KFAI's MinneCulture Presents

Whitman at War from Open Source  The best of American poets and the worst of American wars met head-on just over 150 years ago in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps , his reflections on nursing the wounded and dying soldiers of Union and Confederacy. This is not the Whitman who celebrated himself and working people in Leaves of Grass ten years earlier, though he is more than ever “the poet of the body and of the soul.” This is Whitman in his mid-forties, crossing like Dante into a mass-murdering inferno of screaming pain , and finding also in the despair an astonishing measure of beauty and love. In this hour we'll hear from a composer, Matt Aucoin, who has penned an opera in the battlefield hospital where Whitman served as a nurse, Harvard Professor Elisa New, actor Ben Evett, Yale Professor Harold Boom, and Fordham Professor Lawrence Kramer, a cultural musicologist.

'Fargo' and the Midwest Psyche  by 2 Below Zero The 1996 movie "Fargo" stirred widespread curiosity about snowy winters,  funny accents , and bloody mayhem on the frozen tundra of North Dakota and Minnesota. The film won two Oscars and inspired a popular  television series  of the same name. But how well did it actually capture and reflect the region? In this documentary, producers  Diane Richard and Todd Melby  unravel the mystery behind the parkas, prowlers, and wood chippers in interviews with actors  William H. Macy , John Carroll Lynch, Stephen Park, Tony Denman,  dialect coach   Liz Himelstein , women in law enforcement, and many more. Narrated by  Bruce Bohne  (Deputy Lou).  Essential listening  for diehard fans of "Fargo."  Season 3 of the Fargo television series premieres later in the evening on the FX network!

An Unlikely Friendship Transforms the Gun Debate  from Reckonings In the mid-90’s, Dr.  Mark Rosenberg  was leading gun violence research at the  CDC . Republican Arkansas Congressman  Jay Dickey , the NRA’s so-called "point man on the Hill," spearheaded legislation to defund it. Dickey and Rosenberg were on diametrically opposed sides of the gun debate, but fate took a twist. Producer  Stephanie Lepp  explains how through unexpected experiences, they managed to  become friends , create common ground, and are now  jointly calling on Congress  to restore CDC funding for gun violence research. Their story is a rare  source of hope  within one of America’s most polarizing issues: guns. A Red State Gun Owner Who's Not so Red   from Making Contact We go to Montana, where  Making Contact  producer  Amy Martin  spent some time with a guy that you might think of as the  stereotypical American gun owner . Listen closely to this audio portrait, though, and you might find some

Frankie Lee Live from Minnesota  Singer-songwriter Frankie Lee shows us his rootsy, candid style while playing both piano and acoustic guitar in this performance, recorded live at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. Lee is joined by Michael Rosetto on electric guitar for the second half of the show. Masterfully recorded, mixed, and produced by Tom Garneau . Chastity Brown Live from Minnesota To celebrate Brown's soon-to-be-released Red House Records debut, Silhouette of Sirens, we're pulling a show from the rich and vast Minneculture vault : Chastity Brown performing at the Cedar Cultural Center on June 12, 2010. Recorded and produced by Dick Rees, Tom Chance, and Nancy Sartor for KFAI's Minneculture. Chastity is currently back on tour and playing at Tattersall Distilling next Monday. Her new album, Silhouette of Sirens , is released on May 19th.