The Legend of How Bluesman Robert Johnson Sold His Soul to the Devil at the Crossroads

in History, Music | October 30th, 2020

We remem­ber the blues­man Robert John­son as the Jimi Hen­drix of the 1930s, a gui­tarist of stag­ger­ing skill who died before age thir­ty. Both found main­stream suc­cess, but John­son’s came posthu­mous­ly: in fact, his music and Hen­drix’s first music hit it big in the same decade, the 1960s. King of the Delta Blues Singers, an album of John­son’s songs released by Colum­bia Records in 1961, had a great influ­ence on the likes of Bob Dylan, Kei­th Richards, Robert Plant, and Eric Clap­ton, who calls John­son “the most impor­tant blues singer that ever lived.” How did this poor young Mis­sis­sip­pi­an come by his for­mi­da­ble abil­i­ties? Why, he sold his soul to the dev­il at the cross­roads, of course.

Or at least that’s what we all seem to have heard. And indeed, does­n’t the leg­end make the open­ing line of “Cross Road Blues,” King of the Delta Blues’ open­ing num­ber, that much more evoca­tive? “I went down to the cross­roads,” he sings. “Fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above for mer­cy, ‘Take me, if you please.’ ” Well, it could’ve been the Lord, or it could have been the oth­er one. But in fact we have pre­cious lit­tle record of John­son’s life, and no direct ref­er­ences at all to his bar­gain with Beelze­bub (ani­ma­tions of which we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Why has the leg­end stuck? Music Youtube series Poly­phon­ic address­es that ques­tion in the video essay above.

An ear­li­er episode cov­ered deals with the dev­il through­out the his­to­ry of music. This time, the sub­ject is the cross­roads itself, the set­ting of John­son­ian lore no one ever fails to men­tion. “Of all the marks that humans make on the earth, cross­roads are among the sim­plest and most endur­ing,” says nar­ra­tor Noah Lefevre. “As long as humans orga­nize our­selves in towns and cities, cross­roads will remain, and so will the leg­ends of their dark pow­ers and of the strange spir­its who occu­py them.” The mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads goes back at least to the Greek god­dess Hecate, who rules over “lim­i­nal space, the tran­si­tion from the known to the great unknown beyond.” In the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, the mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads inter­sects, as it were, with the realm of Hait­ian voodoo.

“A reli­gion that mix­es Roman Catholic influ­ences with West African spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions” — and the one that gave us zom­bies — voodoo has “one all-pow­er­ful god, but you can only speak to him through spir­its known as loa.” And to talk to loa, you’ve got to go through Papa Leg­ba, the loa of the cross­roads. From the late 18th cen­tu­ry, voodoo began mak­ing its way through the Amer­i­can South, the cra­dle of the blues. Out of this rich set­ting came John­son’s pre­de­ces­sor Tom­my John­son (no rela­tion), a singer and gui­tarist who based his per­sona on the claim of hav­ing sold his own soul to the dev­il. Even Robert John­son’s men­tor Ike Zim­mer­man was said to have prac­ticed gui­tar in grave­yards at mid­night.

“John­son is seen today as the grand­fa­ther of rock-and-roll,” says Lefevre. “That comes not just from his vir­tu­oso play­ing, but also from his mythol­o­gy.” (Con­sid­er this lega­cy in light of how often rock-and-roll was in decades past called “the dev­il’s music.”) Today, in songs like “Hell­hound on My Trail,” we can hear both ref­er­ences to voodoo-inspired rit­u­als and oth­er forms of the occult as well as con­di­tions of life in a South removed only a gen­er­a­tion or two from slav­ery. This Poly­phon­ic episode may con­vince you that “the myth of John­son and the cross­roads may have been birthed out of sheer acci­dent,” but that’s no rea­son not to give King of the Delta Blues Singers a spin this Hal­loween — or any oth­er day besides.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in the New York Times 81 Years After His Death

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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Karen O & Willie Nelson Release a New Cover Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pressure”

in Music | October 28th, 2020

Today, Karen O and Willie Nel­son unveiled their cov­er of the icon­ic David Bowie and Queen clas­sic “Under Pres­sure.” The­mat­i­cal­ly, it’s a song for our pres­sure-filled times. But this ver­sion will keep you cen­tered and calm. Put it on end­less loop through next Tues­day.

