I have just come across this series on the BBC World Service about the BBC WS broadcasts called "Caribbean Voices" which began in the 1950's. The series is currently being repeated in "The Wednesday Documentary" slot - part two this week. Part one is still available on Listen Again at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p008grqf/>
or go to The Wednesday Documentary web pages where parts one and two can both be downloaded on-demand, at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/07/090721_caribbean_voices_1.shtml> (Alan Roe, Teddington, UK) =========================================== The Wednesday Documentary: Caribbean Voices What is the Caribbean voice? In the 1950s, the BBC World Service conjured it up. Through its weekly programme, Caribbean voices were revealed to be haunting and melodious, salty, pungent, sun-drenched, wry, amusing, earnest and unique. If a good newspaper acts as a nation talking to itself, then Caribbean Voices distinguished itself as a sounding board for the British colonies in Caribbean. Poets, playwrights and prose writers (amateur and professional) sent forth their contributions from the Antilles and those stories, selected, edited and fastidiously recorded washed back over the airwaves as the BBC called the Caribbean. In this two-part series the radio producer and independent historian Colin Grant, examines how Caribbean Voices served to kick start a literary tradition in the Caribbean. The door of the freelancers' room at the Langham Hotel, with its ochre walls and pea-green dado, was always wide open and a host of soon-to-be famous names walked through: Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott, Andrew Salkey, V.S. Naipaul and many others. The series will travel back to the anxious beginnings of these impoverished fledgling writers who tapped out their stories, on the smooth non-rustle paper, to the sound of their bellies knocking on their backbones. In part one, Colin Grant talks to some of the original contributors, including the Noble Laureate, Derek Walcott and George Lamming about the remarkable beginnings of Caribbean Voices, drawing listeners back to the 1940s where in the midst of war an indomitable Jamaican, Una Marson caught the attention of BBC bosses, and was given the job of reflecting life in Britain to people in the Caribbean and vice-versa. On one level this might simply be Caribbean servicemen and women stationed in England reading letters home; later there would be meditations on the nature of prejudice that the immigrants found on their arrival, and still later Caribbean Voices became a show-case for burgeoning literary endeavour. In part two, Colin asks writers who they think they are, who are their readers and whether they strive for recognition at home or abroad. He also looks at the impact the populist Jamaican poet, Louise Bennett had on the country's most popular art form, pantomime and how the film 'The Harder The Come', brought Jamaican patois and music to mainstream audiences. He speaks to the organiser of the literary festival Calabash who feels that present Caribbean authors are not being pigeon holed by history and writing about slavery and colonialism but writing about everything and anything. Colin also finds out why local bookshops are maybe to blame for the lack of Caribbean literature in the region themselves. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
