Marcie Sillman
12/15/2011

Art museums are dignified repositories for cultural artifacts, right? A new show at the Seattle Art Museum questions that assumption, and slips in a little R&B at the same time. KUOW’s Marcie Sillman reports.

*****

It’s a chilly Sunday morning. The Seattle Art Museum, SAM, has been open for an hour or so, but people are just starting to trickle in. Things are pretty quiet until you take the escalator up to the second floor.

Marcie Sillman: “You can hear the music at SAM before you actually get to the gallery.”

Jazz wafts down the hall as enticing as the aroma of freshly–baked cookies. Follow your ears and you’ll find the audio chef: a young woman in a yellow sweater with a set of headphones on top of her red hat.

That’s DJ Ayana Contreras. She’s spinning discs on two turntables built into a wooden cabinet set up in the middle of the gallery.

Contreras: “Sometimes I use the metaphor or these two turntables as pots, and I’m cooking. Come on in, come to the pot and sniff it, and ask me, and I’ll tell you about the bay leaf I just put on.”

Contreras chooses the ingredients for her tuneful stew from a collection of 5,000 long–playing albums (LPs). For those of you too young to remember, music was recorded and pressed into 12–inch vinyl discs in the pre–digital days. The records are filed in a specially–made nook in the art gallery’s back wall.

Theaster Gates: “It’s a kind of canon of black music, you know; that it covers gospel, jazz, blues, disco, early R&B, later hip–hop.”

That’s Theaster Gates, the artistic mind behind this installation. He calls it “The Listening Room.” Gates bought the records from a store in Chicago, when it went out of business about a year ago. For him, the albums are as much about ideas as they are about tunes.

Gates: “I’m really interested in how do we take stock of moments of cultural loss, like when a record store goes out of business.”

Gates hopes the music will jumpstart conversation about those moments. But this show is about more than a record collection.

Visitors lured into the gallery by the music may notice what look like tapestries made of coarse fabric on the walls across from the albums. The fabric is actually strips of firehoses.

Theaster Gates calls these “Civil Rights Tapestries.” They refer to an infamous 1963 event in Birmingham, Alabama. The chief of police ordered his officers to blast water from similar hoses at peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

Sandra Jackson–Dumont: “I think that’s one of the most exciting aspects of this show.”

Sandra Jackson–Dumont is Seattle Art Museum’s deputy director for education and public programs, and the adjunct curator for this exhibition.

Jackson–Dumont: “People will see something in there, will recognize so much of it, and be introduced to political, social and historical moments through music, through these objects.”

Jackson–Dumont loves Gates’ ideas about the role art plays in fostering community conversation. They dovetail perfectly with her goal of making Seattle Art Museum a crossroads for people from all types of backgrounds. She wants to create singular memorable experiences for museumgoers.

Jackson–Dumont: “Museums have to be places where people feel so inspired to come back over and over again because they’re trying to create that moment they had the last time over and over. So I’m personally, and as an institution, we are completely invested in creating these, like, critical moments that I have to say they are not always comfortable.”

Both Sandra Jackson–Dumont and Theaster Gates want to extend “The Listening Room” beyond the museum walls. To that end, SAM has set up a temporary satellite installation in Pioneer Square, and Gates wants people to encounter musical moments all over the city.

Gates: “Our hope is to identify sites that would be interesting for some of the music to show up at, to engage folk in political listening, the idea that people could come together and reflect on important moments together using the album as a minister, if you will.”

Back at the Seattle Art Museum, Sandra Jackson–Dumont and DJ Ayana Contreras are grooving to The Four Tops. Jackson–Dumont spots a young boy eyeing the records along the wall. She pulls out a copy of “Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits” and hands it to him.

Jackson–Dumont: “So you’ve never held a record before, huh?”

The boy eyes the vinyl dubiously. His dark eyes are wide.

Jackson–Dumont: “So, hold it like that; pull it out. Hold it like a pizza. Hold it, though.”

The boy’s mother snaps a photo on her phone.

Mother: “That was monumental event for him to hold his first LP.”

It’s a pop culture artifact that has almost faded into memory. Sandra Jackson–Dumont watches with a wide grin.

