Down Home Radio: Statement of Purpose

                               

Through folk and popular music, Down Home Radio will bring to its listeners a true understanding of the peoples of the Americas (North and South America, and the Caribbean) in all their national, regional, and tribal diversity.  We will feature the music of native Americans and the music that has evolved from the British Isles,  Iberian  and African sources as they have changed and interacted with each other through the centuries 
to the present.

At Down Home, we believe that music is a mirror that reflects the fundamental principles of societies. Through melody, rhythm and  words, songs reveal the ways ordinary people  think and feel about the most intimate details of their own personal lives,  their history, laws and customs which define their identity as well as their role in the world around them.   Unfortunately both radio and television have paid scant attention to the importance of  folk and popular music as a social and political document.  Our airways are deluged in their coverage of pop standards, which in the last few decades has been sorely lacking in innovation, and out of touch with reality. Fortunately, Down Home Radio has at its disposal huge collections of recorded music available for broadcast, hidden musical treasures with provocative texts that will surely inspire and stimulate the listener. 

From the United States we plan to explore in depth the many forms of music created on American soil from the early 19th century to the present.  Principally of African and  British origins they interacted  with each other to produce a unique, varied and vigorous musical culture: examples: 19th century minstrel theater, spirituals, work songs, and blues in all their manifestations (vocal, instrumental, regional, individual) country music, political hip-hop, rock, children’s game songs, songs about women,  and  those dealing with American industrialization from the middle of the 19th century to the present enlivened with appropriate commentary on their political, social and historical meaning.

The programs on Latin America and the Caribbean will air music popular in their respective countries but almost unknown in the United States.   Spanish radio  and TV in the United States present almost exclusively pop standards, and a nod to the Tango from Argentina,  Norteño and Mariachi from Mexico, and Salsa from Puerto Rico. Down Home Radio will present music in all its ethnic and historical variety:  native American,   music of  Spanish-Portuguese-British-French origin, and resulting  new musical forms created  in profusion throughout the area.  Examples: 1.  Dance music:  milonga,  cumbia, habanera, samba, danzon, plena, etc. 2.  Native American prehispanic  colonial  and contemporary music. 3.  Instrumental styles:  ensembles and  solo guitar, fiddle and harp  4.  Distinguished soloists:  Soledad Bravo,Victor Jara, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes, Mercedes Sosa, The Parra Family of  Chile,  Judith Reyes, etc.  5.  Historical ballads and songs of  protest and social issues:  La Nova Trova, the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico,  historical ballads . 6.  La Trova:  the romantic tradition, a  Medieval Spanish heritage  alive and well throughout the Iberian world.   

Down Home Radio is conceived as a trail blazer:  to present folk and popular music as a time honored  cultural expression endowed with wisdom, wit, humor, and a vivid sense of humanity, its joys, trials and tribulations.

-Henrietta Yurchenco, NYC 2006