Sound and Story by Mendi and Keith Obadike

Mendi and Keith Obadike tell stories with sound. The two have collaborated on numerous multi-media projects, including the internet opera The Sour Thunder, a surround sound piece and online game called The Pink of Stealth, and the sound installation Big House/Disclosure. Their work investigates ideas of race, history, identity, and narrative, and they make audio work that lives between and among the genres of transmission arts, documentary, music, sound installation, and internet art. “We like working with sound because it is a medium of music and a medium of storytelling,” says Mendi Obadike. “Or perhaps we like telling music and stories because they can happen in sound.”

The Obadikes will be presenting the session "She Launched Channel Zero" at the 2007 Third Coast Festival conference in November.

Below are two examples of the Obadikes' work and an excerpt from a live performance:

Hearing America: A Century of Music on the Radio
By Nate DiMeo

One hundred years ago, shipboard technicians listening for Morse code messages on their newly installed wireless telegraphs heard something incredible: music. Men on ships from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico were the audience of the first successful radio transmission of music and voice. Since that first experimental broadcast, music has been the dominant sound on radio. In Hearing America: A Century of Music on the Radio, producer Nate DiMeo explores the history of music on the radio and how it became not only the economic engine of a major American industry, but an engine for cultural and political change in American life.

Hearing America: A Century of Music on the Radio was produced by Nate DiMeo for American RadioWorks, the national documentary unit of American Public Media.

Deep Wireless 4
a Radio Art Compilation
produced by New Adventures in Sound Art

New Adventures in Sound Art is a non-profit organization that champions all manners of sound art - from performance to experimental recordings to installation work. Each year NAISA produces a compilation cd full of audio pieces relating to a specific theme, by sound artists from around the world. Past themes have included: "What is Your Culture"," Belonging" and "Power",
and there's currently a call for submissions relating to the theme "A Sonic Portrait."

The work below was inspired by the theme "Trans-X" (Trans = from, across, beyond, through, X = unknown quantity), and were featured on the most recent Deep Wireless compilation. Click here (and scroll down) to read more about it and listen to other selections from the set.

Epic, Painful, Long, Scary
By Julie Kimberly

Epic, Painful, Long,Scary is the story of 19 year-old African Australian twins Vuli and Bheki. The twins hardly remember their mother and father who both died from AIDS-related illnesses when the boys were just toddlers. They were adopted by their parents’ friend Susanne who was with the family when the children were tested for the virus. As fate would have it, one of boys was found to be HIV Positive, the other perfectly healthy. In this documentary Vuli and Bheki share their fears, hopes and secrets about growing up together with this reality between them.

Epic, Painful, Long and Scary was produced for the series Street Stories on the Australian Broadcasting Corporations' Radio National. Claudia Taranto is executive producer of the series.

Leaps and Dunes
By Sabine Hviid, Rikke Houd and Lisbeth Koerner
Edited by Erling Kristensen

Summer sleepover camp means more than mosquito bites, sunburn, twig art and bonfire gatherings. Camp offers many kids their first taste of independence - which can be equal parts blissful and terrifying. At one seaside camp in Denmark the days pass predictably: campers leap tirelessly from sand dunes and swim too far out into the ocean while the girls sneak cigarettes and the boys sneak from cabin to cabin playing tricks on each other (and the girls.) Throughout the session, 10-year old Johannes observes all of these antics, commenting poetically on his fellow campers as they prepare to leap even further - into the adult world.

This feature is presented in celebration of the Danish Radio documentary department, in light of DR's recent decision to close it down entirely by the end of 2007. Read more about the situation here.

Radio Across Time Zones: A TCF Special Broadcast
curated by the Third Coast Festival
produced by Roman Mars and Delaney Hall

With Gwen Macsai as tour guide, Radio Across Time Zones helps listeners discover the unique story-telling styles each country has to offer:  In Canada, a young woman reflects on her father’s near-death experience, while relishing his stubborn spirit of adventure. In Ireland a group of healthy-sized women gather around an elaborate feast, microphones on, to dine and share stories about body-image and weight, love and prejudice. In Australia, a producer explores the last-ditch hope – tongue in cheek - that karaoke might actually save her marriage.

Radio Acrosss Times Zones presents these stories and more against a back-drop of sound-rich radio snippets from distant countries, giving listeners a rare sampling of radio as it’s heard around the world.

*We cannot offer Hour 2 of the special online. To hear that, you'll have to contact your local PRI affiliate and ask them to broadcast Radio Across Time Zones.

Ocean Hour
by Keith Talbot with Larry Massett

Two friends sit on a dock, meandering through a variety of ocean stories (some true and some not) : oceanographer Dr. Fish collects and catalogues the sounds of sea life for a top secret government project, a man constructs an amusement park in honor of the sea, a scuba diver becomes immersed in his hobby, and more...

Ocean Hour was produced for National Public Radio in 1979.

