This episode is audio from the Public Domain Cabaret featuring the WNYC Public Song Project Players and the Necromancers of the Public Domain. It was recorded on February 12, 2025.
The Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, Library Futures, Theater of the Apes, and the Information Law Institute bring you this very special Public Domain Day presentation of Necromancers of the Public Domain.
Performers skilled in the art of necromancy transformed the book An Hour With The Movies And The Talkies (plucked from the shelves of the New York Society Library's public domain class of 2025) into a one-night-only variety show. We also featured performers from WNYC's Public Song Project.
WNYC Public Song Project Players include:
Sibyl (Chloe and Lily Holgate)
Necromancers include:
Emilio Cuesta (I Am Nobody / QUESTA)
Connor Kalista (The Neo-Futurists / Independent Film Editor)
Necromancers lead by Ayun Halliday (Creative, Not Famous / The East Village Inky)
With Special Guest:
Event photos: https://www.nyuengelberg.org/events/public-domain-celebration-with-necromancers-and-friends/
Announcer 0:00
Welcome to engelberg center live, a collection of audio from events held by the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. This episode is audio from the public domain cabaret featuring the WNYC public song project players and the necromancers of the public domain. It was recorded On February 12, 2025.
Jennie Rose Halperin 2:54
Thank you so much to Natalia peruse the saw lady for coming and joining us tonight.
Michael Weinberg 3:04
all right, thank you. Hi everyone. I am Michael Weinberg. I am the Executive Director of the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law, and I am so yes, thank you. I'm so thrilled to be able to welcome you all to this public domain cabaret. I love this event for two reasons. One is, we work so hard on copyright issues and public domain issues, and there are lots of other ways to engage with it. But this is an event where we really we show why the public domain is so important, because we show that it's a living creative space to people, for people to draw on to build new creative works. So the theme of this night is new creative works being pulled from the public domain. And the second reason I love this event is because it is an event that really only works in New York, we have, you know, we have colleagues who do great work with us, who are all over the country, and you know, like they're fine, but they do not have the ability to draw on New York to put together an event that vividly illustrates the importance to public domain like this event does. So thank you so much for being here, Jenny. Please introduce yourself and tell us why. I'm not gonna step on your thing.
Jennie Rose Halperin 4:30
Hi everyone. My name is Jenny rose Halperin, and I'm the Director of Library futures, which is a thank you, which is a project, a project of NYU engelberg center on innovation, law and policy. I could not be more excited to be here. One of my favorite events of the year. Library features is a research, education and advocacy organization. We run all sorts of very cool programs. I'm going to call out two, three in order. Order to invite all of you to become part of our community if you are not already, if you are a law student and are interested in an internship, we run a very stellar internship program. If you're any other kind of student and want an internship, definitely apply. We also provide small research grants to a large research network and growing Research Network and community on cutting edge issues in the field of digital rights and policy in libraries and other public information systems. And the third thing I'm going to call out is because tomorrow we have a really big report coming out on soft censorship in educational databases around the country. It's a widely misunderstood and underreported issue involving the right to read and writes online, and so I want to invite you all to check us out on the web as well, at library futures.net so I wanted to talk for a minute because we are having a Night at the Movies and the talkies about one of my favorite talkies from 1929 which is the first Marx Brothers movie, the coconuts. Have you all? Has any seen it? All? Right, so the coconuts was written by Georges Kaufman and Maury Rifkin. Georges Kaufman a very, very famous playwright, and it's one of the few movies that Zeppo is in. And like, I'm gonna be honest, like, Zeppo, like, really brings down the movie, even though, apparently he was a very good Mimic, and it's pretty light entertainment. But the thing that's cool about it is that it was the first time that American audiences got to see in mass media, the stage show that the Marx Brothers put on and that really took over Broadway through the 1920s and introduced American audiences to a lot of the characters that became integral parts of 1930s cinema. And so I, as a huge Marx Brothers fan. Did want to say and make sure that everybody knows that? Yes, I am a Marxist. We have Chico Groucho Harpo and Carl the Forgotten Marx brother.
But I actually do want to be able to make that joke next year without fear of retribution from my federal government. So I wanted to talk for a minute about why the public domain is important to me. Equitable access to culture is a right. It helps understand the past, and understanding the past helps inform a better present and a better future. Again, as Michael said, the public domain is a living, breathing corpus of works that can be drawn on, that can be remixed, that can be built. New public domain works are coming in all the time. And I also wanted to give a little update for those of you who were here last year. I made this big deal about how we were going to get a national public domain day on January 1 a national commemorative day for the public domain, and that everybody's now going to get january 1 off for a national commemorative day for the public domain. However, unlike the current administration, we do believe in congressional approval, and it is going to be very difficult in the next few years, so I want to I want to just say that the public domain can be celebrated every day, and not just at the beginning of the year. So thank you all so so much for coming. I want to make sure that I thank all our CO organizers, Simon close of WNYC and Anne Holliday of theater of the Apes. They did incredible lifting to make this night possible. And of course, I want to thank my other co organizer, Michael Weinberg, who I have a privilege to work with every day. And thank you all for coming. And welcome to the show. So
Michael Weinberg 9:07
we're going to bring Simon on first the program for tonight is the first half is going to be Simon and the public song project crew, and then the second half of the evening is going to be the necromancers crew. So Simon, the stage is yours.
