If you build it, they will buy… ‘least when “it” is PRX. The org had a great “Q2 2011: Public Radio Exchange,” with wild-ass growth in pieces and purchases, meaning more stories for stations and semolians for producers:
Q2 2011 is our biggest yet, lead by a record number of pieces purchased by stations, 4,363 (35% growth over Q2 2010). Over the coming weeks we’ll be sending out over $70,000 in royalty checks to producers and stations across the country for this quarter’s activity.
Fluke and Propadata Films “teamed up to explore the world of vibrations — the world of unseen movement — through high-speed videography,” via the Vision Research Phantom HD GOLD camera.
Part 1: A bike trip through Yellowstone and Teton National Parks, into windstorms, between snowbanks, and in the middle of a bison herd. Interviewees: Rick McAdam, Yellowstone Park Ranger; Geyser Gazers at Old Failthful; Kathy Urbigkit of Spin a Yarn, Dubois WY; Wolves in West Yellowstone MT.
Part 2: Finishing seven hundred miles of miking and mic-ing in Wyoming, riding north on the east side of Yellowstone,. encounting killers, hunters, special forces, and trips to Heaven. Interviewees: Dan Herring, Herring & Sons Taxidermy, Thermopolis WY; Special Forces members Buck Wilkerson (US Army retired) and David Owens (Tech Sergeant, US Air Force) at Honor Our Special Operations Forces Weekend, Memorial Day, Cody WY; Pastor William Hardrick, Kingdom of Heaven Embassy visiting his kids in Riverton WY (photo gallery).
The paving of America as seen from the shoulders and sidewalks of our country’s roads. Musings-in-motion recorded during a 5000 trek from Arizona to Georgia to Maine. “It is becoming illegal to travel this country by foot.” Music by Jeff Arntsen. (A longer version of this story is at Third Coast International Audio Festival.)
Bhutan is a land of prayer flags, Buddhism, and, like everywhere else: poverty, poor health, and domestic violence, Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk believes her job is to increase the Gross National Happiness. To do that she treks into the most remote corners of the country, meeting people she’d otherwise never see, asking about their lives, helping them with health care issues, and working to end mistreatment of woman. Outer Voices accompanied her into an unmapped corner of the high Himalayas — they are the first foreign journalists invited to accompany a Bhutanese monarch on a trek, and to interview the Queen.
The Queen of Bhutan, Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck, with her people (photo: Jack Chance)
The Queen’s Trek (PRX) was produced by OV’sStephanie Guyer-Stevens and Jack Chance, Guerilla Ethnomusicologist for The Mountain Music Project. Major Underwriting was provided by Terry Causey and the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation. Interviewees: Chimi Wangmo, Kunzang Choden, Yeshey Dorji and Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk. Musical performances by Jigme Drukpa and the Khuju Luyang Ensemble.
Special thanks to Her Majesty Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk, the staff and clients of RENEW Bhutan, Tshering Uden Penjor, Françoise Pommaret, Ariana Maki, the Royal Body Guard and the Royal Bhutan Army, the Zulikha Nunnery, Hotel Zhi Waling, and the people of Daifam, Zamtari, and Shinka Lauri villages.
RENEW = Respect Educate, Nurture and Empower Women, “an organization dedicated to the empowerment of vulnerable women of our society so that they can emerge as socially and economically independent members of their communities.”
As part of a ProPublica investigation into the deep, dark toxic chemicals we penetrate Mother Earth with to make her cough up “natural” gas, here’s “Fracking: The Music Video– My Water’s On Fire Tonight:”
The video is by David Holmes and other J-students at NYU’s Studio 20 . Sez they: “The best explainers are direct, concise and easy to understand. But investigative journalism is rarely any of those things, instead reflecting the messiness of real life.”
From the British prime minister’s speech to the House of Commons, June 4 1940, preceding the Battle of Britain:
We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
“Atomic Mother” & “Trinity” (2011 / 4:50 excerpts) Jonathan Elias
From the benefit CD Path To Zero – A Prayer Cycle I(video below). Proceeds go to Global Zero, an international organization dedicated to nuclear disarmament. Some voices on the album: Sting (on “Atomic Mother”), Robert Downey Jr., Sinead O’Connor, Jonathan Davis of Korn, Jon Anderson of Yes, Angelique Kidjo, and Pakistan’s Rahat Fateh Ali Khan; along with archival tape, including a previously unreleased recording of Jim Morrison, performing a poem on the plight of Native Americans in Los Alamos, New Mexico. (Face: Prayer Cycle | Space: Jonathan Elias.), and J. Robert Oppenheimer, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
The recollections of Hiroshima survivor Kaz Suyeishi, rendered by two young Japanese woman, Kazuka and Kiyo. Alvin Huntsman performed the improvisational music by banging, scraping, and bowing several large sculptures by Gary Bates, including the “Wind Wagon,” a 35-foot multi-stringed banjo-like structure.
24 hours of programming dedicated to international radio creation broadcast simultaneously on radios all over the world.
a way of making people aware of the cultural richness that these radio stations can bring to today’s radiophonic landscape.
This promising Euro project sports a lengthy list of x-pond programs (FB pg). Listen online starting 2011-06-04 00:00:00 UTC+2 (French Time) = 2011-06-03 18:00:00 UTC-4 (Eastern Daylight Time).
Land of 10K Homeless is a Minneapolis music-audio documentary project by Voices of the Streets, “An Artistic Portrayal of Homelessness in Minnesota.” Thier “website of artistic activism provides a space for the disadvantaged to share their stories.” Producer Danny Burke created this mix of the main theme, blended with interviews with individuals staying at a family shelter in Minneapolis.
