The Signal

Friday 7-8pm
Saturday 1-2pm

The Signal, a weekly radio magazine produced by WYPR, is devoted to exploring Maryland's thriving artistic and cultural scene.

The Signal, hosted by veteran WYPR personality Andy Bienstock, promises to transport listeners to the region's cultural back roads: the studios, recital halls and basement workshops where art is conceived and brought to life.

The minds behind The Signal senior producers Aaron Henkin and Lisa Morgan, as well as Bienstock -- share an abiding love for the tradition of radio storytelling. Every program is crafted like a book of short stories, a radio quilt sewn together with thoughtful narrative transitions and embroidered with contemplative musical interludes.

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Program Days:

Friday

Saturday

Short Program:

Only Archive

The Signal, 1.20.12 & 1.21.12, honky tonk musician Arty Hill, reflecting on the ’68 Riots, and spoken-word artist David ‘Native Son’ Ross

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January 20th & 21st, 2012, on The Signal…

We drop in at a local country music bar to hear the twang of honky tonk musician Arty Hill, whose new album, “Another Lost Highway,” brings a little Nashville flavor to Charm City.

We talk to the editors of “68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City,” a new collection of essays, archival photographs, and deeply personal oral histories about the riots that took place in Baltimore following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Plus: David “Native Son” Ross of the of the Baltimore spoken-word crew The 5th L has just finished his first solo album, “In Late Bloom,” and he joins us to reflect on the honesty and vulnerability he’s poured into his lyrics.

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The Signal, 1.13.12 & 1.14.12, B-Grant award winners, the Charm City LGBT Film Festival, and fiction from Eric D Goodman

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Marcia Woolfson Ray builds sculpture from Dog Fennel and cornstalks; Ellen Durkan forges tempered steel into sci-fi meta-fashion; and Ed Hough strums the guitar in the band Smooth Kentucky. These three artists are as different as can be, but they’ve got one thing in common: This week, they each earned a thousand-dollar B Grant from the Baker Artist Award website, and we pay them a congratulatory visit.

A preview of the upcoming Charm City LGBT Film Festival, a showcase of the best and newest queer films from Baltimore and around the world

Plus: Novelist Eric D Goodman brings us the story of a computer-geek-turned-criminal who finds himself on the run from the mafia.

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The Signal, 01.06.12 & 01.07.12, The National Pinball Museum, Arthur Magida’s “The Nazi Séance,” and Clarence Browns’ “Needs”

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David Silverman’s got a collection of almost 900 pinball machines, and he’s about to open the National Pinball Museum right here in downtown Charm City. We drop in at the museum for a crash course in pinball history.

Arthur Magida talks about his book, “The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler’s Circle.” The book tells the tale of Erik Jan Hanussen, a celebrated clairvoyant who let his own ambition blind him to the terrible realities of life in Berlin during the 1930’s.

Plus: We visit with writer (and recovering heroin addict) Clarence Brown, whose new crime novel, “Needs,” pits a drug-addicted Baltimore detective against an elusive killer.

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The Signal, 12.30.11 & 12.31.11, doo-wop pioneers "The Legendary Orioles"

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“You’d stand on a corner, and a guy would come up and say hey, there’s a guy on the East Side who could blow you guys off this corner, he can sing so good. We’d say go get him! Bring him down here! We stopped fighting each other and started singing.”

-Orioles singer Diz Russell

They went from singing on street corners to getting immortalized in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and this week on The Signal they share their stories and their songs. The legendary vocal group, The Orioles, took the music world by storm back in the 1950s, wowing listeners with a harmonizing style that would later come to be known as doo wop. Now, 60 years later, they’re still with us – and still singing. In this special edition of The Signal, we pay a visit to the surviving members of The Orioles – Diz Russell, Raymond Allen Jr, David Warren, and Clark Walker – and we learn about the magic behind lyrics like: “Hey-dah-nee-ding-dong-a-lang-a-lang-a-whoa-whoa-whoa-zip-sha-boom!”

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December 23rd & 24th, 2011, on The Signal: O Little Town of Baltimore (Part II)

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Part II of the live radio series, “O Little Town of Baltimore,” presented by Center Stage and produced by The Stoop & The Signal. We hear music from Caleb Stine and Arty Hill, plus Persian classical musicians Ahmad Borhani and friends. Our radio actors bring us a battle of wits between Santa and a precocious child, a dysfunctional gift exchange with the in-laws, and an epic survey of bossy grandmas at holidays through the ages. All that, plus stories from Larry Doyle, Liz Smith, and Tara Doaty about Christmas gifts that leave kids high and dry, a long-distance Solstice celebration, and one woman’s life-long misunderstanding of the song “Back Door Santa.”

