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I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Cali Crossley Show. Unemployment numbers are trending downwards. But the facts seem to belie the everyday reality. Thousands are out of work and many haven't gotten a job since the recession began. What's more Bay Staters are bracing for what may be their last unemployment check. After Congress led by our own Senator Scott Brown voted against extending jobless benefits. We'll take the pulse of these taxing times with two unemployment experts. Then when the World Cup wraps up this weekend the soundtrack will no doubt be something called World Music. But what exactly is world music anyway. We check in with music authorities to get some answers. We round out the hour with our wine contributor Jonathan also whose new book is a 365 day devotional that chronicles a love affair with the novel great. Up next the state of unemployment the world of global music. And a year of wine. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Janine Herbst. The largest U.S. Russian spy

swap since the end of the Cold War is apparently underway. Two U.S. officials familiar with the case tell NPR a scientist imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges has been released. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports. Scientist Igor Sutyagin was flown to Vienna earlier today. His release marks the first step in what is shaping up to be a complicated spy swap between the U.S. and Russia. Officials tell NPR that while the details are still being ironed out there will be a one to one swap in which the U.S. will turn over 10 suspected Russian operatives and receive some jailed Russian prisoners in return. It's unclear who is on the U.S. wish list and when the prisoners will leave Russia on the U.S. side of the ledger the 10 people rounded up last week a suspected Russian agents are supposed to appear in a New York court later today. Officials say they're expected to plead guilty to the charge of being an unregistered foreign agent. And then they'd be deported to Russia. That could happen as early as this evening. Dina Temple-Raston NPR News New York.

It appears that al-Qaida plot to attack the New York subway system and blow up a shopping mall in England is bigger than first thought. Norwegian and U.S. officials say three suspected al Qaeda members were arrested today two in Norway one in Germany. Officials say they were part of a terror plot linked to the other two planned attacks. Officials though say it's not clear if the men had selected a new target but they were trying to make peroxide bombs Ride the Ducks tour company is temporarily suspending operations nationwide following an accident yesterday in Philadelphia. Two passengers are still missing after a duck boat and a barge collided on the Delaware River. From member station in Philadelphia Elizabeth Fiedler reports. Coast Guard Captain Todd Gatlin says the missing passengers could be in the duck boat at the bottom of the river but it's too murky for divers to know for sure. He says plans to send divers down were cancelled because of water conditions. But boats continue to scour the river. The boats right now are doing search patterns a lot of shore search patterns looking for the survivors hopefully ride the docks also operates tours in San

Francisco Seattle Branson Missouri and Newport Kentucky. For NPR News I'm Elizabeth Fiedler in Philadelphia. A lackluster and mixed performance for retail sales last month. Early reports though consumers focusing on deeply discounted clothing as shoppers worry about jobs. Target stores posted a 1.7 percent hike in sales in stores open over a year but that's less than economists wanted. And though Costco posted solid revenue gains it was mainly due to international business and that has retailers worried too about the important back to school season. That's just ahead. Or oil rose about $75 a barrel today spurred on by the rally on Wall Street. Midday trading venture crude for August was up a dollar 65 to $75 16 cents a barrel. On Wall Street the Dow is up 47 points the NASDAQ is up one point. The S&P 500 is up 2. This is NPR. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show last month's unemployment report revealed a nine point five percent jobless rate nationally. That's a drop from

January's 9.7 and improvement surely. But the statistics don't seem to reflect the on the ground reality. Joining us to review the unemployment landscape in Massachusetts and the nation is Andrew Sum. And Hannah Ryan. Andrew Sum is professor of economics and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Hannah Ryan is a founding member of monument staffing a Boston based recruiting firm for administrative support professionals. Professor Sum and Hanna Ryan welcome to the program. Thank you. Now let me just pick up on the fact that it just doesn't feel as though anything is getting better even though those numbers are going down. And I'm going to turn to you first Hannah because at Monument staffing people are hiring so something is happening on a positive side. Something is definitely happening. We've. Seen a pretty dramatic increase in number of jobs listed with us since the beginning of the year a number of jobs filled. You know our numbers are kind of up you know number of jobs listed it is up 47 percent from where I was

this time last year and jobs filled is up about 81 percent from where it was this time last year so something is happening still very cautious. I think companies are still being very careful. But when they do have an opening they're pretty serious about filling it. So now I want to point out that you you focus on administrative jobs and it within that range you have permanent jobs temporary jobs and temporary to permanent. What's moving the most if anything. Certainly this year I would say first and second quarter we've seen a dramatic increase in permanent jobs. Temp has always stayed steady. You know the start of the recession and you know permanent jobs clearly disappeared and temp remained pretty steady. But the exciting thing about the start of this year has been that we've seen permanent jobs increased so dramatically. I've been great for us and great for our candidates. OK Professor some I don't get it. I mean I think everybody knows several people not just one person out of work. And these numbers are improving but it still feels very bad.

