Speechification

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).

The Irish State broadcaster’s equivalent to Radio 4 (which, confusingly, is called Radio 1) has a show called The Curious Ear. Ronan Kelly records people and events with the kind of wry, slightly sideways attitude you normally get from features on NPR (like the Lost and Found Sounds shows from last week). You don’t get this kind of stuff on Radio 4. It’s too gentle, a bit purposeless. I think people would complain. Anyway, this one’s about the World Draughts Championships which took place in Buncrana, Co. Donegal in October. Lovely (MP3, podcast and here’s a page showing all the RTE factual podcasts. Lots of good stuff here).