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“A Radio Programme about Radio”, 1974, by Howard Broomfield, part 9 of the 10-part Soundscapes of Canada series produced by the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, directed by R. Murray Schafer. Website: http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html

Howard Broomfield was a member of the World Soundscape Project, an acoustic education and research group that composer R. Murray Schafer established at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. In 1974, Broomfield contributed to a series, directed by Schafer and broadcast through the CBC show Ideas, called Soundscapes of Canada. Across the ten parts of the series, World Soundscape Project members drew heavily on field recordings they had conducted around the country for programs that attuned listeners to different aspects of Canada’s sonic environments while reimagining the form and conventions of documentary broadcast. For the ninth program, Broomfield turned to radio itself as a facet of the acoustic ecologies the group studied. Using historical clips from 1930s radio dramas and interviews he conducted about people’s radio listening habits, among many other sources, Broomfield playfully traversed the mystery and mundanity of broadcast radio. The piece is at once an anthropological study and a critical intervention into radio as a major part of the mediated sound worlds people inhabit. - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2021/2022, Andy Stuhl.