Uptown Radio

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

INTRO: After years of anticipation and delays, director Baz Luhrman’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby opens today. Fans turned out in force — and style — for the first screenings last night. Emily Jones reports on why the Jazz Age story remains so popular today.

John Hoge and Glenn Santiago have lived together for 27 years. They got married in 2012 a year after gay marriage became legal in New York. This is their home in the East Village. (Camilo Vargas/Uptown Radio).

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

INTRO: We’re all used to hearing stories with words. But commentator Matthew Vann found you don’t always need words to tell them.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST: And now to a totally different kind of music — punk rock and hard rock. In the midst of their popularity in the 1980s came the Black Rock Coalition. African American musicians and artists in New York founded the group in 1985. For a while it really helped some Black bands make it big. But Lance Dixon reports that changes in the music industry have made it harder for Black musicians to be seen beyond their skin color.

NARR: When the Black Rock Coalition began in 1985, its flagship band was Living Colour. They stormed onto the scene with their hit song, “Cult of Personality.”

[Fade in “Cult of Personality” to a bed that fades out until first WILLIAMS ACT]

It hit #13 on the Billboard charts and won the group a Grammy in 1990. Living Colour’s Vernon Reid was one of the founders of the coalition and Gene Williams is currently the artistic director of the New York chapter. He watched a recent Living Colour performance on YouTube and was shocked that some commenters on the video didn’t identify them as a Black group.

GENE WILLIAMS: They didn’t even know Living Colour was black. They see Corey up there and they’re like, oh my God he’s black!?

He says the fact that people are shocked, decades later, is a part of why the Black Rock Coalition or BRC was founded in 1985. Their goals were to seek chances for Black artists to perform, record and be paid fairly.

WILLIAMS: When we started we needed an outlet for musicians to have venues that weren’t really provided for us at the time.

Eventually they were able to find places to play. And building off the fame of Living Colour, the BRC gained momentum and allowed for other bands to follow suit. BRC co-founder Greg Tate says it also allowed them to assert their Blackness.

GREG TATE: We chose the name Black Rock Coalition because we knew if you put Black in front of anything it immediately becomes kind of terrifying to certain folks.

Jimi Hazel is the lead guitarist of another BRC band–24-7 Spyz and he says that given the history of rock and roll, the idea of Black people playing it shouldn’t be so surprising.

HAZEL: Black people don’t rock. Hello? We’ve been rocking since the fifties, we invented it.

Of course, rock and roll came out of blues music. Black artists like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix rocked in the 50s and 60s. Guitarists that followed them moved into funk bands like Sly and the Family Stone and Funkadelic with large Black followings. But, once disco arrived, Hazel says it became more about dance tracks and not live shows.

HAZEL: That’s really when the disconnect happens between Black people and rock music. Because now rock it just went back to being predominantly a white thing, except for a handful of black bands. But, they weren’t being supported by their own people.

Gene Williams says today there are even fewer places for bands to play in New York.

WILLIAMS: We lost a lot of great venues, we don’t have CBGB’s anymore, we don’t have Danceteria, we don’t have the places that we started at.

Greg Tate who, along with his BRC work, is a long-time music journalist says the real problem is what he calls “progressive racism” in the music industry.

TATE: There’s still a desire to keep Black musicians in their place.

Tate says this racism means corporate executives still tell Black musicians that they can’t sell them as artists.

TATE: You know, they were telling people that in 1985 when we started, and they’re kind of still telling people that 30 years later.

The Black Rock Coalition’s membership today is mainly built on the older acts who are still rocking, but mainly at the occasional benefit concert. Still, there are younger supporters of the movement.

[Fade in Earl Greyhound song “Shotgun” to a bed and fade out before THOMAS ACT]

Earl Greyhound was a rock trio that debuted in the largely-white alternative rock scene seven years ago.Bassist and vocalist Kamara Thomas and drummer Ricc Sheridan were the black members of the group. Thomas says when the band was looking for a new deal, label executives weren’t sure of what to do with them.

KAMARA THOMAS: Labels still had this kind of idea about how you market music and how it’s gotta be divided into all these categories. And you market r&b to black people and rock to white people.

There have been some noteworthy crossover exceptions since Living Colour. Black rock artists like Lenny Kravitz in the nineties and bands like TV on the Radio more recently. But, Darrell McNeil, operations director for the New York BRC, thinks it’s not enough.

MCNEIL: We can have a black president, but we can’t have a black superstar rock and roller outside of say like a Lenny Kravitz. He’s the guy who kind of gets the pass. But, he’s the only guy who’s getting the pass.

But maybe Kravitz is starting to be joined in the mainstream by some good company.

[Fade in Gary Clark Jr. song “Numb” to a bed until MCNEIL ACT]

Gary Clark Jr. is a rising star in the industry, Tate says he’s been able to find success due to his look, charisma and the popularity of blues-rock bands like The Black Keys. His debut album Blak and Blu peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts last year. McNeil says Clark is embodying  the Black Rock Coalition’s mission.

MCNEIL: In a lot of respects I look at him as kind of an ambassador as to the different things that can happen for a black artist if you put together your audience the right way. 