Simon Close 9:30
Hi everyone. I'm Simon close. I'm a producer at all of it with Allison Stewart at WNYC. Do we have any WNYC fans in the room? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So normally, at this point, when we do these kinds of shows, what I do here is explain the public domain this. I don't have to do that tonight, which is amazing, because there's a bunch of nerds in front of me, so that's great. So I'm going to skip ahead to talk about, like, how this project works, and I'm going to ask. Now if we can, and it's already amazing. Thank you. So we invite anybody to send in a song based on something in the public domain. So you could cover a song that's in the public domain, or you could take a book or a poem or a movie, just take inspiration from that thing, make a song out of it, send it in to us, and then we compile all those submissions into like we call it the public songbook. It's like a database, so if you send something in, you get your song featured on WNYC website. But we also put together a panel of judges and have them listen through the songs and pick out a few winners who get to be interviewed on the radio. So we've gotten, like, Gershwin covers. We've gotten musical adaptations of Agatha Christie. We got one Mickey Mouse song last year, naturally. And this is the project's third year. I'm excited to say we just launched it with a show at Joe's Pub in January. And in the last three years. Thank you. In the last three years, we've received almost 200 songs. I think we did that show at Joe's Pub. We did a show at Lincoln Center last year. We've partnered with libraries across New York and in Connecticut and New Jersey, and had them help us put together resources and use of their recording studios. Shout out to the Brooklyn Public Library, which has a, yeah, cool, which has an instrument lending library, so you can pick up an instrument from them the way that you would a book. And their their like range of instruments is amazing. They have several kinds of ukuleles, so check that out. And thank you to them. And another thing we did this year is we made an album, and at this point I'm going to ask a special guest. This is my brother, Peter, who's our album model for the evening. That's Peter. A round of applause for Peter. Everybody. Thank you. So the small one he's holding, oh, do the other one first small the small one he's holding is a single that They Might Be Giants made. Sorry, I'm not explaining this Well, last year, I reached out to a bunch of musicians who are friends of WNYC, the kind of people that you would hear on the air, sometimes partly because it was WNYC anniversary, or centennial, 100th anniversary. And I said, Hey, I do this project. Would you want to do a song celebrates 100 years of music, 100 years of radio, more or less? And reached out to a bunch of those artists, some of them said yes, including They Might Be Giants who put together this single, which is available on their website if you buy it, which is great, you should WNYC doesn't get any money from that. So instead of that, or in addition to that, you can get this vinyl that we put together as the public song project, which is a full LP, and it features songs from Rhiannon, Giddens, Bela Fleck, the lemon twigs. Who else is on it? Peter, he doesn't remember it's got, yeah, Bella, fact, grana's Lemon Twix rose and cash is on it. Odyssey, DJ, Rick, lots of other people. You can check it out. We're gonna be not selling it. It'll be available by donation to WNYC after the show for a $30 donation. So just come to the table afterwards if you want to pick up a vinyl. And yeah, that's it for the vinyl. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Peter. You can also, if you don't want to get it tonight, you can go on to WNYC regular donation website anytime, and it's available there too. So that's the album. So now I'll talk about the plan for tonight, which is that you're going to hear five of the acts that submitted to the project in the last couple years. And this is a variety of performances. There are some sort of straight cover songs, there are adaptations of poetry, that kind of thing. One thing I like to say before we do these shows is that the artists that you are going to hear tonight, some of them don't necessarily make music professionally. Some of them do. Some of them don't. Some of them used to. Some of them are planning to in the future. So they're at varying levels, but a thing all excellent, obviously, but a thing that inspired this project for me in the first place was this idea that the public domain offers a resource that can inspire anybody creatively, and anybody has access to it. And that's a thing that I think is worth celebrating. And so I thank you for coming out to celebrate it tonight with us, and thanks. So without further ado, I want to bring on our first performer. Cat Lewis was one of the 2023 our first year of the project, one of the winners of the project for the song ice cream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream, which entered the public domain in 2023 so please welcome Kat. Lewis, another
thing that's going to happen tonight is I'll do like a quick interview with all the performers, just so you get to know them a little bit before they perform. Hi Cat. Thank you for coming out tonight. This is really cool, because Kat was on the show in 2023 but this is the first time that we met in person. Yeah. So I wanted to first ask you, what made you interested in getting involved in the project, and how did you land on ice cream? You scream. We all scream for ice cream.
Kat Lewis 15:38
Well, I heard about the project on all of it. And I don't know if Allison mentioned that that was one of the songs, but it was definitely on the list, the playlist, and, or on some list, and, and I was like, Oh, I know the chorus of that song. You know, we all know ice cream music, but I didn't know the rest of the song, yeah, which is fine, because the rest of the song,
Simon Close 16:02
it's really like, it's from the time that it was created, for sure.
