HV Episodes
Hearing Voices from NPR weekly hours 2012-2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008
January 2012
2012-01-18 013 Crossing Borders: From Mexico to US
Marcos Martinez, (formerly) of KUNM Alberquerque, hosts A Tale of Two Countries, from Mexico to US: In “Sasabe,” a Sonora, Mexico border town, Scott Carrier talks to immigrants on their hazardous, illegal desert crossing, and to the border patrol waiting for them in Sasabe, Arizona. Luis Alberto Urrea reads from “The Devil”s Highway,” his book about death in the desert. Guillermo Gomez-Pena imagines “Maquiladoras of the Future,” fantasy border factories. “And I walked…”, by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler, is a sound-portrait of Mexicans who risk their lives to find better-paying jobs in the United States. Listen…
2012-01-11 130 Shortcuts 2011: A Year in An Hour
Speeches, songs, events, and people who past last year: We hear Queen Elizabeth, Occupy Wall Street, The Arab Spring, Osama Bin-Laden’s death, Japan’s nuclear accidents, North East floods, Texas fires, GOP presidential candidates, Michael Moore, and Charlie Sheen. Music includes: PJ Harvey, Ry Cooder, Fleet Foxes, Bright Eyes, The Coasters, John Barry. Tributes to: Steve Jobs, Jerry Leiber, Andy Rooney, Joe Frasier, Gil Scott Heron, Hubert Sumlin, Wild Man Fischer, Amy Winehouse, Clarence Clemons, Harry Morgan, Sylvia Robinson, Carl Gardner, Wildman Fischer, Phoebe Snow, Jack Lalane. Listen…
2012-01-04 099 Polk Street Stories: San Francisco USA
An oral history of San Francisco’s premiere queer neighborhood, told by those who’ve called it home: Public Historian Joey Plaster spent a year gathering 70+ interviews from people experiencing Polk Street’s transition from a working class queer neighborhood to an upscale entertainment district. Polk Street’s scene predates the modern gay rights movement. It was a world unto itself, ten blocks of low rent hotels, bars and liquor stores, all sandwiched in between the gritty Tenderloin, City Hall, and the ritzy Nob Hill: a home invented by people who had no other home. A Transom Radio special. Listen…
December 2011
2011-12-28 026 Prime Candidates: Portraits of Past Presidential Primaries
Politicians who fancy themselves president tromp thru the New Hampshire mill town of “Claremont,” produced by Larry Massett, Art Silverman and Betty Rogers. The media spin myths out of misquotes in “Democracy and Things Like That” by Sarah Vowell and This American Life. The Language Removal Service concocts the world’s first wordless political debate in their “California Recall Project.” And all this years primary losers re-appear in “Super Tuesday Mixdown,” from Peter Bochan’s series Presidential Shortcuts. Listen…
2011-12-21 129 HanukkahChristmashup: Season’s Greets and Beats
Christmas at a Bagram Air Base hospital, Afghanistan; a tour of the Holy Land, Hannukah military history; a visit to a toy store; and musical Chrismashups. Listen…
2011-12-14 128 Prisoners of War: Battle of the Bulge
In December 1944 the Allies were closing in on Germany. HHitler had a desperate plan to save the Third Reich, a massive assault he believed would so demoralize that the Allies, they would seek a separate peace, leaving only the Russian army on the eastern front. On December 16 the Germans unleashed an offensive that would become the most brutal battle of the European war: the Battle of the Bulge. Nineteen thousand Americans were killed, about the same number were taken prisoner. We hear from four Americans soldiers about their time — before, during and after — in a German POW camp. Listen…
2011-12-07 127 Behind the Beat: Inside Musician’s Minds
Music makers on making music: French vocalist Camille, Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, a Hidden Kitchen at a Mozart Festival, and a high school sax player with immigration issues. Stories from the Kitchen Sisters, Long Haul Productions and the series Musicians in Their Own Words. Listen…
November
2011-11-30 039 Portrait of a Plague: For AIDS Awareness Day