[“Numb” fades in as a bed through SOC and end of piece.]

And with another potential crossover Black rocker on the rise, the BRC can continue to fight for a fair shot.

Lance Dixon, Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO:

The American criminal justice system seems pretty simple: After someone commits a crime, they’re convicted, sentenced and sent to prison. Time is served and people are released. But the disturbing fact is that 40-percent of the people leaving prison will be back.

But there’s another way of looking at crime and punishment – it’s called restorative justice. And as Christie Thorne reports, it’s a movement that’s taking off across the country.

–

[AMB: Fade Up and Hold Under, Driving in car with Vicky to scene of accident (Engine, Turn Signal)]

On a recent sunny afternoon, Vicky Ruvolo takes a right turn onto Sunrise Highway in Ronkonkoma, a quiet Long Island town. We arrive at a spot less than five minutes from her house. Vicky says this is where she almost died nine years ago.

VICKY RUVOLO:

See, I think it happened right over here at this miniature golf place.

Just before Thanksgiving in 2004, Vicky was driving home from a fun night out with her family. Four teenagers were approaching in an oncoming car. The kids were joyriding, on a shopping spree with a stolen credit card. As the two cars passed, 18-year-old Ryan Cushing hurled a large object out of the window, aiming it right at Vicky. It was a 20-pound frozen turkey…

VICKY RUVOLO:

That went into my windshield, hit me in the face and nearly killed me. I didn’t wake up until over a month later.

She was knocked out on the spot.

[AMB: Drop Out "Driving in car"]

Vicky’s injuries were so severe that she spent a month in a medically induced coma, and another five recovering.

It took the police less than a week to identify the teenagers. Ryan eventually turned himself in. He was facing up to 25 years in prison for first-degree assault and reckless endangerment.

VICKY RUVOLO:

He was going to be wasting his whole life – he was going to lose 25 years to sit and rot in jail for a stupid, ridiculous act.

Vicky didn’t understand the benefit of punishing Ryan. Her emotional struggle was just as challenging as the physical. Still in rehab, Vicky prayed. And she came to a realization: that she had to forgive.

VICKY RUVOLO:

Because that’s the biggest thing that people forget. Is that forgiveness, isn’t about that other person. It’s all about you. Because when you forgive you’re letting go of all that anger, that pain, that negativity. It actually releases you.

Vicky asked that Ryan be given leniency. She didn’t want him to spend more than 6 months in jail.

At the sentencing hearing, Vicky and Ryan met face-to-face for the first time. At the end of the day, Ryan walked over to where Vicky was sitting with her family.

VICKY RUVOLO:

And he stood in front of me and was just crying profusely, just crying. Talking through his tears just saying, “I never meant this to happen. I prayed for you every day. I’m so glad you’re doing well.”

Then, she hugged him.

VICKY RUVOLO:

The only thing I could do was coddle him like a child. And I told him, “Just take this experience and do something good with your life.”

In response to Vicky’s request, the judge sentenced Ryan to six months in jail, five years of probation and a year of community service.

Ryan spent that year working with Dr. Robert Goldman, who was the supervising psychologist at the Suffolk County Probation Department. Goldman had developed an innovative restorative justice program called TASTE.

[AMB: Fade Up and Hold Under, Vicky & Robert greet one another at restaurant (Waitress, Dishes)]

ROBERT GOLDMAN:

I was seeing children in the juvenile justice system graduate into the adult criminal justice system.

Goldman had spent a little over a decade as a criminal defense attorney. And most of his defendants were children. He noticed a problem. Not just in Long Island, but across the country.

ROBERT GOLDMAN:

Like Vicky, I really didn’t know what restorative justice was, I just knew what we were doing wasn’t right.

Restorative justice is an alternative to a purely punitive approach. The movement focuses on the needs of both victims and offenders and gives both parties an opportunity to heal and learn from a criminal experience.

Psychologist Jacques Verduin has pioneered several restorative justice programs in California prisons:

JACQUES VERDUIN:

Where you get to stare down your demons, confront your actions and name your victim in front of everybody. That’s tough on crime.

Verduin says that the current system isn’t doing anyone any good.

JACQUES VERDUIN:

You know, to run a system that is so heavy on custody and so little on creating opportunities for people to change their ways, is in many ways a disservice to public safety. It’s time for us to start investing in keeping people out of prison rather than in prison.

Right now, 1 in 34 Americans are under some form of correctional supervision – that’s close to 7 million people in prison, jail, parole or probation.

JACQUES VERDUIN:

Across the board, about 95 percent of all prisoners eventually get out. And they get out to be somebody’s neighbor. So how do you want them to come out? Punished, clueless, not having learned anything? Or educated, evolved and a bit more humble?

Ryan Cushing is a good example of the latter. Vicky still keeps in touch with him.

VICKY RUVOLO:

Now he’s off probation, now he’s got a job, he’s got his own apartment, now he’s paying taxes like the rest of us – instead of our taxes paying for him to rot in jail!

Vicky knows how much Ryan took away from the experience. She says that she gained, too.

VICKY RUVOLO:

I got my life, what better gift is there? And I was just glad that I could do that for him.

