On Thursday’s Radioshow: Environmental Encroachment the Magic Circus Band

Independent media comes in all forms, next to ‘zines, podcasts and blogs there are trombones, drums and batons. In parades, clubs and gatherings of all types across the US, and across the world a fresh wave of marching bands are bringing musical chaos to the streets.

Insurgent marching bands from around the globe are soon gathering in Boston for the Honk! Festival. One of those bands will be Chicago-based Environmental Encroachment. But before they head to Beantown EE is making a stop into the WNUR studios for an appearance on the mediageek radioshow.

As a Magic Circus Band, EE uses circus acrobatics, live music and costumes to create unique entertainment environments. At the same time they bring incredible marching band interpretations of classic and modern rock that you’ll never hear on a high school football field.

It’s going to be a fun and unique episode of the radioshow. You can hear it live this Thursday, Oct. 1 at 9 PM CT on WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago and online at www.wnur.org. Afterward listen to the podcast at the mediageek radioshow website.

San Antonio’s Local 782 Organizes for Media Empowerment

Anne Elizabeth Moore reports on independent musicians and media makers organizing right in Clear Channel’s own backyard:

“People in San Antonio have been doing media justice organizing for over 30 years,” the outspoken Latina activist and director of the Texas Media Empowerment Project DeAnne Cuellar explains. It makes perfect sense. One of the most renowned radio conglomerates in the world is spitting distance from your doorstep, and “you are nowhere on the radio at all,” as Cuellar puts it. This, plus the hour’s drive away from Austin, the so-called live music capital of the world, fosters a keen awareness of what locally consumed media could look like. …

Local 782’s approach is upfront and very clear. The group aims to organize local musicians, improve working conditions and the local music economy with socio-economic strategies, archive the diversity and history of music in San Antonio, and strive for solidarity throughout the music industry—especially among the working class.

Local music is local culture, and serves as a glue that ties people and communities together. Seems to me that musicians and artists in a lot of towns and cities could take a page from Local 782′s playbook, joining with existing truly local media, or working to create new local media opportunities.

Occasionally There Is Justice: free103point9 Receives an FM License

There are so few open frequencies for new full-power noncommercial radio stations in the US, so it’s all the more exciting to learn that the great folks at free103point9 have received a license from the FCC to start a 3,300 watt FM station in New York’s Hudson Valley.

free103point9 is an amazing group that promotes transmission arts, located at the intersection of music, experimental sound construction and radio. Over the last 10 years they’ve maintained an online presence with a live audio stream, while catalyzing the creation of new sonic arts through programs like the residency program at their Wave Lab on 30 acres in upstate New York. free103point9 also sponsors performances and concerts, releasing many of these recordings through their Dispatch series.

I’m so jazzed about free103point9′s FM license because it promises to be a station that is dedicated to and a participant in the creation of art, sound and music, not just merely playing existing recordings on air. With 168 hours a week to fill, I’m sure that the station also will be playing recorded music, along with important news and public affairs show. But the connection of an FM station to a non-profit group already engaged in the production and promotion of sonic art is both new and promising.

Indeed, I think that the sonic and transmission arts represent a fruitful new frontier for radio as the medium transcends being just a music jukebox (no matter how eclectic). Now, this sort of artistic experimentation has happened on community, college, public and even commercial radio stations for decades, but rarely has taken center stage — Public radio’s This American Life arguably is the best known example of a radio program that breaks out of the typical confines of radio genre and format. However, more often programs that truly play and experiment with sound and transmission are relegated to overnight hours and not often long-lived.

I also think it’s great that free103point9 started life as a microbroadcasting collective, that turned into an internet broadcaster, and is now bridging to the airwaves. Each medium has unique constraints, advantages and audiences and the future vitality of radio will rest on the fruitful use and bridging of multiple methods like these.

I’m scheduling Tom Roe, Program Director of free103point9, to be on the radioshow in the next few weeks. I’ve wanted to feature more transmission and sonic arts on the radioshow, but the move to Chicago this year and limits on my time and energy have kept this idea on the back burner. But hearing about free103point9′s license gives me motivation to re-engage with it.

Two young women journalists attacked and killed in Oaxaca

Unfortunately, there is more bad news from Oaxaca, as reported by Reporters Without Borders. The two young women killed were working for a community radio station serving an indigenous population.

Reporters Without Borders is deeply shocked by the fatal shooting on 7 April in Putla de Guerrero, in the southern state of Oaxaca, of Teresa Bautista Flores, 24, and Felicitas Martínez, 20, two women journalists working for La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence”), a community radio station serving the Trique indigenous community.

