Reimagining the City

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Documentaries

Factual: Travel

Writers and musicians offer guides to cities with which we think we are already familiar.

Writers and musicians present alternative guides to cities with which we think we are already familiar.

BBC Radio 4 Extra

BBC Radio 4 LW

Reimagining the City: New Orleans

New Orleans

BBC Radio 4 - Reimagining the City, New Orleans

Writer Nik Cohn invites us to "re-imagine" New Orleans, a city he's loved all his life.

4 Extra Debut. Writer Nik Cohn takes us to the New Orleans he's loved all his life and invites us to re-imagine the city. From 2013.

When the writer Nik Cohn was 10 years old, he visited a bookshop and found a copy of Alan Lomax's book on musician Jelly Roll Morton.  It had photographs of Jelly Roll's hometown, New Orleans, "the city of dreams." Nik fell for Jelly Roll Morton's vision of the city "hook line and sinker". 

Back home in Northern Ireland, New Orleans became a place of magical possibilities. It would be another decade before Nik finally visited New Orleans but it has become a place he returns to and re-discovers constantly.

Nik muses on what makes New Orleans so different and so special. The beauty, the music and the food are all part of it, but living under sea level also has an impact on anyone who spends proper time in the city. 

Producer: Rachel Hooper

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in January 2013.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Reimagining the City

New Orleans

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4