text: The NCBI Bookshelf is a collection of freely accessible, downloadable, online versions of selected biomedical books. The Bookshelf covers a wide range of topics including molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, disease states from a molecular and cellular point of view, research methods, and virology. Some of the books are online versions of previously published books, while others, such as "Coffee Break", are written and edited by NCBI staff. The Bookshelf is a complement to the Entrez PubMed repository of peer-reviewed publication abstracts in that Bookshelf contents provide established perspectives on evolving areas of study and a context in which many disparate individual pieces of reported research can be organized.


title: National Center for Biotechnology Information

text: BLAST is an algorithm used for calculating sequence similarity between biological sequences, such as nucleotide sequences of DNA and amino acid sequences of proteins. BLAST is a powerful tool for finding sequences similar to the query sequence within the same organism or in different organisms. It searches the query sequence on NCBI databases and servers and posts the results back to the person's browser in the chosen format. Input sequences to the BLAST are mostly in FASTA or GenBank format while output could be delivered in a variety of formats such as HTML, XML formatting, and plain text. HTML is the default output format for NCBI's web-page. Results for NCBI-BLAST are presented in graphical format with all the hits found, a table with sequence identifiers for the hits having scoring related data, along with the alignments for the sequence of interest and the hits received with analogous BLAST scores for these.


text: The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is used at NCBI for all the major databases such as Nucleotide and Protein Sequences, Protein Structures, PubMed, Taxonomy, Complete Genomes, OMIM, and several others. Entrez is both an indexing and retrieval system having data from various sources for biomedical research. NCBI distributed the first version of Entrez in 1991, composed of nucleotide sequences from PDB and GenBank, protein sequences from SWISS-PROT, translated GenBank, PIR, PRF, PDB, and associated abstracts and citations from PubMed. Entrez is specially designed to integrate the data from several different sources, databases, and formats into a uniform information model and retrieval system which can efficiently retrieve that relevant references, sequences and structures.


text: Gene has been implemented at NCBI to characterize and organize the information about genes. It serves as a major node in the nexus of the genomic map, expression, sequence, protein function, structure, and homology data. A unique GeneID is assigned to each gene record that can be followed through revision cycles. Gene records for known or predicted genes are established here and are demarcated by map positions or nucleotide sequences. Gene has several advantages over its predecessor, LocusLink, including, better integration with other databases in NCBI, broader taxonomic scope, and enhanced options for query and retrieval provided by the Entrez system.


text: Protein database maintains the text record for individual protein sequences, derived from many different resources such as NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq) project, GenBank, PDB, and UniProtKB/SWISS-Prot. Protein records are present in different formats including FASTA and XML and are linked to other NCBI resources. Protein provides the relevant data to the users such as genes, DNA/RNA sequences, biological pathways, expression and variation data, and literature. It also provides the pre-determined sets of similar and identical proteins for each sequence as computed by the BLAST. The Structure database of NCBI contains 3D coordinate sets for experimentally-determined structures in PDB that are imported by NCBI.


text: The Conserved Domain database (CDD) of protein contains sequence profiles that characterize highly conserved domains within protein sequences. It also has records from external resources like SMART and Pfam.


text: There is another database of proteins known as Protein Clusters database, which contains sets of proteins sequences that are clustered according to the maximum alignments between the individual sequences as calculated by BLAST.


text: PubChem database of NCBI is a public resource for molecules and their activities against biological assays. PubChem is searchable and accessible by Entrez information retrieval system.


title: WebRTC

text: WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps. Supported by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera, WebRTC specifications have been published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).


title: WebRTC

text: According to the webrtc.org website, the purpose of the project is to "enable rich, high-quality RTC applications to be developed for the browser, mobile platforms, and IoT devices, and allow them all to communicate via a common set of protocols".


title: WebRTC

text: In May 2010, Google bought Global IP Solutions or GIPS, a VoIP and videoconferencing software company that had developed many components required for RTC, such as codecs and echo cancellation techniques. Google open-sourced the GIPS technology and engaged with relevant standards bodies at the IETF and W3C to ensure industry consensus. In May 2011, Google released an open-source project for browser-based real-time communication known as WebRTC. This has been followed by ongoing work to standardize the relevant protocols in the IETF and browser APIs in the W3C.


title: WebRTC

text: In January 2011, Ericsson Labs built the first implementation of WebRTC using a modified WebKit library. In October 2011, the W3C published its first draft for the spec. WebRTC milestones include the first cross-browser video call (February 2013), first cross-browser data transfers (February 2014), and as of July 2014 Google Hangouts was "kind of" using WebRTC.


title: WebRTC

text: The W3C draft API was based on preliminary work done in the WHATWG. It was referred to as the ConnectionPeer API, and a pre-standards concept implementation was created at Ericsson Labs. The WebRTC Working Group expects this specification to evolve significantly based on:


title: WebRTC

text: In November 2017, the WebRTC 1.0 specification transitioned from Working Draft to Candidate Recommendation.


title: WebRTC

text: In January 2021, the WebRTC 1.0 specification transitioned from Candidate Recommendation to Recommendation.


title: WebRTC

text: The WebRTC API includes no provisions for signaling, that is discovering peers to connect to and determine how to establish connections among them. Applications use Interactive Connectivity Establishment for connections and are responsible for managing sessions, possibly relying on any of Session Initiation Protocol, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, Matrix, or another protocol. Signaling may depend on one or more servers.


title: WebRTC

text: WebRTC allows browsers to stream files directly to one another, reducing or entirely removing the need for server-side file hosting. WebTorrent uses a WebRTC transport to enable peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol in the browser. Some file-sharing websites use it to allow users to send files directly to one another in their browsers, although this requires the uploader to keep the tab open until the file has been downloaded. A few CDNs, such as the Microsoft-owned Peer5, use the client's bandwidth to upload media to other connected peers, enabling each peer to act as an edge server.


title: WebRTC

text: Although initially developed for web browsers, WebRTC has applications for non-browser devices, including mobile platforms and IoT devices. Examples include browser-based VoIP telephony, also called cloud phones or web phones, which allow calls to be made and received from within a web browser, replacing the requirement to download and install a softphone.


title: WebRTC

text: WebRTC establishes a standard set of codecs which all compliant browsers are required to implement. Some browsers may also support other codecs.


title: WebRTC

text: In January 2017, TorrentFreak reported a serious security flaw in browsers supporting WebRTC, that compromised the security of VPN tunnels by exposing a user's true IP address. The IP address read requests are not visible in the browser's developer console, and they are not blocked by most ad blocking, privacy and security add-ons, enabling online tracking despite precautions.


title: WebRTC

text: It has been reported that the cause of the address leak is not a bug that can be patched, but is foundational to the way WebRTC operates; however, there are several solutions to mitigate the problem. WebRTC leakage can be tested for, and solutions are offered for most browsers. WebRTC can be disabled, if not required, in most browsers. The uBlock Origin add-on can fix this problem (as some browsers now fix this problem by themselves, from uBlock Origin v1.38 onwards this option has been disabled on these browsers).


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Mead Howard "Robert" Horton Jr. (July 29, 1924 – March 9, 2016) was an American actor and singer. He is known for playing Flint McCullough in "Wagon Train" (1957–1962).


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: One of two sons, Mead Howard Horton Jr. was born on July 29, 1924, in Los Angeles, California. His parents were Mead Howard Horton Sr. and Chelta McMurrin.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton said that he never felt he fitted into his proper Latter-day Saint household because at times he was rather impetuous. He survived several surgeries in childhood, including hernia repair and treatment for an enlarged kidney. Horton attended California Military Institute in Perris, where he played football. After graduation in 1943 at age 19, he enlisted in the Coast Guard, but was medically discharged because of his kidney.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: In 1945, a chance encounter with a talent scout led to an uncredited part in Lewis Milestone's film "A Walk in the Sun" (1945). He first studied dramatics at the University of Miami but later changed schools and graduated cum laude from UCLA. He relocated from California to New York City, where he worked as a struggling actor, before returning to California. At age 28, Horton signed a contract with MGM, appearing in films. It was there where he met younger actors Robert Fuller and James Drury, who both became Horton's lifelong friends.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton's experience on stage included work with the American Theatre Wing in New York City, where he was the "resident leading man". From that, he was signed to a contract with MGM Studios, where he "appeared in numerous films." His "first major TV role" was in "Ford Theatre" in the episode "Portrait of Lydia" on December 16, 1954.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: In his six decades of television, Horton, who became known for his voice, was most noted for his role as the frontier scout Flint McCullough in the television series "Wagon Train" from 1957 to 1962. His co-stars were Ward Bond, John McIntire, Terry Wilson, and Frank McGrath. He eventually quit the series to pursue a career in musical theater.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: His role on "Wagon Train" was taken by Robert Fuller as the scout Cooper Smith. Fuller, a veteran of the western series "Laramie", resembled Horton, and the two actors coincidentally shared the same birthday, albeit nine years apart.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton played Drake McHugh, Ronald Reagan's role in the television version of "Kings Row" (1955), which featured Jack Kelly, and ran for seven episodes as part of the "Warner Bros. Presents" series, rotating with a television version of "Casablanca" and "Cheyenne", starring Clint Walker.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: The ruggedly handsome Horton made dozens of appearances in movies and television shows between 1951 and 1989, including a small role in the film "Bright Road" starring Dorothy Dandridge, an episode of Ray Milland's sitcom "Meet Mr. McNutley" and on the syndicated "Sheriff of Cochise", starring John Bromfield. Horton played Corporal Tom Vaughn in an episode "False Prophet" (1956) on "Crossroads".


