Socialism We Can Believe In

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Four years on, the heady idealism of 2008 makes me cringe like a purple passage in a teenage diary, like an old love letter excavated from a dusty pile. In some respects the frustration of that first term has been a uniquely American story: with its two houses, both alike in dignity, Congress will always produce legislation that satisfies no one in particular, and America’s non-stop election calendar will inevitably encourage centrism. But the path that leads a Leftist from “Change We Can Believe In” to “Better The Devil You Know” has become familiar throughout the West. To Brits like myself, for instance, the Obama cycle feels like a Hollywood remake of Tony Blair’s premiership (1997 slogan: “Things Can Only Get Better”), which itself appeared in theaters alongside the French version—more conversation, less drama—starring Lionel Jospin (1997 slogan: “Let’s Change The Future”). And all three remind you of Bill Clinton.

In each case the activist “base” seems to go through the same emotional cycle:

(1) anger at right-wing government precedes
(2) hope in a new Left and
(3) election of a new government;
(4) disgust at that government’s compromises gives way to
(5) protest at betrayals, leading to
(6) refusal to vote which produces
(1) anger at right-wing government.

At the time of writing, Britain has returned to (1) under David Cameron, although there are hints of (2); France is between (3) and (4) with François Hollande; and the U.S. has just decided (narrowly) not to convert (5) into (6) and hence (1). The most interesting phase is clearly (4): disgust at compromise. Why should the base find compromise disgusting? Everyone knows you can’t always get what you want—that may be disappointing, but it does not, on the face of it, seem disgusting. Yet that is precisely the point. What offends Leftists is the suspicion that their leaders are not actually compromising but triangulating. Compromise is something you do when you know your desired destination; triangulation, by contrast, is just negotiating to stay in power.

Yet it’s not as if the base itself has any kind of articulated vision of the good society. Take last year’s Occupy protests in America and beyond. “We are winning,” they cried. But what exactly were they trying to win? Whereas the Tea Party placed candidates into elected office, and forced others to bend to its will by orchestrating debates, rallies and pledges, Occupy renounced such ambitions from the start. Policies and politics are for dupes, it seemed to sneer: the old world is beyond saving. The idea, its leaders proclaimed, was to model a new direct democracy in which there are no leaders. But if the movement was itself the message, the message was hardly appealing: anyone who has endured student government knows that when everyone talks, nothing gets decided. And this indecision seemed all too convenient, as many pointed out, since it allowed the protesters to wash their hands of the responsibility that comes with concrete commitments.

It may have been unfair to expect detailed policies from the Occupiers. But the real critique was harder to answer: What, the critics asked, is your vision of the good life? And not just the good life in general, but the good life for us, here and now in the twenty-first century West? How does the model of tent-dwelling anarcho-democrats debating long into the night relate to the problem of contemporary inequality? It’s all well and good attacking corruption and cronyism, but inequality is also a function of globalization, which turns first-world countries into service economies that reward the educated and screw the rest. Viewed in this light, Occupy’s central slogan—“We are the 99%”—was as facile as they come; the editor of The Occupy Handbook actually bragged that “Occupy Wall Street has the rare distinction of being a protest movement that even the objects of its attack can find little fault with.” Like the Harvard lawyer at whose feet many of its participants had knelt three years earlier, Occupy managed to wrap itself in the aura of Che Guevara while offending nobody. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Obama and Occupy seem to represent the exhaustion of the Western Left in general. Yet the mood of cynicism, wry and weary, to which I, like so many, presently find myself tempted, can be as blinding as the most dizzying optimism. To dismiss 2008 as mere showbiz, or the Occupy movement as mere self-righteous escapism, would be to ignore the significance of the springs from which they drew: widespread dissatisfaction, even despair, at the status quo; and a yearning, however inarticulate or inchoate, for fundamental transformation. That this yearning has so readily found expression in vacuities points to its strength, not its weakness; if it is capable of sustaining us in empty illusions, at least for a time, that only goes to show how desperately we crave escape from the fetters of contemporary politics. And it is notable that in promising us relief, Obama and Occupy both pointed to the same kind of destination: setting their faces against self-seeking individualism, they spoke to us as individuals in search of self-transcendence. They spoke, that is, to our desire for community without collectivism, for a community forged from the ground up, by us ourselves, in a spirit of what the French Revolutionaries called “fraternity.” We are the change that we seek.