And, as if it was planned, DJ Ayana Contreras cranks up a song to match the moment.

I’m Marcie Sillman, KUOW News.

© Copyright 2011, KUOW

The graphic at left is a cobbling of two photos I created to illustrate that what comes next for radio is not ‘radio’, yet radio will be the seed to something completely unique.

In previous posts, I’ve laid out various underserved (and thus, untapped) radio audiences.  So, what’s the natural progression?  What of so-called new media?  One of the reasons why I targeted the more plugged-in demographics of minorities is because multi-platform communications are now a way of life for them.  That is not to say that radio is obsolete, in their minds.

It’s been said that radio is dying; but that’s been said before.  What saved it? Innovation in format.  Today, the natural progression is innovation in format and multi-platform flexibility.

Why can’t a radio service blog, tweet, and text with the best of them?  It would keep the service forward-leaning and responsive in a way that mere broadcasting cannot.  It also lowers the bar for participation.  Participation is paramount in reimagined radio.  So is content overload.

Participation because as we mentioned earlier, the most technically savvy are the most prone to feeling a need for tangible community.

Content Overload because it is expected.  Younger folks in general have the expectation of unlimited choice in media consumption at their fingertips.  YouTube alone houses unknown millions of media clips.

These are two tandem (yet distinct) desires of the Wired Generation.  How can ‘old media’ accommodate them?  Take a cue from the project I am currently working on: Vocalo.org.

One thing Vocalo.org does very well is straddle new and old media (it is a website as well as a terrestrial public radio station).  It tweets and it blogs.  It juliennes.  What we have learned, though, is that many folks are strictly on-line community members, while many listen to the signal and never venture to the site.    There is, of course, a continuum of use, and a number of reasons for the usage patterns (no signal in their region on one end, intermittent internet access on the other).

Each platform (old & new media) gives audience a distinct experience:

Vocalo.org (the website) gives audience the chance to tailor their listening experience, choosing from various categories of user-uploaded content (not unlike YouTube).  They could even upload their own content (consisting of audio, photo, text, or video (not unlike a Facebook upload).  Additionally, they can network with other audience members via the social networking interface, comment in the Shoutbox (an Instant Message box with questions tied to the live broadcast) and they can listen live to a stream of the broadcast.

Vocalo.org (the radio station) gives audiences a hosted listening experience of content culled from the website and mixed with music and topical conversation.  It allows access through a hotline (that is on during all live broadcast hours), and the potential to be guests  Additionally, responses on the Shoutbox are often read over the air) as are responses to Tweets, Myspace, and Facebook updates from the hosts).

So, again, I say: What’s the natural progression?  Vocalo.org was born because Chicago Public Radio was (and is) keenly aware of many of the audience and media trends listed in posts below.  At Vocalo.org’s inception, it was identified as a service for people of color, teen to middle-aged.  Unfortunately, as the aesthetics have been in a state of constant evolution, that target audience was not evident.  Vocalo.org was also identified as a project whose purpose was to use new and old media in a compelling, audience-driven way.  I applaud the attempt to integrate new media and old in a degree that has seldom been seen.  I further applaud the idea of a station targeting “those underserved and underrepresented by traditional media outlets”.  Unfortunately, these are two distinct missions.  How to integrate the two into a sound and web product that sounds cohesive (and yet fulfills both missions?).

Ah, that’s the rub…..

Let’s return to the dual desires (or better still, expectations) of the young consumer that I mentioned earlier:

Participation and Content Overload

In reality, the issue is not that these desires are unfulfilled.  The issue is that third and four elements are not named:

Favored Referral and Razzle-Dazzle

Favored Referral

Young people often don’t have one source for news & information or one source for new culture.  They cobble together a bookmark folder full of them (among these are both blogs and “big media”).  But of course, who doesn’t love a favorite plugged-in friend who can fill you in on what the blogosphere is buzzing about (and what they missed on your side of town), who knows about that a quirky art exhibit, or some great pizza for the money, or who’s hiring, or what’s going on with that City contract for work on the street where you live.  The Favored-Word is sometimes hard to find (especially on a local level, and especially for many minority communities).  What if a radio station became Word-of-mouth amplified… with one essential element:

