At WFMU’s Beware of the Blog Doug Schulkind has been regularly Mining the Audio Motherlode, digging thru the share-isphere for valuable vinyl sonic nuggets.
This week he found what he accurately describes as “Stunning Unheard Nigerian Gem”. The LP is Hikima (Creativity) by sax great Yusef Lateef. All the album trax are up at WFMU BOTB. Here’s a taste…
“High Life” (6:48 mp3):
Christmas wishes from soldiers at U.S. Army Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Northern Iraq: Sgt. First Class Siatuu Quarterman, Sgt. First Class Claudia Bullard, Staff Sgt. Brian Allen, Specialist Nico Kane, Staff Sgt. Robert Lacome, and Simon Welte.
Aired 2009-12-24 on APM Marketplace; by producer Jake Warga, “Iraq: Soldiers’ Wishes” (1:42 mp3):
More Iraq Christmas ’09.
Sgt. First Class Jodie Manford and the 3rd Infantry Division Band spread some holiday cheer via Chrismas songs, at the U.S. Army Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Northern Iraq.
Aired 2009-12-21 on PRI The World; by producer Jake Warga, “Iraq: Singing Soldier” (2:04 mp3):
More Iraq Christmas ’09.
December 24, 2009
Christmas eve in a Muslim land.
Embedded with the Chaplin… yes, sounds strange to me too.
Here he is walking to service:
Two schools: Christmas on the battlefield is best ignored, or fully embraced. Our convoy of MRAPs (Mine Resistant something something’s) and HMMWVs (HighMobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle… aka: Humvees) drove from base to a joint forces outpost to deliver cheer — in this case a large plasma TV for Xbox tournaments. They were glad to see the Chaplin, he came with some promised bibles, they were very happy to see the TV (Tele-vision). Two frozen turkeys started thawing as well.
“Shotgun Santa” (1:31 mp3):
Wandering around base I found Santa with a shotgun defending a stash of presents sent from the states by organizations and school children who would pee just seeing this Clause. Everyone was peeing themselves laughing, I recorded him: “Merry Christmas Mother F…â€Â He does the gun loading move for the F part. I too get stockings in the spirit of the season for there were far more stockings than troops in this section.
I miss my Grandmother, inside is what she used to get me for Christmas — everything from the pharmacy:
Oh, how silly I thought. Then I picked-out the toothpaste because I was low. Then the tissues because the desert/pollution sinuses I’ve gone through so many packs already. I keep a pack of handy wipes because they’re so handy and I’m running out, the dust, oh the dust. Sox sure I’m on my feet most of the day. Lastly, I started reading an article in Road and Track about GPS navigators.
A card was at the bottom, drawn by a child, for a class project, tree penned in green, time was spent, an American flag, not colored within the lines, and a penciled letter cut and glued:
Thank You so much for serving for our country and keeping us safe. I appreciate you trying to keep everyone in America safe. Have a great Christmas. I hope you get to have a little celebration of Christmas. May we have peace on earth. From: Julia, Franklyn Elementary.
The other stocking of gifts I gave to an interpreter smoking outside his CHU (Container Housing Unit), just down from mine. In the spirit of giving.
“Merry Christ…†I started. “A gift†I ended. He was very happy, and so was I in the spirit of giving.
More Flickr pix.
[“Iraq: Christmas 2009“: observations, images and sounds from Iraq, Christmas 2009, a series of posts by Jake Warga.]
Oh the things I’ve seen.
I shall never complain about long lay-overs again.
I have flown in a C-17 transport.
I shall never complain again of uncomfortable seats again.
I have ridden in the belly of a Stryker.
What do you get when you stick a public radio guy with a Fox TV crew in the back of a Black Hawk for a multiple re-fuel hop up to Northern Iraq?
A bumpy ride.
I saw an injured dove in Baghdad trying to be nursed back to health on a blast wall away from cats. It had a saucer of water and feed, don’t know who put it there. I saw a dead dove come evening.