Well Kelly the answer is it's a very mixed picture out there. If you look at just our state we've actually had three months in a row where we've had pretty respectable job growth here in Massachusetts so there are a number of sectors that clearly have added to the number of workers under payrolls. But when you look at a lot of the numbers what you still find is that those people who are being hired do not appear to be coming from the ranks of the unemployed the unemployed have stayed pretty much constant the last three to four months. And at the same time there's a growing number of workers who report themselves to be underemployed. That is they're working but they want a full time job but they pay their have their hours cut or they could only find a part time job to keep to keep them going. In fact on the cab driver who dropped me off here today he said when someone tells me they work for a nonprofit He said I do too. Basically he's found that the volume of his business has that has declined considerably and you have to work a lot more hours just to make that same amount of money. But I think the real crucial thing is will we be able to get enough job growth where employers will be able to draw back from that long list of unemployed people

that's going to be the key to the turnaround here and across the country. Now I want to pick up on something you said because I'm having my mind blown a little bit. The people who are being hired are not coming from the ranks of the unemployed. Did I hear that correctly. That's what the data clearly suggest yes. So you have to be employed or it seems so to get employed or you have to be what we would call the new entrant to the labor market I just graduated college are just great. Graduated high school or you have a number of cases where the second spouse and family has come into the labor market to supplement family income. So they're hiring but they're not necessarily hiring from the unemployed. OK. President Obama earlier this week addressed the unemployment picture and I just want to have our listeners hear what he had to say after 22 straight months of job loss. Our economy has now created jobs in the private sector for six months in a row. That's a positive sign. But the truth is the recession from which we're emerging has

left us in a hole that's about 8 million jobs deep. And as I've said from the day I took office it's going to take months even years to dig our way out. Now I just wanted you to pick up on what Professor son has just said about coming from the ranks of the employed are you saying that as you handle your applicant pool. Yes I would say there is a good amount of truth to what he's saying to that when it comes to a direct hire position with one of our clients. It is not uncommon for them to hire somebody that is currently employed. However there has been a nice shift of companies looking to do more temp to perm hires because they are a little bit wary about the market wanting to maybe have the chance to try somebody out to make sure that the fit is right. And in that case you can only look at people that are unemployed people that are in a permanent job they can't take time to do a temp to perm situation so you know I think both you know applicant pool they both have their

advantages. It just depends on the situation. Now I have to say that I've heard and I don't know if this is just some weird trend story but I've read a couple of times not much but I've seen that there are some companies that say they will not hire you if you're not already employed. I'm wondering Professor Some have you seen that. Yes I have. There has been a number of stories on it that have said that employers are particularly shying away from individuals who have been unemployed for a fairly long period of time and they've said that openly in the end of the jewels who interview them about their hiring what one just one last thing on that Kelly I think is very important which is in this recession we have never seen the length of unemployment spells as long as they are here in Massachusetts we just finished a little study that shows first five months of this year the average person misuses out of work 35 weeks the longest in our entire history since 1961 where we have this data. The longest code we had was like 17 weeks. So we have doubled the length of time in fact you have more

people out of work for a year than we've ever seen both in a country in our state in our entire history since into World War Two. And being able to bring those individuals back into the labor market is going to be a major challenge. So if employers are not willing to reach back into the queue the next question is what do we do with these is the president said what do we do with these 8 million people for almost 4 million of whom have been out of work for a year. What do we do to help bring them back into the paid labor market. This is pretty scary I have to say. The length of time that people have been off work and you're seeing that to Hannah and your applicant pool. Absolutely yeah. What's the average. Is there an average that you can tell from your from your group. You know it's hard to say it's anywhere from two weeks to two years and I think there is some truth to you know the longer somebody is unemployed the more challenges that they're seeing in just simply getting an interview. You know what you know because I'll hear from a client they'll review resume and say well her background looks terrific but what has she been doing for the last six months. Well for God's sake she's been unemployed you know. I mean you know come on. But there is a lot that people can do.

