Two works this week from Hildegard Westercamp. "Cricket Voice" and "A Walk Through the City."
Hildegard Westerkamp was born in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946, emigrated to Canada in 1968, and since then has lived on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples - the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh), Tsleil-Waututh (Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh), and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations. After completing her music studies at the University of British Columbia in the early seventies she joined the World Soundscape Project under the direction of R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Her involvement with this project not only activated deep concerns about noise and the general state of the acoustic environment in her, but it also changed her ways of thinking about music, listening and soundmaking. Vancouver Co-operative Radio – founded during the same time - provided an invaluable opportunity to learn much about broadcasting, and ultimately enabled her to produce and host her weekly program Soundwalking in 1978/79.

First, "Cricket Voice" is featured. A musical exploration of a cricket whose song was recorded in the stillness of a Mexican desert region called the Zone of Silence. Slowed down it is like the heartbeat of the desert; at its original speed it sings to the stars. The percussive sounds in Cricket Voice were created by playing on desert plants, dried roots and palm eaves, and by exploring the ruins of an old water reservoir.

Second, tune in "A Walk Through the City." An environmental composition based on a poem by Canadian poet and playwright Norbert Ruebsaat. Urban sounds such as car horns, sirens, brakes, pinball machines and the rhythmic pounding of trains are presented both as they were recorded on Vancouver's skid row and as they were processed in the studio. The voice of the poet reading his poem moves in and out of the composition, entering into dialogue with many of its sounds. A continuous flux is thus created between real and imaginary landscapes, recognizable and transformed places, between reality and composition. Produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In its ten years as a weekly national series, 1987-1998, New American Radio (NAR) commissioned and distributed over 300 original works: conceptual new drama, associational documentary, language explorations, sonic meditations, environmental compositions, musical explorations and works that pioneer new dimensions in acoustic space. Wave Farm is thrilled to be partnering with New American Radio to ensure these works remain available to listeners today and into the future through this streaming online radio channel, a weekly radio show on Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM, and an online archive at https://wavefarm.org/radio/nar/.

New American Radio was organized by Helen Thorington, Executive Producer and Regine Beyer, Associate Producer. A special thanks to both Helen Thorington and Jo-Anne Green for their generous support and collaboration of this partnership, and their contribution to the field at large!