Sound engineering and Audio Mixing Workshops for Youth
On this week’s Sonosphere show on WYXR 91.7 FM, Optic Sink joined me for a live DJ set! You’ll hear lots of dance tunes and a couple tracks from Optic Sink’s latest album, Glass Box out now. Check it out! The band is on tour in Oct. don’t miss them in your town!
And we’ll hear a few tracks he shares, why he chose them and some advice he has for anyone looking to come up in the music industry. Join us!
Joe Rainey is a Pow Wow singer. He is not used to singing solo, because pow wow is inherently communal, but this debut is every bit as powerful. The album is Niineta, released on Justin Vernon and the Dessner brothers’ 37d03d label, showcases his command of the style – faithful to tradition – accompanied by cinematic, bass-heavy production from Andrew Broder.
Join Sonosphere as we dive into the sounds of contemporary pow wow fused with vast experimental and electronic oceans of sound. Joe Rainey lent his voice and experience to this episode and I think him for sharing his story through his learning of, preservation of and lifting up of pow wow and indigenous music. Friday, May 26, 2023, Joe will perform at Crosstown Arts in the Green Room.
“The record is an unusual proposition: A rare fusion of pow wow—an Indigenous culture of music and dance—and experimental electronic production that pairs Rainey’s singing with Broder’s synths and wildly abstract beats. Holding it all together are sampled live recordings of pow wow singing and drumming stretching back decades, many of them made by Rainey himself.” – Pitchfork
Check out his archive on Soundcloud and YouTube.
On this episode of Sonosphere we highlight the life and compositions of composer Margaret Bonds. So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music have been nearly lost to history or are underappreciated in their time. Bonds is one of those characters.
We learned more about her when we covered one of her mentors, American composer Florence B. Price earlier in 2021 – be sure to check out that episode. Bonds like Price is lesser known in the field of classical music – being both female and African-American – often not covered among classical European-based composers dominating the history of classical music.
Sonosphere has covered women in classical and electronic music, like Pauline Oliveros, and we hope to continue covering lesser known great composers of our time.
Today we are covering the life and composition of pianist and composer Margaret Bonds. Bonds was born in Chicago in 1913 to musical parents. Margaret Bonds was a music prodigy, and by age 13 she had begun to compose. At age 16 she enrolled at Northwestern University, where she won awards in piano and composition. Bonds experienced success as a performer and composer in the world of classical music, but she went beyond the limitations of the genre.
She wrote music for Cab Calloway, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, and Woody Herman as well as radio and television specials. Later in life Bonds moved to Los Angeles where she taught at the Los Angeles Inner City Institute and at the Inner City Cultural Center and worked for the movie studios.
We interviewed Anna Celenza, author and professor of music at Georgetown University. She wrote a whole host of books featuring musicians like Duke Ellington, Vivaldi, Gershwin and Bach. Celenza also put together an archive on Margaret Bonds, the digital version is available online as part of Georgetown University Library.
We speak with her about the archive and more about Bonds.
While in Chicago, she regularly played piano at the Palmer House Hotel and tried her hand at songwriting. Activities such as these increased when she moved to New York in 1939. Many of her songs, like “Peachtree Street,” tapped into trends in popular culture. Others confronted social issues connected with civil rights. The lyrics to “Three Wise Monkeys” references the racist viewpoints of three southern politicians: Theodore Bilbo, Eugene Talmadge and John E. Rankin.
Bonds’ lifelong friendship with poet Langston Hughes yielded numerous settings of his poetry, including some of Hughes’ most iconic poems like I, Too and The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Bonds’ daughter, Djane Richardson, referred to Hughes as “Uncle Langston.”
Bonds died four years before the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 and she didn’t leave a will. Her only heir, daughter Djane Richardson, died in 2011 without any heirs and also without leaving a will. The copyright status of Bonds’ work is unclear – no one knows, at this point, who controls the copyrights, which remain in effect for many more decades. As a result, performances and recordings of her music are complicated. One of Bonds’ largest and perhaps most important works–Montgomery Variations, written in 1965 during the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March and dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.–has never been performed. And it may not enter the public domain until 2042 at the earliest.
We are lucky however that much of her work is available. Her spiritual Troubled Water, has been recorded many times. Her Christmas cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King, which features the poetry of Langston Hughes, was performed recently at Georgetown University where Bonds’ archives are kept.
Welcome to Sonosphere the podcast that explores the sounds all around us in art and music movements through history. Sonosphere is now on WYXR 91.7 FM in Memphis, TN every Monday from 4-5pm. Today’s episode is a harrowing tale of a natural disaster that ravaged much of middle America, especially the South.
The Great Flood of 1927 was one of the most catastrophic floods in our nation’s history. In the summer of 1926 heavy rains started to fall along the Mississippi River, these heavy rains kept up and in March of 1927 levees started to break which led to flooding from Illinois to Mississippi displacing nearly 650,000 people and destroying 16 million acres of land.
