Creative Arts Awakened By Sound

Michael Hedges June 19, 2021 Follow on Twitter

Giving honor and note to instances of the creative propels those who partake into greater bursts of energy. The arts and skills mixed into the creative process are both solitary and engaging. High art isn’t just for The Louvre. Popular media can, at once, display and enhance.

Last week in Milan, Italy awards for media creativity were bestowed by Prix Italia. It has been held with some regularity for 73 years under the patronage of the Italian Presidency, public broadcaster RAI responsible for organization. This years event was held in Milan, appropriately at La Scala. “'Rebuilding Culture and Entertainment: Media's Role for a New Start” was the theme for the presentations, debates and, of course, awards.

Prix Italia participants include a broad spectrum of broadcasters and producers around the world. Television and digital media eclipses radio somewhat. But what a joy were the entries for radio, music and sound.

Entries for the radio documentary and reportage category tackled, as usual, really tough subjects. “The Skull - A Tale With No Ending,” exploring a very dark chapter of German colonial history, was honored for best radio documentary. Human skulls were taken from German South-West Africa, known now as Namibia, for “scientific” examination to prove Africans were “subhuman.” The storyline centers on the efforts by one person, related to a missionary, to return the skull to Namibia. Written and recorded by Bernhard Pfletschinger and produced by German public broadcasters RBB and WRD, it explores the role of the Church in the genocide of the early 20th Century.

Episodes of the documentary - "Ein Totenschädel und kein Ende,” in German - were broadcast across several days on rbbKultur and WDR 5 in September 2020. “It is touching, startling and shows that this historical chapter is far from over,” remarked RBB Director General Patricia Schlesinger.

The entry from ARTE Radio - “You’ll be a Man, Dad” - received top honors for best radio drama. It takes listeners to a place no parent wants to go, the loss of an infant. Written and narrated by Gaël Leiblang and directed by Sabine Zovighian and Samuel Hirsch it follows a father during the 13 day life of a prematurely-born child. It is a true story. Using sports analogy rather than bleak medical reality the true story is both hard and life-affirming. “Tu sera un homme papa” was issued as a podcast in May 2020.

The Prix Italia for Radio Music honored the Czech public broadcasting production “Music for Sirens.” It was a two-year project of Radio Vltava and Berg Orchestra. The twenty “musical miniatures” featured original compositions, live performances and sounds from the regular siren tests. The production noted by Prix Italia, A River Call by composer Petr Hora, was performed at the laboratory of the Water Research Institute in Prague. There were two operatic voices, an accordion and the sirens. Reference to the mythical Sirens cannot be missed.

"The composition is a combination of sound elements, each with its own nature and transforming through radio broadcasting, creating a third sound full of suggestions that can take listeners to a dimension suspended between the reality of the present and the musical scene,” said the jury chairperson RAI Radio Classica director Maria Gabriella Ceracchi.

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