In August of 1918, a group of sumo wrestlers returned to Japan from an exhi­bi­tion in Tai­wan. When they came down with an ill­ness it was first diag­nosed as bron­chi­tis or pneu­mo­nia. In fact, they had returned with the Span­ish Flu.

The “Sumo Flu,” as it was first called by some in the Japan­ese press, was not tak­en as seri­ous­ly as the more preva­lent cholera, which had a high­er death rate at the time. But cholera was not as infec­tious. By the time the Span­ish Flu had burned its way through the pop­u­la­tion of Japan it would leave behind near­ly half a mil­lion dead, either from the flu itself or sec­ondary health com­pli­ca­tions.

These posters (seen above and through­out this post) were part of Japan’s Cen­tral San­i­tary Bureau’s plan to edu­cate the pub­lic, part of a 455-man­u­al that detailed symp­toms and pre­scrip­tions, and sug­gest­ed four rules to avoid con­tract­ing the virus and spread­ing it to oth­ers.

Right now, a lot of us are try­ing to do num­ber one–Stay Away from Others–without going crazy, some of us are fol­low­ing num­ber two (Cov­er Your Mouth and Nose), everybody’s wait­ing for num­ber three (Get Vac­ci­nat­ed), and if you replace “Gar­gle” (Rule Num­ber 4) with “anx­i­ety drink­ing,” well we’ve got num­ber four cov­ered.

Back up to Num­ber Three: the vac­cine in ques­tion at that time helped with symp­toms of pneu­mo­nia, which was a sec­ondary cause of death. If a person’s immune sys­tem could fight off the lung infec­tion part of the flu, they stood a bet­ter chance of sur­vival.

And for Num­ber Two, the Japan­ese response of wear­ing face masks to fight infec­tion has con­tin­ued to this day. Any­one who has vis­it­ed Japan, espe­cial­ly dur­ing cold and flu sea­son, will have noticed the rou­tine use of masks. Will oth­er coun­tries see this become a tra­di­tion in the future? We will have to wait and find out.

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment of Japan, as well as most places around the globe in 1918, did not have the sci­ence or knowl­edge to treat the virus or enforce rules. A lot of deci­sions for the pub­lic were left to var­i­ous pre­fec­tures to decide. Most doc­tors and researchers were already busy fight­ing cholera (as men­tioned above) and tuber­cu­lo­sis. For a while, the virus was misiden­ti­fied as a bac­te­ria. And just like in Amer­i­ca in 1919, the Japan­ese pub­lic thought things had got­ten back to nor­mal when the ini­tial cas­es dropped–they were sad­ly mis­tak­en and, after let­ting its guard down, the Japan­ese were hit with a sec­ond wave, with a mor­tal­i­ty rate five times that of the first wave. As it spread from the city to the coun­try­side, the Span­ish Flu wiped out entire vil­lages. Quack­ery and snake oil sales­men promised mir­a­cle cures. Oth­ers turned to spir­i­tu­al­ism, prayer, and spe­cial devo­tion­al tem­ple vis­its. The virus didn’t care.

But it also soon fiz­zled out. Japan report­ed no new cas­es in June of 1919, and that was that. (Cur­rent­ly, that does not seem to be the case in Wuhan or Ger­many.)

As the say­ing goes, his­to­ry doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes, and so take these posters as a warn­ing and as a form of reas­sur­ance that we will get through this.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pan­dem­ic Lit­er­a­ture: A Meta-List of the Books You Should Read in Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Down­load Full Issues of MAVO, the Japan­ese Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine That Announced a New Mod­ernist Move­ment (1923–1925)

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.

Play­ing the blues is easy, many a bud­ding gui­tarist thinks—their star­ry eyes fixed on the math­i­est, prog­gi­est, djent-iest (or what­ev­er) gui­tar pyrotech­nics of their favorite 7- or 8‑string slinger. Learn a minor pen­ta­ton­ic blues scale, a few barre chords, some sexy bends, a 12-bar pro­gres­sion and you’re off, right? Why spend time try­ing to play like Albert King (Jimi Hendrix’s idol) or Bud­dy Guy when you’re reach­ing for the ulti­mate sweep-pick­ing tech­nique, or what­ev­er, in the com­pet­i­tive games­man­ship of gui­tar hero­ics?

I’ve encoun­tered this kind of think­ing among gui­tar play­ers quite often and find it baf­fling giv­en the blues essen­tial place in rock and roll, met­al included—and giv­en how much more there is to play­ing blues than the stereo­typ­i­cal for­mu­las to which the music gets reduced. Black Sab­bath start­ed as a blues band, Led Zep­pelin nev­er stopped being one, and it was Robert John­son who turned the dev­il into rock­’s brood­ing, Byron­ic hero.