In this episode we will discuss the formation of the Mississippi River, the events that led to the flood, the red cross’ response and how they used the media to shape public opinion, as well as Blues songs that helped inform the public about the human turmoil that was a direct result of the flood. Listen in as we hear from Christopher Morris, Scotti Parish and David Evans about this extraordinary event.
Blues musicians presented the most accurate details about the Great Flood of 1927. There was greater Public awareness of the atrocities happening along the Mississippi. Blues songs of the time captured the events and hardships that black people endured during the flood. Though many blues songs were made about the flood we decided to showcase Backwater Blues by Bessie Smith. We spoke with David Evans about the origins of the song, how it became an anthem of the flood, and how the song inspired more musicians to sing about the flood.
Today we’ve heard songs by BBQ Bob, Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, and many of the blues songs feature artists like pianist James P Johnson who got their start with Black Swan records in early 20s. Sonosphere covered the short tenure of America’s first black-owned record label, Black Swan and the opera singer who shares the labels name – check it out on sonospherepodcast.com to hear the episode on the opera Singer, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield and stay tuned for the Black Swan record label episode’s release in June.
Today we presented the story of possibly the worst natural disaster in our country’s history. The great flood of 1927 was of epic proportion. The flood displaced 650,000 residents and destroyed 16 million acres of land. The toll wrought along the Mississippi River from Cairo to the Gulf of Mexico forced people to seek refuge in Red Cross concentration camps. These camps were run in a manner that kept up the status-quo. Black men were forced to work on the levees in order to receive provisions. The levees were patrolled by armed national guardsmen. If anyone tried to escape they were severely beaten or killed. The government and Red Cross used technologies such as radio broadcast to disseminate information about the flood. Northerners got on board with the narrative that they were helping the desperate south. The South rejected this notion as they saw very little relief if any at all.
Blues songs of the day projected the struggles and tragedies in the delta. We highlighted Bessie Smith and her song Backwater Blues today. Although it was not written about the flood of 1927 it was released just as the Levees were breaking along the Mississippi. The song gained national notoriety in America. The song became an anthem of the Flood and led the way to many more songs written about the Great Flood of 1927 as well as songs pertaining to other natural disasters. When you listen to any of the songs about the flood you are transported there you gain a perspective about those that were affected by the great flood. These songs are time capsules of a time of havoc and disillusion in Black southern America.
Welcome to the Sonosphere podcast. This episode we feature Steven R. Smith.
Steven is behind projects like Hala Strana, Ulaan Khol, Ulaan Passerine, Ulaan Markhor and releases solo recordings under his label, Worstward Recordings. Active since the mid-90s, Smith releases a solo album this year called Spring and out in September is his project’s Ulaan Passerine’s Sun Spear. We will hear tunes from both plus a playlist curated by Steven himself. Join us!
Today we feature a live performance by Model Zero from the WYXR studio in Memphis, TN. Sonosphere interviewed the band after their latest single release, “Little Crystal.” The band performed this song and the b-side “Leather Trap” on our show along with a few other songs from their self-title LP from 2019. We also talked with the guys about the difference between the last album and this new single. Join us!
Welcome to Sonosphere the podcast that explores the sounds all around us, in art and music movements through history.
Today we discuss the first black owned recording company Black Swan Records which sold popular music to black audiences. Its existence was brief, it was only active for two years from 1923 to 1925. During this time however, the label released over 180 records – more than any other black owned record company until the 1950s. Today we’ll talk about the historical context in which the founder, Harry Pace, began and operated the label with mentor W.E.B. DuBois and how his partnership with Memphis blues man W.C. Handy kicked off Pace’s interest in the music industry.
We begin our story of Black Swan Records by setting the context of the times. Performers of recorded songs were becoming pop icons and American celebrities. By the end of WWI recorded music began to take precedence over live performances as proof of musicianship. There is not a lot of information on Black Swan Records, we rely mostly on a website called Black Past, and two dissertations by graduate students Stuart Lucas Tully from LSU, and Jacqueline Brellenthin from Univ of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as David Suisman’s Co- workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music.
According to David Suisman writing about the Political Economy of African American music, “Black Swan’s burden was to chart a course between elite culture and popular culture, between the color blindness of music and the racism of the music business, between ideologically based enterprise and the impinging realities of capitalist markets.”
Founder, Harry Pace was viewed as a key figure along with W.E.B. DuBois in personifying black entrepreneurialism in the 20th century and beyond.
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Today on Sonosphere Amy talks with Christian Fennesz, electronic music composer and musician. Amy caught up with Fennesz at the annual Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. As the first in-person fest in two years, Big Ears was bigger than ever. Acts from all over the nation and the world descended upon the smokey mountain city and brought amazing sounds, visuals, and excellence in musical composition. Always a Sonosphere favorite!
Join Chris and Amy live from WYXR studio in Memphis for some tunes by Fennesz and collaborators like Sparklehorse, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ulver, and more! Christian Fennesz left for his U.S. tour after Big Ears. For more information on Fennesz please visit his website.
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