The problem was that neither Obama nor Occupy was able to give the idea of fraternity any real substance. For Obama, it seemed to imply campaign contributions; for Occupy, endless discussions. Neither could connect it to the imperatives of our changing economic climate or to the day-to-day decisions and actions that together constitute society. This, not their idealism, was their failing. If fraternity is to be more than a utopian fantasy or a pious palliative, it will need to find expression in an ethic that can be lived out in everyday life, in institutions that are within our grasp, in a vision of a future radically better than the present yet recognizably rooted in its conditions. (...)

But perhaps we need to rethink socialism. For what differentiates socialism from both left-liberalism and civic conservatism is, at bottom, its focus on the character of work, the day-to-day labor by which we produce both the world around us and, in the end, ourselves. And in and of itself this entails nothing about the state. Once socialism is distinguished from statism, it can also be liberated from it, both practically and theoretically. If we can find a non-statist mold into which to cast the core ideal of socialism, it might be possible for us to forge a politics of fraternity that is transformative without being utopian. And in this respect, I believe, our best guide might turn out to be a theorist described by Hayek himself as “a very wise man” and “a sort of socialist saint”—the inimitable R. H. Tawney (1880-1962).

by Jonny Thakkar, The Point |  Read more:

Image: Pete Souza 

On Location With Foursquare

There's a great, deep story by Austin Carr in Fast Company today giving a broad overview of where Foursquare is headed, as a product and as a company. I was quoted a few times in the piece, and spent a good bit of time talking to Austin, and I thought it might make sense to explain the non-obvious parts of my perspective on Foursquare.

It makes sense to start at the end:

Crowley is a rare breed of founder obsessed with the problem he's trying to solve. "The thing I fear, which would be devastating for the industry, let alone Dennis, is that he gets rushed and Foursquare can't monetize, they can't raise [another round], and they have to sell to Facebook or Google or whoever," Dash says. "And then at 40, Dennis has to start over. Because he'll do it again—there's no question. But then the world will have to wait another goddamn 10 years for this thing."

This articulates what may be the two most important points underpinning my opinion of Foursquare:

• There's undoubtedly going to be a location layer to the Internet. It's too powerful of an idea, and too valuable of a technology, for it not to come into existence in the next few years.
• Dennis Crowley has incontrovertibly been obsessed with this idea for over a decade.

Now, simply being a person obsessed with a particular class of problem doesn't always mean that someone will be the one who brings it to large-scale adoption — just ask Nikola Tesla. But my bet is that Foursquare cracks the code on this before anyone else. To understand why, let's take a look at what Foursquare really does today. (...)

They've simply done more work, at a deeper level, to really understand the problems around location and location-enabled apps. Astoundingly, for all the public paranoia about online tracking, Foursquare's never made any mistakes that have caused a panic about the way they collect and share data. And its team is respected by other startups and media companies as being authoritative on nearly every important aspect of location-based technology on the Internet. Perhaps most importantly, its position as a neutral third party offers all of these partners an option which doesn't empower the competitors they actually fear.

The truth is, aside from simple mapping apps, nobody has truly built a large-scale consumer technology business around the potential of location. As I noted when discussing the importance of public traffic data, there is enormous value to be created by understanding how people move around: Both Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey's first companies were based on data about how people move around through cities. If Foursquare's given enough time to keep iterating on the incredible success it's had as a platform, and its first few steps toward driving revenue through ads make it stable enough financially, there's no reason it can't be the company that taps into the value of being the location layer of the Internet.

by Anil Dash |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. One of my favorite photos (repost).]

Philip-Lorca-diCorcia, Alice 1988

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Why Freud Still Matters

He’s been dead for nearly 70 years, but Sigmund Freud’s provocative theories are still a huge part of psychology, neuroscience, and culture — this despite the fact that many of his ideas were mindboggingly, catastrophically wrong. Here’s why Freud just won’t go away.

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Sigmund Freud was a giant in his field. When it comes to his influence on psychology, psychoanalysis, and our theories of mind, he’s often credited for kindling a revolution; with Freud, it’s kind of a before-and-after thing.

Freud’s Century

Indeed, the 20th century has often been called Freud’s century. His books landed with the subtlety of hand grenades, featuring such seminal titles as The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), and his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1915-1916).

Freud’s legacy has transcended science, with his ideas permeating deep into Western culture. Rarely does a day go by where we don’t find ourselves uttering a term drawn from his work: Mommy and daddy issues. Arrested development. Death wishes. Freudian slips. Phallic symbols. Anal retentiveness. Defense mechanisms. Cathartic release. And on and on and on.

