NPR’s The Thistle & Shamrock® will finish on September 30 after 4 many years. Present creator, producer, and host, Fiona Ritchie shared the next word with listeners:
June 4th 1983 noticed the debut of a brand new radio present referred to as The Thistle & Shamrock® on stations throughout the U.S. through American Public Radio. Then in September 1990, The Thistle & Shamrock moved to NPR as a part of an eclectic roster of music reveals (“cultural programming” as honoured collectively by President Clinton in 2000 with the presentation of the Nationwide Medal of Arts). So this implies, primarily based within the U.S. and Scotland, I’ve been delivering a weekly present to public radio listeners for over 41 years! Alongside the way in which I’ve visited many member stations the size and breadth of the nation from WRKF in Baton Rouge to KUAC in Fairbanks, and toured with dwell reveals from California to Carolina. I grew to become enchanted by Appalachian music within the Southern Mountains and led American radio listeners on musical journeys by means of my Scottish homeland. I’ve labored for the BBC at totally different instances, however my broadcasting house has at all times been with NPR.
After I first developed The Thistle & Shamrock on WFAE in Charlotte in 1981, there have been valuable few retailers for this type of music within the U.S. or certainly anyplace, and but there have been so many nice issues to share and such keen, open-minded audiences. Small unbiased report labels within the U.Ok., Eire and North America picked up on my enthusiasm and equipped me with recordings for airplay. Vinyl, reel-to-reel, CD, DAT, mp3 (The Thistle & Shamrock provided NPR’s first free mp3 obtain in 2003), uploads and downloads – I’ve reached listeners utilizing all kinds of media. Now individuals can entry each sort of music, anyplace and in any approach, through terrestrial radio, streaming providers, and huge cloud storage. In working with the American Folklife Middle on the Library of Congress for his or her fortieth anniversary in 2016, I realized that there are greater than three million recordings and radio broadcasts of their digital archives, together with many a rarity on wax cylinder and each recording expertise as much as the current time. These days, classic vinyl collections are uploaded onto YouTube, and valuable discipline recordings, from distant geographical areas, could be accessed worldwide. Listeners in all places can be taught outdated songs from tradition-bearers lengthy since departed, after which hear new music because it emerges from each nook of the planet. For many years I’ve loved serving to music to search out its audiences on the radio, but it surely all circulates extra successfully than ever now beneath its personal momentum in each approach conceivable.
By the years, particularly once I’ve given talks to younger individuals or hosted them on work expertise, I get requested what I like most about my work, and there are many solutions: the scrumptious discovery of contemporary new sounds; witnessing thrilling dwell performances at shut quarters; assembly and interviewing artists residing their inventive lives. Listener encounters are additionally endlessly shocking: just a few years in the past I heard individually from a Ukrainian after which a Russian musician, every having found my radio reveals on-line and been equally drawn to what they’d heard. Gathering collectively by means of music, in particular person and on the radio, affords an area for empathy and understanding, a bridge throughout the limitations of language, customized, and even time. Radio is magical in that approach. After I’m requested what I like least about my work, there’s solely ever been one reply: the relentless weekly deadlines! Now I need to proceed to develop my different pursuits, together with maybe creating radio moments with extra respiratory house in between. I’m grateful for the journey to date and open to the probabilities!
–Fiona Ritchie
Producer/host NPR’s The Thistle & Shamrock®
June 28, 2024