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.
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.
Over at RTE Ronan Kelly has got a bit of an NPR thing going on. He’s making documentaries that have that disarming, dreamy feel that I expect from the best output of American public radio stations like Chicago Public Radio and WNYC. Here’s a really excellent show that went out around Paddy’s Day in March about being Irish. Not being Irish in the hard-hitting sociological-analytical kind of way but being Irish in the allusive, poetic kind of way. This is open-ended, discursive radio that rarely arrives at a conclusion. Stories don’t resolve neatly, segments are loosely-linked, themes approximate.
Some people really don’t like this. They find it lazy and purposeless and want something tougher and better organised. Sometimes I agree but that’s mostly because it’s such a difficult technique to get right. It would be very easy to make something slack and undemanding from this material. I’d like to hear more like it in Britain, though. I’d like to hear what would happen if some of Britain’s factual radio talent was let off the hook a bit and allowed to play. With the occasional exception on Radio 3, though, the BBC’s really too uptight to create such loosely-structured radio here. I think Feedback would be swamped if Mark Damazer routinely ran shows like Kelly’s (or like This American Life or Radio Lab, for that matter). Pity.
Anyway, this show is full of good stories. In one segment some really good material comes from the simple device of phoning people up who happen to be called ‘Patrick Day’. A treat (MP3).
After last month’s rather wonderful The Nun Who Nurtured Reggae came last Saturday’s This Are 2 Tone, which I nearly posted, but didn’t, because it was a bit rubbish. Disappointed not to be able to load Speechification with Reggae-tinged vibes, I was therefore overjoyed to find 6Music rebroadcasting Don Letts’ excellent Radio 2 roots and culture documentary Blood and Fire (Part One and Part Two). It’s quite music-heavy, but it does contain some great cuts, characters and commentary. I particularly love Burning Spear’s epic piece of history-denial, Jah No Dead.
I remain slightly perplexed by 6Music - I know I want a good music station, but this consistently fails to be it, usually thanks to the curse of all radio: over-talkative presenters. Tom Robinson’s evening show is generally OK, but if I wanted to listen to lots of old Peel sessions, Radio 1’s Keeping It Peel has it pretty much sown up. So the daily Play It Again slot (weekdays, 2130), showcasing old music docs, is great, and I’d appreciate it if anyone wants to point out what else I should look out for on the station.
The title says it all really. It’s the story of Sister Mary Ignatius Davis of the Alpha Boys School, Jamaica. The school encouraged ‘wayward boys’ to get interested in music; creating generation of musicians who played key parts in the creation of the Jamaica music business and culture. And ‘Sister Iggy’ ran her own sound system and had a massive collection of reggae records. MP3 here.
(Interestingly there’s very little information about the programme on the Radio 4 site, or on the official programme page, but there’s a long interview, and fascinating extra stuff on the BBC Caribbean page, which still has the show on Listen Again)
If I told you this was a series about control rooms and surveillance systems you’d be forgiven for summoning up images of Big Brother, grim, anonymous security men and the oppressive boot of the state. But there’s hope for us all in the fact that most of these programmes revolve around a kettle and a packet of biscuits. Joe Kerr visits various control rooms - that of London buses, a Glasgow care line, the Ordnance Survey, the National Grid and an offender tagging system (sorry, not offenders, ’subjects’, some of them are just on bail) and talks to the people who operate them. This is more chatty radio than you normally get. Chatty boarding on flirty, and almost approaching HR violation at some points. Fantastic stuff. There are five of these fifteen minute gems. One is here. And here are two, three, four and five. I especially love the little bits of jargon you hear - G4S talk about people being ‘on the tag’, the National Grid think it’s a good night if ‘it hasn’t touched the sides’ and the bus control centre call the ambulance service ‘bandages’ and the fire service ‘Trumpton’.
Over on Radio 2 Paul Morley has made a clever two-parter about celebrity. I hesitated to put it up actually because, well, it’s not quite as good as I was hoping it would be. Don’t get me wrong, the show’s thoughtful and funny and there are loads of excellent contributors (and Paul Morley, obviously). I think it’s just too long. Each part is an hour long. Whose idea was that? Anyway, don’t let me put you off. Here’s part one and part two.
A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded. Other speech radio from around the world will no doubt find its way here too.
Of course, one day this might turn into something else, maybe a new way of curating speech radio, or maybe it won’t.
Your hosts on this not very wild ride are Steve Bowbrick, Russell Davies, Dan Hill, Bobbie Johnson, Roo Reynolds and James Bridle. Drop us a line with your thoughts, unless you wish to complain about continuity announcers and their accents.
You might also enjoy the square-eyed sister site, Watchification.
Things tagged with 'speechification'