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton appeared on seven episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", including memorably as a tennis-playing insurance investigator and blackmailer opposite Betsy von Furstenberg in "The Disappearing Trick", directed by Arthur Hiller. He was cast as Danny Barnes in the episode "No Place to Hide" of the"The DuPont Show with June Allyson" as well as appeared on the interview program "Here's Hollywood" and NBC's anthology series "The Barbara Stanwyck Show". He appeared several times on "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford".


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: In the 1960s, Horton made two 45 RPM singles on the Columbia Records label: "The Very Thought of You"/"Hey There" and "King of the Road"/"Julie". The former's A-side was also the title track of an album he released on the same label.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton performed for many years in theaters and nightclubs all over America, and in Australia as a singer (sometimes with his wife, the former Marilynn Bradley). In 1963, producer David Merrick hired him as the male lead in the musical version of N. Richard Nash's play "The Rainmaker" (titled "110 in the Shade"). The musical, with a score by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, ran for 330 performances on Broadway.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton is also remembered for his offbeat role as an amnesiac in the 1965–1966 television series "A Man Called Shenandoah".


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: In 1966, he starred in "The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones", the first Western made specifically for television and simultaneous distribution to cinemas in Europe. It was made by MGM and co-starred Sal Mineo and Diane Baker.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: In 1968, two years later, Horton co-starred in "The Green Slime", a low-budget Japanese-American science fiction film, directed by Kinji Fukasaku and shot entirely in Japan, but with an American and European cast. His character Jack Rankin leads the crew of a space station in a battle for survival against one-eyed tentacled aliens that rapidly multiply as they feed on the station's sources of electricity.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: From 1983 to 1984, Horton took a turn in daytime soap operas, playing the part of Whit McColl on "As the World Turns".


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: "His three greatest thrills were his first solo flight, a performance before Queen Elizabeth II, and being featured on Ralph Edwards' "This Is Your Life". His frequent co-pilot was his French Poodle, "Jamie".


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Initially a Republican, he supported the campaign of Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton was first married to Mary Catherine Jobe in 1946; they divorced in 1950. He then married actress Barbara Ruick on August 22, 1953 in Las Vegas, Nevada. They divorced just three years later, in 1956.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: On December 31, 1960, Horton married actress Marilynn Bradley, who limited her professional appearances on stage to performing with him. Horton and his wife lived in Encino, California in the same home for 55 years, until 2015. Following his 85th birthday in 2009, Horton announced, through his publicist, that he no longer would be making any personal appearances because he had tired of traveling.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: He was the recipient of several lifetime achievement awards for television, including the Golden Boot in 2004, and also the Cowboy Spirit Award at the National Festival of the West. On his 90th birthday, he received the Western Legend Award.


title: Robert Horton (actor)

text: Horton died of natural causes on March 9, 2016 at the age of 91 in a rehabilitation clinic in Los Angeles, California. According to his niece, he was injured in a fall in November 2015, and was placed in hospice care. At his request, he did not have a funeral. His remains were cremated.


title: Nazi hunter

text: A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prominent Nazi hunters include Simon Wiesenthal, Tuviah Friedman, Serge Klarsfeld, Beate Klarsfeld, Ian Sayer, Yaron Svoray, Elliot Welles, and Efraim Zuroff.


title: Nazi hunter

text: With the onset of the Cold War following World War II, both the Western Allies and the USSR sought out former Nazi scientists and operatives for programs such as Operation Paperclip. Cooperative former Nazis, such as Wernher von Braun and Reinhard Gehlen, were occasionally given state protection in return for valuable information or services. At the time, Gehlen had been chief of the German Federal Intelligence Service or "Bundesnachrichtendienst" (federal intelligence agency), founder of the Gehlen Org, "a true life version of ODESSA" network, which helped exfiltrate Nazis from Europe. Other Nazis used ratlines to escape post-war Europe to places such as South America.


title: Nazi hunter

text: In response, Nazi hunters sought out fugitives on their own or formed groups, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Methods used by Nazi hunters include offering rewards for information, reviewing immigration and military records, and launching civil lawsuits.


title: Nazi hunter

text: In later decades, Nazi hunters found greater cooperation with Western and South American governments and the state of Israel. By the end of the 20th century, pursuit of former Nazis declined, because most of the generation active in Nazi leadership had died.


title: Nazi hunter

text: The Simon Wiesenthal Center publishes an annual report on Nazi war criminals. Some notable targets of Nazis hunters have included:


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe-tossing, also known as shoefiti, is the act of using footwear as a projectile in a number of folk sports and cultural practices. Shoe-tossing entails throwing a pair of laced shoes onto raised wires, such as telephone wires and power lines, or tree branches, creating "shoe trees".


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe-tossing occurs throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, North Africa and South Africa in both rural and urban areas. Often, the shoes are sneakers. Other times, they are leather shoes and boots.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Many cultural variations exist, and differences abound between socioeconomic areas and age groups. In some cultures, shoes are flung as part of a rite of passage, like to commemorate the end of a school year or a forthcoming marriage. For example, in Victorian England, people would pelt "a bride and bridegroom with old shoes when they start on their honeymoon." Some theories suggest the custom originated with members of the military, who are said to have thrown military boots, often painted orange or some other conspicuous color, at overhead wires as a part of a rite of passage after completing basic training or when leaving the service. In the 1997 film "Wag the Dog", shoe tossing is an allegedly spontaneous tribute to Sgt. William Schumann, played by Woody Harrelson, who has purportedly been shot down behind enemy lines in Albania.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe-tossing may be a form of bullying, where a bully steals a pair of shoes and tosses them where they are unlikely to be retrieved. Shoe tossing has also been explained as a practical joke played on drunks, who wake up to find their shoes missing.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoes on a telephone wire are popularly said to be linked to organized crime, signifying the location of gang turf or commemorating the death of a gang member. The shoes are also rumored to mark a spot for drug deals, although a 2015 study of shoe-tossing data in Chicago rejected this explanation.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe-throwing is a wedding superstition in several cultures. In Charles Dickens' novel "David Copperfield" (1850), the custom is recorded by the narrator following his marriage to Dora Spenlow:


title: Shoe tossing

text: In 1887, an article in "The New York Times" observed that: "[The] custom of throwing one or more old shoes after the bride and groom either when they go to church to be married or when they start on their wedding journey, is so old that the memory of man stretches not back to its beginning." Peter Ditchfield, writing in "Old English Customs Extant at the Present Time" (1896), expands: "We also throw old shoes after young married folk in order to express our wishes for their good fortune. Probably this was not the original meaning of the custom. The throwing of a shoe after a bride was a symbol of renunciation of dominion and authority over her by her father or guardian, and this receipt of the shoe by the bridegroom was an omen that the authority was transferred to him. In Kent the shoe is thrown by the principal bridesmaid, and the others run after it. It is supposed that she who gets it will be married first. It is then thrown amongst the men, and he who is hit will be first wedded."


title: Shoe tossing

text: In 2008, Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi was arrested for throwing two shoes at United States President George W. Bush, in protest against the American military invasion and subsequent occupation, while the president was visiting Baghdad. Al-Zaidi shouted in Arabic: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those killed in Iraq!" President Bush ducked and was not struck by the shoes.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe throwing as an insult is not limited to the Arab world; other notable incidents have involved other celebrities and world leaders, including Steve McCarthy, David Beckham, Lily Allen, and Wen Jiabao.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Wellie wanging, or boot throwing, is a sport in which competitors are required to throw a Wellington boot as far as possible. The sport appears to have originated in the West Country of England in the 1970s, and rapidly became a popular activity at village fêtes and fundraising events across Britain. The sport is now played in many different countries, including Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Russia.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoes have also been turned into objects for many other group activities and games that involve throwing, but which don't involve throwing shoes over a wire or branch.


title: Shoe tossing

text: One Physical Education game has participants put into two groups. The two groups create two lines by sitting parallel to one another. The participants then take off their shoes and throw them into the middle of the playing area, which is in between the two groups. The game starts when the teacher or referee says so. The goal of the game is for the participants to stand up from their lines and run to the middle to find their shoe. Participants then have to put their shoes back on and sit back in the same order they were sitting. The first group to get everyone back to the line wins.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Another example of a shoe-based game is a smaller group activity that requires the following: two pairs of shoes, two chairs, two plastic bottles, and two participants. The bottles are placed in the center of the gameplay area, and the chairs are positioned on opposite sides of the bottles, so that the game play area forms a line. The two participants start in the middle by the bottles, run to their chair, sit down and take their shoes off, and throw their shoes at the bottles. Whoever hits their bottle over first wins.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe throwing also appears in video games. Half Dead and Half Dead 2 feature shoe throwing as one of the main game mechanics. The game has the player trapped in square rooms with doors on all sides, and it requires them to explore different rooms in order to find the exit and escape. However, most of the rooms have deadly traps in them. The shoe throwing mechanic lets the player identify if a room has a trap in it, The player throws a shoe into a room, and it will set off a trap, if there are any.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoes are sometimes thrown into a tree to festoon it as a "shoe tree". Occasionally, a powerline pole or other wooden object may be decorated in the same way.


