It’s hot … as in Sahara desert hot, except with humidity that makes it feel like Satan’s armpit. But if it’s going to be Sahara hot, we may as well spend A Night in Tunisia …

This jazz standard was written by Dizzy Gillespie in 1941, and quickly became a well known standard. The exotic, sweltering sound is woven by a funky bassline and a repeating chord progression which uses a jazz “trick” of substituting an expected chord with the tonality a tritone away (in this case, we want to hear A, we get Eb instead – this interval A-Eb is known as a tritone, or the “devil’s interval”). Also, an Eb chord in a D minor piece implies a Phrygian mode, which is a scale we commonly associate with the “exotic” lands of the African Mediterranean or middle east. So, the Eb chord is doing double duty: exoticism AND devilish trick. And we like it.

Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the overture from the suite.

Hear the rollicking scherzo from earlier this week!

Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the rollicking scherzo from the suite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksLWUBXHQ8w