The sto­ry of pop­u­lar music in the late 20th cen­tu­ry is nev­er com­plete with­out an account of the explo­sive psy­che­del­ic rock, funk, Afrobeat, and oth­er hybrid styles that pro­lif­er­at­ed on the African con­ti­nent and across Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean in the 1960s and 70s. It’s only late­ly, how­ev­er, that large audi­ences are dis­cov­er­ing how much pio­neer­ing music came out of Kenya, Ghana, Nige­ria, and oth­er post­colo­nial coun­tries, thanks to UK labels like Strut and Sound­way (named by The Guardian as “one of the 10 British Labels defin­ing the sound of 2014” and named “Label of the Year” in 2017).

Germany’s Ana­logue Africa, a label that reis­sues clas­sic albums from the era, puts it this way: “the future of music hap­pened decades ago.” Only most West­ern audi­ences weren’t pay­ing attention—with notable excep­tions, of course: super­star drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er appren­ticed him­self to Fela Kuti and became an evan­ge­list for African drum­ming; Bri­an Eno and Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne (who also intro­duced thou­sands to “world music”) import­ed the sound of African rock to New Wave in the 80s, as did post-punk bands like Orange Juice and oth­ers in Britain, where music from Africa gen­er­al­ly had a big­ger impact.

But the fusion of African polyrhythms with rock instru­ments and song struc­tures had been done, and done incred­i­bly well, already by dozens of bands, includ­ing sev­er­al in the East African coun­try of Zam­bia, which had been British-con­trolled North­ern Rhode­sia until its inde­pen­dence in 1964. In the decade after, bands formed around the coun­try to cre­ate a unique form of music known as “Zam­rock,” as it came to be called, “forged by a par­tic­u­lar set of nation­al cir­cum­stances,” writes Calum Mac­Naughton at Music in Africa.

Zam­rock bands were influ­enced by the funk and soul of James Brown and the heavy rock of Hen­drix, Deep Pur­ple, Led Zep­pelin, The Who, and Cream—the same music every­one else was lis­ten­ing to. As Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga from the band Musi-O-Tun­ya says in the Vinyl Me, Please mini-doc­u­men­tary above, says, “the hip­pie time, the flow­ers, love and every­thing, Wood­stock. We were a part of that cul­ture too. If the record was in the Top 10 in the UK, it was in the Top 10 here.” But Zam­bia had its own con­cerns, and its own pow­er­ful musi­cal tra­di­tions.

“As much as we want­ed to play rock from the West­ern world, we are Africans,” says Jagari Chan­da, vocal­ist for a band called WITCH (“we intend to cause hav­oc”), “so the oth­er part is from Africa—Zambia. So it’s Zam­bian type of rock—Zamrock.” The term was coined by Zam­bian DJ Man­asseh Phiri. The music itself “was the sound­track of Ken­neth Kaunda’s social­ist ide­ol­o­gy of Zam­bian Human­ism,” Mac­Naughton notes. “In fact, Zam­rock owed much of its exis­tence to the nation’s first pres­i­dent and found­ing father. A gui­tar-pick­er who took great plea­sure in song” and who pro­mot­ed local music “via a quo­ta sys­tem” imposed on the new­ly-formed Zam­bia Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice (ZBS).

Vinyl Me, Please has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Mac­Naughton and oth­ers from Now-Again Records to release 8 Zam­rock albums, “7 of which have nev­er been reis­sued in their orig­i­nal form.” The video above, “The Sto­ry of Zam­rock,” reflects their decade-long jour­ney to redis­cov­er the 70s scene and its pio­neers. In the video at the top from Band­splain­ing, you can learn more about Zam­rock, which has been gain­ing promi­nence in album reis­sues for the last sev­er­al years, and which “deserves to be a part of the musi­cal his­to­ry of Africa in a much big­ger way than it has been up to now,” Hen­ning Goran­son Sand­berg writes at The Guardian. See all of the music fea­tured in the video at the top in the track­list below.

0:00 WITCH — “Liv­ing In The Past”

0:40 Kei­th Mlevhu — “Love and Free­dom”

1:05 Paul Ngozi — “Bamayo”

3:11 WITCH — “Intro­duc­tion”

4:19 Musi-O-Tun­ya — “Mpon­do­lo”

4:32 Musi-O-Tun­ya — “Dark Sun­rise”

5:28 Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga — “Shee­been Queen”

5:37 WITCH — “Lazy Bones”

6:00 Paul Ngozi — “Ana­soni”

6:16 The Peace — “Black Pow­er”

6:46 Kei­th Mlevhu — “Ubun­tung­wa”

7:06 Amanaz — “Kha­la my Friend”

7:24 WITCH — “Liv­ing In The Past”

