There’s noth­ing like hav­ing a dead­line. When Simon and Gar­funkel were called on by direc­tor Mike Nichols to pro­vide music for his 1967 com­e­dy The Grad­u­ate, the film was already being edit­ed, and the duo were work­ing on the movie stu­dio clock. To hear Simon tell it in this inter­view with Dick Cavett (from the same inter­view we fea­tured ear­li­er this week), it was that crunch time that pro­duced one of their best songs, and their biggest hit, “Mrs. Robin­son.”

In fact, the song stitched togeth­er two unre­lat­ed sketch­es. The first was the gui­tar fill that starts the song, which was Simon just riff­ing over a chase scene. “But it wasn’t work­ing,” he says. The oth­er, the cho­rus, was a frag­ment: “And here’s to you Mrs. Robin­son, Jesus loves you more than you will know.”

“For no par­tic­u­lar rea­son, the words just came into my head,” Simon tells Cavett. The next line men­tioned Mrs. Roo­sevelt, and who knows where Simon might have gone with the song if Mike Nichols hadn’t told him to ditch any­thing polit­i­cal and keep with just the one char­ac­ter.

If you have the sound­track to The Grad­u­ate, you’ll notice that the ver­sion of “Mrs. Robin­son” only has scat singing in the vers­es, just mak­ing it up as they went along. There was no time to flesh out the track, and it fit in the movie bet­ter than any of the songs Mike Nichols had licensed already from the duo. It would be one of many pre­scient choic­es for the clas­sic com­e­dy, includ­ing cast­ing the unknown Jew­ish 30-year-old Dustin Hoff­man for the main role instead of the very white choic­es the stu­dio was try­ing to push on the direc­tor.

It was only three months after the film came out that Simon and Gar­funkel record­ed the full ver­sion with the lyrics in the vers­es. It became their sec­ond num­ber one sin­gle in 1968 and was the first rock song to win a Gram­my for Record of the Year. But true to the orig­i­nal sound­track ver­sion, it keeps its open­ing verse word-free.

And it’s an odd song. Simon describes the writ­ing as stream of con­scious­ness. Though Mrs. Robin­son is indeed a char­ac­ter in the film, played by Anne Ban­croft, the lyrics rarely ref­er­ence the film, except for “It’s a lit­tle secret just the Robin­son’s affair/Most of all you’ve got to hide it from the kids.” (And even here Simon seems to be singing about hid­ing pre­scrip­tion drugs). Instead Simon cre­ates an ellip­ti­cal nar­ra­tive for Mrs. Robin­son, plac­ing her at the cen­ter of a sto­ry set…at a san­i­tar­i­um, per­haps? The sto­ry jumps all around, but Mrs. Robin­son remains con­fused, out of sorts, suf­fer­ing the alien­ation of the sub­ur­ban wife, nos­tal­gic for an imag­i­nary past. It’s where Joe DiMag­gio comes in, called out like a sav­ior (“a nation turns its lone­ly eyes to you”) when the “Jesus loves you” exhor­ta­tions don’t work. Lat­er, Simon would explain the DiMag­gio ref­er­ence as, “I thought of him as an Amer­i­can hero and that gen­uine heroes were in short sup­ply.” (Simon was more of a Mick­ey Man­tle fan, but DiMag­gio had bet­ter syl­la­bles).

The good thing about writ­ing in this stream of con­scious­ness, Simon tells Cavett, is “You find out what was in your mind was rel­e­vant even though at the time it didn’t seem so.” The song sounds chip­per, but those lyrics are the sto­ry of a soci­ety about to come apart, which it would do sev­er­al months lat­er in 1968. Like The Grad­u­ate, with its satire about sub­ur­bia, loos­en­ing morals, hypocrisy, and “plas­tics” both as a career choice and a way of describ­ing soci­ety, the song is a rev­e­la­tion of a world to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Art Gar­funkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

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.

It seems impos­si­ble to talk about key­boardist Chick Corea, who passed away from can­cer on Feb­ru­ary 11 at age 79, with­out also talk­ing about Miles Davis. Davis hand picked him for the ground­break­ing albums In a Silent Way and Bitch­es Brew, and as a mem­ber of those ensem­bles, Corea helped shape the future of music and helped divide the jazz com­mu­ni­ty into those who embraced the psy­che­del­ic “fusion” of jazz, rock, and oth­er world musics and those who were fierce­ly pro­tec­tive of tra­di­tion.