Sister Agnes Ramashiga’s Radio Diaries of “Just Another Day At the World’s Biggest Hospital,” Soweto — 2000 patients check in daily, half HIV positive. Teenager documents their HIV “Positive Life,” by American RadioWorks. Poet Lisa Buscani is “Counting” on her mom’s health advice. “And Trouble Came: An African AIDS Diary” is Laura Kaminsky’s compositon for viola, cello, piano, and stories of Tamakloe: warrior, tailor, AIDS victim. Life-saving meds brought Krandall Kraus back from the dead, like “Lazarus.” And dying mother’s writes her son “Letters to Butchie,” by Sound Portraits. Listen…
2011-11-23 095 Inside the Adoption Circle: Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Families
First-person accounts from all sides of adoption. Stories about living with questions and searching for answers. We hear from birth families (mothers, siblings and a father), adoptees (both kids and adults), and various adoptive families including open adoption and international adoption (China). Produced for Transom.org by Samantha Broun and Viki Merrick with help from Jay Allison. Listen…
2011-11-16 126 Joe Frank: God and Girls
An hour under the influence of radio maestro and master storyteller Joe Frank, featuring many of Joe’s sonic co-conspirators, including David Cross (Fox “Arrested Development”), Laura Esterman (ZBS “Ruby”), Larry Block (PBS “Sesame Street”), and Grace Zabriskie (“Twn Peaks,” HBO “Big Love”). Deep and dark does not begin to describe the solitary, ponderous melancholia that is a Joe Frank story. Listen…
2011-11-09 075 Veteran’s Day: Iraq and Afghanistan Vets
Voices from the Armed Forces: “Project Healing Waters” teaches wounded warriors, including amputees, to fly-fish; we spend a day catching trout at Rose River Farm in Virginia. “Operation Homecoming” is an NEA book project featuring writings and readings by vets returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. “Winter Soldiers” is testimony by soldiers and marines at the Iraq Veterans Against the War hearings. “Swords to Plowshares” follows a member of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition: farmers helping veterans helping farmers. And the last Vet we hear is from Afghanistan; he’s a former Taliban. Listen…
2011-11-02 125 City of Angels: An Ode to Old L.A.
Joe Frank talk to a homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles. David Greenberger visits Senior Centers in East LA. Pastor Michael Cummings patrols the grounds of at Jordan High School, Watts, California. And we hear excerpts from Tom Russell’s “Hotwalker,” an Americana ode to old LA, the music and the culture, with beat outsiders, religious revivals, and L.A. poet Charles Bukowski. Listen…
October
2011-10-26 074 Bloody Hell: For Halloween
An hour of horror for All Hallows’ Eve, the first half is bloody, the second goes to hell: ESP, dreams and intuition drip “Blood on the Pulpit” by David Greenberger. La Llorona, the crying woman, is Mexico’s bogeyman. ZBS adapts Cherokee writer Craig Strete’s “The Bleeding Man.” FM Einheit delves in Dante’s DivineComedy in a “Radio Inferno.” A woman narrates her found-sound trip to hell with Jesus. Shel Silverstein introduces us to “Monsters I’ve Met.” And the 90 Second Cellphone Chillin’ Theater wonders what’s in “The Box.” Listen…
2011-10-19 124 Walk in the Park: National Parks, Neighborhood Parks
National Parks, Neighborhood Parks: Scott Carrier climbs Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. Jay Allison goes deep into the Everglades with Lance Corporal James McMullen, author of “Cry of the Panther.” Katie Davis introduces us to her neighbors in William Pierce Community Park, DC. And Yellowstone’s geyser guy, geologist Rick Hutchinson, gets us up close and personal with the Park’s hydrothermal features. Listen…
2011-10-12 073 Home Team: For World Series Season
For the weeks leading to the World Series, baseball stories from the Public Radio Hall of Fame: Host Gwen Macsai takes a swing at singing the National Anthem. Composer Phillip Kent Bimstein plays ball with the St. Louis Cardinals’ “Bushy Wushy Beer Man.” Barrett Golding spends a season with the Rookie League. Singer/playwright Terry Allen defines the many meanings of Dug-Out, amid the emerging early 1890s sport of professional baseball. Listen…
2011-10-05 123 Cystic Fibrosis: Living with CF
