Music Hat

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Hey, I'm Lulu Miller. So Radiolab, you know, we're a science show. Tell sciency stories, or stories that don't seem sciency at first, but then have a scientific question at their heart. But there's another element at the core of Radiolab, which is music. The creator of this whole operation and original host Jad Abumrad was a musician before he was a journalist. And he took music and brought it into the DNA of the show. And that's still how we do it today. So this week, we're going to listen back to two pieces that Jad made about musicians, musicians he loves and uses on the show. These are both stories he made years ago. And what I really love about them is that they start deep in the music, purely about the music.

But then each one unfurls into something more philosophical about our relationships with technology, our relationships to ourselves. So here they are in an episode we are calling Music Hat. Hope you enjoy.

Yeah, wait, you're listening. All right.

Okay.

All right.

You're listening to Radiolab.

Radiolab.

From?

WNYC.

Rewind.

Okay, so I'm going to put on my music hat for a couple of minutes.

Okay.

And then in two weeks, we can put our other hats back on, whatever they're called.

Science, humanism, whatever.

Philosophy, whatever. Look, we are many people.

We are many people.

I am a musician as well as a storyteller. You are a Broadway show tune singer as well as a radio rock on tour.

I would like to have been a Broadway show. No one has ever invited me to do that.

Well, I'm going to invite you at least to listen to my version of that for just a few minutes. I'm going to tell you about a band that I just discovered. This may be the coolest thing I've heard in years. Actually, you know this band. I mean, maybe you don't know that you know them, but we've used them in a few shows. Remember the piece we did in the Bliss show about the perfect snowflake?

Yes.

We used them there.

Oh.

Remember the story about the artist who weaponized his own blood?

Yes, Spartan Benish.

We used them there, too.

So in a subtle way, I have already been exposed to them.

That's what I'm saying, although I am quite certain you will hate their music. I could be wrong about that.

Well, I will be as generous as I know possibly how to be.

The band is called Dawn of MIDI.

Dawn of what?

Of MIDI.

M I D I?

Mm-hmm. Do you know what MIDI is?

No.

It's sort of like a computer language for music. Like, in my studio at home, I have a bunch of synthesizers and various things. They all talk to each other using MIDI.

Oh, the dawn of MIDI.

Dawn of MIDI.

It's one of those half and halves. Like, dawn suggests something pleasant, beautiful, and sort of movie-like. MIDI, technological, card, cold.

Yeah, that's actually not a bad place to start. Okay, so the band is three guys. Akash is Ronnie, he plays the bass. Amino Belliani plays the piano. Akasham Nakvi plays the drums. They met in college at Cal Arts. Initially, though, their partnership was not about music, it was about tennis. Began on the tennis courts.

On the tennis court.

Yeah, it was funny, actually, because we would play, like, late at night.

That's Akash, the bass player?

Akasham had, like, stolen the key and kept it or something. And one night, we were there at, like, 3:00 AM, and I think we were really drunk. And security showed up, and he saw us.

They were pounding the ball back and forth, yelling.

And when he saw the intensity with which we were involved in this match, he was like, you know, you guys should continue, like, carry on. And he, and he left.

And that intensity sort of translated into the music that they started to play. Maybe not the competitive part, but they would take it really seriously. Like, what they would do is they'd get together.

We'd go into these classrooms that had no windows and turn out all the lights.

And they would play these long, crazy sets.

In pitch-black darkness.

That was completely, totally improvised. Like, before they started, they would have no idea what key they were gonna play in.

No.

No idea of what tempo.

No.

Or how long they were gonna go.

No.

Would you at least figure out who was gonna play first?

No.

You mean, they'd just start cold?

Cold. But it would end up sort of like that 3:00 AM tennis match. Really intense, rolling, rollicking improvisations, kind of atonal.

Atonal, oh, boy.

I mean, I know, I know. I was just trying not to use that word.

Okay.

It's really, I like it, it's really interesting stuff. And like I said, we use it in the snowflake story. But that's, but that... Style of music is not actually what I'm going to present to you now.

OK.

It's what they do next that I find totally fascinating. To set that up, as they're out on tour, doing this free improvisational thing,

they were also listening to different kinds of music, like they were listening to electronic music as well, stuff like Aphex Twin. Also, one of them gets really deep into trance music, not techno-trance, but...

A lot of music from Africa.

West African music, as well as music from Morocco.

And these are musical traditions that have a totally different approach to rhythm, which we can talk about in a second. But they're listening to all this stuff, and it begins to somehow seep in. They begin to gradually put a little bit of it into their sets. And to make a long story short, over the course of two years...

It was a very incremental and slow process.

