This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks for "unique" videos reviewers have seen recently.
Unique? Err umm...I imagine that means no popular songs of bygone years, nothing in the "Stupid Pet Tricks" genre, no tales of the unexplained, no collections of moments in sports, no tours of small towns where the vlogger's in-laws happen to have real estate for sale, no people reading their own poetry, no political rants, no high school marching bands, no hidden cameras spying on wildlife, no demonstrations of cooking or knitting or battery-changing, no Stern Du Tube collections, no "relaxing" videos of raindrops sliding down windowpanes or animals scampering in gardens. Those can be fun but each one has become a genre. By now YouTube is so densely populated that by "unique" I suspect it's only possible to mean "bizarre."
I think the most unusual thing I shared recently might be a video of church academy students rehearsing for a church performance on the shore of their favorite lake, with the lead tenors actually paddling in canoes as they sang. Has that become a genre yet? It could easily have done! *lemmecheck*
Actually, it has sort of done. Google's plagiarism bot actually offers comparative ratings of different church school bands and choirs. Well, this one's new to me. What makes this video special is that, American though they sound, the college is in Fiji. Most, though not all, of the students are Fijians who have never visited the United States.
Now this church school group may still be unique. It's a tough act to follow. In the mid-twentieth century some people at Andrews University thought it would be fun to combine orchestra, pop band, choir, AND gymnastics performances in one show, thus reducing the amount of study time students would lose to travelling with more than one group. Andrews is a good-sized school and has other musical groups besides the Gymnics, but the Gymnics became famous because, most years, they've been unique. Their performances can be long. This video link is for a full concert: two and a half hours. Well, that's what the "pause" button is for.
I have mixed feelings about these church school groups. I belonged to some of them, shortly after the cooling of the earth's crust. Andrews University was where I got chronic mononucleosis from the unnecessary measles vaccination.
And this is the school that tried to double-bill Grandma Bonnie Peters. But they always did have a solid classical music program, and, I'm glad to learn, still have, even now that it's changed its name and become even more pretentious than it was in the Awesome Eighties.
Enough. Have I found anything really unusual that's not in the church school concert genre? Of course I have. One of the Substacks I've followed longest belongs to Wu Fei, an expert in classical Chinese music, specifically the zitherlike instrument called the guzheng. She's been sent on tours of other countries to build a repertoire of non-Chinese music and compose new, foreign-influenced music for the guzheng. In the summer of 2023 she published this video of improvising a Duet for Guzheng and Freight Train.
I posted that link to Glen Campbell's playing the "William Tell Overture" on a guitar, playing a few bars with the guitar on top of his head, just last week. That's too recently to post it again, isn't it? I'll mention it, but it's not on this list. Scroll down.
The thought of "unique videos" made me think of a TV show of bygone years called "You Asked for It," where a TV personality, formerly best known for imitations of other people's voices, travelled around filming things most US audiences hadn't seen and did not necessarily believe existed. One winter when we were in Florida occupying one of my aunt's properties, my brother and I watched at least a half-dozen half-hours of "You Asked for It." I think both of our favorite sequence was a brass band who "marched" on bicycles. At the time the presenter said that such a band was unique to Belgium. Now, Google says, Belgium doesn't have an active bicycle-mounted band any more but the Netherlands has a few highly rated ones.
"You Asked for It" tended to focus on odd local customs, the kind of thing travellers would describe when they came home and their families would say "I'd have to see that to believe it."
Did fishermen really train cormorants to catch fish for them? Yes. It's not so much a matter of training as it is of restraining. The birds naturally want to catch fish. They need no training, just a little practice, to catch fish for themselves. Each tame bird has a little leash around its neck so that it can easily swallow small fish, but has to bring bigger fish to its human. The birds aren't hurt; arguably their family lives are disrupted by living with humans, but, also arguably, as with many wild animals, the individuals in captivity enjoy more protection from predators and live longer. The tradition is preserved for tradition's sake, although it's no longer considered a viable way to earn a living--not competitive with more modern fishing techniques. It's more a matter of knowing how to do what one's ancestors did. It is hard to imagine anyone wanting a cormorant as a pet but the birds do seem to recognize and go to their men (cormorant fishing was traditionally done by fathers and sons). And if you want to see how it's done, click here:
Nobody actually wanted to watch how "head hunters" traditionally shrank severed human heads, which I think might have been on a different show. We did watch a minute or two of Los Penitentes, a Spanish-Portuguese-American brotherhood of men who try to atone for their sins by beating themselves bloody with whips and carrying wooden crosses about. Apparently this induces a sort of stress "high," like a Sun Dance, which is felt like spiritual joy. A group of "The Penitents" let the TV man videotape their procession, no doubt in exchange for a generous donation to their (Catholic) church. Google has enough videos of these processions that they're not unique. I'm glad. I can't say that they're not on a valid spiritual path but, if they are, I don't think it'd be respectful to watch their self-flagellation on video.
As I recall, "You Asked for It" featured many nice, uncontroversial documentation of traditional arts and crafts techniques. People would feed the producers questions like "Do Shetland knitters really cut knitted fabric?" or "Do glass artists really blow air into hollow beads of molten glass through pipes like giant drinking straws?" The answer to both questions is yes, but if you want to try cutting knitted fabric I must emphasize the importance of knitting with Shetland wool, which sticks to itself enough that the fabric won't unravel when cut, as cotton or acrylic would do.
"Are there towns in England that still really pay a Town Crier to shout the news out loud?" As I recall, the "You Asked for It" show gave the impression that the producers had interviewed the last living Town Crier, but reportedly towns still employ these people and there are trainings and competitions for them:
And fans used to throw the host, Rich Little, softballs like "I want to see your imitation of..." some other TV person. So much for that show. Some other memorable spectacles that I don't think have become genres, yet...
Well...Berea College had a special traditional relationship with Tibet, and once hosted a group who performed the Lhamo Folk Opera. Obviously a different group, by now much older, than this group:
Whereas Andrews University once hosted the Wiener Sangerknaeben, Vienna Boys' Choir. That would have been different boys than the ones in this recording, too.
And I remember, on a road trip, being summoned to watch a Chinese performance on a grainy black-and-white motel TV screen. I don't remember whether it was Shen Yun but it was their sort of thing, and Shen Yun is/are another tough act to follow and has/have not become a genre.
If onlyYouTube and TikTok videos count, here's a YouTube alternate. Their goal is to add at least one video from each country on the continent.
And that makes ten!
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