Portland community radio station KBOO-FM celebrates its 50th year on air in 2018, and to commemorate the anniversary the station is hosting an exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society Museum. While an exhibit seems simple enough on the surface, in fact a lot of time, thought and work goes into curating the artifacts and narrative […]
Today, is World Radio Day. First proclaimed in 2011 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to, “celebrate radio as a medium; to improve international cooperation between broadcasters; and to encourage major networks and community radio alike to promote access to information, freedom of expression and gender equality over the airwaves.” February […]
“I can’t even imagine my life without KBOO.” That’s what Shaheed Haamid told the audience assembled January 20 at the Oregon Historical Society to celebrate the opening of “50 Years of KBOO,” an exhibit marking the Portland community radio station’s first half-century. Haamid is a long-time KBOO volunteer, programmer and current board member. He recalled […]
With so many college radio stations in the Chicago area, it can be tough to decide which to visit first. WIIT 88.9 FM at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) jumped to the top of my list when I learned that it was potentially one of the oldest college radio stations in the country. Coupled with […]
While looking for info on a BBC session recording of the 1980s new wave / post-rock band Talk Talk I stumbled upon a version of the band’s Radio 1 broadcast on a site called Past Daily. Digging into its archives I discovered a treasure-trove of audio archives, from a 1991 CBS Radio world news roundup […]
“Podcasts are luring people into listening,” Jennifer Waits reports, quoting the esteemed radio scholar Susan Douglas, from her keynote address at the recent Radio Preservation Task Force conference in Washington DC. Jennifer also relays some important reasons for studying radio history shared at the conference, especially to help understand the present and plan for the […]
For my third Hybrid Highbrow podcast I have assembled a collection of tango pieces written by late-19th and early 20th-century classical composers. They include Albéniz, Shostakovich, Milhaud, Mompou, Stravinsky, Satie, and Poulenc. Listening to these wonderful compositions, and reading up on the history of tango, I am struck by the explosive impact that this […]
By popular demand I have produced my second Hybrid Highbrow podcast. It’s all about jazz and classical pieces that conform to the “arabesque” format. Arabesques are often but not always written for the piano. Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy composed the most famous arabesques. But I also hear the arabesque spirit in the the work […]
Hybrid Highbrow podcast #1 is out! Ta daaaaa! The maiden episode focuses on the similarities between two early 20th-century “talking machine” singers: blues shouter Mamie Smith and opera star Enrico Caruso. Both sang in the middle ranges, alto and tenor, rather than the high or low registers. This made them perfect for acoustic recording. Both […]
A nineteen hour tape of an entire day’s radio broadcast of WJSV in Washington DC is available via Hoopla. The day is September 21, 1939, a day in which Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech to congress asking it to amend the Neutrality Act so he could aid the allies as World War II had begun.
