September 2021 – According to The Kidd

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – 2. Why?

From S.F. SORROW and MON AMIE LA ROSE to RAINY DAY WOMEN NUMBER 12 AND 35

A series of posts on the politics and culture, and the history and structure of music.

Give a listen, if you would, to this song about Bad Captain Madman and his atonal apples:

The song is called Pressed Rat and Warthog and some see this as a metaphor for Thatcher’s England but Thatcher came later. The song was co-written by the singer Ginger Baker, the superlative drummer with the British blues rock supergroup Cream, one of only a very few rock groups in which all the members have taken lead vocals. Actually he says the lyrics, more than a decade before Rap emerged musically. The musicianship level is very high and though the most famous member of the group is Eric Clapton in my opinion both Ginger Baker and vocalist / bassist / cellist Jack Bruce were more talented than Clapton. Both are now deceased.

Bruce, on this track amongst many, weaves his bass line melodically in and out of Clapton’s lead guitar line. This is rare in rock, it’s called contrapuntal, and J.S.Bach was famous for it. The track’s producer Felix Pappalardi played the excellent trumpet solo bits at the beginning and again in three other places. Pappalardi died at the age of forty-three, shot and killed by his wife Gail. Cream was also unusual in that they were highly talented studio musicians coming up with intricate, complex compositions brilliantly layered and executed and yet could also deliver long blues / rock improvisations that never got boring. These two musical approaches are incredibly different requiring very different musical skill sets.

In August 1976 Eric Clapton, drunk, made a public rant at a concert in Birmingham, England which included “get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out” and the phrase “Keep Britain white” repeated several times. This led to the creation of Rock Against Racism. In recent months Clapton has released anti-lockdown and anti-mask songs. Does that make a difference in your perception of the track?

Why was this song recorded? Just for fun? Music has many purposes and functions which have determined why it has evolved as it has. Here is a list of twenty-five of them. ONE – TO TELL NEW STORIES. Pressed Rat and Warthog tells a rather silly story. Here is that track again performed by Cream live 37 years later – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_txpe6Ie2Nk

CREAM – LEFT TO RIGHT: GINGER BAKER, JACK BRUCE, ERIC CLAPTON
By General Artists Corporation (management) /Atco Records (the band’s record label at one time). – eBay itemphoto, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16515213

NOTE: I have attempted to include a wide range of music in these posts, including music I don’t like but which is important or demonstrates a musical idea well. Almost any piece of music is interesting in some way. I recommend at least sampling all the music here – you might be pleasantly surprised. At least check out specific sections of compositions which I have identified. If you don’t like a clip just stop and jump to the next clip.

Some storytelling songs take the form of ballads, for example – Joe Cocker (‘The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen’), Crash Test Dummies -(‘The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead’),and Jefferson Airplane (‘The Ballad of You And Me And Pooneil’). The Crash Test Dummies also did Superman’s Song that tells the story of the death of Superman. New imaginary stories are about imaginary people of which there are hundreds in popular music, including the following small sampling: Mr. Bojangles – by Jerry Jeff Walker, recorded here by Harry Nilsson ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5qyVKfJMCU ); Mr. Soul; Mean Mr. Mustard; Mr. Fantasy; Mr. Tambourine Man; Demolition Man; Apeman; Madman Across The Water; Monkey Man; Magneto and Titanium Man; 21^st Century Schizoid Man; Ice Cream Man; The Candy Man; The Pony Man; Far East Man; Wizard Man; Nowhere Man; Laughing Boy; ‘Voodoo Childe’ recorded by Orianthi ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK6tcgsKgps ); Teddy Boy; My Boy Flat Top; Child of the Universe; War Child; Gemini Childe; My Boy Lollipop; Mother Nature’s Son; Sun King; ‘King of the Road’ written and recorded by Roger Miller ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uJe-Yq0zGo&ab_channel=ClassicHits%7BStereo%7D ); Mack the Knife; Rocky Raccoon; Silas Stingy; Happy Jack; Johnny B.Goode; Ziggy Stardust, Jumping Jack Flash; the sinister ‘Missionary Man’ recorded by Eurythmics ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Q3cp3cp88&list=RD0-Q3cp3cp88&start_radio=1 ); Corporal Clegg; Sergeant Pepper; Private S.F.Sorrow; Youngblood; Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear; Mud Slide Slim; Big Bad John; Bony Moroni; Dizzy Miss Lizzy; Tallahassee Lassie; Crazy Miranda; Wild Child; Soft-Hearted Hana; ‘Lovely Rita’ recorded by The Beatles ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysDwR5SIR1Q ) which is a track full of fun and an amazing fadeout; Cindy Incidentally; Sweet Georgia Brown; Lady Madonna; Witch Queen of New Orleans; Proud Mary; Factory Girl; Lady Stardust; Georgy Girl; Ozone Baby; Sunspot Baby; Ruby Tuesday; Judy in Disguise; Little Susie; Little Miss Strange; Pearly Queen; Dear Eloise; Oh Susanna; Pistol Packin’ Mama; Cherokee Girl; Creole Belle; Ghetto Woman; Material Girl; Eleanor Rigby; Jennifer Eccles; Barbara Allen and ‘Long Tall Sally’ recorded by Little Richard (Richard Penniman), a song that he co-wrote. Note that all the listeners in this clip are white as is the announcer Alan Freed, while all the performers are black. At the 1 minute 9 second mark we see Bill Haley with two of The Comets sitting listening. Haley had a huge hit with ‘Rock Around the Clock’, a track often considered to be the first Rock N Roll hit. Here’s Long Tall Sally – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxNSvFMkag&ab_channel=carllafong69

RIANTHI 2017
DOING VOODOO CHILDE
By Justin Higuchi – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jus10h/31889907304/, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66824873

One of the more complex songs is ‘I Am The Walrus’ by The Beatles. The singer also talks about being the Eggman. This is in 4 / 4 time except for the very first bar which is in 6 / 4. John Lennon, leader of The Beatles, is on record as loving two stories entitled ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ as a child, and saying that the walrus in this song is from ‘Through the Looking Glass’. This same walrus is also referenced in the later Beatles song ‘Glass Onion’. Notice the triplets played by the stings on “See how they run”. Many different instruments can be heard on the track, along with both major and minor sections, and several key changes. At the end the melody is simultaneously ascending and descending in a harmonic minor key and in the second half we hear recitations of lines from William Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’. Here’s the track: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Jm5epJr10&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic )

TWO – TO RESURRECT STORIES FROM THE PAST – Storytelling has a long and storied history and is a very important part of one’s culture, and it takes many forms. Chumbawamba has an entire CD of historical songs (‘English Rebel Songs 1381 – 1984). Here are some old stories re-told by new musical groups: Georgie Fame – ‘The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cONe-suGgP0 ); Led Zeppelin – ‘Gallows Pole’; ‘John Barleycorn Must Die’ is an English and Scottish folk song dating at least as far back as the Elizabethan era. John Barleycorn is the personification of barley and the beer and whiskey made from barley. The indignities and eventual death of John Barleycorn in the song correspond to the different stages of barley cultivation. Robbie Burns came up with his own version of the song in 1782. The song has been covered by dozens of people, most notably by Traffic. Here is a strong version by Jethro Tull with lead vocals shared by the band’s leader Ian Anderson and the great George Dalaras, a Greek singer and musician with a distinguished international musical reputation ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD7bZ54oh6Y&ab_channel=Jethrotullforum ).

BONNIE PARKER 1933
By FBI – http://foia.fbi.gov/bonclyd/bonclyd1a, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8042455

Why are songs about old stories (about real events or imaginary ones) still popular? How historically accurate do you think these ballads are? Did the song about Bonnie and Clyde glorify gun culture or condemn it? Do the serial killers of today have the same motives as Bonnie and Clyde? Is the culture (the attitudes and perceptions) of the Old West still alive today in the US? In ‘The Gallows Pole’ was justice served? How did the singer try to escape being hanged by the hangman? Was that the right thing to do? Do you think the singer deserved to die or in those days were people sometimes falsely accused of crimes, or given punishment out of proportion to the crime? How did the condemned criminal’s sister try and save her brother from being hanged? How common was that? How awful was that?

THREE – TO EXPRESS INTENSE PERSONAL FEELINGS – This usually takes the form of the Blues. Traditional blues songs were usually composed and performed by African-Americans about the racist society they lived in, or the poverty caused by the racism of their world. Some are just about the desperate state of things or about personal relationships. The Blues grew out of spirituals and work songs and became incorporated into Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll. Blues music usually uses a Blues Scale the most common being the six-note Hexatonic, seven-note Heptatonic and nine-note Nonatonic scales. Blues songs sometimes have a call-and-response form and their own distinctive chord progressions, as well as flattened thirds, fifths and sevenths known as blue notes.

