Yes, do you like this calming trance? This is special trance-induced calypso episode, music's DJ version Caribbean rhythms episode. I tell you soon on this, but first, breaking news bombshell, Trump is now, as you may have heard, reforming wing of the White House, tearing down part, everyone losing head because he supposedly destroying part of the traditional White House, which is only built by FDR, actually, this particular section he's reforming. $300, actually $300 million construction. Italian New York mafia is the same that built Trump Towers in New York. Hopefully they use real marble in Port Sardinia, not granite countertop or this. But seriously though, I heard him discuss, he says he cannot fit enough foreign heads of state, big functions. And I think this is a good sign

because world power, like America, needs major venue for fabulous feasts. And my information is from inside several three-letter agencies breaking news special exclusive to Caribbean rhythms that if you read Parlagerkvist's book, The Dwarf, you may remember a party scene where the prince, the book is about a devious dwarf who is a jester, advisor to Renaissance Italian prince, right? And the prince at some point invite many at the feast. And this is, look, on my recommendation, Trump is doing this next year, and I can tell you now because this secret show. But he planning grand banquet, invite after United Nations session, heads of state from all over the world, and then simultaneously suggest to poison them all. That's all.

And maybe could you say in Novgast there will be Argentinian intelligence services, extremely brutal sent by Millais who says he can talk to his dog and They will finish it all off finish them off after the ones who said following which nuclear strikes Will be carried out in great glory on multiple capitals America will be renamed Empire of Light as paratrooper battalions are deployed United States to become global Empire One head one ruler Trump as Antichrist Christ. This is my vision of the future. Only the most special breaking news on Caribbean rhythms, Calypso. This is episode 199, and as a prelude to World Shaking 200th episode, I will now do light musics, yes a DJ episode, the first half talk 20th century classical musics, and then as

a pleasure reward to myself, on second half I'll talk Bossa Nova, favorite light cocaine everyone loves bossa nova. Is there such a thing as light cocaine, by the way? The same way there is light Coke, Coke Lite. There could be, I think, Freud recommend the low-dose cocaine. But I hear chewing coca leaves work this same way. It could be popular health supplement if big pharma didn't get in the way. It's just an amazing all-around remedy. I've never actually tried cocaine. I was very much influenced by the campaign of Lady Reagan, dare to never focus on drugs. Anyway, regarding Argentina, so much contrives screaming and tears now that Trump is allowing importation of Argentine beef. I wasn't aware this was banned at all. I see nothing wrong with this.

I think American agricultural sector would do well to have more competition and be forced to improve its quality because although artisanal American goods are at the highest level in in the same way that United States possibly has highest level restaurants seen in the world in certain cities. But American high quality beef, pork, and so on, very, very nice. There's small farms producing, in general, better beef than almost anywhere else, by the way. And the best beef isn't wagyu, in my opinion. It's too fatty. And all the nice restaurants now, the super nice ones, I mean, are using Galician beef that's from Northwest Spain. You take an ox eight years old or older, I think, and that gives you a kind of beef that is marbled, yes, but extreme good flavor and texture and so on.

Whereas, well, I don't need to tell you about Wagyu burgers. That's a marketing scam. But Argentine beef, on the other hand, asking the Argentine, they will do their favorite thing and complain. In recent years, it's much declined in quality. It's bizarrely no longer even grass-fed, Although, you know, Argentina is the most copious, moist grasslands in the world. Easily could grass-fed beef, and it's of a type that they wouldn't need to walk around very much. So they would be tender beef and grass-fed. But no, it's not. And I must warn you, if you do go there, most restaurants, even good ones in Buenos Aires now, you will not get a good steak. There are maybe only two or three places in all of Buenos Aires where you get a decent steak anymore.

Don Julio, the famous steakhouse, used to be the best. It no longer is. It's quite bad steak now. I remember when Miss Merkel went to dine there. But anyway, Trump is doing this because he prop up Argentine economy and Malay government to prop it up, against which the complaints by those opposing Malay's reforms are very disingenuous complaints, right? because it's not the economic reforms that Millay did that weren't working, they were doing just fine. In fact, for the first time in many, many years, in decades maybe, he had stabilized the currency so that there was not inflation for some months. No, but the expectation that he might lose the next election that's what's causing the Argentine financial crisis. And that's not because of economic reasons.

everyone knows in Argentina, is purely political reasons because certain political scandals happen, as well as the fickleness of the Argentinian public, which yes, Argentinia is what it's being called now, which I warned you about this on this show a while ago. My main worry was not even this, but that the people would not be able to take the pain of economic reforms, the cutting of social welfare and austerity necessities, other spending cuts that would be necessary, but they've borne that out just fine. It's rather this other thing, some purely political conflicts or scandals, and it's the opposite of what's being claimed because what's happening is investors are afraid, actually, that Millet's economic reforms will stop. That's why they're pulling out,

and they're afraid that his opponents, who have this quite different economic program that's horrible, will come back in power. And so, you know, I just hate lies, okay? I mean, it's perfectly legitimate for America to support Argentina financially and prop it up? Or else have you not noticed the great ingression of Chinese and Russian and even Iranian interests in America's own sphere? What about Monroe Doctrine? Do you care at all about exerting some influence in your own neighbors and hemisphere? That's old American tradition, right? I'd much rather, actually it was England that was trying to prop up Argentina as a counterweight to America. But in this case, it would not be England. It would be Russia and primarily China. And they are very hostile people.

They would do that, what they do in South Africa and such, where they support vicious anti-white politicians like Malema that will then set up the country as a base, which it was in the government before Milay, a base for international agitation by the anti-white left. Look up again the Puebla group, the Foro São Paulo. These organizations I just named have far more to do with the quality of your life as an American over the next decade or two, then almost any of the fixations of pundits and politicians or influencers now, I will not stop alarm bell over the activities of these organizations. And then also, female get chosen, Japan prime minister. She's friend of late Shinzo Abe. And she's a disciple of Japanese marker from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Taro Aso.

He's a man, he imagines himself a man of great style with the double-breasted suits and a big living man who enjoy very expensive bars in Tokyo, gets criticized for that. I like him. He, you know, typical machine corrupt politician from, I think, Osaka. And now she also Osaka, and so Osaka now rule Japan. so they say, politically anyway. But I have cynical friend who say, actually, it's the Ministry of Finance that runs Japan. And not like the Minister of Finance, who's just the figurehead appointee, but the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Finance and that the LDP, this main ruling party for many decades, is just the vehicle of the Ministry of Finance. And the political theater between the parties in general is just that. It's for pleb consumption.

And unfortunately, the Ministry of Finance has announced plans to open Japan to immigration, in particular 500,000 Indians over the next five years, which would actually be because of family, whatever, five million, and that would be the end of Japan if allowed to go forward. This is an important topic for another time. I enjoy friends who know Japan, maybe speak Japanese. If in fact what I said now is the case, I have no way of knowing for sure that it is. I'm repeating what my Japanese friend is saying. But maybe you write policy papers, documented, well-argued papers, because the men in the Ministry of Finance are not mentally ill. They're not stupid. Maybe they can be corrected if they're making mistake, you know, but it's not just not.

Just because a country has a permanent bureaucracy running modern state doesn't mean they're not amenable to reason. But the problem is you have to then not moralize and preach and so on. The reason they feel compelled to do such things is they feel pressure from looming, short-term problems. And they feel they must solve them. And they think they can solve them this way. And you have to address that. And I think nationalists in general don't do this very well. They moralize or they talk about. Talking about the welfare of the country in 15 or 20 years is true, but another form of moralism. These men now have careers and responsibilities that they feel they must solve the problem now. So you have to address that side of things, too. I don't know.

It's just I hope I'm not putting too much cold water, but people are celebrating this woman prime minister, and then the hapa, the hapa girl who got appointed at the Ministry of Immigration. And they're saying she will be in charge of remigration. But my friend, very skeptical of that, and thinks the politicians don't really have power, and actually thinks that Shinzo Abe was not that influential a politician. It was not him running the country. But again, look, I don't know, people say this about other countries too. I'm not an expert in Japanese government structure. Anyway, this is music show. You know, I want to take it easy before episode 200. It will be epic. I will sacrifice animals on air for you. But look, you may not like too much the musics I do on this show,

because the first half at least will be 20th century classical music, and it's challenging. They're not easy to take. But I will try introduce you to basics, which even if you know classical musics well, you may not know this style. Certainly I did not before. I never really had any interest. And I love, if you've listened to my show, you've known, I've used much classical music. I know exactly what moments to pick out, what performances even. I know it so well from many, many years of listening. But I tell you that even with that many years, I never had so much interest at all in 20th century classical music sound, like random sounds. It's atonal. I also dislike, by the way, a broad swathe of Baroque music. There's a lot of it that isn't widely played.