Right now, Ryan’s outcome is the exception and not the norm. But more and more restorative justice programs are being implemented across the country. And in New York City, the method is even being introduced in some schools.

Christie Thorne, Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: Another way to help former inmates re-enter society is through religious groups. Re-entering society after imprisonment can be difficult on the former inmate and his or her family. Amber Binion visited Riverside Memorial Church where religious organizations met to discuss the most effective ways to help ex-convicts find jobs.

Champion Jon Jones, top, lands an elbow against Chael Sonnen during their UFC 159 Mixed Martial Arts light heavyweight title bout in Newark, N.J., Saturday, April 27,2013. Professional mixed martial arts is illegal in New York. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: Mixed Martial Arts is one of the fastest-growing sports in America. But New York is one of only two states where the sport is banned. Tony Maglio tells us why 2013 may be the year that this changes. Or possibly why it won’t be.

If you’ve never seen a mixed martial arts — or MMA — match before, it can be tough to watch.

[Bring up UFC 121 ambi]

At a 2010 event in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC – which is the “big league” of mixed martial arts — the heavy weight champion is about to lose his title. The challenger and soon-too-be-champ is on top, hammer punching his face and head. There is blood on the mat, all the champ’s. He has a bad cut under his left eye. It’s over quickly. A first-round knock out.

It is this kind of spectacle that led New York legislators to ban professional combat sports in 1997. In 2000, the legislature also cracked down on amateur bouts.

[Fade out UFC ambi]

[Bring up gym ambi]

But that has not put a damper on the dreams of Anthony Pipola. At a gym in midtown, he sees becoming a pro MMA fighter as a way out of his current life.

[Fade down gym ambi]

Pipola: “Currently I dig holes for a living…and it kind of sucks. So I’d rather much try to beat the sh** out of people for a living.”

Pipola’s 31-years-old and from Queens. He’s currently 2-0 as an amateur.

Pipola: “The fighting’s the easy part, the training sucks. The dieting, the conditioning, the strength training, the living like a Buddhist disciple, pretty much removed from everybody and just concentrating on what you have to do – that’s the hard part. The nine minutes of fighting is easy.”

[Bring up gym ambi]

Pipola alternates between two-minute rounds on the heavy bag and wrestling with his coach. He trains six days a week for his next amateur fight on May 25 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But he would rather fight in New York.

[Fade out gym ambi]

Some legislators, like Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman, want to keep the sport illegal.

Hoylman: “The reason I’m concerned about mixed martial arts is because I have a two-year-old daughter and the main venues where mixed martial arts at a professional level would be held are in my district.” 

And there are activists on Hoylman’s side. One group hosts a web site called UnfitForChildren.org. Let’s break those initials down: “U-F-C.” The site accuses Ultimate Fighting Championship of sexism and homophobia, and accused one of its stars of having made a ‘how-to’ rape video.”

Mixed Martial Arts can be dangerous, too. Aspiring pro Anthony Pipola certainly has had a few injuries.

Pipola: “Uch, about 7,341.”

all sarcasm aside…

Pipola: “None during fighting, all during training and my conditioning routines. Three broken noses, broken ribs, sprained my back, sprained my knee…

Since MMA in New York is illegal, any bouts that do occur are unregulated. Stephen Koepher is Pipola’s coach and owner of the New York Sambo gym. He says that means anything can happen.

Koepher: “There was an incidence where a gentleman fought on an unregulated show in New York, and he was banned by the Association of Boxing Commissions for having hepatitis. So he couldn’t fight anywhere else, but he fought here in New York where nobody cared to check.”

And that’s not even as bad as it gets. In the past year alone, there have been three deaths in amateur mixed martial arts. Last month, a 35-year-old fighter collapsed and died following an amateur bout in Michigan. There was no doctor on site.

Koepher and other critics of the New York State ban say that legalizing the sport would make it much safer.

Koepher: “And New York right now having a blank slate, actually has an opportunity to make some really important changes.”

It could also be a boon to the state’s economy: The UFC’s own study estimates that legalizing and regulating MMA in New York State would bring in $23 million annually and create over 200 new jobs.

In 2013, for the fourth straight year, the state legislature has taken up a bill to legalize the sport. The past three efforts failed. This year’s bill has passed through the senate and into the assembly. That’s where it sits now.

The reason the bill has been shot down over and over is … a union dispute 2500 miles away.

Culinary Union Local 226 is by far the largest union in Nevada. And it’s locked in a battle with the Fertitta brothers, who own Station Casinos in Las Vegas. The National Labor Relations Board found Station Casinos violated U.S. labor law 82 times in efforts to block the Culinary Union from organizing its employees. Stephen Koepher of New York Combat Sambo says there’s one more thing the Fertitta’s own…

Koepher: “They are also the owners of he UFC. So their beef in Nevada has dragged its way over here to New York. So both parties are sort of using New York MMA as a proxy battleground to take shots at each other. And New York, being a union-friendly state, obviously has some ears that are listening to what the union is having to say.”

