89: Understanding Blood & Peculiar Percussion
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The Origins and Cultural Significance of Percussion Instruments
This chapter explores the foundational role of percussion instruments in music history, emphasizing their simplicity and cultural significance. It contrasts these instruments with melodic ones, highlighting examples like the quixada and their connections to Afro-Cuban and Afro-Peruvian traditions.
Blood! We all have it, but how much do we know about it? And more importantly, what was the journey of understanding to get there? And just how deep can the history of these peculiar percussion instruments go? Well we'll be criss-crossing across the planet today to find out!
Images we Talk About:
The Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
The Clapper
The Clapper in Performance
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:35) Understanding Blood
(00:49:38) Peculiar Percussion
(01:24:41) Outro
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We also learn about: 5 liters of blood over 60,000 miles, humoral theory, phlegm - yellow bile - black bile - blood, I’m from house sanguine - our fire is strongest in our season of spring, humoral theory was around for 1500 YEARS, blood letting, a leeches detour just for Caroline, very few leeches actually suck blood, the exportation of leeches for blood letting made them endangered, we nearly killed the leeches in nearly killing us, leeches are sometimes used today after reconstructive surgery for their enzymes, Nafis’ circulatory system would not be believed for 400 YEARS, these time skips are killing me, Harvey was ALSO NOT BELIEVED, we stan Harvey cause he got witches acquitted, the government and church’s ban on blood transfusions, 1818 was the first recorded successful transfusion, 1658 Jan Swammerdam first saw “oval particles” but this was 7 years before the word “cell” was used, pop quiz on what the parts of blood do, don’t draw your blood while driving, blue and green blood in crustaceans and leeches, antigens and antibodies, “I hope this will be of some use to mankind”, sodium citrate helped blood stay fresh for transfusion, god medicine fucking rules, we reinvented humors with blood personality types, the humors are stored on the antigens obviously, “do you know what my blood type is, for no reason, I’m fine, it’s a podcast thing”, Tom has a slumdog millionaire moment because he was working on another video, there are 48 recognized blood groups each with dozens of antigens, having your own bloodtype means having your own bespoke horoscope, we’re averaging one blood group discovered a year, the journey of understanding blood is the journey of science, it’s hard to tell if rocks were used for a cup song routine, Caroline & Ella fall in love with the quijada, it’s a literal death rattle, “play my bones when I die”, make a jawbone that won’t break, the much sillier vibraslap can still sound good, vibraslap on All Along the Watchtower, the whip/clapper/slap stick, comedia dell’arte, the slap stick was a literal stick to make a slap sound, the christmas rise in slapsticks, the armenia alchemist Avedis Zildjian, since we were working with metal we went listen to this taaah tah tah taaah, a perfeclty clear cymbal is just a bell, a cymbal is crafted chaos to sound good, mmm this wine is very trash but not pingy, now we know Ella’s partner wasn’t just making shit up about cymbal sounds, confirming our sources for this wild Zildjian story, what do you think about this instrument?? I can’t stop making chocolate cymbals! Ringo made people want to drum, finding out Sabian is from the Zildjian family is like finding out Wendy’s last name is McDonald, a percussionist can literally touch history from all across the world, it’s about the reviews we don’t read.
Sources:
Science Museum: Blood
J Thromb Haemost: Discovery of the Cardiovascular System
Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections: Humoral Theory
MedicineNet: Is Bloodletting Still Used Today?
Fresh Water Habitats Press Release: Medicinal Leech Breeding
The New Yorker: The History of Blood
NCBI Book: The ABO Blood groups
Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science: The Discovery of Blood Cells
Red Cross Blood Services: History Of Blood Transfusions 1628 To Now
NCBI Bookshelf: Blood and the Cells it Contains
The Conversation: Essays on blood: why do we actually have it?
Blood at 70: its roots in the history of hematology and its birth
PMC: A Brief History of Human Blood Groups
Japan Experience: Blood Types in Japan
The Conversation: More Blood Types than you Think
CBS News: New Blood Type
The Conversation: Gwada-negative
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Kabeleh Bah Playing the Quijada
Salsa Blanca on the Quijada
John Jeremiah Sullivan on the Quijada
Son Jarocho Quijada Video
History of the Vibraslap
Boston Symphony Orchestra on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2
Britannica on Slapstick's Etymology
The AMNH's Slap Stick
The Cymbal Test Video
NPR on Zildjian's History
NYT on Zildjian's History
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