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:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

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The History of Soviet Rock: From the 70s Underground Rock Scene, to Soviet Punk & New Wave in the 1980s

in Music | October 28th, 2020

“As long as you’ve got a pack of cig­a­rettes,” sings Vik­tor Tsoi, the Sovi­et Union’s biggest ever rock star, “life can’t be all that shab­by.” When Tsoi died in a car crash in 1990, Please Kill Me writes, “it was, to a young per­son in the Sovi­et Union, as if Bob Dylan, James Dean and Muham­mad Ali all died simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.” When Yuliya Aba­she­va, born in the year of Tsoi’s death, first heard him sing, “I was thrilled to the core of my being. I lit­er­al­ly fell in love with his music, and I imme­di­ate­ly real­ized that I didn’t want to lis­ten to any music but Kino.”

What, you’ve nev­er heard of Vik­tor Tsoi? Or Kino? Or Sovi­et rock? Well, you’re in for a treat. The two-part series on Sovi­et rock from Band­splain­ing fea­tured here cov­ers all the big names from the scene, bands who first came togeth­er in the 1970s and explod­ed into legit­i­ma­cy in the 80s, thanks to the KGB, iron­i­cal­ly, in 1981, when “some Com­mu­nist Par­ty genius decid­ed to open a num­ber of rock clubs around the Sovi­et Union to con­trol and treat the rock mania from with­in,” Auck­land-based Moscovite Anas­ta­sia Doniants writes. “For the first time since the ear­ly 1930s, the cool kids had a place to social­ize open­ly, but still under the watch­ful KGB eye.”

For­eign jazz and rock had cir­cu­lat­ed in samiz­dat form through­out the coun­try since the 1950s, some of it on repur­posed X‑Ray film. And Russ­ian hip­sters, known as stilya­gi, had devel­oped their own under­ground style and tastes. But form­ing a band and per­form­ing for an audi­ence is a major step beyond lis­ten­ing to illic­it records in secret. It sim­ply couldn’t be done at scale with­out offi­cial sanction—with no radio play, com­mer­cial record­ing stu­dios, or pay­ing gigs. Once said sanc­tion arrived, bands like Kino, Akvar­i­um, Time Machine, and Auto­graph took off.

But it was hard­ly a smooth tran­si­tion from under­ground to main­stream. “The vast author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment would seem to con­stant­ly backpedal,” says Band­splain­ing, “allow­ing some artis­tic free­doms, then tak­ing them away. Numer­ous bands were pop­u­lar one moment, then banned, cen­sored, or even jailed the next.” Accused of being dis­si­dents, rock stars like Tsoi were also accused, as recent­ly as just a few years ago, of being “CIA oper­a­tives try­ing to desta­bi­lize the Sovi­et regime.” While the claim may be far-fetched, it is not off the mark entire­ly.

The U.S. was keen to use any cul­tur­al means to under­mine Sovi­et author­i­ty. But a “rock sub­cul­ture,” Carl Schreck writes at The Atlantic, “had been per­co­lat­ing in the Sovi­et Union for decades by the time Gor­bachev came to pow­er in 1985.” It was entire­ly home­grown and spread—as it was every­where in the world—by dis­af­fect­ed teenagers des­per­ate for a good time. Learn more about this pas­sion­ate scene and its sub­tly sub­ver­sive music in the two-part series above. Find track­lists of all the bands fea­tured on the doc­u­men­tary’s YouTube pages.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Did the CIA Write the Scor­pi­ons’ “Wind of Change,” One of the Best­selling Songs of All Time?

The Sovi­ets Who Boot­legged West­ern Music on X‑Rays: Their Sto­ry Told in New Video & Audio Doc­u­men­taries

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curat­ed Playlists of Ara­bic, Brazil­ian, Bol­ly­wood, Sovi­et & Turk­ish Music

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

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John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” & Bach’s “Prelude in C Major” Get Turned into Dazzling Musical Animations by an Artist with Synesthesia

in Film, Music, Neuroscience, Psychology | October 28th, 2020

Colour is the key­board, the eyes are the har­monies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touch­ing one key or anoth­er, to cause vibra­tions in the soul.

—Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky

We may owe the his­to­ry of mod­ern art to the con­di­tion of synes­the­sia, which caus­es those who have it to hear col­ors, see sounds, taste smells, etc. Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, who pio­neered abstract expres­sion­ism in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, did so “after hav­ing an unusu­al­ly visu­al response to a per­for­mance of Wagner’s com­po­si­tion Lohen­grin at the Bol­shoi The­atre,” the Den­ver Muse­um of Art notes. He was so moved by the moment that he “aban­doned his law career to study paint­ing at the pres­ti­gious Munich Acad­e­my of Fine Arts. He lat­er described the life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence: ‘I saw all my col­ors in spir­it, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.’”