They piece together this style of music that is 180 degrees from what they were just doing, and unlike anything I've ever heard. And the only way I can describe it is it's sort of like ancient folk music filtered through highly obsessive computers that actually aren't computers, but people.

What does that mean?

Here, I'm going to play you some, OK?

OK.

No, not that. Let's put this on. Let's just wait. Let's just mute this. All right. Here it comes.

Now, keep an open mind.

OK.

So this is how it starts, with just a bassline.

Is it going to develop, or are we going to just...

Yeah, no, it is. It is, but just slowly. Just wait, maybe.

Hear that?

Right.

This is the pianist. He's playing it with his left hand on the strings, so he's kind of muting it to create a harmonic.

I know a pod of whales who would go crazy for this.

Just look. OK, you hear the drums are coming. You hear that?

Yes.

I don't know about you. Actually, maybe I do know about you. But for me, right about now, I'm getting into a deep trance.

All right, let's just don't say anything for a minute and let's see what happens.

Yeah.

Listen to that.

They're not playing a machine. They're playing traditional instruments.

No, this is all live. They're playing real instruments.

It's all performed.

It's acoustic. Well, that doesn't sound acoustic.

Yeah, it doesn't.

I am so addicted to this. Just listen some more.

See, it just starts to slowly evolve.

Yeah, a little bit.

Bit by bit. And it just keeps doing that for 45 minutes. I mean, it has, it's broken into tracks, but it's really just one long thing.

I think that in seismic laboratories all over the world, where geologists gather, people who have to listen to impending earthquakes, this is going to be like enormous.

In the Crowe Witch household too, I imagine.

Because it's small, small shifts.

Tiny, tiny shifts.

Come on, you don't find that groovy at all?

Yeah, no, I do. Actually, I do.

So these guys basically went from like free improv, no rules, to becoming like human machines.

It's sort of like wishing to be an element in a very finely made Swiss watch.

Except now remove the watch.

I think that something is going on in the world right now.

That's Akash again?

The last 10 to 15 years, you see in a lot of fields right now, people doing things, quote unquote, in an analog way that 10 years ago would have been assumed were absolutely like impossible without the aid of technology. You see it from big wave surfers who found out they could ride huge waves if they have jet skis to pull them into these waves, to now saying, hey, wait a minute, we can catch these with our arms again. But the jet ski needed to be there to show them that this was even possible.

And you see it with this French beatboxer video online.

He's doing something that just sounds impossible. It's unbelievable. And it's like something that, the kind of stuff that Aphex was programming for his music, but this guy's doing it with his mouth. And it's like the computers showed us a world of possibility and now we're sort of almost realizing that that world was inherent to us, not the machine.

Huh. So you're talking about like a reclaiming?

Yeah, absolutely. And it was like, almost like we didn't know how far the biotech of our minds could go until the machine sort of showed us that, hey, wait a minute, like, this is coming from you guys.

You know what it is? Is if you just let it do what it's doing.

And have no, none of the usual expectations of resolution or...

Or like that usual arc.

It's not gonna tell you a story, it's just gonna keep you company. That's what's happening here.

Yeah, I mean, I think what it's trying to do is to get you into a different state of mind. Like a different state of time.

That, that experience of time that is non-narrative.

Where you're sort of existing in time, not in a sort of regular story way where everything leads to the next thing, beginning, middle, and end. Something else.

What Amino and I often talk about is the idea of quantum states of time.

And I think what he means, what I take it to mean, is something very ancient in a way. Like, you know how I listen, I mentioned that they were listening to West African and Moroccan trance music?

Mm-hmm.

What you have in a lot of that music are these vertical stacks of rhythms, like almost multiple time flows existing simultaneously in the same moment. And if you listen into this music that we're hearing right now, you try and pick out, okay, what's the bass doing? What's the drums doing? What's the piano doing? You will hear that they're actually almost not fitting together, like they're, they're playing different beats. Pulling at each other in some sense. If I listen in and try and pick out all the lines, I, I get lost in the, in the intricacies of their rhythms. If I listen out, I can just nod my head to it for 45 minutes, but if I listen in, I'm like, Jesus, God, what is that bass player doing? I have no idea what beat he's on.

That's cool.

And that's just interesting to me, the way that the patterns on the interior are just kind of mess with your ear, because they all seem to be on their own cycle. Falling in and out of phase, but then when you pull out and just listen to the whole thing together, you're like, oh, yeah, I can nod my head to this. I can nod to this.

So it reminds me, actually, I don't know if you are familiar with Mark Rothko's paintings, those like sort of squares of color that sit one on top of the other sometimes. I have the same, I'll go, there's a Rothko chapel in Houston.

