Original Photo by wfuv — Some Rights Reserved

Who would have thought that one artist’s musical curiosity could help change our musical taste and experience?

Making the current rounds of film festivals is a new work that reminds us of one of the great leaps of creativity in music and in politics. This leap, which became a movement, was led by Paul Simon.

Under African Skies, directed by Joe Berlinger, tracks Simon’s return to South Africa twenty-five years after his first journey there to make one of the best albums of all time, Graceland.

At the time, Simon’s visit was extremely controversial. The United Nations had sanctioned a cultural boycott of South Africa as a way to help end the brutality and inhumane South African government rule of apartheid. Many performers refused to go South Africa where they would have to perform for government sanctioned segregated audiences.

Simon, though, chose a different track and a different tactic. By focusing on the artist to artist exchange, Simon not only brought significant attention to the South African music and musicians, he also created a new spark for genuine international art — world music. In fact, it’s fair to ask where the current acceptance and popularity of world music would be without Simon’s original determination and creativity.

In addition to Simon’s reuniting with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Ray Phiri, among others, the film also features Simon sitting down with Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, who still believes Simon was wrong to ignore the boycott.

Simon’s point of view, which seems so clear today, was that the cultural boycott was about performing for segregated audiences; not about recording the very artists who were being silenced by a government.

Every now and again, artists lead not just with their art but with their ideas of how to make art.

The new edition of the album comes out on June 5. Thankfully, there are times when art overcomes and overwhelms politics.

Go ahead, politicians, listen and learn.

- Bill Reichblum

Source: Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham, “The Geographic Flow of Music“

Where are the trend setters in music?

As featured in the KadmusArts Daily Global Culture News, two researchers at the Clique Research Cluster in Dublin have been studying the “geographic flow” of music. With data from 2003 through 2011, Pádraig Cunningham, Professor at the University College Dublin and Conrad Lee, Ph.D. student at the UCD, tracked the most listened to artists by location and analyzed how those rankings shifted across 200 cities. Their research focused on users’ scrobbling on Last.fm to create a model that demonstrates which city’s listening habits are most influential.

Surprisingly, the research shows the results are less about a city’s size than it is about the inhabitants’ taste to identify what will become globally hip.

Their paper, The Geographic Flow of Music, submitted to the Physics arXiv online scientific forum, has Atlanta in the North American lead and Oslo in the European lead.

According to the researchers,

“After suitably normalizing this data, we use it to test three hypotheses related to the geographic flow of music. The first is that although many of the most popular artists are listened to around the world, music preferences are closely related to nationality, language, and geographic location. We find support for this hypothesis, with a couple of minor, yet interesting, exceptions. Our second hypothesis is that some cities are consistently early adopters of new music (and early to snub stale music). To test this hypothesis, we adapt a method previously used to detect the leadership networks present in flocks of birds. We find empirical support for the claim that a similar leadership network exists among cities, and this finding is the main contribution of the paper. Finally, we test the hypothesis that large cities tend to be ahead of smaller cities-we find only weak support for this hypothesis.”

In other words, the chances are that what’s playing most in Atlanta and Oslo will be playing near you. If you want to get ahead of the curve on what’s gong to be the most shared, check-out your friends’ playlists in these two cities. In addition, noticing the trends in festivals and club scenes, there’s no doubt that the growth of live events in these cities has helped spur the depth, breadth, and reach of the music industry.

That’s a pretty cool use of statistical analysis, online networking, and the soundtrack of our lives.

- Bill Reichblum

Original Photo by Mollusa — Some Rights Reserved

Do you like to hang out with the band? Now a music network has made it easy — for classical music.

After thousands of years, it was not until the 20th century that recordings created such a strong separation between the creative musician and a receptive audience. In most music genres, especially rock and hip-hop, recorded music has driven an increase in the live performance business, especially at festivals. However, classical music is the one area which has lost live audiences. Now, a new generation of entrepreneurial players and producers is changing that.

The Classical Revolution started in a San Francisco Mission District bar as a regular Monday night event. The idea was simple: if audiences aren’t coming to the concert hall, bring the music to where they are gathering. The group organizes evenings of music as festive, relaxed, and social as a bar.

Classical Revolution’s start has become a trend. The CR network now has chapters in North America and Europe. Along with similar groups, such as New MUSE (New Music Everywhere), CR combines the kind of musical intimacy of the 17th century’s approach to secular music played in private homes (“chamber music”) with our expectation of the best kind of jazz club.

Classical Revolution’s first international gathering is coming up at the end of the month. As founder Joshua Feltman told The Economist, the push is to make “listeners feel involved in the experience.”

The goal is to create a new fan base by moving out of the high art and high expense concert halls and connecting directly with audiences. Who ever thought classical music could be so much fun? Amazing what can happen when you mix talent and fans in a social setting.

If an art form ever needed a revolution, it’s classical music. The music is too good, too powerful, and the talent too amazing to be preserved in our concert halls.

Go grab a friend, buy a drink, and re-discover why this old art form has a present tense impact.

- Bill Reichblum

This year, World Theatre Day’s international message is from one of the world’s great actors: John Malkovich.

WTD, started by UNESCO’s International Theatre Institute (ITI), is an annual international event held on March 27 to celebrate theatre’s connection to our lives and our dreams. The day marks the 1962 anniversary of the “Theatre of Nations” festival in Paris. Theatre of Nations began one of modern time’s most significant traditions in the arts: the opportunity for artists across cultures and nations (and iron curtains) to meet, perform, and share their visions of the world with international audiences.

Each year, one artist is chosen to present the WTD’s International Message, which is disseminated from cultural outlets and read from stages all over the world.

Here is John Malkovich’s message:

I’m honored to have been asked by the International Theatre Institute ITI at UNESCO to give this greeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of World Theatre Day.
I will address my brief remarks to my fellow theatre workers, peers and comrades.
May your work be compelling and original.
May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique.
May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace.
May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do.
May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life’s work.
And may the best of you – for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments – succeed in framing that most basic of questions, “how do we live?”
Godspeed.

This year, maybe we should all try to be John Malkovich.

- Bill Reichblum

Original Photo by Charlie Llewellin — Some Rights Reserved

Every now and again, one is reminded of rock ‘n roll’s power to capture and transform our lives.

This past week, Bruce Springsteen delivered the keynote speech at the SXSW Music festival. SXSW, which hosts 2,000 bands in 92 Austin clubs, is one of music’s destination festivals. (One feature of this year’s festival was a focus on global music. Be sure to watch the interactive video conversation with a few of the global music masters talking about their work, their reach, and globalFEST in New York.)

Springsteen showed why he deserves the title “the boss.” That is if you think of bosses as being so open, so honest, and so inspirational. Springsteen turns the significant artists and songs in his life into pure poetry. Among so many points that cross all the arts, Springsteen stressed that no matter the style or the genre, it’s about authentic creation.

His speech was as illuminating for those of us who are fans as it was for those who are working to be the next generation of musicians for our lives.

Open your ears and open your hearts. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have unclad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you awake and alert. Believe you are the baddest ass in town — and you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideals alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong… stay hard, stay hungry and stay alive. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have — and then remember it’s only rock ‘n’ roll.”

Watch and listen to Springsteen talk about the power of rock ‘n roll and genesis of creativity. No matter if you know how to play or just like to sing along, I defy you not to be inspired.

And, if you want a Springsteen retrospective, check out the KadmusArts Springsteen playlist!

- Bill Reichblum