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Behind the Scenes with Marco Werman, producer of Ali Farka Toure: Country Gentleman
Interview conducted by Julie Shapiro
> How did you come to produce so many stories about music/musicians? Did
you come to radio with a background in music, or did your interest in music
stem from working in radio?
I've always loved music. When I started working in radio, I used to sub for
music hosts during the afternoon and evenings. So even though I had worked for
years as a reporter and producer of news and features, I came to The World with
a love for music.
In 1995, when I helped brainstorm how The World was going to evolve through the
course of 59 minutes each day, there was a general notion that the music from
around the globe would be a great way to communicate to American listeners
things like cultural tastes, values, even politics, religion, and history.
Initially we thought that just a nice chunk of music with a bit of copy would
pull that off, that it would create this little oasis at the end of the show
for listeners to digest what they had already heard. The idea was that given
The World's high content density as an international news magazine, an
anticipated breathing moment at the finale would be useful. Unfortunately, the
first year we produced this ending music feature, The Global Hit, it lacked
substantial context.
I was given the task of creating that context. Admittedly, at first I wasn't
thrilled by the task, which seemed almost a step down from the hard nosed image
of a "newsman." But since the music segment is a daily thing it didn't take
long for me to give some shape to the pieces. I realized a few things: on
public radio news programs, music features are mostly critics talking about
their tastes, you never hear the musicians speak, there is rarely any wider
context for the music other than the art itself, and curiously enough, the
pieces rarely offer the listener more than fifteen seconds in the clear. So I
decided to exploit all these shortcomings. Now I love doing this segment.
> Why did you decide to focus more heavily on Toure's farm than on his
major decision to stop performing music live?
In the summer of 2000, when Ali Farka Toure came to America, he said it was
going to be his last tour ever. I thought that was a pretty bold statement, but
when I met him in Boston he told me that he was going to return full time to
his village of Niafunke. He made all these noble declarations about how he
wanted to give back to his community after having had a rich life of touring
around the globe and basically being a Malian rock star. But by the end of the
summer he'd be back in Niafunke tending his fields, even though Niafunke isn't
exactly the kind of place you might expect someone would choose to farm. It's
basically in the Sahara desert. There's some rainfall for two months, and the
rest of the time you really have to know a lot about irrigation and soil
improvement to get any positive results from the land.
At the same time a lot of wise guys in the world of world music were claimed
that Ali Farka Toure was being disingenuous about his retirement. They all
pointed out that he's said this before. It dawned on me that whether Toure was
retiring or not, what this story was really about was Ali Farka Toure's belief
that he had to better himself by bettering his village and his country. Because
of his success as a musician, he has the money to create some projects and he
has the leadership abilities to rally his neighbors in Niafunke. Again, it was
about creating some context for the story. Quite often stories about rural
development can be pretty soporific -- Toure's decision to stop performing
music live was a great "in" to this story.
One interesting thing ... at no time was Toure interested in actually playing
his guitar, and I was reluctant to stage something. After all, he's the
musician, he knows when he wants to play. But this left me with unanswered
questions to this day: did he consciously not play to either show that he's now
more interested in farming or to convince me that he really is done with his
days of touring? Should I have pushed him a bit more to play? If I had, what
would have been the point? To satisfy my need to hear him play at his home
after spending days getting to him? Or to satisfy American listeners for a
taste of this man playing his guitar? At the end of the day, I'm glad I did
what I did, which was not pushing him, just letting it be what it was. But I
still kind of wish I could have had an afternoon serenade.
> When producing a music story, how do you balance the narrative, sound
effects and music beds with the actual music you're profiling?
I'm committed to hearing a good stretch of the music wherever in the piece that
it may fall. These are, after all, programs that at least on the surface are
music stories. So let's hear some music that runs at least 30 seconds in the
clear. Lengths of programs will vary, and this is even necessary in order to
retain an element of surprise, but the music needs to do a lot of the talking.
