In an unusual episode, we listen back to field recordings that co-host cris cheek made in 1987 and 1993 on the island of Madagascar. It’s a rich sonic travelogue, with incredible musicians appearing at seemingly every stop along the way. Mack interviews cris, who discusses the strangeness and surprises of listening back to the sounds of that other time and place–and listening to the voice of an earlier version of himself.

The BBC broadcast some of this material on Radio 3 as ‘The Music of Madagascar,” produced by John Thornley. It won the Sony gold radio award for ‘specialist music program of the year in 1995. A longer version aired as “Mountain, River, Rail and Reef,” produced by Phil England and Tom Wallace for Resonance FM, the world’s first radio art station as part of 1998’s Meltdown Festival at the South Bank Centre, curated by John Peel.

This episode takes its name from a boat cris traveled on in Madagascar.

Transcript

[ominous music plays]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

[sound of glass being smashed]

[MACK HAGOOD]

Episode 13.

[CRIS]

James Bond.

[MACK]

Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, the podcast about sound in the arts and humanities.

[CRIS]

Who are you?

[MACK]

*laughs* I’m Mac Hagood.

[CRIS]

I’m cris cheek.

[MACK]

And today we have a very unusual episode because I get to interview cris.

[CRIS]

Yay!

[MACK]

cris has brought in a program that he produced for the legendary community radio station in London, Resonance FM. Based on your travels in Madagascar, actually two trips you took right?

[CRIS]

That’s right 1987, 1993, yeah.

[MACK]

cris, why don’t you tell us a little bit about this show?

[CRIS]

It was originally broadcast on the BBC. And there was some format things that got in the way of it being a longer show on the BBC. And I wanted to let some of the recordings play a little bit more than they could do in the original.

[MACK]

In resonance, it was much more of a sort of freeform kind of space where you could let something like that stretch out right?

[CRIS]

It was pretty emergent as a station at that point, but also yeah, the BBC wanted to cut me distinctly to just under half an hour.

[MACK]

And why Madagascar? Maybe we should start off with where is Madagascar?

[CRIS]

Madagascar is off the east coast of Africa. It’s in the Indian Ocean. Fourth largest island on the planet. 90% unique in flora and fauna. Really extraordinary mixtures of people who came from

From Polynesia, down the Amoni Arab coast from particularly Southwest India, pirates. Did I mentioned pirates yet?

[MACK]

No, you didn’t.

[CRIS]

There were several pirate bases in Madagascar.

[MACK]

Yeah, and the musical traditions that resulted from that mix are really, really incredible.

[CRIS]

They are, and the people are really incredible.

[MACK]

So what we’re going to hear, I’ve heard a little bit of it already. It’s gorgeous music and really some delicious sounds recorded, just delectively. I just really love these recordings and sort of what interests me beyond this sonic travel log that you’re presenting to us, is just the fact that I’m going to hear the you that I didn’t know from 20 years ago, and then you’re also going to sort of hear yourself, the person that you used to be back then.

[CRIS]

Yeah, that’s why I brought this. I mean, I brought it because we’ve been talking in so many differ...