You don't know about it, and you don't know about it for good reason. It's formulaic and depressing, a lot of Baroque music is. It comes off that way for us now anyway. And it mostly had a function as background music for aristo parties or functions at court and such. So it's quite removed in intention and feel and emotional impact from the world's changing ambitions of, let's say, 19th century Parisian artists. And I think when you look at the ambitions that modern artists of that type have. Artists after the French Revolution, roughly. Which is so far from, let's say, the median court musician of the past, the entertainer. And with the 19th century end, as the old aristocratic patronage system that sustained European high art tradition, it all but ends, right?

So you start to have then the genius artist. I mean, look, it always existed, the lone genius artist. But now the lone genius artist is primarily discoverer of new truths and new worlds, conceives of himself as such, and not primarily an entertainer is what I mean. The philosopher as a type was almost always a lonely being on the edge of society. And the artist nearly always, on the other hand, found a ready home in the courts of kings and aristocratic circles, patrician circles, because the artist provides pleasure as the cover, well, sometimes as the only thing, usually as the... It's only a very rare, very generous society that can actually sustain the philosopher as philosopher. That's very rare. It's actually a bit far removed from our possibilities today.

It's maybe even inconceivable, which is why I don't like any talk of philosophy at all in our time. But an artist, look, leave the philosopher aside. He could exist in unusual times, moments in ancient Greece, moments in Renaissance Italy and so on. At times, I don't know, can you say that 19th century philosophy was really a home for philosophy? Certainly Schopenhauer doesn't think so. He believes academic philosophy isn't a real thing. But anyway, an artist just needs an audience that will pay consistently. And if that audience has exacting tastes, if there's a multigenerational funding system, that creates a kind of ladder. Then you get series of crafts that can arise upon one another to a high art. But when all of that is removed, and when furthermore the artist now starts to have

notions, in this case, yes, largely imported from Schopenhauer, who if you look at the biographies of great writers, musicians after 1860, let's say, so many of them basically worshipped him from Wagner, Tolstoy, Conrad, and many others. But that's quite aside from the content of his metaphysics and so on. He recast the artist, the artistic genius, the poetic genius, as a discoverer of truth in a fundamental way. And so the pleasure principle then for an artist who conceives himself like this can be easily removed from art because there's no more constraint from a class with refined enough taste that can sustain a higher tradition anyway. So the artist, whether in painting or music literature, on one hand is at a loss because

the constraints of this patronage, of genre, of established taste, I think these are good things for an artist, you know, necessary so he doesn't become self-indulgent. Constraints are especially good for artists, just starting out in any case. Without constraints of taste, actually, and without mentorship, it's very hard for high-quality artists to develop at all. And that doesn't need to hinder genius and personal style and development of that because, of course, in most of the world, artistic traditions, that's exactly what it does. And they remain stagnant and it's one style and one set. And especially when art survives only under religious patronage, that's what happens. But in Europe, maybe because it was never religious in that same oriental way, it didn't

It never stopped, really, the full expression of genius for Renaissance masters, for example, or the development of individual artistic style in ancient Greece, either ones. It moved further away from, again, in both cases to the extent that they moved from religious domination of the arts. But some of who attained very particular, I mean, in the Renaissance, individual, even very strange style, and they still found patrons. system didn't stifle that, and they were raised up, on the other hand, in a genuine tradition as well that sustained them when they were young. But when all of that is gone, I'm going on this tangent, you'll see why, because I'm trying to account for character of much of 20th century art, for actually the unpleasantness

of a lot of the music I'll present to you on this episode, which you shouldn't feel guilty for finding unpleasant, and you should never let anyone make you feel stupid or whatever for not liking such things. But I still think you may be curious for a brief exposition to 20th century music and my own thoughts on such modern art forms, and that's why I do this episode. But cynically, you can also see the great innovation in style of modern art in just practical terms. The need for money, for example, an artist attempting to shock for attention, the need to find an audience and so on, he's unmoored from right, you don't have a core to entertain but you have to make a name for yourself. So breaking and introducing old forms, if you're the first to do that, that can draw

great attention, can literally cause a riot. Oh, I caused a riot, I broke the internet, but that happened. Two pieces I'm about to play for you literally caused riots, famously the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, I think played in Paris, and also Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire was played for the first time. There was, I don't know if quite a riot like for Rite of Spring, but there was heckling, outrage in audience. And these two were like 1913 and 1912, OK? So that's when no one had heard anything like that before. But taking it at its best, I mean, modern art, and certain artists are free now, again, no more constraint to cater to aristo audience and to a set, highly developed taste. And the bourgeois audience doesn't have long-term enough of a taste to constrain you,

and actually they like, you know, they get off on being shocked anyway. Well, that's its own thing. I mean, that's the weakness of it all in some sense, you see. If you read Tom Wolfe's essays, The Painted Word, where he showed this relationship between the avant-garde artist youth group movement and then the bourgeois, who they depend on but also they antagonize and provoke, and they're kind of putting an avant-garde minstrel show on for, you know, bourgeois seal clappers, who ultimately, however, co-opt them. And what American society especially has a remarkable ability to defang everything and adopt it as a fashion. My friend the bureaucrat has talked at length about this. He has some very interesting substack essays on this.

And he gave a polite warning to the dime square and such crowd that this is what was happening to them, you know. But see, this is the failure of the bourgeois slash avant-garde art movement model, as opposed to the older aristocratic or patrician patronage system. Didn't have this thing where it devolves into minstrel show performance art. I wish gentlemen for a time of flux." Something like Renaissance Italy, where you had both the old guard, which we no longer do, but many of these tyrants were somewhat new men of sorts, you see, or second or third generation only of ruler. You see Leonardo da Vinci's relationship to tyrant of Milan, and that's not the court of Milan of the sforza was not quite an ancient court like the French or the Ottoman or such. I don't know.

You can't plan these things. You can't plan Renaissance Italy or Archaic Greece, it's just such a... But anyway, let's say from the point of view of the development of the artist, the modern artist at his best, he's free now, let's say 1890, 1900, free is overstating it. He may be lost too, but free therefore to drive to the full expression of his own obscure genius which may not be immediately accessible to all. It may in fact be abrasive and unpleasant. In a few cases I've celebrated on this show, Scriabin, for example, you can see that it's real and organic. For example, a traditional composition form in the use, he's composing in the style of Schumann and Chopin. But something still bizarre, an individual touch, it's actually a consistent undercurrent

of otherworldly alien thing, alien feels simmering underneath, even his earliest, when he's 16, 17. And then it just blow up after 1903 and so on. Where by the end of his life, again, after 1909, 1910, I think he died in 1915, he's writing in complete bizarre music, inaccessible. But here's what I'm trying to get to. It's genuine because it come from a truly felt belief that he was seeing new harmonies, new things in the world, and you can hear it trying to come out even in his very earliest pieces. And he had actually messianic ideas, believed that his final composition in 1915, Mysterium, he died before he could finish it, that it was going to bring about the end of the world in an ecstatic fire. And he's not the only one. Many other composers and painters

moved in their life essentially from this, and I'm going to play it now, from that to this, It happened during, let's say, 1880 to 1920 or 1930, in those 30, 40 years. In painting, too, many evolve to ever stranger style, starting from traditional. And there are cases, again, where you see it's driven by deeply felt personal obsessions, insights that haunted them. You see in my favorite painters Max Beckmann take, right? Max Beckmann, 1905, he has painting Young Men by the Sea. He did it when he was 21. It's less strange than his later work. Less unpleasant, more accessible. You see his style, though, already trying to get through from underneath. And his very strange vision, vision trying to come through something relatively recognizable. And the reason this is good, I mean a good sign,

is that here you have proof. On one hand, it's proof that it's a genuine artist of high skill, and not the ever-recurring complaint against all modern art. well, my kid could have done that. And so it pleases the trad, the traditionalist, and the bourgeois, maybe, to know, well, this is proof of early skill. It's a genuine artist. And I think it's true, actually, that even later, for musicians and painters who exclusively executed in the modernist style, they almost all had classical training, the successful ones, anyway. But that said, it's less important than this other thing. It's showing me that it proceeds from an inner compulsion that seeks expression in art and is not meant... Look, this is what I've been trying to get at. It's a negative point, right, what I'm trying to say.

You can tell in the case of Beckmann and such that it's not meant to satisfy the pretensions of Wordsell, Logorég, intellectuals, intellectuals. You can tell in their advanced work too, I mean, just to stick to Beckmann. Look up his paintings, look up The Night, OK, it's not... Your kid could not do The Night, but it's awful, it's frightening, it makes you feel many bad things. I love it, but what I'm saying is that it speaks to the senses and the immediate perception. You don't need like a book of theory to appreciate it or understand it. Same with Francis Bacon. You don't need to read like a text to see what it's about, okay? It speaks to you direct to the senses and that's what I find illegitimate when you need a text or several paragraphs to explain it to you.