Kandin­sky nev­er heard Coltrane, but if he had, and had access to 3D ren­der­ing soft­ware, he might have made some­thing very much like the short ani­ma­tion above from Israeli artist Michal Levy. “Rough­ly 3 per cent of peo­ple expe­ri­ence synaes­the­sia,” writes Aeon, “a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion in which peo­ple have a recur­ring sen­so­ry over­lap, such as … envi­sion­ing let­ters and num­bers each with their own inher­ent colour.”

Levy’s con­di­tion is one of the most com­mon forms, like Kandinsky’s: “chro­maes­the­sia, in which sounds and music pro­voke visu­als.” Where the Russ­ian painter saw Wag­n­er in “wild, almost crazy lines,” Levy sees the “rol­lick­ing notes” of Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a “kinet­ic, cas­cad­ing cityscape built from colour­ful blocks of sound.”

After visu­al­iz­ing her expe­ri­ence of Coltrane, Levy cre­at­ed the ani­ma­tion above, Dance of Har­mo­ny, to illus­trate what hap­pens when she hears Bach. Dur­ing a mater­ni­ty leave, work­ing with her friend, ani­ma­tor Hagai Azaz, she set her­self the chal­lenge of show­ing, as she describes it, “the cas­cad­ing flow of emo­tion, to make the feel­ing con­ta­gious, by using only col­or, the basic shape of cir­cles, and min­i­mal­ist motion, assign­ing to each musi­cal chord the visu­al ele­ments that cor­re­spond to it synaes­thet­i­cal­ly.”

It is fas­ci­nat­ing to com­pare Levy’s descrip­tions of her con­di­tion with those of oth­er famous synes­thetes like Vladimir Nabokov and, espe­cial­ly Kandin­sky, who in essence first showed the world what music looks like, there­by giv­ing art a new visu­al lan­guage. Levy calls her synes­the­sia art, an “emo­tion­al voy­age of har­mo­ny,” and includes in her visu­al­iza­tion of Bach’s famous pre­lude an “unex­pect­ed ele­giac side­bar of love and loss,” Maria Popo­va writes. Read Levy’s full descrip­tion of Dance of Har­mo­ny here and learn more about the “extra­or­di­nary sen­so­ry con­di­tion called synes­the­sia” here.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Artist with Synes­the­sia Turns Jazz & Rock Clas­sics Into Col­or­ful Abstract Paint­ings

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

Decon­struct­ing Bach’s Famous Cel­lo Prelude–the One You’ve Heard in Hun­dreds of TV Shows & Films

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

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Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlikely Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

in Music, Television | October 27th, 2020

If you’re a fan of Tom Jones and you don’t care who knows it, then no one needs to jus­ti­fy the jovial Welsh superstar’s lounge-soul cov­ers of pop, R&B, and rock songs to you. Cer­tain purists have been a tougher sell on Jones’ act, includ­ing, in 1969, Neil Young, who joined Jones onstage once, and only once, on the This is Tom Jones show and imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted it. But who cares about Neil Young’s cranky dis­like of com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion? Who is Neil Young to say we can’t enjoy Jones’ brava­do vocals on Cros­by, Stills, Nash & some­times Young’s “Long Time Gone”? The audi­ence sure got a kick out of it, as appar­ent­ly did the rest of the band.

Janis Joplin didn’t have any such hangups when she went on Jones’ show that same year. Well, she had a hangup, but it wasn’t Jones. “God bless her,” Jones remem­bered, “she said to me when she came on, ‘Look, I don’t do vari­ety shows; I’m only doing it because it’s you.’ So she saw through it. Then when Janis and I did the rehearsal for Raise Your Hand she looked at me and said, ‘Jesus, you can real­ly sing! (laughs) I thought, thank God peo­ple like Janis Joplin had tak­en note.” If she out­shines Jones in the tele­vised per­for­mance of the song, above, and I think we can agree she does, he doesn’t seem to mind it much.

Jones may not have had much rock cred; he would nev­er have been invit­ed to share the Wood­stock stage with CSNY and Joplin, but as a singer, he’s always earned tremen­dous respect from every­one, and right­ly so.

