Cee-Roo is a Swiss YouTube channel that collects images and sounds of different countries, and then makes fascinating video clips with ethnic music soundtracks. The work is tedious, the way I see it, but the result is amazing. For three minutes you find yourself surrounded by the exotic atmosphere of faraway lands.
It’s not learning experience per se, but rather an exciting teasing experiment, entertainment, if a bit kitchi.
Honestly, I enjoyed it. God knows, perhaps someone would want to explore the place beyond the charming kitch and then it might become a start of an amazing journey into the world that start right behind your doorstep and never ends.
Psychologists have long known that music is good for us. It stirs positive emotions, improves blood flow to the brain and muscles, cranking up our mental abilities and physical endurance.
According to a recent announcement from the University of Helsinki, Finland, listening to classical music enhances the activity of genes responsible for brain functions, including dopamine secretion and transport, synaptic neurotransmission, learning, and memory. A study by a Finnish team of researchers showed that listening to classical music down-regulated genes that mediate neurodegeneration, and up-regulated several genes known to be responsible for song learning and singing in songbirds, suggesting a common evolutionary background of sound perception across species. (Listening to Classical Music Enhances Genes Linked to Brain Functions.)
In a nutshell, this is what Finnish scientists (Kanduri et al.) have done: They invited a group of people with different attitude to music and different musical abilities to take part in the study. In the group there were professional musicians as well as music lovers who played no musical instruments, people totally indifferent to music and “everyone in between.” Blood tests were performed on participants’ blood samples before and after “subjecting” the group to music.
People didn’t know what would be played to them. The researchers agreed on Mozart Violin Concerto No.3 in G Major K. 216, lasting around 20 minutes.
It was found that during the 20 minutes of Mozart, in some people certain genes were notably activated (the paper uses the term up-regulated.)
The up-regulated genes were found to affect dopaminergic neurotransmission, motor behavior, neuronal plasticity, and neurocognitive functions including learning and memory. Particularly, candidate genes such as SNCA, FOS and DUSP1 that are involved in song perception and production in songbirds, were identified, suggesting an evolutionary conservation in biological processes related to sound perception/production. (–From the published paper.)
SNCA, the gene involved in the production and transport of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter that provides work memory and learning. When SNCA is “off”, the likelihood of Parkinson’s disease is greatly increased. At the same time, listening to music down-regulated genes that are associated with neurodegeneration, thus listening to music may have a neuroprotective effect.
Music performance is also known to induce emotion-related psychophysiological responses and generate a robust brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns. However, the molecular mechanisms and biological pathways mediating the effects of music performance so far remain unknown.(–From the published paper.)
Unfortunately to those people who aren’t musically inclined, “The effect was only detectable in musically experienced participants, suggesting the importance of familiarity and experience in mediating music-induced effects,” the researchers remarked in a University of Helsinki announcement.
As a quick remedy, do your SNCA a favor and listen:
Udo Jürgens, an Austrian singer and songwriter, passed away at age 80, in Gottlieben, Switzerland on December 21, 2014. He was called Europe’s Frank Sinatra, and a German voice of post-war Europe.
I learned about Jürgens passing from Russian blogs posted by my contemporaries. For some of them Udo Jürgens’ voice is the sound of their youth. In the seventies, Jürgens was almost the sole German-speaking (and German-singing) western songwriter and performer whose songs were aired on the Soviet radio. I don’t know why he was so privileged, and there is no point in guessing. In 1983, the Soviet recording firm “Melody” has released a record of Udo Jürgens’ songs. But it was after my time. Interesting that all the songs on that record were in English, not German.
Another Jürgens “Russian connection” is rather ancient: before the Russian Revolution of 1917, his paternal grandfather was a general manager of the Moscow branch of the German Junker-Bank.
In 2014, Jurgens released his new album “In the midst of life” (Mitten in Leben), and in the fall toured Germany, Austria and Switzerland, giving 222 concert performances, attended by about half a million people.
Udo’s father was a farmer, and the Dadaist artist and sculptor Jean Arp (Hans Jean Arp) was his uncle. I’m not too keen on Arp — his sculptures make me think of disfigurement and birth-defects. But that’s beside the point. R.I.P. Udo Jürgens.
Hieronymus Bosch, (appr. 1450 — 1516) an Early Netherlandish painter, in various accounts was “the inventor of monsters and chimeras” and his works as comprising “wondrous and strange fantasies often less pleasant than gruesome to look at.” It was believed that Bosch’s art was inspired by medieval heresies and obscure hermetic practices.
