AJE Witness Special on Polynesians and Taiwan

Wooooow…

What a terrific show. "Made in Taiwan" is a Witness Special by Al Jazeera English, where a Samoan and Cook Islander analyse their genes, and follow the path they make.

I had known for years that Pacific Islanders, it's generally held, originate from Taiwan. That was a bit of information in my head.

And I had known how girls on the streets of Auckland would remind me of a Taiwanese woman.

But this show brought it together. I spent ten months in New Zealand, until mid-May, then two weeks with American-Taiwanese. The faces, accents and attitude reminded me of my diggs in Auckland and working Radio New Zealand International.

And it somehow worked deeper. This programme moved (me at least) in both the head and the heart. Ace programme.


I can't find it on their website or YouTube channel – I'll post an update if I do!

Edirol R-09 RIP again

A week ago, my Edirol R-09 got a soaking, and in spite of being left next to a toasty Aga for a day, no longer works.

:(

Thinking of an Olympus LS-10 as a replacement, but I should earn some radio-money first!

New series of All Day Everyday

I missed most of the first series, even though I thought I'd set Audio Hijack Pro to record…

Anyway, Martin Williams is producing more All Day Everyday for Resonance FM. 

A L L    D A Y    E V E R Y D A Y
Every Wednesday at 5:45pm on Resonance FM – 104.4fm in London – worldwide via the internet: www.resonancefm.com.
 
Reflections on the mundane and the miraculous.
 
As if in response to Walter Benjamin's belief that the everyday is saturated with the marvellous, All Day Everyday presents an array of artists addressing the quotidian – the beauty and banality ever-present in the everyday.
 
Documentaries, musical compositions, radio drama, essays, poetry, soundscapes, performance, interviews…
 
Series produced by Martin Williams
http://www.notfarfromhere.co.uk/
 
Details of the next few programmes in the series…
 
Wed June 18th:
Tartu Sound by Murmer
In February, 2008, Maksims Shentelevs and Patrick McGinley led a workshop in the southeastern Estonian city of Tartu entitled Sound as Space/Sound as Language with a group of 15 Estonian and Finnish university students. The work focused on a development of deep listening skills, and on the use of sound as a communication tool, or as a way to describe or create real or imaginary spaces. Only acoustic objects, brought in by the participants, and elements of the space itself (floorboards, walls, windows, chairs) were used during the two-day workshop. This piece, intertwined with reactions by a few of the participants, was composed by Patrick McGinley using recordings made of the workshop exercises.
Murmer, aka Patrick McGinley, is a sound artist and composer.
http://www.murmerings.com
 
Wed June 25th:       
Boots Brown: All Day Everyday by David Grubbs
The Swedish improvising group Boots Brown takes its name from a pseudonym once used by the clarinetist and saxophone player Jimmy Giuffre. Guiffre came up with the name for a recording session in order to sidestep the demands of a recording contract. The current Boots Brown is premised on the perhaps impossible melding of free improvisation and the kind of US West Coast jazz for which Jimmy Giuffre was a key figure.

This short programme, Boots Brown: All Day Everyday, takes as its subject a set up and soundcheck prior to Boots Brown's concert on 25th April 2008 at the Bunker in Bielefeld, Germany. It is inspired by the series of documentaries that Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris made for French television in the mid-1960s under the title Les Grandes Répétitions. These five documentaries about musicians in rehearsal beautifully capture the sounds of the comparatively empty time that leads up to a performance. I've also admired Leonard Cohen's idea on Live Songs of recording the final song on a live album in his hotel room after the show. The live recording was made prior to the concert.

Boots Brown consists of Mats Gustafsson on saxophones and electronics; Magnus Broo, trumpet and, at least during this soundcheck, opera singing; David Stackenäs on guitar; and Johan Berthling on double bass.