I got a serious cold sleeping in a 20-man tent during a thunder storm, closest I’ve come to being attacked.
I am now with these 3rd Infantry Division.
I have yet to meet someone who wants to be here. I have met some wonderful people.
For lunch the other day I had crab legs, the desert bar is endless, burger king is everywhere. Where else in Arabia can I eat bacon and watch Fox TV on flat screens throughout a mess hall?
Ugandans hired by KBR guard entrances to buildings on bases, the Peruvians have the evening shift. They look at my passport, I don’t think they know what they’re looking for.
A papier-mâché Mount Rushmore and Statue of Liberty are in the DFAC (Dining FACility). Pakistanis do the dishes. You’re not allowed to bring bags into facilities or wear a hat, but you are required to have a weapon. I am unarmed. I know now the difference between an M16 rifle and an M4 Carbine. Both are 5.56 Caliber, I don’t know what that means but I was given a pamphlet.
The military is run by acronyms. I’m staying in an LSA (Life Support Area).
It’s almost encouraged to have a bad hair cut, in this I feel at home.
I go next to JCC in Tikrit with PSD (Joint Coordination Center…Personal Security Detail), I feel important, I may be a fool. I spend Christmas Embedded with the Chaplin…why not. Here’s what soldiers want for Christmas (4:07):
Black hawk gunner
Dust goes to one lung, trash burns go to the other.
Met a soldier young enough to be my daughter, I become a grandfather when she tells me about her 5yo back home. Everyone dresses the same, it’s confusing, uniformity, conformity, camouflaged in green in a land where there is only brown.
With love from the war on terror. Pictures at Flickr.
Jake
Keffiyeh for sale in Dubai
Text, audio, images © 2009 Jake Warga.
The radio program Interfaith Voices has a new series of sacred sonic features called The Soundscapes of Faith. There’s a shofar, shape singers, Sikh hymns, and several more.
Check this Islamic prayer, with elaborations by Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University (2:34):
One of the most beautiful sounds of Islam is the call to prayer, or adhan. It rings out in many Muslin countries 5 times a day, asking believers to pause their day and remember God.
My audio album, Fragments, is back up on iTunes — they pulled it because it violated several international treaties regulating maximum overt kewlness (or maybe it was site update glitch). Anyroad, it’s back and I kinda like the fact that in iTunes listings, I’m an Artist: Me = BG = The Wandering Jew.
Drove 1100-miles in 19 hours last Wednesday — MT to NoCal — to be with fam for Thanksgiving. Pubradio kept me company the whole way (‘sides some signal-less spots in ID mtns and NV desert, filled with Joe Frank and TAL podcasts.)
Near NV/CA’s border heading east on I-90, when you crest Donner Pass, a pubradio feast commences. My presets fill up fast. From SF there’s KQED, NPR’s most listened-to station, and Pacifica’s KPFA, home to Negativland’s Over the Edge. One of college radio’s freeform finest is KDVS at U of CA-Davis. And community station KVMR-Nevada City CA manages to be hyperlocal yet always entertaining to this outta-towner.
While speeding downhill thru the Sierras, I caught KVMR’s eve news. It ended with a discussion about oak trees: one scientist/radio-announcer/educator talking to another scientist/author. I felt privileged to listen into their conversation. Their tree talk wasn’t dull or dumbed-down; it was comprehensible and comprehensive. An unexpected, imaginative use of radio, doncha think?:
Al Stahler’s Soundings: On Oaks
The oak is one of the signature trees of the Sierran Foothills. Al Stahler spoke with Glen Keator, author of The Life of an Oak: An Intimate Portrait (22:12 mp3):
It is with a mixture of sadness and relief I announce the passing of my Grandmother: Alma J. Kelsey (Warga, Smith).
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska on July 4th, 1910, she passed away this weekend, 99 years later.