You can find a volunteer position. I would suggest if you're going to do that have it be something directly related to the type of work that you want to do. Try your hand at temping. Get yourself some face time with the company that they can at least afford to call me to hire a temp. They might be able to afford to hire someone to hire someone permanently down the road. And would you like to position yourself to be that person who's in the right time right place right time. You can get an unpaid internship and continue to build on your skills. You know there are a lot of things that people can do and I think that the mistake that a lot of our candidates make is not doing any of those things and just waiting for that right job to come along. And I think also not being as targeted with their job search as they should be instead they're kind of just throwing everything out there and throwing their resume out at every job that they can. Yeah and that can become a pretty strong negative you know for someone like myself from looking at a large quantity of resumes coming in. I will start to see the same person respond to you know my jobs and I posed to a wide range of different kinds of jobs but at the same person I thought how could she be qualified for all of these different jobs.

Professor some some of those people have been the numbers that you just mentioned have got to be doing what Hannah said and they're still not getting the gig because they're unemployed. Yeah there is. Kelly outsiders to two things one is just a follow up on it or there have been a number of employers who have said in these or by the way fairly large scale surveys and as well as interviews with the unemployed that if they spend the bulk of their time you know rather trying to find job visiting with employers directly talking to friends relatives by just sending out resumes that it turns out that particular internet search it turns out to more internet search you do holding everything else equal the less likely you are to get a job because employers view you act as some of as sort of like an internet freak. I mean I hate to say that you know you're not you're not being very you know appreciative of which jobs you really feel that you're qualified just going for anything going for anything. And so as a result you're applying for things for which you're not you know fully qualified. So and So that that's the one one side of it the second thing though I think is what I would have liked our country to have done is that is that once you've run out of UI.

And you are an employment unemployment insurance. And once you've been classified as unlikely to go back to your job it's got the other scary thing Kelly is that over half of all the unemployed there job is totally gone. They have no job to go back to. By that what I would want us to do is to say we will do two things for you. We will either go to a private sector firm and we'll buy you a job we'll pay a third to half of all your training costs for up to nine months you're going to go to work. And in addition what we would do is like we did in the late 70s as a young man and as we went out and we created jobs for the unemployed at one time we in this state we had 40000 people at work in those jobs. This time around we have barely a few thousand doing that. So what I'd like to do is rather than have the unemployed doing nothing for that next year let's put them to work in the private sector with a subsidized job or in the public sector with a fully subsidized job. Let's put America back and let's not wait for the jobs to show up. We're speaking with Professor Andrew Sum of Northeastern University is a professor of

economics there. And Hannah Ryan who is a founding member of monument staffing a Boston based recruiting firm. Now Professor Sum I want to follow up with you and ask what is the impact then of those folks who are not going to get these unemployment benefits distended because the Senate has said no. And the census jobs have gone away. What are we looking at. Are this is this 9.5 drop going to now go back up to where it was before and beyond. Well the answer to that is that underlying the 1.5 drop. I'm not trying to be a pessimist here but the answer is it was over a while mainly due to the fact that people quit looking for work. Nearly seven hundred fifty thousand workers just gave up looking for work in a month. If they had not given up the unemployment rate would have been about 10 percent. So the unemployment rate is really being what I call hidden by this. But the scary thing Kelly I think is two things and had a you could comment on this as well is that on the one hand we do find that the longer you've been out of work the less likely it is that you get reemployed so that those

individuals who are spending more and more time out the likelihood they're never going to get recalled is going down. The second thing is well you noticed on TV at night the stories in New Orleans about the people experiencing mental health problems were trying to expand services. A study by Rutgers University a friend of mine Carl Van Horn has shown large numbers of the unemployed are reporting serious stress. Emotional Distress just pressure and mental depression problems and creating serious problems with anger with their family and with their friends and the toll that it's taking is really very serious and it's not confined just to the to the golf. This is a very serious problem we've also found and that also will again increase the likelihood that you won't go back to work because of the mental health problems that will exacerbate the difficulties you have. Finding a job you want to respond. Yeah I absolutely agree and I think I see it on a much smaller scale but I will see candidates who are applying to jobs or maybe I mean an interview with them and the kind of negative or the frustration is

