Don’t Think Twice: A Poignant Film Documents How Bob Dylan & The Beatles Bring Joy to a Dementia Patient

It’s often said the sense of smell is most close­ly con­nect­ed to long-term mem­o­ry. The news offers lit­tle com­fort to us for­get­ful peo­ple with a dimin­ished sense of smell. But increas­ing­ly, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are dis­cov­er­ing how sound can also tap direct­ly into our deep­est mem­o­ries. Patients with Alzheimer’s and demen­tia seem to come alive, becom­ing their old selves when they hear music they rec­og­nize, espe­cial­ly if they were musi­cians or dancers in a for­mer life.

“Sound is evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly ancient,” Nina Kraus, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, tells NPR. “It is deeply, deeply root­ed in our ner­vous sys­tem. So the mem­o­ries that we make, the sound-to-mean­ing con­nec­tions that we have and that we’ve made through­out our lives are always there. And it’s a mat­ter of being able to access them.” The ear­worms we find our­selves hum­ming all day; the songs we nev­er for­get how to sing… these are keys to a store­house of mem­o­ry.

Sto­ries doc­u­ment­ing demen­tia patients in the pres­ence of music usu­al­ly focus, under­stand­ably, on those who have lost brain func­tion due to old age. In “Don’t Think Twice,” the short doc­u­men­tary above, we meet John Fudge, who sus­tained a trau­mat­ic brain injury when he fell from the white cliffs of Dover and split his head open at 24 years old. “The extent of his injuries weren’t revealed,” writes Aeon, “until decades lat­er, when doc­tors decid­ed to per­form a brain scan after John slipped into a deep depres­sion.”

He was found to have exten­sive brain dam­age, “includ­ing a pro­gres­sive form of demen­tia” called Seman­tic Demen­tia that leaves suf­fer­ers aware of their dete­ri­o­ra­tion while being unable to express them­selves. John’s wife Geral­dine “com­pares his brain to an oak tree, its limbs of knowl­edge being slow­ly trimmed away, caus­ing John great men­tal anguish.” In the short film, how­ev­er, we see how “his musi­cal abil­i­ties” are one “as-yet untrimmed branch.”

John him­self explains how he “near­ly died three times” and Geral­dine assists with her obser­va­tions of his expe­ri­ence. “It’s all there,” she says, “it’s just bits of it have sort of been blanked out…. Over the years, John’s seman­tic under­stand­ing of the world will dete­ri­o­rate.” When a young vol­un­teer named Jon from the Hack­ney Befriend­ing Ser­vice stops by, the gloom lifts as John engages his old pas­sion for play­ing songs by the Bea­t­les and Bob Dylan.

Fol­low the mov­ing sto­ry of how John and Jon became fast friends and excel­lent har­mo­niz­ers and see more inspir­ing sto­ries of how music can change Alzheimer’s and demen­tia patients’ lives for the bet­ter at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

For­mer Bal­le­ri­na with Demen­tia Grace­ful­ly Comes Alive to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

How John Coltrane Introduced the World to His Radical Sound in the Groundbreaking Recording of “My Favorite Things”

John Coltrane released “more sig­nif­i­cant works” than his 1960 “My Favorite Things,” says Robin Wash­ing­ton in a PRX doc­u­men­tary on the clas­sic rework­ing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broad­way hit. “A Love Supreme” is often cit­ed as the zenith of the saxophonist’s career. “But if you tried to explain that song to an aver­age lis­ten­er, you would lose them. [“My Favorite Things”] is a defin­i­tive work that every­one knows, and any­one can lis­ten to, and the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion is some­thing every­one can share and enjoy.” The song is acces­si­ble, a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful hit, and it is also an exper­i­men­tal mas­ter­piece.

Indeed, “My Favorite Things” may be the per­fect intro­duc­tion to Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal­ism. After the dizzy­ing chord changes of 1959’s “Giant Steps,” this 14-minute, two-chord excur­sion pat­terned on the ragas of Ravi Shankar announced Coltrane’s move into the modal forms he refined until his death in 1967, as well as his embrace of the sopra­no sax­o­phone and his new quar­tet. It became “Coltrane’s most request­ed tune,” says Ed Wheel­er in The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane, “and a bridge to a broad pub­lic audi­ence.”

