Continuing the republication of podcast review columns from The Tribune newspaper - this column appeared in the Weekend edition of February 27: http://www.tribune242.com/photos/galleries/2015/feb/27/02272015-weekend/
Soul Music (BBC)
“That strange fruit is still out
there, it's just in a different form.”
So says the cousin of Emmett Till, a
teenager lynched and killed in 1955 for whistling at a white woman in
Mississippi. The story of the 14-year-old's death is just one strand
of an episode of the Soul Music podcast on the BBC website, looking
at the story behind the song Strange Fruit.
The Soul Music series has many
episodes, each looking at the background behind a particular piece of
music, but the Billie Holiday episode has many aspects to it – from
the horror of lynchings that inspired it, through the story of the
Jewish New York schoolteacher who wrote it and who later adopted the
children of two people executed for being Soviet spies, to the people
today inspired by the song, such as the quiltmaker who quietly
stitched and sewed with golden thread the names of everyone killed in
lynchings before quietly, defiantly adding: “I stand for these
people. If no one else remembers them, or remembers their names, I
stand for these people.”
The song plays, and the story unfolds.
Website: www.bbc.co.uk
and search for Soul Music
Love + Radio
Walking along the street one day, Ana –
in Oakland, California – was catcalled by Jerome in the street. Ana
pulled out her microphone and asked him if he could repeat what he
said to her, and the latest episode of Love + Radio presents the
conversation that followed.
The goal of Love + Radio is to present
interviews with unexpected subjects. For example, the site suggests a
starting point if you want to work out what kind of things it covers,
and it points you to the episode The Wisdom Of Jay Thunderbolt, about
a man who runs a strip club from his home.
There seems to be a freshness and an
honesty to the approach, an uninhibited freedom in the topics covered
and the language used – some explicit.
That honest approach can bring great
results – in the catcalling episode, An Old Lion or a Lover's Lute,
Jerome gives straightforward answers as to why he does what he does,
but the earnest questions continue and reveal a lot about his
viewpoint, and the uncertain ground it is built on.
Website: loveandradio.org
Pseudopod
Time for a little escapism, and
Pseudopod is a very elegant place to escape to. This is a website
devoted to horror stories. There's something old and something new
here – stories written by modern writers and sometimes a gem
unearthed from the past. Readers are also warned this is not a site
for children, as horror stories can most certainly be gruesome. I
started off with Lost In The Fog, a story published in 1918 by
British novelist John Davys Beresford (whose daughter would later
create children's characters The Wombles). It's a story of a man
taking the wrong train, getting off at the wrong place and learning
of many other, very wrong things taking place there. The readings are
professional quality, with not too much of an introduction before you
get to the meat of why you're visiting, plus analysis at the end.
There are plenty of episodes – Lost In The Fog is episode 420 –
so you won't be short of a shiver or two as you draw up the blankets
and turn up the volume.
Website: www.pseudopod.org
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