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.”
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.
The legend is of a shadowy soul traveling the countryside as singer, preacher, outlaw, teacher, of a hard boozin’, brawlin’, womanizin’ Blues Man. Well, that man had a name: Charley Patton, born around 1890 in the heart of the delta.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
077 AIDS Diaries: For AIDS Awareness Day
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-11-24 (Originally: 2009-11-25)
South Africa has been hit hardest with H-I-V/AIDS. Five million people are infected (Avert: SA). One of them, Thembi Ngubane, at nineteen years old, carried a recorder in 2005 to document her life (NPR | PRX). Produced by Joe Richman, edited by Debra George and Ben Shapiro; more of Thembi’s story, with an audio-visual gallery, is at AIDSdiary.org.
“Day without Art” (5:02) Barrett Golding
December 1st is World AIDS Day. In the arts community it also had this other name, DWA.
Poet Kwame Dawes travels his native Jamaica talking about HIV/AIDS. This is part of the hour-program “Live Hope Love: HIV/AIDS in Jamaica” (PRX) Support came from the MAC AIDS Fund, of MAC Cosmetics, and from and PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Produced by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and Jack Chance of Outer Voices, for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their emmy-winning muchomedia website for the project Live Lope Love.
The new movie “The Mountain Music Project” (by HV producer Jack Chance) is “A Musical Odyssey from Appalachia to Himalaya.” The film screens Sunday December 6th at 7PM at the Emerson Center, Bozeman MT. Families and Fiddles welcome.
The flick looks/sounds superb: just played to a packed house at National Geographic’s Grosvenor Auditorium, DC. Now it makes it’s Montana debut.
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.
Interviews gathered from Mae Sot, Thailand (same town from which all land-transported aid is entering Burma) with medical workers and Burmese migrant laborers who work in Thailand but sleep in Burma. From Jack Chance, aired this week on The World, “Burma Aid Efforts” (3:30 mp3):
Here’s Chance’s more accurate Cyclone report w/ the other story, not being told: the Burmese elections. No one would run this, so we’ll post it, “Irawaddy Delta Blues” (5:10 mp3): More…
I love it while traveling when an HV story comes on the radio. That happened a slew of times this past week (Mtn Gorrillas of Rwanda, Passover poem, Peace Rabbi). The first one I caught crossing the NV desert on NPR Day to Day. It’s another from Jack Chance, international man of trad music mystery…
The Kingdom of Nepal became a democracy this week, holding it’s first elections for representatives who will write the new constitution and are likely to abolish the monarchy. Chance speaks with a young musician in Kathmandu, Rubin Gandharba, whose songs (played on the Nepali sarangi) became a rallying cry for the Nepali Democracy Movement. The call Ruben the “Nepali Bob Dylan” (2:57 mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®
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Interviews gathered from Mae Sot, Thailand (same town from which all land-transported aid is entering Burma) with medical workers and Burmese migrant laborers who work in Thailand but sleep in Burma. From 