Corea, how­ev­er, “had already gone through ear­ly explo­rative phas­es of his career,” writes Jim Bur­long at Jazz Views, before his “brief but not always hap­py” stint with Davis. He was on his way to the avant-garde direc­tion he would take with his lat­er group, Return to For­ev­er. Yet no mat­ter how far out there he went with Davis or the ridicu­lous­ly accom­plished RTF and hun­dreds of oth­er musi­cians he played with, Corea always stayed con­nect­ed to the music’s roots.

“Through­out his career,” Gio­van­ni Rus­sonel­lo writes at The New York Times, Corea “nev­er aban­doned his first love, the acoustic piano, on which his punc­til­ious touch and crisp sense of har­mo­ny made his play­ing imme­di­ate­ly dis­tinc­tive.” We hear it in com­po­si­tions like “Spain” (at the top in a beau­ti­ful­ly spare ver­sion with Bob­by McFer­rin), “500 Miles High,” and “Tones for Joan’s Bones,” all of which have “become jazz stan­dards, marked by his dreamy but bright­ly illu­mi­nat­ed har­monies and ear-grab­bing melodies.”

We hear Corea’s “dreamy” acoustic piano through­out Return to Forever’s 1976 Roman­tic War­rior, an album that fea­tures 29 or so addi­tion­al instru­ments among its four musi­cians, includ­ing a Min­i­Moog, Micro­moog, Poly­moog, Moog 15, ARP Odyssey, and an alarm clock and slide whis­tle on the quirky, medieval “The Magi­cian.” This descrip­tion alone might make purists cringe, but charges that jazz fusion albums are over­stuffed and over­ly busy don’t tend to stick to Corea’s best record­ings.

The sound of Return to For­ev­er on Roman­tic War­rior, an album that influ­enced “bands to come on both sides of the Atlantic,” is “nev­er crowd­ed,” Bur­long writes, “and the over­all ambiance from all com­bi­na­tions of the thir­ty some­thing instru­ments used is most­ly one of con­trolled urgency.” Graced with a finesse that shines equal­ly in weird, Sci­en­tol­ogy-inspired elec­tric albums and tra­di­tion­al acoustic trios, Corea’s “ver­sa­til­i­ty is sec­ond to none when it comes to the jazz world,” says his long­time friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor, vibra­phon­ist Gary Bur­ton.

Corea resist­ed the idea that funk and rock instru­men­ta­tion in pro­gres­sive jazz meant the inven­tion of a new sub-genre. “It’s the media that are so inter­est­ed in cat­e­go­riz­ing music,” he said in 1983, “the media and the busi­ness­men, who, after all, have a vest­ed inter­est in keep­ing mar­ket­ing clear cut and sep­a­rate. If crit­ics would ask musi­cians their views about what is hap­pen­ing, you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts tak­ing place… a con­tin­u­al merg­ing of dif­fer­ent streams.”

His advice to fel­low musi­cians who might feel con­strained by tra­di­tion or the stric­tures of the mar­ket is price­less (or “cheap but good,” he wrote), includ­ing the advice he gave a grad­u­at­ing class at Berklee Col­lege of Music in his home state of Mass­a­chu­setts in 1997: “It’s all right to be your­self. In fact, the more your­self you are, the more mon­ey you make.” As a musi­cian, Corea was nev­er any­thing less than him­self, though he didn’t seem in it for the mon­ey, shar­ing com­po­si­tion cred­it equal­ly among the musi­cians on many of his ensem­ble albums.

