KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Music Box Healer by Emily Eagle The fancy MP3 player you unwrapped yesterday will soon be obsolete. As portable music players get smaller and sleeker, our old ones are tossed and forgotten. But music players haven’t always been so disposable. A century and a half ago music lovers and talented craftspeople designed and created music boxes . These elaborate machines are considered antiques, but many of them can still play music -- if they've had the proper repairs. Michael Everett  is one of the very few remaining music box technicians.  Shodekeh Profile by Aaron Henkin Remember the days of Doug E. Fresh and the Fat Boys , when 'human beat-boxing' mesmerized us fans of early hip hop? The old art form is still around today, some 30 years later. And vocal poly-rhythm masters like Baltimore's Shodekeh are continuing to stretch musical boundaries with the technique. Teen Contender  from Radio Diaries Boxing has been an Olympic sport since the time of ...

Nights of Edith Piaf by The Kitchen Sisters She rose every day at dusk and sang, rehearsed, performed, ate and drank until dawn, then slept all day and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Piaf sang was a moment of her life from the streets of Paris. She would tell her composer and musician lovers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture. And they would put music and words to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. We'll hear from some of France's greatest musicians and composers recall their nights with the "the Little Sparrow."

In a Railway Station on the Western Plains by Ruth Draper Famed monologist, Ruth Draper , evokes a  woman working the late shift at a small town railway station who is going about her quotidian duties when a call comes through that a train has crashed, resulting in many casualties. While she sets up the station as a makeshift emergency ward, she awaits word of Jerry, her fiance and the engineer of the wrecked train . During her lifetime, "Railway Station" was a popular "monodrama" favorite with Draper's audiences.

The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling   What do crocodiles eat for dinner? Inquiring elephants want to know! Written by Rudyard Kipling in 1902 and published in his book of Just So Stories for Little Children . We'll hear a version read by Jack Nicholson in 1986 and accompanied by Bobby McFerrin . So gather the family around the wireless for this timeless origin story classic by a trio of seemingly strange bedfellows.

Ministry of Presence from Unfictional Memories of 95 executions from a man who was there for all of them. Carroll Pickett served as pr ison chaplain at the  Death House in Huntsville, Texas for 15 years. During this time, Rev. Pickett offer ed comfort to some of the worst criminals in Texas history ; men with nicknames like "The Good Samaritan Killer," and "The Candy Man . " After each execution , he recorded his own thoughts about sitting with the condemned m a n on his last day. This is his memoir .