On the day of this performance, Jimmy Giuffre died at his home in Massachusetts at the age of 86.
David Grubbs is a New York-based musician and writer.
http://www.dragcity.com/bands/grubbs.html 
 
Wed July 2nd:          
All Day Everyday by Esther Leslie
This mini-radio lecture in high-flown scientific language backed by quotidian sound effects is an exploration of the everyday as lodged in the microworlds of domesticity and the macroworld of the cosmos, directed by SM Eisenstein and montaged of Marx's Capital and Joyce's Ulysses.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck College, London
http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/
 
Wed July 9th:           
Doors: Through and Into: Brooklyn: Winter ‘07-8 by Rick Moody & Laura Vitale
Inspired by Sun Ra’s Door Squeak piece from 1967, Doors: Through and Into is a sound collage constructed from the multifarious doorways of Brooklyn.
 
Bathroom doors, garage doors, elevator doors, subway doors, doors on municipal buses, car doors, apartment doors, doors to various appliances…
 
In addition to the doors themselves, Rick Moody and Laura Vitale present the passage between spaces, from public to private and back again, always through the lovely, musical thresholds that are a regular part of everyone’s daily fare.
Rick Moody is a novelist and short story writer.
Laura Vitale is a NY-based sound artist and radio producer.
 
Wed July 16th:
Everyday Indeterminacy by Catherine Dyson & Martin Williams
In pastiche of John Cage & David Tudor’s Indeterminacy, Catherine Dyson reads a series of everyday yarns at a rate of one per minute, accompanied by a series of minute-long accompaniments by Martin Williams, each component recorded with no knowledge of the other.
Catherine Dyson is a writer and theatre artist.

Lest WE forget

On Richard Sambrook's blog today:

In Memorium

Blogger issues sorted

So now I have no excuses for not keeping you up-to-date here ;-)

Blog difficulties

I'm still having difficulties with anything under https://google.com, so my blog posts will continue to be irregular – sorry!

Beginnings (sort of)

A recent post to the Radio Lab blog reveals the first ever piece made by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich.

It rather wonderfully reminded me of a piece I made myself.

This is the item I made for London Huayu Chinese Radio, with another volunteer, Jia Nuo. It was her first ever radio piece.

The first voice you hear is CD host Chen Li, then the corny (pre-presenter-training) me, then Jia Nuo.

Have a listen.

I'll provide a text translation if someone asks for it.

I was working in the BBC World Service at the time, so it wasn't a challenge to get the sound effects, and in the wondrous Bush House Grams Library: "I'd like some 16th century Spanish court music please".
"Sure there you go"

I think I may have recorded the coins myself though.

I admit there is a corniness to it – intentionally, really. Because this is informative radio for immigrants – and we reckon that's not a space for Ira Glass' Big Ideas.

Ok so Ira Glass and This American Life producer Julie Schnider both said the proto-Radio Lab was awful. Whaddya think?

Poem by TS Elliot, To Walter De La Mare

In my head-in-the-clouds mood of late, I spent time before and after some shifts in the library in Radio New Zealand. Among the books is a collection of TS Elliot poetry, and one in particular struck me. It's called To Walter de la Mare.
Not meaning to infringe copyright, I'll just quote some of the parts which I think talk perfectly to those of us in radio:

When the familiar scene is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we have yet to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;

…

By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?

By you; by those deceptive cadences
Wherewith the common measure is refined;
By conscious art practised with natural ease;

By the delicate, invisible web you wove –
The inexplicable mystery of sound.

Leaving RNZ

I've left Radio New Zealand: it's been fun!

T'would be silly to start naming the names of who I'll miss, who's been good to me – they are a lovely bunch. I've fulfilled most of my goals in Radio NZ, which is most satisfying. I've made features with Jack Perkins, I've seen Sadie in action – unfortunately not had the chance to learn how to use it – and I've worked in Radio New Zealand International! Getting back on shortwave was fab I have to say.

I must also admit that for about the last week in RNZ, I was getting into a more features frame of mind. Shame every shift I did was news then! So I managed to use phrases like "kneck and kneck", and, I suspect, put through a few more, well, "entertaining" stories than usual. It's not much of a revelation to say I'm more of a features man than news.

In the two weeks since I left, I've been travelling around New Zealand's South Island. It's been a surprise to find how there is no FM coverage of Radio New Zealand in many of the tourist settlements, and only poor mediumwave – sometimes none at all.