The cross­roads sto­ry has been told in hind­sight as a metaphor for John­son’s trou­bled, curs­ed­ly short life. But at the time, it was about envy on the part of his fel­low blues­men, who couldn’t believe how good he’d got­ten in seem­ing­ly no time. Want to emerge from quar­an­tine and inspire sim­i­lar envy? The dev­il isn’t offer­ing online lessons, but you can learn the blues from con­tem­po­rary leg­end, John May­er, who post­ed the les­son above on his Insta­gram Live a few days back.

As with all such online lessons, every­one will respond dif­fer­ent­ly to the teacher’s style. The for­mat does not allow for Q&A, obvi­ous­ly, but you can pause and rewind indef­i­nite­ly. May­er doesn’t move too quick­ly; if you’re an inter­me­di­ate play­er with a grasp on the basics, it won’t be too hard to keep up. He comes across as easy­go­ing and hum­ble (not a qual­i­ty he’s always been known for), and explains con­cepts clear­ly, relat­ing them back to the fret­board each time.

As always, one will get out of the les­son what they put into it. Maybe no one will accuse you of con­spir­ing with the evil one when you’ve mas­tered some of these tech­niques and incor­po­rat­ed them into your own play­ing. But you won’t have to lie, exact­ly, if you tell peo­ple you’ve been jam­ming with John May­er. Or, if that’s not cool in your cir­cles, come up with your own legend—abduction by a con­spir­a­cy of blues-play­ing aliens, per­haps.

How­ev­er you explain it to your friends when we get out of the wood­shed, I have no doubt that becom­ing a bet­ter blues play­er can improve what­ev­er else you plan to do with the gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

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

Four years (or what seems like a life­time) ago, con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed over the cast­ing of actress Zoe Sal­dana, with dark­ened skin, as icon­ic pianist and singer Nina Simone in the biopic Nina. Accu­sa­tions of racism and col­orism met the film, his­tor­i­cal atti­tudes hun­dreds of years in the mak­ing that Simone her­self fought through­out her career, espe­cial­ly after she joined the Civ­il Rights move­ment in the 1960s and active­ly made her per­son­al strug­gles with racism cen­tral to her polit­i­cal state­ments.

“You can­not under­stand Nina Simone’s life and lega­cy with­out tak­ing stock of her iden­ti­ty as a dark-skinned black woman,” says Vox’s Vic­to­ria Massie. “That fact was inex­tri­ca­bly linked to her life’s tra­jec­to­ry, her art and her politics—to every­thing that made Nina fear­less­ly and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly Nina.” Her daugh­ter Simone Kel­ly put it this way:

We all have a sto­ry. My moth­er suf­fered. We can go all the way back to when she was a child and peo­ple told her her nose was too big, her skin was too dark, her lips were too wide. It’s very impor­tant the world acknowl­edges my moth­er was a clas­si­cal musi­cian whose dreams were not real­ized because of racism.

Simone car­ried the wounds of those expe­ri­ences through­out her life, and she sought to heal them through music that affirmed the expe­ri­ence of oth­er young, dark-skinned girls who faced sim­i­lar obsta­cles.

The out­stand­ing nar­ra­tive “Four Women,” from 1966’s Wild is the Wind, artic­u­lates the dif­fer­ent treat­ment its char­ac­ters receive based on skin col­or. The Vil­lage Voice’s Thu­lani Davis called the song “an instant­ly acces­si­ble analy­sis of the damn­ing lega­cy of slav­ery.” The famous “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” writ­ten for Simone’s friend and men­tor Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry, became an anthem of the Civ­il Rights move­ment in the 1970s.

Years lat­er, in “Col­or is a Beau­ti­ful Thing,” Simone revis­it­ed the theme in a short, repet­i­tive one-minute piece that is instant­ly sing-along-able. The song comes from her 1982 album Fod­der on My Wings, just re-released last month by Verve. “Col­or is a Beau­ti­ful Thing” is per­fect­ly tai­lored for young chil­dren, who will respond with joy not only to Simone’s rol­lick­ing piano but to the beau­ti­ful­ly ani­mat­ed video above.

Fod­der on My Wings is an over­looked album, Shel­don Pearce writes at Pitch­fork, “about per­son­al freedom—about lib­er­at­ing her­self from her past and find­ing the lib­er­ty to cre­ate as she pleased. It was Simone’s means of work­ing through fear—of death, manip­u­la­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion.” In the lin­er notes, she her­self writes, “What I did on this album was try to get myself deep into joy.”

The method above is mantra-like, the song’s refrain “like some­thing she’s try­ing to inter­nal­ize, a coda to 1969’s ‘To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black.” Simone nev­er seemed to over­come her own pain, but her gift—in addi­tion to her musi­cal brilliance—was to freely share the lessons she learned in the strug­gle, the bit­ter and the sweet, and to teach new gen­er­a­tions of artists.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lau­ryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

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

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

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