I like to have the artists talk. So when it works, I weave in cuts of the
musicians talking about what they do. A lot of musicians are uncomfortable
speaking about their music, as the artistic process is not always something
that can be easily explained. However, many artists from around the globe are
quite comfortable talking about where they come from, which, again, is helpful
in creating a larger context for each story.
If I'm on site reporting, I try to bring the listener to the place where the
musical inspiration comes from. Sound effects pull that off, but I'm not prone
to using lots of ambient sound unless there's a compelling reason to do so. In
the Ali Farka Toure piece, there were several compelling reasons. A large part
of the actual visit to Niafunke was just getting there. "There" was way out
there, and I felt like the remoteness of Niafunke had to be telegraphed some
way. Toure's music has a remote, rural (many have called it bluesy) feel, so I
wanted to build on that. Sound effects were the way to do so.
And finally, I try to let the narrative come naturally. Stories have that
naturally temporal element, the beginning, middle and end. Usually I find that
if I just let the story flow out chronologically, and then start answering the
questions that remain, I end up with the tale.
> Why do political issues come up so often in music in your music
features?
I think a lot of art is political. When I ask musicians, especially young ones,
what they think about politically, or if their music has a message, many will
say "We're not political. We leave politics to the politicians." But that's
always worth challenging even if it's true. For instance, Cheb Mami, the
Algerian rai singer, said that to me in an interview. He comes from one of the
most violent countries in the world. He left Algeria because he was unable to
perform his music the way he wanted to. He may believe that he's totally
apolitical, but how he explains it tells our listeners a lot about Algeria
anyway. Personally, I'm interested in what's happening politically around the
world, and am always learning something when I produce one of these features.
That's what keeps me juiced.
> In translating the French voices in this program, you vascillate
between paraphrasing what the speakers say and having an interpretor translate
them. How do you decide when to employ each method? What effect does each have
on the flow/tone of the program?
Whenever I hear a translation overdub on the radio I'm not totally happy. With
subtitles, TV doesn't have the challenge of overdubs. But in radio, you go from
reality to theater any time you use a translation. Also, there's always the
question of how accurate the translation is. I have a pretty fluent
understanding of French, but I know that when I translate, when anyone
translates, there are certain liberties taken with what's being said. I take
into account the tone of the speaker, their emotions, etc., and fold that into
my English translation.
For the Ali Farka Toure story, the story was about him, and he didn't speak any
English. In production, if I translated everything he had said, it would have
been a pretty tedious eleven minutes. But if I paraphrased his words entirely,
that would have been equally tedious. So I mixed it up. I didn't want to jump
straight into the translations, in case a listener would hear that and think,
"Oh, I have to listen to a translator now for the next ten minutes. I'm outta
here." So I saved the longer stretches of translation for the second half of
the piece, and used the first half to get into the story, kicking off
immediately with a nice long cut of Toure's voice in French, saying how he was
really done with performing -- "adieu a la scene." Here the listener got a
sense, even in French, of his determination, and it kind of sets up right away
what a character he is. Once that was established, I could take the
translations in any direction.
> In the world of documentary audio work, "music documentaries" are
quite popular productions. What does it take for a music documentary to really
stand out from the others?
In no particular order, and not necessarily all in the same story, the
exceptional music doc should do the following:
A. Give the musicians a face and a personality. The story should show who they
are when they're done making music. They're just like you and me. They cook,
they have families, they read the paper, and they have concerns about their
surroundings and their world.
B. Show how the musicians' environments affect their music. Charlie Parker once
said, "If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn," and I believe this
is true. So how does that translate with each musician?
C. Explain why their music is relevant. What is the connection of the music to
the world at large?
D. Show how the musicians' artistic process evolves.
E. Let us hear the music!
F. Finally, and somewhat abstractly: a really good music documentary, like the
music and musician it's documenting, should create a sense of rhythm and
momentum with the listener.
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