The Signal

Imagine you’re keeper of a family tradition that goes back 800 years.  You and your kin are tellers of history, spiritual counselors, and you do your work through the medium of music.  You’ve learned your art from your father – your father from his father before him.  You’re respected.  You’re venerated.  You’re essential.

And then you pack up and travel 4000 miles away.  You land in a country where you don’t speak the language.  You’re anonymous and utterly out of your element.  This is what happened to West African griot Cheick Hamala Diabate, and this week on the program we hear his story.  We also meet Baba Baile McKnight, an African-American who embraced the Black Power Movement and traveled to Africa in search of his roots.  And we’ll visit with Amadou Kouyate, the American-born son of a Senegalese griot, a child literally of two worlds.

…The legacy of the griot in America, through the lens of three generations, on a special episode of The Signal coproduced with Maryland Traditions folklorist Cliff Murphy.

www.thesharer.com/post/23677088227

www.marylandtraditions.org/festival

We tour the rowhouse-basement factory of Rheb’s Candies, a family business that’s been supplying Baltimore with confectionary delights for more than ninety years.

From The Stoop, optimist Ron Tanner buys a condemned frat house and gives himself six months to restore it before inviting his extended family to stay for Christmas.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an Arab-American mom, and her daughter wants a doll.  So Susan has been diligently sorting through Barbies, Disney Princesses, and American Girl dolls.  She joins us to share her unlikely choice.

And in the ‘holiday cheer’ department, we take a brewery tour at Baltimore’s Union Craft Brewing.

Half a century ago in Taneytown, Maryland, a young couple – Dotty and Leroy Eyeler - started a bluegrass band together. Little did they know they’d become the matriarch and patriarch of a musical legacy:  The Carroll County Ramblers.  

Today, the band is anchored by Dotty and Leroy’s children, brother and sister Bonnie and Dale.  Thanks to the second generation of Eyelers, The Carroll County Ramblers are still going strong.

Producer Aaron Henkin is joined by folklorist Cliff Murphy for a special co-production of The Signal and folk-life program, Maryland Traditions.  Tune in for music, stories, laughs, and some profound philosophical reflections with members past and present of a bona fide bluegrass dynasty:  The Carroll County Ramblers.

(Special thanks this week to Shane Carpenter for his multimedia companion piece.  Check out Shane's other work at: www.thesharer.com or www.readyluck.com)

November 16th & 17th, 2012, on The Signal:  

We visit a nearly forgotten cemetery on the grounds of the now-shuttered Crownsville State Hospital, where patients buried their own.  Historian Janice Hayes-Williams walks us through the gravesite, and tells the story of the institution originally named, ‘The Hospital for the Negro Insane.’  We also talk with Paul Lurz, who worked inside Crownsville for 40 years.

Dan Fesperman talks about his latest book, “The Double Game.” The book has been called a “love letter to the spy novel genre.”

And writer Nancy Heneson remembers a bygone era, when her father worked as a druggist in the first-floor pharmacy of Baltimore’s grand old Altamont Hotel.