Over 40 min­utes, which you can watch above with the help of this tran­script to deal with the rather poor audio, West makes the case for becom­ing a mod­ern Renais­sance per­son, and aim­ing to be not just as famous as a Picas­so, but–and here’s where most of us shake our heads–better than Picas­so.

How dare he? But Picas­so was very good at brand­ing him­self dur­ing his lat­er years, toss­ing off draw­ings to give to busi­ness own­ers instead of pay­ing cash. He and Dali were more shame­less in fact than West in turn­ing fame into gold. Why not set your sights on sur­pass­ing that ego? Picas­so was 56 when he com­plet­ed “Guer­ni­ca”. West has a ways to go.

There’s plen­ty of “Kanye” moments in the talk. He com­pares The Matrix to the Bible. He talks dis­mis­sive­ly about $5,000 sweaters while design­ing such goods. He lets you know that Oba­ma has his pri­vate num­ber. He talks class.

But there’s also ample evi­dence that Kanye real­izes the place he has found him­self and isn’t plan­ning on squan­der­ing that chance. Two years after the divi­sive album Yeezus, Kanye says this.

One of my biggest prob­lems, one of my biggest Achille’s heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very per­son, can remove my ego, I think there’s hope for every­one.

The video above was made avail­able online this week, thanks to the Oxford Guild, the stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion that host­ed Kanye’s lec­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mal­colm X Debate at Oxford, Quot­ing Lines from Shakespeare’s Ham­let (1964)

Do Rap­pers Have a Big­ger Vocab­u­lary Than Shake­speare?: A Data Sci­en­tist Maps Out the Answer

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Performing Arts, From the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Paris Opera Ballet

in Dance, Google, Music, Theatre | December 8th, 2015

We’ve long been able to read books online. More recent­ly, the inter­net has also become a favored dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem for movies, and cer­tain­ly we’ve all heard more than enough about the effects of down­load­ing and stream­ing on the music indus­try. No new tech­nol­o­gy can quite sub­sti­tute, yet, for a vis­it to the muse­um, but as we’ve often post­ed about here, many of the muse­ums them­selves have gone ahead and made their paint­ings, sculp­tures, and oth­er arti­facts view­able in great detail online. At this point, will the expe­ri­ence of any art form at all remain unavail­able to us on the inter­net?

Not long ago, I would have named any of the per­form­ing arts, but the brains at the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute have now got around to those most liv­ing of all forms as well. The New York Times’ Michael Coop­er writes of our new­found abil­i­ty, through a series of 360-degree videos, to “stand, vir­tu­al­ly, on the stage of the Palais Gar­nier, among the dancers of the Paris Opera Bal­let,” ” jour­ney to Strat­ford-upon-Avon, where you can try to keep up with a fre­net­ic Alex Has­sell of the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny as Hen­ry V, exhort­ing his troops to go ‘once more unto the breach,’ ” or “go onstage at Carnegie Hall, where the video places you smack in the mid­dle of the Philadel­phia Orches­tra as it plays a rous­ing ‘In the Hall of the Moun­tain King.’ ”

These come as part of a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion involv­ing “an inno­v­a­tive assem­blage of per­form­ing arts groups” that went live ear­li­er this month at the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s site. The orga­ni­za­tions, now more than 60 in total, include not just the Paris Opera, the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny, and Carnegie Hall, but the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic, the Vien­na State Opera, the Amer­i­can Bal­let The­ater, the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Mag­ic, the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music, the Coun­try Music Hall of Fame, the John F. Kennedy Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, and the Rome Opera. You can find the per­for­mances neat­ly divid­ed into cat­e­gories: Music, Opera, The­atre, Dance, and Per­for­mance Art.

Google’s blog describes some of the tech­nol­o­gy behind all this, includ­ing the 360-degree per­for­mance record­ings, the “indoor Street View imagery” of the grand venues where many of the per­for­mances hap­pen, and the “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion Gigapix­el” images avail­able for your scruti­ny. When you play the video above of the Philadel­phia Orches­tra, you can click and drag to view the per­for­mance from every pos­si­ble angle from your van­tage right there in the midst of the musi­cians. I can’t imag­ine what the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute will come up with next, but sure­ly it won’t be long before we can see things from the Black Swan’s point of view.