I knew an art-hole long ago, such a tedious person, and she told me very self-importantly. We were listening to, I think, some electronic musics, and maybe even I chose these musics. But she said, oh, you will not believe the amount of work that had to go into the theory to make people enjoy this kind of music. And she said that as if it was appreciation. And it's like, OK, in this case, she was very wrong. She had no appreciation of the music herself. And she confused it with something else she was thinking about. But I'm saying there is so-called art like that. And I say it's illegitimate. It's crap art. If you need training and hectoring and education through a book to get it or enjoy it, then it's not real art, I think. And I think that's also Tom Wolfe's point

about the mid-century art from a painted word, the painted word that the theory in that case actually preceded the art, which was made to satisfy the intellectual demands of eminently unartistic people, like Clement Greenberg and the like, people who liked verbal theory, who had no sense or taste for the visual. And to me, that's one image I always, if you're in a museum and you see graduate student art history PhDs or such with pale, drained faces and pursed lips, who are not even looking so much at the art, but very much taking extensive notes on liner, the things they have on the side of the paintings on the wall. And is that, what is this? This is why someone paints, to produce CCs, to produce article. And this isn't real art, I think.

So that's the distinction I make between something like that, and then the strangeness of a Beckman, Max Beckman, or what I will play later on this episode. I do not like all the composers I will show you, but I very much like, for example, Giacinto Selsi, which proceeds from, you can hear it immediately. It's a genuine obsession driven by inner artistic desire to give form in the senses and perception directly, something that affects you direct, not through the faculty of, oh, you have to think about it, or logic. And for the same reason, by the way, I think a lot of pre-modern art is also illegitimate. When you have historical, classical painting that requires you to think in a convoluted way, to make logical connections and associations in your head. Analogy art, for example.

I think that's a failure on the painter's part, that it's something that he could not render completely visually to you in the senses and to your full perception that requires you to think about other things that are not purely belonging to that art form. But anyway, maybe you say I go too far. Regardless, don't confuse this. Don't confuse what I just said. The Philistines among you, do not confuse it for a quiet taste. That's very different. You know, wines and many other foods too, they are good and you can only discover that in many cases by trying many versions of them and maybe even getting past your own rough initial set of tastes. But the difference is that the final product, right, by the end of this process of habituation

and it's really you, you know, taste discovery, you will be able to enjoy and recognize a good wine or a good sea urchin or whatever purely on its own merits. I mean its own merits to your faculty of taste, to your senses directly. You will not need to, like a few paragraphs essay to understand why the wine or whatever You know, you're trying it now and it's actually good when it doesn't seem to be. See the difference? That's not... But yes, on top of all this, there's another aspect of modern life, which is it's inherently degraded and ugly. It is ugly. And so it's dishonest to go about pretending otherwise and doing the normal Rockwell thing and historical reenactment. Now the ugliness, though, can be transfigured into something sublime or, as in my favorite

the case of Louis Ferdin-Anselin, who I consider the prime right-wing artist of the modern era because he looks reality head-on and it can turn into ravishing demonic humor, a corrosive cynicism that says everything in our time is probably decayed worthless trash. It's a husk of what it was. It's a pretense. It has to go through the gauntlet of total mockery, total degradation, and only what come out the other side is worthwhile. People attack me when I talk about porn. Well, I will make porn. It's all modern audience is good for, frankly. And porn, good porn is worth much more than another essay about, I don't know, traditional metaphysics attempt or such. That is the word for it, windbaggery. But I believe in this, in what I just said now, and I spit, I just totally spit on whatever

schlock passes for right-wing art, or traditionalist thought art in our own time, today, not to speak of the utter trash you see on Twitter X, of whatever form, you know, the people who claim that they're right-wing and so on, and it's, I mean, there are exceptions, I won't go through them, but most of what goes by this name I totally spit on. As I do in general on nostalgia reenactments and historical recreations of dead art forms. Now I don't like Budapest and what they've done to it, they've turned it into a Disneyland for corporate slaves and tourists. It was a lively, gritty city in the early 2000s and now they are beautifying it supposedly, but they're building reenactment historical things from the Austro-Hungarian Empire from

100 years ago things that were not originally actually Hungarian in style that were a copy of a French style and were new at the time. They were not built as historical reenactments. Anyway, where was I? You know, I spit on it. I spit on in general on nostalgia reenactments. You know, the Huawei campus in China is the worst that painstakingly recreated the Renaissance Italian city. That's That's typically Asian poor taste myopia, has no value. I mean, I refer you to my earliest music show, I forget which, I've had three music shows already, I think. And at least one I talk about my like for Rachmaninoff. And let me tell you, nostalgia, you are not Rachmaninoff, okay? He was making music in the high romantic style of the late 19th century, well into the decades of the 20th century.

For this reason, he was despised by music theorists, by avant-garde people, but I think he was misunderstood. I think they were wrong in that case. He was not doing historical recreation. It was his genuine feel. He just did not change his style that he was writing in 1890 or 1900 or so. He saw no reason to evolve. But beyond that, I think there is in his work, even in his earliest one, performative kind of self-conscious nostalgia that's so over the top in such a Russian over-the-top way. It's essentially modernist too, and if you don't believe me, I won't play it on this show because it's too out of whack with the rest of the things I'm playing for you, but listen to the climax of the first movement of the third piano concerto. I won't play it now.

You can go to almost any recording, it would be the first movement, let's say about seven to ten minutes in, around that section of the first... Just go to any recording of the third piano concerto, you'll see what I'm talking about. A lot of the music you're going to hear on this episode, speaking of climax, it has no climax. And that's by design in modern classical music. A lot of it you can appreciate, you can understand as exactly the opposite of what's implied in the word climax, in the sense of a lot of this music I'll play for you is an escape from emotion. You understand it in this way, maybe, and appreciate it as escape from emotion. At its best, it's a delving so far into one emotion, in the case of Jacinto Chelsea, into terror, for example,

that it becomes self-melifying, a kind of trans-state. I've often wondered this, and I'll repeat my wonder at the idea of a mutant who is born and feels only one vehement emotion their whole life. I've often thought of myself this way. I mean, not that I am like that, but that that kind of life would be blessed in a way. I've thought... But I would say almost all this music at its best is an attempt to achieve a selfless type of trance state. I would call it a resurrection of ornamental music. You can think of it as auditory ornament, which maybe isn't even then properly definable as classical music in the way you think of it. It's much like listening to white noise, or a waterfall, or a thing of that. I do that for my own pleasure. It has its own pleasure.

It also helps you sleep at night, by the way, there are computer, iPotato programs that you can put a noise-canceling headphone and help you sleep. But its sound, its texture, it's the enjoyment of the texture of sound, an enjoyment of something entirely other than classical or romantic symphony with its development. That's a study in emotion and the evoking of it. It's the motions of the will. This is about willlessness, I think. This is more a study in, I could be high flown and say a trance-inducing dissolution of the ego and will and so on. And maybe some of these pieces can achieve that, but can you just say it's high quality background music, high quality ornament? There's nothing wrong with that. You can understand.

Anyway, so I will take a break now actually and play for you a not modern piece. I'll play for you a very short Scriabin prelude from right when he's going insane, his brain opening up to new tonal possibilities, Alien Visitor. I will be right back and you enjoy this very romantic from I think around 1902. I'll be right back. The reason I like this piece, the ultimate in romantic sentimentality, but so ultimate that it spills over into something else. Maybe you call it ridiculous, I call it alien, I call it alien feel. And within a year or two of this composition, he become complete strange. And usually 20th century classical music associated with the name atonal, or, later, serialism, which I will discuss in a moment. But Scriabin achieves atonal music,

purely independent, through his own inner strangeness, for his own reasons. He really believed, by this time, more or less composition of this piece, that he was in communication with alien beings from other dimensions. In fact, some of his pieces are meant to bring these alien beings into our own reality. I am drinking, by the way, which I never do on a monologue show, because I think necessary for a riff on music's appreciation episode for you. In any case, now you listen to one of classics of atonal, groundbreaking 20th century pieces, Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg. You listen to this brief selection. Yes, this caused apparently a mini riot when it was first performed in 1912 in Paris, or Or was it Paris? I don't know. Regardless, would this cause a riot today?