These days, however, Bosch often seen as a prototype medieval surrealist, and compared to Salvador Dali. That is why I love them both.
The Garden of Earthly Delights is one of Bosch’s most famous works. It is a triptych with Adam and Eve in paradise on the left panel.
The triptych’s central panel is either (a) a fair warning that such unabashed debauchery won’t do you any good or (b) a dreamy delight in earthly pleasures of paradise lost — a wishful thinking.
Wikipedia article quotes American writer Peter S. Beagle who sees it as an “erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty”. Disagree about “us, voyeurs”. It’s either “him, voyeur” or “them, voyeurs” — I respectfully abstain from being included. Perfect liberty? Perhaps. Be it thus.
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Oil-on-wood panels, 220 x 389 cm, Museo del Prado in Madrid
To be fully appreciated, The Garden of Earthly Delights certainly needs to be viewed on large scale. Much larger than this:
Central Panel
Let’sdisregard “erotic derangement” of the center panel, with it’s “broad panorama of socially engaged nude figures” and turn our attention to Hell — the right panel. It depictsthe torments of damnation, vestiges of god-awful hellscape.
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Fascinating as All Hell might be, the subject of this post is but a small detail of the panel.
Fragment of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights
One the torments, offered a la carte in Bosch’s hell, is torture by music. Anyone whose senses were subjected to the offensive sounds of music one strongly despised, could attest to experiencing hell, Hell or HELL.
It seems that no one was paying close attention to the music, written on the damned rascal’s bottom, until recently. Here is how the butt music from Bosch’s Hell sounds:
And below is a video clip — widely available on YouTube but little heard — of the “hellish” melody’s musical arrangement . Sounds a bit “new-agey” to my taste. The triptych, let’s be reminded, is dating from between 1490 and 1510. Something old, something new… music from hell, Hell or HELL?
One fine evening (or, perhaps, morning or afternoon), Kevin Drum, a prolific dr… oups! nearly misspoke, no, not drummer, but blogger (Mother Jones), was sitting on the sofa somewhere in the world. By his own admission, he was having trouble coming up with anything to write about, browsing through the Entertainment section of the LA Times.And, lo and behold, the topic jumped at Kevin soon enough, and just stonkered him. He was stumped.
As far as I can tell, after having read a fair number of his posts and articles, Kevin Drum is not easily stonkered or stumped by anything. When he is, however, Kevin Drum can easily whip up a few riotous lines on the offending subject. Here is Kevin quoted verbatim:
In the LA Times today, classical music critic Mark Swed reviewed Yuja Wang’s performance of Scriabin’s Sixth Sonata. He says Wang played it for “beauty and thrills”:
But she also raced through the sonata, treating it as something to be so fully mastered that it might lose its power to corrupt the spirit with its huge portions of musical decadence.
I love this. Not just because I don’t understand a word of it. That’s to be expected since I know essentially nothing about music. I love it because I can’t even conceive of how someone might come up with that particular string of words to describe a musical experience. Where did they come from? What was going through Swed’s mind when he put them down on paper? Did this thought occur to him naturally, or did he have to work hard on that sentence to make it express the way he felt? And did he really feel that the tempo of Wang’s performance was somehow motivated by a desire to cut through the sonata’s “power to corrupt the spirit”?
Ihave no idea. It’s like reading Ulysses. Or perhaps a description of a cricket test. The words are demonstrably in English, and the syntax makes sense, but nothing else does.
Anyway, you can probably tell by now that I’m having trouble coming up with anything to write about today, so at this point I’m just blathering. But I sat down on the sofa with the newspaper a few minutes ago and then Domino jumped onto my lap. I didn’t want to toss her off right away, so I gave her a few minutes of snoozing by reading the whole entertainment section, including Swed’s review. And it just stonkered me, especially the sentence above. But let’s give this post a veneer of seriousness anyway by turning it into a teachable moment. For those of you who know music better than me (a lot better, hopefully), read the review and discuss in comments. What should I have taken away from it? (Read original post here I Am Stumped by This Music Review)
What can I say about Mr. Swed’s article that Kevin hadn’t?
See for yourself what the young and the mini-skirted Yuja Wang does to Alexander Scriabin — truly spirit corrupting stuff. Innocent spirits everywhere! Keep away from anathema!
