SONGS AS POEMS; POEMS AS SONGS
We listen for poetry in music and music in poetry, songs as poems and poems as songs with Langston Hughes, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Ken Nordine. Plus, a visit to New York’s City Lore with poet-folklorist Steve Zeitlin, who rides the POEMobile to the People’s Poetry Gathering and then back to New Orleans to meet Louisiana’s poet laureate, Mona Lisa Saloy.
MAKING MUSIC ON RECORDS & EXCAVATING SHELLAC
We’re spinning jazz, country, blues, pop and roots music heard locally and globally for over a century on records and later on jukeboxes, in cafes, barrooms and juke joints. We’ll hear June Carter and Johnny Cash, New Orleans’ jazzmen Kermit Ruffins and Danny Barker, Robert Johnson, and the Rolling Stones…then and now. Plus we’ll travel the world from earlier in the 20th century in search of rare music on 78s as dug up by sonic researcher, Jonathan Ward, for his collection, “Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the Worlds Music.”
NORTH AMERICAN ROUTES FROM SOUTH LOUISIANA TO CAPE BRETON WITH THE SAVOY-DOUCET CAJUN BAND AND BEOLACH
We’re rolling out New Orleans Creole and Cajun Francité and soul. We’ll hear music from The Meters, Kid Ory, and Carol Fran… plus the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band live at the French Market in New Orleans. Then, we head to Cape Breton Island in Maritime Canada for a visit with fiddler Wendy MacIsaac of the band Beolach, along with other Nova Scotia Scots Gaelic classics… and finally some down home American folks.
IN THE SPIRIT OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WITH CYRIL NEVILLE
For the Martin Luther King holiday we honor his spirit and struggle with African American spirituals, protest anthems, freedom jazz and soul power. New Orleans musician and activist Cyril Neville tells of growing up with Mardi Gras Indian rituals and street music and the importance of both to Black community life in the city. From our archives, the late jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard talks free form music and freedom of expression. Plus, Bob Dylan gives voice to the social unrest of the Sixties. Cellist and singer Leyla McCalla, formerly of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, reprises “The Capitalist Blues” for a new generation. And Big Mama Thornton brings a musical storm tide with her defiantly upbeat take on “Wade in the Water.” Be in that number with American Routes for MLK Day weekend!
GIVE THE DRUMMER SOME: WITH EARL PALMER, JM VAN EATON, ADONIS ROSE, THE NEW ORLEANS JAZZ ORCHESTRA
It’s time to give the drummer some, with late New Orleans native Earl Palmer talking about his creative percussion for Fats Domino and Little Richard sessions; and conversation with Memphis rockabilly JM Van Eaton about backing Jerry Lee Lewis; plus rhythm and time-keeping in music from Elvis and Johnny Cash to Smokey Johnson and Slim Gaillard. Then a live set dedicated to the soul, funk and jazz of New Orleans drummer James Black with Adonis Rose and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.