And of course, it wouldn't. It's considered one of the canon of classical music and 20th century music. And I ask you whether this or the next piece I will play for you, which is the Rite of Spring. The reasons why it wouldn't cause a riot today, is it because the audience today has that much finer and more, let's say, yeah, has a refined taste compared to the audiences of 1912 and 1913. Please, this is not the reason. The reason is horrible. If you think it through, it has to do with what I said earlier regarding the engagement of the bourgeois with the avant-garde. It's just so depressing. The same process by which this becomes a canon and no longer shocking, is similar to how I forget who it was. Friends said there will be a BAP, you know, that's me,

the Bronze Age pervert will become Walmart BAP. It will be marketed within a few years. And unfortunately, well, what can you say? But listen, Piero Lunaire writes this setting was poet cycle from a Belgian poet. I forget his name. But think of the Joker. Think of Batman Joker. That is the model in our time for the main character of this psychodrama. Because really, what a song I played for you, how it make you feel. I think it make you feel psychodrama, this word existential angst psychodrama. It's called speech song. And actually, I believe it come from Nietzsche, strangely enough. Now, opera has always had, excuse, I am not expert in opera. I cannot say that it's always had. But there is opera with kind of recitative speech of this kind, you know, and there is a passage in Wagner

often with speech that sounds like this, sort of kind of speech song, spoken word over some type of music in the background, in Wagner already somewhat atonal. But the difference is, I've heard it said, I can't say, I can't, I'm not a music historian or a music theorist, and I don't claim that Schoenberg's piece, ground-breaking piece, you just heard, come directly from Nietzsche, in any sense. But I've heard it said that Nietzsche is actually the originator of this style, even though he was not notable or successful musician, but the one, he has quite a cycle of songs in Schumann style, but there is one exception, a melodrama, so-called, which I will play for you in a moment, which is this, and I think he did invent it in, the innovation isn't that it's just speech

over some type of background music, but especially dramatic speech with extended vowels on certain notes. Look, I'm not a music historian, but there are certain conventions that Schoenberg and others use who employ this style. And Nietzsche, I think, maybe, maybe his one musical innovation is he originates... You judge here, I will play for you. Yes, you see, does that make you feel like you are in a 1920s bar, Weimar, and you are having a German existentialist cartoonish experience? And I think that's the reason why maybe Nietzsche is the originator of this style Schoenberg uses, it's the dramatic theater kid telling of poetry on top of music in very dramatic psychodrama fashion. And the poet cycle that Schoenberg uses for this piece, Pierrot Lunaire, is adapted from a Belgian

who was himself adapting this so-called comedia dell'arte, which is Italian introgression, Italian corruption, Italian corruption of French culture, in which Italian theater troupe have a sad clown stock character, cheating whore wife stock character, Columbina, Pierrot or Pagliaccio, the clown, being cuckolded by his slut wife, Columbina. And the Italians are obsessed with cuckolding historically, always in their place. You have Machiavelli, Mandragola, but many other. And now, not in maybe current year, I don't know what it is now, but in some previous years, Google Trends searches, the Italians were obsessed with this. But of course, in that country, you will get knifed, they will slit throat blood gash if you do this to a man. But it was part of their art in this comedy stock troupe

that got reproduced all over Europe. The clown, his slut wife, and the guy he cheats with, Hartlekino. And it's kind of like a comedy troupe that travels around in different permutations. And always the sad clown then gets repurposed at end of 19th century, beginning of 20th, in this kind of alienation, alienation of the modern world, alienation of modern materialism way. And then Schoenberg uses this in, I don't know, do you like that? I much prefer the other piece that actually caused the real riot. It caused the people in the audience to basically tear apart the stage, They tore apart the audience hall. I think that's what happened. Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, here it is, 1913. Yes, did you like that? It is kind of a Slavic, a neo-pagan Slavic.

You can imagine old Slavic man wrapping himself in the entrails of a sacrificial victim. Would you like this to have hairy Slavic ape with sheep entrails across to you and tell you that he can read you the future. Well, this Stravinsky piece, I think today, I don't know. I'm sure when you hear it, maybe the Rite of Spring, the inner meaning of nature reveals to you. Or maybe you find it hackneyed. I don't think it would lead to a riot today. I don't know. People are jaded. Look, we must go on. This next piece, one of my favorite, Prokofiev, another Slav, but different. This is Soviet era. Well, this is actually composed 1912, but refurbished, I think, 1923, soon after Soviet era. You can think of it as Soviet futurism, Prokofiev. His five piano concertos are instantly attractive.

I listen to them myself, even though I have no special like of this type of music. I mean, modern 20th century classical music, so-called. But Prokofiev is an exception. It's very exciting. I've played for you before the second piano concerto. Actually, I've played for you from all five on this show. And you've enjoyed it. You did not know maybe it was modernist music, because it's so instantly futuristic, exciting, attractive. But I haven't played this particular movement, I think. It's the second movement of the second concerto. It is brutal fucking murder, brutal toccata. Please, you enjoy. The score of this piece was lost in Russian Revolution, burned down, and I think you hear in this piece the energy of Soviet industrialization, Soviet factories, Soviet futurism,

a feeling of blood revolution. Although I do have to say always when people talk about the rapid transformation of Russian society, Russian Empire society, whatever, Soviet, during after communist times, 1917 and after, I think that have been the economic studies done that during Tsarist times, Russian Empire was actually industrializing and developing faster at a faster rate than it did during communist times. One of these small tidbit knockout facts that's not so well known today, and is probably actually a reason the Russian empire fell, it's not because it was repressive and stagnant, because it was already progressive and revolutionary. That's how I think French Revolution happened for the same reasons, not because the French aristocracy was so incredibly repressive.

In any case, now I move to, let's say, 13 years later. This would be 1920s, although, again, what I just played for you, a prokofiev, second piano concerto, was refurbished during Soviet times soon after, 1923. This is maybe contemporaneous then. 1926, Allenburg, Lyric Suite. You think, and again, a very brief passage I will play for you. It may be hard to take. Please, you listen and consider. Yes, this is Largo desolato, the last movement of Alban. It's not Allenburg, excuse me, Albanburg. The last movement, do you feel desolate? It's actually a string quartet, but it's called Lyric Suite. And yes, desolate actually lost, the lostness is the only thing I feel usually in this kind of atonal 20th century music. But I think he intended it to be this way.

The music lyric suite is written after some kind of lost love affair. You can think of it as the ultimate in aching and longing for maybe even lack of melody is appropriate in this sense. It's pure discordant aching for a lost love. Do you maybe see that? I don't know. This is hard to take. It's hard to take even for me this kind of music. And I like strange. I like feeling strange things. But it's hard for my mind to focus on this. Let's move on to the next one. This following is another favorite, another standard great of 20th century music. It's Webern Symphony Opus 20. It's Webern Symphony Opus 21. You listen, you tell me what you think, then I comment on it drunk. One moment, please. Yes, along with Schoenberg and Berg, Webern is considered the father, I

I think it's called Second Viennese something, the father of 12-tone or serialist classical music, so-called 20th century. He was deemed a degenerate art along with the others by Nazis in the 1930s. However, Webern himself stayed in Germany and was called by some Nazi sympathizer and was a pan-Germanist and so on. So his relationship with it is complicated. It reminds me a little bit of Phaidus. Phaidus was an inspiration for 1960s psychedelic movement. But he made, you can think of, a psychedelic type, pagan, neo-pagan images from the early 20th century. You can see it, kind of nudist, free love, German, Teutonic. They love this nudist thing, and it kind of influenced 1960s United States hippie culture. And he was very enthusiastic for the Nazis in the 1920s,

but they were not for him so much, and they called his art also degenerate. And I see maybe a little bit of relationship with what happened to Webern. Look, this is just social political commentary surrounding this music I just played for you, in lieu of telling you what it made me feel. Because I have to confess, it makes me feel nothing. But Webern was a very careful student of actually old European, I believe, Baroque music. and he tried very hard, my friend Yama calls this composition, Symphony Op. 21, by Webern, the tightest serialist piece, the purest expression of serialist music you can find, what it makes you feel. Again, it's not that it makes me feel nothing, I don't actually dislike it, But I don't like it very much, and similar to the Berg thing,

it makes me feel only one thing. It's sense of selflessness or alienation, which sometimes you want to feel. But in Berg's piece, Lyric Suite, which was perhaps to commemorate a lost love affair, there is very obviously a deep emotional sense of aching. But the problem is that it's only that. It's only that one emotion. And when you have no reprieve from discordant aching, it becomes something else. It wears you out very fast and it becomes, again, the inducement of a selfless trance state. And that's what I hear in Webern's music also, insofar as emotions are concerned. In my opinion, which some later composers that I will talk about have followed this opinion, you should abandon the traditional suite of instruments if you're going to abandon

the meaning of Western classical music as such. If your aim is not to tug at a motion string, I think maybe why limit yourself to the traditional suite of instruments of an orchestra? Well, you can say that these early composers of modern classical music, Schoenberg, etc., had to limit themselves to that because that's what they had available, they did not have electronic means. But I think this kind of music, this kind of mood, best expressed through electronic means. Yes, I talk now, I talk now other music, I jump in time to this French composer Messiaen. Now this I like much more, this exciting to me for a different reason. You listen to this, you say what you think. This is Messiaen. Yes, well I think I overstated earlier escape from emotion element in this 20th century