title: Shoe tossing

text: Shoe trees are generally located alongside major local thoroughfares, and they may have a theme (such as high-heeled shoes).


title: Shoe tossing

text: In the United States, shoe-tossing is rumored to be used by gangs for a variety of purposes. For example, shoes may be used to mark a gang's territory, commemorate a fallen member, or to commemorate a non-gang member who lived in the area. However, it is difficult to determine what shoes were placed by gang members for gang-related purposes and what shoes were flung by non-gang members for other purposes. Gangs may use shoes on wires to indicate places to acquire drugs, but police officers in several jurisdictions noted that this is a myth and has yet to be proven.


title: Shoe tossing

text: A 2003 newsletter from former Los Angeles, California mayor James Hahn cited fears of many L.A. residents that "these shoes indicate sites at which drugs are sold or worse yet, gang turf," and that city and utility employees had launched a program to remove the shoes. A 2015 study of shoe-tossing data in Chicago found that the rumor and relationship between dangling shoes and drug dealing were correlational, not causal.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: "Once in a Lifetime" is a song by the American new wave band Talking Heads, produced and cowritten by Brian Eno. It was released in November 1980 as the lead single from Talking Heads' fourth studio album, "Remain in Light" (1980), through Sire Records.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: Eno and Talking Heads developed "Once in a Lifetime" through extensive jams, inspired by Afrobeat musicians such as Fela Kuti. David Byrne's lyrics and vocals were inspired by preachers delivering sermons. The music video, directed by Byrne and Toni Basil, has Byrne dancing erratically over footage of religious rituals.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: "Once in a Lifetime" was certified gold in the UK in 2021. A live version, taken from the 1984 concert film "Stop Making Sense", charted in 1986 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lists it as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll", and "Rolling Stone" ranked it at number 27 on its 2021 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: Like other songs on "Remain in Light", Talking Heads and producer Brian Eno developed "Once in a Lifetime" by recording jams, isolating the best parts, and learning to play them repetitively. Songwriter Robert Palmer joined the jam on guitar and percussion. The technique was influenced by early hip hop and the Afrobeat music of artists such as Fela Kuti, which Eno had introduced to the band. Singer David Byrne likened the process to modern looping and sampling, describing the band as "human samplers". He said the song was a result of the band trying and failing to play funk, inadvertently creating something new instead.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: The track was initially not one of Eno's favorites, and the band almost abandoned it. According to keyboardist Jerry Harrison, "Because there were so few chord changes, and everything was in a sort of trance ... it became harder to write defined choruses." However, Byrne had faith in the song and felt he could write lyrics to it. Eno developed the chorus melody by singing wordlessly, and the song "fell into place". Harrison developed the "bubbly" synthesizer line and added the Hammond organ climax, taken from the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On".


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: Eno interpreted the rhythm differently from the band, with the third beat of the bar as the first. He encouraged the band members to interpret the beat in different ways, thereby exaggerating different rhythmic elements. According to Eno, "This means the song has a funny balance, with two centers of gravity – their funk groove, and my dubby, reggae-ish understanding of it; a bit like the way Fela Kuti songs will have multiple rhythms going on at the same time, warping in and out of each other."


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: According to bassist Tina Weymouth, her husband, drummer Chris Frantz, created the bassline by yelling during a jam, which she mimicked on bass guitar. She wanted to "leave lots of space for the cacophony that surrounded me. I felt like I was pounding away like a carpenter, just nailing away to get it in the groove." Eno wanted to remove the first note in the bassline, as he felt it was too "obvious", and rerecorded the part himself. When the band returned to New York and Eno had gone home, the engineer asked Weymouth to record the bassline again. She said: "It wasn't a big fight between me and Brian, as it has sometimes been portrayed, it was just a musical dispute."


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: Byrne improvised lines as if he were giving a sermon, with a call-and-response chorus like a preacher and congregation. His vocals are "half-spoken, half-sung", with lyrics about living in a "beautiful house" with a "beautiful wife" and a "large automobile".


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: The "Guardian" writer Jack Malcolm suggested that the song can be read "as an art-pop rumination on the existential ticking time bomb of unchecked consumerism and advancing age". According to the AllMusic critic Steve Huey, the lyrics address "the drudgery of living life according to social expectations, and pursuing commonly accepted trophies (a large automobile, beautiful house, beautiful wife)". Although the singer has these trophies, he questions whether they are real and how he acquired them, a kind of existential crisis.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: Byrne denied that the lyrics address yuppie greed and said the song was about the unconscious: "We operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: In the "Once in a Lifetime" music video, Byrne appears in a large, empty white room, dressed in a suit, bowtie, and glasses. In the background, inserted via bluescreen, footage of religious rituals or multiple Byrnes appear. Byrne dances erratically, imitating the movements of the rituals and moving in "spasmic" full-body contortions. At the end of the video, a "normal" version of Byrne appears in a black room, dressed in a white, open-collared shirt without glasses.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: The video was directed by Byrne and Toni Basil and choreographed by Basil. They studied archive footage of religious rituals from around the world, including footage of evangelists, African tribes, Japanese sects and people in trances, for Byrne to incorporate his performance. The televangelist Ernest Angley was another inspiration. According to Basil, "David kind of choreographed himself. I set up the camera, put him in front of it, and asked him to absorb those ideas. Then I left the room so he could be alone with himself. I came back, looked at the videotape, and we chose physical moves that worked with the music. I just helped to stylize his moves a little." To emphasize Byrne's jerky movements, Basil used an "old-fashioned" zoom lens. The video was made on a low budget; Basil described it as "about as low-tech as you could get and still be broadcastable".


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: "Once in a Lifetime" reached on the UK Singles Chart and on the Dutch Top 40. In January 2018, it was certified silver in the UK, and in April 2021 it was certified Gold. A live version, taken from the 1984 concert film "Stop Making Sense", reached number one on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1986. At the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns in the US, "Once in a Lifetime" reached number 10 on Rock Digital Song Sales. It was certified gold in the UK in April 2021.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: A 12-inch promotional dance club mix was released by Sire in October 1984. An early version of "Once in a Lifetime", "Right Start", was released on the 2006 "Remain in Light" reissue.


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: In 1996, Kermit the Frog performed "Once in a Lifetime" on "Muppets Tonight" while wearing Byrne's "big suit" and mimicking his dances from "Stop Making Sense". In 2000, NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. In 2016, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed it as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll", and Malcolm Jack wrote in "The Guardian" that the song "is a thing of dizzying power, beauty and mystery [...] it sounds like nothing else in the history of pop."


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: In 2018, the musician Travis Morrison appeared on NPR's "All Songs Considered", where he selected "Once in a Lifetime" as a "perfect song" and said: "The lyrics are astounding; they are meaningless and totally meaningful at the same time. That's as good as rock lyrics get." In 2021, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Once in a Lifetime" number 27 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".


title: Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)

text: In 1989, "Spin" readers voted the "Once in a Lifetime" video the sixth-best of the 1980s. In 2003, the BBC critic Chris Jones described the "Once in a Lifetime" video as "hilarious" and "as compelling as it was in 1981". In 2021, "Rolling Stone" named it the 81st best music video of all time.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Erhard Seminars Training (marketed as est, though often encountered as EST or Est) was an organization, founded by Werner Erhard in 1971, that offered a two-weekend (6-day, 60-hour) course known officially as "The est Standard Training". The seminar aimed to "transform one's ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself". An est website claims that the training "brought to the forefront the ideas of transformation, personal responsibility, accountability, and possibility".


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Est seminars operated from late 1971 to late 1984, and spawned a number of books from 1976 to 2011. Est has been featured in a number of films and television shows, including the critically acclaimed spy-series "The Americans", broadcast from 2013 to 2018. Est represented an outgrowth of the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s through to the 1970s.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: As est grew, so did criticism of it. In 1977, the film "Semi-Tough", which parodied the then-popular course, was released. Various critics accused est of mind control or of forming an authoritarian army; some labeled it a cult.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: The last est training took place in December 1984 in San Francisco. The seminars gave way to a "gentler" course offered by Werner Erhard and Associates and dubbed "The Forum", which began in January 1985.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: The est Standard Training program consisted of two weekend-long workshops with evening sessions on the intervening weekdays. Workshops generally involved about 200 participants and were initially led by Erhard and later by people trained by him. Ronald Heifetz, founder of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, called est "an important experience in which two hundred people go through a powerful curriculum over two weekends and have a learning experience that seemed to change many of their lives." Trainers confronted participants one-on-one and challenged them to be themselves rather than to play a role that had been imposed on them by the past.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Jonathan D. Moreno observed that "participants might have been surprised how both physically and emotionally challenging and how philosophical the training was." He writes that the critical part of the training was freeing oneself from the past, which was accomplished by "experiencing" one's recurrent patterns and problems and choosing to change them. The word "experience" meant to bring into full awareness the repetition of old, burdensome behaviors. The seminar sought to enable participants to shift the state of mind around which their lives were organized, from attempts to get satisfaction or to survive, to actually being satisfied and experiencing themselves as whole and complete in the present moment.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Participants agreed to follow the ground rules, which included not wearing watches, not speaking until called upon, not talking to their neighbors, and not eating or leaving their seats to go to the bathroom except during breaks separated by many hours. Participants who were on medication were exempt from these rules, and had to sit in the back row, so that they would not interfere with the other participants. These classroom agreements provided a rigorous setting whereby people's ordinary ways to escape confronting their experience of themselves were eliminated. Moreno describes the est training as a form of "Socratic interrogation...relying on the power of the shared cathartic experience that Aristotle observed." Erhard challenged participants to be themselves instead of playing a role that had been imposed on them and aimed to press people beyond their point of view, into a perspective from which they could observe their own positionality. As Robert Kiyosaki writes, "During the training, it became glaringly clear that most of our personal problems begin with our not keeping our agreements, not being true to our words, saying one thing and doing another. That first full day on the simple class agreements was painfully enlightening. It became obvious that much of human misery is a function of broken agreements – not keeping your word, or someone else not keeping theirs."