Laura Rothenberg audio-documents two years of her life with CF, in the classic Radio Diaries story “My So-Called Lungs.” A new piece by Catie Talarski of WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio, “Four Failings Lungs,” follows two other CF patients; one wants a lung transplant, the other does not. And StoryCorps brings us one of the longest-surviving lung-transplant recipients, Howell Graham, who had both lungs replaced in 1990. Listen…
September
2011-09-28 066 Desert Air: Audio from the Arid Regions
Hot & dry Summer soundscapes: Coyotes, owls, frogs and songbirds are part of “Desert Solitudes,” recorded by Bernie Krause and Ruth Happel. Host Ben Adair (APM Global Climate Change Initiative) heads to the ghost towns, abandoned mines, and billion-year old boulders along Death Valley’s “Mojave Road.” Kraut-rockers Faust dial in “Long Distance Calls in the Desert.” The Quiet American sound-captures a nuclear Nevada Test Site warning sign rattling in a “Desert Sun.” In the early 1990s, SLC producer Scott Carrier found Nevada”s “Battle Mountain” full of sagebrush, solace and stories. Listen…
2011-09-21 102 Lost Critters: Dogs, Cats, a Pig, & 1M Camels
Some Dogs, Some Cats, One Pig, and a Million Camels: Camel racers ride the wild herds of Australia. Leo Grillo’s DELTA Rescue locates lost pets in Los Angeles. Piggles eavdes the butcher block, and wanders the backwoods near Washington DC. And the mythical Mama Chaos leads the feral dogs of Los Alamos. Listen…
2011-09-14 072 Predator: Hunter and Hunted
For hunting season: Hillary Frank’s tale of a teenage babysitter who’s siblings think he’s a werewolf. Mark Allen fears a toy poodle — the most evil entity known to man. Matmos mixes music with North American Mammals. Long Haul Productions witness a PA Spillway, where tourists toss bread, and the carp amass so thickly that ducks walk the fish’s backs for a slice. Norman Strung demonstrates the shrill sound and thrill found in calling for elk. A father and son provide a hunter’s perspective of the annual deer breeding cycle. And Alex Chadwick visits hunts wildlife and the wild life in Idaho. Listen…
2011-09-07 122 Prisoner of Zion: Religious Fundamentals- 9/11/11
Shortly after the World Trade Center fell in autumn 2001, it became clear the United States would invade Afghanistan. Producer Scott Carrier decided he ought to go there too. Why? To see for himself: that’s what writers do. Who are these fanatics, these fundamentalists, the Taliban and the like? And what do they want? For the weekend of 9/11/11, Hearing Voices from NPR presents “Prisoner of Zion.” Carrier narrates his trip to Afghanistan. With his young guide and translator, Najibulla, they tour the horrors of war. Years later Naji tells Scott he must leave his homeland — the dangers for a translator have become extreme. Scott gets Najibulla accepted at Utah Valley University. Naji, it turns out, handles the Mormons quite well, while Scott, teaching at the same school, has a hard time with them. At the end Naji is graduating, about to get married, and start a new job; while Scott wonders whether he can stand teaching another year — or if he’ll wind up on the street like Naji. Listen…
August
2011-08-31 098 Working Class: For Labor Day
What we do for a living: Mohawk ironworkers on the Twin Towers; a Radio Dairy from a scissors sharpener; exercises for existential overworked, undervalued employees; percussive postal clerks in Ghana; a man with 800 jobs; and what happens when there is no work… anywhere: the 1940 Great Depression “Voices from the Dust Bowl.” Listen…
2011-08-24 121 Engine Overdrive: Ode to Internal Combustion
Engine Overdrive: Ode to Internal Combustion. We talk to people with oversized engines: on Harley’s, and Low Riders, at race tracks and drag strips. Music from Big Stick (aka, Drag Racing Underground) and an opera, “The Miracle of Cars,” by Robert Ashley. Off to the races at the Long Beach Grand Prix and the Bonneville Salt Flats. Some classic comedy car ads, and hanging with Hog riders. Listen…
2011-08-17 097 Crow Fair II: Apsaalooke Nation Celebration