Muddy Waters’ song’ ‘Rollin’ Stone Blues’ gave the Rolling Stones their name. Louis Armstrong’s ‘West End Blues’ is said by some musicologists to be the greatest jazz recording ever made. Bessie Smith was known as Empress of the Blues. She was 42 when she died in a car crash in 1937. She lay in an unmarked grave until August 7, 1970 when singer / songwriter Janis Joplin paid for a gravestone for her. 58 days later Joplin was also dead. She died at the age of 27.

Some of the many blues songs that have been written (one can imagine what many of these songs are about): Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues; Atomic Blues; Bad Penny Blues; Big Stars Falling Blues; Blade Runner Blues; Bleep Bop Blues; Blind Lemon’s Penitentiary Blues; Cannon Ball Blues; Cleanhead Blues; Dead Man Blues; Electric Blues; Gut Bucket Blues; Hangman’s Blues; Java Blues; Jelly Roll Blues; Jim Crow Blues; Kidney Stew Blues; Mule Skinner Blues; Orange Juice Blues; Pneumonia Blues; Potato Head Blues; Tombstone Blues; Travelling Riverside Blues; Vietnam Blues; Yellow Dog Blues; Zombie Walking Blues; Swinging Shepherd Blues; Rattle Snake Blues, Self-Destructive Blues, and . . .

1. Three Dog Night – ‘Brickyard Blues’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomQnKlFf5U )

2. Duke Ellington is here in a 1942 music video decades before music videos were common. Harlem is the predominantly black area of New York City and this is ‘C Jam Blues’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOlpcJhNyDI )

3. Margot Bingham as Daughter Maitland doing an amazing ‘St. Louis Blues’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvty_ipeWkg&ab_channel=cheshire212 )

4. ‘Limehouse Blues’ played by six of the most talented musicians you’d ever come across, each taking a solo turn ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrNS54hBTdo )

5. ‘Summertime Blues’ here played by Eddie Cochran. The multi-talented Cochran experimented with multi-track recording, distortion and overdubbing before anyone else. He could play guitar, piano, bass and drums. He was a session musician, producer and composer before becoming a star performer. This clip is from 1959 the year Cochran’s friend Buddy Holly died at age 22, along with Ritchie Valens at age 17 and The Big Bopper at 28. About a year after this clip was made Cochran was also dead. Touring England the car he was in went out of control, Cochran threw himself in front of his girlfriend, Sharon Sheeley, to save her life and he died in doing so. He was 21 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti38LFY7x1Y ).

6. ‘Kozmic Blues’ here sung by the phenomenal Janis Joplin who, like George Michael, put everything into every performance. This is a LIVE performance from Toronto, 1970. Joplin had a very nasty early life and she died at the age of twenty-seven of a drug overdose ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J31YhSdH-tU&ab_channel=haroldoBcn )

7. ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ performed here by Led Zeppelin, this is a track that appears on none of their studio albums. This was written by legendary bluesman Robert Johnson who recorded it in 1937 during the last recording session before he died, also at the age of twenty-seven ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSht5j3Cnh0&ab_channel=LedZeppelin ).

BESSIE SMITH, EMPRESS OF THE BLUES, IN 1936
By Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964, photographer. – American Memory from the Library of Congress, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=417457

FOUR – TO EDUCATE – One category of educational songs are children’s songs about the alphabet and numbers. Then there are songs about chemistry such as Tom Lehrer’s ‘The Elements’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM-wSKFBpo ) and the love story told by Kate McGarrigle about sodium chloride called ‘NaCl’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpTzawl3OmI ). Of course one must be careful to distinguish between songs that educate and those that inculcate and propagandize.

FIVE – TO RAISE FUNDS FOR OR AWARENESS OF GOOD CAUSES – There have been many benefit concerts / recordings over the years. Here is a sampling:

BANGLA DESH – When George Harrison of the Beatles heard that there were people in Bangla Desh suffering terribly he immediately wrote, recorded and released the single ‘Bangla Desh’ and all money from sales of the record went to help Bangla Desh. He also organized fund raising concerts and money made from sales of the concert recording also went to Bangla Desh. Ringo is playing drums on this tack ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHItRJKV-yQ&ab_channel=MukhoKurts )
DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS? – In 1984 when Bob Geldof first heard about famine in Africa from a report by a Canadian journalist, he got the leading rock stars of England to record a song under the name Band Aid. The single was ‘Do They Know Its Christmas’ and all money from its sales went to help Africa. It was so successful he went on and organized LIVE AID and raised even more money. The money saved many lives but there was a paternalistic colonial element to the effort.
TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH – In 1985 a group of top Canadian musicians released this single under the group name Northern Lights to raise money for African famine relief as well.
LIVE 8 – A series of enormous international concerts organized by Bob Geldof in 2005 on the 20th anniversary of LIVE AID designed to end world poverty and third world debt.
THE SIMPLE TRUTH – The proceeds from the sale of this single by Chris De Burgh went to help the Kurds of Iraq suffering as a result of the Gulf War.
SELF-DESTRUCTION – In 1989 a group of leading Hip Hop artists released this 12 inch single to try to put an end to black on black violence. Public Enemy, Heavy D, KRS-One, Just Ice, Stetasonic, MC Lyte and Boogie Down Productions all contributed.
DUMP THE DEAL – This recording, and music video, was made by a group of Canadian musicians opposed to the Free Trade Deal in the 1980’s. The deal still went through.
THESE ARMS OF MINE / BABY PLEASE DON’T GO – Members of Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who and others recorded this single under the name Willie And The Poor Boys. Money from the sales of the recording and accompanying concerts went to the ARMS organization (ACTION into RESEARCH for MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS). Their friend, Ronnie Lane of The Small Faces, had just been diagnosed with the disease. This was the first time Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck had played together on the same stage. All three legendary guitarists had been guitarists in the band The Yardbirds at some time.
MAN IN MOTION – This song / video by John Paar was used by Rick Hansen when he wheeled 40 598 kilometres through 34 countries raising money for spinal injuries research ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_peFWobQ5I

SIX – TO SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE – Most songs with a specific message are political and are dealt with in great detail in later posts. There are a few non-political message songs, however, with specific messages. One such song is by Korn called ‘Falling Away From Me’, a song decrying child abuse ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s3iGpDqQpQ ).

SEVEN – TO SEND A SECRET MESSAGE – During the brutal Slave Trade many slaves kept their hopes alive and were able to continue struggling through horrendous life experiences because of the religious power of spirituals. Some of the spirituals had a hidden benefit as well. An escaped slave would usually attempt to get to Canada, and freedom, on something called the Underground Railroad. This was a carefully and cleverly hidden system of transportation. Spirituals were used to secretly communicate about upcoming clandestine meetings and escape attempts, or advice on how to achieve a successful escape. Some of these spirituals included ‘Gospel Train’, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, Wade in the Water’ and ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’. The drinking gourd was the constellation known as the Big Dipper and the star at the end of the handle was the North Star, Canada being north of America.

When the Beatles broke up John Lennon and Paul McCartney were at each others’ throats. They lived very different lives. In his song ‘How Do You Sleep’ John openly insults Paul with considerable vehemence. Paul, on the other hand, says a few things back to John but his messages are cleverly hidden in the songs he was releasing (e.g. Dear Boy’). Fortunately they became friends again before John was murdered.

Blues and jazz musicians, often on the edge of society, had been using illegal drugs for years and they wrote about it in their music. As the drugs were illegal, slang terms for the drugs and for using the drugs had to be implemented in the song lyrics. This practice continued among rock musicians with the rise of the counter-culture in the 1960s. Bessie Smith recorded the song ‘Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer’ in 1933 and it contained the line “Give me a reefer and a gang o’ gin”. ‘Reefer’ was a slang word for an illegal marijuana cigarette. In 1931 Cab Calloway released the song ‘Kicking the Gong Around’ which was a slang phrase for using illegal drugs.

Early on songs such as ‘I Can See For Miles’ by The Who and ‘Eight Miles High’ by The Byrds were disguised drug songs. Bob Dylan wrote a song entitled ‘Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-Five’ the rainy day women being marijuana cigarettes. The line that gets repeated over and over again in the song is “Everybody must get stoned” which had an obvious double meaning. It was Dylan who introduced The Beatles to cannabis, an it was Canadian folksinger Ian Tyson who introduced Dylan to cannabis. It has been suggested that the song’s title is a reference to the Biblical verse Proverbs Chapter 27 Verse 15.

As time went on musicians just didn’t bother hiding the drug references anymore. The Beatles released the song ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ which included the line “I get high with a little help from my friends”. The ‘friends’ were drugs and this clip features The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr with his All-Starr band happily taking lead vocals on this song, with his son Jason on drums behind him ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19C5l_keLJU ). According to some the best song on the best CD by the best group, The Beatles, was ‘A Day in the Life’ but the song was banned by the BBC because it contained the drug reference “I’d love to turn you on” as well as imagery and sounds which could be construed as a drug experience. The Beatles were introduced to hallucinogenic drugs by a doctor friend of theirs whose first name was Robert. Later they wrote the song ‘Doctor Robert’ about the experience without coming right out and describing what really happened.