Coltrane’s take is also mes­mer­iz­ing, trance-induc­ing, “often com­pared to a whirling dervish,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, a ref­er­ence to the Sufi med­i­ta­tion tech­nique of spin­ning in a cir­cle. It’s an unlike­ly song choice for the exer­cise, which makes it all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final Broad­way col­lab­o­ra­tion, was an “instant clas­sic,” and every­one who’d seen it walked away hum­ming the tune to “My Favorite Things.” By 1960, it had become a stan­dard, with sev­er­al cov­er ver­sions released by Leslie Uggams, The Pete King Chorale, the Hi-Lo’s, and the Nor­man Luboff Choir.

Hun­dreds more cov­ers would fol­low. None of them sound­ed like Coltrane’s. The modal form—in which musi­cians impro­vise in dif­fer­ent kinds of scales over sim­pli­fied chord structures—created the “open free­dom” in music explored on Miles Davis’ path­break­ing Kind of Blue, on which Coltrane played tenor sax. (It was Davis who bought Coltrane his first sopra­no sax that year.) Coltrane’s use of modal form in adap­ta­tions of pop­u­lar stan­dards like “My Favorite Things” and George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess was an explic­it strat­e­gy to court a wider pub­lic, using the famil­iar to ori­ent his lis­ten­ers to the new.

The video essay brings in the exper­tise of musi­cian, com­pos­er, and YouTu­ber Adam Neely, who explains what makes Rogers and Hammerstein’s clas­sic unique among show tunes, and why it appealed to Coltrane as the cen­ter­piece of the 1961 album of the same name. The song’s unusu­al form and struc­ture allow the same melody to be played over both major and minor chords. Coltrane’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the song reduces it to the two ton­ics, E major and E minor, over which he and the band solo, intro­duc­ing a shift­ing tonal­i­ty and mood to the melody with each chord change.

Neely goes into greater depth, but it’s over­all an acces­si­ble expla­na­tion of Coltrane’s very acces­si­ble, yet ver­tig­i­nous­ly deep, “My Favorite Things.” Maybe only one ques­tion remains. Coltrane’s ren­di­tion came out four years before Julie Andrews’ icon­ic per­for­mance in the film adap­ta­tion of The Sound of Music, evok­ing the obvi­ous ques­tion,” says Wash­ing­ton: “Did he influ­ence her?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

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

For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five”

How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and orig­i­nal­ly per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. Brubeck–who would have cel­e­brat­ed his 100th birth­day today–called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion he had ever heard. Once you watch the per­for­mance above, you’ll know why.

Accord­ing to The Guardian, The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra was cre­at­ed by Izzat Majeed, a phil­an­thropist based in Lon­don. When Pak­istan fell under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Gen­er­al Zia-ul-Haq dur­ing the 1980s, Pakistan’s clas­si­cal music scene fell on hard times. Many musi­cians were forced into pro­fes­sions they had nev­er imag­ined — sell­ing clothes, elec­tri­cal parts, veg­eta­bles, etc. What­ev­er was nec­es­sary to get by. Today, many of these musi­cians have come togeth­er in a 60-per­son orches­tra that plays in a state-of-the-art stu­dio, designed part­ly by Abbey Road sound engi­neers.

You can pur­chase their album, Sachal Jazz: Inter­pre­ta­tions of Jazz Stan­dards & Bossa Nova, on Ama­zon and iTunes. It includes ver­sions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipane­ma.”

For good mea­sure, we’ve added Sachal’s take on “Eleanor Rig­by,” some­thing George Har­ri­son would sure­ly have loved.

Note: A ver­sion of this post first appeared on our site back in 2013. But as enchant­i­ng as it is, it seemed worth bring­ing back.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

Ultra Ortho­dox Rab­bis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem

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One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather

It real­ly is a won­der, know­ing what we know about the his­to­ry of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in Hol­ly­wood and Amer­i­ca in gen­er­al, that the musi­cal Stormy Weath­er even got made in 1943. Along with one oth­er sim­i­lar film Cab­in in the Sky, it’s one of the few Amer­i­can musi­cals of the 20th cen­tu­ry with an all-Black cast, top billing and all. And what a cast, just some of the most tal­ent­ed artists of their time: Bojan­gles Robin­son, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, Cab Cal­loway, and the Nicholas Broth­ers star. Kather­ine Dun­ham, the “queen moth­er of Black dance” per­forms and chore­o­graphs. Cole­man Hawkins, though uncred­it­ed, is there too, play­ing sax.

