Song Stories Podcast Insights

Podcasts & interviews created by first-year students in their first semester of coursework, from two sections of Dr. Sophie Abramowitz’s fall 2019 “American Roots Music” Writing & Rhetoric course at the University of Virginia (UVa). In the fall and winter of 2019, students in the Writing & Rhetoric course “American Roots Music” spent weeks researching, writing, narrating, producing, editing, and publishing original podcasts that told a story about a 20th century song of their choice. The parameters of the project were loose: any kind of song, and any kind of story. In response, students produced a diverse and brilliant array of stories about the sounds and histories of different kinds of songs. Each podcast is searching and exploratory, putting deft sonic descriptions into conversation with analyses that are creative and careful, historical and cultural, political and personal. Appended to the end of ten of these ten to fifteen-minute podcasts are interviews with each podcaster, conducted by Dr. Abramowitz. Interviews were recorded in February 2020, in-studio, by Mary Garner McGehee, the Project & Communications Coordinator at WTJU 91.1 FM Charlottesville. In these interviews, podcasters discuss their processes, dig deeper into their research and conclusions, and propose future directions for their skills in research, writing, and production. In alphabetical order, the podcasters are: Sharon Ahn, Carina Anderson, Grace Bassett, Jasmine Cao, Ana Cordova, Lukas Esser, Zoë Fields, Riley Fitzmaurice, Megan Hack, Danyele Heier, Rebecca Herzog, Daeja Hopkins, Bogdan Ion, Payton Jager, Maia Kantorowski, Miriam Mindel, and Ahana Rosha. The “Song Stories” podcast project is indebted to former UVa Music Research Librarian Abby Flanigan’s interactive research demonstrations; to WTJU 91.1 FM Station Manager Nathan Moore’s guest lecture on “writing for the ear”; and to UVa Multimedia Teaching & Learning Librarian Josh Thorud and UVa Educational Technologist Fang Yi, for their collaboration and their guidance with production technology. Sophie Abramowitz adapted the podcast assignment from a prompt written by Dr. Annie Galvin. The ten accompanying interviews with student podcasters were produced by Sophie Abramowitz, Aaryan Balu, Sarah Howorth, Mary Garner McGehee, and WTJU 91.1 FM. Mary Garner McGehee produced the on-air radio promos for the project. Sophie Abramowitz introduced the program in the recordings and wrote the individual podcast descriptions. Our logo was designed by the talented Zoë Fields, whose podcast is also a part of this project.