“Tom held his own,” writes Soci­ety of Rock, “and kept up beau­ti­ful­ly as he was swept up in the storm that was Janis Joplin’s stage pres­ence, trad­ing ver­bal licks and send­ing her into fits of joy when he let go and sur­ren­dered to her over­whelm­ing ener­gy. This wasn’t just your reg­u­lar, run of the mill vari­ety show but then again, noth­ing was ordi­nary after Janis was through with it.”

This includes any stage that had her on it, which she imme­di­ate­ly dom­i­nat­ed as soon as she opened her mouth. Hear her live ver­sion of “Raise Your Hand” at Wood­stock from ear­li­er that year, fur­ther up, and see her tear it up in Frank­furt on her Euro­pean tour with the Kozmic Blues Band. “I make it a pol­i­cy not to tell any­one to sit down,” she says by way of intro­duc­tion. “That’s to encour­age every­body to stand up.” Joplin’s death the fol­low­ing year deprived the world of one of its all-time great­est blues singers, but thanks to the inter­net, and Tom Jones, we’ll always have per­for­mances like these to remem­ber her by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Get Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

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

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When Billy Idol Went Cyberpunk: See His Tribute to Neuromancer, His Recording Session with Timothy Leary, and His Limited-Edition Floppy Disk (1993)

in History, Music, Technology | October 27th, 2020

Bil­ly Idol has long evad­ed straight­for­ward musi­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion, being a full-on star but one ful­ly belong­ing to nei­ther rock nor pop. He may have come up in the 1970s as the front­man of Gen­er­a­tion X, the first punk band to play Top of the Pops, but the hits he went on to make as an MTV-opti­mized solo artist in the 80s and 90s — “Eyes With­out a Face,” “Cra­dle of Love” — sit less than eas­i­ly with those ori­gins. But as the end of the mil­len­ni­um approached and the zeit­geist grew increas­ing­ly high-tech­no­log­i­cal, it seems to have occurred to the for­mer William Michael Albert Broad that, if he could­n’t be a punk, he could per­haps be a cyber-punk instead.

As bad luck would have it, the bio­me­chan­i­cal had already intrud­ed onto Idol­’s life in the form of a steel rod implant­ed in his leg after a motor­cy­cle acci­dent. This lost him the role of T‑1000, the killer cyborg in Ter­mi­na­tor 2, but it inspired him in part to record the ambi­tious con­cept album Cyber­punk in 1993. Like Pete Town­shend’s Psy­choderelict or Don­ald Fagen’s Kamakiri­ad from that same year (or David Bowie’s Out­side from 1995), Cyber­punk is built on a dystopi­an nar­ra­tive in which “the future has implod­ed into the present” and “mega-cor­po­ra­tions are the new gov­ern­ments. Com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed info-domains are the new fron­tiers.” Thus speaks Idol in the album’s open­ing man­i­festo.

“Though there is bet­ter liv­ing through sci­ence and chem­istry, we’re all becom­ing cyborgs. The com­put­er is the new cool tool. Though we say all infor­ma­tion should be free, it is not. Infor­ma­tion is pow­er and cur­ren­cy of the vir­tu­al world we inhab­it.” Here, “cyber­punks are the true rebels.” This would have sound­ed famil­iar to read­ers of William Gib­son, whose Neu­ro­mancer pop­u­lar­ized the aes­thet­ic and ethos of “high tech meets low life” — and shares a title with one of Cyber­punk’s songs. In fact, as Gib­son lat­er recalled, Idol “made it a con­di­tion of get­ting an inter­view with him, that every jour­nal­ist had to have read Neu­ro­mancer.” They did, “but when they met with Bil­ly, the first thing that became real­ly appar­ent was that Bil­ly had­n’t read it.”

What­ev­er his intel­lec­tu­al invest­ment in cyber­punk, Idol threw him­self into what he saw as the cul­ture sur­round­ing it. This effort involved fre­quent­ing Usenet’s alt.cyberpunk news­group; read­ing Mon­do 2000; and con­nect­ing with fig­ures like Gareth Bran­wyn, author of cyber­punk man­i­festos, and Mark Frauen­felder, co-founder of Boing Boing. “We are merg­ing with machines to become smarter, faster, and more pow­er­ful,” writes Frauen­felder in an essay includ­ed among the “mul­ti­me­dia” con­tents of the 3.5″ flop­py disk orig­i­nal­ly bun­dled with Cyber­punk. “Are you going to ignore tech­nol­o­gy, turn your back on it, and let author­i­ty enslave you with it, or are you going to learn every­thing you can about sur­viv­ing in the dig­i­tal age?”

