Speechification

Glorious. 30 minutes of treasure from the Kitchen Sisters' archive of recordings - all about the revelatory power of singing. Here's the MP3, here's a list of the recordings used in the programme (which I've put up as a page here at Speechification because it will be replaced by next week's in a few days), here are some other things by the Kitchen Sisters we've featured here and, finally, the Lost and Found Sound pages from the NPR web site. Search for the Kitchen Sisters at NPR.org and you'll find hours of great radio to listen to.

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.

Not, I'll grant, important radio. Not ground-breaking. Just a performer you'll know well, pushing beyond the boundaries of his career so far and... well... singing Leonard Cohen. Brave stuff—with many good gags and a kind of melancholy, which I suppose is borrowed from Cohen's words. Lovely (MP3).

More forty-something thrills from Radio 2. This time a terrific three-part series about songwriting that originally went out last Summer. All three subjects—Leonard Cohen, Nile Rodgers and Patti Smith—are old enough and rugged enough not to be troubled by self-doubt or by fear of the opinion of others so we get disarming honesty about methods and inspirations. Of the three, Smith is probably the most guarded but this is still a mesmerising show (MP3) and the other two parts are here.

I didn't expect much of this one but I'm a junkie for stuff about the creative process so I listened and it's just excellent - the first of four half-hours apparently. They call it 'an exploration of the differences between poetry and song' but it's really a genteel Radio 4 version of a Reality TV format: poets write lyrics for singers.

There's something interesting about the reactions of the participants, too: the poets (Paul Farley and Jo Shapcott) are blown away by the whole process but the singers (Jamie Cullum and Doc Brown) are almost blasé. Maybe they just lead more exciting lives. The pay-off is unmissable and quite moving. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series (MP3).