Kat Lewis 16:07
And I was like, Okay, I get it. I get why. I don't know the rest of the song, but it's like, we
Simon Close 16:11
can rewrite the lyrics. This is something you can do with the public domain. Yes, rewrite the lyrics, keep the
Kat Lewis 16:17
chorus, because we all know and love the chorus. And you know, do do the song that
Simon Close 16:23
way? Yeah, definitely. You also added like textural elements, like found sound. There was ice cream truck sounds, kids voices. Can you talk a little bit about, if you want to go on WNYC website, you can listen to it. Obviously, you'll hear a slightly different version tonight. But if you could talk about how you put the recording together, yeah,
Kat Lewis 16:45
I don't know. Does anyone else here record like environmental sounds when they're walking around, some people, some people, all right, you know, sometimes you're out and you're like, Oh, this is like a symphony of real life. And so I record those things. And where I lived in Harlem for many years, there was a fire hydrant right outside my apartment, and they would open it up in the summer, and kids would play in the fire hydrant. And it was just the thing that happened. And so that was one of the things that I recorded. And there's an ice cream truck that also would park across the street, and sometimes there were two ice cream trucks, one at either end of the block, and it was just a great situation. So so some of those sounds got in there. And then also I went to a farm and recorded some cows mooing. And my my brother's dog really has a great voice, so put put him in the recording, and some cats and some kids. So yeah, it's a whole, whole group effort.
Simon Close 17:51
I am also asking everyone tonight, when you are not making music, what do you do?
Kat Lewis 17:57
Well, these days, I watch the live bald eagle cams on explore.org does anyone know explore.org All right, the bald eagles, they're laying eggs right now. Watch. Check it
Simon Close 18:12
out. Amazing, very exciting. Okay, quick. This is an opportunity for a shameless plug. Do you have any music coming out, or any other projects that you're working on, or maybe anything for sale tonight at a table in the back room.
Kat Lewis 18:24
Yes. Funny, yes. Back at a table there, there are some magnets that you know kind of go along with the ice cream theme, and they actually depict the specific ice cream treats that are mentioned in the song, so you can pick those up, and then some CDs. And I'm part of some shows that are free and around town. And Sam Dallas, who's playing with me tonight, we have a band called country city. We just released a song. It's on band camp. And, you know, come say hi, I'm going
Simon Close 19:02
to hand the stage over to you cat Luce, everyone. Thanks, diamond.
Kat Lewis 19:08
All right, now we're going to do the Ice Cream song. So as I said, it's a group effort, and you are totally invited and encouraged to sing along and howl. You know, the dog is in here so and the cow is in here and the cats are in here, and the babies are any babies here, now's the time do your vocal. Warm ups. Scream, right? I scream. You scream for real. We're here. Let's do it. My friend brado is going to join us. You he's on, he's on the recording. I called him up, and I was like, Hey, I'm putting you on speaker. And I put the microphone to the phone, and I said, sing along, you know? And he did, moolah, moolah. It's classic. And I was like, we can't really do the song without you, so. Go, thanks. All right, let's see if I remember how it goes. I think I'm just gonna do it
like in the land of summer fun playing in the hard, hot sun, there's one sound that we all love to hear up down to down downtown. They make a lovely sound when they play your favorite song, mega choco taco. Bucha pop, screwball chip
Sibyl 20:42
witch. Drumsick,
fire cracker, Ice Cream Sandwich cherry did when we hear it in a flash, we run home and grab some cash. This is what we all run out holler. Here we go, ice cream. You scream. We all shrimp for ice cream. Scream start Monday, they all scream.
Sunday.
Unknown Speaker 21:23
Thank you, thank you.
Kat Lewis 21:33
Thank you. You channel.
Simon Close 21:45
Kat Lewis, everyone
up next. We've got a submitter from last year's contest. Please welcome Kal Teaux, whose name I didn't check if I was saying right or not. Excellent. Kal Teaux, everyone. So Kal submitted its Ralph Chaplin poem from 1922 called the Red feast. Your version of the song is the feast. Yes, tell me about why Red was inappropriate for the title of the adaptation. Dude,
Kal Teaux 22:27
that's like a 45 minute answer. Man. Okay, so just briefly. Ralph Chaplin, if you're familiar with the song solidarity forever. Ralph Chaplin, Ralph Chaplin wrote that song, so I adapted. He wrote a book of poems while he was in prison called bars and shadows. The red feast is in it. Frankly, I think that there's been so much propaganda against all socialist and communist things for so long in America that it's difficult to parse for a lot of folks, so I took out the red but one of the things about learning these old protest songs is like, it's unfortunate how still relevant they are. It's like, there's a song, a song from 1910 about how the banks are corrupt. And I'm like, they knew that back then. We haven't fixed it yet.
Shit.
Simon Close 23:29
That's a short answer. That's a great answer. You You also organized something called the new folk revival. Can Tell me a little bit about that, and like in the context of the other music you make, or the way that you're involved in the music community? Totally,
Kal Teaux 23:42
yeah. So ostensibly, what I try and do is take some of those old protest songs and bring them into the 21st century, and tremendously inspired by Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, of course. But then they had the folk revival, the Greenwich Village folks. So I produce a monthly showcase called the new folk revival, because I think it's time we had a new one. We honored that tradition and pushed it forward. So that's a monthly showcase later on called the new folk revival. We'd love to see you there. And we also do our annual New folk revival festival in Prospect Park. Another part of the new folk revival is a fundraiser. Currently, the new folk revival is a fundraiser for the Amazon labor union. Because I very much believe in imbuing art with activism. What
Simon Close 24:31
do you do when you're not making music or imbuing art with activism?