so kind of dramatic that makes it almost impossible for me to be able to help them. Because if you're going to go out on an interview and you're going to bring that negativity nobody wants to hire that. And so I try to encourage people to find a positive way to talk about what you've been doing. And in fact you know we implemented a program with the beginning of the end of 2008 where we were offering clients a free day of temp time or we would send a candidate to their office to do an administrative task we would pay them for the day and it would we thought of it as a way of initially to help the clients get some work done. But what it turned into was my candidates would get a chance to have a day where they would get paid for their time they would feel good about themselves again. It kind of reenergized them for when they did go out on their interview they'd have something new to talk about. And I would get e-mails and calls all the time saying thank you you know thank you I thought it was just one day but that one day sometimes was all they needed to kind of respond to that positive energy and help them have a good interview and maybe even get a job. What is the impact of what some have referred to this as a he cession or a

man session meaning that more men particularly those in white collar jobs are out of work. And so back to what Professor summit said about you know household stress that you know these are folks presumably who have not been out of work for me for not this long and that's having an impact across the board not just in their own families but community wise professor some. The problem is on this he cession on unfortunately has more relevance here in Massachusetts and any other state in the country. We have just shown that in a recent study that we are the only state not the only city but we are the highest state in the country where all the job loss was due to men. During this current recession in fact men lost one hundred sixty eight percent of all the jobs. But the gains were being made by highly educated women highly educated women were more likely to be employed in Massachusetts he ended a recession then it to beginning. If we also find some serious job losses among less educated women who have been hurt very badly by in our state we are at the very top of this ladder where we're asking how much of a problem is a

male problem the answer is more so in Massachusetts than in any other state across the entire country. OK so then what is the the the extra impact of having these unemployment benefits cut off because right now the Senate is said forget it you're not getting them. Our own Scott Brown led that charge and said Sorry I kind of resent such bad straits I don't think that this is a wise move from a financial standpoint. While as an economist I would say that I think that is one of the worst decisions that a country can make at this particular point in time. If the if jobs are growing rapidly in the length of unemployment was 11 weeks Kelly then I would say I could understand concerns that the deficit would drive this. But we're dealing with a situation where the number of people looking for work is five times the number of jobs that are available at a time when the unemployment durations are so long they have to cut off a source of support at this time would be a very tragic mistake I think our senator has had so let us down on on his decision in this area. I wanted you to speak to the he cession I know that you do it with administrative jobs so you don't necessarily

have as many men coming through but from the white collar perspective. Are you seeing that a lot of folks have lost jobs in that arena and specifically was one of the hard is it. Sure. You know in my experience it is we do administrative staffing. So kind of a wider range of our candidates do end up being women. And I think what we've seen more than anything now is that a lot of our higher level you know executive assistant versus an administrative assistant or receptions but they're real high level professional career administrative women. They are now becoming the primary breadwinner for their families including carrying the benefits for their families and kind of the responsibility and the stress that that that can bring to them where they might be in a job or they don't love it and they've come to me to ask for a new position but they are very wary to leave a position because maybe their spouse has been laid off or as they have been unemployed for an extended period of time. And so the kind of responsibility that builds on them is strong so we hear more about those kind of stories in our office than you know necessarily male applicants coming in.

Professor somewhat would you project for the next to the end of the year and particularly I got to assume the Senate is going to come back and give and extend these benefits I just got to. Right. I mean I'm hoping given the political kind of roadblocks that we have which I think are not in the interest of our country for the two parties to to be at it like they are. I'm not sure whether the Senate will come back after after the break and do the right thing in this area. Everyone By the way I think there's a little positive news. When I was talking with the your staff assistant yesterday the Massachusetts there's a survey we do on employers hiring plans and they said that they were beginning to get a little more positive about their hiring plans and were thinking about adding additional people to to the payroll. Now that's a good sign we're still way below where we were by the direction on that is moving in the right direction here at least in our state. The only scary thing to me though I would say

Kelly is is that consumer in all the consumer confidence surveys is taken a really steep dip in confidence about the future and about their spending. And if we're going to get back on the road to recovery we need to get consumers confident enough that I could go back and I could confidently spend because I'm secure in my job. So our ability to get jobs on track is crucial to getting consumers on track to get our country back on track and I hope we don't have to wait so many more years. For this to turn itself around. Well we're going to have to leave it there today. Grim reality but hopefully some positiveness as well. I'm Kelly Crossley and we've been looking behind the recent unemployment numbers with Andrew Sum and Hanna Ryan. Andrew Sum is a professor of economics and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Ana Ryan is a founding member of monument staffing a Boston based recruiting firm. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Up next just call world music but it's hard to define. We'll take a listen after this break. This is the new eighty nine point seven. Support for WGBH comes from you and from the New England mobile book fair