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Sessions lasted from 9:00 a.m. to midnight, or to the early hours of the morning, with one meal-break. Participants had to hand over wristwatches and were not allowed to take notes, or to speak unless called upon, in which case they waited for a microphone to be brought to them. The second day of the workshop featured the "danger process". As a way of observing and confronting their own perspective and point of view, groups of participants were brought onto the stage and confronted. They were asked to "imagine that they were afraid of everyone else and then that everyone else was afraid of them" and to re-examine their reflex patterns of living that kept their lives from working. This was followed by interactions on the third and fourth days, covering topics such as reality and the nature of the mind, looking at the possibility that "what is, is and what ain't, ain't," and that "true enlightenment is knowing you are a machine" and culminating in a realization that people do not need to be stuck with their automatic ways of being but can instead be free to choose their ways of being in how they live their lives. Participants were told they were perfect the way they were and were asked to indicate by a show of hands if they "had gotten it".


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Eliezer Sobel said in his article "This is It: est, 20 Years Later": I considered the training to be a brilliantly conceived Zen koan, effectively tricking the mind into seeing itself, and in thus seeing, to be simultaneously aware of who was doing the seeing, a transcendent level of consciousness, a place spacious and undefined, distinct from the tired old story that our minds continuously tell us about who we are, and with which we ordinarily identify.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Many participants reported experiencing powerful results through their participation in the est training, characterised by Eliezer Sobel as perceived "dramatic transformations in their relationships with their families, with their work and personal vision, or most important, with the recognition who they truly were in the core of their beings". One study of "a large sample of est alumni who had completed the training at least 3 months before revealed that "the large majority felt the experience had been positive (88%), and considered themselves better off for having taken the training (80%)".


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Werner Erhard reported having a personal transformation, and created the est training to allow others to have the same experience. The first "est" course was held at a Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, California, in October 1971. Within a year, trainings were being held in New York City and other major cities in the United States followed soon after. They were carried out by Werner Erhard, who had recently resigned from Mind Dynamics.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Beginning in July 1974 the est training was delivered at the U.S. Penitentiary at Lompoc, California, with the approval of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Initial est training in Lompoc involved participation of 12–15 federal prisoners and outside community members within the walls of the maximum security prison and was personally conducted by Werner Erhard.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: By 1979, est had expanded to Europe and other parts of the world. In 1980 the first est training in Israel was offered in Tel Aviv. The est training presented several concepts to these new attendees, most notably the concept of spiritual transformation and taking responsibility for one's life. The actual teaching, called "the technology of transformation," emphasizes the value of integrity. As est grew, so did criticism. It was accused of mind control and labeled a cult by some critics who said that it exploited its followers by recruiting and offering numerous "graduate seminars."


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: In 1983 in the United States, a participant named Jack Slee collapsed during a portion of the seminar known as "the danger process" and died at the hospital to which he had been transported. A court subsequently found that the est training was not the cause of death. A jury later ruled that Erhard and his company had been negligent, but did not give Slee's estate a monetary award.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: According to a 1991 report by the "Los Angeles Times", est had been the target of a smear campaign by the Church of Scientology. This campaign had spanned several years, with examples being found in documents seized by the FBI in 1977. This smear campaign involved hiring personal investigators to spy on Erhard, recruiting Scientologists to covertly enroll in and disrupt est courses, and compiling information from disgruntled former est participants which could be used to discredit est. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (who died in 1986) believed that Erhard had copied Scientology. Erhard disputed this, saying that est was essentially different despite some similarities.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: In their 1992 book "Perspectives on the New Age" James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton said that similarities between est and Mind Dynamics were "striking", as both used "authoritarian trainers who enforce numerous rules," require applause after participants "share" in front of the group, and de-emphasize reason in favor of "feeling and action." The authors also described graduates of est as "fiercely loyal," and said that it recruited heavily, reducing marketing expenses to virtually zero. The last est training was held in December 1984 in San Francisco.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: It was replaced by a gentler course called "The Forum," which began in January 1985. "est, Inc." evolved into "est, an Educational Corporation," and eventually into Werner Erhard and Associates. In 1991 the business was sold to the employees who formed a new company called Landmark Education with Erhard's brother, Harry Rosenberg, becoming the CEO. Landmark Education was structured as a for-profit, employee-owned company; it operates as Landmark Worldwide with a consulting division called Vanto Group.


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: In W. W. Bartley III's biography of Werner Erhard, "Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, the Founding of est" (1978), Erhard describes his explorations of Zen Buddhism. Bartley quotes Erhard as acknowledging Zen as the essential contribution that "created the space [for est]".


title: Erhard Seminars Training

text: Bartley details Erhard's connections with Zen beginning with his extensive studies with Alan Watts in the mid-1960s.


title: International Driving Permit

text: An International Driving Permit (IDP), often referred to as an international driving license, is a translation of a domestic driving licence that allows the holder to drive a private motor vehicle in any country or jurisdiction that recognises the document. The term International Driving Permit was first mentioned in the document prescribed in the International Convention relative to Motor Traffic that was signed at Paris in 1926, and is a translation of the French 'permis de conduire international', or 'international driving license'. The Paris treaty, and all subsequent, use the word 'permit' exclusively in relation to all kinds of driving licence.


title: International Driving Permit

text: International Driving Permits are governed by three international conventions: the 1926 Paris International Convention relative to Motor Traffic, the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, and the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. When a state is contracted to more than one convention, the newest one terminates and replaces previous ones.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The IDP, whose A6 size (148 × 105 mm) is slightly larger than a passport, has a grey cover and white inside pages. The outside and inside of the front cover shall be printed in (at least one of) the national language(s) of the issuing State. The last two inside pages shall be printed in French, and pages preceding those two pages shall repeat the first of them in several languages, which must include English, Russian and Spanish.


title: International Driving Permit

text: IDPs are issued through a network of AIT/FIA organizations, authorized by their governments to issue them. In most countries these issuing organizations are automobile associations, such as American Automobile Association in the United States, Norwegian Automobile Federation in Norway and Riksförbundet M Sverige in Sweden. As there are many unofficial sellers on the internet, the AIT/FIA has created an approved directory to all IDP issuing organizations in the world.


title: International Driving Permit

text: To be valid, the IDP must be accompanied by a valid driving licence issued in the applicant's country of residence. An IDP is not required if the driver's domestic licence meets the requirements of the 1949 or 1968 convention; the domestic licence can be used directly in a foreign jurisdiction that is a party to that convention. In addition, other arrangements eliminates the need of an IDP in some countries, such as the European driving licence valid within the European Economic Area.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The convention has been ratified by 83 countries/jurisdictions. Examples of countries/jurisdictions that have not ratified the Convention include Ireland, Canada, the United States, Cyprus, Iceland, Malta, China and Malaysia.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The main regulations about driving licences are in Annex 6 (domestic driving permit) and Annex 7 (International Driving Permit). The currently active version of those is in force in each contracting party since no later than 29 March 2011 (Article 43). According to the 1968 Vienna Convention, an IDP must have an expiration date of no more than three years from its issue date or until the expiration date of national driving permit, whichever is earlier, and it is valid for a period of one year upon the arrival in the foreign country.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The convention had amendments on 3 September 1993 and 28 March 2006. There is a European Agreement supplementing the Convention on Road Traffic (1968), which was concluded in Geneva, on 1 May 1971.


title: International Driving Permit

text: Note that before 29 March 2011 the convention demanded contracting parties to recognise as valid for driving in their territories:


title: International Driving Permit

text: Prior to 29 March 2011, annex 6 and annex 7 defined forms of driver's licences that are different from those defined after that date. Driving licences issued before 29 March 2011 that match older edition of the annexes are valid until their expiration dates (article 43).


title: International Driving Permit

text: The 1949 has been ratified by 101 states. The 1949 Convention's description of a driving permit and international driving permit are located in Annexes 9 and 10. Switzerland signed but did not ratify the convention. The 1949 Geneva Convention states that an IDP remains valid for one year from the date of issue, with a grace period of six months.


