Music & Counterculture
Jazz rule-breakers, Afrobeat rebels, a festival that went free and a punk boat on the Thames: music that pushed back.
- music
- counterculture
- culture
Some of the stories included
Thelonious MonkThe pianist whose percussive style changed jazz, and who was then banned from the NYC clubs where the revolution was happening.
The Theremin's Strange LifeInventor Leon Theremin created a touchless instrument, spied for the Soviets in New York, and designed a bug hidden in the US Great Seal.
Fela Kuti and the Sound of RevolutionHow Fela Kuti created Afrobeat and used his song 'Zombie' to attack Nigeria's military, leading to the 1977 raid on his Kalakuta Republic.
Josephine BakerThe life of Josephine Baker: Paris star of the 1920s, French intelligence agent in the Second World War, civil rights speaker in 1963, and in 2021 the first Black woman honoured in the Panthéon.
Punk's Jubilee Boat: The Sex Pistols on the ThamesThe Sex Pistols' Thames boat party on the Queen's Silver Jubilee, 7 June 1977, ended in a police raid and 11 arrests as 'God Save the Queen' hit the charts.
Woodstock: The Free Festival That Wasn't Meant to BeOriginally a for-profit venture that sold 186,000 tickets, Woodstock became an accidental free festival for over 400,000 people in 1969.- The Harlem RenaissanceHow Black writers, thinkers and musicians made 1920s Harlem a cultural capital, from Alain Locke's "New Negro" and Langston Hughes to Duke Ellington, until the Depression and the 1935 riot ended the era.
The BeatlesFrom 1960 to 1970, the Beatles revolutionized popular music, a journey that began in the clubs of Hamburg and ended on a London rooftop.
The Castrato Who Sang for KingsThe story of Farinelli, the 18th-century castrato singer whose voice was so powerful it was used to treat a king's depression.
Chopin's Heart Smuggled to WarsawDying in 1849, Chopin asked his sister Ludwika to take his heart home. It later survived the 1944 destruction of Warsaw.
More like this
To view the rest of the story pack, download the Chunks Microlearning app and start learning
Or get it straight away:
Download on iOS
Download on Android