The Beatles also released a song called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ which had surrealistic dream-like lyrics and sounds similar to a drug experience, and the initials of the three main words in the title spelled out LSD, an illegal hallucinogenic drug. However the group leader, John Lennon, always insisted that the song was simply inspired by a painting his young son Julian had brought home from nursery school, and Julian had indeed drawn a picture of his class-mate Lucy O’Donnell in the sky with diamonds. The Beatles have also said that the song was inspired by Lennon’s love of Alice in Wonderland.

JULIAN LENNON 2000
By Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964, photographer. – American Memory from the Library of Congress, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=417457

EIGHT – TO CELEBRATE OTHER CULTURES – Thousands of great musical works have come from parts of the world other than North America and Europe. Here are some examples of World Music:

1. Algerian Rai singer Rachid Taha, with Mick Jones of The Clash on lead guitar – ‘Rock the Casbah’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbHZJ_oqJew )

2. Egyptian / British singer Natacha Atlas who sings in Arabic, French, English and Spanish – ‘Mon Amie La Rose’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wxwUfki8EI )

3. Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, a singer, composer, actor, businessman and politician, in a track with Neneh Cherry (she is a Swedish singer / rapper) – ‘7 Seconds’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqCpjFMvz-k )

NINE – TO REFLECT OR CELEBRATE A SUBCULTURE – For example, songs about hip hop and the black experience (e.g. ‘He Got Game’ by Public Enemy), and songs about 1950s youth culture (e.g. ‘Rock and Roll is Here to Stay’ by Danny and the Juniors, and ‘Rock and Roll Will Never Die’ by Neil Young).

TEN – TO INTRODUCE A TELEVISION SERIES – A few examples:

1. The Peter Gunn Theme – Henry Mancini ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKSQT-oXfc )

2. Theme from Checkmate – a young John Williams, who years later did the theme from Star Wars ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ocUi15Nzww )

3. Theme from The Avengers – Laurie Johnson. Diana Rigg, who appears in this clip, died a year ago this month. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgEqMsfDGnQ )

DIANA RIGG AS EMMA PEEL OF THE AVENGERS
By Low-resolution television screenshot, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6088827

ELEVEN – TO REFLECT OR PROMOTE ATHLETICISM – Music and team songs stir up fans at athletic events. There are also songs about athletics, for example:

HOCKEY – Stompin’ Tom Connors – ‘The Good Old Hockey Game’
BASKETBALL – Cheech and Chong – ‘Basketball Jones’
BASEBALL – John Fogerty – ‘Centrefield’
TENNIS – Cream – ‘Anyone For Tennis’

Tom Cochrane released the song ‘Big League’. Before one of his shows one night a custodian at the concert hall requested a song saying that it was his son’s favourite song. As the conversation continued Cochrane came to realize that the man’s son had died. Cochrane wrote this song as a result of that conversation, a song about a young hockey player who is killed in a road accident caused by someone else ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoDDnOUKDQI ).

A video by Meat Loaf made decades ago has a simple message and a complex structure. He trades lead vocals with his wife Carmen and the execution is high energy and wonderfully done, with excellent harmony lead vocals. The most interesting part of the video is the use of baseball footage as a metaphor for sexual activity. This is one of the great early music videos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11MzbEcHlw&ab_channel=MeatLoafVEVO ).

TWELVE – TO MAKE MONEY COMMERCIALLY – Recorded music and music concert tickets are sold for a profit; music is used in films and television shows which are also created to make money. Music is also used in ads to sell products, for example this ad for Heineken featuring the song ‘The Golden Age’, a hit for the Danish band The Asteroids Galaxy Tour. The band’s vocalist Mette Lindberg even appears in the ad ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqUnsKMsRxM ).

THIRTEEN – TO RELAX PEOPLE – Muzak is used in stores, businesses and elevators; ambient music is used to induce a relaxed state. Some music is used to encourage meditation.

FOURTEEN – TO EVOKE IMPORTANT MEMORIES – Some couples talk about ‘their song’, the song they listened to on their first date perhaps, or the song on the radio when their first child is born. Sometimes a song will be playing when something momentous happens (e.g. the end of World War Two, Nine Eleven, the assassination of John Lennon).

FIFTEEN – FOR ITS OWN SAKE – One can just listen to well-crafted music to appreciate how well it’s constructed. Enjoy the melody, which may be simple or complex, but all the notes are in just the right places. Admire how well the music is played, or conducted, or how well two soloists improvise together. George Gershwin’s Concerto in F is a wonder to behold. So is Van Dyke Park’s Song Cycle, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, or Pink Floyd’s Animals. Great music, like pure mathematics, is good in itself. One doesn’t need a reason, purpose, function, or practical application to justify its existence.

Here is the entire list of functions of music, plus ten more each of which will be dealt with in an individual post later:

To tell new stories
To resurrect stories from the past
To express intense personal feelings
To educate
To raise funds for or awareness of good causes
To send a clear message
To send a secret message
To celebrate other cultures
To reflect or celebrate a sub-culture
To introduce a television series
To reflect or promote athleticism
To make money commercially
To relax people
To evoke important memories
For its own sake
To support or resist major conflicts
To address issues of economic inequity
For people to dance / move to
To keep up morale during tough times
To stir up religious feelings
To stir up nationalistic / patriotic / xenophobic feelings
To remember and honour people
To contribute to a film or live dramatic performance
To entertain and amuse people
To make political statements.

Are there any functions or purposes I missed? This is the first of twenty-seven music posts.

As the years continue to unfold great new music will continue to be created and older music will just keep going round and round, as Tommy Dorsey and Edyth Wright tell us:

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – Posts posted, planned or being prepared as we speak:

STAND TO ATTENTION, OR ELSE – Anthems, National and Unofficial. From Black Power to one small flower of eternity, from Oceania ‘Tis of Thee to Lift Every Voice and Sing.
WHY? – Twenty-five purposes and functions of music. From Pressed Rat and Warthog to Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-five, from propaganda to religion, labour relations to storytelling.
LISTEN UP – Things to listen for when you listen to a piece of music. From Kashmir to Vine Street, St. James Infirmary to Scarborough Fair.
The Bright Side of Life – Silly and Satirical Songs
The Complexities of War
Music reminding us of Real Events
Music Celebrating Real People
Celluloid Music
Music Left and Right
Miscellaneous Matters – Third Stream, Contrapuntal and Other Things
Dance to the Music
Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
Music Religious and Secular
Session Musicians and Supergroups – the Forgotten and the Famous
Rhythm Part One
Rhythm Part Two
The Great Depression
Musical Families and the people left out
The British Invasion
Girl Groups
The Evolution of Music
Crossroads and Crossbones (Musical Deaths)
Economic Inequities
The Beatles – Good, Bad and Wrong
Music About Music
Musical Instruments

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – 1. Stand to Attention, or else.

From BLACK POWER to ONE SMALL FLOWER OF ETERNITY.

A series of posts on the politics and culture, and the history and structure of music. This is a post about national anthems, unofficial anthems, and songs about one’s country. Childish Gambino has this to say musically about the United States:

Then there were the death threats.

BLACK POWER SALUTE BY TOMMIE SMITH AND JOHN CARLOS AT THE 1968 MEXICAN OLYMPICS DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
By Angelo Cozzi (Mondadori Publishers) – This file has been extracted from another file: John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman 1968.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40937149

At the 1968 Mexican Olympics Tommie Smith won the gold in the 200 metre running event and John Carlos won the bronze. During the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner they both quietly gave the black power salute. All three medal winners wore human rights badges on their jackets. The silver medallist was Australian Caucasian Peter Norman who supported Smith and Carlos. The athletes stood for the anthem until it was over and they made no speeches. Nonetheless the two athletes were booed by the crowd and banned from the Olympic games on the order of Avery Brundage the president of the International Olympic Committee. This is the same man who deemed Nazi salutes on the podium at the Berlin Olympics to be acceptable, a decision he defended when questioned about it. The families of the two athletes received death threats and the athletes received harsh negative media coverage in the United States. In this video by Patrick Gannon, which opens with Mohammed Ali, we see footage of the salute at 1 min 52 sec. and again at 3 min. 30 sec. And at the end of the video is a brief interview with Tommie Smith: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GCdNCUOd74&ab_channel=DavidBennettPiano )

This video includes footage of football players taking the knee. They are following the example of Colin Kaepernick who was a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers and in 2016, in the third preseason game, Kaepernick sat during the playing of the American national anthem. The following week, and throughout the season, he knelt during the playing of the national anthem. He stated that it was his protest against the police brutality and racial injustice in the United States. This was during the ascendancy of Black Lives Matter and a time when a series of highly publicized videos of the unjustified killings of black citizens by police officers had surfaced. Soon others took a knee including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada who took a knee at an anti-racism protest in Ottawa. President Donald Trump angrily declared that anyone taking a knee during the national anthem should be fired. What if he had been president when Smith and Carlos had displayed their Black Power salute?