The film also gave you its money’s worth, with near­ly two dozen musi­cal num­bers in less than 80 min­utes. And the top per­for­mance is the one that clos­es the film, seen here remas­tered from a high qual­i­ty source (make sure your YouTube is set to 1080p) and col­orized with DeOld­ify, the machine-learn­ing col­oriza­tion tool. (Your mileage may vary with the col­oriza­tion, but hey, it’s a start. Check back in a year or so and we might have anoth­er ver­sion that looks like it was tru­ly shot in col­or.)

If you’ve nev­er seen the “Jumpin’ Jive” num­ber, or nev­er heard of the Nicholas Broth­ers, you will soon find out why Fred Astaire called it the great­est danc­ing he’d ever seen on film. Their jour­ney down the ris­ers, one leapfrog­ging over the oth­er and land­ing in the splits, has nev­er been matched. There’s moments where they just seem to float on air. The band leader, Cab Cal­loway, who knew how to slink and slide around a stage, wise­ly gives them the floor. And at the end, while applause bursts out, the entire club is invit­ed to flood the dance­floor. It’s pure joy on film.

Old­er broth­er Fayard Nicholas was 29 in the film, his younger broth­er Harold was 22. Eleven years before that they had moved to New York from Philadel­phia and wowed the audi­ences at the Cot­ton Club with their mix of tap, bal­let, and acro­bat­ics. It was when pro­duc­er Samuel Gold­wyn saw them at the Club that their career took off. But their sequences were always sep­a­rate in white musi­cals, so that racist cin­e­mas in the South could eas­i­ly edit them out. Not so in Stormy Weath­er, where they end the film.

It is often writ­ten that this sequence was shot in “one take” and impro­vised, but that is plain­ly not the case. There’s eleven cuts in the dance sequence where the cam­era repo­si­tions itself. That’s not to take away from the Nicholas Broth­ers’ mas­tery, and hey, maybe they zipped through the sequence, as danc­ing was like breath­ing to them. Let’s just cel­e­brate this for what it actu­al­ly is: the Nicholas Broth­ers at the height of their pow­ers, bring­ing the house down.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” a 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

A 1932 Illus­trat­ed Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cot­ton Club to the Savoy Ball­room

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

When Sun Ra Went to Egypt in 1971: See Film & Hear Recordings from the Legendary Afrofuturist’s First Visit to Cairo

Sun Ra died in 1993 (or he returned to his home plan­et of Sat­urn, one or the oth­er). Twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er his Arkestra is still going strong. “No group in jazz his­to­ry has embod­ied the com­mu­nal spir­it like the Arkestra,” writes Peter Mar­gasak at The Qui­etus. “Their hard­core fans are the clos­est thing jazz has to Dead­heads.” We could fur­ther com­pare Sun Ra and Jer­ry Gar­cia as bandleaders—their embrace of extend­ed free form play­ing against a back­ground of tra­di­tion­al­ism. Folk, and coun­try in Garcia’s case and big band swing in the work of the man born Her­man Poole Blount in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma in 1914.

But (all due respect to Jer­ry, and he earned it), Sun Ra had a vision that was wider than his ded­i­cat­ed fan­base. He har­nessed the pow­er­ful sym­bols of ancient Egypt and oth­er African king­doms to form the base of his Afro­fu­tur­ist mes­sage, a blend of “Black Nation­al­ism, ancient spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and sci­ence fic­tion” for the jazz mass­es. Ra fleshed these themes out ful­ly in his 1974 film Space is the Place, a sci-fi fan­ta­sy in which he bat­tles his adver­saries in a plan to trans­port Black Amer­i­cans to a new plan­et.

What seems like a call for sep­a­ratism is real­ly an alle­go­ry cri­tiquing what schol­ar Daniel Kreiss calls the “ter­res­tri­al com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams” of the Black Pan­thers and the ills of pover­ty, racism, and exploita­tion. “Only the band’s use of tech­nol­o­gy and music will lib­er­ate the peo­ple by chang­ing con­scious­ness” the film sug­gests. Space, and ancient Egypt, are also places in the mind. Sun Ra had his own con­scious­ness changed a cou­ple year ear­li­er when he vis­it­ed the real Egypt for the first time in 1971. The result­ing record­ings—new­ly released—stand as “one of Sun Ra’s major works” Edwin Pouncey writes at Jazz­wise, and “would lead him to oth­er worlds of inner dis­cov­ery in the future.”