The final part of this two-hour special: A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. The Crow Fair honors that tradition with a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Every August is now Crow Fair in southeastern Montana, with a parade, a Pow Wow, and a rodeo. In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event with the Crow people: the Apsaalooke Nation. Listen…
2011-08-10 096 Crow Fair I: Gathering the Tribes
A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. The Crow Fair honors that tradition with a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Every third weekend of August the Apsaalooke Nation puts on a five-day festival in southeastern Montana, with a parade, Pow Wow, rodeo, and traditional and fancy dancing. In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event. This early ambient sound-portrait breathes with the arts and activities of the Crow people. Part one of two. Listen…
2011-08-03 120 Dear Diary: Audio Journals
Audio documents of daily life: From Radio Diaries a Teenage Diary of “Nick In Salt Lake City, from Home School to High School.” Recording an ascent of “Cho Oyo, 8201m,” the sixth highest mountain in the world. A transgender tells her mother she’s gay, in “Dia’s Dairy.” And in “Carmen’s Diaries” a woman rediscovers what she wrote as a girl. Listen…
July
2011-07-27 094 Working with Studs: America’s Greatest Listener
A Transom.org tribute to the great broadcaster and author Studs Terkel (1912-2008): For many years, Transom.org editor, Sydney Lewis, worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this remembrance, a blend of documentary and reminiscence, she brings together a crew of Stud’s co-workers. They share great stories and wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself. Listen…
2011-07-20 119 Trouble: From Bad to Worse
From Bad to Worse: A private investigator empathizes with the criminal element. Katie Davis hunts the vermin of her rat-infested DC neighbor. Joe Frank read the nightly news: no wonder we’re all so depressed. And somehow a KGB-led road trip thru the Republic of Georgia has gone wrong. Listen…
2011-07-13 064 Outer Space: Moon and Beyond
The first moon man, launched July 16, landed July 20 1969: Astronauts communicate from beyond earth in “Zero G, & I Feel Fine” and “Last Man on the Moon.” President LBJ and Commander Scott Carpenter have a helium-infused confusing phone conversation. Sonic transmissions from deep in our solar system are sent back by Voyager I and II. The Sun and “space weather” emit “Natural Radio” sounds. Christine Lavin laments the loss of planetary status of “Planet X.” And Laurie Anderson relates a “Night Flight from Houston.” Listen…
2011-07-06 118 Hiker/Biker: Self-Propelled Travels
Self-propelled travels: We walk five thousand miles with a Fanatic Reactionary Pedestrian. We pedal thru Yellowstone and Teton Parks. And we trek with the Queen of Bhutan to remote villages, promoting what-they-call Gross National Happiness. (“The Queen’s Trek” is an Outer Voices production — they were first foreign journalists allowed to accompany a Bhutanese monarch on the trek, and the first to interview the Queen.) Listen…
June
2011-06-29 063 Lincoln Monument: A Civil War
For Independence Day, Old Abe, the Civil War, and its still-present aftermath: NPR recreates the “Gettysburg Address.” An archival recording of Walter Rathvon, who heard that speech live. Musings by poets Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg. In the 1950s Tony Schwartz recorded an NYC voxpop “Portrait of Lincoln.” Radio Diaries of the last “Civil War Widows,” one Union, one Confederate. Producer Jake Warga goes to battle with “Civil War Re-enacters.” Performance artist damali ayo sits on our city sidewalks collecting “Reparations.” Listen…
2011-06-22 091 Bad Trip: Your Next Vacation
Obscure tours and offbeat retreats thru Americana: Filmmaker Tony Buba takes the Long Haul Productions team around his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a once thriving steel town, now one-tenth the town it was in population. Scott Carrier transports visiting Tibetan monks around the U.S. West. The town of Boonville, California has it’s own language: Boontling, a story by Ginna Allison. And writer Mark Allen tours Universal Studios and pretty much loses his mind. Listen…
2011-06-15 062 Talking Dads: For Father’s Day