COLIN KAEPERNICK
By Mike Morbeck – Flickr: Colin Kaepernick, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30174119

The American national anthem calls the United States “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” How free is the United States if you’re black? Are poverty-stricken women free to easily have an abortion anywhere in the southern United States? The previous president, Donald Trump, has a long and well-documented history of racism as do many American police departments. The country is founded on the Slave Trade, something which continued long after it was abolished elsewhere. Statues and memorials still stand honouring champions of the Slave Trade. Thousands were tortured and lynched as late as the 1980’s. White supremacy is once again on the rise. The long history of racism in America and elsewhere has been carefully documented here ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/black-lives-matter/ ). This is not strictly an American contradiction either. The Canadian national anthem talks about “The True North strong and free” but how free were the indigenous children in the residential schools? How free were Canadian blacks when Viola Desmond challenged racial segregation in Nova Scotia? How free were the Japanese-Canadians in the internment camps during World War Two?

In the United States the national anthem, and the flag, are sacred. With slogans like AMERICA RIGHT OR WRONG and AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT from the 1960’s it’s clear that criticism of the present state of affairs with a view to improving things is still perceived by too many Americans as treason. Pious declarations of noble principles are meaningless if those principles are anti-democratically and intentionally undermined by the powers that be. If school textbooks and the media images controlled by the power structure circulate the lie of a free country and an exemplary past then the populace at large is going to oppose any attempts to change the status quo.

The more declarations of freedom in a country, any country, the less free that country is, generally speaking. It’s like one of those paradoxical phrases in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. It is made very clear in that book that everyone had better scream their hatred at the enemy loudly and vociferously during the Two Minutes Hate and, as Orwell points out in Chapter Two, whenever one hears the national anthem, in this case Oceania ‘Tis of Thee “You were supposed to stand to attention”. Orwell’s dystopia was not a warning about the United States, however. It was about the Soviet Union. Some countries also have more than one particularly patriotic and nationalistic anthem, perhaps to prove just how wonderful their countries are, for example:

THE UNITED KINGDOM – God Save The Queen, Rule Britannia, Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory
THE UNITED STATES – The Star-Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, My Country ‘Tis of Thee
CANADA has two official anthems. One is referred to as the national anthem (O Canada) and the other is referred to as the royal anthem (God Save the Queen) since Canada is a Commonwealth nation.

LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY
By Boosey & Co. – Author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17894269

Every country reveres its anthem. Here is the famous anthem scene in Casablanca:

Almost every citizen of every nation, presumably, would sing their national anthem with the same fervour as the French in this clip. The political hegemony would have kicked in. The French won the singing contest and the Germans closed down the cafe. Power is power. When President Barack Obama asserted that there may actually be some nations in the world who love their country as much as Americans do many Republicans were outraged and angry. How do you think the Vietnamese defeated the Americans in Vietnam? Some stirring anthems that are as important and sacred to millions around the world as The Star-Spangled Banner:

RUSSIA:

CHINA:

SOUTH AFRICA / NKOSI SIKELEL IAFRIKA

Performed here by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The lyrics are in four different languages – Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans

AUSTRALIA / WALTZING MATILDA. This song is not the official national anthem but for many Aussies it is the unofficial anthem. Done here by Kylie Minogue, this is a very effective performance by a very accomplished Aussie singer, with some good under-stated solo piano:

Rod Stewart – Tom Traubert’s Blues / Waltzing Matilda:

CANADA / O CANADA. Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar doing to O Canada what Jimi Hendrix did to The Star-Spangled Banner:

Walk Off the Earth doing a low-key version of O Canada:

FRANCE / THE MARSEILLES. It is played here by the Romani guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt, the first major European jazz artist. His style is somewhat unique because when he was seventeen he suffered terrible burns over half of his body and lost the use of the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand. When doctors predicted that he would never play guitar again, through sheer hard work he determinedly re-programmed the rest of his fingers and never looked back. He died at the age of forty-three of a brain hemorrhage.

THE UNITED KINGDOM / GOD SAVE THE QUEEN – Prince Harry and Meghan Markle singing at their wedding. This has the most wonderful brass arrangement:

God Save the Queen performed by Brian May of Queen on the roof of Buckingham Palace:

I’ve left GOD SAVE THE QUEEN (The Fascist Regime) recorded by The Sex Pistols for the end of this post.

A SWAGMAN CAMPED BY A BILLABONG, PAINTED BY GORDON COUTTS, 1889
By Gordon Coutts (1865-1937) – Art Gallery of New South Wales., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71518347

Seven more rather extraordinary anthems, none of them national or official, can also be found below.

Many anthems make reference to God, the Motherland or the Fatherland, and to flags and banners. The words ‘glory’ and ‘justice’ appear with some regularity. Many describe their homelands as free regardless of how free they actually are. 112 national anthems contain one or more of the following words: free, freedom, liberty, liberation, independence. In five other anthems these words don’t appear but equivalent phrases do. These countries all think that their people are free, or at least purport to be striving for freedom for their people. I guess it all depends on how you define ‘freedom’. 23 anthems contain no reference to freedom but they do contain the word ‘peace’. 54 anthems contain none of these words but often set a more militant tone with talk of justice and victory rather than freedom and peace. Neither ‘God Save the Queen’ from The United Kingdom nor the ‘Hymn and Pontifical March’ from the Vatican City State make any reference to peace, freedom or love.

Anthems are pretty much generic. The aim is to stir patriotic feelings so that citizens will obey the government if, for example, the government starts a war and it needs domestic support and soldiers to die fighting the war. This applies to just and unjust wars. Anthems can also make people proud of their country and if they focus on the good things about the country then they might not get so upset at things like poverty and crime, racism and sexism, corporatism and government corruption. An anthem highlights the good things about a nation, it might even reference God as the source of a nation’s goodness and prosperity, or it might mention heroes from the past. If you don’t respect an anthem like that, you must be a traitor and therefore a legitimate target. The nice thing about a national anthem is that, as generic as it is, it can be applied to both pro-democratic and anti-democratic states, or anything in between. In fact, the more totalitarian the state the more imperative it is to show respect for the anthem, and also the flag and the government, and you’ better not bring up any of your nation’s atrocities, past or present. Pride of country is valid and laudatory, as long as one keeps things in perspective. Respect the anthem but be ready to acknowledge and do something about those shortcomings about your country that still need to be addressed.

The words of the anthems of the world are sometimes quite interesting and revealing:

RELIGIOUS MUSIC. Many anthems reference God and Christianity, but not all of them do:

“As the doctrine of the Lord Buddha flourishes / May the sun of peace and happiness shine on the people” – BHUTAN
The Danish anthem references a Norse deity, describing Denmark like this: “This is Freya’s hall”
“You have lived for a nation whose religion is Islam and guide is the Qur’an . . . Allah has protected you from the evils of the time” – UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Religious diversity is sometimes encouraged: “Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsees, Muslims and Christians come from East and West” – INDIA

HISTORICAL REFERENCES. From Charlemagne to Napoleon:

“The great Charlemagne, my Father, liberated me from the Saracens” – ANDORRA
“O Fatherland, we shall never forget the heroes of the Fourth of February” – ANGOLA. On February 4, 1961, The Angolan War of Independence from Portugal began.
“This innocent and beautiful land which owes its name to Bolivar” – BOLIVIA. Simon Bolivar (1783 – 1830) was a Venezuelan political and military leader who led Bolivia, as well as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama, to independence from Spain.
“let us build our new Great Wall” – CHINA
“The flag is flying from the Sixth of July” – THE COMOROS, which became independent on July 6, 1975.
“Babylon is inherent in us and Assyria is ours” – IRAQ
“Italy has awakened, she has wreathed her head with the helmet of Scipio” – ITALY. Scipio was a cognomen used by a prominent family of the gens Cornelia during the Roman Republic.
“We’ve been shown by Bonaparte ways to victory” – POLAND, referencing Napoleon Bonaparte.