You can start explor­ing the 360s per­for­mances here.

via The New York Times/Google

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Eagles of Death Metal Perform Live Again Tonight in Paris

in Life, Music | December 7th, 2015

“There’s noth­ing left but to intro­duce you to some peo­ple whose lives will for­ev­er be a part of the life of Paris. These are our broth­ers. They were robbed of their stage three weeks ago, and we would like to offer them ours tonight.” And with those words from Bono, the Eagles of Death Met­al took the stage again tonight in Paris, just three weeks after the hor­rif­ic ter­ror­ist attack at Le Bat­a­clan. Up top, see them sing, along with U2, a ver­sion of Pat­ti Smith’s “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” Next, a ver­sion of their own song, “I Love You All the Time.”

Whether the band would per­form again was nev­er in doubt. Inter­viewed days after the attack, the band, still reel­ing, told Vice they had an oblig­a­tion to car­ry on. In the poignant video below, Jesse Hugh­es said it all: “I can­not wait to get back to Paris. I can­not wait to play. I want to come back. I want to be the first band to play at Le Bat­a­clan when it opens.” Play­ing at Le Bat­a­clan may have to wait. But get­ting back to Paris, that’s now cer­tain­ly done.

via The New York Times

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Musicians Play Bach on the Octobass, the Gargantuan String Instrument Invented in 1850

in Music | December 4th, 2015

Take a look at the live per­for­mance above of a Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach cha­conne. See that mon­strous stringed instru­ment in the back? The one that looks like a movie prop? It’s real, and it’s called the octo­bass, a triple bass made in 1850 by pro­lif­ic French instru­ment mak­er and inven­tor Jean-Bap­tiste Vuil­laume, whom Ger­man vio­lin mak­er Corilon calls “the most sig­nif­i­cant vio­lin mak­er of mod­ern times.”

The huge instru­ment can play a full octave below the stan­dard dou­ble bass and cre­ate sound down to 16 Hz, at the low­est thresh­old of human hear­ing and into the realm of what’s called infra­sound. The octo­bass is so large that play­ers have to stand on a plat­form, and use spe­cial keys on the side of the instru­ment to change the strings’ pitch since the neck is far too high to reach. (See this pho­to of a young boy dwarfed by an octo­bass for scale.)

One of two playable repli­cas of the orig­i­nal three octo­bass­es Vuil­laume made resides at the Musi­cal Instru­ment Muse­um (MIM) in Phoenix, AZ. In the video below, MIM cura­tor Col­in Pear­son gets us up close to the gar­gan­tu­an bass, cre­at­ed, he tells us, to “add a low end rum­ble to any large orches­tra.” That it does.

The descrip­tion of the video just below advis­es you to “turn up your subs” to hear the demon­stra­tion by Nico Abon­do­lo, dou­ble bass play­er of the LA Cham­ber orches­tra. (Abon­do­lo is also prin­ci­ple bass for sev­er­al Hol­ly­wood orches­tras, and he came to MIM to record sam­ples of the octo­bass for the Hunger Games sound­track.) As you’ll see in the video, the octo­bass is so mas­sive, it takes five peo­ple to move it.

Abon­do­lo plays the octo­bass with both his fin­gers and with the 3‑stringed instru­men­t’s spe­cial­ly made bow, and demon­strates its sys­tem of keys and levers. “Play­ing the instru­ment is a twofold, or maybe three­fold phys­i­cal exer­tion,” he remarks. It’s also a jour­ney into a past where “peo­ple were as crazy, or cra­zier about music than we are now.” Per­haps need­less to say, the instru­men­t’s bulk and the awk­ward phys­i­cal move­ments required to play it mean that it can­not be played at faster tem­pos. And if the first thing that comes to mind when you hear Abon­do­lo strum those low bass notes is the theme from Jaws, you’re not alone.

A num­ber of oth­er musi­cians vis­it­ing the octo­bass at MIM took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to goof around on the com­i­cal­ly over­sized bass and play their ver­sions of the omi­nous shark approach music (above). You won’t get the full effect of the instru­ment unless you’re lis­ten­ing with a qual­i­ty sub­woofer with a very low bass response, and even then, almost no sub—consumer or pro—can han­dle the low­est pitch the octo­bass is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing. But if you were to stand in the same room while some­one played the huge triple bass, you’d cer­tain­ly feel its low­est reg­is­ter rum­bling through you.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

100 Great Bass Riffs Played in One Epic Take: Cov­ers 60 Years of Rock, Jazz and R&B

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Vintage Footage Shows a Young, Unknown Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe Living at the Famed Chelsea Hotel (1970)

in History, Music, Photography | December 4th, 2015

Here at Open Cul­ture, we can’t get enough of the Chelsea Hotel, which means we can’t get enough of the Chelsea Hotel in a cer­tain era, at the height of a cer­tain cul­tur­al moment in New York his­to­ry. Though it strug­gled as a busi­ness for years after it first opened as an apart­ment build­ing in 1884 and changed hands left and right until the 1970s, it hit its stride as an icon when a cer­tain crit­i­cal mass of well-known (or soon to be well known) musi­cians, writ­ers, artists, film­mak­ers, and oth­er­wise col­or­ful per­son­al­i­ties had put in time there. One such musi­cian, writer, artist in oth­er media, and col­or­ful per­son­al­i­ty indeed has an espe­cial­ly strong asso­ci­a­tion with the Chelsea: Pat­ti Smith.

