8 posts tagged “radio”
I believe I've written a criticism before of Pat Duggins. I usually hear his spots on NASA for NPR news and his delivery is so fast that it sounds like commercial radio with little personality or compassion.
But this audio postcard lets the real Pat Duggins shine.
The segment includes great ambi, onsite reporting, and it breathes with pauses usually absent from the spot reports.
In prepping for a panel I'm moderating about the state of activism today, I found an old wish list item: Movement Soul, a collection of live recordings from the civil rights movement.
Unfortunately, it's no longer available for sale, but I did find an amazing documentary that integrates the voices and music from the peak of the movement produced by Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices.
I plan to play a clip from this along with some of my archival tape from Mark Izu, Miya Masaoka, and Bill Sorro on Tuesday as I ask how music integrates with the movement today.
A testimony to the importance of being able to tell your truth and how most media serves the interests of the elite:
A woman who helped take over a television station in Oaxaca said they wanted an opportunity to tell, "a little bit of so much truth."
The truth about:
- the needs of the school system (the schools, the teachers, the students)
- the needs of the poor while the rich resources and Oaxaca benefit the rich
- the peaceful protest disrupted by strong armed police and military
When I went to Guatemala I was lucky enough to sit in on a lecture about La Voz Popular, a radio station run by the guerrillas during the country's civil war. They were able to update indigenous people about the war, offer medical advice for people living in rural areas, and play nuevas canciones (protest music) to keep up the spirits of the soldiers.
But recently, I learned about another way that radio was used in Guatemala in the form of Radio Liberacion, a radio station created by the CIA. This broadcast in the 1950s during Guatemala's "Democratic Spring" when President Arbenz initiated land reforms that pissed off US businessmen (the United Fruit Company).
Nancy Updike does a great job in piecing this story together with a powerful ending, reminding us the role that the US played in the hundreds of thousands of people murdered and the thousands of people disappeared.
Just quickly checking email and holy smolly! CROSSING EAST WON A PEABODY!
Yesterday, an ex-guerrila member talked about the radio program the movement had for 9 years and it was really interesting.
She and another compañera were trained in Cuba in radio. ONe of the excersizes was to lie down and read the news with books stacked on top of her chest so that she would read stronger. Also, she practiced with a pen across her mouth and over her tongue for one hour. Afer, she had better pronounciation.
When she returned, at first, they were just jamming the state radio. She stopped, but others continued that work. Those people were later disappeared.
Seven years later, they called her up for service as the radio was starting to create programming. They had segments that addressed women, farmers, that was an update from the guerrilas, a medical show for farmers. They also passed on tapes of the show to an international support community. (They wrote the name of popular musicians on the tapes so that they weren´t intercepted at the airport, butreally they had revolutionary programming).
The antennae was on top of a vocanoe. They put mines at the bottom of the volcanoe (which they now removed) so that the army couldn´t shut down the antennae.
This is the power of radio at its best.
(I have video of her talk that I hope to post this weekend)
Tina Gordon is setting out to SXSW with the Rambler, a mobile rock venue she built! I did a radio piece on the Rambler when she was still raising funds and the Chronicle just wrote a fun story on it.