However, contrary to the situation in some other countries, the commercial stations do provide coverage, where the state broadcaster doesn't.

Assumedly, they see the commercial benefits of local advertising and programming mixed in with the networked output.

Wouldn't it be fair to expect that enough people to constitute a "market" also deserve to be served by a service paid for out of taxes? I expect the RNZ response would be that the money is limited – it certainly is, and they do an exemplary job with that they have – and that providing the best possible content is a priority. It is available on DTH satellite over basically the whole country after all.

Can't access blogger at home!

Added to RNZI.com, it's just not working at home! So I have to use a proxy…

London Huayu on the Olympic flame in London

If you want to hear what it was like on the ground in London when the Olympic flame visited, then London Huayu Chinese Radio's page is excellent.

The blue text in the middle is a selection of audio links.

Some of it is lovely, some of it is sad.

There are no pictures of Konnie Huq but it's still worth a listen!

Antarctic hydrophone

Forget my paltry attempts with a hydrophone – this is awesome!

PALAOA - Transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice


Overview PALAOA area
You can listen to the underwater sound of the Antarctic Ocean with a delay of a few seconds here.


Please note, this transmission is not meant for entertainment primilary, but for scientific research. It is highly compressed (24kBit Ogg-Vorbis), so sound quality is not perfect. Additionally, sounds may be very faint. The amplifier settings are a compromise between picking up distant animal voices and not overcharging the system by nearby calving icebergs. So please beware of sudden extreamely loud events.

Providing an acoustic live stream of the Antarctic underwater soundscape is a formidable challange. After all, more than 15000 km lie between Antarctica and our institute in Germany. Underwater sound is recorded by means of two hydrophones by PALAOA, an autonomous, wind and solar powered observatory located on the Ekström ice shelf (Boebel et al., 2006). The data stream is transmitted via wireless LAN from PALAOA to the German Neumayer Base. From there, a permanent satellite link transmits the data to the AWI in Germany. A constant hiss pervading the signal is the natural, isotropic background noise made audible here through the use of ultra sensitive hydrophones. Additional broad band noise caused by wind, waves and currents adds to it on occasion. Due to the limited bandwith of the satellite link, jamming of the WLAN link due to storms, or energy shortage, the connection might temporarily be down or scrammed. In this case, please dial in later!

The Takeaway – new US morning Current Affairs show

A new breakfast news show goes on air three weeks from now.

As the news release says:

New morning drive news program to be produced in editorial collaboration with The BBC World Service, The New York Times, and WGBH Boston

There's a full FAQ that's worth a read. Here's one snippit:

The Takeaway will be broadcast live, rather than featuring pre-recorded interviews and long pre-produced features.
It will deliver all the journalistic depth and excellence that WNYC listeners expect, while offering a dynamic and conversational tone.
It will feature two hosts talking together live in the studio, interviewing guests and responding to listeners on-air and online. Listeners will hear the day’s news and cultural stories — as they are happening — with live reports from the field, along with commentary and analysis from a range of contributors around the table and around the world.

They're promising lots of listener interaction too.

I'm looking forward to this, and I'd love to see behind the scenes too!

Tibet etc

I try not to go on about nationalism here – because if your memories of teenage life in Ireland involve going to peace rallies with strangers in town, and the shock – hundreds of kilometres away – of the Omagh bombing, then you'll probably not think nationalism is the best thing ever.

Anyway, good aggregative blog post on nationalism and media, in China, from Cam at Zhongnanhai.

Complaints to Radio Lab

A recent interviewee of Radio Lab's has contacted them to complain about… um…

Actually I think he just wrote in to grumble. Maybe he was having a tough day or something. Part of it was grumpy-old-man stuff "they put music under someone speaking that's dreadful". Another part was something I have more sympathy for. It's the misalignment that sometimes happens between academics and broadcasters. Ok so let's discount the trivial aims and staff that (not to put a tooth in it) are too common in TV. Let's stick with radio.

