What does cheese have in common with A Tribe Called Quest? Well, they’re both funky, and they both age extremely well. More interestingly, though, science has just discovered that the two go very well together.
Perfectly named Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler started an experiment to determine whether music would help aging cheese reach a more robust flavor, and if so, which kind would work best. Working alongside researchers from the Bern University of Arts, Wampfler placed nine separate wheels of Emmental (the kind of cheese most associated with Swiss cheese by those who don’t live in Switzerland) in separate wooden crates last September, and fed them different kinds of music through mini-transmitters. (One wheel was left to grow in silence–the control cheese, if you will.)
Cut to six months later, and the Emmental has matured. One of the wheels aged with 24-hour exposure to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and another to Mozart’s Magic Flute opera. Another coexisted with the rave-ready electro of Vril’s “UV,” and another still spent months with the abstract melodies of Yello’s “Monolith.”
A jury tasted each strain of musical cheese twice, and each time the results were the same: A Tribe Called Quest’s “We Got It From Here” was the winner.
As Swiss TV chief and jury member Benjamin Luzuy told Reuters TV: “The differences were very clear, in terms of texture, taste, appearance–there was really something very different.”
Perhaps now the band will consider renaming themselves A Tribe Called Queso.
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