The amount of music Seeger has made in support of civil rights, cultural tolerance, non-violence, and environmental protection over the past century is epic. Songs he either composed or co-wrote include: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song),” and “Turn, Turn, Turn!” He –in cahoots with Joan Baez– was also greatly responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” during the 60s.
Seeger was just shy of his 90th birthday at the time of the above Letterman performance, during which he intoned: “We sang about Alabama 1955, but since 9/11, we wonder, will this world survive? The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: we can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing. Don’t say it can’t be done; The battle’s just begun. Take it from Dr. King, you too can learn to sing, so drop the gun.”
He is 92 years young today.
Via Wiki: Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine’s Day party marking the opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.
Many of us have heard about the apparent laughter of rats. Now, Smithsonian Magazine is reporting that a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, has ascertained that certain high-pitched sounds made by mice could actually be melodious songs. Some excerpts from author Rob Dunn’s coverage:
In late 1925, one J. L. Clark discovered an unusual mouse in a house in Detroit. It could sing. And so he did what anyone might have done: he captured the mouse and put it in a cage. There it produced a lyrical tune as if it were a bird. A musician named Martha Grim visited the mouse, commented on the impurity of its tones and left, musical standards being high in Detroit. Clark gave the mouse to scientists at the University of Michigan. The scientists confirmed that the mouse could sing and then bred it with laboratory house mice. Some offspring produced a faint “chitter,” but none inherited the father’s melodic chops. These observations were all noted in a scientific article in 1932 and mostly forgotten.
Recently, though, Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, revisited the mystery of the singing mouse. And after figuring out how to listen to mice on their own terms, she heard something entirely new. […]
The world of rodents, long thought mostly quiet, may be full of songs, broadcast short distances, from one animal to another, songs that we still know very little about. […]
Her discovery reminds us that each species perceives the world in a unique way, with a finely tuned set of senses, and so finds itself in a slightly different world. Bacteria call to each other with chemicals. Mosquitoes detect the carbon dioxide we exhale. Ants see polarized light. Turtles navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. Birds see ultraviolet markings on flowers, signs invisible to us. Snakes home in on the heat in a cougar’s footprint or a rabbit’s breath. Most of these different worlds are little understood because of the narrow reach of our own perceptions. Kalcounis-Rueppell hears music in the dark, but as a species we still fumble around.
Photo by Lynda Richardson for Smithsonian Mag. Kalcounis-Rueppell examines a wav file.
It’s remarkable, how new perceptions of something so tiny could make our world suddenly seem so much larger. The entire Smithsonian article is astonishing. Check it out, and make sure to listen to Kalcounis-Rueppell’s audio file of mice vocalizing. It sounds, for all the world, like the wooing songs of tiny whales.
And then, from the west, in shrieking answer to Munamies, Eggman of Finland, came the lacerating solfege of Volturyon‘s lead singer, Olle Ekman of Sweden:
Is that the most KVLT rec room/rehearsal space you’ve ever seen, or what? Love those pastel floral stencils.
This is Munamies (Finnish for Eggman), from the comedy show Putous. He is here to make you feel bouncy… or maybe just mildly KILL-IT-WITH-FIRE-y. Consider him the benign little brother of the Kinder Surprise Eggman animatron.
That’s musician Sxip Shirey, doing something beautifully strange to a paper-clipped guitar (all live, no overdubs), followed by several more clips from various other performances and collaborations. Sxip’s been a pillar of strength in the NYC countercultural circus/vaudeville/music world for many years, not just as a composer and performer, but as a storyteller, a tireless nurturer of up-and-comers, and as an instigator of unexpected and wondrous happenings.
In addition to implementing “prepared” alterations of traditional instruments and piping their sounds through various effects pedals, he often crafts songs out of junkyard found objects, vintage toys, rusty noisemakers, and sometimes, just by breathing.
His albums are unlike anything you’ve heard. You can buy them here. If he ever comes to your town (and the man travels a lot!), either solo, or with his traveling show, Sxip’s Hour of Charm, or the lovely Balkan-laced Luminescent Orchestrii, or with Gentlemen & Assassins (his new trio with the comparatively strange and beautiful s(tr)ongmen Elyas Khan and Brian Viglione), do not miss him.
After months of excruciating antici…pation, decease Zoetica Ebb and Plastik Wrap have released a preview of their collaborative effort.
Titled GHST RDR, health the tailored top and square skirt combo is inspired by strict riding jackets of the Victorian era, clinic Anime and the dark punk aesthetic. Classic tailoring and details such as pleats, draping and structured sleeves are vivified with modern materials and adjustable straps.
The mini collection, made entirely in Canada, will be available for custom orders at PlastikArmy.com on May 9th.
Jansen’s kinetic creatures have evolved quite a bit since then, and as of this month, the wonderful 3D printing company Shapeways has made a small version of Animaris Geneticus Parvus, available for purchase through their site.
These wee baby Beests, born from one of Jansen’s original behemoth windwalker designs, are “printed already assembled and [work] right after birth from the machine! No other production method can do this!” (Is 3D printing technology trippy, or what?) Apparently there are more Beests in development as well.
Hell yeah, muthafuckas, it’s Friday, time to get drunk and break shit, amiright? WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Huh? No? Well…I mean…ok. Fine. I was just joking anyway. Whatever. It is Friday, though, so at the very least it is time for the FAM, your weekly stop (Editor’s Note: Semi-weekly, really. Lazy jerk.) for afternoon entertainment in film form (Editor’s Note: That was the worst thing. You are literally the worst.)
Today the FAM presents King Corn, Aaron Woolf’s 2007 documentary about two friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who move to Iowa to farm an acre of land and investigate where America’s food comes from; specifically addressing the question: How and why do we eat some much damn corn?
I liked King Corn for two reasons, really. The first being, of course, that I found it informative. The second reason was a feeling of level-headed objectivity. The alarmist, Michael Moore style documentary, is certainly popular and while, perhaps, effective, they are a bit off-putting when it comes to presenting an actual argument, busy as they are in trying to drive home the point that the WORLD IS GOING TO END AND THESE PEOPLE ARE EVIL AND GET MAD! It’s exhausting. So I appreciated King Corn calmly laying out the facts for me and presenting a history of America’s obsession with corn as well as a snapshot of a Midwestern town. It was a pleasant experience to watch the credits roll on a documentary and not feel like I should flip over a cop car or just kill myself.
All art lovers have had those revelatory moments when visual art just blows our minds. It’s surprising, beautiful, provocative, painful, confusing and every kind of emotion at once. I think that’s what the small child in this video is feeling when he wanders into one of Yayoi Kusama‘s infinite dot rooms, installed in Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory. Also, it’s SO CUTE.