Razzle-Dazzle

Every show I’ve ever produced I called (internally) a circus: not because it was out of control, but because it featured a level of simulated suspense and multiple programming elements going on at once.  Would it all work out?  Would the safety net hold?  I let listeners in on some of the behind the scenes glitches.  But, I never, ever relinquished control of the quality of the show they heard.  Even if every broadcasting element save the mic failed me: the show would go on.  It always sounded firmly warm, personable, and truly for the listener.  Razzle-Dazzle is a combination of things.  It’s not just bells and whistles (i.e. the newest interface).  It’s showmanship, attention to detail, attitude, and connecting with the audience… critical things that are oft missed on media sites that really simple house content.  A spectacular magic trick is crucial, but getting the audience’s heart is absolutely everything.

Who are these people, you may ask… Are they so small a niche that it’s not worth it to target them as potential audience at all?

I like to call them “The Contenders”… these are the forward-thinking, young individuals of color that are “on the grind” daily for a better life.

In more specific terms, the Yankelovic/Radio One Black America Today study (the one that single-handedly debunked earlier definitions of the “digital divide”), identified 4 out of 12 segments of Black America that weren’t being very well targeted.  These four distinct groups make up 31% of the Black population (12.4 million people) :

Black Onliners (45% of these are 18-34, 33% are 25-44, 70% are male, middle to upper socioeconomics)    Heavy web users, this mostly male segment is stressed by their work/life balance and the need to straddle Black and White worlds. They are the most frequent users of Black websites and the most frequent online shoppers.

New Middle Class (66% between 25-44, 60% have at least a 2 year degree)  The best educated, most employed and wealthiest segment is mostly between the ages of 25 and 44 and is the most technologically forward segment. They are the most likely to describe themselves as Black rather than African-American and to believe that problems in the Black community can best be solved by Blacks. They are positive about the future and forward looking.

Digital Networkers (38% are 18-24, 92% under 35, 69% male, middle socioeconomics) Over half of this web savvy, high tech, mobile segment are college or high school students who ‘network’ heavily using Facebook, MySpace, instant messaging and their cell phones. They are saving money – to buy a home or for retirement.

and

Connected Black Teens (almost 2/3 under 18)    They are tech savvy, highly social, brand driven and fans of Black music (Hip Hop and R&B). They have a plan for their future, they want to preserve Black cultural traditions and believe that too much focus is put on the oppression of Blacks.

NOTE: Just because the above groups are exceptionally plugged in, doesn’t mean that they have abandoned radio: be aware, according to Arbitron, African-Americans are by far the most loyal radio listening segment.  For more on this, click here.

Alternately,  a group of interest is the Gen X & Y Latino population, many of whom Code-Switch between Spanish and English the way Blacks switch between Standard English and Black English (some call this group Generation Ñ).  This group has quite a bit in common with the above groups (including a certain level of both assimilation and marginalization).  7.5% of Latinos aged 25-44 are college graduates.  According to Arbitron’s 2008 Hispanic Radio Today Survey, Hispanic listeners aged 18-44 have a weekly cume of about 96% (a very loyal listening group).  Right now, few “general market” radio stations nationally make any concerted effort to reach this specific audience.

Not to be forgotten is the ever growing population of Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders.   In fact,  in total, 34% of U.S. citizens claim minority heritage (according to a 2007 U.S. Census Report), up 11% from the 2000 Census (although part of the reason for that is that 2000 Census considered race and ethnic data as being separate and distinct. One question asked respondents if they were Spanish/Hispanic/Latino or not. Another question asked respondents to report the race or races they considered themselves to be, and “Hispanic/Latino” was not an option).

“Black radio not only doesn’t do news, it doesn’t do art or entertainment very well either.

Commercial broadcasters who aim their programming at black audiences are used to considering us only as a passive market. But if black America is more than a market, if it is a polity, then it’s time to demand that black-oriented media, whoever owns it, serve black communities…..