This YouTube clip is not of Ms. Wang’s recent performance reviewed by Mark Swed. And the reference to Ms. Wang’s skirts isn’t the harping of my corrupt spirit — rather, it’s in the spirit of the Mr. Swed’s article:
“…a Bond girl who was also Houdini and Horowitz rolled into one, in her demonstration of startling dexterity despite physical restraints. Towering high heels didn’t hamper her deft pedaling, no matter what Newtonian mechanics might otherwise suggest.”
I read a fair number of various reviews in my lifetime, musical and whatnot, and some — god help me! — did some damage to my fragile spirit. Similarly hilarious, smartly stringed up and grammatically impeccable verbiage can be found in reviews of, say, poetry.
“Admittedly, the tolerance of brutal postmodernism didn’t lower metaphorical existentialism of the conceptual perversions of her reflexive nerve. None of the author’s poetic evocation provides enough buoyancy to get one past the structural coral reef that her verses erect: between the reader and any reason to care…”
How’s this for enlightenment and poetry appreciation? Never mind the poet or the poem. Bask in tidal waves of many well turned-out words — they are demonstrably in English… What if I told you that I’ve come up with this gibberish all on my own –?
My long-neglected Smile page is updated with two new cartoons. Smile! Corrupted spirits thrive on crooked smirks.
Although UNESCO declared January 16th as The Beatles Day, worldwide since 2001, Liverpool and Hamburg, the cities where the Fab Four laid the foundations for their stardom, celebrate it on July 10th.
February 27th is yet another date when “the boys from Liverpool” are fondly remembered. Not that it really mattes to me, other than as a flimsy excuse to share a mildly entertaining anecdote, which appeared, I believe, soon after Paul McCartney took a mic and fronted Nirvana at the benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy and on SNL last December.
Here it goes, and, trust me, the way you find it here you won’t find anywhere else and in any language:
Paul McCartneytook part in the Best Chuck Berry Imitation/Impersonation Contest, and although he looked nothing like Chuck Berry, his rendition of My Ding-A-Ling won him the first place.
John Lennon,though a gentleman to the core, wasn’t above jealousy. He went ahead and entered the Best Humperdinck Imitation contest. He won it hands down; his Release Me was a hit.
George Harrisonfumed, filled with envy, but not for long. He entered and won The Best Joke About Beatles International Competition. Spectators could see it quite clearly – George was slightly anxious. On his left foot he wore a shoe but no sock, on his right – only a sock. He recited the following:
We never imbibed anything stronger than tea during our recording sessions. But after the concert – that’s another matter entirely. One day we got so loaded after the concert, that we felt like singing. We piled into the car and but couldn’t agree who should drive. “George, you drive,” said Macca, John and Ringo in unison. “Why me?” I asked. “You can’t hold a tune worth a damn when drunk.
Never mind that the joke had a momentum problem and, although lively, wasn’t innately suspenseful or particularly funny. Coming from Harrison, it couldn’t be beat.
Ringo Starr wasn’t amused. Though not a jealous man, he, too, wanted to win some blasted prize in one goddamned contest or another. Since nothing suitable was going on anywhere at the time, he entered The Best Flutist Among Drummers Competition… and won, for there was no better drummer than him… who’d signed up for a contest as dumb as this one.
Keith Richards by Tiago Hoisel
Keith Richards watched this circus from the sidelines for a while, experiencing an existential mix of sensations – fever, nausea, nervous exhaustion and suicidal depression – somewhere in the general proximity of his heart. Then he couldn’t stand it anymore. “Look at this! Every eff…ing cockroach is a winner!” he cried out and sprung to action. Guess who won the Golden Beetle as the Best Impersonator / Imitator of Paul McCartney? Right.
“Gee, some big eff…ing problems you’ve got, asshole,” said Mick Jagger and, without much ado, punched Keith in the face. Schplott! Aaaaaiiiieeeee!!!! Keith’s face sustained some damage, though anything that cold compress couldn’t heal. They were best of friends, after all. Besides, this immediately cured Keith’s fever, nausea, nervous exhaustion, suicidal depression and number of other ailments.
Also, yesterday, I became 1,044,075th viewer of a passionate solo rendition of the 1970s Beatles classic Let It Be, during a concert by what appears to be a navy band.
Backing vocals are provided by a choir of similarly-dressed Russian men, while two lines of dancers on either side of the stage wave their hats in the air at the song’s rousing finish.
The person who uploaded it on Dec 15, 2008,apologized profusely to all Beatles fans everywhere for that fat Russian singer who looks like Newt Gingrich. Little did he know (the guy who uploaded it) that it’ll become such a hit, delighting Fab Four fans in Russia and, it seems, everywhere.
Contra Spem Spero... Et Rideo 