As psychologist and Freud critic John Kihlstrom himself admits, “More than Einstein or Watson and Crick, more than Hitler or Lenin, Roosevelt or Kennedy, more than Picasso, Eliot, or Stravinsky, more than the Beatles or Bob Dylan, Freud's influence on modern culture has been profound and long-lasting.”

An Outdated Paradigm

But his legacy is a shaky one. Freud has, for the most part, fallen completely out of favor in academia. Virtually no institution in any discipline would dare use him as a credible source. In 1996, Psychological Science reached the conclusion that “[T]here is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas." As a research paradigm, it’s pretty much dead.

Many of Freud’s methodologies, techniques, and conclusions have been put into question. Moreover, his theories have even proved damaging — and even dangerous — to certain segments of the population. His perspectives on female sexuality and homosexuality are reviled, causing many feminists to refer to him by a different kind of ‘F’ word. Some even argue that his name should be spelled “Fraud” and not Freud.

“Freud is truly in a class of his own,” writes Todd Dufresne, an outspoken critic. “Arguably no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say. But, luckily for him, academics have been — and still are — infinitely creative in their efforts to whitewash his errors, even as lay readers grow increasingly dumbfounded by the entire mess.”

Without a doubt, many of these criticisms and valid and totally justified. But a renewed look at his legacy shows that Freud’s contribution is far from over — both in terms of his influence on culture and science.

by George Dvorsky, io9|  Read more:

Image: uncredited

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Masao Yamamoto, from the Prism Book.
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Lee "Scratch" Perry
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On Geek Culture

In 2009, a small budget but critically successful film called Big Fan hit theaters. The film’s action centers on Paul Aufiero — a man obsessed with the New York Giants to the exclusion of all other pursuits — and the rapid collapse of his life after a chance encounter with his favorite player.

Paul is a geek. A stereotypical (as defined by big media) geek. He lives with his mother, is a portly white man in his mid-30s, has no sexual relationships to speak of, and finds personal validation in his interactions with the subject of his fixation. The role works in no small part because Paul is played by Patton Oswalt, a comedian with impeccable geek culture credentials. The only difference between Paul and a stock geek culture character is what Paul geeks out about: sports. And sports, as we all know, are not geeky.

It was little remarked upon at the time, but the convergence of Oswalt’s casting, Paul’s obsessiveness over the Giants, and sports culture signified a new, more relevant understanding of the geek. In the world of Big Fan, the type of media Paul interacts with isn’t what designates him as a geek; it’s how he interacts with it.

We live in a world where comic book movies pull in record breaking box office numbers again and again, where Game of Thrones not only outsells mainstream fiction in book form but draws huge commercial and critical acclaim in television form, and where gatherings such as ComicCon — for years on the furthest periphery of mainstream consciousness — have become places for large scale entertainment news dumps. What was traditionally understood as geek culture is now the mainstream. Geeks are no longer marginalized outsiders; they’re the new normal.

This is hardly a new or novel observation, but it demands a fresh examination of what geekdom actually centers on. Just as Big Fan hints at, it’s instructive to examine interactions between consumers and media rather than the type of media being consumed, especially when it comes to corporate media.

Even by the narrow strictures of what’s traditionally accepted as geek culture, the whole thing isn’t remotely monolithic. The author, a proud participant in traditional geek pursuits, has a particular fondness for pen and paper roleplaying games — placing him below video gamers but on par with Star Trek fans — and enjoys Michael Moorcock, but can’t stand Star Wars, Doctor Who, or superhero comic books. This lack of uniform interests is more common than not; what is portrayed as geek media is diverse, as geeks have varying tastes. If we’ve already fractured geek culture into a thousand cliques and interests, the term “geek culture” loses all meaning beyond one of vague convenience.