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December 16th & 17th, 2011, on The Signal: O Little Town of Baltimore (Part I)

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Part I of the live radio series, “O Little Town of Baltimore,” presented by Center Stage and produced by The Stoop & The Signal. Stories, songs, and old-time radio theatre - we hear music from ellen cherry, Dundalk barbershop quartet BSQ, and Nepalese singer Prem Raja Mahat. Our radio actors take on holiday travel, treacherous sledding hills, and absurdly lavish gifts. And from Dana Kollmann, Adam Ruben, and Lionel Foster, we hear stories about a hamster named after Baby Jesus, a Jewish boyfriend’s moment of mortification at his girlfriend’s house on Christmas morning, and a grandson’s tribute to his grandma’s cooking.

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The Signal, 12.09.11 & 12.10.11, cartoonist Kal Kallaugher, the poets of “life in me like grass on fire,’ and latke-master Esther Weiner

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December 9th & 10th, 2011, on The Signal

Editorial cartoonist Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher reflects on the some of the biggest stories of 2011 and looks to the year ahead with his 2012 Economist Wall Calendar, a catalog of obscure, off-beat and occasionally well-known holidays and milestones from around the world

Readings from the poets of “life in me like grass on fire,’ an anthology of love poems from The Maryland Writers’ Association

Plus: Jewish grandmother Esther Weiner invites us into her kitchen for a lesson in the finer points of latkes

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The Signal, 12.02.11 & 12.03.11, Rohina Malik’s “Unveiled,” Susan Muaddi Darraj’s “Identity Crisis,” Atomic Book picks, and “1000 Fathoms”

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December 2nd & 3rd, 2011, on The Signal

“Fear and ignorance are the true weapons of mass destruction.” So says playwright and actress Rohina Malik, whose one-woman play, “Unveiled,” challenges audiences to confront stereotypes about Muslim women. We’ll talk with Malik as she prepares to stage her production this weekend at Baltimore’s Theatre Project.

Writer Susan Muaddi Darraj has been confronting stereotypes all her life, from another angle. She’s a Palestinian-American Christian, and she joins us with an essay she calls “Identity Crisis”

Plus: Benn Ray from Atomic Books has holiday reading suggestions, including cookbooks from some of the world’s hottest celebrity chefs

And we get preview of a new radio project called ‘One Thousand Fathoms’

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The Signal, 11.25.11 & 11.26.11, Caleb Stine, Hugh Campbell, and Burton DeBusk: Conversations in Song

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It was a wintry Saturday afternoon, February 2011, in rural Cecil County, Maryland, at a one-room post office turned furniture shop near the town of Elkton. Outside the old building, a January wind whistled over snow banks, through the bare branches of trees. But inside this place, a warm camaraderie was emanating through the room. Three musicians sat together, acoustic guitars on their knees, trading stories and songs, and bridging an age-span of three generations between them. In this special edition of The Signal, producer Aaron Henkin and Maryland Traditions folklorist Cliff Murphy share a selection of recordings made on-site at this multi-generational meeting of the minds, a conversation in songs between folk musicians Burton DeBusk, Hugh Campbell, and Caleb Stine.

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The Signal, 11.18.11 & 11.19.11, OUT OF THE BLOCKS – 3300 GREENMOUNT

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It’s the premiere of OUT OF THE BLOCKS, an original coproduction of radio producer Aaron Henkin and electronic musician Wendel Patrick. The concept is simple: one hour of radio - one city block - everybody’s story.

CHECK OUT A SPECIAL PHOTO GALLERY FROM THIS SHOW AT: WWW.WENDELPATRICK.COM

Between 33rd and 34th Streets in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood, there’s a block of Greenmount Avenue that’s as intricate as it is invisible. You can drive past it a dozen times and never think twice about the King’s Fried Chicken carry-out on the corner, Christine’s Discount Mart up the street, the Dreams Boutique fashion emporium, Kat’s Cuts barbershop, the Maryland Tag & Title outlet, Momma’s Grocery, Thai restaurant, the Mayflower Buffet, the Shear Intensity Hair Salon, the Stereo & Jewelry Exchange, The Stadium Lounge, or any of the idle ranks sitting on stoops and bus benches, watching the traffic roll by.

Inconspicuousness is in the nature of a block like this. But under its camouflage of anonymity, there’s a buzzing microcosm of humanity here, a honeycomb of lives playing themselves out simultaneously. The people on this block are from here, and everywhere: Pakistan, Mali, Korea, China, Thailand, Eritrea, and the Ukraine. They are a one-of-a-kind tapestry of hopes, fears, and dreams.

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