You may remem­ber our post back in 2012 fea­tur­ing Smith read­ing her final let­ter to Robert Map­plethor­pe, which she includ­ed in Just Kids, her acclaimed mem­oir of her friend­ship with the con­tro­ver­sial pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

For a time, Smith and Map­plethor­pe lived in the Chelsea togeth­er, and in the footage above, shot in 1970 by a Ger­man doc­u­men­tary film crew, you can see them there in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. “The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in The Twi­light Zone, with a hun­dred rooms, each a small uni­verse,” Smith writes in Just Kids. “Every­one had some­thing to offer and nobody seemed to have much mon­ey. Even the suc­cess­ful seemed to have just enough to live like extrav­a­gant bums.”

These fif­teen min­utes of film also includes glimpses into a vari­ety of oth­er lives lived at the Chelsea as the 1970s began. If you’d like to see more of the place at its cul­tur­al zenith — made pos­si­ble by the state of 70s New York itself, which had infa­mous­ly hit some­thing of a nadir — have a look at the clip we fea­tured in 2013 of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s Nico singing “Chelsea Girls” there. Just after the 70s had gone, BBC’s Are­na turned up to shoot a doc­u­men­tary of their own, which we fea­tured last year. Smith has long since left the Chelsea, and Map­plethor­pe has long since left this world, but even now, as the hotel under­goes exten­sive ren­o­va­tions that began in 2011, some of those “extrav­a­gant bums” remain.

via Please Kill Me

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York’s Famous Chelsea Hotel and Its Cre­ative Res­i­dents Revis­it­ed in a 1981 Doc­u­men­tary

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Her Dear Friend Robert Map­plethor­pe

The Life and Con­tro­ver­sial Work of Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe Pro­filed in 1988 Doc­u­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christmas Nativity Story on a 1976 Icelandic TV Special

in Education, Life, Music, Religion, Television | December 4th, 2015

The hol­i­days can be hard, start­ing in Octo­ber when the red and green dec­o­ra­tions begin muscling in on the Hal­loween aisle.

Most Won­der­ful Time of the Year, you say? Oh, go stuff a stock­ing in it, Andy Williams!

The major­i­ty of us have more in com­mon with the Grinch, Scrooge, and/or the Lit­tle Match Girl.

Still, it’s hard to resist the preter­nat­u­ral­ly mature 11-year-old Björk read­ing the nativ­i­ty sto­ry in her native Ice­landic, backed by unsmil­ing old­er kids from the Children’s Music School in Reyk­javík.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly since I myself do not speak Ice­landic.

The fact that it’s in black and white is mere­ly the blue­ber­ries on the spiced cab­bage.

It speaks high­ly of the Ice­landic approach to edu­ca­tion that a prin­ci­pal’s office reg­u­lar who report­ed­ly chafed at her school’s “retro, con­stant Beethoven and Bach bol­locks” cur­ricu­lum was award­ed the plum part in this 1976 Christ­mas spe­cial for the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice.

It would also appear that lit­tle Björk, the fierce­ly self-reliant latchkey kid of a Bohemi­an sin­gle moth­er, was far and away the most charis­mat­ic kid enrolled in the Bar­namúsik­skóli.

(Less than a year lat­er her self-titled first album sold 7000 copies in Iceland—a mod­est amount com­pared to Adele’s debut, maybe, but c’mon, the kid was 11! And Ice­land’s pop­u­la­tion at the time was a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand and change.)

As to the above per­for­mance’s reli­gious slant, it wasn’t a reflec­tion of her per­son­al beliefs. As she told the UK music webzine Drowned in Sound in 2011:

…nature is my reli­gion, in a way… I think every­body has their own pri­vate reli­gion. I guess what both­ers me is when mil­lions have the same one. It just can’t be true. It’s just…what?

Still, it prob­a­bly was­n’t too con­tro­ver­sial that the pro­gram­mers elect­ed to cleave to the rea­son in the sea­son. Ice­landic church atten­dance may be low-key, but the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of its cit­i­zens iden­ti­fy as Luther­an, or some oth­er Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.