Corea’s ver­sa­tile musi­cal approach won him 23 Gram­mys (“more than almost any oth­er musi­cian,” writes Rus­sonel­lo), three Latin Gram­mys, and the endur­ing respect and admi­ra­tion of fans and fel­low musi­cians. See more of his flaw­less chops in the inti­mate live per­for­mances above, includ­ing a Tiny Desk Con­cert with Bur­ton, a full con­cert in Spain from 2018 with his acoustic trio, and a duel­ing piano per­for­mance of “Spain” live in Tokyo with pianist Hiro­mi Uehara, just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Chick Corea (RIP) Offers 16 Pieces of “Cheap But Good Advice for Play­ing Music in a Group” (1985)

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew Turns 50: Cel­e­brate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Mas­ter­piece

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

Wis­dom, humour, com­pas­sion, under­stand­ing, bril­lian­cy of intel­lect, unselfish­ness, mod­esty, courage—he had all these attrib­ut­es… The gov­ern­ment quite clear­ly nev­er under­stood the extent to which Steve Biko was a man of peace. He was mil­i­tant in stand­ing up for his prin­ci­ples, yes, but his abid­ing goal was a peace­ful rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of all South Africans.

—Don­ald Woods

When South African police mur­dered Steve Biko in deten­tion on August 18, 1977, they thought they were rid­ding them­selves of a thorn in their side, that in killing him, they could for­get about him. Senior TIME edi­tor Tony Karon, who grew up in white South Africa, record­ed what the Min­is­ter of Police said when announc­ing Biko’s death to “a con­fer­ence of the rul­ing par­ty”: “I am not glad and I am not sor­ry about Mr. Biko. It leaves me cold. I can say noth­ing to you. Any per­son who dies… I shall also be sor­ry if I die.” Then, writes Karon, “they laughed. Like B‑movie Nazis.”

Despite the apartheid state’s best efforts to destroy him, Biko’s death made him a mar­tyr. “I didn’t know Steve Biko,” writes Karon, “but his death made clear to me, and hun­dreds of young white peo­ple like me, what mil­lions of black South Africans knew from expe­ri­ence…. The fight to end apartheid had claimed many thou­sands of lives before his, and many thou­sands more would be killed after Biko’s mur­der. But no death shook my world, and the coun­try all around me, more than Steve Biko’s.”

Biko helped found the South African Student’s Orga­ni­za­tion (SASO) while study­ing med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Natal, and he found­ed the Black Con­scious­ness Move­ment to advo­cate “self-aware­ness and self-reliance for Black peo­ple,” writes Mohammed Elnaiem at JSTOR Dai­ly. It was a move­ment to cen­ter the expe­ri­ences of Black South Africans. Yet as Biko under­stood the term, “Black” was a polit­i­cal class: his was “a move­ment for peo­ple who are oppressed,” he said, includ­ing so-called “col­ored” and Indi­an South Africans. “We believe,” says Biko in the inter­view above, “in a non-racial soci­ety.”

The gov­ern­ment “soon real­ized,” Karon writes, “the rad­i­cal move­ment was a threat to racial hier­ar­chy in the coun­try,” with its legal divi­sions of caste and class. They could not stop Biko’s mes­sage from res­onat­ing around the world. News of his arrest and death spread quick­ly and remained a pow­er­ful sym­bol of the regime’s bru­tal­i­ty. In the music world, the news took the form of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko.” Released in 1980, the song became a major hit. It was, wrote crit­ic Phil Sut­cliffe, “so hon­est you might even risk call­ing it truth.” Gabriel him­self, on the 40th anniver­sary of Biko’s death, wrote that “both music and lyric are sim­ple but writ­ten to be direct and emo­tion­al.”

He did not need to embell­ish, espe­cial­ly in the song’s final line: “the eyes of the world are watch­ing now, watch­ing now.” Indeed, they were, as they are now, even in our states of pan­dem­ic iso­la­tion, watch­ing the con­tin­ued police bru­tal­i­ty of gov­ern­ments built on racism, colo­nial­ism, slav­ery, apartheid, and exclu­sion. It’s an ide­al time for Gabriel to re-release “Biko,” and re-record it with Play­ing for Change, the orga­ni­za­tion gath­er­ing famous and non-famous musi­cians around the world in remote col­lab­o­ra­tive cov­ers of famous songs with uni­ver­sal res­o­nance. “Biko” belongs in their com­pa­ny.