New York Legislators are listening because this culinary union is a part of a larger union, UNITE HERE, which has a major presence in New York. Sources with knowledge of the situation in Albany confirm that it is union pressure that has killed the bill to legalize MMA in the past.

And remember that website “UnfitForChildren” which bashes the Ultimate Fighting Championship? That website is connected to Culinary Union Local 226. Though you’d really only know that if you emailed them. Which Uptown Radio did. No one at the website responded to multiple requests for comment, nor did the culinary union or UNITE HERE.

The bill is still up for consideration as the legislative calendar year approaches its summer recess.  And some backers are hopeful. But with only about four weeks left for the bill to get going, other backers say they’ve used up all of their optimism in the past.

Tony Maglio, Columbia Radio News.

Activists assemble on the steps of City Hall, May 3, 2013. They’re backing city and state bills that would create more oversight of the NYPD and ban the use of condoms as evidence in sex work prosecutions. (Camilo Vargas/Uptown Radio)

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO:

A New York State Senate Bill would ban the NYPD to stop using condoms as evidence of sex work, and a City Council bill would create a new NYPD oversight office. Activists for the bills gathered at City Hall to support the measures. Camilo Vargas reports.

——-

A bundle of legislation to reform the way the NYPD operates is currently making its way in the State Council. It’s called the Community Safety Act, and among its measures is the creation of an Inspector General for NYPD Oversight. The Measure has been endorsed by Mayoral Candidates Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio. But the measure is opposed by current Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. They claim that the bill would add more bureaucracy to NYPD oversight.

At noon today, human rights, public health and anti stop and frisk organizations gathered at City Hall to push for passage of the Community Safety Act. They support the act because they believe it will end what they call police profiling of LGBTQ communities of color. And that it will end the NYPD’s practice of using condoms as evidence of sex work.

[Ambi of protesters chanting “Safe needles saves lives”]

Activists chant on the steps of City Hall protesting against the NYPD. They’re a coalition of HIV Aids, LGBT and human rights groups that oppose the city’s stop and frisk measures. They claim the NYPD confiscates condoms and needles, and use them as evidence to arrest and charge people of prostitution and drug use. A transgender hispanic woman gives her testimony for the crowd.

Transgender witness:

Porque en mi caso personal cuando yo iba para un club me arrestaron por andar un condon en mi bolsa.

She says she was arrested for carrying a condom in her bag as she headed for a club. She fears being arrested for carrying condoms sh   e got at a city health center. She is one of the cases documented by a study by Human Rights Watch. The human rights group interviewed 125 sex workers, LGBT individuals and outreach organizations, and found that because of the NYPD’s use of condoms as evidence, people at high risk of infections are afraid of carrying them.

Margaret Worth:

That the condoms that they have on them at the time can be considered evidence by police and by prosecutors.

That’s Margaret Worth, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch at the press conference. She says people in communities at high risk of HIV and STD infections sometimes believe that there’s a limit to the number of condoms they can carry, so that the NYPD doesn’t prosecute them for sexworkers.

Elizabeth Worth:

There’s absolutely no legal limit to the number of condoms a person can carry on them. Condoms are not contraband.

Elizabeth Lavenger, a spokesperson for the gay men’s health crisis says the measure of confiscating and using condoms as evidence of sex work contradicts the city’s policies of promoting condom use. The city’s health department actually hands out condoms for free. But what the city giveth, the city taketh away.

Elizabeth Lavenger:

People take those condoms and then almost immediately taken by the Police. So it’s money wasted that could be used to prevent infections.

The activists claim that these infection have led to a recent health crisis. Health officials recently documented meningitis and syphilis outbreaks among men who have sex with men in New York City. They also continue to record higher than average HIV infection rates in this group.

The organizations are also pushing for passage of the State Senate Bill sponsored by Senator Velmanette Montgomery, that would ban the use of condoms as evidence of sex work. The bill has received the endorsement of several public officials, including Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Haley. George Artz is the DA spokesperson:

George Artz:

The District Attorney has assigned his LGBT liaison to work with Senator Montgomery’s staff to support a bill prohibiting the use of condoms as evidence.

The bill is garnering support in the New York State Senate. Activists expect it will be ready for passage later this year.

Camilo Vargas, Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: Today is World Press Freedom Day. Journalists from South America gathered on the campus of Columbia University today to debate one of the continent’s most heated disputes between a government and journalists. It pits Argentina’s left-wing government against a media conglomerate that opponents say has grown too big and too powerful. Alexandra Hall reports.

[CLARIN LOGO AMBI]

Clarín is Argentina’s biggest and most influential multimedia conglomerate. It has 44% of the market share in Argentina. Argentineans consume more news produced by Clarín than any other media company. Four years ago, the government said that media in the country was too concentrated, making it impossible for smaller broadcasters to compete. So it enacted a law to break down monopolies and increase the number of voices in the media. It requires Clarín to get rid of most of its holdings. But the company says its being unfairly targeted, according to Miguel Winaski, editor of El Clarín newspapers.

MIGUEL WINASKI: They feel fear of our investigations. Freedom of speech is under attack, so and we are under attack as journalists.

But Damian Loreti disagrees. He’s Secretary of the Center of Legal and Social Studies, an Argentine human rights NGO, and he helped draft the law.