(They also believe in elves and 13 for­mer­ly fear­some Yule Lads, descen­dants of the ogres Grýla and Lep­palúði. By the time Björk appeared on earth, they had long since evolved, through a com­bi­na­tion of for­eign influ­ence and pub­lic decree, into the kinder, gen­tler, not quite San­ta-esque ver­sion, address­ing the stu­dio audi­ence at the top of the act.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk Presents Ground­break­ing Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cians on the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists (1997)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She is proud to orig­i­nat­ed the role of Santa’s mor­tal con­sort, Mary, in her Jew­ish hus­band Greg Kotis’ Nordic-themed hol­i­day fan­ta­sia, The Truth About San­ta. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Steve Martin Writes a Hymn for Hymn-Deprived Atheists

in Comedy, Music | December 3rd, 2015

To under­stand the two sides of Steve Martin’s per­form­ing tal­ents, check out his one and only hit sin­gle, 1978’s King Tut. On the A‑side was the nov­el­ty funk hit about the Egypt­ian boy king. On the B‑side, two deep cuts that showed off Martin’s for­mi­da­ble Americana/banjo chops: the tra­di­tion­al “Sal­ly Good­in” (cir­ca 1860, but exist­ing on record­ings since 1922), and “Hoe­down at Alice’s” an orig­i­nal writ­ten for his then stand-up man­ag­er Bill McEuen’s wife.

It’s not what you’d expect from the “Wild and Crazy Guy,” but Martin’s ban­jo had always been a part of his act. He taught him­self at 15 years old, play­ing along very slow­ly to Earl Scrug­gs records. He told an inter­view­er:

The rea­son I played it on stage is because my act was so crazy I thought it’s prob­a­bly good to show the audi­ence I can do some­thing that looks hard, because this act looks like I’m just mak­ing it up. I real­ly was­n’t. I worked very hard on it.

Which is a long way of say­ing: When Mar­tin record­ed an album of ban­jo favorites in 2009, The Crow, won a Gram­my with­out rely­ing on a sin­gle joke, then enlist­ed the help of the North Car­olin­ian Steep Canyon Rangers to go on a tour, it should not have real­ly been a sur­prise.

When he teamed up next with The Steep Canyon Rangers and record­ed Rare Bird Alert in 2011, Mar­tin start­ed to com­bine com­e­dy and music once again, and with this above nov­el­ty song, he gets to indulge in the beau­ti­ful har­mo­ny singing that blue­grass groups like The Stan­ley Broth­ers, The Lou­vin Broth­ers, and the Osbourne Broth­ers made so pop­u­lar in the mid-cen­tu­ry. (There wasn’t just ban­jo pickin’ on those LPs, you know.) The above appear­ance on Let­ter­man is a great ren­di­tion of a con­cert favorite, “Athe­ists Don’t Have No Songs.”

So in this month of argu­ments over the Star­bucks hol­i­day cup, let Mr. Mar­tin and group add a pal­lia­tive to any hurt athe­ist feel­ings. You guys rock.

P.S. Mar­tin got a chance to play with his hero on the same late-night pro­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es His First Online Course on Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

Steve Mar­tin on the Leg­endary Blue­grass Musi­cian Earl Scrug­gs

Steve Mar­tin Releas­es Blue­grass Album/Animated Video

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. King Tut was the sec­ond 45 he ever bought as a kid. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch a New Nina Simone Animation Based on an Interview Never Aired in the U.S. Before

in Music | December 2nd, 2015

Blank on Blank has worked their mag­ic again, this time ani­mat­ing a 1968 inter­view with the singer-song­writer and civ­il rights activist, Nina Simone. As always, Blank on Blank’s visu­al work is a treat. But what stands out for me here is the audio record­ing. Tak­en from a 1960s radio show host­ed by Lil­ian Ter­ry, the audio orig­i­nal­ly aired in Italy in the 1960s. And, until now, it has nev­er been heard in the Unit­ed States. Ter­ry is nowa­days work­ing on an audio­book project called Voic­es from the Jazz Dimen­sion that “chron­i­cles her remark­able col­lec­tion of inter­views with jazz leg­ends from Nina to Duke Elling­ton.” We can hard­ly wait for that project to take final shape. You can find more Blank on Blank ani­ma­tions, all of which revive vin­tage audio clips, in our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nina Simone Sings Her Break­through Song, ‘I Loves You Por­gy,’ in 1962

Free Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Jazz on the Tube: An Archive of 2,000 Clas­sic Jazz Videos (and Much More)

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.