8:19 The Black­foot — “When I Need­ed You”

8:39 Salty Dog — “See The Storm”

9:30 Salty Dog — “Fast”

10:42 Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga & Der­ick Mbao — “Madzi A Moyo”

10:54 Paul Ngozi — “Nshaup­wa Bwino”

11:43 Amanaz — “Sun­day Morn­ing”

12:38 The Black­foot — “Lon­ley High­way”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

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

Say what you want about YouTube’s neg­a­tive effects (end­less soy faces, influ­encers, its devi­ous and fas­cist-lean­ing algo­rithms) but it has offered to cre­ators a space in which to indulge. And that’s one of the rea­sons I’ve been a fan of Adam Neely’s work. A jazz musi­cian and a for­mer stu­dent at both the Berklee Col­lege of Music and the Man­hat­tan School of Music, his YouTube chan­nel is a must for those with an inter­est in the how and why of music the­o­ry. If not for Neely’s tal­ent and YouTube’s plat­form we wouldn’t have the above: a 30 minute (!) explo­ration of the bossa nova stan­dard, “The Girl from Ipane­ma.” And it is worth every sin­gle minute. (Even the com­pos­er Anto­nio Car­los Jobim him­self could not have con­vinced tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion execs to give him that long an indul­gence.)

See­ings we haven’t fea­tured Neely on Open Cul­ture before, let this be a great intro­duc­tion, because this is one of his bet­ter videos. (Being stuck inside with no jazz venues has giv­en him more time to cre­ate con­tent, no doubt). It also helps that the sub­ject mat­ter just hap­pens to be one of the most cov­ered stan­dards in pop his­to­ry.

Its lega­cy is one of lounge lizards and kitsch. Neely shows it being used as a punch­line in The Blues Broth­ers and as mood music in V for Vendet­ta. I remem­ber it being hummed by two pep­per­pots (Gra­ham Chap­man and John Cleese) in a Mon­ty Python skit (about 3:20 in). And Neely gives us the “tl;dw” (“too long, did­n’t watch”) sum­ma­ry up front: the song’s his­to­ry con­cerns blues music, Amer­i­can cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny, and the influ­ence of the Berklee College’s “The Real Book.” There’s also loads of music the­o­ry thrown in too, so it helps to know just a lit­tle going in.

Neely first peels back decades of ele­va­tor music cov­ers to get to the birth of the song, and its mul­ti­ple par­ents: the Afro-Brazil­ian music called Sam­ba, the hip night­clubs of Rio de Janeiro dur­ing the 1950s, the hit film Black Orpheus which brought both sam­ba and bossa nova (the “new wave”) to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence, Jobim and oth­er musi­cians inter­est in Amer­i­can blues and jazz chords, and Amer­i­can inter­est from musi­cians like Stan Getz. All this is a back and forth cir­cuit of influ­ences that result in this song, which bor­rows its struc­ture from Tin Pan Alley com­posers like Cole Porter and Irv­ing Berlin, and inserts a sad, self-pity­ing B sec­tion after two A sec­tion lyrics about a young woman pass­ing by on a beach (lyrics by Vini­cius de Moraes, who also wrote the screen­play to Black Orpheus).

The key in which you play the song also reveals the cul­tur­al divide. Play it in F and you are tak­ing sides with the Amer­i­cans; play it in Db and you are keep­ing it real, Brazil­ian style. Neely breaks apart the melody and the chord sequences, point­ing out its rep­e­ti­tion (which makes it so catchy) but also its ambi­gu­i­ty, which explains end­less YouTube videos of musi­cians get­ting the chord sequence wrong. And, what exact­ly *is* the true chord sequence? And how is it a riff on, of all things, Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train”? Neely also shows the pro­gres­sion of var­i­ous cov­ers of the song, and what’s been added and what’s been delet­ed. Leav­ing things out, as he illus­trates with a clip from Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 Har­vard lec­tures, is what gives art its mag­ic.

There’s so much more to this 30 minute clip, but you real­ly should watch the whole thing (and then hit sub­scribe to his chan­nel). This essay is exact­ly what YouTube does best, and Neely is the best of teach­ers, a smart, self-dep­re­cat­ing guy who mix­es intel­lect with humor. Plus, you’ll be hum­ming the song for the rest of the day, just a bit more aware of the rea­son behind the ear worm.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

David Sedaris Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Jazz Tracks: Stream Them Online

Remem­ber­ing the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilber­to (RIP) with Four Clas­sic Live Per­for­mances: “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” “Cor­co­v­a­do” & More

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.