If, instead, we begin to look at the geek as someone who allots space for media interest alongside or in place of class, race, or gender identity, then a more meaningful pattern emerges. The geek gives primacy to media consumption, using it as both identifier and lens with which to view the world; what that media happens to look like is irrelevant. The tie that binds geeks of a given strain together is what they choose to buy.

by Ian Williams, Jacobin |  Read more:

Image: Denis Poroy/AP

The Sports Cable Bubble

What is the Sports Cable Bubble? It's the unseen economic engine that increasingly powers the sports and television industries alike, all-important and omnipresent, a little like the Force in "Star Wars," only with money instead of Jedi Mind Tricks. It's a value balloon that keeps going up, up, up, launched and inflated by America's collective cable and satellite bill, a perfectly legal shell game built on high-stakes deal-making, entrenched corporate interests and overlapping near-monopolies. It's the reason why investors paid $2 billion for the Los Angeles Dodgers; why schools have taken to conference realignment like swingers at a 1970s key party; why ESPN is the golden goose of the Disney empire; why Fox Sports 2 is basically a foregone conclusion even before Fox Sports 1 launches; why Solomon was so ridiculously ticked; and why so much of what happens in sports happens.

Next to college sports restraint of trade amateurism, this might be the world's greatest business model -- in what other field do millions of people who neither use nor care about a product still have to pay for it as if they were, you know, customers? -- and judging by the great big garbage bags of cash being tossed around, no one involved expects the Sports Cable Bubble to pop anytime soon.

Which, of course, is exactly what makes it a bubble.

Let's try an exercise. Turn on your television. Grab a notepad. Make a list of every sports channel you receive. ESPN. NFL Network. Big Ten Network. MSG. All of 'em. If you get TNT and TBS, add them, too - both carry extensive, expensive sports programming.

All done? Good. Now go to the website What You Pay For Sports. (...)

Add it all up, and big time sports are taking a minimum of $84.90 out of my pocket, year after year. Before I buy a jersey. Or a licensed video game. Or even a single game ticket. Just because I have pay television. Moreover, that amount doesn't include what I'm paying to conferences, leagues and teams not on the list. (Think the soon-to-be-rebranded Speed and Fuel channels, or regional sports networks like Comcast SportsNet Washington, which has local broadcast rights deals with the Washington Wizards and Capitals.) Nor is that 85 bucks even close to the total annual amount I'm forking over for sports programming, given that the same all-sports and sports-heavy networks paying for those megabuck league and conference rights are collecting hefty monthly fees from cable and satellite providers -- costs that are then passed on through monthly bills to customers like you and me. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson explains:

… your cable bill -- $80 or $90, or whatever it is -- is best understood as two prices. The programming (i.e. the channels you watch) and the distribution (i.e. the infrastructure and profits for the cable companies). Every time you pay a cable bill, the channels collect a small fee. It's called an "affiliate fee." The most in-demand channels tend to negotiate the highest fees. And those tend to be sports channels …

Take ESPN. How can the network afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on college and pro basketball rights, and more than a billion a year for "Monday Night Football?" Simple. ESPN is a cash cow, earning roughly $10 billion annually. And where does that money come from? According to an Atlantic article citing a report from Wunderlich Securities, the network brings in about $3.5 billion from television advertisements, and about $900 million from digital and magazine ads. No surprise there. The rest -- a staggering $6.5 billion, about two-thirds of the company's revenue -- comes from cable and satellite affiliate fees.

Here's how it works:

by Patrick Hruby, Sports on Earth |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

Her

Anti-Mosquito Force Field

Mosquitos were born to bite us, and aside from lighting worthless tiki candles, haplessly swatting them away, or resorting to spraying toxic DEET all over ourselves, there’s really not a whole lot we can do about it. Imagine then, if you could be encapsulated in an anti-mosquito bubble simply by wearing a small square sticker. Not only would it save mosquito-magnets like myself some really uncomfortable moments, it could be a major game changer in the way we prevent mosquito-borne illnesses like Malaria, Dengue Fever, and West Nile Virus.

The good news is that a sticker like this is not some far away concept dreamed up by scientists in a lab–it’s actually a real thing that you’ll likely be able to find on the shelves of your local Walgreens sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Essentially, the Kite Patch is a little square sticker that emits a cloak of chemical compounds that blocks a mosquito’s ability to sense humans. According to its developers, users simply have to place the patch onto their clothes, and they become invisible to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours. This is big news for developing countries like Uganda, where residents have little beyond mosquito nets and toxic sprays to combat the illness-spreading insects. (...)

