HOME |
RSS | 
Mastering a musical instrument is a challenge to begin with, but when an injury ruins someone’s ability to play, that generally is the end of their career. Fortunately, some great musicians have been able to work beyond their injuries and relearn to play, in some cases, making them even better musicians than they ever were before.
Jazz fans and gypsy music lovers adore Reinhardt, although the name isn’t familiar to many other music fans. Even so, he was a wildly inspirational musician who pioneered his own style of jazz that blended gypsy roots with jazz guitar. His music has since been featured on about a dozen movies, including The Matrix, L.A. Story, Chocolat and more.
Reinhardt started learning to play music as a boy, starting with the violin and then moving to the banjo and the guitar. When he was 18 though, tragedy struck. Django and his wife were living in a caravan where they sold imitation flowers made from celluloid and paper to supplement their meager income. When Reinhardt accidentally knocked down a candle on his way to bed, the caravan burst into flames, destroying all of his property and leaving him with first- and second-degree burns over the entire left side of his body.
As a result of the accident, his right leg and the 3rd and 4th fingers on his left hand were completely paralyzed. Doctors said he would have to get his leg amputated and that he would never play a string instrument again. But Reinhardt refused to get the surgery and within a year, he was able to walk with the use of a cane. While his fingers never recovered, the doctors were wrong about his music career as well.
As it happens, learning to play guitar again may have saved his life. Reinhardt ended up getting stuck in France during WWII and it was said that and handful of jazz-loving Nazis ensured his safety despite the fact that thousands of Gypsies were murdered under Nazi-occupied territories. To help protect himself further, he also developed a distinctively non-jazz sound to please the Nazis who, like the majority of their party, were adamantly against jazz.
Interestingly, Django wasn’t just influential when it came to jazz musicians, he also played a major role in the creation of heavy metal. You might be asking yourself how in the world a gypsy jazz musician helped create one of the darkest genres around, but the answer isn’t in his sound, it’s in his story.
You see, guitarist Tony Iommi was talented, but he came from a poor, working-class family so he was forced to work at a sheet metal factory as a youngster, rather than chase his dreams of rock n’ roll stardom. Unfortunately, industrial factories aren’t the safest place for the hands of budding musicians. On his last day of work, Iommi severed the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. As a leftie, this meant his fretting hand was destroyed. Unsurprisingly, the teen was heart-broken and convinced this would be the end of his musical aspirations. However, his boss from the factory inspired Iommi to stick with his craft by bringing him a Django Reinhardt album and telling him about the jazz musician’s injury.
The inspiration worked like a charm and soon enough, Iommi was trying to remaster the guitar. At first he tried learning to play right-handed, but when that didn’t work, Iommi instead developed a few prosthetic fingertips using plastic covered in leather. Because his prosthetic fingers weren’t as tough as the real thing, Iommi started using lighter strings and detuning the strings so the tension would be lowered. To match Iommi’s sound, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler did the same, and suddenly, the dark, deep sound of heavy metal was born solely as a technique to work around an injury.
more …
I don’t know about you guys, but I have a serious girl-crush on Tina Fey. It’s hard not to when the woman in question is unbelievably talented, smart, funny and beautiful. That’s why I’m so happy to get to write this Neatorama article about one of my biggest idols, who will be celebrating her forty-first birthday today. So for all you other SNL and 30 Rock fans, please join me in wishing Tina Fey a very happy birthday by enjoying these fascinating facts about one of the world’s most influential women (and that’s not just me speaking, see fact #7 for more details).
Image via David Shankbone [Flickr]
Liz Lemon’s first name is actually Ms. Fey’s real first name. “Tina” was actually born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. To be fair, at least Tina isn’t a complete stage name, it’s just not her real first name. In case you’ve ever wondered, she was born to a brokerage employee of Greek descent and a university grant proposal writer of German and Scottish descent.
If you’ve ever looked closely enough at one of her movies or shows, you may have noticed that Tina has a fairly large scar on the left side of her cheek. While she refuses to talk about it, her husband finally revealed the story during a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair –and the story is a little terrifying.
According to Tina’s husband, she was playing in the front yard of her house when she was five years old and someone randomly came by and slashed her face with a razor. It happened so fast that when it happened, she thought someone marked her with a pen.
Tina says she doesn’t like to talk about the incident because she doesn’t want to seem like she is exploiting the trauma for attention. She’s also said that talking about it upsets her parents.
If you watch 30 Rock (or pretty much any of her work), you’ll notice the show overwhelmingly features her standing with her right side to the camera –that’s why.
Image via Vivanista1 [Flickr]
Canine musical freestyle returns to the TV show Britain’s Got Talent! Tina and her dog Chandi put on quite a show. -via Buzzfeed
Previously at Neatorama: Carolyn Scott and the amazing Rookie.
Sometimes talent is sparked, or maybe just revealed, in the strangest ways.
Imagine having a stroke, a severe brain injury or a tumor and suddenly waking up one day to find you’ve developed artistic talents to rival Picasso. It sounds impossible, but the brain is a mysterious organ, and sometimes, damage causes it to rewire itself in ways that reveal new talents even in people who could barely doodle a stick figure. From the engineer on disability who became a sought-after digital artist after a stroke to a woman whose dementia spurred remarkable creative output, these 10 artists were all transformed by neurological trauma or disorders.
Pictured is Alison Silva, who chose not to have a brain tumor removed because it improved her painting talent. Link -via Buzzfeed
This egg shell art is truly stunning. InventorSpot has more pictures of these lovely, detailed art pieces by artist Ron Cheruka.
This crochet coral reef is amazing. It’s actually an attempted replica of the Great Barrier Reef. The variety of textures and colors is as full as those in the reef itself. It took years to make, which can be easily recognized just by the look of it.
“Vast in scale, collective in construction, exquisitely detailed, the Crochet Reef is an unprecedented, hybridic, handicraft invocation of a natural wonder that has become, in itself, a new kind of wonder spawned from tens of thousands of hours of labor.”
Link Via Boing Boing
