|
|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Radio
There are a lot of good things about getting older. When you’re
young you want everyone to like you and to make an impression. When
you’re old you don’t give a damn.' Kate Turkington is fearless and
fun, even now in her 80s. From the war-worn East End of London to
raising a young family in a remote part of eastern Nigeria and
building a career as one of SA's most loved broadcasters, Kate's
story is remarkable and revealing. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You
will cheer. You may well be shocked.
Distant Voices Near chronicles the development of the popular and
contentious Indian radio media subsector in the Republic of
Trinidad and Tobago from global historical perspectives and
explores its implications for culture and national sentiment in the
modern context. The work acknowledges the complex discourses
surrounding ethnic and cultural identities in this diverse
Caribbean nation where numerous groups coexist, among them the
descendants of Indian indentured labourers. Shaheed Nick Mohammed
employs a media-history approach that recounts the emerging roles
of modern communications technology and systems from the
development of wireless telegraphy and early radio to the use of
streaming and social media and the interplay of social and cultural
forces along the way. Within this framework, he also maps the
evolution of the Indian radio content genre into its own media
subsector and into a business and marketing concern across national
media while at the same time boasting global reach. In Distant
Voices Near, we learn of international and regional influences as
listeners in Trinidad would tune into broadcasts from abroad before
local stations were available. Among these influences were
international broadcasts from All-India Radio and broadcasts from
British Guiana, where descendants of Indian indentured labourers
first introduced pay-for-play song request programmes on their
local stations. Using documentary research, interviews with
programmers and listeners and content analysis, Mohammed examines
the precedents of Indian radio in Trinidad, its advent and
development, and its emergence into a global presence through live
streaming and social media.
Soon after Duffy's Tavern premiered over the radio in 1941,
Hollywood celebrities flocked to the microphone for a guest
appearance and accepted what was rarely heard of in network
broadcasting - celebrities were roasted in the form of insults that
were praised by critics and raved by radio listeners. Duffy's
Tavern was so popular it helped spawn a hit song, "Leave Us Face
It," an attempted newspaper comic strip, a number of premiums and a
U.S.O. Tour. Convicts at San Quentin voted it their favorite radio
program. This book (700 plus pages) documents the entire history of
the radio program, the 1945 motion-picture, the short-lived
television program, the lawsuits, Ed Gardner's personal life,
contract negotiations and much more
As the Second World War raged throughout Europe, modernist writers
often became crucial voices in the propaganda efforts of both
sides. Modernism at the Microphone: Radio, Propaganda, and Literary
Aesthetics During World War II is a comprehensive study of the role
modernist writers' radio works played in the propaganda war and the
relationship between modernist literary aesthetics and propaganda.
Drawing on new archival research, the book covers the broadcast
work of such key figures as George Orwell, Orson Welles, Dorothy L.
Sayers, Louis MacNeice, Mulk Raj Anand, T.S. Eliot, and P.G.
Wodehouse. In addition to the work of Anglo-American modernists,
Melissa Dinsman also explores the radio work of exiled German
writers, such as Thomas Mann, as well as Ezra Pound's notorious
pro-fascist broadcasts. In this way, the book reveals modernism's
engagement with new technologies that opened up transnational
boundaries under the pressures of war.
|
|