SIMON BOLIVAR, PAINTED BY ARTURO MICHELENA
By Arturo Michelena – Photographed by Wilfredor, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32203667

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Christopher Columbus is mentioned in a favourable light in the anthems of Panama and Colombia. He is also mentioned by Samuel Eliot Morison (1887 – 1976) who was a Harvard historian, and the author of a multi-volume biography of Christopher Columbus. This is what he had to say about Christopher Columbus: “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide”. A young priest named Bartolome de Las Casas (1484 – 1566), who participated in the conquest of Cuba, is the chief and often the only source we have of what happened when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, and he became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. It was Las Casas who first transcribed the journals of Columbus, and Las Casas also wrote History of the Indies, a three volume work which begins with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and most of the work consists of an eyewitness account. He has this to say about the conquest of the New World by the Spanish, including Columbus: “our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy.” and he tells us that “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.” These quotes are referenced in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, a good source for more information about Christopher Columbus and the European conquest of North America. Something to remember the next time Columbus Day rolls around.

CLASS WAR. Some anthems are quite specific about the rights of the working class and the evils of imperialism. I can’t imagine lines like these in the anthem of the United States, Canada or any number of other advanced capitalist nations:

AFGHANISTAN: “Our revolutionary homeland is now in the hands of the workers”
ANGOLA: “Revolution through the power of the people / We shall march, Angolan fighters, in solidarity with oppressed people”
VIETNAM: “Ceaselessly for the people’s cause let us struggle”
The anthem of BURKINA FASO urges its citizens to fight “against the cynical malice in the shape of neo-colonialism and its petty local servants . . . Nourished in the lively source of the Revolution . . . down with exploitation of man by man! . . . Popular revolution our nourishing sap”
NORTH KOREA: “The country established by the will of the people”
LAOS: “The Lao people of all origins are equal / And will no longer allow imperialists and traitors to harm them”
LIBYA: “Woe to the Imperialists! . . . seize the forehead of the tyrant and destroy him”
The Macedonian anthem references four real people – Yane Sandanski, Goce Delcev, Pitu Guli and Dame Gruev, all of whom were Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionaries.
MOZAMBIQUE: “Heroic people who, gun in hand, toppled colonialism . . . Struggling against the bourgeoisie our country will be the tomb of capitalism and exploitation”
PARAGUAY: “For three centuries a reign oppressed the unhappy peoples of America”

Some anthems are quite violent:

EL SALVADOR: “Ever since the day when her lofty banner, in letters of blood, wrote ‘Freedom’ “
ALGERIA: “we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm, and the sound of machine guns as our melody”
LI BYA: “The enemy’s army is coming, wishing to destroy, with truth and with my gun I shall repulse him”
AZERBAIJAN: “We are ready to be martyred for you, we are ready to shed blood for you”
FRANCE: “May the tyrant’s foul blood water our furrows”
VIETNAM: “The distant rumbling of the guns mingle with our marching song, the path to glory passes over the bodies of our foes”

PITU GULI (1865 – 1903), MEMBER OF THE INTERNAL MACEDONIAN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIATION
By Unknown author – Self-scanned, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1402756

SOME INTRIGUING LYRICS

Some of the anthems make astronomical references:

“O God of our land . . . From the solar systems of the heavens bind for you a wreath . . . Iceland’s thousand years / One small flower of eternity with a quivering tear / That prays to its God and dies.”
“Beneath our radiant Southern Cross we’ll toil with hearts and hands” – AUSTRALIA
“As in your beautiful sky, smiling and limpid, the image of the Southern Cross shines resplendent” – BRAZIL
“Keep watch with the angels, the stars and the moon” – BELIZE

The sun is also mentioned quite frequently, for example in the anthems of Afghanistan, Iran, Bhutan and Congo.

THE SOUTHERN CROSS SEEN FROM NEW ZEALAND
By Antonio Ferretti – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78025555

Some anthems talk about their nation’s natural beauty:

“In the full-blossomed paddy fields” – BANGLADESH
“Beloved Benin, your sunny mountains, palm trees, and green pastures” – BENIN
“Your smiling lovely fields have more flowers than the most attractive land elsewhere” – BRAZIL
“where pines and maples grow, great prairies spread, and lordly rivers flow” – CANADA
“O gem of God’s earth, O island so strong and so fair” – THE ISLE OF MAN

Animal imagery can also be found. The eagle is often seen as a symbol of America but note this line from the anthem of KAZAKHSTAN: “Fly high the eagle of freedom”. Other references include mentions of lions (IRAQ, LEBANON, SENEGAL and AFGHANISTAN), doves and birds of prey (QATAR) and a dragon (BHUTAN).

There are some references to mountains and bodies of water such as the Baltic and Caribbean seas. The most common geographical entities referenced, however, are rivers, for example: The mighty Niger River (NIGER), the Moselle and Alzette Rivers (LUXEMBOURG), the Blue Danube (BULGARIA), the Rhine (LIECHTENSTEIN), the Vistula and Warta Rivers (POLAND), the Sava and the Drina (BOSNIA HEREGOVINA), the Zambezi and the Limpopo (ZIMBABWE) and the Nile (EGYPT).

VICTORIA FALLS ON THE ZAMBEZI RIVER
By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73750665

PRAISE FOR POWER. For example:

“Heaven protects our King, and gives him happiness and glory” – KAMPUCHEA
“Long live our Majesty the Sultan” – BRUNEI DARUSSALAM
“God save our gracious Queen” – UNITED KINGDOM
“Shri Pansh Maharajadhiraja, our glorious ruler, may he live for many years to come” – NEPAL
“Bless our Government” – KIRIBATI
“its Prince equally fencing us all fairly with warm love” – KUWAIT
“Qaboos has come with the blessings of Heaven” – OMAN. Qaboos bin Said Al Said became the Sultan of Oman in 1970. He died in 2020.

THE COMPLICATED GENDER ISSUES:

Many of these anthems were written many years ago when gender stereotyping was more prevalent than it is today. Given how important anthems are, there would be great resistance to the altering of long-established much-revered lyrics so that they were more gender balanced. But it can be done. Until quite recently the Canadian national anthem contained these lines: “True patriot love in all thy sons command.” That line was changed to “True patriot love in all of us command” legally and officially, and the change was accepted by the populace without any fuss or bother.

There is a lot of talk in anthems of Fatherlands and Brotherhood, and the words ‘man’ or ‘men’, ‘sons’ and lads’ are used to refer to both men and women. The final line of the anthem of the Ivory Coast reads: “The Fatherland of true brotherhood”. But there is also quite a lot of talk of Motherland, and in many cases talk of treasuring and protecting the nation personified as a mother figure (“My Bengal of gold, I love you . . . O mother mine, the fragrance of your mango groves makes me wail with joy” – BANGLADESH), and in some cases a maiden figure (e.g. “Like an Indian maiden” – Honduras). You also get lines like this: “And noble women, comely girls, and men and lads of mettle dwell in the Danish isles.” The women are noble, but the girls are simply good-looking. The boys, however, are lads of mettle like the men apparently.

The chorus of the El Salvador anthem reads: “Lets us salute the Motherland / Proud to be called her children / To her well-being let us swear / Boldly and unceasingly to devote our lives” which is all well and good. The anthem is one long motherhood metaphor. It talks about “saving the Motherland’s honour” but it is apparently the men who must fight to do this (“In every man there is an immortal hero”) as there is no mention of women warriors. In the Norwegian national anthem we also have “While fathers fought and mothers cried”. On the other hand you also get anthem lyrics like this: “One purpose and one goal, men and women serving selflessly in building Malawi”.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote the music for Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809) wrote the music for the German national anthem. The Bengali polymath Rabinranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) not only wrote the words and music for the national anthem of Bangladesh but he did the same for India. The words of the national anthem of Taiwan are based on a speech by the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-Sen (1866 – 1925). Many books and articles have been written about these people. Very little has been written about these nine women (out of 358, i.e. 2.51%) who contributed to the national anthems of the nations of the world:

1. ALDA NEVES DA GRACA DO ESPIRITO SANTO (1926 – 2010)

Born in Sao Tome e Principe, a former territory off the west coast of Africa, she was educated in Portugal and returned to Sao Tome to work as a teacher where she was active in nationalist circles. In 1965 she was imprisoned by Portuguese authorities for her work in the African liberation movement. When Sao Tome and Principe became independent she held several high government offices. She wrote the words to the national anthem of Sao Tome and Principe.

2. PHYLLIS JOYCE MCCLEAN PUNNETT (1917 – 2004)

Author of the words to the national anthem of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

3. VIRGINIA JULIE HOWE (1927 – )

She wrote the words to the national anthem of The Gambia.

4. PAULA VON PRERADOVIC (1887 – 1951)

Austrian writer and poet, she wrote the words to the national anthem of Austria in 1947. She was the grand-daughter of the poet, writer and military general Petar Preradovic.

5. MATILA BALEKANA (1932 – )

She co-wrote the words of the national anthem of the Solomon Islands with her husband Panapasa Balekana, who also wrote the music. Matila was born in Fiji but spent most of her adult life in the Solomon Islands. The national anthem was composed as part of a government competition.