…Black radio, back in the days when locally produced news coverage was a staple of the medium, played a major role as transmitter and conveyor, as the very circulatory system of public consciousness in African American communities. In 1973 there were as many as 21 reporters from three black radio stations covering national and local affairs in the Washington DC market, providing broadcast constituencies with a rich diet of news and public affairs coverage upon which that community thrived. This was not too different from Atlanta or Chicago or Detroit around the same time.

Well after the decline of black radio news had begun, black talk radio continued to run off the impetus of journalism and the remnant fumes of the movement era. The election of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black and only reform-oriented mayor was made possible by early 80s black talk radio. Those fumes are long gone now….Most station managers would argue that they don’t do news because it’s something their listeners don’t care about. But it’s a choice listeners have never been given.”

Amen.

News & Notes, one of two Black-focused Public Affairs Programs distributed by NPR, was recently canceled. NPR cited that the program received low ratings and did not attract the funding necessary from national sponsors.    Combine that with the fact that it was aired in about 60 markets (at best), and was pulled from large markets like Chicago (the third largest), and Cleveland for underperformance.   At the time of the pull in Chicago (at Chicago Public Radio), then-Program Director Ron Jones (an African-American) stated,

“NPR’s challenge always was to do something that had some appeal to the existing public radio audience, while beginning to serve the African-American public radio audience…That’s a lot to ask.”

Sadly, the program was hiding in plain sight from a core audience that has yet to explore Public Radio.

This creates a perfect segue for briefly discussing a study conducted for Chicago Public Radio by Slover Linett Strategies in 2005.

Key Points:

What keeps people from listening to Chicago Public Radio?

44% of non-listeners had never heard of it.  Ouch. If we are truly serving the whole of the community, how could we be invisible?

23% of non-listeners who tried the station found it to be “boring, dull or dry”

25% preferred music

13% thought the content broadcast didn’t share their views

Back to the woeful tale of “News & Notes”…. I wonder if the program had been broadcast on, say, weekend afternoons on an “Urban” formatted station, it would not have done smashingly.

So, here’s the REMIX…. What if  such news existed in a fresh music based format (not unlike Black Radio of old) but without the Talking Heads, and fully integrated into a music-centric format?  What if, instead of favoring the current editorial slant of the Black Talk format, it became more Narrative (in the sense of the on-going story preferred over the headline) and Progressive (in the sense that collaborative, non-homogeneous thought occurred on-air)?  What if listeners felt as though their authentic voices were being heard?

Back to the Slover Linet Study:

Based on the challenges facing your community, what could a station do to help?

44% offered a range of responses, from:

build awareness in the community about challenges (what is your definition of community?)

bring various sides and points of view together for meaningful discussion (NPR is sadly homogeneous)

provide unbiased information and broad coverage of issues

propose possible solutions (…this one is definitely not what happens much on NPR)

Who’s to say that the phenomenon of underservice only effects Blacks?   What of the so-called Hip Hop Generation (who right now coincide with the 18-44 target age group, and are only growing)? This group is inclusive of many primarily English-speaking Latinos, and Asians, as well.  Because of the historically trendsetting nature of Black Culture (and more broadly, “urban-centric” culture), this is an aesthetic that is primed for crossover appeal.  A ball of wax inclusive of all of these notes would create such a powerful force… I shudder to think of the revolutionary possibility.

NOTE: as of April 11th, 2009,  the number of nationally syndicated Black-centric Programs aired on public radio is two:  Tell Me More with Michel Martin (which does not air in Chicago, Los Angeles, or Boston), and the newly-hewn Michael Eric Dyson Show. (The Michael Eric Dyson Show launched in April, and airs in 18 markets. New York, L.A., and Chicago are not among them.  The Number four market, Houston, does air the show).

The number of Nationally syndicated Latino-centic Programs aired on public radio is one: Latino USA.  This does, however, air in the top four markets.

My argument is not necessarily for more programs, but for a separate format that grapples with the lot of issues from a  minority, younger, and/or urban perspective  without segregating topics to “The Brown Hour” or the “South Asian Hour”.  Who would listen to this?  Please see my study in color and sound: target audiences yet untapped.