At the top, you can see the per­for­mance, which opens with the stun­ning voic­es of The Cape Town Ensem­ble choral group. Then bassist Meshell Nde­geo­ce­lo, Beni­nese singer Angélique Kid­jo, and cel­list Yo-Yo Ma join in with a Japan­ese per­cus­sion group and oth­er musi­cians as Gabriel deliv­ers the lyrics with as much con­vic­tion as he did over forty years ago. Just above, see a mov­ing live per­for­mance of “Biko” from 1987, in a video direct­ed by Lol Creme. Intro­duc­ing the song, Gabriel calls the activist “a man who preached non­vi­o­lence in a state that has racism enshrined in its con­sti­tu­tion.” Or as the lyrics put it in their dev­as­tat­ing­ly direct way: “It was busi­ness as usu­al / in police room 619.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

Musi­cians Around the World Play “Lean on Me,” the Uplift­ing Song by Bill With­ers (RIP)

We all reach an age when the music of our youth becomes “the oldies.” When it comes to music as dynam­ic, inno­v­a­tive, and far-reach­ing as hip-hop, that age can feel sur­pris­ing­ly young. Or so it seemed to me, a child of the 90s, when the 21st cen­tu­ry dawned. Now, sep­a­rat­ed from the artists I grew up lis­ten­ing to by a gulf of almost thir­ty years, I can say they are all cer­ti­fi­ably old school, which I sup­pose makes me cer­ti­fi­ably old.

But con­sid­er this—in 1993, a year I once con­sid­ered some­thing of a gold­en age of hip-hop—the music had already trav­eled twen­ty years and thou­sands of miles from its Bronx ori­gins to become a world­wide phe­nom­e­non. Its great­est inno­va­tors, the men and women who invent­ed the sound, were by then very much old school.

In fact, every­one who wasn’t get­ting down to the sound sys­tem of DJ Kool Herc in the New York of the ear­ly sev­en­ties is a late­com­er to the scene, includ­ing punks like Blondie who imme­di­ate­ly seized on its rev­o­lu­tion­ary poten­tial.

“In 1973,” Hen­ry Louis Gates informs us in the video at the top from the Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes series, the Jamaican-born Herc “set up his turnta­bles and intro­duced a tech­nique at a South Bronx house par­ty that would change music as many peo­ple knew it. His abil­i­ty to switch from record to record—as well as iso­late and repeat music breaks—led to the dis­cov­ery of the hip hop genre.”

It was the sound of a thou­sand radios play­ing, all over the city, with the noise fil­tered out, beats made from the breaks, and the chaos cut into pieces and stitched togeth­er into music again; the sound of turntab­lism, a series of tech­niques, from Herc’s break-beats to the “Trans­former scratch” to jug­gling beats: switch­ing between “two iden­ti­cal records at light­ning fast speed,” as a PBS guide explains, “loop­ing or re-com­bin­ing indi­vid­ual sounds to pro­duce an entire­ly new beat.”

These new means of using play­back devices as instru­ments led “from rework­ing exist­ing tracks to com­pos­ing music” from the com­po­nents, a mad sci­en­tist approach that pre­ced­ed the age of the MC, whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose was to hype the crowd in the music’s ear­ly days, instead of deliv­er­ing the news of the streets in ever more-com­plex rhyme schemes. In the short videos above, you can learn more about Herc’s rev­o­lu­tion. Just above, hear from the man him­self and his for­mer neigh­bors, who went to his first par­ties in the com­mu­ni­ty room of his South Bronx apart­ment build­ing.

Herc took the dis­co DJ’s tech­nique of using two turnta­bles, but played punk and funk records instead, seiz­ing on the obser­va­tion that the crowd went wild dur­ing instru­men­tal breaks. “How would it be,” he thought, “if I put them all togeth­er?” Call­ing it “mer­ry-go-round,” Herc showed off his new idea, after first announc­ing it to the crowd, and got just the reac­tion he’d hoped for. The rest is a his­to­ry we should know. But if we leave out the turntab­lists, the DJs who built the beats that made the music what it is, no mat­ter how old school they sound to us now, we’re miss­ing some­thing crit­i­cal, an exper­i­men­tal rev­o­lu­tion that changed the world.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Jazz Became the “Moth­er of Hip Hop”

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Found­ing Fathers, A Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed By Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D, Presents the True His­to­ry of Hip Hop

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