Kal Teaux 24:36
It's most of what I do. No, let me say another thing, actually. So I produce another monthly show. It's called socialist variety hour. So that is a is that activism? I'm not sure that's another monthly show, but a variety show, not unlike what you're seeing this evening, musicians, comedians. That is a fundraiser as well, and we are bringing that socialist variety. 80 hour to caveat in May if you'd like to come by. So I think you know where it is. Yeah.
Simon Close 25:07
Kal Teaux, everyone. Thanks. You.
Kal Teaux 25:27
Whether it be yours to fall or to kill, you can't question why nor where. See the time. Tiny cross set apart. It took all those to make 1 million. When will we find that a nation's just the name and boundaries are things that simply don't exist, and what keeps people down world wide, The same it greed, the enemy we must
Speaker 1 26:29
me crash his cannons will roar enough. God give us peace again. The rats, the maggots and the lords of the war had to burst in front of men. When will we find that a nation's just a name and boundaries, I think, that simply don't exist, and what keeps people down world? Why does the same hate the enemy? We must resist. When will we find that the nation's just a boundary don't exist, and what keeps people down world wide, the Same it's greed in hate
Unknown Speaker 27:51
the enemy
Speaker 1 27:56
we must resist. Yay, thanks y'all
Simon Close 28:07
Kal Teaux everyone. Thank you. Kal All right. Next up, we've got a trio of Park Slope residents, any park stuff? Residents out here? Excellent. I know that that's my brother again, hammer County. Please welcome hammer County.
So my first question is, what is hammer County? How did this group come to be? Oh,
Hammer County 28:41
well, I think we all have our own opinions, but nine pound hammer, to me is John Henry. I'm always loving that song, and it's the man beating the machine. It's like keeping it real, keeping it local, keeping it small. Cabaret. Yeah, small. But, oh, that's to say somebody else had the name nine pound hammer, and they're like a metal band in Seattle that's way bigger than us. So we had to change our name because, yeah, all our traffic kept going to them,
Simon Close 29:12
because people might get confused between the
Emilio Cuesta 29:15
two. And then, yes, they did. And we even went to Berlin, and they were plastered all over the busses the day we were going to play like a really tiny place in Berlin. So that's when we decided we had to change it. And the only like email that we could find that was available was hammer counting. Nobody had it
Hammer County 29:33
that said we did pick up a lot of Facebook friends, because people thought they were signing up for them, and we got them,
Simon Close 29:40
and I'm sure they were delighted to not it was a metal band. So the song that you submitted to the project last year is down where they make the gas. It's based on a poem by Michael J Shea from 1899 Can you tell me a little bit about where the story of this poem? Because it's a pretty good story.
Emilio Cuesta 30:01
Yeah. Well, we were, we were originally provided the text by a friend, Lana Schweitzer, who handed it off, and it was as we understood it. It was like a Photostatic text, Photostatic picture of a text from a Brooklyn Eagle article and or, as we found out, a poem that had been published in the eagle, and it's about a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Gowanus, which now is of such renown, but then was nasty, and some would say still is, has some attributes of questionable charm. And so over 100 years ago, it was always industrial, but it was also a place where, you know, they, they, they manufactured and stored and then transmitted gas, natural gas, and other kinds of gas, gas for lighting, and it was stinky, and they would keep goats There to, sort of, I don't know, help mitigate the stink, which that doesn't really add up either, but it was, it was a poem, and Lana gave us this text, and when I read it, I it felt to me like it, the immediate idea was a kind of adenoidal, sustained sort of
Unknown Speaker 31:20
like which
Emilio Cuesta 31:24
goes with the narrative I feel like, and that was kind of the, I mean, like, that was literally the first impulse was, as you'll hear, was this kind of agony of the back of The nose and
Simon Close 31:40
very, very go on and burger can tell
Emilio Cuesta 31:42
you a little more about the poet.
Hammer County 31:43
I mean, Shea was. What's great about it is he was a poem, a poet, but he he emigrated from candy county Tipperary in Ireland in 1863 and then he worked draining gas pipes all over, all over Brooklyn. So he kind of had first hand experience of of gas strips. And they called him the gas strip bar was his name, and he played at weddings and funerals and all over Brooklyn up until the 40s. So he would have done, he might have done a version of his own of this song, amazing,
Simon Close 32:12
lightning round. What do you do when you're not hammer County? I'm
Speaker 2 32:16
a staff writer at The New Yorker, and I write about music and food and weird subcultures.
Emilio Cuesta 32:25
So this is Burkhart, Bill Gert, and this is Jennifer Nelson. My name is Mike Shapiro, and I'm an actor and a songwriter and working on those projects right now. Jennifer, I
teach elementary school music, and we love the public domain. Thank
Simon Close 32:41
you. Thank you hammer County, everyone.
Emilio Cuesta 32:47
We have a very sophisticated, high tech way of finding our note. You guys hear that, okay, okay, good.
Speaker 3 33:02
Mmm. Whom
Hammer County 33:10
way way down in old glass Slab City and darbys patch where squatters lived in years gone by, all jumbled in a batch that frisky goat he roamed at will and to The bird as grass but his years ago, since Sandy grew down where they made the gas, the odors I hate In it with the smell that rises from the old canal, I guess you know it.