In the late 70s and ear­ly 80s, a hand­ful of musi­cal duos emerged who would have tremen­dous impact on post-punk, alter­na­tive, new wave, and exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music. Bands like Sui­cide, NEU!, and the Pet Shop Boys made far big­ger sounds than their size would sug­gest. Before them all came Sil­ver Apples, a duo who should right­ly get cred­it as pio­neers of elec­tron­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion in pop song form. Like many a pio­neer, Sil­ver Apples had no idea what they were doing. They also suf­fered from a string of some of the worst luck a band could have, dis­ap­pear­ing after their sec­ond album in 1969 until a mid-90s redis­cov­ery and brief return.

Band­mem­bers Sime­on Coxe and Dan­ny Tay­lor formed the band in 1967 from the ruins of a rock group called The Over­land Stage Elec­tric Band, which fell apart when Coxe began exper­i­ment­ing with old oscil­la­tors onstage. All of the mem­bers quit except Tay­lor, and Coxe set about build­ing his own syn­the­siz­er, “a machine nick­named ‘the Sime­on,’” Daniel Dylan Wray writes at The Guardian, “which grew to con­sist of nine audio oscil­la­tors with 86 man­u­al controls—including tele­graph keys—to con­trol lead, rhythm and bass puls­es with the user’s hands, feet and elbows.”

Coxe was the only per­son who could play the Sime­on, and he sang as he did so, his weird, war­bly voice com­ple­ment­ing his machine, as Tay­lor played pro­to-Krautrock beats behind him. “I had heard the word syn­the­siz­er,” he says, “but I had no idea what it was. We were dirt poor and used what we had, which was often dis­card­ed world war two gear.” They were essen­tial­ly mak­ing up elec­tron­ic pop music as they went along, iso­lat­ed from par­al­lel devel­op­ments hap­pen­ing at the same time. They named the project after a line by William But­ler Yeats (many of their lyrics were writ­ten by poet Stan­ley War­ren). Around the same time, com­pos­er Mor­ton Sub­ot­nick released his ground­break­ing all-elec­tron­ic album, titled—after Yeats—Sil­ver Apples of the Moon.

It was Sil­ver Apples’ fate to be over­shad­owed by oth­er releas­es that came out imme­di­ate­ly after their 1968 self-titled debut, such as Wendy Car­los’ Switched on Bach and Ger­shon Kingsley’s hit “Pop­corn,” both of which pop­u­lar­ized Robert Moog’s mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­ers. Moog him­self became so fas­ci­nat­ed with Coxe’s sin­gu­lar cre­ation that he vis­it­ed the Sil­ver Apples stu­dio to see it for him­self. The band’s man­ag­er scored them their very first gig play­ing for 30,000 peo­ple in Cen­tral Park, “pro­vid­ing a live sound­track to the Apol­lo moon landing—broadcast on enor­mous screens beside them,” writes Cian Traynor at Huck mag­a­zine, “as peo­ple took their clothes off in the rain.”

This mag­i­cal experience—and oth­er brush­es with fame, such as a one-off record­ing ses­sion with Jimi Hendrix—was no indi­ca­tion of a bright future for the band. For their sec­ond album, they were allowed to pho­to­graph them­selves inside the cock­pit of a Pan Am jet. The inclu­sion of drug para­pher­na­lia in the pho­to, and of a crashed air­plane on the back, prompt­ed a law­suit from the air­line. The album was pulled from the shelves, the band shut out of the indus­try, and a third album, The Gar­den, remained unre­leased until 1998.

For a look at how musi­cal­ly for­ward-think­ing Sil­ver Apples were, see the short doc­u­men­tary about their rise and fall above. They end­ed up influ­enc­ing neo-psy­che­del­ic elec­tron­ic bands like Stere­o­lab and 90s duo Por­tishead, whose Geoff Bar­row says, “for peo­ple like us, they are the per­fect band…. They should def­i­nite­ly be up there with the pio­neers of elec­tron­ic music.” Tay­lor sad­ly died in 2005, just after Coxe had par­tial­ly recov­ered from a bro­ken neck suf­fered the year of their 90s resur­gence. But Sil­ver Apples music is immor­tal, and immor­tal­ly oth­er­world­ly and strange, even if its cre­ators nev­er quite under­stood why. “To me and Dan­ny,” says Coxe, “it sound­ed per­fect­ly nor­mal and was a nor­mal pro­gres­sion into the areas we were try­ing to go.”

As so much exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic pop music that emerged around the same time proves, Coxe was more right than he knew. What Sil­ver Apples did turned out to be a “nor­mal” musi­cal devel­op­ment, though they had no idea that it was hap­pen­ing when they made their aston­ish­ing­ly groovy, spaced-out records.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daphne Oram Cre­at­ed the BBC’s First-Ever Piece of Elec­tron­ic Music (1957)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

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