“Although there is so far no evidence that these two women were killed because of their work as journalists, their murders will be traumatic for all of Latin America’s many community radio stations, which are too often ignored or despised by the rest of the media and by governments,” Reporters Without Borders said.

Read more »

An Appeal from Kenya

The situation in Kenya is truly heartbreaking, especially since that nation has shown so much progress in moving past ethnic tensions and divisions. This message from an Indymedia journalist in has been circulating through Indymedia networks and deserves wider dissemination:

Dear Indymedia Colleagues,

Five days ago, on the 27th of December, I stood in a queue for six hours – from 5.30 AM to 11.30 AM, waiting for my turn to cast a vote in my country Kenya ‘s presidential, parliamentary and civic elections. When the votes were counted later that night, Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, began taking a near-unassailable lead. At one point, he led with almost one million votes. But somehow, Mwai Kibaki the incumbent president squeezed through a disputed victory. I can live with that. What I can’t live with, is that in the last three days, more than 200 Kenyans have lost their lives because of this disputed election results.

When the tension escalated, I had to move to my brother’s house because I stay in a neighborhood dominated by the Kikuyu, the biggest tribe in Kenya and also one that President Mwai Kibaki comes from. Tragically, Kikuyus around the country are bearing the brunt of an angry people and they are also beginning to retaliate. Just a kilometer from where I am now staying, a crowd of Kikuyus gathered at the police station asking for trucks that they can use to ferry their fellow kikuyus from different parts of the country. In the meantime, they are beginning to demand that all non-Kikuyus in this region should start vacating.

I recently talked with a close Kikuyu friend from Eldoret town and she was so scared. She is from the Kikuyu community while most of her neighbors are from the Kalenjin community. Due to no fault of hers, the president happens to be from her community. Due to his own fault, the president has greatly angered the Kalenjin community together with thirty eight other communities. Even the supposedly official results show that he only led in two provinces out of eight. Consequently, members of all other communities generally feel that the president has robbed them. Unfortunately, they are taking it out on innocent members of the three communities that voted overwhelmingly for the president – Kikuyu, Embu and Meru. It is becoming a ping-pong game of violence as members of these three communities are also starting to hit out.

I blame the people who commissioned and condoned the rigging of these elections. While I realize that most losers usually blame rigging for their losses, these particular rigging claims are not mere speculation. Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya has already admitted that he announced the presidential results under pressure from the President’s Party of National Unity. He also conceded that there were widespread irregularities which resulted in extended delays in announcing results from some forty eight constituencies. Both local and international observers have explicitly reported that while the actual voting process was beyond fault, the tallying of the votes was riddled with faults. Raila Odinga has refused to accept these results. Millions of Kenyans have refused to accept these results. Business has been paralyzed across the country and it is not business as usual. Lives have been lost and life cannot go on like this.

Kenya is now in a state of panic. Just yesterday, when the rest of the world was celebrating the New Year, thirty women and children were burnt alive in a church that they had sought refuge. They have died because someone found it fit to rig an electoral process and someone else found it fit to either facilitate or condone that rigging. They have died because there has been no concerted high level effort to quell a fire that is now consuming highways, byways and villages of this great nation. They have died because a subjective mass intolerance has been borne from massive political deception.

I hold all the aforementioned persons responsible for these deaths and any other deaths that may result from this tragic situation. The blood of these fellow Kenyans is primarily on the hands of the politicians whose legs have trampled on the fundamental voting rights of Kenyans. This innocent blood is also on the guilty hands of those whose acts of violence inflicted irreversible death blows. No injustice, however heinous, warrants murder of the innocents. As we learnt from the Rwanda genocide, this blood will also be on the hands of all those who will turn a blind eye on this simmering conflict. Which is why we cannot, and must not turn a blind eye on this violence and other violent situations around the world.

But what can you and I do to stop this violent, raging fire that is razing down innocent Kenyan lives?

1. Share this information far and wide: Send this piece to your local newsrooms and radio stations. When more and more people are informed, more possibilities avail themselves.

2. Volunteer as a web designer for the Kenya Independent Media (Indymedia) website: The Kenya Indymedia website can and should act as a platform for accurate and widespread expression. We need to publish dozens of first account stories that may not make it to the mainstream media. We also need to publish photos, audio and video. We therefore need volunteer web designers and programmers to work on it consistently for a period of 2 – 3 months as the Kenya Indymedia team builds its web designing and programming capability. As Kenya Indymedia, we now need to communicate to the world what is really happening and a vibrant website will be one way of doing this. We are liaising with national movement known as Million Youth Action to call and text people from across the country, moreso the worst hit areas of western Kenya and Rift Valley, so that we can in turn share their stories. This way, statistics will cease to be cold figures and they will take on a personal, human angle.