6. ANNA BENDER, ELIZE BOTHA (1922 – 1997), FATIMA MEER (1928 – 2010) and JEANNE ZAIDEL-RUDOLPH (1948 – ). The anthem of South Africa includes excerpts from Nkosi Sikilel iAfrika by a man, and Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, by two men. The rest of the anthem was composed by a group of twelve people. Four of them were female.

UNOFFICIAL ANTHEMS. Not all anthems are official or national:

The Internationale, the anthem of the Socialist International, is sung here with great enthusiasm by a Chinese children’s choir:

Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union, is performed here by The Sydney Symphony Orchestra:

Germany – Deutschland Uber Alles in a short performance by the Berlin Guard, 1927. This is no longer the national anthem:

A chilling Nazi inspired song from the film ‘Cabaret’ – Tomorrow Belongs to Me:

Here is a sobering thought. The lyrics of the Rwandan national anthem include the following: “Democracy has triumphed in our land / All of us together we have striven for it arduously / Together we have decreed it – Tutsi, Twa, Hutu, with other racial elements.” Between April 7 and July 15, 1994 between 500 000 and 800 000 members of the Tutsi minority, and some moderate members of the Hutu and Twa populations, were slaughtered by armed militias. The total death toll estimates are as high as 1 100 000 people.

Though most anthems are fairly standard and somewhat predictable, some contain lines that are wonderfully eloquent, for example:

“Death is everywhere the same, Man is born just once to die” – ARMENIA
“Iceland’s thousand years, one small flower of eternity with a quivering tear that prays to its God and dies” – ICELAND
“For a long time the Peruvian, oppressed, dragged the ominous chain . . . He shook off the indolence of the slave, he raised his humiliated head” – PERU
“the saga of past ages that sends dreams, sends dreams to our earth” – NORWAY

Some anthems are militaristic, some are confrontational, some are nationalistic in the extreme. There are also some that are decidedly progressive and civilized, for example:

“A homeland of glorious determination and tolerance” – IRAQ
“Eternal hearth of agreed democracy” – BURKINA FASO
“Breaking poverty and tyranny” – CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
“All for Each and Each for All” – DOMINICA
“Teach us true respect for all . . Strengthen us the weak to cherish” – JAMAICA
“Diversity of our cultures, our differences, will enrich us” – MICRONESIA
“The Bantu is our brother, the Arab and the White Man too” – SENEGAL

A final, rather unorthodox anthem, recorded on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. This is an obvious over-reaction for effect but given how the Queen has protected Prince Andrew lately and attacked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in that quiet way she has, I have no sympathy for Queen Elizabeth. Here are The Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen:

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – Posts posted, planned or being prepared as we speak:

STAND TO ATTENTION, OR ELSE – Anthems, National and Unofficial. From Black Power to one small flower of eternity, from Oceania ‘Tis of Thee to Lift Every Voice and Sing.
WHY? – Twenty-five purposes and functions of music. From Pressed Rat and Warthog to Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-five, from propaganda to religion, labour relations to storytelling.
LISTEN UP – Things to listen for when you listen to a piece of music. From Kashmir to Vine Street, St. James Infirmary to Scarborough Fair.
The Bright Side of Life – Silly and Satirical Songs
The Complexities of War
Music reminding us of Real Events
Music Celebrating Real People
Celluloid Music
Music Left and Right
Miscellaneous Matters – Third Stream, Contrapuntal and Other Things
Dance to the Music
Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
Music Religious and Secular
Session Musicians and Supergroups – the Forgotten and the Famous
Rhythm Part One
Rhythm Part Two
The Great Depression
Musical Families and the people left out
The British Invasion
Girl Groups
The Evolution of Music
Crossroads and Crossbones (Musical Deaths)
Economic Inequities
The Beatles – Good, Bad and Wrong
Music About Music
Musical Instruments

MOEBIUS TALES Part 2 of 2 – Likely Story 21

BRAZILIAN STAMP 1967
By Post of Brazil – https://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/263101-Mobius_Symbol-Sixth_Brazilian_Mathematical_Congress_Rio_de_Janeiro-Brazil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98468319

A Moebius band has only one side and one edge and it is the main feature of several rather bizarre short stories. It was discovered and first analysed by the German mathematician and astronomer August Moebius (1790 to 1868). It is an object full of surprises. If you cut one down the middle you would expect to get two more Moebius bands each half as wide as the original. You get something quite different than that, however. Cutting a third of the way across also gives a surprising result. You can also nest one strip inside the other, and even run a ruler all the way around between the two bands to demonstrate that they are separate, but when you attempt to separate them the result is again unexpected. It is instructive to talk about such entities because it shows us that Mathematics is not about numbers but about ideas, about shapes and surfaces, about relationships between numbers, but not about numbers or number-crunching alone.

This is the second of two posts on Moebius bands. Here is the first: https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/25/moebius-tales-part-1-of-2-likely-story-20/

I first became aware of Moebius strips when I read the story under discussion here, A Subway Named Moebius, as well as another story featuring Moebius strips called The No-Sided Professor. These two tales were in an anthology called Fantasia Mathematica which contains other strange stories about strange mathematical ideas, and which spurred an interest in mathematical fiction which remains as strong as ever all these years later. One can often communicate wonderfully complex ideas as effectively in fiction as in non-fiction.

A SUBWAY NAMED MOEBIUS by A.J. Deutsch published in 1950

What do you do when a subway car, and all of its passengers, vanishes into thin air? The Boston subway system has over two hundred twenty-seven trains and one and a half million passengers on any particular day, we are told. One fine March day the new Boylston Shuttle is added which ties together seven principal lines on four different levels. As soon as this is done subway car 86, with approximately three hundred and fifty passengers, goes missing.

This is the twenty-first in a series of posts about works of fiction which I have enjoyed and which focus on or include some fascinating aspect of mathematical interest. Everything from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes short story ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’ (1893) to the miniseries ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (2020) will make an appearance. I will discuss each particular work, and reference some related works, and expand on the mathematical principles in question.

THE BOSTON SUBWAY SYSTEM
By Michael Kvrivishvili – Flickr: Boston Rapid Transit Map, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28660767

The General Manager of the Boston subway system, Kelvin Whyte, is beside himself and investigates thoroughly but the missing car remains missing. Professor Roger Tupelo, a Harvard mathematician, contacts Whyte and explains to him what might have happened. Using a Moebius band (which has one singularity) and a model of a Klein bottle (which has two singularities) he points out that adding the Boylston shuttle to the complex subway network gave the system an infinite number of singularities. The system now possesses infinite connectivity. When Whyte, somewhat confused, presses Tupelo for more information Tupelo says that he is an algebraist and what Whyte needs is a topologist. Fortunately one of the world’s great topologists. Merritt Turnbull, lives in Boston. Unfortunately Turnbull was on car 86 when it disappeared. When Whyte says they can’t find the car, Tupelo says that the car is still on the system but the train has no real ‘where’ in fact “the whole system is without ‘whereness’. It’s double-valued, or worse.”

This is what a Moebius strip looks like:

A MOEBIUS STRIP
By David Benbennick – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50359

The next day Whyte reports to Professor Tupelo that car 86 has been detected – sort of. All other trains had been taken out of the system but car 86 was heard, though not seen, passing through Copley Junction. There are two other incidents in which car 86 makes its presence felt but no one is ever able to catch a glimpse of it, or catch it. It turns out that several times people heard the car at great distances apart but almost simultaneously. Tupelo has figured out that car 86 can in fact be in more than one place at once. It’s also true that car 86 is on the system without really being on the system, and also no one knows what state the passengers on car 86 might be in. Finally they decide to close off the Boylston shuttle and resume service so that no other subway cars will disappear. There is no chance of a collision with car 86 but as far as they can tell the passengers of car 86 can never be retrieved.

Professor Tupelo advises against this, however. He points out that car 86 right now is occupying a non-spatial part of the network but at any point it could move into the spatial part of the network and return safely, but such a transition will be impossible if the Boylston shuttle is closed off so he advises them to leave it open. When and where the transition occurs is unpredictable but there is a fifty percent probability that when it does return to the spatial part of the network it will be running on the wrong track making a collision inevitable. The car could reappear anywhere on the system, not just on the Boylston shuttle because the entire network is infinitely connected. The car might also not reappear for years at which point the occupants would probably not be in very good shape. At least, Tupelo suspects, that if you start running the system normally again, and leave the Boylston shuttle open, there seems to be an Exclusion Principle at work so that no other cars will disappear. Only one car can occupy the non-spatial section of the network at a time it seems.

In the days that followed several renowned topologists from other cities were brought in. They all disagreed about the situation amongst themselves. One wonders whether the author was making a wry comment about mathematicians. The media speculated wildly, lawsuits were brought against the system by relatives of those lost on car 86, there were recriminations in the halls of Congress. An investigation was carried out and nothing resulted from it. What a surprise. A month passed and the story receded in the public’s awareness and the people lost on car 86 were forgotten and rarely missed.

