The Echo Chamber

On March 6, 1971, a group of some of the top musicians from the United States -– Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and more -– boarded a plane bound for Ghana to perform in a musical celebration that was dubbed the “Soul to Soul Festival.” Thousands of audience members filled Accra’s Black Star Square for a continuous 15 hours of music. The festival was planned in part for the annual celebration of Ghana’s independence, but also as an invitation to a “homecoming” for these noted African-American artists to return to Africa.

This episode revisits the famed music festival on its 50th anniversary and explores the longstanding legacy of cultural exchange with African diasporans originally set forth in the 1950s by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. Tune in for interviews with noted musicologist John Collins, poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji, concert goers and more.

This story was originally produced for AfroPop Worldwide.  To hear more stories from this Peabody-award winning show, visit www.afropop.org..

As we gather this week to witness the inauguration of our new president, we find our nation in a state of great political unrest.  While certain recent events of violence at the Capitol are no doubt unprecedented, it is certainly not the first time an inauguration in our country has been met with divide.  

In 1973, the United States was reaching the concluding stages of our involvement in the Vietnam.  And while the war would soon come to an end, the proceeding weeks leading up to the inauguration were met with some of the most intense and deadly bombing campaigns  the war had witnessed.  The anti-war movement was unhinged.  They had marched, they had protest - all to seemingly no avail when it came to changing the foreign policies of Richard Nixon.  

So what to do next....  American conductor, Leonard Bernstein, gathered an impromptu orchestra and choir to perform a "Concert for Peace", following his belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists had the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace.

Special thanks to Michael Chikinda, Alicia Kopfstein, Matt Holsen, and Bernie Swain for sharing their insight and memories of the musical events surrounding Nixon and his second inauguration in 1973.

A Plea for Peace: Leonard Bernstein, Richard Nixon, and the Music of the 1973 Inauguration

ARCHIVAL:  Not everybody is here this weekend to celebrate. Thousands of demonstrators are expected. They've spent weeks organizing and are here to protest the war.  "This is one anti-war demonstration that Mr. Nixon is not going to avoid.  Past demonstrations he has fled town, nobody sees him now. He's never explained to the nation why he ordered these saturation bombing rates on Hanoi and Haiphong, but this is one time he's going to have to be present.  We know he's not going to be out of town and we want to be there at the same time."

Alicia Kopfstein (AK):  The number of people who were in DC, it was thousands upon thousands. 18,000 were at the cathedral alone.   To have the cathedral so full like that... full to the gills. There was no room. It was just overwhelming, to try to find a place to park, of course, but to be with so many like-minded people.  Contrasting with so many protests now where there's violence, it was so peaceful. There was such an attitude of goodwill and camaraderie and companionship. That was just incredible. I'm Dr. Alicia Kopfstein, I teach at American University and I'm a contributor and co-editor of a recent collection of essays called Leonard Bernstein and Washington DC. I was a singer in Leonard Bernstein's "Concert for Peace" that happened at the Washington National Cathedral in January of 1973. 

ARCHIVAL:  Introduction to the three official inaugural concerts tonight. There's a fourth unofficial one. Leonard Bernstein is conducting what is called a "Concert for Peace" at the Washington Cathedral.  Admission is free, arrangements have been made to pipe the program outside.  It is thought that 10,000 persons might show up, many of them anti-war protesters.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ku9HUWZDas

AK:  There was hope, there was desire for peace, there was love, but there's also a resignation, a fear because people had done their utmost to try to protest the war and it didn't seem to change anything.  Years and years and years of protest still led to the Christmas bombing.  So it was just, we're getting desperate. Let's do everything we possibly can.

The Vietnam War went from 1959 to 1975. When Nixon was elected the second time, it was shortly after some more horrors in the Vietnam war. We had Kent State and the Pentagon papers, the My Lai massacres. Films and photographs were available in Time and Look and all the major magazines and newspapers showing women and children and young people just lying d...