Though the Kite seems a little fantastical, it’s backed by some legitimate technology. Back in 2011, Dr. Anandasankar Ray, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside (and founder of Olfactor Labs), found that certain chemical compounds can inhibit the carbon dioxide receptors in mosquitoes. These smelly compounds, which act like a anti-mosquito force field, are able to disorient the bugs, whose main method of tracking down humans is through our exhalation of CO2.

by Liz Stinson, Wired |  Read more:

Image: ieCrowd

Capital Children's Choir

Tina Kazakhishvili 'Is not No Sunshine When She's Gone.'
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Wrinkles - yes.
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Bathers
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Bar Fights, an Appreciation

The best bar fight I ever witnessed took place in a tiny shitkicky bar in Wyoming, somewhere along the road between Sheridan and Gillette. Outside there was a faint skein of April snow on the ground. Inside it was Hawaiian night.

The bar was festooned with tropical knickknackery and paper palm trees, grass skirts were free for the taking, and the owners – a salty-mouthed blonde and her mother – were forcing everyone to wear leis, including me. I was in the company of a Canadian poet and a Wyoming painter, fellow artists-in-residence at a foundation down the highway; we'd been snowbound for a few weeks, and, like loggers emerging from a long stint in a lumber camp, we were itchy for a bit of fun. Some hot whiskey, some social chainsmoking, a smile from a hard-faced girl, perhaps a clumsy two-step, and maybe – you never know – the spectacle of a good-natured late-night fistfight.

It was a perfect place for all that. A singer-guitarist with a drum machine mixed Merle Haggard and Joan Jett into his sets. An old Indian in new blue Wranglers and a belt buckle the size of a 45-rpm record tore up the dance floor with all seven of the women present, with the exception of the owner-mother, who chose to dance solo with an oversize chef's knife raised above her head, as if baiting criticism or suitors or both. Besides us, the only other nonlocals in the bar were three itinerant sheepshearers from New Zealand – two drunk louts and a girl.

I got the full story only later. Allegedly, one of the Kiwi sheepshearers – a short, stout, vinegary guy – took to throwing roasted peanuts at the head of a local boy, one peanut after the other. The local boy had some tragic name – I swear everyone pronounced it "Art Fart," though it must surely have been Art Vart. In any case, skinny Art Fart – clad in a grass skirt with an impromptu bikini top made from coconut shells and twine over his shirt – finally tired of being pelted with bar peanuts, said words to that effect to the Kiwi sheepshearer (who was also, I should note, wearing a grass skirt), and, like that, the fight was on.

Smart money was on the Kiwi. He'd started it, had some solid farm muscle on him, appeared to have piss for brains, and, unlike Art Fart, wasn't sporting coconut titties. But chalk one up for the US of A: After the typical cuss-and-shove windup, Art Fart threw a lanky-armed punch that sent the Kiwi buckling to the floor, hula skirt and all. There may have been some subsequent tussling – a crowd swiftly circled them, blocking my view – but the decisive blow had been struck. The fight officially ended, as I recall, when the salty blonde charged from behind the bar with a pistol, though I wouldn't swear to that in a court of law; maybe she just threatened gunplay.

"We have to get out of here," said my poet companion. With a smile I refused, and there in that bar, as the Kiwis hustled their frothy countryman outside and into the giant RV that was their home during sheepshearing season, and as Art Fart ordered a victory round, I tried to explain to him, knuckleheadedly, what I'm about to attempt to explain, just as knuckleheadedly, to you: The spectacle of a good bar fight, properly executed and healthily ended, is not merely annoying boorishness. The best of them – an admittedly minor slice – are shaded with the elements of high art. Think ballet, with its orchestrated stepwork, and opera, with its epic, heart-on-the-sleeve passions, or any kind of gladiatorial drama. Naturally, these overlofty comparisons apply to boxing matches and run-of-the-mill fistfights, too, but the bar fight has a sublimity all its own. Because it's fueled by alcohol, it's usually a rank amateur's game, with all the unpredictability this implies, and unlike boxing and most angry fistfights, it's sometimes lacquered with a gloss of comedy. Flying peanuts, grass skirts – that sort of thing. For millennia saloons have served as comfortable petri dishes for sex and violence. I am either too honest or too unsophisticated to suggest that one can exist without the other. There is a mammalian side to all of us; on occasion it rears its head, snarls, makes a mess, acts the fool, howls at the moon, gives or gets a black eye.

