WGXC-90.7 FM
From the Radio Art Archive: "Calewalayana—Changes in the Ecology of the Mind" (1986) by Harri Huhtamäki
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
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Produced by Wave Farm Radio.
Calewalayana—Changes in the Ecology of the Mind was created in 1986 by Finnish radio maker Harri Huhtamäki, along with four collaborators (two musicians, a sound engineer, and a journalist.) Harri Huhtamäki founded the famous Radio Atelier at YLE, the national broadcasting network in Finland. The text in the piece comes from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The title of the piece, Calewalayana is a made-up word. It refers to the Kalevala poem while also evoking other famous epics, for instance the Sanskrit epic Ramayana. The soundscape of Calewalayana was recorded in various remote and urban parts of Finland and is combined with sounds of drums, wood, traditional herding instruments and a saxophone improvised on the streets of Helsinki. What emerges is a hybrid radio piece blurring drama, documentary, and music. Huhtamäki says Calewalayana is about Finnish identity and changes in the Finnish ecology of mind spanning pagan, Christian, and capitalist eras. New American Radio adapted this piece for American radio listeners in 1986 including the original Finnish with English translation. This adapted bilingual version of Calewalayana—Changes in the Ecology includes collaborating artists Pekka Ruorhoranta, Teppo Hautohao, Pekka Lappi, and Seppo Pakunainen. The English narration is performed by Regine Beyer.
- Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.
The Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive is an online resource and broadcast series on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, which is syndicated to stations across the country through The Radio Art Hour. It aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM/Shortwave broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or pirate transmission. The archive is a product of Wave Farm's Radio Artist Fellowship.
Radio artists explore broadcast radio space through a richly polyphonous mix of practices, including poetic resuscitations of conventional radio drama, documentary, interview and news formats; found and field sound compositions reframed by broadcast; performative inhabitations/embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities, such as entropy, anonymity and interference; playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers, and the potential feedback loops between hosts and layers of audience, from in-studio to listeners at home to callers-in; use of radio space to bridge widely dispersed voices (be they living or dead), subjects, environments and communities, or to migrate through them in ways that would not be possible in real time and space; electroacoustic compositions with sounds primarily derived from gathering, generating and remixing radiophonic sources. Note: Wave Farm continues to expand this definition of radio art through engagement with contemporary practices including those revealed by Wave Farm Artists-in-residence, and the Radio Art Fellowship program.
Playlist:
- Owner Of A Lonely Heart / Yes
- I Want To Tell You (Remastered 2009) / The Beatles