Yeah, one of the most amazing places.

Because he would often take a sponge and then dip it in the color and then very lightly dab.

Like over and over and over.

So it's very, very layered. And when I look closely, I see patterns within patterns within patterns within patterns.

And I get feelings from the patterns.

Yeah.

And I find myself sort of telling stories about the feelings that I'm having. Then I'll pull myself out and I'll see three rather richly tonal blocks of color. Big picture, then little picture again.

Yeah, totally.

And it's the same thing you're describing.

Yeah, I like that phrase, feelings from the patterns. That makes sense to me.

And these patterns, to me, they feel kind of ancient and new at the same time, super mechanical and yet deeply human at the same time. It never quite resolves for me somehow.

You can find out more about Dawn of Midi on their website, dawnofmidi.com. After the break, we have one more exploration of music. Stay with us.

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Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad.

I'm busy listening to this. Who is this? I'm Robert Kralowicz. This is Radio Lab the Podcast.

So this person that you're hearing right now?

Mm-hmm.

Testing, testing. She's one of my favorite, favorite musicians. Can you introduce yourself? My name is, I am, my name's Juana Molina.

I'm Juana Molina, and I am a musician. I hope you enjoy what I do.

Okay, so you know how sometimes on this podcast, instead of the science and the big ideas and the whatever, we present musicians?

Yep.

Well, that's what I want to do for the next 10 or so minutes. Mostly because I think she's amazing, but also because when we used her music in the sperm show, I used it for some of the breaks, this song right here, in fact, we got a flood of email, people asking about it.

I wonder what she thought about being the breaks in the sperm show?

She doesn't know. So this podcast is for the bunch and bunch and bunch of people who wrote in asking about Juana Molina, and also for the rest of you who maybe don't know her yet, but will hear her now, and maybe, I hope, fall in love with her music, as I have.

So let me make space here. Okay, so I spoke with her recently as she was in town to play a gig at this club called Le Poisson Rouge. Le Poisson Rouge, the red fish? Yep, and she told me her backstory. It's kind of interesting. She started out as a musician, taking piano lessons and guitar lessons, trying to be a performer. It wasn't really working out at that point. So she needed a job, and she wasn't really sure what to do, but she knew she was always good at impressions.

Something I could always do, and it was easy for me, just to impersonate characters.

People that you knew or just?

People, like stereotypes, or, I don't know if it's stereotypes or archetypes, both. I mean...

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. And then, one day I was desperate, looking for a job that gave me enough money to play music, and I thought TV was the best option.

You went to TV to help pay for music?

Mm-hmm.

What she did was she went over to the local TV station, somehow convinced them to give her a job reporting fake news, sort of like The Daily Show, and eventually she got her own show called Juana y Sus Hermanas.

Which means Juana and her Sisters. It was sort of a comedy show.

It was just sketches, yes.

How long did that go for?

Three years. At the beginning, it worked very well because I had money and I could pay my rent and my guitar lessons, but then I got big.

She became a huge hit. Was it the kind of situation where you'd walk down the street and be recognized?

Yeah.

Much to her dismay, oddly. Suddenly, she was an actress, not a musician, and, as she puts it, her life kind of got out of hand.

Well, eh...

But then she got pregnant.

I got pregnant and I needed to stay in bed, and so I had time to think about my life and to realize that I had totally missed my goal. It was just that I didn't want to miss it, I didn't want to die by not having done what I wanted to do.

So at the height of her popularity as an actress, she drops out.

Yeah. That's not what I wanted. I just wanted to be a musician.

So she starts playing in these little clubs, just her and her guitar.

How did people respond?

Badly.

Didn't go so well.

It was hell for several years.

She said she had terrible stage fright. You're an actress, wouldn't you be fine to be on stage?

It's not the same. You're acting. It's not you.

I suppose that's true, but I mean, you're used to having...

You don't suppose you know. What I was doing is to impersonate people, and I was making fun of people. It was never myself. And it was horror, because it was, I don't know, I was just very scared.

So what she ended up doing was kind of going solo.

You know, like she tried to play with musicians.

And I didn't like anyone. And they didn't like what I was offering them either.

So essentially, what she does now is she creates entire symphonies of just her. Just her, her guitar, some electronics, and this looping box. She'll play a line, and then it'll loop, and loop, and loop, and then another line, and then it'll loop, and loop, and they'll both be going, and then she'll add a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and somewhere along the way, and this is what I love, as you're listening, you slip into this universe of one.

The thing, by being on your own, is that you can go deeper and deeper and deeper on your, in your own universe, and go further, further away, or deeper, deeper, deeper inside.

