A journey into sound through the archives

When we listen to archive recordings, not only do we hear the words of those who speak, but also the tone of their voice. We travel in time, as voices from the past reach us with an immediacy that can be powerful, moving and sometimes dramatic. Czech Radio has one of the richest and most diverse audio archives in the world, reflecting the complexities of this country’s history. I have often drawn from sound archives in my historical research, in my teaching and in documentaries, radio drama and podcasts.

We hear not only the words of those who speak, but also the tone of their voice; we have a taste of the mood and the atmosphere. We travel in time, as voices from the past speak to us with an immediacy that is powerful, moving and sometimes dramatic.

The Czech Radio archives include famous names, like Czechoslovakia’s first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and his son, Jan Masaryk; we have the pioneering feminist Františka Plamínková and the inspirational politician Milada Horáková who was sentenced to death in the show trials of the 1950s; we have writers like Karel Čapek, inventor of the term “robot”, musicians like the great Czech composer and jazzman Jaroslav Ježek, and we have sporting heroes, from Emil Zátopek to Martina Navrátilová. And then there are some of the people who came to Czechoslovakia from abroad, as visitors or exiles. They include Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower and Josephine Baker, to name just a few.

Another fairly recent addition to the archives is made up of many dozens of recordings that were found a few years ago in a forgotten attic in the Czech Foreign Ministry. They include many broadcasts made by the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile in London during the Second World War and other broadcasts made by the BBC concerning the Czechoslovak war effort.

I have also drawn from audio archives in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Archive Hour

A Quarrel in a Faraway Country, BBC Radio 4.

The first major documentary I made that drew from the radio archives was for BBC Radio 4. It tells the story of the 1938 Munich Crisis as it played out on the airwaves of radio stations in Europe and across the Atlantic.

Slyšte můj hlas (Hear My Voice)

Slyšte můj hlas is a nine-part documentary drama in Czech, telling the story of the 1938 Munich Crisis in Czechoslovakia. It incorporates hundreds of archive sounds, as it tells the story of a dramatic diplomatic crisis that has echoes even in our own time. The book that goes with the series won the 2015 Czech Book readers’ award.

In Their Own Words: podcast

For more details, see the Documentaries and Podcasts section.

Working with students: Exploring the Archives

Over several years I developed a course with journalism students from Anglo-American University, in cooperation with the Czech Radio archive and Radio Prague. The students explored the sound archives, and we devised methods to analyse and contextualise the recordings. As it was radio we were talking about, we also created a series of radio programmes, in which we played extracts from original recordings and talked about them. Here are links to some of the programmes that emerged from that cooperation:

A programme to celebrate Czech Radio’s 90th birthday, including the feminist Františka Plamínková, appealing for reason on the eve of World War Two, “Old Gravel Voice” General Harmon as he gets ready to leave Plzeň in 1945, and the legendary Czechoslovak Radio correspondent, Karel Kyncl, as he talks to the first African American to study at the University of Mississippi in 1963. There is also a moving encounter with a six-year-old girl, back home after being taken from her mother at just four months; we hear how American students saw Prague back in 1937, and a friend of Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, the American wife of Czechoslovakia’s first president, recalls their friendship.

Cutting across Czechoslovak history. Students chose to analyse recordings that give us some intriguing insights into radio at different times in Czechoslovakia’s history: into the tense atmosphere before the outbreak of World War II, into the drama of the Cold War and then the thaw of the 1960s, followed by the Soviet-led invasion.

The Terezín ghetto: a perspective from the 1960s. Students discuss a moving and unusual drama documentary made in 1967 by the English Section of Radio Prague. It takes the form of a stylized tour through Prague’s ancient Jewish quarter, Josefov. Using various sound effects and music, as well as interviews with survivors, it ties in the earlier history of the city’s Jewish community with the fate of those sent during World War Two to the Terezín Ghetto north of Prague.

A message of student solidarity still powerful after more than seventy years. Students discuss a broadcast made in London in 1943 to mark the fourth anniversary of the Nazi suppression of student protests in Prague in 1939.

My people will never abandon their democratic way of life: the irony of a 1945 speech by Edvard Beneš. In the spring of 1945, just before he ended his six-year exile in Britain, President Edvard Beneš gave an address in English that was broadcast by the BBC. The fight to liberate Czechoslovakia was still under way, but by now it was clear that the war was drawing to a close and Beneš was already looking towards the post-war future of his country.

Ernest Thompson Seton: A scout appeals for peace. The writer Ernest Thompson Seton, one of the pioneers of scouting in the United States, visited Czechoslovakia in 1936. We look at a talk he gave to the radio.

An English girl and a Czech soldier. It is May 1945, Czechoslovakia has been liberated, and Czechs and Slovaks who fought in the Allied armed forces are returning home. One recording evokes this moment vividly. It is a dramatized reading of a letter, written by a Czech soldier to an English girl at some point shortly after he has returned to his home country, still in his British army uniform.

Czechoslovakia and India through the archives. Looking at links between Czechoslovakia and India, as reflected in the archives.

Paul Robeson in Czechoslovakia: all culture comes from the people. Czech Radio’s archives house several recordings of Civil Rights activists, who visited Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 or were interviewed at home in the United States. One was the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, who came to this country several times.

Working with Czech secondary schools

I am working on developing classroom exercises that involve using audio archive recordings as a tool for teaching secondary school students. One such project is in cooperation with Palacký University in Olomouc.

Here is a short description: In Their Own Words

And here is a PowerPoint with the material itself: PowerPoint Using archive recordings