Film of the 22-mem­ber col­lec­tive at the pyra­mids (top), tak­en by Arkestra mem­ber Thomas Hunter, cre­ates “an audio-visu­al tele­por­ta­tion into their inter­stel­lar uni­verse,” The Vinyl Factory’s Gabriela Helfet remarks. Pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished pho­tographs of the Cairo con­certs com­plete the image of the band as a psy­che­del­ic pan-African space­ship made of music. Where will it take you? Wher­ev­er you need to go. In a record­ed Q&A held dur­ing one show, Sun Ra tells the audi­ence that his adopt­ed name is “my nat­ur­al, vibra­tional name,” his true iden­ti­ty.

Each per­son, Sun Ra sug­gests, has to find to find their own fre­quen­cy. “Pro­gres­sive music is keep­ing ahead of the times, you might say. In Amer­i­ca they call it avant-garde music. It’s sup­posed to stim­u­late peo­ple to think for them­selves.” The mes­sage and the music res­onat­ed, and the band would return to Egypt two more times in the com­ing decade after their first vis­it, as Brad­ford Bai­ley notes:

Beyond per­son­al appeal, the trip proved cre­ative­ly fruitful—introducing the entourage to fig­ures in Cairo’s grow­ing jazz scene. The most notable was Salah Ragab—founder of the sem­i­nal out­fits, The Cairo Jazz Band and The Cairo Free Jazz Ensem­ble, with whom they would col­lab­o­rate on their sec­ond and third vis­its, record­ings of which came to light on the 1983 LP, The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab Plus The Cairo Jazz Band ‎– In Egypt. 

Hear “Watusa” from that LP, above, lis­ten to the full Egypt 1971 ses­sions at Band­camp (or below), and see sev­er­al more new­ly pub­lished pho­tographs at the Vinyl Fac­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Col­lec­tion of Sun Ra’s Busi­ness Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This World

Sun Ra Applies to NASA’s Art Pro­gram: When the Inven­tor of Space Jazz Applied to Make Space Art

Stream 74 Sun Ra Albums Free Online: Decades of “Space Jazz” and Oth­er Forms of Inter­galac­tic, Afro­fu­tur­is­tic Musi­cal Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

An Introduction to Rap Battles: Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #71

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are rejoined by our audio edi­tor and res­i­dent rap­per Tyler His­lop (rap name: “Sac­ri­fice”) to dis­cuss a form of enter­tain­ment close to his heart: Two peo­ple star­ing each oth­er in the face in front of a crowd and tak­ing lengthy turns insult­ing each oth­er in a loud voice using intri­cate rhymes, ref­er­ences, jokes and even some cul­tur­al com­men­tary and philo­soph­i­cal spit-balling.

So what are the rules? How does mod­ern bat­tle rap com­pare to free-styling, the beefs aired on rap albums, and clas­sic insult com­e­dy? What’s the appeal of this art form? Is it because of or despite the aggres­sion involved? Bat­tle rap is regard­ed as a free speech zone, where any­thing’s fair game, but does that real­ly make sense?

A few rel­e­vant films came up in the dis­cus­sion:

  • Bod­ied (2017), a film writ­ten by Alex Larsen (aka Kid Twist) and pro­duced by Eminem, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al cur­rent bat­tle rap­pers doing their thing along with dis­cus­sion by the char­ac­ters of the eth­i­cal issues involved
  • 8 Mile (2002), a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film star­ring Eminem, which dis­plays the old­er, free-styling over a beat type of bat­tle rap­ping
  • Rox­anne Rox­anne (2017) a biopic about Rox­anne Shante depict­ing hip-hop rival­ries of the 1980s.