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I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. You're listening to AM radio by Lionel Leckie and Julie Kee Joe. It's a genre known as world music. The World Cup was a global stage for fans of the genre and helped highlight the work of musicians who perform this music. But just exactly what is world music here to help us sort out the high and low notes. Ron Reed a musician himself and an associate professor of contemporary writing and production at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. Ron welcome. Thank you very much is a great pleasure to be here. Okay good. Well I come to this with a little bit of but yes I realize in preparing for the segment that I've been educated a little bit better but. I always thought that world music was kind of that stuff that I heard in Putumayo a hundred years ago that little shop that has the music going but it had the kind of dresses and it was the music was in the background. That was kind of a in my mind it's what world music was. Well that's some of it and some of it and I think it was great that that they put to me you know organization realized there was a need to fall for this and found ways to talk to

the market. And these diverse bits and pieces of music and make it accessible to a lot of people. I think for a lot of people the introduction to world music is actually true put to mail. Yeah you know while the television was definitely mine but I've since learned as I said in prepping for this that it's bigger than that so first of all some defining is defined as any kind of non-Western music would you agree with that I definitely agree with it. OK. Definitely. And you know music that is that traditional musical folk music of a culture that has created and played by Indigenous musicians. So how do you separate what's folk music and world music or is it the same. Well you know when you think back about two years ago many years ago when ethnomusicologist would travel and they would make these field recordings they basically really were recording folk music and I think we got to a point where where we decided we wanted to rather than have these natural sounding folk recordings we wanted to have music that because of taste and ears and

now joined a very highly. Rick recordings I refined recordings I think a lot of musicians who wanted to be able to use those songs that incorporate them into their recordings. OK now we have here at WGBH radio program called the world and the senior producer of the program is Marco Warman and part of his job is to cover world music. So he gave us a couple of examples one that he says is world music and one is not. So let's start with the one that is and I'm going to find it right here so I won't screw this up and this is by al by who but remember I'm crucified in the name of the song by database by yes indoor is a two thousand seven album which was made for us and Senegalese audience and it is quite a different sound. Remember not to pay attention. And now here's the thing.

Here's a song by the same artist which he says is not world music this is called Seven seconds. And so let's hear what let's hear it. First of all do you agree with Marco's assessment. What I can see why he would say of the second track is not world music only because of the of the instrumentation the electronic instruments the backbeat which sounds very much like American pop music. So using that lower maybe maybe we want to be in the the things that made me made him determine that it wasn't real music as opposed to the previous A example. But I think a lot of world music actually is that fusion of America and I think a lot of this actually trying to do that because they are looking to appeal to a wider audience like say for instance many years ago is that wider audience our wider audience.

Why. Just checking OK. Because many years ago I think I've heard that musicians say this that they have approach producers and the producers what would make a man so this is many years ago with say would say things about the music well it's true it's a nickel it's two that's two Caribbean Oh it's to this or it's to that and I think that many world music artists have been trying actually to find ways that they can they can incorporate little bits and pieces of instruments or add some blues or instruments and ideas from American pop music as a means of really help them reaching a wider audience there. Their stories are still very much rooted in controlled environments. They're trying to tell the stories and make people very aware of the conditions that they have the content of their lyrics are certainly a lot more about social concerns about rather than about singing about love and loss. So but I think that that's that's really a lot

of the world music that I think that is very popular today is a really a happy marriage of some pop elements with traditional. Music. Well let's listen to this is a piece called MLA by Hugh Massa Kaila and a lot of people might recognize him as killer from his roots in kind of pop music in the past you know graze in the grass and other stuff. And so right now this is a piece as I said call to Mel and he wrote this for his 974 album. I am not afraid. To live Don. Rob Reuben here that sounds good to me so that's a that's a good marriage of what you were just saying right. That was my introduction a long time and I didn't even know what stimuli was. OK

I heard this piece by Hugh Massa killer and it was just just his his one his voice the groove the. I didn't know what the language was and I learned all the words just by singing them. After doing some research found out that he was really talking about the coalmines and stimuli is really about the cool steam train. There's a whole or wonderful story and I've seen him perform this where he actually you know he imitates the sound of the train and he talks a lot about the story. And in some ways it's a pretty sad story but also it's a very very powerful piece of music but I think again a happy marriage of some jazz sensibilities with traditional South African music. OK now we can't leave this discussion without playing some of your music. So we have a piece from you and this is called Mesquite Masti. My Steve Vai. All right there we go. How can I get here the Caribbean and it is this world music. Well I think of it as world music.

