Tag: youth/Archives

Eleven: Sara and Pogo

Damn this guy’s good, another Pogo creation:

This is my remix of an original song by SaraSinger42: youtube.com/SaraSinger42

The video was shot by Sara’s mother, singer and song writer Jackie Messenger: youtube.com/JackieMessenger. Sara is part of a beautiful family who have always been wonderfully supportive of me.

This track came about almost immediately when I found Sara’s channel. I wondered what her song would sound like with a beat, so I spent around 10 minutes knocking together a drum sequence before layering in her song. 45 minutes later, I seem to have spontaneously put together a complete track.
—Pogo

Read all about it: Eleven (SaraSinger42 Remix) on Vimeo.

HV131- Voices from Tahrir

On April 1, 2011, Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square in Cairo for a rally to save the revolution, photo: Platon for Human Rights Watch Hearing Voices from NPR®
131 Voices from Tahrir: Portrait of a Revolution
Host: Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch
Airs week of: 2012-01-25

“Voices from Tahrir” (52:00 mp3):

Bread, Freedom, and Human Dignity:

“Voice from Tahrir” (52:00) Human Rights Watch

January 25, 2011. One year ago, a revolution began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. For the next eighteen days, millions of Egyptians across the country would demonstrate in the streets, demanding the end of their 30-year dictatorship. They were inspired by Tunisians, whose protests, that same month, had forced out the authoritarian regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Now it was time for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to go.

A few weeks after the protests, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch interviewed some of the organizers of the January uprising: union leaders, civil rights workers, young social media activists, family members of of murdered protestors, and mothers who brought their kids to Tahrir to clean after the protests.. These Human Rights Watch interviews provide a rare, eyewitness account of a revolution, told by the Egyptian people, the activists, human rights defenders, and bloggers who persevered during those eighteen days.

The hour features recordings made in the square by reporters and citizen jounalists from around the world, including Daniel Finnan of Radio France Internationale, Al Jazeera, Egypt Daily News, Ramy Roof, and Matthew Cassel of Just Image.org.

Music: “Erhal (Leave)” and “Laugh, Revolution” by Ramy Essam; “Ezzay? (Why?)” by Mohamed Mounir and “Gomaa Hayran (Uncertain Friday)” by Joseph & James Tawadros
from the collection Our Dreams Are Our Weapons – Soundtracks of the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Mix: Robin Wise of Sound Imagery.

More…

HV127- Behind the Beat

Photo, by Eleonora Alberto, of Cyro Baptista, surrounded by percussion instrumentsHearing Voices from NPR®
127 Behind the Beat: Inside Musician’s Minds
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-12-07

“Behind the Beat” (52:00 mp3):

“MITOW: Camille” (2006 / 6:03) Musicians in Their Own Words

From Musicians in their own words, an NPR series produced by David Schulman: The French singer Camille Dalmais, better known as Camille, has many voices inside her. She makes her music by overlaying everything from a sniffle to a growl to an operatic F-sharp. She speaks about the intimacy of the French language, spirituality and finding a natural music in the sound of everyday speech.

“Mozart’s Hidden Kitchen” (2007 / 6:49) Kitchens Sisters

From Hidden Kitchens, an NPR series by the The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & NIkki Silva): Imagine a Mozart Festival without a note of Mozart. Instead, more than 60 artists from around the world were invited to Vienna by director Peter Sellars and asked to pick up where the musical and social visionary left off, to create new works of art. Called “New Crowned Hope,” for the free-thinking Masonic Lodge in Vienna of which Mozart was a member, it was a month-long, genre-spanning event linking agriculture and culture, with food at its heart. It featured a Maori dance troupe; a Venezuelan street chorus singing a new opera by John Adams; new films from Chad, Iran and Paraguay; Mark Morris’ dance company; Chez Panisse founder and culinary activist Alice Waters; lunch ladies from across Europe; and farmers, chefs and seed-savers from throughout Austria. Aired on NPR Morning Edition. Mixed by Jim McKee of Earwax Productions. Music: John Adams, David Williamson, Frances Nelson, Sarah Folger & harmonia mundi, and Wieslaw Pogorzelski.

“MITOW: Cyro Baptista” (2007 / 9:12) Musicians in Their Own Words

From Musicians in their own words: Beyond-Brazilian musician Cyro Baptista is fluent in the musical languages of samba, cabela, and yoyoma. Also, squirrel. He proves it in this piece, and demonstrates how he narrowly averted disaster during a recording session with the fearsome-to-some-people soprano Kathleen Battle. Cyro’s secret weapon? A vacuum cleaner hose. (More at PRX).

