Cultural, Community, Information

Airs Wednesday, February 22 at 8:00 p.m. Despite disability, poverty, isolation and prejudice, a surprising number of blind African American musicians who came from the gospel tradition influenced not just gospel music, but blues, bluegrass, and American vernacular music up to and beyond rock and roll. Using narrative, archival audio, interviews, scholarly commentary and music, Heavenly Sight tells this little known story through broadcast and a comprehensive, interactive web site.

Airs Tuesday, February 21 at 9:00 p.m. The Berklee College of Music in Boston has educated at least eight bandleaders playing this year's Newport Jazz Festival, and several other sidemen. So it's appropriate that the school annually sends one of its most enterprising student groups to Newport. At the Harbor Stage, Puerto Rican saxophonist Mario Castro leads a group of musicians from places as far-flung as South Korea, Israel and California, and as close as a few hours north on the Massachusetts coast. Recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival on Sunday, August 7.

Airs Monday, February 20 at 9:00 p.m.  During the vibrant years of the Harlem Renaissance, music, religion, and spitituality were interconnected -- not just in the religious setting of the church, but in the jazz club, the dance hall, the rent party, even the political street rally.  Writer Carl Hancock Rux, Reverend Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, historian Farah Griffin, Professors Josef Sorett and Obery Hendricks, and others explore these powerful interconnections.  Includes the voices of Langston Hughes, poet Sterling Brown, Marcus Garvey, as well as read