The string arrangement was written and produced by Brian J. Casey and Danny Burke of the Skeptics, and performed by the Arlington String Quartet (Matthew Knippel, cello; Conor O’ Brien, violin; Gabriel Platica, violin).
After leaving the Marines, George Hill became addicted to drugs and alcohol. He soon found himself on the streets of Los Angeles, homeless for 12 years. But the kindness of another homeless man changed everything. Hill is now off the streets, working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and pursuing a computer information systems degree at Cal State University. Recorded in Santa Monica, CA; part of StoryCorps’Griot Initiative.
A portrait of the self-named, Crazy John, who lives on the streets of Austin, Texas. He tells writer Carmen Delzell about his life. Carmen was homeless for a couple of years in the early 1990s. This piece was made after she got on her feet and was living in Austin. Produced by Jay Allison (PRX).
An interview with Bill, recorded near the Dorothy Day Center homeless shelter, St. Paul MN. Andrew Turpening, the Land of 10K Homeless Artistic Director, composed the music and produced the piece.
The producer spends a night at a church homeless shelter in Washington DC.
“Miracle On The Streets” (2009 / 2:25) Dmae Roberts
A profile of life on the streets for homeless youth told through the experiences of 21-year-old Miracle Draven, Portland OR. Original music by Craze MC. (Longer version at PRX).
Boulder MT 9-year-old, Brigid Reedy, may be young, but she can yodel with the best of ’em. Mountain West Voices, a new series by producer Clay Scott, presents a radio portrait of this pre-teen musical tour-de-force, “The Yodeler” (5:00 mp3):
The MtnWVox site has nice photos of Brigid in full yodel, and with the animals on her fam’s farm. While there, check these other series eps: “The Pastor” and “The Returning Warriors.”
HV are spoken word evangelists. But sometimes it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Like in this one-minute piece of performance art on the US House floor, delivered by Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) on the House floor, April 14 2011:
A nice blend of map-based selectable sounds/images at “The Soundlines Project.” It’s a project-in-progress done by Andrea Hammer’s Cornell students about the town of Endicott NY.
From One Thing: The producers spent a year talking to refugees living in USA about why they had to leave their country, how they got here, and what “One Thing” they brought with that reminds them of home. In this first of several stories from the series, the Sher Ali family, a mother and nine children, was the first Afghan family to be resettled in Amarillo, Texas in 2000. They fled the Taliban in the middle of the night with only the clothes they wore. Their one thing was a photo of their father. (Produced for Weekend America w/ photo gallery.)
The stories of Burmese refugees, the Karen people, recorded in the camps on the Thailand-Burma border, and in their new American homes. Thru it all their music preserves their culture. Part of The Mountain Music Project.
The One Thing for the Augustin family was their home movies. Their religious beliefs forced them out of Iraq: Mom Nujood is a Chaldean Christian and Dad Abdullahad is a Latin Catholic. The Augustins left a comfortable life in Baghdad for Jordan, where limited opportunities siphoned much of their savings. They arrived in Detroit, where son Arkan takes pre-med courses at the local community college, while working part-time at a grocery store. (Produced for Weekend America: From Iraq to Detroit.)
Starting with the fall of Saigon in April 1975, refugees from Vietnam awaited approval to move to the US and other countries. By 1979, there were almost 62,000 Vietnamese in refugee camps, with more than 140,000 people displaced from Cambodia and Laos. Portland, Oregon, was one of the medium-sized US cities that dealt with the relatively sudden influx of every major ethnic group (Vietnamese, Lao, Hmong, Mein and Cambodian) from Southeast Asia. More than 25 former refugees were interviewed for radio piece, and movie below.
Filmmakers Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante, and Julius Metoyer III play with our yearning for balance, and reveal how beautiful imperfect matches can be.
Ellen Rocco, GM of North Country public Radio, has this memorial to the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP), a recently defunded .gov agency, that helped buy gear used to bring you your local pubradio:
The folks who run the PTFP are people you will never read about in the news or see on television. Bill Cooperman and his team are the kind of federal employees who belie all the nasty stereotypes we hear about “bureaucrats.” They are helpful, they want to see stations succeed, and they understand when unforeseen circumstances force changes in timelines (e.g., bad weather keeps us from installing a new facility as planned).
—Ellen, Rocco, “Alphabet soup, public radio and gratitude.”
A friend found this literary gem of musical analysis:
An excerpt:
Wikipedia writes: “Bob Larson is an American radio and television evangelist.” Aka, in RationalWiki terms: “a notoriously sensationalist fundamentalist Christian windbag… He spent at least 1/3 of every show begging for money.”
Excellent essay on “The Power of Voice” by Siobhan McHugh. She shares a devastating tape-recording of Jan Graham, an Australian woman who reported the Vietnam War:
She wept as she told of finding the mutilated body of her lover, a Green Beret on surveillance with the US army. I offered to stop the tape, but she wanted to be purged of all the memories, and the worst was yet to come. Have a listen to the three minutes of tape here. It’s barely been edited, apart from where I shortened some of the pauses, as her grief was just unbearable:”
I’m a high school computer science teacher and I often have students who want to hack on things like WordPress or other open-source projects, but they don’t see a path from where they are to that goal.
So I started a web site for sharing how and why people started programming. Will you share your story? http://ilearnedtoprogram.com.
As the site has gotten more entries, I’ve been reminded of a bunch of fun things from my childhood. Maybe you’ll enjoy a trip down memory lane as well.
I(video below). Proceeds go to 
“Bill Speaks” (2008 / 2:24) 
Ellen Rocco, GM of North Country public Radio, has 
