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Game on: all kinds of music are on board …
Not video or cards, this week it’s the turn of games played on a tabletop with moveable pieces, anything from chess to Monopoly, playing out the patterns of human life and behaviour in microcosm. But how are they expressed in song lyrics?
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Original material: Sun Ra
Join this potentially long thread of a subject through time to capture the wonderful weft and warp of songs about all kinds of fabrics natural or otherwise – wool, cotton, hemp, linen, nylon, muslin, silk, and much more, clothing to curtains, their manufacture and industry, metaphor, colourful, darker, or lighter associations
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The classic poisoner’s choice …
Natural or handmade, animal or chemical, fast or slow, murderous or accidental, we inhabit a world of toxins and venoms, but how are they expressed in song? With inspiration here, the more specific and colourful the better but there’s also the mental and metaphorical …
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Red Cormorant Woman, Olive Oatman and Biddy Mason from the history – Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West, by Katie Hickman (2022)
It’s a word that summons up a rich history of tough trails across the American west, but also of key figures in many other fields, from science and medicine to space, politics and civil rights to music and art. To it’s time to capture all sides of breaking new ground …
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Santa’s scary helpers: Krampus procession in Austria
From the ceremonious to the cerebral, the wonderful to the weird, the historical to the hysterical, let’s explore the world of traditions through all spheres and societies, from religion to culture, relationships and death, and of course, Christmas
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Pianist Paul Barton is joined by a Thai trumpeter …
The big tusk ahead: actual or metaphorical, fictional, real, or idiomatic, in nature or captivity, it’s time to gather the herd, stroll or stampede through your musical collections and celebrate these magnificent huge creatures of trunk in song
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Hot on the horizon: The Meitan Tea Museum in Guizhou Province, China stands more than 70 metres in height
The routine, the ceremony, the warming up, the cooling down, the flavour, the comfort, the refreshment and everything that goes with it. This week we’re brewing up and leafing through our music collections …
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Class act: John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in 1966
On the move or stuck in one place? Class snobbery to pride, social control to aspiration, it’s a hugely potent part of human life, something that never seems to disappear in stories, situations, and above all the feelings it generates
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Welcome to the bar. What else is happening here besides whisky …?
Jazz scat to beatboxing, Appalachian eefing to Scottish Puirt à beul, Indian bol and Blackfoot songs to Tuvan throat-singing, this week we go beyond language to explore the intricacy of the voice as a non-lexical instrument
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Perhaps these steps will lead you to the right key …
Steep, sweeping, stone, wood or metal? This week we're exploring how music give us a certain kind of lift – through lyrics that describe all ways to up or down, on foot or via mechanical means, actual or metaphorical
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