Sun­day May 5th at 1:30pm SLT/Pacific, join us on Wil­low Grove in Sec­ond Life for anoth­er of our month­ly first-Sun­day For­mal Balls. 

This time we’re cel­e­brat­ing Earth Day (yes, a lit­tle late) with 90 min­utes of music from Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er and Elrik Merlin. 

See you there! Join us in per­son or on the air… 

Your car­riage awaits: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Willow%20Grove/92/109/2964

- Or tune in at main.vcradio.org...

Today we present a pro­gramme of a wide vari­ety of music inspired by, but not lim­it­ed to, Beltane.

Beltane or Beltain is the Gael­ic May Day fes­ti­val. Most com­mon­ly it is held on 1 May, or about halfway between the spring equinox and sum­mer sol­stice. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it was wide­ly observed through­out Ire­land, Scot­land, and the Isle of Man. In Irish the name for the fes­ti­val day is Lá Beal­taine, in Scot­tish Gael­ic Là Beall­tainn and in Manx Gael­ic Laa Boaltinn/Boaldyn. It is one of the four Gael­ic sea­son­al fes­ti­vals — along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lugh­nasadh — and is sim­i­lar to the Welsh Calan Mai. Inter­est­ing­ly, in the process of Chris­tian­i­sa­tion, no saint was assigned to this day. And inter­est­ing, too, Beltane actu­al­ly began at night­fall the day before, not on the morn­ing of the day itself: it was the night and the day, and not the oth­er way around.

Don’t for­get to tune in for an edi­tion of our reg­u­lar fea­ture, Where Have You Been? — where we take a look at events and places around the Sec­ond Life grid. 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic Time, 8pm and mid­night in the UK. Plus The Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity — every four hours from 4am Pacific.

In today’s pro­gramme, we present a selec­tion of music fea­tur­ing the human voice, from Mediæ­val times to the present.

Both sec­u­lar and a lit­tle sacred music is includ­ed, so today’s show will be quite var­ied, rang­ing between trou­ba­dour songs, Renais­sance choral works, tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish folk-songs sung by artists like the King’s Singers and Coope Boyes & Simp­son, and mod­ern works such as those of Karl Jenk­ins, Lib­era, The Swingle Singers, The Car­pen­ters, and Don­na McK­e­vit­t’s haunt­ing set­tings of Derek Jar­man’s poetry.

The pro­gramme focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on less­er-known works and on small­er vocal ensem­bles, rather than either solo or large-scale per­for­mances, but exam­ples of both are also included.

Then lat­er today, join us at noon or 4pm SLT/Pacific for Where Have You Been?, our series on places to vis­it and things to see around the Sec­ond Life Grid, plus Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every 4 hours from 4am Pacific/SLT.

“Peters­field Cham­ber Choir 004” by dom archer is licensed under CC BY 2.0

60 years ago, on East­er Sat­ur­day 1964, Radio Car­o­line began reg­u­lar broad­casts at noon on 1520kHz, “199 metres”, from the MV Car­o­line (for­mer­ly the Fred­eri­cia), anchored off Felixs­towe, Suf­folk, from where it had begun test trans­mis­sions the pre­vi­ous day. The first pro­gramme was host­ed by Chris Moore. Radio Car­o­line’s first musi­cal theme was Jim­my McGrif­f’s “Round Mid­night”, a jazz stan­dard co-com­posed by Thelo­nious Monk. In March 1964, The For­tunes record­ed Car­o­line, which became the sta­tion’s theme. The sta­tion’s slo­gan was “Your all-day music sta­tion”. It was the start of a three and a half years that changed the face of British broadcasting.

In mem­o­ry of the immense changes and ben­e­fits the off­shore sta­tions brought to music radio and to lis­ten­ers in search of pop­u­lar music on the air around the coasts of Britain and Europe, we are com­mem­o­rat­ing the event today with a spe­cial pro­gramme of music from the 1960s, as you might have heard on the off­shore sta­tions, plus a spe­cial broad­cast of a 1970 radio doc­u­men­tary by Paul Har­ris, “The His­to­ry of Off­shore Radio”. The doc­u­men­tary cov­ers the peri­od 1958 to 1970 and includes the ear­li­est Scan­di­na­vian sta­tions such as Radio Mer­cur and Radio Nord, as well as more famil­iar sta­tions like Radio Lon­don, Radio Car­o­line* and Radio Veron­i­ca. The peri­od is illus­trat­ed by many airchecks from the major­i­ty of the sta­tions oper­at­ing in this peri­od in addi­tion to a com­men­tary which tells the sto­ry, from ear­ly begin­nings, to years of suc­cess and some­times dark deeds. The pro­gramme is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable in that it was made in 1970 — soon after the events it depicts occurred,

Tune in for this spe­cial pro­gramme at 2pm Pacific/SLT.

We’ll also be broad­cast­ing episodes of “Where Have You Been?”  at the usu­al time of 12 noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, and “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every 240 min­utes from 4am Pacific.

*Radio Car­o­line is now a licensed com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion based in SE Eng­land. You can vis­it them here.