3. Host the Kenya Independent media website: In order to enable a download of videos, images and audio of this conflict, the website needs to have sufficient space. We would like to use this site to keep track of all the Kenyans who are needlessly losing their lives, getting injured, robbed and displaced in this post-electoral violence. We would also like to use it to keep track of who is instigating, undertaking and condoning this violence. Even more important, we would like to know the victims of this violence so that we can reach out to them one way or another, in our own small way.

4. Mobile phone communication: The only way that most endangered people can communicate and be communicated to, is through mobile phones. We would like to distribute mobile phone air time to as many people as possible so that we can enable them to communicate about what happened, is happening or may be about to happen. As already mentioned we will file all this communication on the website and pass it on to relevant authorities. One dollar will provide four minutes air time. These four minutes may make a difference between life and death.

5. Help relocate someone from a danger zone: This violence has taken on ethnic dimensions, which means that people from certain communities are now no longer safe in certain places in which they are the minorities. Property belonging to such individuals is being looted and destroyed. Even worse, their lives are in grave danger. Many of them are however not able to flee since many public means of transport have suspended their services due to rampant insecurity on the roads. We intend to relocate such people through any means possible. This includes tipping food delivery trucks, cargo trains, newspaper vans and any other vehicles that are moving from one point to another for whatever reason.

6. Help feed a relocated person: we have identified and are continuing to identify families in Nairobi and other parts of the country that can temporarily host relocated persons. As this is a grassroots movement with an emphasis on grassroots solutions, we intend to temporarily host displaced persons in host families. These families will greatly appreciate whatever food supplements we can give them.

7. Diplomatic missions: Contact your respective embassies in Kenya and seek to know what they are doing about the deteriorating situation in Kenya . Give them our contacts and forward this paper to them. Embassies can do more than issue blanket statements for people to ‘keep the peace’ as if don’t already know that!

8. Tend to a child: More than 75,000 Kenyans are now internally displaced. Most of them are women and children. What a tragedy when young children are caught up in such a mess. There is no perfect formula for reaching out to such innocent ones. We intend take to them toys, clothes, chocolate, drinks, books and more gifts that can cheer them up. We will particularly target children who have been displaced or those whose parents have died in this conflict.

9. Pray: For those of you, who like, believe in God, do whisper a prayer that peace will eventually prevail in Kenya .

10. Share your ideas: it will greatly help if you share any concrete ideas that you may be having. Most politicians are just telling Kenyans to keep the peace and not really taking any concrete action to address this situation. People power and solutions can make a BIG difference.

You can do any of the above by donating any of the mentioned things or what you would consider to be their monetary equivalent. Just go with your gut feeling and thanks for your thoughts.

- A member of Kenya IMC

Anarchy, Integrity and the Digital Marketplace, via a Double-Ended Podcast Interview

Michael W. Dean is the former lead singer of the 90s band Bomb, an author of instructional books, podcaster and is probably most well known for his documentary DIY or Die about independent artists. I watched DIY or Die a year or two ago and had made a note to get Michael on the radioshow, and then promptly forgot. Then this weekend I read this excellent commentary that he wrote for O’Reilly Digital Media, Anarchy, Integrity and the Digital Marketplace:

What I’m saying is this: I believe in a free-flowing global exchange of information. I believe free flow is important to continue advancements in art, science, and commerce. And I believe in Fair Use. But I also am not a communist, and I enjoy getting paid for something I work very hard on. I think the artist (or content creator, if you like) will do well to learn what all the various options are, all the different levels of copyright, copyleft, free, and pay, and adjust accordingly on a project-by-project basis.

Don’t believe the pundits, intellectuals, or dumpster-diving squatters who tell you that any one way is the right way or the wrong way. Don’t let anyone guilt you into doing anything you don’t want to do with your art. Your art is your baby. Respect it, love it, cherish it, but don’t devalue it just because “everyone’s doing it.”

Art belongs to the ages, but it primarily belongs to the artist. To you. You are free to do with your art as you please. And that’s true anarchy.

So i shot off an email to him and almost immediately received a positive response and we recorded an interview Monday night.

Be sure to tune in to this week’s radioshow to hear this very interesting interview with someone who is making a go of it as a multi-media independent artist. You can listen live Friday at 5:30 PM Central Time on WEFT’s live stream, or wait for the archive which will be posted by midnight Sunday.

And a quick note on the tech behind this particular interview. Michael suggested we do it “double-ended” where he recorded his voice in his podcast studio and I recorded my voice in my studio. We did the interview over Skype, which I also recorded so I would have a good sync reference. Michael uploaded a high-quality mp3 of his vocal track and I’m mixing it together with mine. Then it will sound like we were in the same room together.