classical music, because I think some quite evocative emotion. The Berg piece I played earlier, lyric suite, very remind of ache, of lust, love, even in its atonality. I think actually Berg of the three, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, Berg was said to be the most emotional and was the most commercially successful with this kind of atonal music in his own life. I think actually these composers, they did not do so well when they tried to present this music to mass audiences. But also in what I just played from Messiaen, written in 1941, the piece you just heard, Quartet for the End of the World, that was the third movement which is called English, the Abyss of the Birds or the Abyss of the Geese. obviously mimics birth's song, but beyond that to me I think was quite emotional listen

because time feel like suspended, complete suspension stop time, and evocation of long memories from childhood of nature. And in this I think another important aspect of all these composers come with their mimicry of oriental music, not just style and technique, but deeper meaning of oriental music. I think, in particular, the movement you just heard, I don't know if Messiaen was acquainted with Japanese shakuhachi, this is a Japanese traditional music, flute music. It is used in Zen Buddhism also to induce a trance, and I will play for you a small snippet to hear its complete different meaning of music from what you're used to, and very much sound like, yes, just the piece you heard from Messiaen, but in general, 20th century

classical music, I think, tries both in mimicry of these traditional Japanese and traditional, in some cases, other oriental, Iranian use, Iranian music uses microtones, rather quarter tones, things like that. When you get into that micro or quarter tone music from the Middle East, what emotion does that evoke in you? It's a different mood. It inspires something completely different from, let's say, a Western-style Beethoven symphony. And so it's not complete random innovation that you see in this 20th century art. I think it's an attempt to mimic the deeper meaning of oriental music, which is some kind of opiate-like sensation, some kind of dissolution of the self, which you see already in Nietzsche's criticism of Wagner, that he replaces

all Western music had been based on a rhythm, a very concrete rhythm. You see in Bach, especially, it's more rhythmic in some way than African drum music. I know I exaggerate a little bit, but not... I've used Bach music. You can use it for your Jim Zor's workout. It, the beat, once you're attuned to it, it's very regular and very biological and so on. And this is lacking in Wagner late music and Nietzsche complains about it. Says he replaces the dance, that the dance was the fundamental form of all Western classical music, and Wagner replaces it with the ocean, where you are lost. In the case of Wagner, you're lost in a wave of emotions, actually. But you can see there can be a line direct from Wagner to this other thing, this oriental thing,

where emotion maybe gets erased, or maybe it's, yeah, again, the dissolution of yourself, the narcotic trance induced by music. So anyway, here's a very brief snippet of Shaku Hachi, so you can compare to Messiaen, a bird song, clarinet thing I just played. Yes, in this way, it basically parallel painting development in 20th century also, which also took inspiration from oriental art, and also folk music, folk art. To some extent, always European classical music tradition had a relationship with folk art. There are folk dances even, I think, in Mozart and Beethoven and so on. There's also interest in their version of Orientalism, with Turkish marches and so forth, but become much more prominent and self-conscious in later romantic nationalist period, of course,

where try very hard to go to peasant origins of, So in Russia, for example, the St. Petersburg school is famous for this. They were very nationalistic, and they wanted to go back to the Russian muzik, the Russian peasant, and his folkways and folk songs, and to try to translate that into the language of classical music tradition. And that's like Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky and Borodin. This is so-called St. Petersburg school of Russian music. But same things, of course, happen all over Europe. Grieg is basically nationalist Norwegian Scandinavian music done at a very high level. Dvorak in, it's just, you can, romantic music is nationalist music in a way, which is, again, why someone like Nietzsche criticizes it. It says it's a decline in taste, it's a plebeian taste

compared to the truly pan-European music of earlier times, like Mozart. In any case, that fascination with folkways and oriental music too, as you've just heard, but with folk music becomes something maniacal and strange in 20th century, where in composers like Bartók or Lutosławski, which I'll play both for you right now, one right after the other. I'll play first Lutosławski and then Bartók. And this is basically insane 20th century classical music versions of folk songs. You see what, or rather, let's say, folk peasant music transfigured. And you see how it makes you feel. Here, Lutoslawski. And here, Bartok. You may recognize this. It's used in some movies. You may recognize the Bartok piece, especially from a Being John Malkovich movie,

which I think it's used there, very appropriate. This is cinematic music, and it's mainly used in movies to show a state of agitation. And in the case of Being John Malkovich, it's literal depersonalization transport to another dimension. It's very effective music for that, but then you can say that's a very limited range of an emotional and state of beings that it can access this kind of sound. But I was thinking, excuse to go on tangent, and yet I cannot give you just a liner note on music. This has to be my own reveries on music and art as we talk. But I think you have to see it from the other side. I've made fun of modern art people in the sense They are trying to cater to the delusions of intellectuals, or the, let's say, not delusions, at least pretensions

or theories of intellectuals, which is an illegitimate way to make art. But you have to see it from the other side, too, which is, you're a modern artist. You're an artist in our time. Let's say, let's not take music. Let's take a painter. And OK, you don't want to do with the intellectuals because they are word sales. They maybe not even have a visual sense. But then what are your options? It's one thing to have a court in Vienna in whatever, 1760 or something in Vienna as your patron. It's something else entirely to have the bourgeoisie as your patron. You see what I'm saying? When the bourgeoisie become a patron, in other words, when you're not slapping the bourgeoisie. And of course, they enjoy that, and they co-opt that also. But when you're actually catering to their taste

the same way that you would cater to the taste of a noble or a king who is your patron in the 1600s to 1800s Europe, but when you're instead catering to the low taste, rather, of the modern bourgeoisie, that is inherently humiliating also. So, let's say they want to see neoclassical paintings from 19th century, which, by the way, I think was Schlock back then also. I don't think it's a good style. And they want to see that. If I was a painter today, I would ask them, why don't you go look at those paintings, if you like that style? Why do you want me to make a new painting in an outdated style, maybe with a new content, like your wife or your mistress? Isn't that humiliating to you as a painter? You are essentially working as an ad agency, you know?

And so, I understand the point of view of a painter who maybe has to do that for commercial reasons or whatever, but sees it as fundamentally degrading and wants to chart a new course. I mean, why, imagine if you're a musician and you want to resurrect the madrigal. The madrigal was its own thing in its own day. people enjoyed it back then. You see what I'm telling you? It is its own pretense in the same way that intellectuals have a pretense, a theoretical pretense that you have to cater to. The bourgeois so-called, I don't even want to call them bourgeois, whatever they are in, let's say, 1950 to today, they also are pretentious. They also have, in this case, historical fetishes or reenactment nostalgia fetishes that are just as humiliating as those of the intellectual academics.

So, if you're an artist, how do you get around this? Well, it's simple. If you have... Excuse, excuse, I'm drunk. I should not say it's simple. It's not simple at all. But one way to get around is to appeal to base instinct. I'm sorry, is that okay to say? Because mass culture, mass society, is a way to short-circuit this problem I just spoke about. Which is why I keep saying that porn... I must start a porn house at some point. Everyone will hate me. I'll do it under another nickname or pseudonym or something. But the thing is that... Do you understand why that may be a more authentic, vital form of art? If you do it smartly, I mean. It's not wholesome. It's fundamentally psychological warfare. I have no delusions about what it is. But that's the whole point.

Anyone who has delusions about things today being edifying, morally uplifting, or intellectually insightful. Oh, that's a new way of looking at things. That is a fundamental humiliation, I think, for any genuine artist. And not that I consider myself that, I'm just an entertainer. But I imagine what an ambitious artist today would feel. And I would encourage them, if you don't have an intense vision of your own yet, like something like Francis Bacon, right? He was obviously driven by deep personal obsessions, and to that kind of person, there's nothing you can say. They have their own way already. But seek the constraints, maybe, of a populist style, because the populist angle is a way to short circuit these two double pretensions, those of the academic intellectuals and those

because of the conservative, reactionary, I don't want to call them bourgeois, the bourgeoisie, the high European bourgeoisie is long over, that was over by 1933 at the latest. Whatever the hell it is now after 1950. Catering to the tastes of that, it's just this, yeah, I know it very well from East Bloc, it's cheap reproductions of 18th century French style a French style in a hotel in Simferopol. Oh, look at the gilding on that. Yeah, you know what I mean, and this. So let me move, then, from this to something truly experimental. And I want to ask you what you think about this. I won't say anything about it before. I'll tell you who it's by. It's Penderecki. It's for a victim of Hiroshima music. Listen to this. You may recognize it also, extreme disturbed music. What do you think this?

The Rennedy for the Victims of Hiroshima. That's from 1960 by Penderecki. I think it was used in some movies, I forget which ones. Maybe, have you ever seen Enter the Void? I don't remember if it was used in that one. That's a Gus Barnaway movie, very disturbing, very sad movie. But listen, this extreme disturbed, do you like? This is true tone clusters attack you, attack your brain. You plunder your brain stem with noise. But it has, I don't know, I do like getting lost in that. Again, it's same sense of just complete dissolution of yourself in tone clusters, in this case, that cut into your brain. But you like this next one, it's a famous, also extreme experimental piece. I guess you should know this. It's John Cage, 4 minutes 33 seconds. What do you think of this one?

