Hearing the Lifeforce: understanding West Midlands jazz 1969-1979 through radio and podcasting production practice
This is a practice-as-research doctoral project conducted through an auto-ethnographic study of my own work as a radio producer, generating oral histories of jazz musicians and promoters working in the English West Midlands between 1969 and 1979.
My research question is: How could processes of audio production mediate and interpret jazz in the West Midlands between 1969 and 1979?
My research aims are: To contribute to a body of knowledge to help inform radio documentary practice, jazz research and jazz studies; and Interrogate the voices of jazz in the West Midlands in the 1960's and 1970's. My PhD project will include interviews with jazz and radio industry practitioners, an auto-ethnographic study of my own radio production work together with a series of podcasts on elements of jazz history in the west Midlands between 1969 and 1979. This research will allow me to present a first-hand and personal perspective on my radio production practices to reveal the production processes involved in radio documentaries.
In situating my investigation, my research sits somewhere in the nexus between (a) radio production and podcasting; (b) West Midlands cultural heritage and archival processes; (c) oral histories and "radio talk" and (d) mediated histories of jazz.
This project will fit into the current debates about communities of musicians, creative industries and collective memories and their relationship to the hidden histories of jazz in the west Midlands . I will bring into focus the work of musicians who have hitherto been overlooked and will examine the ways that the issues of race, class and gender influenced the production and reception of jazz in the West Midlands in the 1960's and 1970's.
