Speechification

Lose yourself in this - half an hour spent in a Marrakesh square called Djemaa el Fna. And no ordinary square: a 'masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity', according to UNESCO. Wonderful radio (MP3 - length: 28:28).

More info on the Radio 3 programme page. Picture, taken with a Lomo toy camera, by Molemaster. Used under licence.

Another Speechification exclusive (you won't hear this anywhere else). Steve Shepherd (the man who made the Lenny Bruce programme we published here in April), produced this portrait of divine eccentric Moondog for Radio 3 (MP3). The narrator is again Charles Shaar Murray.

Steve sent me these words about the making of the programme:

Moondog was another of my heroes/obsessions, a legendary NYC street performer and driven outsider who made some of the strangest records on the planet. Charles Shaar Murray shared my fascination with him and when I managed to sell the idea to R3 he jumped at the chance of presenting. The budget for these 30min jazzfile docs was very low so it was basically an illustrated talk but we managed to find two people who had actually experienced Moondog on the streets of New York: Charles knew musician Patti Palladin from way back and I was friendly with composer John Zorn. I think their eye witness statements bring this piece alive alongside the incredible Moondog interview I found buried in the BBC archive. The hardest thing to source when we were making the show was the Moondog / Julie Andrews collaboration. It's since been reissued but at the time it seemed as if someone had invented it just to give me something to search for. We eventually tracked down a copy via a Julie Andrews completist in Holland - the things we do for radio! Hope you enjoy Moondog - spread the word about him and if you're going buy some of his music get the early stuff.

(The video uses numbers from Flickr to illustrate a Moondog piece called 'Fog On The Hudson (425 West 57th Street)'. I found it on YouTube).

In which Michael Goldfarb encounters the ghosts of Ludwig Boerne and Heinrich Heine in Frankfurt - doubly punished, for being Jews, and for writing in German, and thus condemned by their own culture, and ignored as the rest of the world turned against it. A grand intellectual history, excellently told. [MP3]

Some more Radio 3, and quite music-heavy this one, but justified by the voices:

Musician and writer Banning Eyre heads to the American state of Georgia, gateway to the Deep South, and southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, to record some of the unique vocal music that has been preserved in the area, and meet the personalities who have kept the traditions alive. [MP3]

Thanks to, um, someone, for the tip. Sorry. Remind me. Andy! It was Andy! Andy gave me the tip! Thanks/sorry Andy.

Radio 3's Sunday Feature is a lovely slot, full of odd things, and generalist interests. Here, Ken Hollings explores the development of military games, culminating in the most high-tech of modern developments. [MP3]

We've been a bit quiet, haven't we? Sorry. I'm just setting up a few to trickle through over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!

A really lovely Sunday Feature in which poets Paul Farley and Kate Royal retrace the journey taken in Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings and an equally lovely Archive Hour (also presented by Paul Farley) about the discovery of a box of lost tapes of Larkin reading his own verse. Adding up to a slice of melancholy beauty the like of which you will not hear anywhere else this week. True.

An excellent and engrossing discussion between Night Waves presenter Philip Dodd and historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash, ranging across Communist Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Orwell, Greene, the soixante-retards, the USA and the Bush administration, and England's place in Europe.

I feel sort of blessed that this level of intellectual discussion is available free to air, just coming out of my radio when I switch it on... [MP3]

We're posting a lot of Radio 3 at the moment aren't we? Well, how could we resist this? Extraordinarily atmospheric radio; evoking the vanishing towns of the American South West with music, stories and just plain sound. MP3 here.

I particularly like the complaints about the noise of motorcycles.

Radio 3's The Essay is such a strong strand we seem to find ourselves posting a lot of it, but this tale is so fascinating and so entertainingly told, it demands inclusion. Stuart Clark recalls The Great Solar Storm of 1859, its effects on its observers, and on the nascent Scientists of the day, illuminating the heavens, and our understanding of them. [MP3]

Clark, in case you didn't know (I didn't) is an astronomy journalist, and the essay is based on his book The Sun Kings

If you're interested in work or life or mixing the two in the way most are obliged to these days, you'll like this. One of Radio 3's almost-always excellent five-part series of The Essay, this one presented by Professor Hugh Cunningham. It's about the 'work-life balance' but Cunningham doesn't waste any time explaining how contingent the phrase is and how recently it is that we were concerned more with 'leisure' than wih 'life'. This is episode one of five.