KFAI

The program is a sonic journey through contemporary jazz, free improvisation, new music, hindustani music, flamenco, world music, underground, avant garde and art music from different corners of the globe, as well as interviews and live studio performances by local and visiting artists and the occasional musical restructuring*. An adventure in sound, a journey into the tone world.

We strive to present music with duende, a term originally used by flamenco musicians referring to inspiration, magic and fire in music. There is no direct translation for it in English, but the closest would be "soulful".
The famous Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca often speaks of duende. In his lecture "El juego y la teoria del duende" (Play and Theory of the Duende) he says:
"All through Andalucia. . . people speak constantly of duende, and recognize it with unfailing instinct when it appears... These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots... from which we get what is real in art... Thus duende is a force and not a behavior, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old master guitarist say: ‘Duende is not in the throat; duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of true living style; of blood; of ancient culture; of spontaneous creation."
Duende is not just found in flamenco though. In the liner notes of Miles Davis' 1964 album My Funny Valentine, Nat Hentoff says: "In trying to distill the particular mesmeric quality of Miles Davis, Kenneth Tynan has referred to the Spanish word DUENDE: 'It has no English equivalent,' he explained, but it denotes 'the ability to transmit a profoundly felt emotion with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of restraint... Miles Davis has DUENDE.' "

Hosted by Emel Sherzad.

'May music never just become another way of making money.'
- Keith Tippett

*musical restructuring: simultaneous playback/mixing of various audio sources, a.k.a. audio collage.