Tag Archives: #music

Putin’s Crazed Imperial Fantasy Is Dying

Trump’s failed Capitol insurrection on Jan 6, 2021 may yet prove to have been the high point of the authoritarian wave.

Putin’s crazed fantasy of creating a Russian Third Reich is now being buried in Ukrainian fields, streets and towns.

Can Putin hear the people singing? Does he know that his megalomaniacal dream is dying?

“Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the song of angry men?

It is the music of the people

Who will not be slaves again!

When the beating of your heart

Echoes the beating of the drums

There is a life about to start

When tomorrow comes!”

Xi, and all the other petty authoritarians – from Trump and Bolsonaro to Mohammed Bin Salman and the Myanmar junta – are watching fearfully.

When Putin fails, the democratic tsunami will sweep around the world.

And, it will sweep them away.

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#people

#music

#democracy

#democracywins

Sex & Music, Music & Sex

Whitney Houston Aroused

Michael Spitzer asks: Can music give you an orgasm?

The short answer is yes.

A longer answer will unlock the secrets of the evolution of music. But let’s begin with orgasms.

Listen to Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ from the film The Bodyguard (1992). She begins by singing quietly, breathily and alone, in a low register, with those strangely hesitant breaths between her words. As Houston gets into her stride, she stretches out her words with those soaring vocal runs characteristic of gospel music, whose effect here is to compound an emotion of trembling uncertainty.

This is a perfect set-up for the song’s killer blow, when she finds certainty on an extremely long held tonic note swelling at the top of her register (the first note of the scale, but up an octave), with the words that complete the sense of the song: ‘And I will always love you.’ The melodic climax is underscored by the first entry of guitar and synth strings.

Continue reading on Aeon.

Michael Spitzer is professor of music at the University of Liverpool in the UK. His books include A History of Emotion in Western Music: A Thousand Years from Chant to Pop (2020) and The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth (2021).

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