Cyber­punk con­sti­tutes Idol­’s affir­ma­tive answer to that ques­tion. Much of his excite­ment about per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy sure­ly owes to the lib­er­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the pro­fes­sion­al-grade home record­ing stu­dio. “I’d always real­ly sort of worked through a team of a pro­duc­er and an engi­neer,” he said in one inter­view, “and in the end I think real­ly you felt like you weren’t get­ting as close to your ideas as you could be.” From his own home stu­dio he wit­nessed the 1992 Los Ange­les riots, which prompt­ed him then and there to rewrite the song “Shock to the Sys­tem” to reflect the tur­moil roil­ing out­side his door. (Film­mak­er Kathryn Bigelow would explore at greater length that explo­sion of urban dis­con­tent’s inter­sec­tion with cyber­punk cul­ture in 1995’s Strange Days.)

See­ing cyber­punk as the lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of a broad­er coun­ter­cul­ture, Idol cast a wide net for col­lab­o­ra­tors and inspi­ra­tions. He invit­ed Tim­o­thy Leary, the “cyberdel­ic” cul­tur­al icon who dreamed of mak­ing a Neu­ro­mancer com­put­er game, not just to inter­view him about the project but par­tic­i­pate in its record­ing. The album’s cen­ter­piece is a cov­er of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s “Hero­in,” and a dance cov­er at that. Though remem­bered as nei­ther an artis­tic nor a com­mer­cial suc­cess (the rea­sons for which Youtube music crit­ic Todd in the Shad­ows exam­ines in the video at the top of the post), Cyber­punk set some­thing of a prece­dent for main­stream musi­cians keen to use cut­ting-edge record­ing and pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy to go ful­ly D.I.Y. — to go, as it were, cyber-punk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gibson’s Sem­i­nal Cyber­punk Nov­el, Neu­ro­mancer, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (2002)

Dis­cov­er Rare 1980s CDs by Lou Reed, Devo & Talk­ing Heads That Com­bined Music with Com­put­er Graph­ics

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

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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Jazz-Zither-Piano-Man Laraaji Discusses His Decades of Meditative Improvisations: A Nakedly Examined Music Podcast Conversation (#134)

in Music, Podcasts | October 26th, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apUE3nAeszw&feature=emb_title

Jazz mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Edward Lar­ry Gor­don Jr. became Laraa­ji around the same time he start­ed releas­ing med­i­ta­tive zither music in the late 70s and was then dis­cov­ered by Bri­an Eno, who pro­duced “The Dance No. 1” from  Ambi­ent 3: Day of Radi­ance (1980). Laraa­ji has since had around 40 releas­es of large­ly impro­vised music, and this inter­view (below) explores his approach toward impro­vi­sa­tion on numer­ous instru­ments, play­ing “func­tion­al” music intend­ed to aid med­i­ta­tion and reflec­tion, and the evo­lu­tion of Laraa­ji’s unique musi­cal vision.

Each episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music fea­tures full-length pre­sen­ta­tions of four record­ings dis­cussed by the artist with your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er. Here we present “Hold on to the Vision” and “Shenan­doah” from Laraa­ji’s lat­est release, Sun Piano (2020), the sin­gle edit of “Intro­spec­tion” from Bring On the Sun (2017), and “All of a Sud­den,” a 1986 vocal tune released on Vision Songs, Vol. 1 (2017). Get more infor­ma­tion at laraaji.blogspot.com.

Want more? Hear all of “The Dance No. 1.” Watch the live TV ver­sion of “All of a Sud­den” we dis­cuss, as well anoth­er episode of Celestrana fea­tur­ing Dr. Love the pup­pet. Watch a sim­i­lar, recent iso­la­tion stream also fea­tur­ing Dr. Love and much more. Lis­ten to the full glo­ry of “Intro­spec­tion” and the trip that is “Sun Gong.” Check out some live gong play­ing. Here’s a remix of “Intro­spec­tion” by Dntel.