Here are some match­es Tyler rec­om­mend­ed that also get men­tioned:

More resources:

Hear Tyler talk about his many rap albums on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #24.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Japanese Art Installation Lets People Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Socially-Distanced Notes on the Floor

The glob­al pan­dem­ic has revealed the depths of sys­tem­at­ic cru­el­ty in cer­tain places in the world that have refused to com­mit resources to pro­tect­ing peo­ple from the virus or refused to even acknowl­edge its exis­tence. Oth­er respons­es show a dif­fer­ent way for­ward, one in which every­one con­tributes mean­ing­ful­ly through the prin­ci­pled actions of wear­ing masks and social dis­tanc­ing or the prin­ci­pled non-action of stay­ing home to slow the spread.

Then there’s the crit­i­cal role of art, design, and music in our sur­vival. As we have seen—from spon­ta­neous bal­cony ser­e­nades in Italy to poignant ani­mat­ed video poet­ry—the arts are no less cru­cial to our sur­vival than pub­lic health. Human beings need delight, won­der, humor, mourn­ing, and cel­e­bra­tion, and we need to come togeth­er to expe­ri­ence these things, whether online or in real, if dis­tant, life. Ide­al­ly, pub­lic health and art can work togeth­er.

Japan­ese design­er Eisuke Tachikawa has put his skills to work doing exact­ly that. When cas­es began spik­ing in his coun­try in April, Tachikawa and his design firm Nosign­er made some beau­ti­ful­ly designed, and very fun­ny, posters to encour­age social dis­tanc­ing as part of an ini­tia­tive called Pandaid. Then they cre­at­ed Super Mario Broth­ers coin stick­ers to place six feet (or two meters, or one tuna) apart. In its Eng­lish trans­la­tion, at least, the text on Nosigner’s site is direct about their inten­tions: “As this con­tin­ues we want­ed to val­ue-trans­late the social con­straints of social dis­tanc­ing into some­thing pos­i­tive and enjoy­able.”

Tachikawa and Nosign­er have “devel­oped a brand,” they announced recent­ly, called SOCIAL HARMONY “in order to spread the cul­ture of social dis­tanc­ing in a humor­ous way.” Their lat­est instal­la­tion, how­ev­er, does not incor­po­rate jokes or Nin­ten­do ref­er­ences. Rather it draws on one of the most pop­u­lar and beloved pieces of min­i­mal­ist clas­si­cal music, Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” (pro­claimed by Clas­sic FM as “the most flat-out relax­ing piece of piano music ever writ­ten”). “Peo­ple stand on a large music sheet on the floor and notes are played the moment you step on them. By respect­ing social dis­tances and going one note at a time, the pub­lic is able to play” Satie’s piece.

Even for such a suc­cinct com­po­si­tion, this must require a rig­or­ous amount of coor­di­na­tion. But it is nec­es­sary to play the notes in order: “Since the melody changes with every stop, one can cre­ate one’s own Gymnopédie No. 1, since the played melody changes with every step.” The piece was installed at the entrance hall to the Yoko­hama Minatomi­rai Hall for DESIGNART TOKYO 2020, where it will remain until the end of the year. Sure­ly there will be oth­er forms of “social har­mo­ny” to come from the Japan­ese design­ers. Like the prac­tice of social dis­tanc­ing itself, we can only hope such projects catch on and go glob­al, until the wide­spread vac­ci­na­tion and an end to the pan­dem­ic can bring us clos­er again.

via Spoon & Tam­a­go 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­serves Black Lives Mat­ter & COVID-19 Street Art

Watch How to Be at Home, a Beau­ti­ful Short Ani­ma­tion on the Real­i­ties of Social Iso­la­tion in 2020

2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey–A Short Film Reen­acts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

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

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Recorded Song (1976)

Sev­er­al years back, we fea­tured an eleven-year-old Björk read­ing a nativ­i­ty sto­ry in her native Ice­landic, backed by unsmil­ing old­er kids from the Children’s Music School in Reyk­javík. In this new find, also dat­ing from 1976, you can hear that same eleven-year-old Björk singing in Eng­lish, in what marks her first record­ing. Above, she sings the Tina Charles song “I Love to Love” for a school recital. Accord­ing to Laugh­ing Squid, the “teach­ers were so impressed with her voice, they sent the record­ing to the nation­al radio sta­tion where it received a great deal of play.” Soon there­after (in 1977) came her first album, fea­tur­ing cov­er art pro­vid­ed by her mom. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly explored that here on OC.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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

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

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

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