DAMIEN LORETI: In Argentina, there is no press restrictions, there is no censorship, there is no journalists killed, there is no journalists imprisoned.

Clarín’s first reaction when the law was enacted four years ago was to take legal action, but it was unsuccessful. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that a federal appeals court granted Clarín’s request saying that clauses of the law, which apply to the company, are unconstitutional violations of private property rights. This was a triumph for supporters of Clarín, who argue that it has been unfairly singled out for political reasons. Columbia University political science professor Victoria Murillo isn’t convinced.

VICTORIA MURILLO: I don’t know to what extent their fear is warranted. Monopolies are not good anywhere, so in that sense, the law is not bad, it’s good.

She thinks that Clarín is a monopoly.

MURILLO: What’s bad is that the enforcement of the law is uneven in the sense that there are other monopolies and the government doesn’t seem to be paying attention to those.

This would have been a rare opportunity for representatives of Clarín and the leftist administration of President Christina Kirchner to talk openly about media reform. But no government representatives were present. Roberto Saba is Dean of Palermo University School of Law in Buenos Aires. He says that’s one reason why the conflict is still ongoing.

ROBERTO SABA: The big media and the government cannot even talk to each other. Which makes things very difficult.

Columbia University will make one more effort to bring the two sides together again this fall.

Alexandra Hall, Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: Street musicians can be found almost anywhere in New York City. Classical musicians, however, are just a bit harder to find for reasons many believe have to due with the challenges  the industry faces. But as Matthew Vann reports, one classical pianist is reviving this old art form one note at a time.

It’s 8:15 on a Saturday morning at Washington Square Park. Vinny Longo and a friend are moving a baby grand piano off a pickup truck.

[FADE UP AMBI: Vinny Moving Piano]

They’re assembling the piano for what will be a very long day of playing by the instrument’s owner: 35 year-old Colin Huggins.

[FADE UP AMBI: Assembling Piano]  

They turn the piano over and screw in the legs. After a half hour, the piano is assembled. The pianist, Colin Huggins is red-haired, with music notes tattooed to his finger knuckles. He tunes the instrument himself.

[FADE UP AMBI: Colin Tuning the Piano.]

He sits at the keyboard, closes his eyes and plays.

[PIANO AMBI IN FULL]

He opens with Consolation No. 3 by 19th century composer Franz Liszt.

[FADE UP AMBI & UNDER NARR: Sound from piano]

In a matter of minutes, a small crowd gathers. Huggins turns this otherwise noisy park into a concert hall.

[FADE UP AMBI & UNDER NARR: Last Note and Applause]

As he takes in the applause, some from the crowd approach to drop dollar bills in the two buckets Huggins placed at each end of the piano.  Others linger for the next piece.

[PIANO AMBI IN FULL THEN FADE UNDER NARR]

He’s now playing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. This music is his passion.

COLIN HUGGINS: These pieces are beautiful. And if they’re presented in the right way I think people will totally take them.  

Huggins lives solely off of the monetary donations he gets from playing in the park on weekends. And he’s found the life of a solo classical street performer to be tough.

COLIN HUGGINS:  I can pay my rent. I can get enough food to eat. But I can’t unfortunately afford health care or a car or to buy myself my own home.

Other classical musicians teach, play freelance gigs or work in orchestras, but aren’t  necessarily more prosperous than a street musician like Huggins. That’s because the industry of classical music is in crisis.

DAVID GEBER: We have strikes, we have lockouts, we have bankruptcies, we have scaling down in terms of personnel.  And those are really 21st century issues. There were not these problems, 50, 60, 70 years ago.

David Geber is a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the audience for classical music has declined by 30% since the 1980s. And because audiences have dropped, hiring with orchestras and arts institutions have slowed.  But despite that, Colin Huggins still landed a job. He worked for a while as an accompanist at the American Ballet Theatre in New York. But it wasn’t what he wanted.

COLIN HUGGINS: I want to be performing. I want to be the center of attention. I want to be preparing big classical pieces and not just working on the accompaniment.

That’s why playing on the weekends is so important for Huggins. Once he’s reeled in a listener with music, he’s got them hooked.

[FADE UP AMBI: If you like that piece of music I have it here on a CD feel free to come grab one anytime.]

And they do come to grab one. Sometimes, even more than one.

[FADE UP AMBI: Exchange between Colin and Listener]

He says the key to his success as a classical music performer is knowing which pieces to play. That’s something he says more classical musicians should be aware of.

COLIN HUGGINS: If you end up forcing boring music on people and get angry at them then they say this is boring when they say they don’t wanna listen to this. It’s gonna be a wreck and that’s what classical musicians end up doing a lot of the time.

Unlike popular music, classical music isn’t heard as widely. Because listenership declined, public radio stations dropped classical music programming for more news and talk. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, there are only 19 commercial classical music stations nationwide. To reverse this trend, some performers are combining classical music with other music genres. Allan Kozinn,  a New York Times music critic, says that’s working.

ALLAN KOZINN: Now you have an audience of young people going to what is in effect new classical music. Liking it because it speaks a language that is not that different from pop language but incorporates classical elements and classical sounds.

