Speechification

An unusual pleasure: curating a curator. And not just any curator. Here's a programme by Sara Paul - a student piece she made while at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Maine (which sounds like a fantastically cool place). And the curator is Ronan Kelly, producer of the marvellous Flux and Curious Ear on RTE Radio 1.

And he picked this because he was reminded of it by an Irish news story back in July, which is the kind of semi-random motivation that just wouldn't work on the BBC (but ought to!). Ronan also brought to my attention the excellent Saltcast podcast - which packages work by Salt students. And his own RTE podcast is one of my favourites (now rolled up with the Doc on One podcast). MP3 (8:21).

Picture, Blackfoot Diner, by Mark Heard. Used under licence.

The Curious Ear is Ronan Kelly's feature strand for RTE Radio 1 in Ireland. Kelly wins awards all over the place for this stuff. It's always playful, often very moving (maybe sometimes a bit too arch). This one's lovely. It's about the people you'll find under the stands at Dublin's legendary GAA venue Croke Park while there's a game on (some of them praying).

The Curious Ear goes out in the Doc on 1 slot on RTE Radio 1 and there's an excellent podcast. Here's the programme's web page and the MP3.

Wow. This is special. On the face of it nothing remarkable here: another classical-model doc about the turbulent birth of the Irish Republic. But it's a thing of beauty: a layered masterpiece that builds and builds: real radio craft from Peter Woods, an RTE staff producer since 1995. There's real tension and lots of quietly recorded sadness and bitterness. A reminder too that the horror that unfolded in country lanes and back streets all over Ireland in the first decades of the Twentieth Century still haunts many, especially the old men of West Cork. Sobering and moving stuff.

The MP3's here and on the programme web page you'll find some more audio and pics of the area and of the annual ceremony remembering the Kilmichael ambush. More pics of the ambush site here.

Picture by Conor O'Neill (CC).

Get lost in this marvelous 45 minutes of classical radio documentary-making from Newfoundlander Chris Brookes, brought to you via RTE's Documentary on One slot which I'm always going on about here because it's one of the few places you can hear this kind of quiet, meditative documentary feature every week. Subscribe to the podcast for lots more like this, most of it made by RTE in Ireland (like this one about the 1995 All Ireland Hurling champions) but some (like this one adapted from a Finnish original about Amos Oz) brought from all over the world. Here's the MP3, here's the programme's page at the RTE web site and here are some other RTE shows we've featured here.

Another documentary masterclass from the Irish. I'm not going to go on about it because I've said all this before but over at RTE Radio One they have a strand called Documentary on One: a long-running series of handsome, entirely artless 45-minute features on different aspects of Irish life. Here's the latest show, which is about the legendary 1995 All Ireland Hurling champions from County Clare in the West of Ireland. Ther'e nothing fancy about this: the only voices you'll hear are those of the documentary's subjects and the only other sounds are the match commentaries of the day and some gorgeous, evocative wild tracks fom the blustery West. Pure pleasure.

Flashing through the lanes of West Cork the other night, probably a bit too fast, on the way from Bantry to Baltimore in the dusk, I heard this beautiful programme of archive voices and music. It's a real gem: quiet and a bit old-fashioned. Ian Lee, an RTE traditional music stalwart, has made a six part series based on the field recordings of the various folklorists and collectors who tramped around the place during the Twentieth Century.

This one's about the recordings of Alan Lomax, legendary Library of Congress archivist. There's nothing like it on British radio. I suppose it's a kind of throwback—and you'll really have to concentrate: some of the voices are impenetrable. But it's wonderful. Here's the MP3 and the other programmes in the series are all here.

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 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).

A radio nostalgia special! First, part one of a two-part feature about Wolfman Jack, legendary 1960s DJ who broadcast from a Mexican 'border blaster' and was made famous when he provided the soundtrack for George Lucas' American Graffiti in 1969 (MP3). Second, a really fascinating Archive Hour from last year about the surprising early years of commercial radio in Britain: God, Pirates and The Ovaltineys (MP3). Third, an hour-and-a-half of memories from 80 years of Irish radio made to mark the closure of the state broadcaster's medium wave service last week (MP3).

Only the Wolfman doc will show up in the podcast so click the links to listen to the other shows. Border Blaster: In Search of The Wolf,  God, Pirates and The Ovaltineys, Medium Wave Goodbye.