Alma was the oldest of seven siblings but the last to depart. She is survived by myself and her son Robin.
In 1928, at the age of 17, Alma Smith eloped with Wayne Warga, 19, and headed West for Hollywood to start a new life and a family. The family was harder to come-by for her husband was not medically able: but in 1938 she bore my father, Wayne (Bud), after a secret affair with an LAPD officer. Then in 1949 she met another man to have another child: Robin. She wanted a family so bad and bore the weight of her secrets until she started AA and revealed all.
In the 1970’s she met and married Dick Kelsey, painter and animator. They moved to Leisure Village in Camarillo where her Lilly Garden won village awards year after year. She stayed by Dick through his Alzheimer’s and eventual death.
In 1985 AA became Alma’s new church, where she grew to become a guru in the program. In 1994 we stood together and buried her son, my father, Wayne. It’s around that time Alzheimer’s started pulling her away.
In 2005 NPR aired a story about her (transcript). I invite you to hear Alma in her own voice, “Grandmother: Aging, Decline & Love” (8:16 mp3):
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)
“AIDS Diaries” (52:00 mp3):
Portraits of people fighting a plague:
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.
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.
Arthur C. Clarke chose HAL’s 2001 music cuz ’twas the same ditty demo-ed by Bell Labs, turning the IBM 704 into the 1st singing computer. Lots more 20001-Daisy related videos, links, audio, and history at Switched, “‘2001’ Geeks, Rejoice! World Learns Why HAL Sang ‘Daisy’.”
We’ll leave you with “this historic recording was made by D.H. Van Lenten in 1962 as part of a series of experiments at Bell Laboratories to understand the nature of speech and hearing.” From Vintage Computer Music, “Computer Speech Demonstration w/ “Bicycle Built for Two” (2:19 mp3):
While in Iraq, former U.S. Army Sergeant Matthew McCue witnessed the power and peace-making potential of agriculture. When he returned to the States he worked with the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, and now works at the French Garden Farm near Sebastopol. Says McCue: “I still want to make the world a better place. I think i can do more good with a shovel than with an M-16.” McCue worked with the Farmer-Veteran Coalition and the French Garden Farm in Sebastopol CA, This story was originally produced for the SpeakeasyDC Storycast.
Aired on PRI Hear & Now; by producer Alix Blair, “Swords to Plowshares” (0:00 mp3):
Joyride Media’s recently PRX-posted a Gazillionth (or so) Monty Python Radio Special, narrated by Keith Olbermann (MSNBC). They start with this Python mini-masterpeice, “Radio Tuning Radio 4” (0:30 mp3):
Announcers: Graham Chapman and Terry Jones, off The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief.
Among the great oddio-viz coming out of Maker’s Quest is The Corner: 23rd and Union, stories, photos, and phone call-ins about one street intersection “near the geographical center of Seattle.”
KUOW’s Jenny Asarnow directs the project. One of the many fine Corner interviews at the site is with “Aaron Dixon: The Checkmate” (mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®
074 Bloody Hell: For Halloween
Host: Tom Lopez of ZBS Productions
Airs week of: 2011-10-26 (Originally: 2009-10-28)
“Bloody Hell” (52:00 mp3):
An hour of horror for All Hallows’ Eve, the first half is bloody, the second goes to hell:
Based on a conversation with Edna Wofford about ESP, dreams and intuition. From the 2003 CD, Mayor of the Tennessee River. Artist David Greenberger of Duplex Planet has been collecting the thoughts, memories and stories from elderly Americans for more than a quarter century.
From birth, a young Native American has been bleeding from his chest. The government keeps him locked in a cell, refusing to heed his uncle’s warnings. A 3D ZBS adaptation of Cherokee writer Craig Strete’s short story from The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories.
La Llorona — the weeping woman — is the Mexican equivalent of the bogeyman. The man she loved rejected her, in madness she drowned her children, then herself. Now she roams the night wailing “Aaay, Mis Hijos;” a scary story that keeps children from wandering at night: “La Llorona will get you.”
