Speechification

A very good 45-minute feature about the prosecution and incarceration of modernist legend (and ‘A’ Level English fixture) Ezra Pound. He made over 400 broadcasts on Italian radio during the Second World War and narrowly escaped a conviction for treason on his capture and return to the USA. He wasn’t sent to prison but to serve twelve years in a psychiatric hospital, after which he returned to his adopted Italy. Fascinating and bewildering. Grand and infuriating. (MP3). Here’s a 1958 interview with the poet from BBC4’s interview archive.

I don’t think I’d had the nerve to post another Archive Hour, it seems we do it every week, but this one was a listener request so I couldn’t resist. And it is a complete audio joy. The words, the voices, the music are all great, a welcome departure from the Radio 4 norm in the use of music. But the sheer sound of it is delicious. Lots of crackly phones, under-powered tape recorders, badly tuned radios. It’s incredibly evocative. Hats off to Brook Lapping who made it, and in an absolutely unheard departure for a radio production company, mention it on their website! Genius. MP3 here.

Blimey, it’s still there! Reader (listener?) Daniel Weir found the Real stream for the Jarvis Cocker show, although it ought strictly to have gone away by now, so I rushed off and hijacked it. Here it is. And it is absolutely excellent.

Here’s a reminder of the richness and surprise that’s on offer all over the BBC’s radio output. Watchification contributor Jem Stone told me I ought to nip over to Radio 2’s web site and listen to Jarvis Cocker’s programme about Sheffield, which he said was excellent. But I was too late, by about half an hour. So I poked around a bit and came across this really marvelous one-hour feature—presented by one-time guest Joan Rivers—about The Ed Sullivan show, on the occasion of its Sixtieth birthday. Perfection (MP3).

I’ve missed most of this Radio 2 series by Paul Morley about new musical genres but I reckon this one must be the best episode because it’s about Glitch, which is a genre that I reckon must be right up his street. The show sounds like an episode of Radio Lab—very self-conscious and playful and lots of entertaining bleeps and whistles. Morley and his regular producer Paul Kobrak have fun in the edit and lots of the off-mic laughter and mucking about have been left in to good effect. Brilliant (MP3).

Here’s a gorgeous, dreamy doc from RTE. It’s about a teacher of Irish dance born in Britain and returning to the bottom left-hand corner of Ireland to pursue his passion, but you really don’t need to know that. You could easily listen without knowing a thing about the subject matter. You could tune out and enjoy the layered mix of voice and music , memory and emotion—it’s like ambient music. Or you could pay attention and enjoy the story of Timmy “The Brit” McCarthy, Irish dancer.

I’m linking to RTE’s MP3 because the Irish aren’t encumbered by a Trust and a bunch of service definitions that require them to delete their MP3s after a week. Let’s hope they don’t change their minds.

Saddest and truest radio programme this week. Soldiers’ letters, meant to be read only in the event of their death in action. A small tribute to the resilience and humanity of those left behind and to the courage (and humour) of those who died (MP3).

I can do no better than quote from the world service’s site:

“Each year the BBC World Service collaborates with radio stations from around the world to make a documentary series on a contemporary subject of international importance and interest. Each partner station contributes a documentary which gives a local interpretation of the chosen theme, and this year the theme is Escape.”

Splendid idea. You can listen to all eight programmes here. I’ve done about half and they’re all good so far. And they serve to illustrate that it’s not just the Beeb making interesting radio. Escape From Time is a good example of the way American public radio seems much happier than the BBC to play with sound and music when telling a story. Good stuff. MP3 here.

This is brilliant radio; media paying attention to the stuff of everyday life, specifically holes in the road. Taxi drivers complaining, road menders explaining. Lovely. MP3 here.

Here’s a excellent programme from RTE’s Documentary on One strand that’s got the strange history of British colonial rule written right through it. Savour this profoundly odd fact: a longish stretch of one of Ireland’s best fishing rivers belongs to… The 12th Duke of Devonshire. The fascinating thing is that the colonial history—700 years of slavery and all that—doesn’t even come up. Nor does the messy disentanglement of the two states that followed independence.

I think there’s something about modern Irish self-confidence and the instinctive resistance to what the Australians call ‘the cultural cringe’ that prevents contributors to the programme from even mentioning the ugly history that enabled a British aristocrat to acquire and retain huge swathes of Irish land. Can you build a modern, post-colonial state while deliberately forgetting the circumstances that produced it? Looks like it. MP3.

Read about the programme here. There’s a substantial archive of previous Documentary on One shows here and there’s a podcast too.