title: International Driving Permit

text: There is a European Agreement supplementing the 1949 Convention on Road Traffic, in addition to the 1949 Protocol on Road Signs and Signals, concluded in Geneva on 16 September 1950.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The 1926 International Convention relative to Motor Traffic is the older IDP Convention. It is only required in Somalia. International Driving Permits according to the 1926 Convention on Motor Traffic might also still be valid in Liechtenstein and Mexico. However, both are parties of the above-mentioned later conventions, thus the most recent signed convention is the valid one. Mexico also recognizes the Inter-American Driving Permit according to the convention on the Regulation of Inter-American Automotive Traffic 1943.


title: International Driving Permit

text: According to the 1968 Vienna Convention, an IDP must have an expiration date of no more than three years from its issue date or until the expiration date of national driving permit, whichever is earlier, and it is valid for a period of one year upon the arrival in the foreign country. The previous convention (1949 Geneva Convention) stated that an IDP remains valid for one year from the date of issue.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The IDP is not valid for driving in the country or jurisdiction where it was issued, it can only be used in foreign countries, and it must be shown with the carrier's original driver's license.


title: International Driving Permit

text: ISO/IEC 18013 establishes guidelines for the design format and data content of an ISO-compliant driving licence (IDL). The design approach is to establish a secure domestic driving permit (DDP) and accompanying booklet for international use, instead of the international driving permit (IDP) paper document.


title: International Driving Permit

text: This standard however, it should be noted, has no official mandate or recognition from the WP.1 of UNECE as a replacement for the current IDP standards as described in the 1949 and 1968 Conventions.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The requirements with regards to content and layout of the data elements is contained in Annex A of ISO/IEC 18013-1:2018. While the main ideology is a minimum acceptable set of requirements, sufficient freedom is afforded to the issuing authorities of driving licences to meet domestic needs such as existing standards, data contents and security elements.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The specifications of the layout of the booklet is defined in Annex G of ISO/IEC 18013-1:2018. There are two options; a booklet with some personalisation or a booklet with no personalisation.


title: International Driving Permit

text: The booklet shall be marginally larger than a ID-1 size driving license card, with an insert pocket for storage of the card, and for convenient carrying of the booklet. The front cover should include the logo of the UN or the issuing country and the words “Translation of Driving Licence” and "Traduction du Permis de Conduire ".


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: The Last Song is a 2010 American coming-of-age teen romantic drama film developed alongside Nicholas Sparks' 2009 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Julie Anne Robinson in her feature film directorial debut and co-written by Sparks and Jeff Van Wie. "The Last Song" stars Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, and Greg Kinnear, and follows a troubled teenager as she reconnects with her estranged father and falls in love during a summer in a quiet Southern United States beach town.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Sparks was approached to write both the film's screenplay and the novel. Sparks completed the screenplay in January 2009, prior to the completion of the novel, making "The Last Song" his first script to be optioned for film. The setting, originally in North Carolina like the novel, relocated to Georgia after the states had campaigned for months to host production. Upon beginning production in Tybee Island, Georgia, and nearby Savannah, "The Last Song" became the first movie to be both filmed and set in Tybee Island. Filming lasted from June 15 to August 18, 2009, with much of it occurring on the island's beach and pier.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" was released by Touchstone Pictures on March 31, 2010, and was later released on Blu-ray and DVD on August 17, 2010. The film garnered negative reviews from critics, with many criticizing the script and Cyrus's performance, who felt she was miscast in the role. In spite of this, it grossed $89 million worldwide against a $20 million budget making it a box office success.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: At 17, Veronica "Ronnie" Miller remains as rebellious as she was the day her parents divorced and her father moved to Georgia three years prior. She had been caught shoplifting in New York City, where she lives. Once a classical piano child prodigy under her father, Steve Miller, Ronnie now ignores the instrument in and has not spoken with him since he left. Juilliard School has been interested in her since she was young, but she refuses to attend as she resents her father.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Kim Miller sends the teen and her younger brother, Jonah to spend the summer with Steve in Georgia and reconnect. A former Juilliard School professor and concert pianist, Steve lives a quiet life in Wrightsville Beach, the small town in Georgia where he grew up, working on a stained-glass window for the local church to replace the one the church lost in a fire. Locals believe Steve had (accidentally) set fire to the church one night.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: After arrival, Ronnie is miserable, defiant, and defensive toward all those around her, including handsome, popular Will Blakelee. They meet when he crashes into her during a volleyball match, spilling Ronnie's shake all over her. She shrugs him off and meets Blaze, an outcast who lives with her boyfriend Marcus. With them at a beach campfire, Marcus hits on Ronnie and Blaze mistakenly thinks it's the other way around. As revenge, Blaze later gets Ronnie arrested for shoplifting.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Later on, Ronnie discovers a loggerhead sea turtle nest at the beach by her dad's, and while protecting it from raccoons, she meets Will again as he is an aquarium volunteer. After a night of staying up to defend the turtle eggs from predators with Will, she discovers he is deeper than she expected, and they connect.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: The next day, Will takes Ronnie to the aquarium. Later, on the beach, Ashley tells Ronnie about Will's past relationships and going to the aquarium is part of his routine. Doubting Will, he finds her at the turtle's nest and they argue about his past. When Ronnie says she does not want to be just another girl and they should end it, Will embraces her and they kiss passionately, becoming a couple.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Will takes Ronnie to his home under the impression that his parents are not home. Ronnie finds out that Will is rich after seeing he lives in a large, gated mansion. Ronnie ends up meeting Will’s parents due to them returning home earlier than expected. The pair then have an awkward dinner with Will’s parents. It is revealed that Will had a brother that passed away the previous year. Will and Ronnie profess their love for each other, with Ronnie revealing that she is a talented piano player.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: During Will’s volleyball game, Ronnie soon hears the rumor that her father burned down the church from some locals, but ignores it. Ronnie is finally invited to Will’s sister’s wedding after being upset over not being told about the wedding by Will. She then meets her father in the burnt church to show him the invitation where they talk about what caused the fire. Distraught about what information her father disclosed, she goes to Will and laments about it. While working, Will speaks with Scott about telling the truth about what happened to the church, with Scott refusing.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Ronnie is preparing to go dress shopping when she sees Marcus breaking up with Blaze and leaving her essentially homeless. Ronnie then leaves all the money given to her by Steve, which causes Jonah to help her pay for her dress, which he also helps her pick out. The wedding day arrives, with Ronnie and Will enjoying themselves amongst other guest. Ronnie sees Blaze, who thanks her and tells her that she has left Marcus and moved back in with her mother. Marcus suddenly arrives and causes issues at the wedding. Will ends up attacking him after he insults Ronnie.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: When Will and Ronnie arrive back at Steve’s home, Jonah excitedly tells them that Steve believes the turtle eggs will hatch. As they are watching the eggs hatch, Steve collapses and has to be brought to the hospital, revealing that he has terminal cancer that has spread to his lungs and that was the reason for Ronnie and Jonah’s presence for the summer.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Ronnie spends time with Steve in the hospital while Jonah and Will continue to work on the stain glass window. Steve’s cancer news progressively gets worse and he eventually requests to be returned home, as he does not want to die at the hospital. Will and Jonah finished the window and took Steve by to view it being placed in the church. Beginning the feel more pressure and discomfort from knowing that truth about the church burning, Will asks Scott one more time to tell the truth, to which Scott agreed.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Scott and Will came to Steve’s home and finally told the truth: Scott, Will, and other friends were behind the church horse playing when Marcus and his friends showed up. Will then left, while Scott stayed with Marcus and his friends, who then began to play with fire, causing the church to catch fire. Scott allowed Steve to take the blame, but Will wanted to report the crime to the police, but did not due to his friendship with Scott. Steve did not want this to be reported to the police and was fine with taking the blame. Ronnie overhears this and breaks up with Will.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Kim arrives after learning the kids know of Steve’s condition. Jonah and Steve has a tearful moment before Jonah goes home to New York for the school year while Ronnie stays to take care of their father. Leading a slow life, she tries to make up for the time lost with her father. She continues working on his composition for him (titled "For Ronnie"), as his hands are painful due to his illness. As he is sitting on the couch listening to her play, he dies just as she finishes.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: At his funeral, she declares that no words could ever be able to show how wonderful her father really was. Instead, she decides to share with them the song she helped finish. Before sitting down to play, sunlight shines through the stained-glass window. Ronnie smiles and says "Hi, Daddy," remembering her father saying that whenever light shines through the window, it is him.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Blaze and other townsfolk offer their condolences after the funeral outside, Will included. He says that he liked the song she played and that he knows her dad did, too, disappearing in the crowd. Having decided to attend Juilliard, Ronnie is packing up to return to New York when she sees Will standing outside. He apologizes to her for everything that had happened, surprising Ronnie by revealing that he will be transferring to Columbia University to be with her and they passionately kiss.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" began when Disney executive Jason Reed met with Miley Cyrus to discuss her future career plans. At the time, Cyrus had been known mainly for starring as a pop star on Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana", a children's television series that had expanded into a globally successful media franchise. As the series neared its end, Disney hoped to create a star vehicle to help Cyrus break out of the pop persona she had developed through the franchise and to introduce Cyrus to older audiences. During her meeting with Reed, Cyrus expressed a desire to film a movie similar to "A Walk to Remember", a 2002 film based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. "A Walk to Remember" helped Mandy Moore, then a teen pop star much like Cyrus, launch an acting career. Disney called Adam Shankman, director of "A Walk to Remember", who signed on to produce the potential Cyrus film along with his sister and Offspring Entertainment production company partner, Jennifer Gibgot. Tish Cyrus, Cyrus' mother and co-manager, became the film's executive producer. Cyrus' acting representation, United Talent Agency, then contacted Sparks, also a UTA client, to ask if he had plans for a novel appropriate for a film adaptation starring Cyrus.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: At the time, Sparks had been wrapping up "The Lucky One" and beginning to ponder an original plot for his next book. The author told himself he could "either go younger than 20 or older than 50", having recently written about every age in between. Wary of venturing above 50 again after his best-seller "The Notebook", Sparks had already been leaning toward writing a teenager story when he received a phone call from Gibgot on behalf of the film in August 2008. Sparks recalled, "Jennifer asked if I had anything laying around? I said no, but funny you should say that…" Sparks returned with a premise by the end of July 2008. Once the proposal had been agreed upon by Cyrus, her family, and Offspring Entertainment, Sparks, with the aid of co-screenplay writer Jeff Van Wie, completed the screenplay before starting the book. Sparks explained that such an arrangement was necessary to accommodate filming in summer 2009, as Disney had scheduled, but, "this is similar to the way it's gone with movies based on my novels; it's just out of order." Sparks and Van Wie completed the first draft of the screenplay in December 2008, the first rewrite later that month, and the second and final rewrite in January 2009. Both rewrites took about one or two days, and Sparks found them relatively simple. The finished screenplay was approximately 100 pages long. While "The Last Song" is not the first screenplay Sparks has written, it is his first to be optioned for film. The novel was completed in June 2009, the same time shooting for the film began, and was published on September 8, 2009 by Grand Central Publishing. The plot of the film and novel remained secret throughout development.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Julie Anne Robinson signed on to direct the film in May 2009, attracted by the emotion present in the story. "The Last Song" is Robinson's first feature film, although she is a veteran of television and theater. Robinson previously helmed episodes of American series such as "Weeds" and "Grey's Anatomy" and earned a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA award for her work on the BBC series "Viva Blackpool".


