From The Vault

FTV 370 Medgar Evers Memorial

admin — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:09:49 +0000

Medgar Evers, a prominent civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, was gunned down in his driveway 50 years ago on June 12, 1963. Four days later a memorial service was held in Jackson, Mississippi and veteran Pacifica journalist Dale Minor was there with a portable audio recorder, gathering field recordings he would soon craft into a captivating documentary titled “Where Do We Go from Here?” This week on From the Vault, we present this timeless Pacifica documentary that seats the listener front and center at the funeral of Medgar Evers, the following mourning procession, and the demonstrations and near-riot that ensued in its aftermath.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio Listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

FTV 369 Albert Camus: A Memorial Tribute 1961

admin — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:30:56 +0000

In this episode of From the Vault we present a 1961 memorial tribute of Nobel Prize for Literature author Albert Camus, who died in 1960. We hear readings of Camus’ classics like The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Caligula from celebrity fans such as Kenneth Rexroth, Jean Renoir and others; we listen to excerpts from interviews with Albert Camus translated into English – a firsthand glimpse of a creative force who was often mischaracterized as part of Sartre’s Existential Movement; and we sit in on conversations with a Camus scholar, author, and translator. Pacifica producer Richard Vernier introduces and narrates the original 1961 program.

FTV 368 Building Bridges with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

admin — Fri, 31 May 2013 22:44:15 +0000

This week on From the Vault we present fascinating in-depth interview with two iconic artists and social visionaries who led fellow artists in the fight against social injustice, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Davis and Dee sat down with longtime Pacifica hosts Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash in 1998 to reflect on their lifetime of work, as both artist and activists, with consideration to the changing culture of social activism, and the “abolition of poverty” as one of the greatest challenges of their lifetimes.

Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash continue to host their nationally syndicated program Building Bridges every Monday evening from WBAI 99.5 FM studios in New York City.

FTV 367 Oyelo! Out Loud! The Nuyorican Poets Café

admin — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:12:33 +0000

On this edition of From The Vault we feature a special edition of Grace Cavalieri’s Poet and the Poem series called Oyelo! Out Loud! The Nuyorican Poets Café, which showcases the work of Puerto Rican poets. The Puerto Rican poetry scene in New York City exploded with the 1973 founding of the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village apartment of writer poet and Rutgers Professor Miguel Algarin; by 1975 the group outgrew Miguel’s apartment and began renting an Irish pub a few blocks away on East 6th Street, quickly earning a reputation as one of the country’s most respected non-profit arts organizations. In 1996, some of the Café artists travelled to WPFW’s Washington, DC studios to perform on Cavalieri’s program, including Nuyorican Poets Café Founder Algarin, Nuyorican Poetry Slam founder Bob Holman, Ed Morales, Tracie Morris, Dael Orlandersmith, Kenneth Carroll, Magdalena Saavedra, Willie Perdomo, and Edwin Torres.

FTV 366 One Billion Seconds Later: A Social History of LSD

admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:17:18 +0000

In honor of the work of pioneering Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who discovered the hallucinogenic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide in 1943, From the Vault presents the 1974 documentary One Billion Seconds Later: A Social History of LSD, winner of the prestigious Ohio State Award for Radio Excellence. Produced in 1974 by legendary radio producer Adi Gevins, this program explores acid’s social history, from its accidental discovery at Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland, through the halls of academia, to Golden Gate Park and beyond. Included are the voices of Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass, Ken Kesey, and Dr. John Lilly, among others, who describe the LSD experience and speculate on acid’s importance an agent of therapy, religious sacrament, and revolution.

FTV 365 Sabina Virgo – Earth Day 2013

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:47:38 +0000

During the course of the week-long 2013 Earth Day celebration, acclaimed speaker, writer and political analyst Sabina Virgo turned her mediating, organizing and oratory skills in the direction of the environment. In this captivating speech, given at the invitation of the Eagle Environmental Club on the campus of Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, California, Sabina traces the history of corporate interests that have put the environment on a fatal course and the impact of our push back.

FTV 364 Bob Kaufman, Poet: The Life and Times of an African-American Man, Part 2 of 2

admin — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:21:22 +0000

“Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.”
Bob Kaufman, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems

This week on From the Vault we continue with an amazing radio documentary about one of the most elusive poets of the twentieth century and the originator of the name ‘beatnik,’ Bob Kaufman. Written and produced in 1992 by David Henderson, with associate production and engineering by Vic Bedoin, Bob Kaufman, Poet: The Life and Times of an African-American Man features interviews with family members, scholars, and artist such as Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Roscoe Lee Brown. Despite his battles with alcohol, drugs, psychotherapy, and the justice system, Kaufman’s ragged life teems with poetic brilliance, as this documentary demonstrates. Highlights include a rare 1958 recording of Kaufman reading his epic poem Second April and a discussion of jazz with recordist Henry Jacobs. Part two of two.

FTV 363 Bob Kaufman, Poet: The Life and Times of an African-American Man, Part 1 of 2

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:05:46 +0000

“Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.”
Bob Kaufman, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems

This week on From the Vault we treat you an amazing radio documentary about one of the most elusive poets of the twentieth century and the originator of the name ‘beatnik,’ Bob Kaufman. Written and produced in 1992 by David Henderson, with associate production and engineering by Vic Bedoin, Bob Kaufman, Poet: The Life and Times of an African-American Man features interviews with family members, scholars, and artist such as Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Roscoe Lee Brown. Despite his battles with alcohol, drugs, psychotherapy, and the justice system, Kaufman’s ragged life teems with poetic brilliance, as this documentary demonstrates. Highlights include a rare 1958 recording of Kaufman reading his epic poem Second April and a discussion of jazz with recordist Henry Jacobs. Part one of two.

FTV 362 Andy Warhol

admin — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:25:24 +0000

This week on From the Vault, Cal Green of WBAI’s The Critical People speaks with artist Andy Warhol about his film Chelsea Girls in a rather unconventional interview recorded on June 3, 1967. Joined in studio by Henry Geldzahler, associate curator of American painting and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paul Morrissey, film critic and director, and International Velvet and Ingrid Superstar (two of Warhol’s “Factory Girls”), Green and Warhol focus on how Chelsea Girls differs from Warhol’s previous cinematographic efforts. Not surprising, Warhol’s musings are filled with deflections, half truths, and feigned ignorance; yet through this all we still absorb Warhol’s personal examination of his filmmaking approach, in a most insightful and unique example of Pacifica Radio at its finest.

FTV 361 Poet May Sarton, 1983

admin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:31 +0000

This week on From the Vault we celebrate National Poetry Month with the American poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton recorded at the College of Marin in Cali in1983 by the KPFA Women’s Department.

Born in Belgium in 1912 but raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, May Sarton suffered through early attempts at acting and running her own theater, until in 1935 she devoted her life to writing. Producing over fifty volumes of poetry, novels, journals, essays, and children’s books before she died in 1995, Sarton was an open lesbian but rejected the narrow label of ‘lesbian writer.’ Seventy-one years old at the time of this recording, Sarton draws from her entire canon of poetry to explore the theme of the evening: the hazards and joys of being a poet.

Poems featured are Sun Boat, The Beautiful Pauses, At Muzot, Where Dream Begins, Binding the Dragon, The Godhead as a Lynx, Death and the Turtle, The Muse as Medusa, At Lindos, The Frog That Naked Creature, Of Molluscs, The Lady and the Unicorn, Dr Abshchied, and On a Winter Night.