Sons, daughters, and dads: Storyteller Kevin Kling shares pancakes with his “Dad.” Sarah Vowell is a gunsmith’s daughter, in “Shooting Dad.” Joe Frank lets us eavesdrop on a father-son phone call between Larry and Zachary Block. Host Larry Massett and several other sons try to get to know their “Lost and Found Fathers.” Listen…
2011-06-08 117 War Torn: Weapons-Grade Radio
A weapons-grade hour of wartime radio: The people who start the fight, and the people who pay the price. The words of Churchill, Bush, Rumsfeld, LBJ, MacNamara, J. Robert Oppenhiemer, and a Hiroshima survivor. Carl Sandburg reads his poem “The Unknown War.” Scott Carrier reports from an Afghan battlefield in November 2001. Ryuichi Sakamoto has a musical contemplation of “War & Peace.” And “Prayer Circle: Path to Zero,” a CD for global nuclear disarmament. Listen…
2011-06-01 116 Homeless: Living on the Streets
The voices of people who were or are homeless: Carmen Delzell takes “Crazy John” into her home. Scott Carrier spends a night in DC “Gospel Mission” shelter. The “Land of 10,000 Homeless” is a Minneapolis music/audio documentary project. Dmae Roberts interviews a young homeless girl in “Miracle on the Streets.” The Homeless Writers Coalition performs poetry put to music. Homeless people tell their stories to StoryCorps. And the Kitchen Sisters visit with street and low-income people whose main cooking utensil is the the “George Foreman Grill.” Listen…
May
2011-05-25 059 War Memorial: Return to Vietnam
For Memorial Day, two stories recorded in Vietnam: In 1966, a young Lance Corporal carried a reel-to reel tape recorder with him. He made tapes of his friends, of life in fighting holes, of combat, until, two months later, when he was killed in action. His friend and fellow marine remembers him in “The Vietnam Tapes of Michael A. Baronowski” (by Jay Allison for Lost & Found Sound). And host Alex Chadwick’s first trip to Southeast Asia was as a soldier in the Sixties. Two decades later, as a journalist, he makes a “Return to Vietnam” to find what has and hasn’t changed since the war. Listen…
2011-05-18 090 On Horseback: Equine Athletes
A couple equestrian classics from the NPR archives: Olympian Bruce Davidson shares his techniques for training equine athletes, with NPR’s David Molpus. Josh Darsa and a team of sound-recordists are at Belmont Stakes for the third leg of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. And a poem by singer Annie Gallop about the poem that unleashed her love of horses. Listen…
2011-05-11 115 Refugees: Forced to Leave
The journeys of people driven from their homeland by war, disaster, and religious and political persecution: We travel “From Afghanistan to Amarillo,” “From Sudan to Omaha,” “From Burma to Indianapolis,” and “From Iraq to Detroit” (stories in the One Thing series). Mountain Music Project records “Blues for the Karen” in a Thai/Burma border refugee camp. A “Cargo Flight to Somewhere” starts in the Congo and ends in an airport detention center (a song/story for Crossing the BLVD project, Queens NYC). And “Refugee Dreams” of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians, now living in Portland, Oregon (Crossing East story). Listen…
2011-05-04 058 Motherly Love: Moms, Young and Old
For Mother’s Day: The Radio Diaries of “Melissa, Teen Mom” move her from foster home to starting her own family. Muriel & Walter Murch compose “A Mother’s Symphony” from womb sounds. Amy Jo, single mother of two toddlers, is “Surrounded by Lights” (producer: Erin Mishkin). Myra Dean tells StoryCorps of the day her son was killed. Ben Adair takes his mom in search of “Family Baggage.” Toronto musician Charles Spearin with his neighbor “Mrs. Morris,” in The Happiness Project. Katie Davis admits “I Live with My Mother.” And Jake Warga’s “Far Side” calendars make metaphor and memories of his mother’s life and death. Listen…
April
2011-04-27 089 Musicians’ Minds: Interviewing Music Makers
Musicians minds sometimes work differently. So interviews with musicians sometimes take unexpected turns: Host Lynne Neary’s interview with David Byrne ends up with her answering his questions. Mickey Hart takes us on an audio tour of his extensive worldwide percussion collection. Negativland turns their NPR interview into audio art. Musicians In Their Own Words surveys the sonic spectrum of musicians warming up for a performance. Listen…
