Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
‘Johnson’s song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight.’
Carl Sagan, on including Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground (1927) on the Voyager Golden Records
The US gospel blues musician and evangelist ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson was born to a sharecropping family in the small town of Pendleton, Texas in 1897. After learning to play a cigar-box guitar, he performed as a popular street musician throughout Texas, eventually recording 30 songs for Columbia Records between 1927 and 1930. Little notice was taken of his death in 1945, and much of his biography remains a mystery. What is certain, however, is that today his legendary low-register howl and slide guitar persists, both on our planet and in interstellar space. Here on Earth, his music influenced the likes of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Howlin’ Wolf. And just beyond the reaches of our solar system, his recording of his song Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground (1927) is one of 27 pieces of music selected for the Voyager spacecraft’s famed ‘Golden Records’, intended to capture the range of musical expression. This instalment from the US animator Drew Christie’s series Drawn & Recorded combines biography and mythology to recount how Johnson’s music made the unlikely journey from the streets of rural Texas to the stars.
Director: Drew Christie
Writers: Drew Christie, Bill Flanagan
Narrator: T Bone Burnett
Producers: T Bone Burnett, Bill Flanagan, Van Toffler
Website: Gunpowder & Sky

video
The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes

video
Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes

video
Space exploration
In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?
5 minutes

video
Love and friendship
When drawing your muse hundreds of times becomes an exercise in love
7 minutes

video
Thinkers and theories
Is simulation theory a way to shirk responsibility for the world we’ve created?
13 minutes

video
Biology
A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues
2 minutes

video
Family life
In Rwanda, Sébastien finds traces of personal history in the wake of national tragedy
21 minutes

video
Dance and theatre
Leaf through Shakespeare’s First Folio for a riveting journey into theatre history
13 minutes

video
Architecture
Modern architecture should embrace – not ignore or repel – the nonhuman world
8 minutes