Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Clarke Peters
Clarke Peters ‘presents beautifully’. Photograph: Steve Meddle/Rex/Shutterstock
Clarke Peters ‘presents beautifully’. Photograph: Steve Meddle/Rex/Shutterstock

The week in radio: Black Music in Europe; A History of the World in 100 Objects; Prison Bag – review

This article is more than 3 years old

Clarke Peters tells more stories of how Europe became a musical melting pot – and another chance to hear a Radio 4 classic…

Black Music in Europe: A Hidden History (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

A History of the World In 100 Objects (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

Prison Bag (Resonance FM)

Several Radio 4 fans, including Kathy Burke, have rightly been raving about Clarke Peters’s series Black Music in Europe: A Hidden History. Last week, in the third and last episode of the third series, we got up to the 1970s.

The three series have been riveting, so check out the earlier shows. Peters presents beautifully, and I forgive him for being the standard ”reads out what’s in front of you” actor host, because he has a long connection with UK music (through Five Guys Named Moe), because he was Lester Freamon in The Wire and because, well, he does his job so well.

But, as ever, the true credit should go to the producer; this time, Tom Woolfenden from Loftus Media. It was Woolfenden who found the relevant archives, whether that be Neneh Cherry talking in 2011 about her father, the jazz musician Don Cherry; Martin Simpson, in 2005, explaining the Moroccan way of tuning a guitar; John Craven doing a Newsround round-up of the 1975 decolonisation of Suriname. And it was Woolfenden who did the interviews: with Johny Pitts, the British writer of Afropean; Surinamese flute player Ronald Snijders in the Netherlands; Patrick Bebey, son of Cameroonian guitarist and composer Francis Bebey; Janet Kay, of Silly Games fame… So many excellent interviews: informative and detailed, well edited, revelatory. They underpin these shows.

The story, this series, is of post-colonialism, and how the people of former British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Belgian colonies used their newly given freedom (after the second world war, many colonial countries waived restrictions on visitors from colonies) to come to Europe. Many stayed. And over and over again, those that did stay explain how it’s this consequent mix of cultures that results in their brilliant music. They make us understand that it’s not just the bumping up of different musical techniques, but how the new arrivals’ optimism and hope were muddied and muddled with the racism that they encountered, and how they eventually reclaimed their musical heritage to show it off to Europe. It’s this musical melange that creates the gorgeous soundtrack that we hear throughout the shows. And, in the background, the political culture is creaking. General Franco and Eric Clapton make passing appearances, as baddies.

A lot of work has gone into this series and it shows. When a flamenco dancer walks into a Spanish studio, we hear her footsteps; her voice is beautifully recorded. The levels of music and speech are impeccable, the sound moving from ear to ear in your headphones, but remaining clear at all times. It’s all lovely stuff. There’s a list of the tracks played on the show’s website: the BBC should make it into a playlist and put it up on Sounds.

Neil MacGregor. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

For a different angle on colonialism, Neil MacGregor’s classic series The History of the World In 100 Objects is being repeated, reassuringly, on Radio 4. We’re just in the early stages – last week we had objects 6 through to 10 – so a nice long way to go. Colonialism is relevant throughout the series, of course, with MacGregor’s none-more-educated, mellifluous voice telling the stories of far-flung objects that somehow, through Britain’s immensely mixed history, have ended up in London.

An interesting new documentary series on Resonance FM: Prison Bag. Josie Bevan, who writes a blog with the same name, is our host: she’s telling the story of what it’s like to be a prison wife. Middle-class and a bit naive, Bevan confesses that, after her husband Rob was sentenced to nine years (for tax fraud), she expected a phone call from someone – social services? The police? The prison system? – asking her if she was OK. There was no phone call. There is not much help for anyone wanting to support their partner in prison. “I spend my life trying to get into prison,” she says, early on in the programme.

Bevan talks to Lisa, a university lecturer who has experience of addiction and prison. They are different, but connected. “I talk about this stuff in front of a lot of people,” says Lisa, “but I feel… overwhelmed and tearful. I think it’s because you understand.”

Understanding people who come from a different place, being kind when they’re in a new alien environment. It’s how great art comes about; more importantly, it’s how we all survive.

Three success stories for radio during lockdown

5 Live’s Anna Foster and Tony Livesey. Photograph: BBC

5 Live Drive
Drive presenters Anna Foster and Tony Livesey have the unlovable job of broadcasting the daily 5pm government shamblathon slap in the middle of their regular three-hour show. They manage this by bringing on experts and politicians, then getting on with the more important job of making lockdown bearable. They’ve tackled at-home dentistry, small business loan applications, online haircuts. They have a daily homework quiz, Learner Drivers, and, on Thursdays, a whole hour of listener-generated positivity, The Extra Mile. A great mix of spiky current affairs and silly home life, just what’s needed at the moment.

Fun Kids
Fun Kids, the UK’s best audio offering made especially for children, has seen an 80% increase in its streaming hours since the lockdown started. Fun Kids has a live radio station and loads of podcasts, and its specially made pandemic show, Stuck @ Home, is the first ever non-BBC podcast that the Beeb has listed on BBC Sounds. The website has a great selection of shows for younger children: from drama to the human body to the inevitable space exploration. And everything springs from a dedication to making audio programmes that children actually like.

LBC
Radio has, broadly, benefited from people not going to work, as we’re listening for longer to the shows we like; and commercial radio is no different (advertising is another matter). All commercial broadcasters are reporting big jumps in reach and hours of listening, mostly around the 10% to 15% mark. But LBC’s daily reach has gone up 43%, and its listening hours 17%. As with Brexit, the news-based station has gone big on coronavirus, with presenters taking politicians to task. And listeners are responding, whether by tuning in for longer, or by phoning in and asking silly, obvious, unexpected or intelligent questions.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed