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(04/12/24 4:00am)
An impatient motorist honks incessantly on Walnut Street. Hundreds peck away at their Macbook keyboards in Van Pelt. A freshman unleashes an ear–splitting scream as “Love Story” starts playing in a frat basement. From its loudest parties to its most solitary corners, Penn’s campus is bursting with sound, not all of it particularly desirable. But escape to the top floor of Fisher Bennett, or the depths of Platt Performing Arts House, and you might hear something unexpected. Entering those halls, the stray notes of instruments being tuned and singers doing warm–ups wash over you. Like the horns of the Angel Gabriel, they announce that you have entered another realm—one alien to the one most of us inhabit. Welcome to the world of Penn musicians.
(03/15/24 4:00am)
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller gave us that wisdom as a high school senior who felt he had too much on his plate. If he had gone to Penn, he’d have a heart attack within the first week. From cramming for finals to searching for internships, we seem to lack the time and the patience to think about the questions that matter most. What is virtue? What makes our lives worth living? Why are we here? On a cold Wednesday night, as crisp autumn turned to cruel winter, I made my trek through the wind tunnels of Locust Walk all the way to the Starbucks underneath 1920 Commons in search of the man who might have all the answers.
(11/27/23 8:00am)
There are some who complain that America has gone woke—but when has it not been? The woke mob (Puritans) have been canceling (executing) innocent Americans (“witches”) since our nation’s founding. The original colonizers of New England were among the first to promote a “politically correct” culture in the U.S., rigidly enforcing Puritanical codes of morality and behavior under threat of exile or even death. This unique founding spirit has never really gone away—from the Hays Code to the Satanic Panic to Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center, the instinct to censor runs deep in American culture. But in recent years, a new outgrowth of this horrifying urge has manifested itself in an entity so cloaked in pizazz and saccharine pop sweetness that it almost defies recognition for the beast that it is. I speak, of course, of that devil Kidz Bop.
(11/03/23 4:00am)
When someone tells you that a live show was “absolutely insane,” the image that comes to mind is a packed house, blaring noise, and a mosh pit that threatens to swallow you alive. On their current tour, however, Xiu Xiu presents a very different kind of madness—at any given show, you’re likely to find rapt crowds, plenty of personal space, and moments of eerie silence to balance out the wall of sound hurled out from the stage. At small, intimate venues across the country, Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo, and David Kendrick treat their audiences to not just an incredible concert but an emotional journey.
(11/14/23 9:00pm)
The wood paneling and the multitude of panda murals that adorn the walls of Chengdu Famous Food tell you everything you need to know about the place as soon as you walk through the door—this is not your average Chinese takeout restaurant. About a 10–minute walk from Penn’s main campus, Chengdu Famous Food offers Chinese cuisine in an upscale setting. With warm yellow light emanating from metal lamps on the ceiling and an open kitchen layout that allows diners to see the goings–on in the kitchen, the atmosphere inside the restaurant is cozy and inviting. Though we came in around 1 p.m. for lunch—typically rush hour—we were seated immediately at a comfortable wooden table by the window.
(10/29/23 4:00pm)
Since the 19th century , the campaign song has been a staple of presidential elections. Jackson had “Hunters of Kentucky,” Lincoln had “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and even Penn’s own ill–fated William Henry Harrison was cranking out bangers like “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.” In the 21st century, however, the art of the campaign song seems to have fallen by the wayside. Campaigns nowadays are more than happy to utilize premade songs from established artists, rather than create their own tunes. Even worse, the cultural democratization of the internet has led this vacuum to be filled by constituent hacks from across the political spectrum, be it Le Tigre’s oddball Clinton anthem “I’m With Her,” or Latinos for Trump's divisive new hit “Unity.” Things were much simpler in the mid 20th century, the true heyday of the campaign song. Communications were developed enough to disseminate media to audiences across the country, but before the art of the campaign song was lost to the sands of time. But even during this apex of the art form, some presidential candidates simply had more juice than others—the history of campaign music has some pretty clear winners and losers.
(10/02/23 4:58am)
Techno was born free—but everywhere it lies in chains. Electronic music today has largely come to be associated with the blistering heat and piercing lights of the rave hall, the occasional ambient track playing in the background of the airport lounge, or bizarre moments such as David Guetta including a Martin Luther King Jr. sample in one of his beat drops. This picture is not so much incorrect as it is incomplete. The ravers and David Guettas of the world have just as much a claim to electronic music as anyone else—but their close connection with the genre has come to obscure its past as both a mirror of society and a site of resistance. Nowhere was the genre’s role clearer than in Germany at the end of WWII.