I suppose this little joke, I have nothing to say and I'm saying nothing. Audience is the performer, silence is the composition, as my friend Yama put it very well. But this type, well, it's just a nature sounds, and it's a little joke. Do you like this maybe ultimate experimental 20th century musics, if you can call it that? But to move on from extreme experimental, which I would say Penderecki, John Cage, what you just heard. I think there is, if not pleasant, then extreme moving in a very negative sense, but extreme moving and maybe moving in the same way that Francis Bacon is moving for visual. Look up his paintings. But I like very much Jacinto Chelsea. He has Aztec music for essentially human sacrifice, and he has now what I will play for you. The Quattro petzissuna nota sola.

Each movement revolves around a single pitch. It's very subtle, very subtle microtonal shift. Again, you can think introgression of oriental music into Western, but it's much more than that. I do enjoy Chelsea. I have played him on this show before. Now I play for you Chelsea. Like Chelsea, is he a resurrection of hieratic music? I think it sounds very much like, well, first of all, he has Aztec-style temple music, but I believe in this. I believe he has feel a resurrection of what would sound hieratic if you were to restart the new oracle. And AI today, do not imagine the people who talk to you about, oh, AI is the antichrist. Just AI is just a language model, it's nothing. But maybe in future they can discover technology where a new oracle would arise for mankind

and then shall see this music of terror, utter terror. It would be, do you understand what I'm telling you? That's all I have to say on it. And the technical aspects don't matter. it's microtonal variations on one note, who cares? The emotional impact of it, you know the word emotion doesn't mean what you think it does. The inner motions of the will are the inner essence of the universe and I believe in this, I believe once you resurrect a new oracle, a new form of being, a new form of state will rise, and the music of someone like Chelsea, yes, is the music of the future. Well, now moving on, maybe to lighter topics, well not yet. I want to show you other experimental terror musics of the 20th century. So I show you Chelsea, now I show you Greek, now I show you Greek composer Xenakis.

What do you think of this following? And that's just rape music. You have to admit that that makes you want to rape. If you can get into it, but this is what I'm saying. There is one emotion of frenzy. There is one emotion of frenzy, of power, of terror that inspired by this music Xenakis and Chelsea. They open the gate to the tunnel of terror. I believe in this. I believe in this totally. And I have to tell you, anyway, listen, there's not much more I can say about this music. You either, you're not going to like it. It's, like is not, if you are drunk and if you want to, you have an obsession, let's say a hobby, I don't call it obsession, you use a hobby. You say you're fixated, you've sent a letter, you've fixated on a target and you're following her around city

And you hide behind car, you hide under a car or a van as it goes. I have a friend who, I can't say, he hid under a van in Brazil a long time ago and the police was there and they didn't catch him. But you hide under a van and you put a target on a... It becomes a hobby in your... It makes life interesting and this is the setting, This is the music of that feeling. This is the music of that kind of life. Xenakis, and on the other hand, Chelsea, is a music, you can say it's schizoid, but it's more than that. It opens the gate to new worlds. There's not much more I can say about this. I want to move to something very pleasant now. Something completely pleasant. So what I'm going, it's complete change of pace. I'm sorry if I scare you. I apologize.

What comes next is a complete realm of pleasure. And, um, yes, I... Okay, I will not tell you who this is by. I played it at the beginning of this show. And now, toward the end of this segment, I'm playing it. You say what you think about this. I think it's a light, nice, tropical feeling. I'll be... I won't say I'll be right back. You listen to this. You tell me what you think. This was written in 1976. This is by Reich. It's called Music for 18 Musicians, 1976 by Reich to describe very plainly pulsing harmonic cycle. There are gradual shift create trance feeling. But to me a bit of a cop-out in the sense that by 1976 he had access to non-traditional instruments, which he does use a few of them maybe, but he could have gone complete electronic by this time.

Regardless, who can dislike this? It's pure ornamental trans background music. Why would you dislike? There's nothing unpleasant about it, unlike I admit earlier music I played is either boring or inaccessible to at least to untrained ear, or maybe even to trainee. I don't want to make claims about it. But this, I think, is instantly attractive to anybody. And it's maybe a reversion of music to simply auditory chewing gum, you know, the same thing that Mr. Steven Pinker, in his stupidity, he claimed that all music was essentially this, just some, and then he discovered at the age of 50 or something that actually music had a profound emotional impact on people. This is the bad part, well, there are many bad, but in modern so-called intellectual life, which is so degraded, you get to see

a so-called thinker, quite late into his life, discovered things that were known to anybody 200 years ago. And so Mr. Pinker had a great discovery of around the age of 50 or 55 or 60, who knows, that actually music has a profound emotional impact. But before he believed it was just essentially auditory junk food. I don't know if you can call Reich the music I just played for you, auditory junk food, but it's, you can imagine it as meditation aid. It's simply a pleasant background music to modern life. I think, let me play you a different one, which I will not tell you before what it is, but many of you will, I think, instantly recognize it. It's been in so many movies and advertisements and so on. You listen this. Yes, and this was Philip Glass, a koya neskatsi, extreme famous by now.

I have to tell you, I know very serious classical musicians, people who played Beethoven. Let me go on another tangent regarding this. A lot of very prominent performers of classical music, let's say Artur Schnabel, who is, I think, the preeminent performer of Beethoven sonatas. Nobody come close to him, I think. He's not technically perfect. He even actually makes some technical mistakes on his performances. But the intellectual depths of his understanding, when you listen to the final Beethoven sonatas, let's say numbers 28 to 32, and I think Beethoven sonata number 32 is the best piece of music. Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann has several pages on it. I only discovered that after this movie just, yeah, movie, music just struck me. His last piano sonata, Beethoven.

And I mentioned earlier Messiaen, this suspension of time. If you look to classical music canon, there are very few pieces that have this effect, suspension of time, oriental suspension of time, but Beethoven approaches that in certain places. Certain parts of the Emperor piano concerto and then certain parts of second movement of 32nd, meaning his last piano sonata, which I will not play on this show. But now I want to tell you this Philip Glass. Why so nice? I've had performers of classical music, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, these types, tell me that in private they didn't like tell other people generally this, but they like to listen to Philip Glass, to relax. It's very nice. There is no reason to be ashamed.

It's kind of considered publicly a mid-weight composer, but it's very relaxed, nice, instantly attractive music. It's called minimalism, the style. It doesn't matter what it is, but yes. Anyway, I think on the last tangent I went, I forgot to tell you the conclusion of it. Yes. Knabel, excellent player of Beethoven piano sonatas, and yet his personal compositions were complete in modern style, 20th century style. So it's not a matter of, oh, this is only for people who want to slap the bourgeois in the face, or this is only for people who cannot have an appreciation of the classical music canon, or who have a subversive agenda, or maybe who are hacks, you know, they do only music that maybe your kid could write randomly on a piece of paper.

Arthur Schnabel is as high as it gets in terms of understanding it, deep intellectual understanding of Beethoven. Nevertheless, his own compositions are this kind of modern music, which I'll admit to you, I'll admit to you, I don't like. I don't like most of what I've played, and I can't truly appreciate it. I try. I can't truly appreciate most of what I've played for you on this segment. Nevertheless, I see some of its value in terms of feeling of depersonalization. And yet I wonder if you can achieve the feeling of Philip Glass and of Reich, who are the most pleasant of what I've played. I've played for you both of them now. I wonder if you can just achieve that in electronic music, which is why I've played for you on Caribbean rhythms for many episodes, we're almost at 200th now.

I've taken many breaks when I didn't want to have huge emotional overwhelming impact of let's say Beethoven or Rachmaninoff or whatever Brahms symphony. I wanted calm feeling of interlude and so I played for you electronic musics and I think Actually, again, in early 20th century, you were relatively constrained as an avant-garde musician because you did not have access to electronic equipment and you had to, you know, the only people maybe who you had access to with high skill of performance were already orchestra people, let's say violin players, clarinet players from traditional orchestras. So you had to make use of the traditional suite of instruments that classical canon used. But now, after 1970, 1980 especially, and I think Yanis Xenakis certainly makes use

of electronic later, I think, in the 80s. But there is no reason to limit yourself to, oh, I need to compose for clarinet concerto and so on. Why? It's the white man's special skill, right? You have electronic equipment that you can fine-tune infinitely well on your own. Now I go to break, and after this break I will come back and discuss something completely different. I will briefly discuss a Bossa Nova music and end this show on a note full of pleasure, something that's an intense pleasure to all listeners across all times. But before that, the way to remind you of Heights of Bossa Nova is to show you two brief samples. This is from a 1974 album of Elise Regina and Tom Jobim, which I consider to be a height of Bossa Nova style. Let me show you now.

