Words and Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

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Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Life Rafts

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Life Rafts

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Music by Britten, Lili Boulanger, Baaba Maal. Prose about Noah, the Kon-Tiki, refugees now

Down the river, over floods and out to sea with Winnie the Pooh, fleeing migrants, Gericault's painting, and music by Britten, David Fanshawe, Baaba Maal and Joan Armatrading.

An unstable wooden platform, an ark, a honey jar: rafts can make the difference between life and death. Yann Martel won the Booker Prize for his novel Life of Pi, tracing the journey made by an Indian Tamil boy and a tiger and a stage version has just opened in London; Edward Lear's The Jumblies set to sea in a sieve; Théodore Géricault interviewed some of the survivors after a French frigate ran aground off Mauritania - their experiences of starvation, dehydration and cannibalism became an international scandal which he depicted in his 1819
painting The Raft of the Medusa, described by Julian Barnes in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters;  in 1947 the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl made headlines travelling by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands; Dina Nayeri fled Iran as an asylum seeker and her book The Ungrateful Refugee charts experiences of immigration which are making headlines now.  We also travel on the water with Winnie the Pooh, Huckleberry Finn, Noah and ants observed by Edward O. Wilson.  Our music ranges across David Fanshawe, Baaba Maal, Benjamin Britten, Joao Gilberto, Elena Kats-Chernin and Herbie Hancock. The readers are Alia Alzougbi and Shaun Mason.

READINGS: 
Mary Coleridge - I Had a Boat 
Thor Heyerdahl - The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Raft Across the South Seas 
R M Ballantyne - Man on the Ocean: A Book about Boats and Ships
Michael Rosen - The Raft 
Anne Carson - Short Talk on the Total Collection 
Julian Barnes - A History of the World in 10½ Chapters  
Ken Thompson -  Where do Camels Belong by Ken Thompson 
Alfred Russel Wallace - The Geographical Distribution of Animals 
Rachel Rooney - Survival Advice from a Caterpillar 
Robert Crawford - Crannog 
Bert Hölldobler,  Edward O. Wilson  - The Ants 
Dina Nayeri - The Ungrateful Refugee 
Daniel Trilling - Lights in the Distance 
A A Milne - Winnie the Pooh 
Edward Lear - The Jumblies 
Yann Martel - Life of Pi by Yann Martel  
Emily Dickinson -  “'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers’ 
Sir Ernest Shackleton - South! 
Kathleen Jamie - The Blue Boat 
Lola Ridge - Interim 
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn  
James Carter - Who Cares? (by permission of the poet and published in Weird, Wild and Wonderful by James Carter (Otter-Barry Books 2021)


Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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