Well. Moo. Mmm.
The air be full of micro. Just hold your breath and pass or you'll get a fixation down where they beg the gas. Yes, you'll get as Fixies sure down where they make the gas.
Simon Close 35:05
Amber County, everyone, Our next performer tonight came all the way from Massachusetts. Please welcome Nicole das Gupta.
Where are you going? Um Can talk here, so I've been talking too much. So this is going to be a quick one,
which is ok, because you and I know each other outside, yes, breaking the fourth wall. So the song you did is tonight, you belong to me by Billy rose and Lee David from 1926 Correct. Tell me about your relationship with that song, how you chose it for the project,
Nikhil Dasgupta 35:40
yeah, so after you said the title, I didn't know any of that other information is what I'm here for. Yeah, I'm, yeah. I'm a little intimidated, because everyone here is so, like, well informed, so deeply in love with the public domain. I think that's really awesome. I heard about this because I heard Zoe Deschanel singing it with her band. So, you know, I reach this because I like watching New Girl, and I think Zoe Deschanel is cute. So we all have our own journeys, right? But so, you know, Simon is, we go way back, and he's doing this project, which I think is just like this cool, really, really exciting thing that's happening. And I wanted to do submission last time, and they were doing a special. It was like something from the 20s. And I was like, I only know one song that's kind of old. And I checked it, and it was from the 20s. So I recorded it and submitted my little songwriter version of it, I guess. And that's I do think it's a wonderful and really beautiful song. And I'm glad to be here and didn't play
Simon Close 36:36
it. I think so too. And you're gonna hear that quick plug. Nick Hill makes his own music, and you can hear more about him on WBUR from a recent interview he did, and you can hear that music otherwise. But now you're gonna listen to this song right now. Thanks for the plug,
Speaker 4 36:49
thanks for listening. Have to give me a hot Second for some technical difficulties. It's
Hammer County 37:42
But tonight, you belong
to me, although we're a part, you're a
Nikhil Dasgupta 37:53
part of my heart.
Hammer County 38:01
And tonight, you belong
Nikhil Dasgupta 38:09
to me, way down by the stream. How sweet it would seem, once more, just a Dream. Just a
dream, my honey, you belong
to me. Belong to
me, way down across the street. How very, very sweet it would seem, once more, just a dream and silvering moonlight. Glory, Moonlight, my honey, I know will
be gone. You belong to me, just
Unknown Speaker 39:28
thank you so much. Everyone, thank you.
Simon Close 39:35
Nicole Dasgupta, everyone, thank you, Nicole. All right, we've got our last performers for the public song project portion of the evening tonight. And they are the sibling duo, Sibyl. Please welcome them to the stage.
Lily and Chloe Holgate, you're you are Sybil um. You. Let's see, I only have like a second to ask you one question. Let's talk about the song that you submitted to the project, and maybe Edna St Vincent Millay in general. So they submitted adaptation of a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay, which is really interesting, because probably that's the most frequent writer that we get submitted to this project. So I want to know, like, how you found that poem, and sort of how she fits into your music generally. So,
Sibyl 40:25
gosh, we discovered her poetry kind of early on. I think we were probably in high school, and we have an album of songs by a composer, Ricky Ian Gordon, and he said a lot of her poetry, and it just lends itself really well to vocal music, to vocal music. Yeah,
Simon Close 40:47
great. Well, I have spoken too much, and so I've taken your time. And this is Sybil for the public song project. Wow.
Sibyl 40:58
So this song is called Witch wife. It's not the one that you would have heard on the radio when we won the public song project, but it is another one of her poems that we set, and we have another show coming up at Arlene's Grocery on February 26 and at the jalopy theater in March. And we are making an album so you can find us online for more music. Thank you so much. Is this all good
Unknown Speaker 41:29
for me? I think
Sibyl 41:42
so. Okay, hmm, ha,
Speaker 5 41:59
ha, Ah, she's neither
Unknown Speaker 42:19
pink nor pillow.
Speaker 5 42:32
Neither pink nor she. She learned her hands in a fairy tale
Speaker 3 42:41
and her mouth on
Speaker 3 42:55
a Valentine, She has more hair than she means alone for me,
Unknown Speaker 43:00
Woe to me, a string of colored
Unknown Speaker 43:13
bees or steps
Speaker 5 43:16
leading into the sea. Loves me all that she can and her ways to my ways resign. But she was not made for any Man, and she never will be
Unknown Speaker 44:02
all my
Sibyl 44:36
Thank you so much. Thank you
Simon Close 44:42
that's Sibyl everyone, and this has been the public song project. A reminder, the website is wnyc.org/public, Song project. To find more information, we're accepting submissions of songs through April 28 so don't wait until. April 28 to send in your song, but you can, if you end up doing that. And again, we've got those vinyls. Peter, do you want to hold up that vinyl again? That's the vinyl. Thank you. After the show, I'll be over there. And if you want to pick up a vinyl, you can, or you can get it online later on. Thank you again. And thank you to all the performers. And now I'm going to ask Jenny to come out and introduce necromancers.