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: In a June 2009 blog entry, Cyrus said she had "always been a fan of Nicholas Sparks" and that she had been waiting to do a production separate from the "Hannah Montana" franchise "for a long time", but had not found the time to do so due to her TV show, music, tours, and "". To film "The Last Song", Cyrus' contract for season four of "Hannah Montana" included an extra-long hiatus.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Recognizing the popularity of "A Walk to Remember" as both a novel and film, Sparks "put all [his] thoughts into that, trying to make the story as different from "A Walk to Remember" as [he could], but try to capture the same feelings." Sparks' experiences as a father and as a high-school track and field coach also helped shape the plot, and characters Jonah Miller and Will Blakelee are respectively based on Sparks' sons Landon and Miles. Sparks felt Ronnie was the hardest character to write for because he had "never been a 17-year-old, angry teenage[d] girl". Ronnie became a composite character inspired by several young women Sparks has known, such as his nieces. Cyrus herself influenced Ronnie fairly little, although her singing career did inspire the musical elements of the story. Ronnie plays only the piano and Cyrus only sings a small amount in the film, though she does contribute to its soundtrack.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Disney did not give Sparks limitations on the topics featured in "The Last Song", which include underaged drinking, infidelity, and terminal illness, but Sparks says that Disney desired to work with him in part because "they've read my novels. My teenagers… don't do bad things. I just don't write that. I don't write about adultery, I don't write profanity ... I'll certainly have love scenes in my novels, but they're always between consenting adults." Still, Sparks acknowledges that elements of the screenplay may have been toned down by the director or the studio after he finished. As dictated by the Writers Guild of America, Sparks receives full credit for his work, although the amount of his original screenplay retained in the film is uncertain. For example, Sparks says the character of Marcus, leader of the gang of thugs, was likely altered for the film.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: The project remained nameless for several months after Sparks' initial meeting with Disney in July 2008. Sparks wrote in a September 2008 online chat that "I have the idea completed, but no title. That's common for me though. Titles come last." The film was referred to by the working title "Untitled Miley Cyrus Project" In March 2009, "Variety" magazine called "The Last Song" a "tentative" title.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Cyrus chose the name "Ronnie" for her character in honor of her grandfather, Ron Cyrus, who died in 2006. Unknown to many, the character had first been named "Kirby" by Sparks and later changed to "Hilary".