Before we get rolling here, though, I feel it necessary to clarify my terms and to set a few ground rules. When I say bar fight, I mean this: one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat that occurs inside a saloon, or just outside its door. Except in those rare instances when a life is at stake, weapons have absolutely no place in a proper bar fight. In short: no knives, chairs, bottles, derringers, swords, or mounted billfish (a possible urban myth I once heard in Australia had a man attacking another with a marlin yanked off the wall), and absolutely no throwing opponents through plate-glass windows. (Let's call this last one the Charles Barkley rule, to dishonor Barkley's throwing of a man through the window of an Orlando bar in 1997 after the man had thrown a glass of ice at the NBA star. It's hard not to secretly admire Barkley, however, for his reply when asked if he had any regrets: "I regret," he said, "that we weren't on a higher floor.").

by Jonathan Miles, Men's Journal |  Read more:

Image: Yuri Arcurs / Alamy

Ayako Miyawaki: The Art of Japanese Applique. "Onion Cut in Two” 1965.
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Google Introduces New Feature to Help People Find In-Depth Stories

[ed. Or you could just come to Duck Soup every day.]

Google introduced a new feature this afternoon that makes it easier for people to find relevant, in-depth articles about broad topics.

Jake Hubert, product manager, said Google research shows that about 10 percent of Google searches are for broad topics such as happiness, love and stem-cell research.

“We’re trying to find the best in-depth content,” Hubert said by phone. “A lot of it will be from well-known publications, but sometimes the best answer is from someone’s blog or a local paper.”

Here’s how it works: When you search for a broad topic in Google and scroll down the list of results, you’ll see an “in-depth articles” header toward the bottom of the page. Under that header, you’ll see links to long-form stories about that particular topic.

“We’re going to be experimenting with different ranking algorithms,” Hubert said, but for now, “it’s on the lower part of the page.”

The new feature is aimed at people who aren’t just looking for news stories, but want to find stories they can “kick back and read on a Saturday afternoon and spend 15 or 20 minutes on,” Hubert said.

by Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter | Read more:

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How a Gang of Harmonica Geeks Saved the Soul of the Blues Harp

Harmonica players will suck and harmonica players will blow, but mastering the harmonica is tougher than its diminutive size and simple mechanics suggests. “The harmonica is actually pretty hard to play well,” says harmonica virtuoso Mickey Raphael, who has shared the stage with Willie Nelson for the better part of 40 years. “If you have a harmonica in the right key for a song, you can play any note and it’ll sound good. But to be able play melody on it is a whole different skill set.”

Of course, it doesn’t help if your harmonica is so poorly designed that you couldn’t play it well even if you were a pro, which describes the state of the instrument from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, when Hohner, the largest harmonica manufacturer in the world, made a single, seemingly small change to its ubiquitous Marine Band harmonica. Hohner’s bottom-line gambit was to slightly enlarge the slots through which a harmonica’s reeds vibrate. It made the instrument’s pair of reed plates cheaper to assemble but the instrument itself virtually impossible to control, thanks to all the extra air that was now being blown into and drawn out of it. Hohner eventually corrected its error, but it took a ragtag group of harmonica customizers and music geeks from around the world to force the 150-year-old German firm to face the music.

Above: Kinya Pollard, aka the Harpsmith, testing a harmonica in his workshop. Top: Mini harmonicas from Harland Crain’s collection. Makers include Hohner, Schlott, Koch, and Seydel.

Even if a musician gets his hands on a well-designed harmonica and learns to play it as fluidly and expressively as Raphael, it’s hardly a sure-fire ticket to the big time. Unlike windmill-arm guitarists (Pete Townshend), 360-degree drummers (Neal Peart), and flamboyant keyboardists (Elton John), harmonica players anchor themselves to a single spot on the stage, hunched over, eyes shut, their hands obscuring their faces as they huff and puff until they’re soaked to the skin with sweat.

It’s often not a pretty sight, and you don’t even want to know about the tonguing techniques employed to block certain holes while blowing out or drawing in, let alone a prolonged period of bloody lips. “That was kind of a rite of passage,” laughs harmonica maker and technician Kinya Pollard. “If your lips weren’t bleeding after a gig, you were considered a weenie.”

Not surprisingly, kids everywhere aren’t exactly clamoring to learn how to play the harmonica, nor are the airwaves crowded with the instrument’s sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, sound. Yet despite their low profile in the culture at large, following those decades of poor quality by Hohner, harmonicas are enjoying a full-blown renaissance right now, as major manufacturers and boutique customizers alike battle to perfect the beloved instrument. In a weird way, harmonicas are cool again precisely because they aren’t hogging the limelight, giving them an underground, back-to-the-roots cachet.

by Ben Marks, CW |  Read more:

Images: uncredited