Speaker 6 45:28
Thank you so much to all of the WNYC performers who came out. And while we have everyone here, I want to preemptively give a huge round of applause to all of the performers tonight who just, who did this, who did this for pure creativity and just the joy of performance, which is really, really beautiful. I'm not even gonna say anything about necromancers, because you're really in for a treat, and you'll catch on the theme very quickly. And I am delighted to welcome Ayun Halliday East Village creative and the emcee of necromancers of the public domain coming up. Thank you. Applause.
Ayun Halliday 46:27
The moving picture is an illusion. It is also an industry. Half a million people labor, so that several 100 million others will spend a billion dollars a year to see about 1000 feature pictures, the majority of which are so stupid, tasteless and wearisome that no man of average intelligence could bear to look at them twice. Half a dozen people have in the 30 years of the movie's existence, created perhaps a score of films which have interested men and women of intelligence and have suggested that the moving picture is, or can be, an art. It seems a small accomplishment, especially when placed against the vast bulk of silly and
commonplace movies. Let's necro now.
Unknown Speaker 48:02
Thank you.
Ayun Halliday 48:05
So this is the necromancers of the public domain portion of the show, and how it works is I go to the New York society library, wonderful place, and I choose a book from the public domain, and this year's book was published in 1929 it's an hour with the movies and the talkies by Gilbert seldice. And then I read the book, and I farm it out to a bunch of other performers, singer songwriters, comedians, monologolists. We had a stripping clown one time, burlesque dancers, you know, who's ever around? And they all read it, or give it a very good skim, hopefully, and we mark it up. We can see the next slide to see how, yeah, we get we so we read it really hard, and then everybody makes an act that's based on some part of the book. It can be a sentence. It can be somebody who's mentioned it. Maybe it's the author's life. It could be a chapter, whatever. So this is our book, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about the author, Gilbert Seldes, okay,
so this book is part of a series. Some of the other titles in the series include one hour with American music, one hour with the French novel, one hour with the newspapers and one hour with physics, and they were all written by experts in their respective fields, and Gilbert Seldes definitely qualifies. Here's something that I got. Off of Wikipedia because I didn't know who he was. Did anybody know who Gilbert Seldes was? Okay, good. It works. Sell this belief in the democratization of culture characterized his career. In the 1920s he rejected conventional understandings of jazz, film, comics, vaudeville and Broadway as banal, immoral and esthetically questionable. He did not limit art to its high culture, normative of European forms like opera, ballet and classical music. And he also did not believe that culture was inherently ordered, or that it demanded rigorous training to create and understand. So, yeah, I think he qualifies, even if none of us have heard of him. And he actually, he wrote a ton of books that are, sadly only one of them is currently in print, the stammering century, which was published the year before, an hour with the movie and the talkies, and it's about cults, manias and various Mad Men of the 19th century. I think that sounds awesome, so you're going to hear more about Gilbert later on, but real quick, he was also the editor and drama critic of the seminal modernist magazine the dial. He was a Broadway playwright who wrote adaptations of Lysistrata and A Midsummer Night's Dream. And here's a little fun fact for all of you theater geeks out there, he was the father of actor Marion soldies, and he hosted the NBC television program the subject is jazz in 1958 so I was doing a little research and trying to decide whether or not this would be a worthy book to resurrect as a one night only New York City variety show. Because, you know, 1929 was a different time, and sometimes you find out that the author was a Nazi or a eugenicist? Well, maybe 1929, wasn't such a different time. In full transparency, I do want to let you know that he was a great admirer of Birth of a Nation, but I think it was for its cinematic innovations. I was relieved to see him denouncing the source material as a cheap piece of sensationalism and prejudice. So nearly 100 years later, we can't exhume him and ask him, What did you mean by that? But I also found out in my research that he was a huge fan of crazy cat and her Creator, George Herriman. Yes, me too. So and he loved, loved. He loved Charlie Chaplin. Seriously, if you are a Chaplin fan, do yourself a favor and read this book and then maybe write a song about it. And on that note, I am going to call to the stage our first necromancer. He is a first time Necromancer, Emilio questa, please come to the stage. And while Emilio is grabbing his guitar, I should make clear Gilbert refers often to the movies and the talkies. And as far as he is concerned, the movies are silent movies, and the talkies, which were something very new, were something that weren't movies. The talkies were something unto themselves. All right, you're here. I'll take my phone off. Your music stand. Keep vamping. Okay, what's your favorite movie from 1929 anybody? Coconuts? Okay? Is everybody's favorite movie from 1929 coconuts? Yeah, me too, the Marx Brothers. All right. Emilio gave a thumbs up, and he's getting his guitar from the corner. So Emilio Cuesta, thank you,
Emilio Cuesta 54:06
everybody. First of First of all, give it up to Anne. Just, just great vibes, great stage presence. She's actually a big part of and her husband Greg, why I got into music so really happy to be here the first chapter. It was really interesting, because, you know how things are real, but they aren't like constructs, time, money, gender, you know, just things that we give meaning to. The first chapter did that with with cinema. So this about that I realized I started writing it, and I realized that the same progression as despacito, but, but, you know, it's or at least the verse, but that's a vibe. So, so yeah, all right, it's a. It's okay, here we go.