Find the archive of song­writer inter­views at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com or get the ad-free feed at patreon.com/nakedlyexaminedmusic. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast. Mark Lin­sen­may­er also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, and releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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Glenn Gould Explains Why Mozart Was a Bad Composer in a Controversial Public TV Show (1968)

in Music | October 22nd, 2020

No mat­ter how eccen­tric Glenn Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tions of major com­posers might have been, his friend and pro­mot­er Leonard Bern­stein found them wor­thy of per­for­mance, even if he didn’t quite agree. In “The Truth About a Leg­end,” his trib­ute essay to Gould after the pianist’s death, Bern­stein wrote, “Any dis­cov­ery of Glenn’s was wel­comed by me because I wor­shipped the way he played: I admired his intel­lec­tu­al approach, his ‘guts’ approach.”

Are these con­tra­dic­tions? Glenn Gould was a com­pli­cat­ed man, a bril­liant­ly abstract thinker who threw his full phys­i­cal being into his play­ing. When Gould slowed a Brahms con­cer­to to a crawl, so slow that “it was very tir­ing” for the orches­tra to play, he was con­vinced he had dis­cov­ered a secret key to the tem­po with­in the piece itself. Bern­stein had pro­found doubts, tried sev­er­al times to dis­suade Gould, and warned the orches­tra, “Now don’t give up, because this is a great man, whom we have to take very seri­ous­ly.”

Not all of Gould’s admir­ers were as tol­er­ant of Gould’s unortho­dox views. In 1968, Gould pre­sent­ed a seg­ment of the week­ly pub­lic tele­vi­sion series Pub­lic Broad­cast Library. His top­ic was “How Mozart Became a Bad Com­pos­er.” This was, per­haps suf­fice to say, a very unpop­u­lar opin­ion. “The pro­gram out­raged view­ers in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, includ­ing for­mer­ly sym­pa­thet­ic fans and crit­ics,” Kevin Baz­zana writes in Won­drous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. It would nev­er again air any­where and was only recent­ly dig­i­tized from 2‑inch tape found in the Library of Con­gress Nation­al Audio-Visu­al Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter.

Gould opens the show with a selec­tion from Mozart’s Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor, then in his crit­i­cal com­men­tary, alleges the piece “has had a rather bet­ter press than it deserves, I think. Despite it’s gen­tly swoon­ing melodies, its metic­u­lous­ly bal­anced cadences, despite its sta­ble and archi­tec­tural­ly unex­cep­tion­able form, I’m going to sub­mit it as a good exam­ple of why I think Mozart, espe­cial­ly in his lat­er years, was not a very good com­pos­er.” Then Gould real­ly digs in, casu­al­ly com­par­ing Mozart’s “depend­able” crafts­man­ship to “the way that an accounts exec­u­tive dis­patch­es an interof­fice memo.”

It is a shock­ing thing to say, and Gould, of course, knows it. Is this hubris, or is he delib­er­ate­ly pro­vok­ing his audi­ence? “Glenn had strong ele­ments of sports­man­ship and teas­ing,” Bern­stein writes, “the kind of dar­ing which accounts for his fresh­ness.” His con­trari­ness might have inspired at least a few view­ers to lis­ten crit­i­cal­ly and care­ful­ly to Mozart for the first time, with­out hun­dreds of years of received opin­ion medi­at­ing the expe­ri­ence. This is the spir­it in which we should view Gould’s eru­dite icon­o­clasm, says Library of Con­gress Music Ref­er­ence Spe­cial­ist James Win­tle: to learn to lis­ten with new ears, “as a child,” to a com­pos­er we have “been con­di­tioned to revere.”

Gould’s unpop­u­lar opin­ions “did not always take a turn toward the neg­a­tive,” Win­tle writes. He cham­pi­oned the works of less-than-pop­u­lar com­posers like Paul Hin­demith and Jean Sibelius. And his “great sense of inquiry,” Bern­stein wrote, “made him sud­den­ly under­stand Schoen­berg and Liszt in the same cat­e­go­ry, or Pur­cell and Brahms, or Orlan­do Gib­bons and Petu­la Clark. He would sud­den­ly bring an unlike­ly pair of musi­cians togeth­er in some kind of star­tling com­par­a­tive essay.” Gould’s musi­cal inven­tive­ness, taste, and judg­ment were unpar­al­leled, Bern­stein main­tained, and for that rea­son, we should always be inclined to hear him out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Glenn Gould’s Eccen­tric­i­ties Became Essen­tial to His Play­ing & Per­son­al Style: From Hum­ming Aloud While Play­ing to Per­form­ing with His Child­hood Piano Chair

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

Glenn Gould’s Heav­i­ly Marked-Up Score for the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions Sur­faces, Let­ting Us Look Inside His Cre­ative Process

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

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