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: New interviews with Sparks reveal he imagined Cyrus in the role "only a little" during the writing process.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: At the completion of the screenplay, Sparks was concerned that Cyrus would not be able to successfully execute the role: "The first thing I thought when I finished the screenplay was, wow, I hope she can do this, this is a tough role because I'm bringing you through a whole gamut of emotion and you're just a 16-year-old girl who's done the Disney Channel. Are you able to do this as an actress?", After visiting the set and watching Cyrus film, Sparks' worries abated. To play the New York teen, Cyrus worked with a dialect coach to lose her Southern accent and learned to play classical piano. After she completed filming, Cyrus said that in a case of life imitating art, she had matured and "changed a lot" over the course of her summer in Georgia, similar to the way Ronnie does in the film. "Showing this movie, I feel like I'm really showing a part of my growth as a person as well. So I'm really excited for people to see it."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: In April 2009, Disney officials chose Rafi Gavron for the part of Will Blakelee, but switched to Australian actor Liam Hemsworth by May. On May 18, 2009, the decision to cast Greg Kinnear as Steve Miller was made final. Kelly Preston's part as Kim was the first role she had accepted since the death of her son, Jett Travolta. After being introduced to Cal Johnson, the film's stunt coordinator, Adam Barnett landed the role of Teddy in May 2009 due to his previously developed talent in juggling and hackey sack.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" entered post-production following the end of filming on August 18, 2009. Automated dialogue replacement took place in mid-September; Beals and Chaikin stated they had gone in to record on September 11 and September 18, respectively. Chaikin said she had worked for five and a half hours. The director's cut was presented to the studio on October 1, 2009. The Motion Picture Association of America reviewed the film and issued it a PG rating for "thematic material, some violence, sensuality and mild language" three weeks later.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" had originally been set in Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington in North Carolina. Though they wished to shoot on location, filmmakers also examined three other states and identified Georgia as the next-best filming site.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Georgia's housing prices were higher, but the state's filming incentive package refunded 30% of production costs such as gasoline and salaries. North Carolina's package refunded 15% and excluded salaries of over $1 million. Still, Disney remained interested in North Carolina and offered to film there if the state would reduce the amount the company would save in Georgia, around $1 million, in half. North Carolina officials searched for ways to accomplish this, including applying unsuccessfully for state and Golden LEAF Foundation grants. They also introduced legislation to improve the state's refund to 25%, which eventually passed on August 27, 2009. Disney decided to work within existing incentive laws and agreed to film in North Carolina as long as the film rights they had bought from Sparks counted as a production cost, thereby saving the company an additional $125,000 to $225,000. Then-North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue set up a press conference on April 1, 2009, to announce N.C.'s victory. North Carolina tax collectors refused to consider the film rights, forcing Perdue to cancel the conference at the last second. "I was hopeful to say that it was coming and now I don't know that I'll get to say that," Perdue said. "Nobody knows what's going to happen [...] I don't know what figures they got from Georgia, but Georgia wants them badly, and we want them badly, and by Monday [April 6, 2009], there'll be four or five other states that want them badly." Johnny Griffin, director of the Wilmington Regional Film Commission, explains: "Disney makes feature films. They also make television series; they make individual movies for the Disney Channel. By losing this one project, in essence, we've lost all of those opportunities." He also notes the loss of jobs and tourism filming would have created.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: On April 9, 2009, after three months of deliberation, the decision to relocate to Georgia was made final. To determine the specific town, location scouts scoured the state for an aged, isolated, oceanfront property to use as the Miller family's home in the film. After another three months and the discovery of the "Adams Cottage" on the southern tip of Tybee Island, Tybee and neighboring locations became the sites of filming in late March, with the intention of masquerading the area as Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. The locale proved too unique to disguise. "We had a hard time trying to hide the fact that this was Tybee and Savannah was Savannah," said Bass Hampton, the film's location director. Filmmakers convinced the screenwriters to change the setting of the film and to Tybee Island, thus allowing them to incorporate landmarks such as the Tybee Island Light Station and the Savannah Historic District. The setting of Sparks' novel remained in North Carolina. Though other movies have been filmed in Tybee Island, "The Last Song" is the first to be both filmed and set in Tybee Island. With the city's name plastered on everything from police cars to businesses, Georgia officials predicted a lasting effect on the economy. In addition, "The Last Song" is estimated to have brought up to 500 summer jobs to Georgia, $8 million to local businesses, and $17.5 million to state businesses.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Nelson Coates is the production designer for "The Last Song", responsible for all visual aspects of the movie. Coates, who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the Stephen King television miniseries "The Stand", arrived 11 weeks prior to the start of filming to do prep work. While most of the filming took place on the natural Tybee Island beach or on preconstructed private property, Coates oversaw the re-painting of the pier and the construction of the carnival and church.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Location scouts had searched the entirety of Georgia for an aged, isolated, oceanfront property to use as a home for the Millers for nearly three months before scout Andy Young came across the "Adams Cottage" on the southern end of Tybee Island. "It was getting down to zero hour," said Young. "Often, it's about the house. It can be a character itself in the movie." The house's owner, Sam Adams, welcomed filming as "an opportunity to sort of immortalize the house," in case it is destroyed by storms. The two-story, six bedroom house was built by Adams' great-grandfather in 1918 and was made entirely out of hard pine wood with very few painted surfaces. According to "Savannah Morning News" reporter Lesley Conn, it "was built in classic rambling beach style [... designed] to allow ocean breezes to sweep through wide, wraparound porches into cool, heart-pine rooms."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: The church set was built over a six-week period on a vacant lot on the corner of 13th Street and Sixth Avenue, near residential homes. The one-room, building seats roughly 80 people and is estimated to be worth $250,000 to $350,000. Special-effects coordinator Will Purcell subdued concerns about the church burning scene by stating that the building would not actually be set on fire. The intended menacing effect is "all camera angles. It is a safe environment for actors to do their work." Several techniques were used to simulate the fire, including the use of propane pipes to shoot flames through the church windows. At the end of filming, Cyrus hoped to fly the church set back to her family's estate in Tennessee. Disney agreed to donate the building to the island after Tybee officials lobbied to keep it, with the condition that its connection to "The Last Song" not be advertised. The set will be moved to a new location and brought up to code for use as a nondenominational chapel for island weddings; renovations are expected to cost approximately $600,000.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Cyrus' busy schedule necessitated that filming take place over the summer. Sparks noted, "She's got a fall music tour and then she's back filming "Hannah Montana" in the spring again. So, the only time she had free in her schedule was over the summer."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Principal photography began on June 15, 2009 and finished on August 18, 2009. Filming did not take place during weekends.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: On the first day of production, Cyrus and Hemsworth filmed a kiss in the ocean. Other scenes which took place in June included the carnival and volleyball tournament, both of which were filmed on the beach near the Tybee Island pier. Filming at the pier wrapped up on June 23, 2009 after shooting the scene in which Kim drops off Ronnie and Jonah to live with Steve. Scenes of the church fire were shot on July 10, 2009. Filming at the Georgia Tech Savannah campus began on July 16. Kinnear finished taping on July 17, 2009. Wedding scenes and a key driving scene were filmed at the Wormsloe Historic Site between July 20 and July 23 for twelve hours each day. Driving scenes in Isle of Hope, Georgia continued to the 28. By July 30, the movie had returned to Tybee Island for more beach scenes. Chaikin's character framed Cyrus' for stealing a watch on August 6. On August 10, Hemsworth performed an oil change and Cyrus browsed an upscale boutique in downtown Savannah for the movie. The funeral was filmed from August 11, 2009 to August 13, 2009 at the church set in Tybee Island. On August 15, further church burning scenes took place. The wrap party was held on the 16, and the cast and crew arrived in Atlanta the following day to spend the last days of filming at the Georgia Aquarium. After analyzing the area on the 17th, the movie began shooting in public areas at dawn on the 18th to avoid crowds. Once the aquarium opened to the public at 10:00, filming shifted to behind-the-scenes areas.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Due to the conflicting personalities of his protagonist couple, Sparks faced difficulty in finding a vehicle that would draw Will and Ronnie to spend time together. "It had to be during the summer, she [Ronnie] had to be new in town, and whatever happened had to start in June and end in August. Because you always want a conclusion," said Sparks of his requirements. He mentioned summer camp or a summer job as typical vehicles used in books, but dismissed them as unoriginal and boring. "So it's got to be original, it's got to be interesting, and at the same time it's got to be universal, that you feel like it could happen to anybody." Sparks eventually chose to have Will and Ronnie bond over a loggerhead sea turtle nest, knowing that loggerhead eggs often hatch in August. The scene of the hatching nest took place during the first week of August and involved 26 live loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings. Sea turtle hatchlings have an innate sense to head toward the ocean water as soon as they are born, so scenes of the nest hatching had to be taken swiftly. Said Mike Dodd of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the biologist who supervised the scene, the hatchlings "did all they know how to do: They crawled down to the water and swam off." Sparks told an interviewer he suspected filmmakers would digitally add more turtles to the scene. At the time of filming, the loggerhead sea turtle was listed as a threatened species. The environmentally friendly theme was an added bonus to Tybee Island, which was then promoting ecotourism.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "When I Look at You", song by Miley Cyrus, was originally from her EP "The Time of Our Lives" released August 31, 2009, but was included on the soundtrack because it fit the movie well. The song is used in the background of the film's trailer.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: At the launch of his album "Cradlesong" on June 30, 2009, Rob Thomas told the New York "Daily News", "My buddy Adam Shankman, who just directed Miley's movie, called me on the phone the other day and was like, 'You have to write a song for this movie.'... I would definitely write a song for her [Cyrus]." In the end, however, Thomas was unable to contribute music to "The Last Song", citing "scheduling problems" as the reason.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: The soundtrack features a track by Casey McPherson, frontman of the band Alpha Rev which signed with Disney's Hollywood Records in August 2008. "Variety" magazine's Anthony D'Alessandro notes that the use of soundtracks as "launch pads" for new Disney artists is a common practice. "A Different Side of Me" by Allstar Weekend was also included on the soundtrack. They are a group newly signed to Hollywood Records after winning the N.B.T. Competition through the Disney Channel. The soundtrack was released in the U.S. on March 23, 2010.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Though not featured on soundtrack, Snow Patrol's 2006 single "Shut Your Eyes" and Feist's "I Feel It All" also appear in the film. The soundtrack had a major increase in sales in the week of the DVD release. The soundtrack peaked at #104 on the "Billboard" 200 albums chart.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures originally scheduled "The Last Song" for wide release on January 8, 2010, but was delayed from January 8, 2010 to March 31, 2010.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Upon the release of the novel on September 8, Sparks began a book tour reaching around 13 cities and gave several interviews. During these events, he discussed writing both the novel and the screenplay. Cyrus and Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook discussed the film on September 11, 2009 at the first D23 Expo. The first clips from the film appeared online on September 11, 2009, interspersed within one version of the "When I Look at You" music video. The film's first trailer was integrated into Cyrus' Wonder World Tour and premiered during the tour's opening night on September 14, 2009 in Portland, Oregon. Midway through each concert, the trailer was shown on large video screens surrounding the stage. After it finished, Cyrus played a white piano and sang "When I Look at You" while film clips continued to play on the screens behind her. On November 16, 2009, the first three film stills were released via the film's Facebook page. The following day, the film's trailer premiered online. The film's premiere was held in Los Angeles on March 25, 2010.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Cyrus was originally planned to go to the UK premiere of the film, but due to the April 14, 2010 eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull that blanketed Europe in volcanic ash and grounded all flights to and from the continent, she was unable to attend.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" performed well for when it was released for the first time, garnering $5,125,103 on approximately 3,300 screens at 2,673 theaters for an average of $1,917 per theater.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: It has grossed $62,950,384 in North America and $26,091,272 in other territories for a worldwide total of $89,041,656.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed $16,007,426, finishing fourth at the box office behind "Clash of the Titans" ($61,235,105), "Why Did I Get Married Too?" ($29,289,537) and "How to Train Your Dragon" ($29,010,044).


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: "The Last Song" was panned by critics. , the film holds a 21% approval rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 119 reviews with an average rating of 4.01/10. The critical consensus is summarized: "As shamelessly manipulative as any Nicholas Sparks production, "The Last Song" is done no favors by its miscast and over matched star, Miley Cyrus." Metacritic, which assigns normalized ratings to films, "The Last Song" holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 33% based on 27 reviews.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Reviewers were critical of Sparks' and Van Wie's screenplay and formulaic storyline. Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" says the screenplay's faults include several "scenes that make no emotional sense" and claims, "The plot construction is weak. Incidents don't flow one into the next." When reviewing Cyrus's performance, critics acknowledged her stage presence, but were frequently critical of her acting abilities. Jay Stone of "The Ottawa Citizen" says Cyrus's portrayal of angry Ronnie "consist[s] of pouting and sneering [...] Cyrus doesn't have a lot of range, but she does have presence."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Rob Nelson of "Variety" writes, "Cyrus, alas, hasn't yet learned not to act [...] But she does show off her considerable chops as a pianist and remains reasonably likable throughout." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" believes that although "her Hannah Montana persona has a certain aggressive charm", in "The Last Song" she "play-act[s] rather than exploring the motives and feelings of her character."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed 2.5/4. He praised the acting and directing, but derided the plot and Sparks's writing.


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Kinnear's performance has been widely praised. A. O. Scott writes, "it's nice to see Mr. Kinnear play an entirely sympathetic character for a change [but] his slyness and subtlety seem wasted in a project that has no interest in either." Michael Phillips of "The Chicago Tribune" writes, "Reliably honest and affecting, [Kinnear] fights off the waves of corn in much the same way that Tibetan monk defied the tsunami in "2012"."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Glen Whipp of the "Associated Press" writes, "Kinnear lends the movie a dignity it doesn't deserve". Stone advises, "I'd watch out for Liam Hemsworth".