The system returned to normal and Tupelo began taking the subway to work himself. Tense at first, but after some weeks it became a simple matter of course. Then one morning in late Spring he noticed that all the people in his car were doing ordinary things, but some of them had current newspapers while others had newspapers ten weeks old. This was car 86 and some of the passengers, completely unaffected by and unaware of the passage of time, had already got off and new passengers got on. Car 86 had returned and the passengers were safe. Tupelo stops the car, gets hold of Whyte and other authorities and they start to sort things out. As soon as Tupelo gets hold of Whyte the first thing he does is tell Whyte to close off the Boylston shuttle immediately. Whyte tells him it’s too late. Car 143 is missing. End of story.

THE KONIGSBURG BRIDGES PUZZLE
By Merian-Erben – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Koenigsberg,_Map_by_Bering_1613.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79412532

What is the point of all this? Is it just having fun? Some of it is a bit silly since a finite set of subway tracks no matter how tangled could never have infinite connectivity, and the idea of a non-spatial section of a network is possible theoretically but not when it comes to actual subway tracks and subway cars. Is it making the point that esoteric mathematical phenomena can have a major effect on people’s lives? Perhaps. More than two centuries ago Euler tackled a puzzle pondered by the citizens of the town of Konigsberg as they crossed the seven bridges in the centre of town on lazy summer evenings. His solution laid down the foundations of network theory without which personal computers, cell phones and international cybernetworks would be impossible. Without Euler you wouldn’t be reading this post about Euler. One thing we might learn from this story is that just when you think that things have gotten better (car 86 has returned with the passengers unscathed) something awful is sure to follow (car 143 has disappeared). As Gilda Radner used to say, “it’s always something”. When something bad follows something good in real life my wife will often turn to me and remark that’s it’s a subway named Moebius again and bystanders will simply look at us as if we were crazy.

By the way, the title of the story is making fun of the name of a very famous play by Tennessee Williams, a play that was made into a successful film of the same name which launched the career of someone who many experts have decided is the greatest actor ever produced by the United States. The actor was Marlon Brando and the play / film was called A Streetcar Named Desire.

A TWENTY-FOUR YEAR OLD MARLON BRANDO ON THE SET OF THE BROADWAY PRODUCTION OF ‘A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE” – 1948
By The original uploader was Tomruen at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Jalo using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4694970

A MOEBIUS BAND MISCELLANY

STAMPS FEATURING MOEBIUS BANDS

BRAZILIAN STAMP 1973
By Post of Brazil – https://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/263896-Sciences-Promotion_of_Science-Brazil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98469298

Brazil released a stamp which commemorates the sixth Brazilian Mathematics Congress in Rio de Janeiro in 1967.
Brazil released a second stamp featuring a Moebius band, in 1973.
The Netherlands issued a stamp featuring a large Moebius strip in Benelux colours in 1969 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the signing of the Customs Union between The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Belgium issued a stamp featuring a large Moebius strip in Benelux colours in 1969 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the signing of the Customs Union between Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Luxembourg issued a stamp featuring a large Moebius strip in Benelux colours in 1969 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the signing of the Customs Union between Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands.

WORKS OF FICTION

1. In Martin Gardner’s story The No-Sided Professor a leading topologist named Slapenarski gives a presentation at the obscure but exclusive MOEBIUS CLUB in which he demonstrates that he has figured out how to fold a sheet of paper so that not only can you form a one-sided surface with it but you can form a no-sided surface with it and it promptly disappears. When another topologist, Simpson, calls it a trick and a hoax, Slaparneski knocks him out, fold him the way he folded the paper, and Simpson disappears. Slapenarski calms down, realizes what he has done, and, with the help of the narrator, Gardner, ties himself up in the same way and disappears, hoping somehow to return with Simpson. The last step in the folding process involves one’s left hand grasping one’s nose. Both professors return safely, though unclothed, and at the end of the story Slapenarski comments to Gardner that it was fortunate that when Simpson was untangling himself he released his right hand before his left hand, otherwise he would have returned inside out.

2. In Arthur C. Clarke’s The Wall of Darkness we hear of a universe in which there is only one star, and one planet, named Trilome. On Trilome is a wall that surrounds the entire inhabited region of the planet, a wall that extends out of sight upward. Various theories abound regarding what lies behind the wall. Finally a rich man finds a way to scale the wall and he discovers that Trilome is not a sphere but a gigantic Moebius band and by going over the wall they simply arrive back in their own world again but from the other side from where they started.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE
By ITU Pictures – https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/16636142906, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64344486

3. In Amy Cameron’s story The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods he main character, an eleven year old girl who is very good at Mathematics, is given a Moebius band and she immediately appreciates its complexity. Throughout the rest of the story Amanda realizes that a Moebius band, in which “the outside turns into the inside and the inside turns into the outside”, is a great metaphor for life, a concept that helps her to mature sanely and manage opposing demands.

4. In The Lobotomy Club by Clifford Pickover a neurological surgeon discovers a certain configuration of neurons in the shape of a Moebius band (Cerebral Moebius Strip) found only in individuals who report experiencing ecstatic visions then convulse and die a few days later. The neurosurgeon hypothesizes that our everyday experience of reality is an illusion and that the CMS enables them to tap into a higher and truer reality.

5. In Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny the main character comes across an alien device called a Rhennius Machine which is constructed, in part, of a Moebius strip almost a metre wide.

6. Ian Stewart wrote a sequel to a famous work of mathematical fiction called Flatland. His story is entitled Flatterland: Like Flatland Only More So. In that book he describes a creature named Moobius whose sold people bottles of his milk packaged in Klein bottles. This particular beast is two dimensional so it has a flat tail that stretches out the length its body and connects to its nose but on the way from tail to nose it has a half twist making it into a sort of Moebius tail.

FILMS AND TELEVISION

Moebius bands are the main topic in the 1996 feature film Moebius directed by Gustavo Mosquera.
A Moebius band is also referenced as an explanation for why the Enterprise has become trapped in an endless time loop in the episode Time Squared in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

You may not have noticed but the ubiquitous Universal Recycling Symbol is a Moebius band:

RECYCLING SYMBOL
By Krdan – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1566238

ESCHER ARTWORK

The celebrated Dutch artist whose mathematical works have a large international following, has done three works which feature Moebius strips. To take a look at them I recommend that you visit the official M.C. Escher website here https://mcescher.com/

Once there scroll down to where it says Visit our Online Gallery / Enter the Gallery. The first work, entitled Moebius Strip II, features six giant ants traversing a Moebius strip, under MEDIUM / WOODCUT (near the bottom). The second work, entitled Horseman, features interlocking images of a horseman in red and grey meeting in the centre of a Moebius strip, under MEDIUM / WOODCUT (about four fifths of the way down). The third work is called Moebius Strip I but I can’t find it on this website. However if you go to WikiArt ( https://www.wikiart.org/en/m-c-escher/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry ) and you go tl VIEW ALL 470 ARTWORKS you’ll find that Moebius Strip I is number 436.

Escher’s three works (Horseman, Moebius Strip I, and Moebius Strip II) can also be found in the following books:

M.C. ESCHER GRAFIEK EN TEKENINGEN, Koninklijke Erven, 1968: Horseman (print 9), Moebius Strip I (print 41) and Moebius Strip II (print 40)
M.C. ESCHER: HIS LIFE AND COMPLETE GRAPHIC WORK, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1982: Horseman (print 342 on page 290, also page 150), Moebius Strip I (print 437 on page 322, also page 116) and Moebius Strip II (print 441 on page 324).
M.C. ESCHER: VISIONS OF SYMMETRY (Notebooks, Periodic Drawings and Related Work of M.C. Escher) by Doris Schattschneider, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1990: On page 242 we see a series of concept sketches as well as the final version of Horseman alongside two pages of discussion concerning the creation of the work.
M.C. ESCHER’S LEGACY: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, edited by Doris Schattschneider and Michele Emmer, a collection of articles coming from the M.C. Escher Centennial Conference, Rome 1998: Moebius Strip II (page 75)
GODEL, ESCHER, BACH: AN ETERNAL GOLDEN BRAID by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Vintage Books, 1980: Moebius Strip I (page 276) and Moebius Strip II (page 30)
IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS, Taschen Books, 2002, this is a collection of four previously published books. Three of the books are by Bruno Ernst, and the fourth is called M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work which is an English translation of Grafiek en Tekeningen (see the first book on this list): Moebius Strip I (page 99 of The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher and print 44 on page 61 of M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work), Moebius Strip II (page 23 of The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher and print 40 on page 57 of M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work) and Horseman (print 9 on page 25 of M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work)