Gene Moss’s 1964 Beatles parody mixed w/ SFX by MP3J. Full vers at Mashuptown, “I Want to Bite Your Hand”” (2:50 mp3):
From a cassette tap found by The Professor of WFMU (mp3) & TheAudioKitchen.net. A video vers with images added by Kenneth Salt: More…
“The 4 ways sound affects us,” a Julian Treasure TED Talk:
Julian Treasure runs the sound-branding firm Sound Agency, and is author of the a blog. His TED vid above also has an audio marketing vers:
“Sound Affects” (10:23 mp3):
via Hear 2.0.
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WMFU’s Blog posted Loony Tunes for Kooky Times (MP3s), 21 tunes about being loosing it, done by everyone from Dolly Parton to Dinah Washington, Screaming Jay Hawkins to The Sensational Alex Harvey. “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!” is there, by Napoleon XIV (“I know you laughed. I heard you laugh. You laughed, you laughed and laughed and then you left. But now you know I’m utterly mad.”) As is Lenny Bruce’s “Psychopathia Sexualis.” And these punk and jazz classics:
Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized” (mp3):
Annie Ross “Twisted” (mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®
073 Home Team: For World Series Season
Host: Gwen Macsai of WBEZ Re:sound
Airs week of: 2011-10-12 (Originally: 2009-10-21)
“Home Team” (52:00 mp3):
For the weeks of the Conference Championships and World Series, baseball stories from the Public Radio Hall of Fame:
The sounds of a St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball game are combined with the echoes of Scott Joplin’s ragtime and the distinctive calls of Bushy Wushy the Beer Man. This 39-year veteran beer vendor at Busch Stadium, he shares his love for the game, the crowd, and the communal spirit of St. Louis. Commissioned by Continental Harmony, a partnership of America Composers Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the White House Millennium Council. Performed by Equinox Chamber Players, who premiered the work in their hometown of St. Louis.
Our “Home Team” guest host goes to games at her local minor league stadium, in Prince William, Virginia. After hearing the a host of different folk try to sing the Star-Spangled Banner there, she figures she could do better. That’s where the trouble begins.
At the Helena Brewers ballpark in Montana, teens and early twenty-somethings get their first, and for most their only, taste of playing of pro baseball.
The fictionalized history of two people: a man born in the late 1800s who runs away from home to play baseball, and a woman born in the early 1900s in a half-dugout (a small house partially built into the side of a slope or hill), who grows up to be a piano player and a beautician. Told by Terry Allen, Jo Harvey Allen, and Katie Koontz, with music by Terry Allen. Commissioned in 1993 by New American Radio. (“Radio Memories” self-interview with Terry Allen.)
Just got the new Funny Car flyer from
Drag Racing Underground. Reminded me of their musical side, the band Big Stick. Their tunes are audio auto crashups, fusing dragster sounds, race track announcers, race engine specs, driver intervus, and full throttle rock n’ roll.
Their 1895 sonic salute to summer, “Drag Racing,” went top ten in the U.K.. The tune was one of the select singles in John Peel’s Record Box. And its lyrics are a single line of pure poetry: “In the summer I wear my tube top, and Eddie takes me to the drag strip.”
The cut was re-released on their 2004 Hot from the Strip!. (Also check WFMU’s Blog “Summer Necessities” (w/ mp3).
Another Big Stick classic— “Jesus Was Born on an Indian Reservation” (2:33 mp3):
Big Stick: tube | space | site | DRU
A road trip along historic route 66 in New Mexico, exploring America’s past and present. Tour includes a Santa Fe cooking class, a hot air balloon ride above Albuquerque, Acoma tribal traditions, a mining museum in Grants and a historic hotel in Gallup. Aired on NPR All Things Considered; by producer Jake Warga, “Route 66 Postcard” (8:20 mp3):
