A musical tribute to maps
A playlist takes a tour of the myriad musical works dedicated to maps and cartography...
A sequence of sounds, rhythms, melodies and silences: music is a most primitive art, the most essential, and the most powerful of all languages. Its capacity is not limited to the (hardly trivial) transmission of emotions. It’s also able to move in time and to act as a sonic vehicle which can transport us geographically without the need to move us physically. Through music, one can make a map of sounds and (why not?), one could compile music on maps—as was recently shown in an exercise put together by the website CityLab.
Speaking of musical themes related to maps, the site’s editorial team was given the task of making a musical list that focused precisely on such instruments, the products of imagination and science—a taxonomic exercise as interesting as it was inspiring. The result is a playlist titled Maps… They Don’t Love You Like I Love You. At nearly five hours, it consists entirely of songs referring to cartographic events, both literally and metaphorically. Putting the scope of their platform to use, the CityLab team also invited readers to propose songs within the theme so that they’re part of the list, too.
Within this strange exercise are two characteristic features of our species: musicality and a need for taxonomies. The first involves making sense of the world through the intuitive and the emotional in a universal language. It’s one that doesn’t need prior knowledge or codes to reach us inside. A second characteristic is, perhaps, an attempt to make the universe objective and orderly, to shape it and to make sense of it. Finally, maps (the guides that inspired such a playlist) are also tools based in the great fiction that is cartography, documents with a beauty all their own and which conjure realities ever more profound.
Related Articles
When ancient rituals became religion
The emergence of religions irreversibly changed the history of humanity. It’s therefore essential to ask when and how did ancient peoples’ rituals become organized systems of thought, each with their
Seven ancient maps of the Americas
A map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski Maps are never merely maps. They’re human projections, metaphors in which we find both the geographical and the imaginary. The cases of ghost islands
An artist crochets a perfect skeleton and internal organs
Shanell Papp is a skilled textile and crochet artist. She spent four long months crocheting a life-size skeleton in wool. She then filled it in with the organs of the human body in an act as patient
The enchantment of 17th-century optics
The sense of sight is perhaps one the imagination’s most prolific masters. That is why humankind has been fascinated and bewitched by optics and their possibilities for centuries. Like the heart, the
Would you found your own micro-nation? These eccentric examples show how easy it can be
Founding a country is, in some ways, a simple task. It is enough to manifest its existence and the motives for creating a new political entity. At least that is what has been demonstrated by the
Wondrous crossings: the galaxy caves of New Zealand
Often, the most extraordinary phenomena are “jealous of themselves” ––and they happen where the human eye cannot enjoy them. However, they can be discovered, and when we do find them we experience a
Think you have strange reading habits? Wait until you've seen how Mcluhan reads
We often forget or neglect to think about the infinite circumstances that are condensed in the acts that we consider habitual. Using a fork to eat, for example, or walking down the street and being
The sky is calling us, a love letter to the cosmos (video)
We once dreamt of open sails and Open seas We once dreamt of new frontiers and New lands Are we still a brave people? We must not forget that the very stars we see nowadays are the same stars and
The sister you always wanted (but made into a crystal chandelier)
Lucas Maassen always wanted to have a sister. And after 36 years he finally procured one, except, as strange as it may sound, in the shape of a chandelier. Maassen, a Dutch designer, asked the
The doom-laden 19th century talking dolls
For more elegant and courageous generations than our own, there were talking dolls made of porcelain. Beings with hand-painted faces and robotic torsos and with an internal sound mechanism, activated