Moving Pictures in my mind, an illusion we will never find, watching scenes that play themselves. A species can't figure it out, a delusion in the mirror, a ghost speaks my name. I'm stuck inside the movie, but I'm caught in Someone's frame.
Hammer County 55:57
Frames fall like raindrops too fast for the eyes to see, paint your picture of a memory, but none of them belong to me. Love is a moving picture, that face with destiny. I'm a character on paper, but I don't know what's left of me. It's a dream, it's a scene. It's a turning wheel, humans caught in between, fades black, the camera pans, lost in an endless laugh. Where does the hero go? Distorted lens of life, flashbacks of aborted stripes, a reflection with no face, an echo with no trace. Cinema. Helps us find the mystery of the human race. Oh,
up times a moving picture. No image is ever the same. I'm stuck inside a movie, but I'm lost without a name caught between the frames tons of actors names in this special moment, there is no one to blame. Thank you.
Ayun Halliday 58:22
And I can feel the vortex opening. Gilbert, can you feel the vortex opening? Okay, I'm gonna call Jordan fight to the stage, but I'm gonna read a little portion of the book that might feel germane the spectator seeing a fairly silly love scene in the movies, and perhaps without knowing it, hearing at the same time Beautiful Music has attached a greater emotional significance to the scene than it deserved for itself. Even had the film been less good, the music would have suggested its inner quality. The talkies, to an extent, destroy the illusion which the movie and music could build up. A skillful director of movies may create a scene of intense emotion, but if instead of music, we have drab words without the pulse and cadence of an appropriately poetic speech, the scene will lose effect. I have to this is kind of a spoiler, but maybe you're not going to go home and read this book. But like it takes in the final 10 pages, Gilbert's like, well, you know what? Actually, these, these talkies, they're in their infancy. Maybe the people. People who are making them will figure it out and they can become art. But he really took many, many pages to get there. So now we're going to have a film in a minute, and it was made by someone, Connor Calista, who is an actual film editor with an I am DB page and everything. Here's what Gilbert had to say about film editors, incredible as it may seem, directors finished their contracts when they gave to the cameraman their final signal to cut or save it, ie to save the costly electrical power of the studio lamps say, save it. The unarranged and tentatively titled film went to the producers, and there a new set of workers took it in hand. In general, it may be assumed that the director had made his intentions clear, and if he took two scenes which he meant to run as parallel action, the cutter arranged them in alternation in the final print of the film. But for a long time, the work of cutting was so ill considered that a cutter could change emphasis, delete scenes essential to the director's conception of his theme, and distort the story, and then he goes to bust a little bit on the movies, on the silent movies, while the title writer, who was supposed to follow A set of tentative working titles, was able to change the title of a picture entirely, and in one case at least, to save a disappointing film from being discarded, by writing in the titles an entirely new story into which The taken and assembled pictures were made to fit. Okay, we're gonna keep it moving. We have an interactive quiz with prizes. Who knows about film and what's prizes? Whoever sent me? You get up here? Okay, we got me.
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:02:22
Who else you who right, come here, come on
up. All right, fantastic. What is your name? My name's Margie. All right, we
got Margie. And how about you? Mark, Margie and Mark, okay, Margie, here's the bell for you, Mark. Come on over here.
Ayun Halliday 1:02:46
Here's your bell. Here's your mic. Just down here, Mark. So we have Margie, we have Mark, and we have some questions. I hope Mark wasn't sneaking a look at my clipboard there. Okay, you didn't see anything, did you? All right, let's start this quiz. I guess maybe the audience, you know, you can help out, but you're gonna see some things, so you know, don't help them too much. All right, here is your first question in the quiz. And I think Lenny, can we get the slide up behind them? Fantastic. Okay, don't peak in 1914. The year of Charlie Chaplin's first picture, Mary Pickford received a contract for $2,000 a week. Two years later, she was commanding how much per year do I ring my bell? Yeah, ring your bell. 200,000 200,000 mark. Do you have 5000 Oh, I'm sorry, the answer is a million dollars a year for me. All right, that's a zero score. But no worries, because we got others. Okay, what was the most popular genre for films in the seven year period between 1908 and 1914 was it a romance? B, Western, C, Rags to Riches, or D, melodrama, melodrama? Oh, no, it was, oh, that's a point for Mark. It was westerns. All right, sorry about that. Margie is somebody keeping score out there. We got mark on one. Okay? Now, given that we know that Westerns were the most popular genre for that aforementioned period, could you name three tropes of Westerns of that period?
Speaker 7 1:04:48
Boy gets girl, boy gets girl, boy gets horse. Boy gets horse.
Ayun Halliday 1:04:55
Keep it. Keep feeding me where you're getting warmer. I think
Speaker 2 1:04:58
there's a new. Sheriff in town. There's a new sheriff
Ayun Halliday 1:05:01
in town. I think that must have come later in in Western history, Margie, cattle rustling, cattle wrestling. Yes, that was a trope. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:16
there's no rain. There's no rain.