REFERENCES TO MOEBIUS BANDS

By far the most comprehensive and imaginative book I’ve seen about Moebius strips is simply called THE MOEBIUS STRIP by Clifford Pickover, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006. Also, in Pickover’s 2009 work The Math Book one of the illustrated entries is on the Moebius band and there are four other references to Moebius bands throughout the book.
A SUBWAY NAMED MOEBIUS by A.J. Deutsch, A.BOTTS AND THE MOEBIUS STRIP by William Hazlett Upson, and THE NO-SIDED PROFESSOR by Martin Gardner can all be found in Clifton Fadiman’s seminal anthology Fantasia Mathematica.
STAR, BRIGHT by Mark Clifton and PAUL BUNYAN VERSUS THE CONVEYOR BELT by William Hazlett Upson can both be found in The Mathematical Magpie, CliftonFadiman’s sequel to ‘Fantasia Mathematica’.
Martin Gardner talks about the Moebius band in his first collection of columns from his famous Mathematical Games column in Scientific American magazine. The collection is called Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions, Chapter 7 (Curious Topological Models). There are five references to Moebius and Moebius bands in Gardner’s The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems and ten references in his The Colossal Book of Mathematics.
There are five references to Moebius and Moebius bands in Mathematics and the Imagination, six in Peter Bentley’s The Book of Numbers, five in Eli Maor’s To Infinity and Beyond and one reference covering several pages in One, Two,Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow.
In the Life Science Library book on Mathematics there are four large pages on the Moebius band and Klein bottles. There is an illustration describing the difficulties of painting part of one, an illustration of the unexpected result when you cut one down the middle, or cut one starting a third of the way in. We also see how you can partition a Moebius band into six regions so that you need six different colours to colour it so no two neighbouring regions have the same colour (on a flat sheet you only need four though on a torus you need seven).
What many don’t realize that Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, was the pseudonym of Charles Dodgson who was a professor of Mathematics at Oxford and a pioneer in the field of Symbolic Logic. His analysis of determinants is still used today. In one of his lesser known works, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, published in 1893, he describes how to construct a purse that is the equivalent of a Klein bottle and we also find the following text in Chapter Seven:

“You have seen the puzzle of the Ring?” Mein Herr said, addressing the Earl. “Where you take a slip of paper, and join its ends together, first twisting one, so as to join the upper corner of one end to the lower corner of the other?”

“I saw one made, only yesterday,” the Earl replied. “Muriel, my child, were you not making one, to amuse those children you had to tea?”

“Yes, I know that Puzzle,” said Lady Muriel. “The Ring has only one surface and only one edge. It’s very mysterious!”

FRONTISPIECE OF SYLVIE AND BRUNO BY LEWIS CARROLL
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2238459

LIKELY STORIES already posted, ready or in the planning stage:

1. NORTH OF THE NORTH POLE – FLATLAND by Edwin A. Abbott (and other trans-dimensional stories from 1884 to 2017) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/north-of-the-north-pole-likely-story-1/

2. QUEEN VICTORIOUS – THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT – the 2020 Netflix miniseries (and other chess-related stories from 1624 to 2020) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/queen-victorious-likely-story-2/

3. ONCE UPON A TIME – THE TIME MACHINE by H.G.Wells (and other time travel stories from 1838 to 2018) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/once-upon-a-time-likely-story-3/

4. THE DYNAMICS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES – THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an original Sherlock Holmes story https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/the-dynamics-of-sherlock-holmes-likely-story-4/

5. LOOKING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS by Lewis Carroll (with its existential nihilism, death jokes, and its foreshadowing of quantum physics) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/looking-through-the-looking-glass-likely-story-5/

6. DANCE OF THE DEAD – THE PRISONER – the 1968 television enigma created by Patrick McGoohan https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/dance-of-the-dead-likely-story-6/

7. I FOUGHT THE LAW – INFLEXIBLE LOGIC by Russell Maloney, about monkeys typing (and other probability stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/28/i-fought-the-law-likely-story-7/

8. ALL YOU ZOMBIES by Robert Heinlein (a sixty-three year old trans story) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/all-you-zombies-likely-story-8/

9. UNSAFE HOUSE – – AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE by Robert Heinlein, and THE CAPTURED CROSS-SECTION by Miles J. Breuer (and other stories about the fourth dimension from 1887 to 1997) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/12/unsafe-house-likely-story-9/

10. ONSCREEN MATH – GOOD WILL HUNTING – the 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams about an unusual Math genius (and other Math movies) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/19/onscreen-math-good-will-hunting-likely-story-10/

11. NOTHING TO SEE HERE – THE LAST MAGICIAN by Bruce Elliott (and other science fiction stories that are extreme, controversial and dangerous) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/nothing-to-see-here-likely-story-11/

12. CHILD’S PLAY – THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster with its dozens of puns (and other mathematical children’s stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/childs-play-likely-story-12/

13. THE MATHEMATICAL IDEOLOGY OF DEATH (including ALL THE KING’S MEN by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and other stories about chess, political science and ethical philosophy) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/09/the-mathematical-ideology-of-death-likely-story-13/

14. DOWN UNDER – ALICE IN WONDERLAND and its many manifestations ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/down-under-alice-in-wonderland-likely-story-14/

15. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HUMAN RACE: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HUMAN RACE – 1984 – Likely Story 15

16. GUIDE TO THE GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – Douglas Adams’ five part trilogy starting with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/guide-to-the-guide-to-the-galaxy-douglas-adams-likely-story-16/

17. THEY CANNOT TOLERATE OUR MINDS – THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS – A slow and ghastly invasion tale ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/04/they-cannot-tolerate-our-minds-the-midwich-cuckoos-likely-story-17/ )

18. THE JABBERWOCK’S SECRET – an extraordinary story about extraordinary children ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/the-jabberwocks-secret-on-beyond-euclid-likely-story-18/ )

19. IT’S A VERY GOOD STORY– a monstrous story about a monstrous child, a post about mind control, propaganda and education ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/its-a-very-good-story-mind-control-propaganda-and-education-likely-story-19/ )

20. MOEBIUS TALES PART 1– A set of stories that feature the mathematically famous Moebius Band which has only one side and one edge ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/25/moebius-tales-part-1-of-2-likely-story-20/ )

21. MOEBIUS TALES PART 2 – A set of stories that feature the mathematically famous Moebius Band which has only one side and one edge.

22. COUNTDOWN PART 1 – More likely stories, with mathematical elements, told in the form of songs, from Beethoven and the Eagles to Radiohead and Queen.

23. COUNTDOWN PART 2 – More likely stories, with mathematical elements, told in the form of songs, from Beethoven and the Eagles to Radiohead and Queen.

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

A series of posts on the politics and culture, the history and structure of music. For example:

THE POLITICS OF ANTHEMS – from the Mexican Olympics’ Black Power salute to taking a knee.

MUSICAL FAMILIES – from the Jacksons to Oasis, and the offspring of Bach and The Beatles, and why sons take up the mantle but daughters rarely do.

THIRD STREAM MUSIC – from Gershwin to Jon Lord of Deep Purple.

MUSIC – RELIGIOUS AND ATHEISTIC – from Madonna to Randy Newman, Buddhist chants and Gospel energy.

And twenty-three other topics. So far.

These will cover new ground not covered in my earlier series of posts on POLITICAL MUSIC.

The best site I’ve come across that deals with literary Mathematics in general is this one, a database with over a thousand entries and a lot of good information with works from as recently as 2020:

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/ I have not read every entry on the “works inspired by” lists so some may be mathematically interesting but of mediocre literary quality. If you’re thinking of trying any of the stories mentioned in any of these posts you might first check out the story’s entry on this site to get more details, and opinions, about the story. Other good sources of information:

1. Math Goes to the Movies by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross, 2012, is particularly comprehensive and detailed, with many photos and diagrams. For an even more comprehensive source of information on more than 800 films, take a look at the website the authors of this book have put together: https://www.qedcat.com/moviemath/index.html#3

2. Mathematics in Popular Culture edited by Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar.

3. The modern interest in mathematical literature started, most would agree, with a seminal work from 1958 which many still speak about with reverence. The book is called Fantasia Mathematica, with works by Plato, H.G.Wells, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Lewis Carroll amongst others.

4. The 1962 sequel to Fantasia Mathematica was called The Mathematical Magpie, containing writing by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Mark Twain, Stephen Leacock, Bertrand Russell, Lewis Carroll, Norton Juster and William Wordsworth, amongst others.

5. Imaginary Numbers is an anthology of mathematical stories, diversions, poems and musings edited by William Frucht, 1999. This contains works by Lewis Carroll, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Connie Willis, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman and Yevgeny Zamyatin, amongst others.

6. Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder, edited by Rudy Rucker, 1987. This contains works by Greg Bear, Ian Watson, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Martin Gardner and Robert Sheckley, amongst others