Radio and the past: preserving centuries-old traditions

Orality and storytelling in the Global South. To look into the role of radio in preserving traditions, I first sit down for an interview with Alison Phipps, Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow, who also holds the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts (RILA). Alison has worked in the Global South on many occasions, and therefore she speaks from experience when she tells me that radio plays a crucial role in the ‘curation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage’. She explains that this medium sits very well with cultures that are still predominantly oral and have not incorporated their knowledge into textual forms. Local music and proverbial wisdom are two good examples. Working in several African countries, including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Ghana, Sudan and Kenya, she has often had the opportunity to listen to the ‘beat’ of different cultures on local radio stations. She adds that, for many communities, radio is also a powerful way to keep storytelling traditions alive, which, in turns, helps to preserve native languages. It is, she concludes, a ‘soundtrack to life’.

Alison’s insights are confirmed by the lived experience of three members of her team, Gameli and Naa Densua Tordzro, and Tawona Sitholé, whom I interview next. Initially, we talk about their personal encounters with radio as they were growing up. Gameli and Naa Densua explain to me how, between the 1960s and mid-1970s, it was very common in Ghana to listen to radio, both at home and at school, using ‘national radio boxes’. Gameli, in particular, remembers how everybody at home would gather around the device and listen to different shows. Tawona, who is from Zimbabwe, tells me that when we he was born, life in the region of Zimbabwe where his parents lived revolved around orality and storytelling traditions. For most of his upbringing, radio was a big part of that lifestyle. He shares with me his fond memories of the jingle he used to hear on the radio as he was getting ready for school, not to mention the Sunday football programme.

Gameli, Naa Densua and Tawona are now part of the UNESCO Chair in RILA at the University of Glasgow, where they use their artistic and academic backgrounds to facilitate intercultural dialogue and social integration. For all three of them, orality and storytelling play a central role. In 2001, for example, Gameli led a community theatre intervention in Ghana aimed at resolving communication difficulties around trachoma, which resulted in a successful collaboration with local radio stations. When he thinks about radio today, as a source of news and information for the general public, he is taken back to the tradition of the ‘town crier’, which he witnessed as a child. In the clip below, he explains this point and performs a typical town crier’s announcement using an instrument called ‘Gakogui’.

 

Naa Densua’s work, on the other hand, focuses on textile and garment-making traditions in Ghana, as well as the oral traditions surrounding these practices. She explains to me how most fabrics and textiles are inextricably connected to the songs and rhymes used to describe them. If you wear a certain dress, you immediately think of the song that goes with it and the message behind it. The following audio clip is the perfect illustration of how this oral collective wisdom is ‘woven’ into the fabric. Naa Densua describes the dress that any Ghanaian woman who is going to get married should have in her suitcase, and the wise words of its accompanying song:

 

Reflecting on the role of radio in preserving oral traditions, she tells me that it was thanks to radio that she would hear these songs while she was growing up. Every weekend, there would always be a segment featuring one or more songs and that has helped her stay connected to her heritage throughout her life.

Finally, Tawona: a poet, playwright, storyteller and musician, and therefore somebody who knows very well how compelling the spoken word is. He agrees that radio has a crucial role to play in sharing collective wisdom and keeping traditions alive. This is one of his poems:

Radio: a ‘physical’, intimate and emotional medium. At the end of these interviews, I reflect on my takeaways so far. First, radio can act as a ‘developmental tool’ in many African communities providing access to information even within remote rural areas². It is also a medium very well suited to protect oral traditions, helping individuals stay in touch with their collective heritage.

But as I think back to my interviews with Alison and her team, I cannot help but notice the presence of fond memories around radio, and the intimacy that is often experienced while listening to somebody’s voice. It is actually Alison herself that gives me an important clue to understand this during our conversation, when she says that orality is an ‘unmediated expression of the body’. Unlike other ‘mediated’ activities, such as writing, which relies, for instance, on the use of pens or keyboards, speaking, on the other hand, as captured by radio, simply relies on our voice and is therefore a more direct form of self-expression.

Alison’s insights are confirmed by the literature on the ‘affective power’ of voice and sound³. When we listen to somebody, we do not just pay attention to the content, or, in other words, the ‘what’; we also hear the ‘how’, that is to say, the accent, the prosody, the emphasis, and all those aspects that make that person unique. In radio, this process is heightened, as the lack of visual data translates into greater awareness of the different modulations of voice and sound.

My interview with Guy Raz, American radio journalist and host of the ‘How I Built This’ podcast, among many others, sheds further light on this point. Guy still recalls the moment he fell in love with radio. He was in college at the time, in the United States, and was fascinated by the journeys that different radio shows would take him on:

 

Later on, as a war correspondent in the Middle East, he confesses that his greatest interest was not reporting on the war per se, but, rather, speaking to families affected by the conflict and hearing their stories. He would record them as they talked about their daily struggles, their fears, and their hopes. To this day, he strongly believes that, at its best, radio can not only inform, but also build empathy. It does that, Guy explains to me, by challenging our brain to create a mental picture of what we are listening to. Because we have to visualise it for ourselves, we are fully engaged with the content that is being offered to us; we are active users, much more so than we are watching TV. The power of our imagination takes us on a journey with the person speaking into our ears, and we establish an intimate, one-to-one connection with them. Whether we agree or not with what they are saying, according to Guy, in audio ‘you have no choice but to empathise’; by being exposed to their story, you understand that person’s contours and how their worldview came into existence.

With regard to the intimacy that we experience while listening to someone, Claudia Hammond, psychologist and BBC Radio 4 presenter, talks to me about the crucial role of radio, especially during this pandemic, in counteracting feelings of loneliness. There is an aspect of ‘authenticity’ in the human voice, she explains to me: ‘we learn so much from how people say things, their tone, their gravitas’.

Crucially, that is confirmed by the research carried out by Ofcom, the UK communications regulator. Clare McNally-Luke, Head of BBC Research and Intelligence at Ofcom, gives me an overview and explains that one of the most common results across different studies is the strong connection that people establish with their favourite radio stations. On average, in the UK, people tend to listen to no more than 2 or 3 stations; they form a ‘core set’ of choices, which, as Clare points out, speaks to the intimacy but also the sense of agency involved in the listening process.