I would gladly pay for that and the other Inventions and a proper Delia boxset/release but amazingly BBC and now the University of Manchester seem to be dragging their heels in that regard, so MP3s it is. But so glad to actually get to hear it…like the original poster I’d love to hear the other Inventions (I have a low quality copy of Dreams…are there any HQ versions out there?).
I missed this – I loved the Digital Revolution program on the Beeb, it was a little bit overplayed/simplistic but still laid out some interesting thoughts about the Internet in the 21st century – and I knew they were holding a remix competition for the footage – but I didn’t know Cassetteboy had remixed it for the competition!
The internet is bigger than a balloon – but smaller than a car! LOL!
Somalia’s islamic Hitzbul Islam has banned music (even jingles or adverts using music) on the radio. They’ve also seized BBC relay transmitters (hence first linking to the Grauniad article first, as the BBC article has obvious bias) and I wonder if in part this is a political step against outsiders broadcasting into the country?
I do have a question – is Islam really against music? I know it’s probably in part to what degree of orthodoxy and which sect you follow (Sunni/Shia etc) but I know music has been banned by ultra-orthodox Islamic regimes before and it’s been incredibly unpopular, especially amongst local tribes and those who don’t follow Islam. Also I thought at various times music and dancing were allowed, and great flowering of those arts, in such places as Andalusia? Hence the acoustic guitar being developed – a Moorish introduction to Europe and ‘guitar’ is in fact an arabic loanword?
I also love how any religion can deem itself to enforce it’s beliefs on those who don’t follow it – like the recent story of the Williamsburg hassidim vs hipsters over a cycle path! (My thoughts there is if a bike is traif (unclean) then how can the Satmars drive in mini-vans? Eh?) Surely any religious mumbo jumbo should only affect those who believe in it?
And you don’t need protective laws or sharias against the rest of the world and need to live in a bubble if you really have faith?
As part of Ada Lovelace Day organised by the wonderful Suw Charman-Anderson, Finding Ada has asked bloggers to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.
It’s obvious to me who to celebrate – Delia Derbyshire, mathematician, musician, sound artist, and early audio engineer/technologist.
Born in Coventry in 1937 she grew up during the Blitz and graduated in a degree in mathematics and music at Girton College, Cambridge. She tried to apply to Decca in 1959 and was told “the company did not employ women in their recording studios” – the first of many prejudices she faced, but it didn’t let it stop her.
Eventually she was working at the BBC at the Radiophonic Workshop in the early 60′s, creating musical compositions on the sly as they weren’t officially ‘musicians’ for political and union/legal reasons…the Workshop was mostly working with tape and musique concrete techniques, for which her mathematics training came in useful (apparently she went and corrected their textbook on tape lengths and pitches because it was wrong!) with some very rudimentary electronics.
Here she created the famous Doctor Who theme tune with composer Ron Grainer, still a landmark in electronic music – and legendarily Ron asked her ‘Did I create that?’ to which Delia replied ‘Most of it’ – in fact Ron asked for her to get a credit because he realised how much she had added to his original composition, but the BBC wouldn’t allow it.
Delia worked on many projects, from doorbells to dreams to daleks, creating incredibly influential proto-ambient works and innovating music techniques using the most rudimentary technology that everyone thinks is electronically based, but the Radiophonic Workshop didn’t have synthesisers til the late 60′s/early 70′s.
Take this tune created with the sound of a reverberating lampshade:
Eventually she and others started creating music outside of the BBC, in studios they setup on their own using the newer synthesiser technologies and away from the BBC’s restriction…also library music was a lucrative business, and many people heard Delia’s work on adverts unknowingly as ‘Li De la Russe’ and other pseudonyms. She worked with colleague Brian Hodgson and EMS founder Peter Zinovieff with Unit Delta Plus that performed at the infamous ‘Carnival of Light’ in London, and also with Brian again and David Vorhaus with the influential late 60′s psych favourite White Noise and their first LP, ‘An Electric Storm’ for which she worked on 3 tracks and setup the Kaleidophon Studio with them:
In 1973 she left the BBC and retired from music apart from occasional projects like The Legend of Hell House soundtrack and working with Sonic Boom aka Pete Kember just before she died in 2001 of renal failure following reovering from breast cancer.
She faced a lot of prejudice in a then male dominated world of engineers, technicians, mathematicians and musicians, and bitchy BBC queens who didn’t like a strong-minded perfectionist woman who refused to stay in her place (although she rebuffed suggestions of being a feminist icon, saying she was just doing her work and what she needed to do).