Drawing of Sam and sax, from Long Haul Productions

“American Dreamer: Sam’s Story” (2010 / 26:09) Long Haul Productions

Sam is a talented and articulate young jazz musician, brought to the United States at age 5 by his Mexican parents. He stayed out of trouble, was drum major of his high school’s marching band, fell in love with playing jazz on the tenor sax, and got his diploma with honors — only to find that for an “illegal,” graduation marks a dead end. Though Sam dreams of attending college to study jazz performance, he hides his status from even his closest friends. He can’t legally work, drive, get financial aid, or even gain admission to some colleges. “American Dreamer” follows him from his high school graduation, through the following summer, as he struggles to raise money to continue his education and weighs the risks of working and driving illegally against his own desire to achieve his American dream. Aired on NPR Latino USA and All Things Considered.. A one-hour version is at PRX and Long Haul Productions (Dan Collison & Elizabeth Meister). Produced with help from the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Top photo of Cyro Baptista © Eleonora Alberto.

HV120- Dear Diary

Hearing Voices from NPR®
120 Dear Diary: Audio Journals
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-08-03

“Dear Diary” (52:00 mp3):

Documenting daily life:

“Cho Oyu 8201m, Tibet” (2006 / 8:00 excerpts)

Geir Jenssen, the musician who records as Biosphere, is also a mountain climber. On his Himalayan ascent of the sixth highest mountain in the world, he kept an audio journal of all the sounds. The result is the CD Cho Oyu 8201m Field Recording from Tibet (Ash International / Touch Records | Climber’s notes | Wikipedia | WFMU Beware of the Blog).

Thruout the hour, we hear excerpts from the tracks “Zhangmu: Crossing A Landslide Area” (2300 meters above sea level), “Palung: A Yak Caravan is Coming (5400m), “Cho Oyo Basecamp: Morning” (5700m), “Jobo Rabzang: A 6666 metre peak in the Cho Oyu Himal”, “Camp 3: Neighbours On Oxygen” (7500m), “Summit: Only slight breeze on the summit at 8201m.” Also this piece “sampled and processed from a cassette of Tibetan music.”

“Carmen’s Diaries” (1980 / 13:37) Art Silverman

Writer Carmen Delzell finds a box of journals she wrote as a girl, and enters an addendum as she reflects on her 1960s self. Produced for NPR All Things Considered.

“World’s Longest Diary” (1994 / 6:15) David Isay

For twenty years, Reverend Robert Shields, of Dayton, Washington, kept a written record of absolutely everything that happened to him, day and night. For four hours each day, Shields holes himself up in the small office in his home, turns on his stereo, and types. His diary, at 35 million words, is believed the world’s longest. A Sound Portraits production, on the CD Holding On: Dreamers, Visionaries, Eccentrics And Other American Heroes (and companion book)

“Nick in SLC: Home School to High School” (1999 / 16:39) Radio Diaries

For RD’s Teenage Diaries project, they gave “tape recorders to young people around the country to report on their own lives. They conduct interviews, keep an audio journal and record the sounds of daily life — usually collecting more than 40 hours of raw tape over the course of a year. Nick Epperson of Salt Lake City began his audio diary when he was 13. The talented singer/cellist music, but has a hard time making friends.

More…

HV100- Stories of Transformation

Miles/Megan as a little girlHearing Voices from NPR®
100 Stories of Transformation: Character and Change
Host: Jay Allison of Transom
Airs week of: 2010-09-29

“Stories of Transformation” (52:00 mp3):

Two audio diaries of people documenting their own personal transformation, a Transom Radio special:

“Finding Miles” (27:11) Sarah Reynolds

Miles has the wrong body. He was born a woman, Megan. After 15 years of serious depression and confusion about his place in the world, at age 28, he decided to make a change. He chose the name Miles and began his slow, difficult transition into manhood. All along the way, he carried an audio recorder with him. This is his story. Produced for Transom (available at PRX); edited by Jay Allison.

“Running From Myself” (17:50) Louis & Anthony Mascorro

For most of his high school career, Louis robbed people: for money, and for thrills. He never got caught. Then, in his senior year, he decided to stop. Louis talks to friends and family, and to himself, about why he was a criminal, and why he needs to change. Produced for Transom (also at PRX) and the 826NYC writing center.

Keitai Shosetsu

Keitai is Japenese for cell-phone, shōsetsu for novel; so keitai shōsetsu is “cellphone novel” (also “thumb novel”): a new lit genre started by young .jp girls. Their novels are posted to a media-sharing site as a series of text messages, which millions of .jp-teens download and read on their mobile phones.

Readers rapidly respond, and sometimes suggest. Some authors have used the best suggestions to alter their plots. Quite a few of these cell-phone serials have evolved into successful paper novels, selling 100K’s and even 1M’s of copies. Readers often purchase not the paperback but the hardcover as a momento of their literary interactivity. Half of the Japan’s half the top 10 fiction bestsellers of late have started as keitai shōsetsu.

