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Andy Stuhl (Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2021/2022) talks with Sadie Woods about two recent works, which are shared here in their entirety.

Sadie Woods's A Meditation on Civil Rights (2022) rhythmically places excerpts of James Baldwin speeches from the 1960-1970s in conversation with the song What I Want to See by The Last Poets. Baldwin discusses civil rights, slave codes, and rebellion in America to the lyrics of The Last Poets such as “no prisons, no locks, no keys, no killings….” speaking on identity, law and liberation from colonial mentality and oppressive systems. The People’s Radio (2021) was created while in-residence at Wave Farm. The work explores radio as a technology developed and pioneered by the U.S. military industrial complex as political warfare and public radio as a conduit for Black expressive culture and radical imagination. The People’s Radio incorporates a variety of sources, including cultural media, ephemeral and symbolic sounds, political speeches like "Power Anywhere Where There’s People" by Fred Hampton, excerpts from Motown’s sister label Black Forum releases like "Black Spirits: Festival of New Black Poets in America," and oral histories propelled through Black music. The People’s Radio emphasizes resistance during times of social unrest in aims to recuperate and make legible repressed histories, reminding us of the political dimensions under the surface of Black life.