And that’s an audience Huggins is trying to attract. On the days he’s not playing in Washington Sq. Park, Huggins is busy composing new classical music from his home studio.

[FADE UP AMBI & UNDER: Huggins Composing and Playing Excerpts]

This time, he’s branching out beyond the piano to compose a piece for strings, guitar, and voice.

[FADE UP AMBI & UNDER: Huggins Composing and Playing Excerpts]

COLIN HUGGINS: I play a lot of the same music in the park but I’m aware of it and I’m trying to learn new things and keep developing it.

And it is, perhaps, that desire from listeners to hear new works that will sustain classical music in spite of its challenges.  Matthew Vann. Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: Commentator Tenzin Shakya has been hearing stories about her family’s homeland, Tibet since she was a little girl. She says her grandfather’s stories have shaped how she thinks about Tibet — and its occupation by China.

It was 4 o’clock in the morning when my grandfather, Popo Sonam, awoke me. “It’s time to go for kora,” he said.  Kora is a Buddhist practice of praying and walking in circles, usually around a temple. I got dressed, put on a t-shirt and chupa, the traditional dress that Tibetan people wear.  since I was visiting my grandfather in Nepal, where many of Tibetan elders live, I decided to dress in proper attire. Also to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of old Tibetans starring me down and calling me “inji,” which means foreigner.  Of course as soon as Popo Sonam saw me with the t-shirt underneath my chupa instead of the traditional silk shirt, he insisted that I change. “If you’re going to wear the chupa, wear it right,” he said. “and while you’re at it, go braid your hair,” .

I argued against it. “Popo Sonam, times have changed and you must learn that we are not required to walk around with braids.” Little did I know, that an argument about braids would help me to understand my family’s history.

My family fled Tibet in 1960, a year after China invaded. Five years later, my grandfather traveled back to Tibet. He hoped that he would find it safe to return. Instead, he was captured by Chinese soldiers and forced to work in labor camps for 6 months. He had to plow fields, and clean up rubble left by the war. He had been a farmer in Tibet, so the work didn’t bother him. What really hurt him was being told by a young Chinese soldier to kneel, and remain still as he chopped off my Popo’s long braids. Traditionally, Tibetan men kept their hair in braids, too, wrapped around their head. For Popo Sonam, the braids represented his devotion to a centuries-old cultural tradition. But for the soldier, it represented the “old ways.”

Growing up as a Tibetan refugee, I’d heard much worse stories.  I’ve wept as Tibetan nuns shared their stories of being raped in prison by Chinese soldiers, while monks were forced to watch. They were political prisoners because they demanded freedom.

It’s hard not to resent the Chinese government.

Popo Sonam is a constant reminder of why I am hopeful about the future of Tibet. Popo Sonam never re-grew his braids but he did escape the camps six months later in 1965. And, he did it with the help of a young Buddhist Chinese soldier who empathized with his longing to be reunited with his family.

I’ve tried to visit Tibet twice; both times I was denied entry.  But when I listen to Popo’s stories, I travel. He is a window into a world I may never get to see.  Popo Sonam gives me hope, inspires me with his wisdom and compassion. He always tells me to focus on the good.

He’s old now, and every time I talk to him, he says his time is coming.

I fear his passing. Not only because I would lose my last remaining grandfather, but, because it would mean that the stories would come to an end.

BACK ANNOUNCE: Tenzin Shakya is planning a journey back to Tibet with her grandfather, soon.

Teachers lead a music class at the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church in the Bronx, Apr. 20, 2013. Some observers say growing Latino churches are the future of Evangelical Christianity. (Sonia Paul/Uptown Radio)

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST: Some Evangelical Christians have embraced comprehensive immigration reform in recent months. It’s a huge shift for the group, usually conservative in its politics. An influx of Latino congregants has pushed the church into changing its stance. Sonia Paul reports.

It was a week and a half ago, the day the Senate released its eight hundred and forty-four page draft bill for comprehensive immigration reform.

[AMBI: Rev. Salguero singing at the worship service in DC. [Let rise and play for seven seconds, then fade under and float under narration.]

Just blocks away from the Capital, at the Church of Reformation, an audience was singing a closing hymn . A giant screen at the front showed the people who came to preach and perform. They were clapping their hands and stomping their feet.

[Bring up more ambi.]

Latinos, Blacks, and a few Asians. But most of them appeared to be white.

They were Evangelical Christians. And they came here from all over the country to lobby Congress on immigration reform.

[LET AMBI RISE UP A LITTLE BIT FOR A FEW MORE SECONDS, THEN FADE DOWN]

They were calling the day a National Day of Prayer and Action on immigration. A group that calls itself the Evangelical Immigration Table organized the event.

[Fade out AMBI HERE]

Evangelicals aren’t the most likely supporters of immigration reform. Take Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee. In the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, he advocated strict controls.

ACT: MIKE HUCKABEE AUDIO

What we need to do is have a border that is sealed, and the same kind of process that we have if we go through a stadium — we go in one at a time, and we have a ticket.