The thing is that I don't well let's say if when you start off creating the music you're not even thinking what is going to be will music or not but I think you are trying to blend your influences and I think one is strongly rooted in the Caribbean the steel plants the rhythm that has a story it's about Masti is the name of a well-known stick fighter from Trinidad who as I said there's a whole tradition of stick fighting which is very much like that Brazilian tradition of capoeira. Right. So the lyrics talks about talks about that tradition and Masti as one of its key exponents of that form. But it's also taking that folkloric melody and using that as a as a as a base for improvise a song for jazz improvisation. There's keyboards a saxophone as there is a drum improvised nation and it's really just experimenting and and bringing something that's about more than you know. If somebody says this is World Music you're not insulted by that.

Also they know that I'm actually happy. OK I think that it can cross over well into world music and but it could also this is also considered Caribbean music. OK. So someone from the Caribbean here and it will still go of course I recognize that melody. OK well I want to play a piece called immigrant by an artist need to Sawney who resents having his music labeled as world music he says is too limiting Here we go. With. Women. So he says he writes on his album jacket. I'm in DND to be more accurate I was raised in England but my parents came from India am I not English because of my cultural heritage or the color of my skin who decides. I you know don't appreciate this he doesn't think it is just too limiting and in fact there are others who have written about this and said that sometimes that this label is applied to ethnic music as a way

to sort of not address the fullness of the history and all of that would you agree with it. I would agree with that I think and I can I can say that I realize that the this broad term will in music what it does is really just allow a lot of people to find say for instance I was trying to find this. This is a book that's one of the places I would start. I find out of the this was if I went to where we don't have record stores anymore. Yeah. But think of when you have Tower Records or Virgin Records and so on you know you can go online and listen to you know you know what it means to these areas and you look through the Will section and buy either by country or if you're looking for the same as one of the ways that you could find. And I really do understand that the limiting 2m of live music but it's a commercial term that allows people to if they're searching or trying to find some of this music as a place to stop. Now let me ask. Question because I think the Internet speaking of that has brought so much different kinds of music to people where they are that you know for a lot of people listening to

this I think World Music is just kind of another kind of music I enjoy I don't even know because I no longer sort of stick to one category because the whole world is open to me musically. Would you agree that the Internet has really been a force to open up people's minds musically. Oh most definitely. And that is one of the things that I think put to me it was did recognize that one we're going to find something to search for music online and the fact that a lot of people don't particularly need to buy an entire album. They want to have access to the pieces of music that they like. Just like you'd walk into a store and it may have the number wouldn't be a record store it might be a clothing store. But there is a Putumayo kiosk in there and then playing some music and you just you know and say I like that. And you go online and you find that one truck. Now they figured out if we put a selection of these five or six tracks that sound similar or from this particular region put them together we could sell a CD. There you go. Well I don't say that listening to all of these songs are so much richer than what I thought was

quote world music which I had in my mind sort of a vague new agey little bit of ethnic flavor tossed in but this is a whole other kind of thing. And again as we mentioned at the beginning there are so many people who are being introduced to some of this music via the World Cup World Cup it's really been a great export or YEAH of music you know the two quote and official songs ones by Chic Here are the other ones about this artist from the Sudan and many many more official songs are out there for people to sample through this particular competition. If you had to give one or two songs for folks who are just dipping their toe into this genre what would you suggest. Oh and that's a whole other than just yours. That's how Ron read. That's a that's a really tough one. I mean there are I mean there's so many it depends on where they want to where they want to start but if they were songs I could just talk about that I like to say for instance will base locally mangle blue is a wonderful example of a group who I think it really captures the essence of

world music. The musicians are all from from various Latin American countries. The music is representative of anything from jazz to blues to to all kinds of Afro-Cuban and Cuban music. Angelica Jo who was just visited us. Well we get there's a list right there that every people can start with and we're going out a little bit more with music call in you two by Richard Bona. I've been talking with Ron Reed who is an associate professor at the Berklee School of Music about world music. And Ron is a musician himself. So you should look up his work as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Will. I had a great shedding a light on this subject. Up next Arden wine lover Jonathan also opens the book. His book on living the wine life Stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Kelly Honda on the Lynn way in Lynn featuring a wide selection of in-stock new and pre-owned vehicles to fit a range of budgets and lifestyles. You can see their complete inventory at Kelley auto dot com at