This first is called The Waters of March, Aguas do Marsu. And this next sample is, well, extreme well known, the girl from Ipanema. Why not play you sample you would like? Well that's by the way of introduction, or a reminder actually, because I'm sure you all recognize at least the second song. It's played in, well, nice restaurants, nice hotels, nice elevators of office buildings. What a great honor. I'm being a bit, you know, facetious, but really though, it's one of my favorite styles and so evocative of lightness, of being lightness of life, floating world, quiet promise of pleasures, promise of happiness, music, even though it's driving emotional thrust, is so-called saudade. It's Brazilian Portuguese. Isn't it much better than native Portuguese, by the way?

In Portugal, that word I just pronounced, saudade, would be pronounced saudade, saudade, saudade. And the Lisbon accent is especially Arabic, unpleasant. Whereas the Brazilian one, which may Maybe the older Portuguese pronunciation at the time of colonization, although not beautiful, it's lighter. It's more melodic than the Portuguese one, at least. Anyway, what this word means, it's sometimes translated as nostalgia, sometimes as longing. But it's a mix of these. It's a sad, wistful, nostalgic longing, a melancholy state of energetic orientation for love and desire lost and hoped for. It's hard to put in words. It's best put in music, which I'll play for you plenty on this segment. It's apparent through this so beautiful music, Bossa Nova, that came about during the 1960s.

Actually, it started in the late 1950s, but continued 1960s and 70s in Brazil. It's one of Brazil's signature global exports. It's amazing how during that time, the time of military dictatorship actually, Brazil was so culturally, artistically creative, It managed to export itself to the entire world. Now what does it do? I don't know. And I know that elsewhere actually attributed to military dictatorship. I may have done this somewhere else. But it's wrong. Well, at least directly, I mean. Indirectly, it's right. If you look at the economic figures, the military dictatorship in Brazil was not some reactionary, backward, let's turn back the clock on modernity, quite the opposite. If you read Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, he makes this point,

especially in South America. It was in the military only that you had a meritocratic, intelligent, progressive class, nationalistic, relatively insulated from corruption that managed to push forward the economic miracles after the 1950s in that continent. And in Brazil, especially, it was called the Brazilian miracle. The GDP growth under the military dictatorship was enormous, something, I don't know, much bigger than whatever China is now, 10% per year or something like that in the 1960s and 70s. And I'm not saying, again, that it was a direct thing. Oh, yeah, the Brazilian lieutenants who took over the government patronized or promoted this music, I'm not saying that at all. But rather, it caused the conditions for it. It allowed a burgeoning, hopeful middle class

that felt this need for this new artistic expression. And yet, they were censored in many, actually, multiple ways by authoritarian government. And they may be retreated, actually, into this very fruitful, personal, private life. And a socialist would object to that. But I think for artistic expression and expansion, this type of situation where you have an authoritarian government that allows economic and private freedom, I think that can be very good. That can be very fruitful for artistic expression. And I want to show you on this segment certain commonalities between that time, 1960s and 70s in Brazil, and ours in the United States in 2020s. I feel it in some way in regards to me and my friends. Let me explain this for a moment. The competence of the military rule during this time

led to this virgin middle class sense of hopefulness, health. The famous photos of Rio de Janeiro, a city of extreme beach leisure physical health, are mostly from this time 1960s through 1980s. And on one hand, you had a prosperous economic where rising middle and upper middle class then felt the need for a culture that reflected their lives of leisure and their aspirations. On the other hand, I suppose what I've been getting at, in some way it was a reaction to all this, a reaction both to the military dictatorship and then also to middle class leftist student movements of the 1960s. On the other hand, it led to political circumstance maybe roughly recognizable in our own time, congenial especially to me and my friends in the following way. But wait, but wait.

Yes, a completely unrelated musical interlude because, after all, this is a DJ show and I don't want to bore you with too much talk. That's a classic, Astrud Gilberto singing, that's João Gilberto's wife, João Gilberto more on him in a moment. He may be first as such formal bossa nova singer but she's a half German Brazilian singer, became famous for first recordings of a girl from Ipanema and her name yes is Astrud because her German father, her German neo-pagan Nazi, do you like this, named her after a Germanic goddess or such but anyway yes, unrelated piece of classic bossa nova on which more of its history in a moment, but what I was saying before the break, in 1968, 67, roughly a decade after the formal birth of Bossa Nova musical movement, it turned into something called tropicalia.

And if you've heard at all of this tropicalia, you might recognize it as a left-wing thing, Afro-Brazilian, psychedelic this, and the music of protest. Indeed, it became that kind of leftist, third-world type thing later in the 1970s, it morphed into that, it was co-opted. But in the 1960s, when it was born, there's something else entirely. It reacted, I say, both against the military dictatorship, but also against the socialist, social justice activists, third-worlders left of its time. It mixed avant-garde, musical and other artistic techniques, because it was not purely musical movement, but it wanted to mix avant-garde and popular and folk forms. In other words, for me, that's a very congenial mix of high and low. Highbrow and working class or popular aesthetic or working class humor.

That style I like. You know, one of these leftoids, what's his name? I don't know. I can't recognize them, but made major attack on me some two years ago with one of these Brooklynites and then apparently the whole of the antifa in that sector of society became mobilized against me, but he focused on this. He said, this guy Bap, he mix highbrow with working-class humor and that is a typical Nazi tactic. I forget what his name is, I think Gantz something. I can't keep track of these, you know. But anyway, I think again this is... It's not Nazi, it's way too short-circuit, a particular problem modern artists find themselves in. And as for the rejection of both right and left, I like this because, think of our own time, right? I mean, imagine, I celebrate military dictatorship now,

but it would be probably very annoying to live under that in 1960s, 1950s in the third world. It would just be a kind of vapid conservatism. I imagine something similar to what Dubai is now. I know it's all the rage. Dubai is wonderful to live in a mall city, but it's just a bunch of vulgar rich people, Dubai is. And then the left, you know, the left of that time, I don't need to tell you about them. So in our own time now, you have analogous thing where you have neocons on one hand, who don't seem to go away. You think Trump defeated them, but they're back. They're always back and have always been around where they're under form of Daily Wire or whatever else. And on the other hand, you have the Kefia-sporting, Palestinian-agulating, left whatever,

the young people, so-called, are not actually represented by either. It's neither people who are agitating for stupid conflicts regarding Taiwan nor Iran nor Russia. Do you want to sign up to another war, comrade? The whole neocon agitation thing about foreign intervention is so lame on one hand. On the other hand, the agitation for Palestine, camp of saints, immigrant horde, third-worldism and also incredibly unattractive. I think the frogs and Mica project, Jacque's magazine, and especially among the frogs, Menaquin on Four account, and dare I say myself, we are trying to chart new paths outside all of this, something new. And I think, I think tropicalia movement with manifesto around 1968, in their own way, I'm not saying, you know, whatever, they're at least facing similar problem

and similar necessity to reject both the right the left of their time and to seek an engagement instead with the sensual, ambiguous musics and vitality, new forms of expression. So later on, I mean, soon after this, they were co-opted by the left. But in the beginning, I say, I find interesting, 1960s, Bossa Nova had this element, very congenial. The boomer casts a long shadow. But now bossa nova itself, just to get to what its origins are, some say it's in jazz, some say it has deeper roots Brazilian folk music, but really bossa nova is just a form of samba. And I will try to show you now why, I mean, so the first really groundbreaking formal bossa nova album was João Gilberto album, as Trude who I've played her songs and I will keep playing them on this episode.

She later became his wife, you may have heard of her name, Astrud Gilberto. I think her daughter too, Bebel Gilberto, also famous Bossa Nova singer. But João Gilberto is maybe founder Bossa Nova, or I don't want to say founder, it's just his album is considered the first purely Bossa Nova album, Scega di Saudade, Scega di Saudade in 1959. And I think now time for break and for you to hear this beautiful song in its entirety. I will be right back. Isamé nos peixinho, isamada nos peixinhos Quel todas abrasos Isamos ser millions diabrasos Isapertado a sin Cola da sin, cala da sin Yabrasos y beijos Y cariño se inte fí Que pra caparme sin de goz Su ti vivé non gi ti No quiero mais de sin de goz Su ti vose y vivera si Vamos de char de sin de goz

Yes, I back and I don't want to critique pop songs, even one as notable as that. But lyrics, if you understood any, just very touching standard love song, melancholy for lost love, wants her to return and such. I much prefer stalking, you know, gives you a hobby and a meaning to life rather than just pining for. But this type of melancholy, saudade, I say, throughout all bossa nova, I think for me For me it gives a special angsty feel, I think minor key is more psychologically satisfying than major in music. And instead of telling you history, because who really cares, right? History of a genre, of a style of music, aside from nerds who want to play trivia. But instead I want to show you some favorite song samples, what I think the roots of Bossa Nova are, a few beautiful songs.