2011-04-20 114 Psychological: States Of Mental Health
States Of Mental Health, in three diagnoses: Depression, Amnesia, and Mental Breakdown. Cameron Ledoux talks with his dad about his father’s depression. Scott Carrier goes looking for amnesia victims. And a sonic journey into the depths of mental breakdown — a first-person account told by the person losing grip on reality, and her friends who witnessed the descent. Listen…
2011-04-13 088 Scene of the Crime: Victims, Cops, and Criminals
There will be blood: An archival interview with 1950s NYC crime scene photographer, Weegee; then excerpts from old time radio’s “Casey, Crime Photographer” and “Dragnet.” Nancy Updike of This American Life spends the day with professional “Crime Scene Cleaners.” A sound-portrait of a convicted “White Collar Criminal,” by Adam Allington. And host Jake Warga does a good deed, for which he ends up assaulted, bleeding, and hospitalized. Listen…
2011-04-06 087 Thumb and Thumber: The Joy of Hitchhiking
Is hitchhiking the great American adventure sport or just a risky last resort for folks who can’t come up with bus fare? Producer Jonathan Mitchell offers a “Beginner’s Guide to Hitchhiking”. Scott Carrier relates a hitchhiking adventure involving “New Shoes” and a letter to the Dalai Lama. And host Larry Massett drives a battered Olds 88 from New Mexico to Florida, picking up every hitchhiker on “The Road” he sees — no matter how dangerous-looking. Listen…
March
2011-03-30 113 Hippies: Flying our Freak Flag
Tuned in and turned on: Interviews with Merry Pranksters (Carolyn Garcia and George Walker). The Beautiful People remixes Jimi Hendrix. Johhny Depp conjures Hunter S Thompson. And a walk down Haight Street, looking for the lost generation of the 1960s. Listen…
2011-03-23 085 Protest: From the National Mall to Town Halls
We hear crowds and confrontations at the “Town Halls 2009″ collective cross-country chaos. “Protest 1968-2008″ is four decades of marches and musics, montaged by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler. Scott Carrier introduces a junta-threatening Burmese rock band, Iron Cross. Tea Partiers and single-payer proponents shout outside a Presidential health care whistle stop; there’s debate, division and a “Day of Democracy”. NPR’s Jeff Kamen takes to the DC streets amid a police crackdown on an anti-war rally — from ATC’s first broadcast day (May 1971). Listen…
2011-03-16 112 Native America: Our Nation’s First Nations
A tour of our nation’s First Nations: NPR’s Alex Chadwick rides into the Bitterroot Mountains with Natives and Forest Service workers. We paddle the Pacific Coast with the Canoe Nations of the Northwest. And native poets Henry Real Bird, Joy Harjo, John Trudell and Keith Secola sing us the stories of their homes and ancestors. Listen…
2011-03-09 086 WHER-Memphis: All Girl Radio
The first all-girl radio station in the nation, WHER-Memphis, went on-air in 1955. It was the brainchild of sound legend Sam Phillips, who created the groundbreaking format with money he raised from selling Elvis Presley’s Sun Studios contract. Women almost exclusively ran the station. They read the news, interviewed local celebrities, and spun popular records. They sold and produced commercials, directed and engineered programming, and sat at the station’s control boards. “WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts” was produced by the Kitchen Sisters for their Lost and Found Sound series. Listen…
2011-03-02 071 Vietnam Vets: Coming Home
The sounds of Saigon, 1972: in combat, on the radio, in the streets, were recorded by Claude Johner for the Folkways recording “Good Morning, Vietnam. Doug Peacock, former Green Beret medic, deals with the PTSD of vets, including himself (interviewed by Scott Carrier). Rich Kepler’s war experiences were bottled up and about to burst, until he released them in his poetry (producer: Larry Massett). And producer Katie Davis talks with African American vets, a sound-portrait based on the book Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History by Wallace Terry. Listen…