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time. Simply by making the switch to sustain it as a sustainer you can break down your gift into monthly installments and you'll enjoy the convenience of automatic renewal. Every sustainer helps reduce the on air fund raising one eighty nine point seven and on WGBH channels two and forty four new sustainers will help bring more uninterrupted episodes of Masterpiece Mystery. To do your part. Visit us online at WGBH dot org WGBH reporter Philip Martin investigates the crisis of sexual and famine trafficking. This afternoon during the five o'clock hour of All Things Considered and again tomorrow morning in the seven o'clock hour of MORNING EDITION here on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH radio. I'm Cally Crossley wine 365 days a year sounds like heaven to wine lovers I know there are few more enthusiastic about wine than my guest Jonathan also. Jonathan is the founder of the Boston Wine School a contributor to this program and an author his new book is wine lovers devotional 365 days of knowledge

advice and lore for the ardent afficionado. Jonathan welcome back thank you Cali. Good to see you again. Now listeners here's your chance to call in with your questions about wine or Johnson's new book. Our number is 877 3 0 1 89 70. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy After let my listeners this is the first time you showed up here with no one. I could not believe that you know what I'm not going to let that happen again I promise. I tell you what let's talk about let's go back to my port wine all over your head that doesn't matter right. Well let's talk about how you got into writing about wine which I think people think when they hear you when you're here on the show that you just came out fully formed with everything. Yeah well you know I started life as a speechwriter. Meetings sales meetings conventions trade shows that kind of thing. My specialty was writing for in English for non-native speakers in English and in 1088 I was doing a big international sales meeting in Hawaii and the Australian

Museum. Yes oh yes Trillian New Zealand when this company decided that they wanted to do an Australian New Zealand wine tasting and so you know it was like a writer boy you can type you know we needs a menu we need some tasting notes we need some wine jibberish you know can you sling that together and I I said well you know I I I swirled I sniffed and I detected the aroma of some cash. There were some checks a little like a little coin I said yeah. You can definitely write about it I have never written about wine or even food at this point. So I started to research. You know these wines that they were going to bring in you know this is one thousand nine hundred eight you know Australian wines aren't even hardly in the US New Zealand wines you know Al Gore has has not yet invented the Internet you know so I cant really look it up. And so I come back and I say well I don't know what I'm going to do I'm just I you know what how how am I going to how my going to write about these wines. And they said you know what. We're sending some stuff to the you know home

office we're going to put in some wine. You know we know what we're bring in and we're going to put you a little case in we're going to send it to you and then you'll just you know you'll just taste it and then you'll write about it and I'm like I'm like what what what will I write. They're like oh you've read that you've read that stuff it's all nonsense just sling some verbiage together and you know make it happen. And and that was really it you know couple weeks later this is this case of wine shows up out of nowhere I invite a bunch of people over to taste it and just it was just. It was it was just it was so much more interesting and so much more. You know I was like everybody else you know I'm down here winds up here. You know I always think of that scene from Wayne's World where Wayne and Garth meet Alice Cooper you know and they get down on the floor and they're like I'm not we're not we're not worthy. I you know I think a lot of people feel that way about wine and I felt that way too. But once I started getting into it once I started tasting it on purpose and asking questions about asking the natural

questions of like you know you know what's That is it someone's name is that you know Mary Beth chardonnay or what. You know once you start asking those questions and you start getting answers I just I just it was just much more interesting much more real. And you know that that you know that night of course you know no one had really at this point thought about spitting out. You know you are a little full of it yeah. So that so that night is that night as I had one hand on the floor and one hand on the ceiling kind of stabilizing myself. I said man this this is something a person could write about. Well here you are MANY years later having written about it quite a bit. And this book is something for every day of the year just a little tip or some advice or a little piece of wine lore and I mentioned the lore because I love this particular piece that you wrote about Charles Shaw Charles so you may recognize trial shots now because it's usually two but yeah that's what we call it

