Speechification

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.

Here’s one I’ve been meaning to post for a few weeks - a beautiful and moving mosaic of immigrant voices from all over Europe. This is the kind of collaboration you get if you’re a small economy and better wired into Europe than we are in Britain. The show was produced (in German) by RBB (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) and first aired in May 2007. The English-language version was mixed by Radio France International and the show was broadcast again as part of RTE’s Documentary on One strand in Ireland on 10 February this year, which is where I picked it up. Here’s the MP3 (and the Documentary on One podcast is here).