Plenty of academics hate having their work edited, they hate having their stamp removed. And a colleague being media-friendly can be a handy outlet for academic snobbery.

But we love them all the same!



And my do I love Radio Lab.

Have a look at the comments.

One in particular put it well, I thought:

I’m a Czech women, musicologist, musician, and for 20 years, a former radio executive producer-author at the French public radio station (France Culture) in Paris. I came in US recently, for my husband’s work. I listen to KPBS and NPR very often, every day; I love radio, I need it. Here in US, I try also to learn English by listening to it. In a very general way, I appreciate considerably the quality of NPR/PRI/KPBS shows. I pitched incidentally upon this particular program, my attention was immediately caught, I stayed with it until the end and - I was literally enrapt: I didn’t know until this moment that it was possible to do & to present such a good, fine, sophisticated radio work in this country. I wanted to know more about the Radio Lab I had never heard before.
Then I discovered this unbelievable letter from Mr. Fox. First I thought I had made a mistake… This is the reason I dare to write you, to express my thanks to the authors of this excellent radio piece (almost a sort of Hörspiel), and to give my contribution to the discussion.
The main (only real) issue here is, in my opinion, the question of a common preliminary agreement. If the purpose and the way of intended use (editing, fragmenting, contextualising) of the interview was exposed and explained to Mr. Fox before his interview, there is no reason to complain. So my question is, was it explained to him beforehand ?
In any case, his reaction is completely inadequate, ugly, obnoxious.
Thank you for your attention.
Daniela Langer

Yes, I think this is almost a sot of Hörspiel, but it's more than that, as it's a different genre. Radio Lab has broken the moulds. It'll be remembered. I'm well-chuffed to be of its generation!

Oops!

Just now I accidentally deleted my iTunes library, so when I re-loaded the files, the played tatus of my Podcasts was reset – this just a week after I backed-up and deleted the first five months worth. So the figure would be higher, but…

Radio Taiwan International Cyber Museum

This is really cool! Lot's of interesting technical stuff (in Times so not very easy on the eye unfortunately), cool design, and a really funky play studio – some parts are more entertaining and intriguing if you can speak or read Chinese – they seem to have a bit of a Chairman Mao thing going on there – well I suppose it is a museum.

Anyway, it's really cool!

The Radio Taiwan International Cyber Museum.

I feel like such a fraud.

When I lived in Auckland, I would watch the Pheonix News & Info bulletin relayed in the evenings on WTV's terrestrial Chinese channel. It felt nice and homely – not that I'd ever watched it before*, and sure, the political stuff was… not very inspiring. But I quite liked the presenter. And ok she was cute but I did convince myself that was just a small part of it.

I thought though that I was also assessing her as a news reader, based on her sense of authority, how engaging she was, her presence, and the stodgier qualities like voice and diction.

But it would seem I was deceiving myself.

Oh, the presenter's name? Jiang Xinrong. Didn't mean anything to me. But maybe it should have, given that in 2003, she (aged 19) became the first ever Miss China.

And here's a nauseating TV show including her, in her diamond tiara, saying how winning a beauty contest changed her life.

Ok so I just based it on cuteness. Poo.


* Never say never. I think it was on one of their bulletins on Pheonix CNE, when in Ireland, that I learned about the Hemepl Hempsted fire in December 2005 – together with a Chinese speaker from London, that took us off guard I'll say.

The Diary of Leanne Wolfe

Gut-wrenching documentary from December.

It's wonderful. I hope it wins awards.

It's on the RTÉ website here.

It's the diary of a girl who was bullied.

My own time being bullied seems very meagre now.

Mark Mardell and complaints

Revisited. He's doing, again, what I consider to me model responses to complaints to the BBC. Lord knows they get a ton of them – when I was there on a quiet late shift I'd go through the listener logs on the intranet for a giggle. It's interesting to see how people can love and loath the same things, and enlightening. But it can get tiresome sometimes too, the things people complain about. I mean, I try to listen to six hours of radio a day, but I still
know I can't say "you didn't cover this"!

Anyway, well done as ever Mr Mardell.