Podcast spotlight: Global Hit

The lion's share of my radio life has been lived in the digital age. I'm way more comfortable with multi-tracks than a razor and tape. But my very first job in public radio entailed producing and mixing a series of profiles of jazz musicians. I had a mixing board, a couple CD players, and three reel-to-reel machines. Mixing down the narration, music samples, and interviews with artists was a frenetic dance with the audio devil. I'd break a sweat jumping from machine to machine, cuing the tracks, riding the faders, all the while following along on the script like a haggard third violinist for a two-bit orchestra. One mistake...and I started from the top.

So it makes what dubbers in the 1960s did in Jamaica so amazing to me. Dub was created by looping tracks one on top of another, then rapping over it. If you messed up, you had to start over. DJ Spooky explains it in a tremendous story about Jamaican dub by The World's Marco Werman. Werman's the guy who's managed to feature a different artist or musical happening somewhere in the world every weekday now for years on his feature, Global Hit.

I get tons of leads for new music from the Global Hit. I listen daily to the podcast. Do yourself a favor and do the same. You won't be disappointed.