His views were mainstream Republican at the time. Pew research Center reports show white Evangelicals overwhelmingly supported the Republican party in the last three presidential elections. But now, residents in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Florida — all conservative states — can hear ads like this one coming through their airwaves.

ACT: FLORIDA AD AUDIO

But our dysfunctional immigration system breaks up families and causes suffering. Christ calls all of us to compassion and justice.

That focus on compassion and justice is the selling point of the two-year-old Evangelical Immigration Table. It’s an umbrella organization for several Evangelical and social justice groups in support of immigration reform.

Evangelical pastor Gabriel Salguero chairs the group. He’s the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. In January, under his leadership, the Evangelical Immigration Table developed a bold message on immigration.

ACT: SALGUERO PRAYER CHALLENGE

We worked on a campaign called I was a Stranger. And we engaged just hundreds of Evangelical churches and tens of thousands of Evangelical Christians to read the bible and pray.

The Table put out radio ads in areas with large Evangelical populations — and released YouTube ads, like this one, of prominent Evangelical leaders reciting a well-known verse from the Book of Michael.

ACT: I WAS A STRANGER CAMPAIGN AUDIO

For I was a stranger, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.

I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.

I was a stranger.

I was a stranger.

I was a stranger.

(In Spanish)

I was a stranger. And you invited me in.

I needed clothes, and you clothed me.

[AMBI FROM OUTSIDE THE DC CHURCH]

Back in Washington, people outside the Church of Reformation are saying their goodbyes after a long day of lobbying on immigration. Others inside the church are still singing.

David Beckmann is a white Lutheran pastor and economist. He says it’s about time Christians unite for immigration reform — because the connection between the bible and the public policy issue is clear.

ACT: BECKMAN BIBLE MESSAGE

Cause the bible over and over again talks about doing right, being kind to widows, orphans and immigrants. Duh! (laughs). Cause immigrants are always kind of shuddered aside, they don’t ever have full rights.

But it’s not just biblical passages reminding Evangelicals of their call to duty. Reports indicate there are now nearly eight million Hispanic Evangelicals in the United States. That’s about 15 percent of the overall Evangelical population.

[AMBI OF MUSIC CLASS]

At the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church in New York, Latinos are the majority of students at the church’s weekend music class. They make up practically the entire church population.

ACT: MORELBA BRONX CHURCH POPULATION

There are people Dominican, Puerto Rican, from Hondorus, Ecuadorian…

That’s eighteen year old Morelba Fernandez. She’s at her church in the Bronx most days of the week, leading the youth ministry or assisting the music classes.

[AMBI OF MUSIC CLASS]

Or, advocating for immigration reform.

ACT: MORELBA

We also go to marches about immigration, like the Dream Act. A lot of teenagers, we go, because that’s very important for us.

Some observers say growing all-Latino churches like Fernandez’s are the future of Evangelical Christianity. Their support of immigration reform is hardly surprising.

[FADE OUT AMBI OF MUSIC CLASS]

Pew research polls show over 85 percent of Hispanic evangelicals support immigration reform. In comparison, just over half of white Evangelicals support the cause.

But that’s still a big change for the white Evangelical community. A few years ago, only a quarter of them polled supported immigration.

ACT: CRUZ

Hi, I’m Samuel Cruz.

Samuel Cruz is a sociologist of religion at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He says the Latino Evangelical influence is the biggest reason Evangelicals are now embracing immigration.

ACT: CRUZ

In fact, Focus on the Family, which is one of the big conservative right-wing organizations in this country, is supporting immigration reform. And they know why they’re doing it. They’re catering to their huge constituency of Latinos within the Evangelical community.

The Senate is expected to debate the provisions of the immigration bill in coming weeks. Observers say that if Evangelicals maintain unity, they just might help tip the scale on passing immigration reform.

Sonia Paul, Columbia Radio News.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST: George Jones, the iconic and influential country star of the (nineteen sixties) 1960s and  (seventies) 70s passed away today. He had a storied career, releasing 60 albums and piling up hundreds of hit songs like “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST: Jessica Gould got married twice in one year. And she says it took two ceremonies to understand what a wedding is all about.

NARR: Michael proposed in early spring 2009. It was sunset, at the water’s edge in Annapolis Maryland. We kissed and walked the cobble stone streets, hand in hand, peaceful and in love. We knew just what we wanted. A long engagement of about a year and a half with a simple wedding, maybe about 30 people, sometime in the fall.

But my parents had their own ideas. My dad suggested getting hitched at the Harvard Club. My mom filled an accordion file with ads for Amsala dresses, Tiffany wedding bands, All Clad cookware and fine china. It seemed like every day she had a new dish to discuss, but I wasn’t interested. Finally I told her that if she mentioned china one more time, I’d go there and never come back.

You see, Michael and I considered ourselves to be a pretty low-maintenance couple. Our ideal evening involves eating takeout and watching the Bachelor. And yet, as the months wore on, we found ourselves mired in debates over bands versus DJs and chocolate instead of red velvet cake. The guest list ballooned and so did our budget. By winter we had put down money on an old mansion outside D.C. and hired a caterer. We were expecting about 150 guests in October.