February
2011-02-23 111 Guitar Heroes: Pickers, Pluckers, Players
Pickers, Pluckers, Players: The bad man of blues guitar, Charley Patton. A Master Class with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening, narrated by Susan Stamberg. Bass and steel guitarist Musicians In Their Own Words. Learning to play with Lemon Jelly and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. And Asian stringed instruments recorded by the Mountain Music Project. Listen…
2011-02-16 110 Mormon Fringe: Life with Latter Day Saints
Practicing polygamy, finding pockets of Polynesian Mormons, and converting the lost Native-American Israelites: “Saints and Indians,” a Homelands Production, on the Latter-Day Saints school for Navaho children — restoring their original place as the lost Kingdom of Isreal. A “Utah Luau” with displaced Hawaiians. And Scott Carrier’s sound-portrait of the “Last Days” plural marriage sects of Manti, Utah. Listen…
2011-02-09 053 Ranchers: Life, Death, Land, and Livestock
Life, Death, Land, and Livestock: We spend a year on a sheep ranch, lambing, shearing, selling and “Counting Sheep.” Musician Phillip Bimstien bases his classical composition, “Garland Hirschi’s Cows,” on the voice of a Rockville, Utah cattle-man. And 97-year-old rancher is “Holding His Ground” (produced by Jesikah Maria Ross for Stories from Heart of the Land and Saving the Sierra). Listen…
2011-02-02 109 Musical Memory: The Soundtrack of Our Lives
The Soundtrack of Our Lives: Selected stories from the series “Musicians in their own words” and “Song and Memory”, which asks the musical question: What one song do your remember most from your childhood? Also Melissa Block interviews musician Abigail Washburn about her project Afterquake: creating sound poetry with the children who survived China’s 2008 earthquake. Listen…
January
2011-01-26 084 Place Your Bets: What Happens in Vegas
We play keno, cards, and craps in Sin City: Scott Carrier stays up all night in America’s gambling Mecca: “Vegas”, baby. “Casino Suite” is three pieces for strings, winds, and Vegas dice table worker, composed by Phillip Kent Bimstein. Jazz bassist Kelly Roberti lost his bass to the “Keno Machines”. NPR host Alex Chadwick pits his wits against the casino regular playing “Poker at the Ox”. Joe Frank’s “Old Gambler” gets on the wrong side of Sin City’s collection crew. And playwright John Ridley’s “Lock It Up” is set inside the Hollywood Park Casino, which is neither in Hollywood nor a park. Listen…
2011-01-19 108 Making Music: For a Living, For a Life
Making Music, For a Living, For a Life. 1930s Florida folk music in the turpentine camps — a WPA project with Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy. The Maddox Brothers and Rose, a California country star. A North Carolina preacher’s son plays everything on guitar. And a whistler on the streets of Mexico City. Listen…
2011-01-12 079 Sacred Places: Maps to Heaven
Host Alex Chadwick charts “The Geography of Heaven” from the holy Hindu city of Vrindavan, India. Barrett Golding finds “Sacred Spaces” around Montana in a Buddhist woman’s home, a Methodist prairie church, a Soiux Sundance, and a sculptor’s ranch. Dmae Roberts climbs to a “Temple in Taiwan” with 100 people singing. Judith Sloan gathers “Incantations” in Queens, New York, prayers from churches, mosques, synagogues, apartments, and public gatherings. And Hammad Ahmed get’s “Lost in Ritual” with American Muslims searching for places to pray and ways to find Mecca five times daily. Listen…
2011-01-05 080 Elvis Aaron Presley: Birthday Party
Elvis Presley (Jan 8 1935 – Aug 16 1977), a Birthday Party for the King: Long Haul Productions rides the bus to Graceland, talking to the EP pilgrims. Producer Adam Allington rides along with a policeman and Elvis impersonator. The Residents storytell the allegorical “Baby King.” Knonos Quartet performs “Elvis Everywhere”. Gillian Welch expounds her biographical song “Elvis Presley Blues”. Go Home Productions mashes up a “Strung-Out King” on-stage meltdown. And from Joyride Media & Sony’s Elvis 75 project, we hear Elvis’ friends and bandmates recall his righteous faith in both religion and rockin’. Listen…
