Bureau of Lost Culture

https://feed.podbean.com/bureauoflostculture/feed.xml

Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, rare, forgotten and half-remembered countercultural stories on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio. +

To listen on all major podcast outlets go here: https://linktr.ee/BureauOfLostCulture

The Bureau has been selected for curation at the British Library Sound Archive

Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including Billy Bragg, Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore to hear oral testimonies and tales from the 20th Century underground and beyond.

For more on the Bureau:
www.thebureauoflostculture.com

The Bureau produce publications, films, events, broadcasts and installations that tell half-forgotten or lost narratives driving human endeavour. We create immersive experiences with unique perspectives that connect people to hidden stories. +

We celebrate the self-made, inventiveness and ingenuity driven by need. +

We resonate with those who have taken risks to go against the establishment, beyond censorship and outside the forbidden. +

The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent

June 22, 2021

The Cold War is ending, the Soviet Empire is crumbling.

In Central Asia, new countries are being born - or built - in the ruins: Kazakstan, Krygystan, Tajakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

Allegiances and borders are shifting, overshadowed by the ghosts of ancient kingdoms. Exciting times. New histories in the making. And it all needs reporting.

Documentary maker MONICA WHITLOCK visits the Bureau to tell tales of her times as the Central Asian foreign correspondent for the BBC.

And what tales they are: lost treasure; Polish cemeteries in the Uzbek desert; tiny paintings on matchboxes smuggled from gulags; state murder and a last desperate dash across the runway, fleeing Tashkent after being accused of abetting terrorists.

This episode features some of Monica's collection of field recordings.

For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com

London’s Lost World of Yiddisher Jazz

June 7, 2021

London’s East End and Soho were the centres of a unique musical culture in the years between the 20s and the 50s.

Award wining oral historian and radio producer ALAN DEIN returns to the Bureau to tell stories of songs that soundtracked that world and feature on ‘Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World', the album of super rare tunes by London jewish jazz artists he has unearthed.

We hear tales of poverty and glamour, Soho gangsters, ghettos, vaudeville swing, comedy, cuisine and cabaret - and of some of the musicians who escaped the squalid streets of Whitechapel to become international stars. And we discuss what it means to be an oral historian, the power of story and how much radio still matters.

For more on Alan’s work

https://www.facebook.com/alan.dein

For Don't Log off

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jxzy9

For the ‘Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World’ album

https://jwmrecords.bandcamp.com/releases

For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com