She’s a role model for me because she created her own path, struggled, and suceeded, and is now a cult-hero for several generations of musicians. I doubt the likes of Little Boots would get acceptance as musicians and sound creators if it wasn’t for the likes of Delia. Just a shame there wasn’t as much support or acceptance, especially in the early 70′s where she felt ostracised from the BBC and society – because I think we lost many years of great music from one of the best modern composers and sound artists we ever had.
And with the discovery of her tapes which are being rescued and analysed I hope more Delia releases will come out, revamping and keeping her memory alive…compared to her contemporaries she is pretty badly served for record releases, I think. The likes of Trunk Records are trying to rectify this – but shame on BBC for leaving her and her contemporaries to gather dust.
This video is interesting as it highlights not only one of Delia’s best tunes (done for Electrosonic in 1972 on the sly as De La Russe I think) but also the slideshow of women in electronic music. Certainly in this field there are many women who get sidelined unlike their male contemporaries – Delia is just the top of a large stack for me:
(+1 on the Pauline Oliveros, Eizabeth Parker, Bebe Barron, Daphne Oram – many of these were Radiophonic Workshop interestingly)
Finding Ada has an unconference event tonight in London, not sure I can make it, but Suw and Maggie Philbin (that’s a name from my youth religiously watching Tomorrow’s World ) and potluck and networking…sounds good
And another way of supporting Ada Lovelace Day is go read Sydney Padua’s great 2D Goggles – the Ada Lovelace / Charles Babbage crime-fighting steampunk comic! It’s my wallpaper atm, I love it.
Well it’s official – the ‘not going to happen’ axing of BBC 6music, the only real music station now worth listening to, is going to happen.. Or will it? Let’s see.
What can you do?
Firstly there’s a flashmob protest at 6pm tonight outside Broadcasting House, dunno who’s organising it (the nature of flashmobs says: No-one! It’s beautifully organic) but they want you to print out and bring this flag . I’ll see you there.
Strange that the Strategy voices wanting to increase quality, but is doing this be restricting the amount of choice, a monoculture that allows the travesty that is BBC3 to exist (Sorry Andrew Collins, I know it’s part of your money stream but it’s an expensive carbuncle) and funds audience dropping Radio 2 far more, as Nigel Jenkins posted over on the FB group:
Radio 3 (2 million weekly listeners, annual budget £51.1 million, cost per user per hour 6.3p) No real changes detailed.
Radio 1Xtra (0.6 million weekly listeners, budget £9.6 million, cost per user per hour 4.5p) Links with Radio 1 will be “strengthened”.
Radio 6 Music (0.7 million weekly listeners, annual budget £9 m…illion, cost per user per hour 3.4p)
So if that’s true Radio 6 costs LESS than 1Xtra, and much less than Radio 3 (I’m not calling for Radio 3 to be closed, John would kill me…and like Radio 4 that would never happen, those in power listen to them).
Also the whole ‘making it bigger will make it commercial’ is a fallacy – as we know DAB and digital radio is still early-doors; and if ‘we don’t want to compete with commercial radio’ ethos was true then Radio 1, 2 and 4 would be for the chop for the start – especially Radio 1 which KissFM should be especially pissed off about. The idea Mark Thompson is upping the quality is a smoke screen – this is just a numbers game ignoring the Reithian ideals of community provision.
I strongly doubt that the mass produced banal pap the corporation produces will actually be less (it’s a mixed message – we need to concentrate on quality; so let’s axe the quality niche products and focus on the mainstream – eh?) and that Radio 1 or 2 will change at all, or as Mark Thompson alluded to start catering for the 6Music audience (in fact Radio 2 is going to go older, and Radio 1 gets off scot free for some reason, and 1Xtra’s audience won’t want 6Music’s breadth).
Really it is a victory for genre/demographics targetted radio, that you are all in little ticky tacky boxes and should stay in your ghettos – obviously new, unsigned and eclectic music isn’t going to be everyone’s bag, but to kill the station pretty much at birth without ever letting it have a wider (FM, or when DAB covers the whole of the UK) audience or promoting it, is totally short sighted.
Facebook group: Save 6Music 88,000 people and counting!
Another petition:
PS. I’d use the email address for the consultation rather than the flakey online form to contact the BBCStrategy Review – just got this lovely error after the first page:
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Nice. Great public consultation if the form doesn’t work? Of course they don’t want the form to work, they’ve decided their route…interestingly it looks like it might become an election issue, so sorry BBC, this won’t go away. I think it’s going to be hotly political, fast.