Some candidates have their campaigns for presidency planned out before they can even vote.  For others, such as General Eisenhower, it took a little Broadway magic to coax him into the race.  On this episode of The Echo Chamber, we bring you a special election episode – filled with a closer look into some unknown, and perhaps surprising, facts about campaign songs and how they have helped shape presidential history.

Special thanks to David Haven Blake, Cheri Burk and Juliet Cesario, Paul Christiansen, and Bob Gardner.  And to the archivists at the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford Presidential libraries for their hard work and dedication to preserve this important campaign material.

This is an expanded version of a story that originally aired on KALW in 2018 when Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues Band were celebrating their 40th anniversary at The Saloon in North Beach.  The band formed when Yoko was busking around Powell and Market Streets in the late 70s.  

Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues are currently one of the longest running acts at The Saloon, one of San Francisco's oldest bars.  Yoko can wail on an electric guitar with a flair that combines B.B. King, Chuck Berry, and Neil Young.

"We arrived [in the US] the same date, different year, but same date, that The Beatles first came to the United States. Every year February 7th I see The Beatles anniversary and I always think, mine too!"

She was born in Japan and raised playing classical music, but her life changed when The Beatles came to the Tokyo Budokan in 1966. She swapped her classical flute for a guitar, finagled passage on an American cargo ship toting Mazdas from Hiroshima,  and never looked back.  

Special thanks to Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues Band, Myron Mu and all of the staff at The Saloon.  This story was produced in collaboration with Mary Franklin Harvin.

On this episode of The Echo Chamber, Shonen Knife – a story of cultural exchange through the cassette tape.

But also a story of an era in history just before the stronghold of the looming internet drastically changed, among so many other things, the way we consume and discover music.  It was a time when culture – as writer Karen Schoemer said – was precious, you really had to fight for it.  

A closer look at how cassettes, alongside fanzines and college radio, all worked to create an environment that made possible the seemingly improbable circumstance of an all-girl band from Osaka, Japan eventually opening for Nirvana – one of the biggest musical acts of the 90s, and how these women have retained their status of cultural influence some 40 years after their bands' origin.  

This episode features interviews with Shonen Knife; Karen Schoemer, former music critic of the New York Times; and Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College and author of the forthcoming book, Shonen Knife's Happy Hour: Food, Gender, Rock and Roll

The Osaka Ramones – The International Impact of Shonen Knife

Naoko Yamano (NY):  Sheena is a punk rocker [sings The Ramones "Sheena is a Punk Rocker]

NY:  I'm Naoko, I play the guitar.

Atsuko Yamano (AY):  I'm Atsuko, I play the bass guitar.

Risa Kawano (RK):  I'm Risa.  I play the drums.

NY:  Shonen means boy in Japanese and it's a very old brand name of a pencil knife.  And the word 'shonen' has very cute feeling and the knife has a little dangerous feeling, so when cute and dangerous combined together, it's just like our band.  So I put that name. 

Originally I liked The Beatles a lot when I was a child, and then in the late 70s, punk pop movement was happening and I became a big fan of The Ramones or Buzzcocks.  First I listened to their music through radio. There was a radio program in Osaka and they played The Ramones or Buzzcocks.  Many punk music...

When I was 15 years old I got an acoustic guitar.  The strings were so hard and I hurt my fingers so I couldn’t play the acoustic guitar but after I get an electric guitar a few years after that. I rather like pop melody line punk rock, and inspired by such kinds of bands, I wanted to start my own band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsOGXEwl1Z8

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki (BM):  Shonen Knife – they formed in 1981.  Naoko decided to form a rock and roll band after she heard some Ramones on the radio.  My name is Brooke McCorkle Okazaki.  I am an Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and I am the author of "Shonen Knife's Happy Hour: Food Gender and Rock and Roll".  Michie and Naoko were currently working as secretaries and workers in a machinery company in Osaka, and Atsuko was actually still  a high school student.  She wound up graduating and going to fashion school.  They all worked day jobs until 1994 when they went on the big North American tour.  And it was then when they decided to quite and become full time musicians.  So they were slugging it out for a good 13 years before becoming full time musicians.  And they've been full time musicians since then which is just amazing.