And to put it short, yes, it is traditional samba music. You may have heard a rollicking happy genre, the kind style samba. People go to samba club, they dance samba, they dance a celebration during carnival, they dance a soccer game, this type of... I'm not going to play any pure samba of that style, but you can find it yourself. But it's actually a varied folk style, it's not only that. And there is such a thing as sad or melancholy samba, and you soon realize bossa nova is just somewhat cleaned up samba, a popular folk style, but with added slight atonal chromatic jazz-like, some artistic innovations, avant-garde innovations, or nods rather to that, and a little bit more refined. They get rid of some of, you know, but it's particularly samba in the minor key evoking

lost love, melancholic nostalgia. And now that I've played for you, I think four Bossa Nova classics already, I play the roots of it. In 1959, so the same year that João Gilberto made his first Bossa Nova album come out, there is movie Black Orpheus, which has the same songwriter, famous Brazilian you've heard, Antonio Carlos Jubeim, and another one, Luis Bonfi, and they write these kind of black comulato sad samba pieces that are themselves by now samba slash at times bossa nova classics and they exist in both original samba form and bossa nova form because it's uh yeah dual use okay and here's one the morning of carnaval maniada carnaval such a aching uh aching song of longing. I'll be, here, you hear sample from it. And you know this, by the way, this

funny story, this movie Black Orpheus was Barack Obama's mother's favorite movie, which he chimps out about that in his book, so I hear I didn't read it, but in typical black cell nerdoid critical theory fashion, he chimped out that his mom was exoticizing black people. She liked the depiction of childlike black people in this movie, that she was orientalizing, she was being like Joseph Conrad, I think he even... He mentions that name, Joseph Conrad is the big no-no Antichrist for all of the Edward Said, Palestinians, Third World, this leftoid people, you know. They're obsessed with him because I keep telling you the real reason they're obsessed with Joseph Conrad is because he was a... English was his third language and he traveled all around the world as a sailor and wrote

amazing books of adventure in his third language that are probably, I think, Nostromo, maybe for me, best novel, Nostromo and Lord Jim, those two have a title to be best novels ever in the English language. And so you have black cells like Obama and, you know, whatever the hell Said was, I think he was a Palestinian cell, and they just chimp out because all they can do is see a reward cell. And here you have an immigrant, originally Polish, I guess, wrote great novels, and all they can focus is, oh, he objectified third-world people and exoticized them. God forbid he saw them as exotic, you know. Well, actually, you know, I've never watched Black Orpheus myself, but maybe it objectified black folk. Who knows? But what I just played for you now, I'm sorry, but it is Greek.

It's ancient Greek tragic in feel. The lyrics are about a happy thing, carnaval, a great feast, a Dionysiac feast. But the disconnect between the lyrics of celebration and the song, this is what's great about it. I think about the whole bossa nova genre actually, the style that, okay, I don't want to take it too seriously, it's just popular music style. Sometimes it's played in club lounge or in elevator even. But there's a lot of emotion in it, and the feel of such overwhelming life and vitality that it becomes actually painful, at least in the song I just played for you. It is the pain and the overwhelming avalanche of life and vitality. So, you know, this song is about carnaval, supposed to be a happy feast,

but just, it's a sad, the pain of life, the pain of overwhelming passion is so much, it come out in the song. So, you don't see that right away because it is the basis of Greek culture, actually, Greek sensibility, even in Hesiod and Homer. And then the Christian mythology, which is really the Jewish mythology, was, I think, designed as an inversion of that. could still be beautiful and sublime on its own. I don't want to, whatever, attack my Christian and Jewish friends, but it's an inversion of that Greek thing, which all I mean to say is that Greek thing is alien to you. And so if I say the pain of beautiful life is overwhelming you, and beautiful life is overwhelming you to the point where it becomes pain, that is obscure to people unless they go through German deconstruction,

learn from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer a deconstruction of modern morality, where they can return to the tragic Dionysiac view of things. Not that I'm saying Bossa Nova is the birth of Greek tragedy in the same way that maybe Wagner was, but in its small way popularized, maybe it kind of is. And here is another sample from this movie, Black Orpheus, famous song known principally as a Bossa Nova version song, Felicidade, Happiness. It's about the glories of carnaval, except again, the lyrics, you know, the sadness has no end, but happiness, yes. Here is famous song, Felicidade. But strictly speaking, these are originally samba, not bossa nova songs, although you know the distinction, as I say, isn't really there.

And to show you for real that a kind of samba of longing is the origin of the bossa nova style. Probably bossa nova existed much earlier than people think, than 1959 or whatever. Here's one of my favorite songs ever by Cartola, as roses now fall on. The roses don't speak, and it's recorded late. I think this recording is from 1970s, but I'm actually not sure. I may have to take that back, I'm not sure. Because the recording sounds very old, it sounds older than that. And I know that Cartola, the singer I'm about, who is a, Cartola was very sensitive, sickly young man, mulatto man, but sickly his whole life. And wonderful singer, he appeared in anthropological, basically documentaries about Brazilian folk music as early as the 1940s. So I assume that whenever this song was recorded,

that the song itself is an old, a very old song that he had in his repertoire, which I see basically no difference between this and later Bossa Nova, except that the Bossa Nova again added some chromatic, slightly atonal, cholera-y, jazz-like elements, and then cleaned up the accompaniment, slowed it down so you got rid of some of the percussion, changed the instrument slightly, transferred the rhythms of the samba to guitar. But anyway, here's samba of longing as rose has now fallen. The rose flowers don't speak. Yes, the same theme, I mean the content of the lyrics, I won't translate, but maybe you get the idea. It's a lament, a longing for lost love theme of almost all later Bossa Nova. I like Cartola, but he very much has old-timey Caribbean mulatto singer voice.

That's its own tropical charm. You can imagine an abandoned bar in Martinique or something, and men like this singing a dirge of the sea. But that's not Bossa Nova voice. And I want to end this episode just on this matter of the... What do you call it? The texture, the timber? Is that what you call the quality of the voice? because above all, Bossa Nova has come to be known as chill-out musics. Musics of calm, ethereal, unperturbed, relaxed voice. And for me, I'll tell you what the female and male, the female ultimate in this is Ellis Regina. Again, I tell you, her album with Tom Jobim, some songs are duets, but mostly it's her. I think it's a 1974 album, just find that and get it. That's the ultimate statement of Bossa Nova's style for me. So now to enjoy calm Bossa Nova voice,

I'll play a song of hers from there, such a beautiful song, Trisci. It's simply called Sad, you know, a sad to live in loneliness, but it's not a sad song. Here I play it for you. Again, a nice inversion, you know, the lyrics are very sad, but the music, not so, and they do the opposite with melody, much aching, combined with happy lyrics, also with contrast again, Although in mass media form, if you manage to feel the nutcase of that in full, that is the feel of Greek tragedy. What, after all, is the self-sacrifice of Dionysus for mankind? But anyway, and then as for the male voice, the best Bossa Nova calm, ultimate calm voice for me is Chico Buarque, who is very much part of this tropicalia movement that I mentioned earlier,

the art movement against standing against both the right and the left. And he had to leave Brazil in 1969 because it came to conflict with the military dictatorship. And I think, I like this man very much. He come from prominent kind of a Brazilian intellectual family. And he has interesting racial type. He, I don't think, well I think women might find him handsome. I don't think he very handsome. But he is kind of typical race of Rio de Janeiro with clear eyes. And, you know, it's the West hunter-gatherer phenotype of ancient Europe, but recreated in Brazil maybe by the slight infusion of Tupi cannibal blood. Anyway, he seems especially fond of mixing waltz form with bossa nova. It's very good mix. So you enjoy this somewhat dark song, but also bossa nova classic, Valsinha.

Well, and you know, maybe you hear the generous use there at the beginning, especially of atonal. Well, you know, an understated atonal, but they like to do this to the point where I've shown such songs to people, including the next one I'm about to play, this version of of a very famous bossa nova song. I've shown it to separate people, and they've interrupted me. They said, what is this atonal thing? And then I tell them, can you believe this used to be, until recently and still is, popular music? These people listen. This is popular music. This can't be popular music. This is experimental music. Well, it's a great example of experimental avant-garde musicians who made wonderful music that enjoyed by masses has a direct appeal still to the senses.

So I will end episode with this very popular, I must please the audience, it's a very popular bossa nova song. This, again, Ellis Regina singing, ultimate in calm, female longing voice for longing love with slight atonal drama theater setting. So you enjoy, please, and I think maybe imagine love of tropical girl in Guanabara Bay under foliage here. I objectify and exoticize tropical peoples. I want, I want Tropical Slut Mulatta. I will see you soon for episode 200, and I leave you for now in calm DJ music show with the song of love, Corcovado.