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Stephen Witty of "The Star-Ledger" commends "newcomer Carly Chaikin [who] plays the "bad girl" ... with an exciting mixture of wildness and vulnerability. Halfway in, I began wishing desperately that Chaikin was playing the lead."


title: The Last Song (2010 film)

text: Reception for Coleman was mixed; Jeff Vice of "Deseret News" calls him a "hammy irritant" while Jon Bream of the "Star Tribune" writes, "The most memorable acting is by Coleman, 12 [... who] gets a lot of great lines and delivers them with aplomb".


title: Mbira

text: Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.


title: Mbira

text: A modern interpretation of the instrument, the kalimba, was commercially produced and exported by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in the late 1950s, popularising similar instruments outside of Africa. Tracey's design was modeled after the mbira nyunga nyunga and named ''Kalimba'' after an ancient predecessor of the mbira family of instruments. The kalimba is basically a westernized younger version of mbira. It was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s largely due to the successes of such musicians as Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire and Thomas Mapfumo in the 1970s. These musicians included mbira on stage accompanying modern rock instruments such as electric guitar and bass, drum kit, and horns.


title: Mbira

text: Their arrangements included numerous songs directly drawn from traditional mbira repertoire. Other notable influencers bringing mbira music out of Africa are: Dumisani Maraire, who brought marimba and karimba music to the American Pacific Northwest; Ephat Mujuru, who was one of the pioneer teachers of mbira dzavadzimu in the United States; and the writings and recordings of Zimbabwean musicians made by Paul Berliner. Claire Jones, a student of Dumisani Maraire in the 1970s, has been playing and teaching mbira for more than 40 years. She is also a Festival Coordinator for Zimfest, a Zimbabwean Music Festival held annually in North America that offers many opportunities to learn and listen to mbira.


title: Mbira

text: Joseph H. Howard and Babatunde Olatunji have both suggested that mbira (and other metal lamellaphones) are thoroughly African, being found only in areas populated by Africans or their descendants. Similar instruments were reported to be used in Okpuje, Nsukka area of the south eastern part of Nigeria in the early 1900s.


title: Mbira

text: Various kinds of plucked idiophones and lamellaphones have existed in Africa for thousands of years. The tines were originally made of bamboo but over the years metal keys have been developed. These types of instrument appear to have been invented twice in Africa: a wood or bamboo-tined instrument appeared on the west coast of Africa about 3,000 years ago, and metal-tined lamellophones appeared in the Zambezi River valley around 1,300 years ago. Metal-tined instruments traveled all across the continent, becoming popular among the Shona of Zimbabwe (from which the word mbira comes) and other indigenous groups in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The mbira was differentiated in its physical form and social uses as it spread. Kalimba-like instruments came to exist from the northern reaches of North Africa to the southern extent of the Kalahari Desert, and from the east coast to the west coast, though many or most groups of people in Africa did not possess mbiras. There were thousands of different tunings, different note layouts, and different instrument designs, but there is a hypothetical tuning and note layout of the original metal-tined instrument from 1,300 years ago, referred to as the 'kalimba core'.


title: Mbira

text: In the mid 1950s mbira instruments were the basis for the development of the "kalimba", a westernized version designed and marketed by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, leading to a great expansion of its distribution outside Africa.


title: Mbira

text: Lamellophones are instruments which have little tines, or "lamellae", which are played by plucking. Unlike stringed instruments or air-column instruments like flutes, the overtones of a plucked lamella are inharmonic, giving the mbira a characteristic sound. The inharmonic overtones are strongest in the attack and die out rather quickly, leaving an almost pure tone. When a tine is plucked, the adjacent tines also create secondary vibrations that increase the harmonic complexity of an individual note.


title: Mbira

text: Mbira music, like much of the sub-Saharan African music traditions is based on cross-rhythm. An example from the kutsinhira part of the traditional mbira dzavadzimu piece "Nhema Musasa" is given by David Peñalosa, who observes that the left hand plays the ostinato "bass line," while the right hand plays the upper melody. The composite melody is an embellishment of the 3:2 cross-rhythm (also known as a hemiola).


title: Mbira

text: It is common on African mbira and other lamellophones to have the lowest notes in the center with higher notes to the far left and the far right—this is an ergonomic nicety, in that the thumb can pivot such that all the tines are easy to reach. However, traditional African tunings use notes that do not lie on the grid of the Western tempered scale, and traditional mbira note layouts are often idiosyncratic, sometimes with adjacent tines making part of a scale, but then an odd note thrown in that defies the pattern.


title: Mbira

text: Historically, mbira tunings have not mapped exactly onto Western scales; it is not unusual for a seven-note sequence on a mbira to be "stretched" over a greater range of frequencies than a Western octave and for the intervals between notes to be different from those in a Western scale. Tunings have often been idiosyncratic with variations over time and from one player to another. A mbira key produces a rich complex of overtones that varies from one instrument to another depending on its maker's intentions and accidents of fabrication, such that some instruments simply sound better when some notes of a familiar tuning are pushed. With the increased popularity of the mbira dzavadzimu in North America, Europe, and Japan in recent decades, Zimbabwean mbira makers have tended to tune their instruments more uniformly for export, but much variation is still found among mbira in their homeland.


title: Mbira

text: Tunings vary from family to family referring to relative interval relationships and not to absolute pitches. The most common tuning played throughout Zimbabwe and among non-Zimbabwean mbira players worldwide is Nyamaropa, similar to the western Mixolydian mode. Names may also vary between different families; Garikayi Tirikoti has developed a "mbira orchestra" that has seven different tunings, each starting on a different interval of the same seven-note scale, where it is possible to play all instruments in a single performance. The seven tunings that Garikayi uses are: Bangidza, Nyabango, Nhemamusasa, Chakwi, Taireva, Mahororo, and Mavembe (all of which are also names of traditional songs save for Mavembe and Nyabango). The closest to what is commonly named "Nyamaropa" is his "Nhemamusasa" tuning.


title: Mbira

text: In Shona music, the mbira dzavadzimu (""voice of the ancestors"", or ""mbira of the ancestral spirits"", national instrument of Zimbabwe) is a musical instrument that has been played by the Shona people of Zimbabwe for thousands of years. The "mbira dzavadzimu" is frequently played at religious ceremonies and social gatherings called "mapira" (sing. ""bira""). The "mbira dzavadzimu" can be used to play over one hundred songs, such as "Kariga mombe".


title: Mbira

text: A typical "mbira dzavadzimu" consists of between 22 and 28 keys constructed from hot- or cold-forged metal affixed to a hardwood soundboard ("gwariva") in three different registers—two on the left, one on the right.


title: Mbira

text: While playing, the little finger of the right hand is placed through a hole in the bottom right corner of the soundboard, with the little finger entering from the front of sound board, and the ring finger and middle finger reaching around the back to stabilize the instrument. This leaves the thumb and index finger of the right hand open to stroke the keys in the right register from above (thumb) and below (index finger). The fingers of the left hand stabilize the left side of the instrument, with most fingers reaching slightly behind the instrument. Both registers on the left side of the instrument are played with the left thumb. Some mbira possess an extra key in the upper left register which is hit from below by the left index finger.


title: Mbira

text: Bottle caps, shells, or other objects (""machachara"") are often affixed to the soundboard to create a buzzing sound when the instrument is played. In a traditional setting, this sound is considered extremely important, as it is believed to attract ancestral spirits.


title: Mbira

text: During a public performance, an "mbira dzavadzimu" is frequently placed in a "deze" (calabash resonator) to amplify its sound.


title: Mbira

text: The "mbira dza vadzimu" is very significant in Shona religion and culture, considered a sacred instrument by the Shona people. It is usually played to facilitate communication with ancestral spirits, bringing the spirit of the dead back on its homestead. Within the Shona tradition, the mbira may be played with paired performers in which the "kushaura", the caller, leads the performed piece as the "kutsinhira", the responder, "interlocks" a subsequent part. The ritual is known as the "Bira." During these all-night ceremonies, people call upon the spirits to answer questions. The variations of notes in an "Mbira" piece aid the participants in going into trance, which in Shona culture aids the spirits in taking over the participant's body.


title: Mbira

text: Albert Chimedza, director of the Mbira Centre in Harare, has estimated that "there are at most ten thousand people in the world who play mbira."


title: Mbira

text: The nyunga nyunga which normally has 15 keys, originated from Manicaland where it traditionally played the entertainment role during social gatherings and commemorations. Jeke (Jack) Tapera introduced the mbira nyunga nyunga in the 1960s from Tete province of Mozambique to Kwanongoma College of African music (now United College of Music) in Bulawayo. Two keys were then added to make fifteen (Chirimumimba, 2007), in two rows. The mbira nyunga nyunga is similar in construction to the mbira dzavadzimu, but has no hole in the soundboard. Key pitch radiates out from the center, rather than from left to right.


title: Mbira

text: Zimbabwe's Dumisani Maraire originated mbira nyunga nyunga number notation. The upper row keys (from left) are keys 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 while the bottom row keys are notated as 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15. Maraire brought awareness of this instrument to the United States when he came to the University of Washington as a visiting artist from 1968 to 1972.