Then my grandmother, Nanny found out she had cancer. Nanny and I spoke nearly every day, and she was the first to embrace Michael as part of our family. If she was going to see us get married, we had to do it fast. So the arguments about cake and cutlery melted away as the family swung into action. We began to plan a small pre-wedding wedding, for close relatives, in my uncle’s backyard.

It was a damp day in late April when Nanny and I went to get our hair done by the man who had styled her faux blond bouffant for more than 25 years. Then I slipped on the simple white dress I bought at J. Crew, linked arms with my parents and walked across the grass to meet my husband. Nanny’s 90 year-old friend Jake played a Bach solo on the viola. Nanny read a sonnet by Shakespeare: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Michael and I promised to love each other, in success and failure, illness and health.

Under a small tent on the patio, we drank champagne and sunk our forks into my mother’s homemade blueberry pie. Nanny said she had never been happier or felt better. Maybe her doctors were wrong and she’d make it to the big wedding in October after all. But just three days later, she had a heart attack. And a month later she was gone. After that, there were no more fights over table cards and cake flavors. I didn’t register for fine china and inherited Nanny’s platters instead. And I began to embrace the October wedding as a celebration of and for family and friends.

When Michael and I got engaged in Annapolis four years ago, I thought our wedding was supposed to be about us, our love, our tastes and preferences. But what I learned along the way is that weddings — and even marriages — aren’t just about the couple. They’re about family — the family that came before, the family you build, and the family you leave behind. And that’s the most romantic thing of all.

HOST: Jessica Gould and Michael Pellegrino will celebrate their third anniversary next week. They aren’t planning another wedding. But they haven’t ruled it out.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO:

Early next year,The Tonight Show will be coming back to the city where it all began more than 50 years ago: New York. The city’s comedians are already getting excited that this move could be their big break. Tony Maglio reports.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO:

For commentator Stephanie Kuo, family is everything.  Two years ago, she and her sister found a way to get even closer by honoring their father.

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO:

Masterpieces can fetch millions of dollars at arthouse auctions. So if you’re about to buy a Van Gogh or Monet, you probably want to be absolutely sure it’s the real thing. And as Katherine Jacobsen reports, computer analysis is changing the way that art experts can detect a fake.

Photograph by Richard Corman of Madonna and a group of boys in the Lower East Side, 1982. The photo is part of a series on display at the Times Square W Hotel until May 12

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO: As a pop icon, Madonna is known for being, well, revealing. Now a new photo exhibit gives fans some additional insight into the star.  Alexandra Hall has the details.

ALEXANDRA HALL: Black and white portraits of Madonna are all over the lobby of the W Hotel in Times Square. In one, she’s on a rooftop with a group of scowling, school-aged boys in tough, cut-off jeans. She’s the only one smiling, holding a boom box with one hand behind her head. In another, she lies on a rock in jeans and studded belts. Photographer Richard Corman shot the photos of Madonna at her Lower East Side apartment in 1982- and they’ve never been shown. Jody is a journalist from Australia staying at the W hotel with her children. Looking at the photos, what stands out to her most is Madonna’s trend-setting style.

JODY: The armbands and the bangles, the hair with the tie, the makeup, um and the torn jeans. You know, so it was just that look.

HALL: Her young son Amon stands nearby.

AMON: From looking at these pictures, I think she kind of looks like almost wild and out there.

HALL: Like a good wild?

AMON: Yeah, different to today’s wild.

HALL: Looking at the photographs, Jody notices a difference between pop artists in the 1980’s and now.

JODY: Especially looking at these photos, you know, it came from Madonna. It didn’t seem to be that somebody else found her and made her into something else that she wasn’t already.

HALL: Jason Knowles and Pedro Vabuena are also in the lobby. Knowles says that Madonna was ahead of her time.

JASON KNOWLES: She was very cutting edge. What she was singing about and all that was what other people were thinking but she was actually doing what other people were thinking.

HALL: What was she singing about?

KNOWLES: (whisper) Sex! And provocativeness and freedom.

HALL: The two reminisce about the first time they saw her.

KNOWLES: He and I saw Madonna in concert back in 1981 or 2 at a place called Club Illusions in Hialeah, Florida.

PEDRO VABUENA: It was pretty awesome to see her like that because it was before she was famous, it was a small nightclub, it cost 5 dollars to get in.

HALL: Jody Britt is the head of photographer relations and sales at Rock Paper Photo- that’s the group that’s curating the show. She says that the photographer Richard Corman and Madonna met purely by luck.

BRITT: His mother was a casting director. She was casting a film for martin Scorsese- a remake of Cinderella, and Madonna had come in as one of the potential actresses. And Richard’s mother said, you need to shoot this girl.

HALL: She didn’t end up acting in the film. Their photo shoot was one year before Madonna released her first, self-titled album- the one that made her famous. Pedro Vabuena says the photos remind him of what he likes about music from that time.

VABUENA: If you listened to the lyrics that they had back then, it had more meaning and it had something to it.

HALL: The photos will be on display at the Times Square W Hotel lobby until May 12.

Alexandra Hall, Columbia Radio News.

(TIME 2:58)