NY:  The Japanese Minna Tanoshiku means “Let’s have fun together”.  We recorded it at our friend’s house and everybody was very DIY.  One day a guy who’s record label is called Zero Records came to our show and he offered that he would like to release our record.  For that cassette album we copied 40 cassettes and we put our kissmark on each jacket. 

First I got postal mail from Calvin Johnson from K Records and then we exchanged letters because there was no internet at that time and of course there was no facsimile too.  So Calvin Johnson said he wanted to release our album from his label K Records.

On today’s episode, Maximum RocknRoll – the story behind the famed punk institution.

Beginning in 1977, a group of Bay Area music fans led by Tim Yohannan, began a weekly radio show out of the studio at KPFA in Berkeley, California. The driving impulse behind the show was simple – an unabashed uncompromising world of punk rock. By 1982, the punk scene had grown into a worldwide movement and the founders of the show launched Maximum RocknRoll as a print fanzine, dedicated to anti-corporate ideals, leftist politics and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands from every inhabited continent of the globe. Over the next several decades, what started as a do it yourself labor of love amongst a handful of friends had extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. For many, it became the punk rock bible. The inky smudge of the black and white newsprint providing a voice in community for young teenagers around the world, introducing them to bands and a sense of creative expression they had not known before. By 2019, the landscape of the punk underground as well as print media itself had dramatically shifted and MRR announced the end to its print publication. Over these 42 years with over 1600 radio shows and 400 issues of fanzine to its claim, MRR came to represent a certain do-it-yourself ethos that extended far beyond the music itself.

As the print scene came to an end last year, I invited some well the longstanding Maximum contributors to come together for a night to talk about that the zine and its lasting impact on the global punk scene. Here’s our conversation..

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Special thanks to BetaBrand for hosting this event. And thanks again to Paul Curran, Martin Sprouse and Matt Badenhop participating in this conversation. For more information on Maximum Rocknroll, or to get involved, visit www.maximumrocknroll.com

The story of a small Filipino nightclub that transformed into one of San Francisco’s most influential punk venues.

"To play, you need a place – be it where you live, the street, a venue. For unrestricted play, you need an unrestricted playground. Dirk Dirksen envisioned The Fab Mab just as such a playground. Without him and The Mab, there might not have been the great punk scene in the late 1970s in San Francisco. The San Francisco punk scene was fun. I miss it. But as Iggy Pop said, 'Let's Sing.'"

-- Mindy Bagdon

Special thanks to Denise Demise Dunne, Liz Keim, Penelope Houston, Ron Greco, John Seabury, V Vale, Janet Clyde, and Kathy Peck.

The archival interview with Dirk Dirksen is from Vale's RE/Search Conversations 13.

Production support from Mary Franklin Harvin.

This bonus episode features my interview with two of Dave Brubeck's sons, Dan and Chris Brubeck.  Excellent musicians in their own right, the two shared intimate memories of growing up with their father and his legendary contributions to modern jazz.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1369MM9B40