Now, do you, when you loop yourself, and you're in the middle of, like, let's say, an avalanche of one of my own songs, or singing and harmonizing, are they the same person?

I usually feel that the sounds tell me what to do with them.

Every sound has its own behavior, at least for me.

I'm just feeling like a driver of obsession.

What's so interesting is it feels like she's taking a bath in herself.

Little by little, my ridiculously small universe, it becomes huge.

Anything that has a note or a rhythm, you can make music with.

Are you inspired more by a thought, like I want to say something?

No, never. There's absolutely nothing that I really want to say.

Really?

Really.

I mean, you have lyrics sometimes.

Most of the times.

So when the song pops into your head and you develop it, you're not thinking of a story, per se?

No, never.

But you put the story on afterwards, why?

In order to be able to sing.

"Un día", the song.

How did that happen?

I was warming up for a show. Then I got bored and I started to play.

And it sounded like "un día", I wasn't saying "un día", but it sounded like.

You didn't even have the words just yet.

No, but then when I was singing,

that just came out. "Un día voy a ser otra distinta", "one day I will be someone different".

So from that sentence, I already had the whole song.

"One day I will be someone different", "I'll do everything I never dared to do before", "I will"

"live in the middle of the country", "and I will dance, dance, dance", "and I'll make it happen".

"One day I will fix the back door", "and one day I will write songs with no lyrics", "so everybody just can imagine whatever they want".

You wanted something crazy? Heard that song? And I got the sense immediately of what it was without knowing the words. Just a sense of like, a chant to your better self. You once called it like the chorus of one, remember that?

Yeah.

The thing you say to yourself when you're feeling really crappy? Well, I had that feeling from this song. So I got on her website, wannamalina.com, and the only fan letter I've ever written in my life was to her. And I emailed her and I was like, "I really love this song. I love your music. And can I remix it?"

And amazingly, her manager wrote me back. "Totally, you can remix it."

Really?

Yeah, he sent me a DVD of all of the different parts of the song. And you can hear there's like a bazillion parts here. So I remixed the song.

Oh my God. Was this guy in Buenos Aires or where was he?

No, it turns out he's just down the street.

He was in New York.

Can we hear your version?

Yeah. How can I do that? I know how I can do it. Okay, hold on one second. I'll go run over and I'll play it for you.

Okay, I've got it right here.

Okay, so here it is. Here's a short excerpt from a remix that her manager was nice enough to let me do of her song, of Wannamalina's song, "Un Dia."

Un día voy a hacer otra distinta, voy a hacer cosas que no hice jamás. No va a importarme lo que otros me digan, ni va a importarme si resultará. Voy a viajar, voy a bailar, bailar, bailar, quiero bailar. Voy a vivir en el medio del campo y a la mañana me voy a levantar. Para ordenar me va a costar, me gustará cuanto será.

Un día voy a hacer otra distinta, voy a hacer cosas que no hice jamás. Un día voy a hacer otra distinta, voy a hacer cosas que no hice jamás.

Okay, I want to thank Paul Daylin and Juana Molina. You can also go to juanamolina.com, check out her music. And I want to thank Michael Rayfield for some of the sounds used in that remix, as well as Stuart Dempsey for some of the music. I'm Jad Abumrad.

And I'm Robert Krilwich.

I'm Lulu Miller. And you know, since we are in a music mode, I just wanted to tell you about a favorite show right here at our home station, WNYC, called New Sounds. They have been on the air for decades. And their small team of John Schaefer and Karen Havlick comb through music released from all over the world to bring you such a delightful and eclectic mix of musical goodies, just like Juana Molina or Dawn of Midi, that kind of stuff. So if you want something on in the background to unwind to, to refresh your repertoire while you cook or run, or I don't know, contemplate some profound mathematical theory, I highly recommend you check them out. Here's a little sample of their vibe. Here's one of their promos.

In a world full of algorithms, we often miss the element of surprise, especially with music.

New Sounds is all about bringing you the music you did

Didn't even know you needed.

If you're in New York, you can listen Old School Live on the radio on 93.9 every weeknight at 11:00 PM, or you can find tons of episodes online at wnyc.org/shows/newsounds. See you next week for a story where music quietly returns to the background. Thanks for listening.

Hi, I'm Victor from Springfield, Missouri, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Habermat and edited by Sol and Reader. Lulu Miller and Laszlo Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bruthner, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sunu Nanansamandan, Matt Kilfi, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Curry, Sarah Sandbeck, Anisa Riza, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rann. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Bujo-Mangini, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, I'm Jerry, and I'm calling from Kapsavara, Kenya. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.