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:05:19
Bank robbing, bank
Ayun Halliday 1:05:22
robbing, one more audience. You want to throw an assist? Revenge? Shoot Out. Shout out. All right, I'm going to give that point to Margie, and here's the answers, the Roundup, the false branding of cattle, the stampede, the quarrels between ranchers, the tender foot, who made good, the cowboy who turned out to be a gentleman, the crossing of the plains, the saga of the covered wagon, the search for gold, the vigilantes, the massacre by the Native Americans, except he didn't call him that, the struggle against the Mexicans and the development of the West. And don't forget whiskey for everybody. Whiskey All Around Don't forget to tip your saloon keeper. Okay, now it's a complete the sentence question, when your characters are dogs or visitors from Mars or the peculiar little children, English humorists invent it is easy to be on the internet. On the internet, well, that wasn't invented. Upstaged. Upstaged. Upstaged. No, it would be the answer is imaginative. When your characters are dogs or visitors for Mars or peculiar little English children, that humorous. Invent. It's easy to be imaginative. That's okay. Don't worry, you're tied right now. Okay, next question in an hour with the talkies and the movies, Gilbert Seldes provides three excuses directors and producers might give for churning out unoriginal, uncreative work. Which of these is not one of those excuses, commercial pressure, false esthetic theory, crazy power, drunk stars, or the demands of the patrons, the demands of the movie. Going public, if you're gonna make an excuse for why your movie's bad, which one wouldn't you say
Sibyl 1:07:25
demands of the public?
Ayun Halliday 1:07:27
It's crazy power drunk star. You guys are neck and neck. Let's keep going. Okay, this one's a two parter, the advance guard critics of these are Gilbert's words, not mine. The advance guard critics of today are almost unanimous in choosing blank as one of the greatest of all directors. Was it Eric Von Stroheim, DW Griffith zvolier, the podolkin, or Robert Florey,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:02
Griffin
Ayun Halliday 1:08:04
Marjorie, sorry, it's the one I can't pronounce. Podolskin. Has anyone heard of him? Nobody went to film school me either? Okay, let's keep going. Well, this is really gonna get tough, so now that the advanced guard critics of today are almost unanimous in choosing Vlasov did povkovkin as one of the greatest of all directors, and his film blah as an undisputed masterpiece. Now I'm looking for the title of that undisputed masterpiece. Was it a intolerance B, storm over Asia, three, greed. Four, the life and death of 9413, a Hollywood, extra,
Jennie Rose Halperin 1:08:53
intolerance, the death of 94130,
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:08:57
you guys are so good. But actually the answer is, storm over
Ayun Halliday 1:09:02
Asia. I hope you're not embarrassed by this, because I don't know any of this either. I'm just holding the clipboard. Okay, here we go. Oh, and how about that original poster art? It's pretty cool, right? Okay, storm over Asia. I think you might be able to see it on YouTube. Okay, this is the final question. It's the tie breaker. You all are tied.
Emilio Cuesta 1:09:22
Okay, deep
Ayun Halliday 1:09:25
breath. It's a fill in the blank, and it kind of speaks to Gilbert's feelings about industry versus art, a director ordered to produce a film of Hamlet with blah as the star female player would produce an Ophelia, which it might be worth considerable trouble to avoid, but he would be doing his duty to his employers. So who is a big star, who would have been horrible Ophelia in this. This film of Hamlet. Is it? A, Gloria Swanson, B, Clara Bow the it. Girl three, Anna, Mae Wong or d4 I think I'm mixing them up. Louise Brooks,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:16
Clara Bowe,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:18
Clara Bo Oh. Margie
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:10:20
got it. Clara. VO, okay, wait, you got
Jennie Rose Halperin 1:10:28
prizes? Enemy, Wong, would have been amazing. Yeah, everyone
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:10:30
did amazing. Everybody wins you both get water bottle. Oh, and you each get a
Ayun Halliday 1:10:41
power bank from the engelberg center, something Gilbert would not even know what it was, you'd be like, is it a door stop? I don't know. And Margie by pulling ahead by 1.0
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:10:52
my gosh.
Sibyl 1:10:54
Oh my goodness.
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:10:58
Mark, you've been Margie. Oh, yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. All
Ayun Halliday 1:11:05
right. So very sad time now I'm afraid it's time that we return an hour with the movies and the talkies to the vortex and also it's author Gilbert Seldes. Can you imagine what he would have made of the talkies of today, streaming services? I mean, come on, all right. But before we before we send them back into the vortex, will you please join me in a closing refrain,
Sibyl 1:11:41
all together.
Ayun Halliday 1:11:43
Now we can follow the bouncing ball. The essential thing, of course, is for the talkie to become thoroughly itself, to be not symphonic music, not opera, not movie, a distinct thing, growing and changing in accordance with its own laws as human beings grow as
Nikhil Dasgupta 1:12:15
All the arts grow. Thank you so much. That's necromancers of the public domain. Thank you to
Ayun Halliday 1:12:27
everybody. Michael, Jenny Garros, we're the owner of the apes, Simon, all the performers. And thank you to you, and thank you to Deborah, the house manager. And thank you to Lenny and the booth. And thank you to your bartenders, and you can hang out because we got this place for a little bit longer. Simon, did you want to say something?
Simon Close 1:12:46
Thank you? The more Texas club.
Announcer 1:12:55
The engelberg center live podcast is a production of the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law, unlike most episodes of the podcast, this episode is not released under a Creative Commons license. All rights in the performances have been retained by the respective performers. Our theme music is by Jessica Batke and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, 4.0 international license, you.