The New Yorker interviewed author Mone:

Mone started posting her novel straight from her phone to a media-sharing site called Maho i-Land (Magic Island), never looking over what she wrote or contemplating plot. “I had no idea how to do that, and I did not have the energy to think about it,” she says. She gave her tale a title, “Eternal Dream,” and invented, as a proxy for her adolescent self, a narrator named Saki, who is in her second year of high school and lives in a hazily described provincial town. “Where me and my friends live, in the country, there aren’t any universities,” Mone wrote. “If you ride half an hour or so on the train, there’s a small junior college, that’s all.” Saki has a little brother, Yudai, and a close-knit family, a portrait that Mone painted in short, broad strokes: “Daddy / Mom / Yudai / I love you all so much.” Before long, however, Saki, walking home from school, is abducted by three strange men in a white car: “—Clatter, clatter — / The sound of a door opening. / At that moment . . . / —Thud— / A really dull blunt sound. / The pain that shoots through my head.” The men rape her and leave her by the side of the road, where an older boy from school, Hijiri, discovers her. He offers her his jersey, and love is born. More…

HV061- Educating Esme

Esme Codell in the classroom with studentsHearing Voices from NPR®
061 Educating Esme: A Teacher’s Diary
Host: Alex Chadwick of Interviews 50 Cents
Airs week of: 2009-6-10

“Educating Esme” (52:00 mp3):

During her first year teaching fifth grade in a Chicago public school, Esmé Codell kept a journal. This radio hour is based on her book Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year. Produced by Jay Allison with Christina Egloff for their Life Stories series and Chicago Public Radio. (This version is slightly edited for time; the original is at PRX.)

Esmé Raji Codell: Planet Esme | Blog | Amazon | Audible | WBEZ 848 | LOC Webcast.

HV060- Getting Out

Jesse Jean with Teri and Toni

Photo by Katie Davis:
Jesse Jean with Teri and Toni.

Hearing Voices from NPR®
060 Getting Out: The Education of Jesse Jean
Host: Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories
Airs week of: 2010-05-05 (Originally: 2009-06-03)

Getting Out: The Education of Jesse Jean (52:00 mp3):

“Getting Out” (52:00) Katie Davis

Go to school, keep your grades up, go to college. That’s what we tell kids — over and over. What if just leaving your apartment, and walking up the block is risky? What if it feels safer to stay home, play video games, keep a low profile. When you do go out, head somewhere safe, like the teen center, the basketball court. That was the world of African American teenager, Jesse Jean.

Jesse's self-portrait, painted in the fall of 2001
Jesse’s self-portrait
Fall 2001.)

Jesse lived a half a block from host Katie Davis in their Washington DC neighborhood. He was lucky enough to get a scholarship to a private boarding school and brave enough to take it. Katie kept in touch with Jesse, as he moved into this new world. We hear three stories covering seven years, starting in summer, 2001.

Jesse’s Stories on NPR: 2002 Turning the Corner (photos) | 2004 Beyond Myself (photos) | 2008 An Urban Teen Beats The Odds.

Leaving the Mountains

Machlyn Blair's home in Jeremiah, Ky.Here’s a piece I heard at Duke’s Ctr for Doc Studies Documentary Happening

“‘Leaving the Mountains’ is one young man’s experience about having to deal with economic depression in rural Kentucky, and the reality of migration.” Produced for the Appalachian Media Institute and Youth Radio, and aired on NPR ATC, “Leaving the Mountains by Machlyn Blair (mp3 1:56):

If These Walls Could Talk

Audio aritiste extraordinaire (and USA Fellow) Susan Stone’s new project is IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK “Inside Youth Speak Out: testimonial writings by the youngest members of America’s prison system.” Lots of poetry and audio there, some w/ music by Malcolm Marshall. A couple of my faves…

“Two Cripples” (1:07 mp3):

“Missing Moms” (0:44 mp3):

HV029- Old School

ChalkboardHearing Voices from NPR®
029 Old School: Back-to-School Special
Host: Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories
Airs week of: 2012-06-06 (Originally: 2008-09-17)

Old School (53:00 mp3):

Richard Paul follows “School VP,” Asst. Principal Irasema Salcido, through her hectic multi-lingual morning at DC’s Bell Multicultural  High School.

Host Katie Davis finds she “Got Carried.”

Slam poet and  history teacher Taylor Mali schools us on “What Teachers Make” (CD: Conviction | video.)

Producer Hillary Frank gets the shy “Quiet Kids” to speak up.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich‘s commencement speech advises  “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen),” with music from filmmaker Baz Luhrman (CD: Something For Everybody), performed by actor Lee Perry, sung by Quindon Tarver).

Host Katie Davis takes her DC summer camp into the wild woods on a “Hike to Rock  Creek,” two blocks from where the kids  live.

And more poems: Meryn Cadell “The Sweater” Angel Food for Thought (video), Jelani “By The Numbers” Angel Food for Thought., and Taylor Mali “Seventh Grade Viking Warrior” Conviction.

Music: Jurassic 5 “Lesson 6: The Lecture” Jurassic 5 EP, Archie Moore’s “Times Table’ With Soul and a Beat” from WFMU Blog- 365 Days Project, Lanterna “Fields” Sands, Sam Cooke “Wonderful World” Greatest Hits.

Baz Luhrmann – Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)