The Brubeck Brothers

Chris Brubeck:  We're sitting about 10 miles away from the house where we grew up.  My dad used to work in San Francisco and come home and he'd go to bed. And then my mom would say like, you gotta be quiet. Your poor dad didn't go to bed till three or four in the morning. So part of the technique of keeping us quiet was that we had these little cheap record players almost in every room, including the room that was adjacent to my dad's room.  We had these Disney records. Tunes like Someday My Prince Will Come, Alice in Wonderland. So my dad's asleep and yet probably subconsciously he's hearing [hums melody of Someday My Prince Will Come].  After a while he comes up with this idea, he says, you know, those actually are really good tunes, even though they're from cartoons.  Then he started playing Someday My Prince Will Come.  Miles Davis walks into a club in San Francisco and hears my dad play.  Then his next record, Miles' record is called Someday My Prince Will Come.  So you're staring at two of the brats that accidentally had something to do with those songs becoming jazz standards. Just trying to be quiet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcTeAWh8OusChris Brubeck:  I'm Chris Brubeck, and I play in the Brubeck Brothers quartet. I play electric fretless bass, and sometimes bass trombone. Dan Brubeck:  And I'm Dan Brubeck. And I'm a drummer with the Brubeck Brothers Quartet.  Up here in Oakland it was just an open room with piano in it and whatnot.Chris Brubeck:  A kitchen and a big dining room table. And this redwood pocket door that opened up to this studio was big enough for a grand piano and for drums to set up and, you know, just a beautiful space with big bay windows.  And from those windows, you could literally see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay bridge, and the Richmond bridge.  As little kids it was really fun to go to camp outside and look at the twinkling lights and you know, it was very magical as a little kid also, if I wasn't thinking about music, I was thinking about like Willie Mays is down there somewhere playing baseball, you know, he was my hero.I know for me, one of my favorite things to do in the world, I'd like to hear the group we rehearse I'd crawl under the piano, And there, I couldn't be in anyone's way, knowing what step on me. And I got to hear all the low overtones of the piano and it got to you the bass and the bass drum really well. That, to me, it was like heaven, just lying down and listening. Dan Brubeck:  Where I slept, there was probably 10 feet from a door where my dad would practice and he'd often practice at night or be writing composing at night.  So I don't think there were too many nights where I didn't fall asleep when he was home to him practicing and composing.  It there's always, I was always hearing music.  But I was lucky too, because he had at his rehearsals Morello, who is an incredible drummer, but of course we didn't know they were incredible drummers.  We just heard all these guys and there, you know, it's Uncle Paul, Uncle Joe, you know, So for us, it was just like these guys that were friends of my dad's that played. 

Chris Brubeck:  Paul was like a visiting member of the octet. Dan Brubeck:  He didn't study with Darius Milhaud, but he got called in to play in my dad's octet, which was the first group that he started.  Mostly people that were studying with Darius Milhaud. Chris Brubeck:  Milhaud was open-minded and loved American jazz so much that he said here's a counterpoint exercise and old school would be, it would be, you know, Bach Prelude #2,, analyze it.

In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet embarked on a tour of Europe and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department.  HEAR THE STORY.

This episode features interviews with Keith Hatschek, Program Director for Music Management and Music Industry Studies at the University of Pacific; and Mike Wurtz, Assistant Professor and Head of Special Collections and Archives at the Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of Pacific Library.

The archival recording of Dave Brubeck is from his interview with Monk Rowe from the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College.

Dave Brubeck and The Jazz Ambassadors

Dan Brubeck:  The more repressed a society is, the more they admire the freedom you can find in jazz. Jazz is America.  People behind the Iron Curtain started falling in love with jazz. Chris Brubeck:  The idea was if we get jazz musicians to go out, that represents freedom.  People could express themselves in this kind of way out of that kind of democracy comes that kind of expression.ARCHIVAL:  Louis ArmstrongChris Brubeck:  You're not going to get a repressed environment like communism. That seemed to be the idea. I mean, if you saw a Louis Armstrong back then you know, your heart opens up and you're like, wow, this is great.  This guy is totally cool. He loves everyone and he's expressing himself and he just made people happy all over the world. So that's a way better defense against fighting communism than fighting might with might and all that, you know.  It's like nowadays, maybe we would just bomb them or something.Brandi Howell:  Welcome to The Echo Chamber. I'm your host, Brandi Howell.  On today's episode, The Jazz Ambassadors, a blue note and a minor key, America has its secret sonic weapon, jazz. This was a headline in 1955 when the United States seeing jazz as propaganda to promote democracy abroad sent its top musicians overseas.  The music they thought was a universal language, knowing no national boundaries.  So off they sent the so-called jazz ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and lastly, Dave Brubeck. His experience with the program is the focus of this episode.Keith Hatschek:   It was a brilliant use of what we have come to term soft power.  Eisenhower realized that bullets and bombs ultimately would never decide the outcome of the future of this battle between the capitalist system and the socialist system. He very wisely invested in cultural exchanges. They were dubbed unofficially the "jazz ambassadors", Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie. The groups were chosen to go overseas and play their music.  This battle for the hearts and minds of all these territories around the world who were not directly linked to either the Western powers or the Soviet Union played out not so much in a military sense, but in a cultural sense.  Why not send a jazz quartet and have them go and do their thing in these various countries and territories?  I'm Keith Hatschek. I'm the author of "The Impact of American Jazz Diplomacy in Poland During the Cold War Era". As far as my interest in the jazz ambassadors, I teach at the University of the Pacific and we are the place where the jazz musician Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola decided to bequeath their papers and all of their archival materials.  They both attended school here in the 1940s. Dave went on of course to become a world renowned jazz musician and composer and humanitarian. And one of the things that really struck him was that he was a GI during World War II. He was in the European theater of operations and he ended up leading a band called the Wolf Pack. And after the war, after hostilities had ceased. the band stayed on and they played both for GIs, but also refugees who were displaced over there. And it really gave him a look into what it was like in Europe in the aftermath of the devastation of World War Two. Later, when he became more popular in the 1950s,