* Plus, bonus tracks! Listen to two of Keith Talbot's sound portraits, from a series he produced in 1972, also down below.

The Tourist
by Martin Williams

The Tourist is lost... he can't sleep, or tune out the music that comes from everywhere. Secretly, he's looking forward to the journey home. Combining lush field recordings and a stark written narrative, The Tourist obliquely approaches the story of a fictional traveler, a melancholy innocent abroad.

Text and recordings by Martin Williams, including extracts from James Clifford's Routes, John Berger's Here is Where We Meet and William Basinksi's The Garden of Brokenness. Featuring the voices of Ana Bonaldo, Haimo Li and Maike Zimmermann.

Original Kasper's:
The Hot Dog Stand that Saved a Neighborhood
by Peter Thomson

Hot dogs are a classic American food. But when is a hot dog more than just a hot dog? When it's a neighborhood mainstay, through years of change.

As Oakland's Temescal district suffered through decades of decay and halting recovery, Kasper's Hot Dogs stayed rooted on Telegraph Avenue as an anchor for its community and a gravitational force for its customers. Since the stand opened in 1929, three generations of an Armenian immigrant family have served up friendship, compassion and a commitment to their community along with some of the tastiest and most artful hot dogs served anywhere.

The Obscure News:
Anatomy of a Punch, Part 2
by Lloyd B. King

Now in its third season, The Obscure News podcast claims to feature "all the news the networks omitted." Dedicated to redeeming the ordinary, TON is a chorus of anonymous voices telling those weird little anecdotes that are born every day.

The whole thing is tied together by a steadfast host, driving rhythm and strategic bits of found sound.  In Anatomy of a Punch, Part 2 a young man discovers that a well-placed punch might just be his ticket to Harvard, and the hot pursuit of a stolen bike takes a surprising turn.  

Hairwaves: A Cautionary Tale
by Zoe Irvine and Mark Vernon

Bouffants, buzz cuts, mohawks, and dreadlocks: no matter the style, hair has played an important social and cultural role throughout human history. In Hairwaves: A Cautionary Tale, sound artists Zoe Irvine and Mark Vernon explore the sounds and stories of the barber shop -- snipping, layering, and mixing field recordings and interviews with beauticians, wig makers, pet groomers, and a psychic hairstylist.

	Combing and Hackling A wig maker repairs a toupee. (1:34)
	Voice in the Mirror A psychic barber encounters ghosts while cutting hair. (4:23)

Three From Curie Youth Radio
under the direction of Sarah Levine

A search through the trash bin reveals carelessly tossed love notes, while down the corridor a school band labors over a new musical piece, and at home a young woman quietly cuts herself in hopes of finding some inner peace. Through these radio stories, students at Curie Metropolitan High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side transport us into their lives, and deomstrate how young, fresh voices are re-thinking radio for a new generation.

	Back to School in a Garbage Can A collage of love notes, tardy slips and other high school detritus collected from high school garbage cans. Produced by Geraldo Hernandez and Giancarlo Hernandez (1:59)
	Teenaged Guitarists Tackle "El Gato Montes" Carlos and his quartet struggle with "El Gato Montes" in after school rehearsals. Produced by Carlos Maeda (2:41)
	I'll Quit Cutting When You Quit Smoking Excerpts from the diary of a girl who insists that self-mutilation is saving her life. Produced by April Winbun (3;34)

Tur de Lima
by Lucho Hernandez and Jesse Hardman

Musician Lucho Hernandez is visually impaired, but is able to "see" his native city, Lima, Peru, simply by listening carefully. Join Lucho for a walking tour through Lima, while he muses about the modernization of the city and points out some of the aural details that reveal Lima's true personality - from the activity of a typical marketplace to the patterns and rhythms of the traffic racing by.

Childhood Trains
by Sandy Thacker and Steve Wadhams of CBC

What is it about train travel that inspires music and memory? And why do people tend to confess their innermost thoughts once they get on board? These mysteries are deftly explored in Childhood Trains through sound and a cast of "riders" including an 85 year old ex-railway man, a 10 year old train fanatic and a writer searching for reconciliation with the father she never knew.

Credits: Sally Crooks, Bill Barr, Kinsey Posen, David Siemens and the late Lou Greenburg. John Buchanan played the part of Tom Anderson.  Music was from the CD "Machine Works" by Ian Tamblyn.  Train sounds came from Edmund Eagan's cd "The Sonic Ambiences of Eastern Ontario Trains".

Tin Man
by Pferdzwackur (aka Matt Sahr)

Part Wizard of Oz, part Dante's Inferno, part absurdist radio theater and part anti-corporate musical, this twenty-episode podcast follows the Tin Man (but not necessarily the one you're thinking of) on a bizarre and venturesome journey through landscapes familiar and unknown. Along the way, Tin Man meets a cast of memorable characters while tracking down a few missing body parts and finding his way to Heaven. And then to Hell. And then to Disneyland...