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Behind the scenes with Noah Miller, Director of the outLoud Queer Youth Radio Project
Interview conducted by Katia Dunn
> How did outLoud Radio come to exist?
A couple years ago, on a whim, I stopped by my old junior high school, and
discovered that some students and teachers had formed a Gay-Straight Alliance
(a club organized to fight homophobia). My mouth dropped to the floor when I
saw a classroom of 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds writing protest letters and
organizing presentations about respect and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender people. At that time, it was something like the only middle
school GSA west of the Mississippi. The next time I came, I brought my
microphone, and started documenting the club's activities. I did this for
months and months, and then, one day, I decided to let some of the kids
interview one another. It was the most incredible thing—they got things on tape
that I never had. They were so much more real. I remembered back to when I was
their age, lying in bed and listening to Ghetto Life 101 come out of my
radio—my fascination with radio started in earnest then, with two kids
documenting their own lives. Here, in the middle school classroom, with
seventh-graders exploring the cutting edge of social justice and talking about
its relevance to their own lives, I saw the possibility for something very
important, or at least very interesting. I officially started outLoud soon
after that.
>Talk about what happens at outLoud; what is the creative process that
you and the kids go through together?
We always start with a discussion of each youth producer's life and interests,
and the rest of the process stems from that. Some youth producers are really
issue-driven: they want to immerse themselves in ideas, find out what people
think, develop their own understanding. One of our current participants, Alla,
is a great example. When she arrived at outLoud she told me, "I really want to
talk with people who have different beliefs from me." She's voraciously curious
about everything from the interaction between religion and sexuality to the
developing campaign for gender-neutral bathrooms. For her, making radio is a
way to learn about all these things that fascinate her. So we've spent a lot of
time working on interviewing skills, learning about how to get at different
sides of an issue, and how to synthesize those ideas into a radio piece. Other
Youth Producers, like Robbie, who scored and cut the section of Dia's diary
that's up on your site, are more into radio as sound art. Robbie told me when
he was just starting out that he wanted to explore the interplay between words
and music. So the process with him was very different—he never did a single
interview. Instead we worked with tape like Dia's diary, where he could
essentially be a composer. With him, the creative process was a cycle of
experimentation and critique.
> Do you struggle, as the producer, to find a balance between improving
their work and letting the kids have their own voice?
Always! Even though I'm a pretty young producer myself, I have a very
particular audio language in my head, an idea of the way things should sound,
and it's hard not to push that on the young people. I forget that not every one
is as geeky about radio as I am; not every one has been listening to
documentary radio constantly since 1990—especially kids who were only born that
year! And quite often, if I get out of the way, what they have to say is a
hundred times deeper than what I would have said. I don't presume to know
what's going on in the youth world—I'm constantly surprised and amazed by the
things I learn doing this work. That's why it's best to let the young people
speak for themselves: they're the only ones who really can do it.
> How did the creative process work with Dia's Diary: My Mother?
The first part of the creative process was developing a friendship with Dia; we
had to build a connection over what seemed (to me) like a huge cultural divide.
As a middle-class white boy, I had never even set foot in the part of town
where Dia was staying. At the same time, she had to step out of her own shoes,
and think about how to portray her life to people like me, who were different
in so many ways. Even though this was a diary, she also had to think about it
in terms of creative self-expression. Luckily, she's a born storyteller. As her
diary and our friendship evolved, I encouraged her to explore some things more
deeply—like her family—and to try different modes of reflection. She surprised
and delighted me with what she put on tape. Once we had some audio, the second
part of the creative process began. I worked with Robbie, one of the Youth
Producers I mentioned earlier, to find the sections of tape that really got to
the core of Dia's story. The piece about her mother is from one of those
sections. Robbie essentially had free reign over the composition of the piece.
He edited the story down a bit, then began to listen to it, guitar in hands,
until he developed a rough score. He recorded the guitar tracks at the
beginning and end of the piece in real time, while he was listening to Dia's
voice. I think it made the music wonderfully responsive the words. He decided
to use prerecorded music to orchestrate the middle section. I stepped in again
to help him refine the structure—mostly, I showed him how to let the piece
breathe a little. But essentially what you hear is the result of Robbie's
musical ear combined with Dia's honest, artful storytelling.
> It seems like one key part of this process is the act of playing this
work for the kids' parents, teachers, and friends.
It's true, that is important. But I find that, in a way, our most important
audience is the young people themselves. When they hear their finished work
actually coming out of radio or streaming off the web, they suddenly see
themselves in a very different way. All of a sudden, they're part of the public
conversation; they're at the table; their words are making an impact. When they
start thinking of themselves in that new way, the work takes on a new
importance for them. It's immensely empowering.
> What is the future for outLoud? Are you hoping to expand into a
regularly scheduled program?
I would love to take the leap to a regular program schedule, and that's a huge
desire for the participants as well. In fact, the ultimate dream for most of
the Youth Producers is for us to have our own youth station in the Bay Area.
That would be a much easier way to reach an audience of our peers than through
scattered stories on public radio. Of course, it takes a lot to produce a
regular show, much less start a radio station! If anyone is interested in
helping us out financially, I'd love to hear from you. Speaking more broadly, I
want to bring outLoud to more and different ears. It's important that soccer
moms in Idaho hear us, that people in economically depressed urban
neighborhoods hear us, that people who might never otherwise think about this
stuff hear us. People who think they've never met a queer youth: those are the
ears we want to reach. In my vision, our Youth Producers will come away with
the strength and confidence to continue expressing themselves all through their
lives. Because the power of a story can be profound. When people come in
contact with the humanity of our voices, it's hard to think of us as strangers
to be excluded or belittled or cured; we begin to be recognized as family.
That's the belief that drives outLoud.
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