Rock critic Joel Selvin on the origins of psychedelic rock in San Francisco–including Ken Kesey and his Acid Tests, the Trips Festival, and birth of bands such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Joel Selvin:  In San Francisco in 1965, '66, '67, there was such an explosion of music, great rock bands – it was just impossible not to be swept up in it.  As a copyboy at the [San Francisco] Chronicle, I could get my name on the guest list at The Fillmore.  I think I was out like six nights a week watching bands.  I'm Joel Selvin, born and raised in Berkeley, CA.  At the age of 17, after having dropped out of high school, I went to work as a copyboy at the San Francisco Chronicle and I subsequently took a job there as the pop music critic, which I kept for 36 years.  San Francisco was the center of the rock music universe – a truly amazing parade of musical talent.  Not only local people, but from all around the world.

Well, the first thing was LSD.  In 1964, Augustus Stanley Owsley, III became the first private party to synthesize the formula for LSD, which had been produced since the late 40s by a Swiss pharmaceutical company.  Owsley set up business in Berkeley down on Virginia Street, Bear Research Laboratories, and produced – we don't know?  Could be the first two million units of LSD.  

Obviously from that epicenter in Berkeley this whole psychedelic movement just sort of spread out.  At The Fillmore in December of '65, The Fillmore was in a black neighborhood, they had run R&B shows there for years.  The Acid Tests came in, Ken Kesey and all those guys, had the same staff, right.  So the old door guard is this old black guy named John Walker.  And John Walker is sitting there and he is watching all this craziness go on. Can't imagine what he is thinking.  But the police come in – San Francisco police – they come in and want to see what is going on here.  And they think it's pretty weird too.  And they go to Walker and they go – What the hell is going on here?  He says – Don't worry, they's in love.  Nobody was pushy, nobody was obnoxious.  Everybody felt like being in this together was so special that we were automatically bonded and we were all friends immediately just because we were cool enough to be there.  Everybody else that wasn't there, they were missing it.  

By 1966 when it was appearing on the cover of Life Magazine and this mind altering chemical, publicity had reached a point where everybody knew about it and those people who were inclined were gravitating toward using it.  And this was the center of that.  LSD had a tremendous effect on people who took it.  And San Francisco bay area, they began to form a kind of community around people who took LSD and one of the first things they did was throw dances with bands.  And these bands, who also took LSD, were not really playing old time rock n roll in the way that had been.  It just didn't make any sense.  Instead of like, 2-3 little songs, verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus...they started playing instruments and jamming.  The audience danced and everybody was on LSD.  

The Avalon and The Fillmore in 1966 were pretty much LSD speakeasies.  This was like the ground zero for the explosion.  And it wasn't just music, I mean, you can see its effect on organic farming, interest in yoga, the personal computer movement – all those guys were acidheads.  Music is just one of the things that came out of that.  It was a real prominent, it became the forefront of all of that countercultural movement.  

First thing that happens to the LSD community, they wanted to have these public gatherings where they could engage in activity while having the LSD experience.  The first of those were kind of informal affairs that were hosted by Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which had been a best seller.