That’s actually how a lot of public radio interviews are conducted, like on Fresh Air. All those celebrity guests don’t travel to Philadelphia to be in-studio with Terry Gross. Instead they go to some studio or station nearby where they record the celebrity’s voice as s/he speaks with Terry on the phone. Then the Fresh Air producers mix it all together.

Radio magic.

Reclaim the Media Presents Community Media Film Festival

I think this is just a great idea and I wish I could be out in Seattle to attend. It’s a great weekend for community media events. You could start this weekend in Montreal for CKUT’s Redefining Media conference starting Friday (hear more about it on last Friday’s radioshow), then jet over to Seattle to catch the first screening of the Community Media Film Festival starting at 7 PM with Pirate Radio USA.

The Community Media Film Festival is screening Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad/A Little Bit of So Much Truth, which also is screening at the Redefining Media conference. The filmmaker, Jill Freidberg, is scheduled to be a guest on the Oct. 26 edition of the radioshow to talk about this documentary.

Also playing is Michael Lahey’s great Making Waves, as much a brilliant character study as it is a movie about pirate radio in Tuscon, AZ. I spoke with Michael on the Nov. 12, 2004 edition of the radioshow.

Finally, the fest will feature the Seattle premiere of the new documentary about Paper Tiger TV, Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger Television. I’m lucky to have Maria Juliana Byck from Paper Tiger TV as a guest on this coming Friday’s radioshow to talk about this documentary celebrating 25 years of cutting edge public access TV.

The fest wraps up on Oct. 23 with what looks to be a really good panel discussion on the future of community media broadcasting. I hope the RTM folks will audio or video record this panel to share.

If you’re anywhere near Seattle this next weekend and week you shouldn’t miss it.

Oaxaca Documentary Released

In May 2006 the annual teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, Mexico turned into a people’s movement and uprising against the repressive response of the Oaxacan and Mexican governments. As part of that movement, known as APPO, the people took over radio stations, using broadcasting as the most effective tool for communicating with often remote indigenous villages in that state.

I aired a couple of reports from George Salzman and Nancy Davies, two American activists living in Oaxaca, on the radio show last September and November.

Now Seattle’s Corrugated Films has released a documentary on the APPO, Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (A Little Bit of So Much Truth), focusing on the strategic use of media:

[The film] captures the unprecedented media phenomenon that emerged when tens of thousands of school teachers, housewives, indigenous communities, health workers, farmers, and students took 14 radio stations and one TV station into their own hands, using them to organize, mobilize, and ultimately defend their grassroots struggle for social, cultural, and economic justice.

The film is screening around South and North America (including CKUT’s upcoming Redefining Media conference), and is also for sale.

I’m very interested in seeing Un Poquito de Tanta Verada, so I think I’ll order myself up a copy.

Redefining Media: Media Democracy and Community Radio

Community radio CKUT in Montreal, Quebec is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a conference, Redefining Media: Media Democracy and Community Radio. I only found out about it yesterday and really wish I had the time and travel money to go. The conference happens Oct 19 – 21 and is “pay what you can.”

I’m always impressed when a licensed station is willing to deal with unlicensed radio. In this case there are two sessions at this conference dedicated to the subject, in technical detail: Building a Low-Watt Transmitter I & II.

Plenty of other sessions looks good, too, especially: Radio, Art and Freedom of Thought, Community Radio Around the Globe and the closing panel, What is Media Democracy?

CKUT is a great station with a nicely diverse lineup of music and public affairs program. I’m a regular listener to the podcast of the International Radio Report.

Paper Tiger Celebrates 25 Years

Paper Tiger TV has been producing thought-provoking and challenging television programming for 25 years. Before the age of the internet, DVD and widespread VCR ownership, much of Paper Tiger’s programming was seen on public access stations around the country, and on satellite TV (not DBS like DirecTV, but old-school BUDs). Collectively organized, Paper Tiger was and is an innovator in grassroots, political video production, continuing to teach people how to harness the power of the moving image themselves.

If you’re in NYC this coming Thursday, Oct. 11, you can catch Paper Tiger’s 25th Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser at Anthology Film Archives. The celebration is hosted by Amy Goodman, Bill Tabb and Joan Braderman. It will also be the premiere of Paper Tiger’s documentary about itself, Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger Television.

Paper Tiger is also maintaining an occasionally updated video blog featuring excerpts from PTTV’s productions over the past 25 years.

As an aside, here’s an interesting review of PTTV’s residency at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992, as written by Paul Dorn for Socialist Worker.