A beautiful and insightful TED talk by Hrishikesh Hirway, creator of Song Exploder, a podcast about the creative process of songwriting. He talks about how important it is to be fully engaged when listening to a song, and compares it to listening to people, giving them full attention and effort. He also plays one of his songs and goes into the construction of it. Great stuff!

Twerk the world around
October 01, 2021

Lizzo on TED: Twerking is good for humanity

An amusing and amazing TED talk by Lizzo who goes into twerking as a pop-cultural phenomenon. She traces booty shaking to a traditional West African dance and tells how Black women across generations kept the rhythm alive, from blues and jazz singers to modern rap and hip-hop performers. With her characteristic energy, she shares how twerking empowered her to love her own body — and explains why understanding its origins helps protect Black culture from erasure and misappropriation.

Technology lawyer and musician Damien Riehl and his associate, programmer Noah Rubin have copyrighted all of the possible unique melodies, billions of them, in an attempt to prevent musicians from being sued on grounds of copyright infringement. They saved all the melodies on a hard-drive and placed them in public domain. Riehl made an amazing TED talk about it.