HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Musicians Own Words · David Schulman
Hearing Voices from NPR®
089 Musicians’ Minds: Interviewing Music Makers
Host: Lynn Neary of NPR
Airs week of: 2011-04-27 (Originally: 2010-04-21)
“Musicians’ Minds” (52:00 mp3):
Interviews with musicians that took unexpected turns:
Host Lynne Neary’s talk with the head Talking Heads, ends up with her answering his questions. From 1984, the “Stop Making Sense” movie and Speaking in Tongues album had just been released.
Surveying the sonic spectrum of musicians warming up for a performance. We hear old-time singer Abigail Washburn, concert pianist Lang Lang, Brazilian singer Flora Purim, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, Tuvan rocker Albert Kuvezin, singer songwriters Gillian Welch and Dar Williams, bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Montage by David Schulman
One of the world’s great operatic singers explores what it means to approach the human voice as an instrument — like a trumpet or violin, produced by David Schulman.
The cutup artists, Negativland, chew up and spit out the media, turning their NPR interview into audio art; accompanied with excerpts from their 1987 Escape from Noise.
The former Grateful Dead drummer and respected ethnomusicologist takes us on an audio tour of his extensive worldwide percussion collection. He talks about the rhythm “timeline” from his 1987 book and CD Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm.
When listening to the recent airing of Hearing Voices on April 23, I was disillusioned in hearing no reference to Bellona from David Byrne when discussing the development of “Burning Down The Houseâ€.
I had such a strong misconception that this song was based on Samuel Delany’s “Dhalgrenâ€, and had a strong feeling of enlightenment for having recognized this; that I felt crestfallen when he made no reference to this and knew that I had come to the wrong conclusion.
Regards, David
The most amazing hour of radio. I found myself
smiling, laughing, and even weeping at the beauty of the singer who goes to the natural history museum to sing with the birds,Mickey Harts musings of the rhythm of the body, and David Byrnes random phrases to produce songs.
I want my son, a high school drummer, to hear it all. Negativeland…makes me want to reexamine the 80’s. What else di I miss?
MLang
What a wonder this world is that we’ve only to flip a switch to hear Mickey Hart, Negitiveland, and a beautiful singer who warms with the birds. Thank you so much for opening up my little corner of the garden! Hearing Voices will be at the top of my weekend listening from now on.
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