Take the model of hip-hop: a completely new and exciting musical genre (not to mention, a cultural phenomenon) built from literal scraps of music that had come before it.  What is to be learned from Hip-Hop?

Hip Hop was created out of lack and fat.  There was a lack of resources: alongside a shortage of Music Education in inner city schools, there was limited  access to instruments (but a wealth of recorded matter).  Conversely, there was a fatness in community… hip hop was born at a party, it was a communal happening that united a neighborhood through sound.

Lesson learned?

Lack and Fat is where we’re at.  We’re lacking a well defined future, but we’ve got a wealth of past.  How can we take Daddy’s record collection and spin it for the people?  REMIX!  To create a sound that people respond to, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel.  Radio has done a lot of things well, but we’ve perhaps strayed from the communal (occasionally gritty) communal experience that made so many people love the medium in the first place.  We MUST return to that communal experience (through events, public involvement, and radio that people care about [told relevantly]***) now more than ever.

David Houle also said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that  ‘marginalization’ is  a dying breed with so many media platforms catering to every group that was at one point marginalized to the corners of society.

He isn’t looking very hard.  The fragmentation of media will ultimately result in an intensified desire for palpable community.  Not just an avatar of some anonymous, like-minded individual; but someone who breathes your same air, pays your same taxes, and is rooted in the place you call home.

This is especially obvious in the African-American Community.  They are almost completely unserved in mainstream media (unless you consider peripheral inclusion, limited choice, and one-dimensional perspective to be service).

Few mainstream publications truly grapple with problems that they deal with every day, fewer still programs on mainstream outlets reflect the diversity they see within themselves.

Radio One’s recent study entitled Black America Today highlighted no fewer than 11 distinct Consumer Groups in the African-American Community (and no Orientalistic singular “Black Experience” to be found).

Yet in Chicago, the third largest Radio market in the country, The only major offerings targeted at blacks 17% of the metropolitan listening area (and 36% of the city’s population) are:

92.3 FM Hip Hop and R&B

107.5 FM Hip Hop and R&B

102.7FM Adult Urban Contemporary

106.3FM Adult Urban Contemporary

1690AM Gospel

1390AM Urban Talk

which equates to a lot of similar programming and not a lot of conversation.  Also note that out of 54 stations with the threshold listening cume of 40,000 per week to appear on Chicago’s Arbitron ratings (as of March 25, 2009), 6 stations (that’s 1/9) serve African-Americans is any consistent capacity.  Fully 7 stations identify themselves as Adult Contemporary or Hot Adult Contemporary.

You top that off with numbers from Arbitron’s 2008 Black Radio Today study that testify to the fact that the weekly cume rating, on average, was a staggering 94.7% for African Americans over the age of 12 in 2007, and 94.4% in 2008.  The low end of this average is the 65 and over group with about 90%, and the high is 25-44 year-olds with an average of 96%.  The view suddenly gets much clearer.

What’s up with that?  It seems no one wants to be the first pearl to fall from the strand.

***relevancy is a simple case of angles.  Almost any topic can become relevant to a subset if said topic is treated with sensitivity to angles.  The trick is to find the sweet spot (the optical illusion, if you will) that satisfies as many subsets as possible, without relying on what’s been historically deemed middle-of-the-road.  We turned the corner while you were fiddling with the dial.

Key Points:

1.) The Color of Evolution

In the slide sequence, it was stated that the more education a person had, the more likely it was that they would listen to public radio

.  It also asserted that Educated people of Color tend to skew younger, with about 15.6% of college graduates aged 25-44 being Black or Hispanic, compared to 10.5% in the 45 and over category

.  Note:  this means that no less than 26% of college grads over the age of 25 are black or Hispanic.  That’s a sizable number, in my mind.

2.) “Marching Orders” include: Optimism, Attitude, Redefinition.

To be certain, marching orders for the nation, but specifically for radio because the sink or swim moment is upon us:

Do we dare be hopeful that this time of lean can bring about unknown innovation (birthed from necessity)?

Do we walk tall, as though we’ve already won?

Do we evolve as we always have, or do we remain in the muck and mire, afraid to try things deemed contradictory to what’s worked in the past?

I for one am not afraid.