in California. These are wines that are sold at Trader Joe's and these are in California there are dollar ninety nine. Yeah that's how they got the nickname Two Buck Chuck. You know here on the East Coast they're you know they're 299. But you know they really you know there really is was a a Charles Shaw and you know these wines represent you know these wines represent. You know a new world of wine for for a lot of people and you know affordable tasty available every day every every day. You know sometimes even more than once a day. You know this is the kind of wine that you can you know Tuesday night home late from work eating a sandwich standing over the sink why you know you know you know you know you know you don't have to sit down you don't have to have a special fancy glass and. And it represents it represents I mean Charles Shaw wines and these two buck chuck in this really

affordable wine part of the market really represents in many ways the future of wine as more and more people are into it. It's a past beer in this country is the favorite beverage has a lot of people don't know and don't believe you know the way. Yes and as soon as that happened we started doing beer classes at the bar. He says that's how you are going to be like that. Now Jonathan I want to get you to read a piece from your book and this is so much your voice I love this short piece about the psychology of buying the case. Yeah. So if you move from drinking the wine over the sink thinking boy I really like this one and I think I'm going to have to really buy a case of it. This is really pretty interesting to me it's only age 35. OK. Just it's funny to me. If you want me to read it yeah I want you to read just you know like the second paragraph of the same paragraph. OK. So this is about buying an entire twelve bottle case of wine you can't

believe you bought so much of this you think to yourself seven bottles yet to go you curse yourself and the wine and lapse into a funk craving diversity in new flavors. The honeymoon is over. Bottle six through eight leave the house as house warming gifts and impromptu birthday gestures and you feel you are making progress. Much time passes. The last four bottles creep to the bottom of the rock in a Venus replay of continental drift. Finally months later you hit upon bottle number nine. Pop the cork in you Rica. The best bottle of wine in the whole case. In fact it's your new favorite wine. Hey you think fondly caressing the glass. I remember this wine. It was a whole case once. What's wrong with me I should have bought two cases. You drink the last four bottles with a combination of the stall Jeff and regret. I love every single guys give some nice advice for people to think about it before they buy Yeah

it's what I thought it was. I read that and I just started laughing out loud because I've been there and you're thinking well what if that's what's wrong if I say I think it is I mean it's just the arc I mean it's like you know it's the arc of any you know of any relationship or of any of anything you know first just crazy in love. And then you know kind of in the Middle East are getting kind of realistic about it and you know what. The things that I like about the book is it's so excessive and you've you structured it so that there is it is a devotional meaning that there is something for people to read about if they want to every day or they can just go to yes Pacific salmon Absolutely. I mean you know I begged my publishers to make this vampire wine book. I said you know I begged them but they would not listen to any of it and insisted on doing something meaningful. The pictures are great and what you talk about is living a wine life meaning that you can you know as you say drink it over the sink or a special occasion.

And we talk about this. We talk about this at the wine school a lot when I say to people well tell me about your wine life. You know you know people people often will laugh or they'll giggle you know. You know people have you know work life and home life and love life and commuting life I mean people can go on and on about what their commuting life is like. But we really try to encourage people to think about what's your wine life like. What did you used to like. What do you like today. Has it changed is it changing. You know it's one hundred eight degrees outside right now. You know you've with life the way it is here you've got to be drinking something different now. And once you start to you know want to one of the challenges of wine in America is that. Wine is always sort of an out there kind of thing. You know here's the here's the orbit of your normal meaningful personal life and wine is sort of out

there something you should like something you should know more about. And it's just sort of separated for a lot of people wine is still a special occasion beverage. And what we try to do in terms of thinking in terms of a wine Life is too is to you know either expand the orbit of what you think of as your life so that it takes in wine or to make wine as you say more accessible and more available so you can just bring it inside so it's like so that it's like anything it's like food it's like wine it's like music. And incorporate it in between the lore which I love all these funny little stories about stuff. Our recipes and you know some really practical advice to me because I know that people ask me all the time what goes with that OK I drink it but what goes with it yeah. Yeah. Well and this is what in addition to having these recipes in addition have these recipes and conversations about food and then suggestions of wines

that that would go or that might be a good match. You know we also talk about. We talk about wine as a color spectrum from you know super light white wines to super inky intense black red wines. And when you think about wine like that and then you think about food like that you know think of a spectrum of meat you know on one end is oysters clams mussels you know tremendously tremendously white food you know and then on the other end is you know beef lamb goat badger you know really strong. OK. Well you did right. But if you overlay those spectrums and you see how they start to line up they start to make sense they start to give you a clue about you know what you're eating and what kind of wine is going with it. So instead of just overt advice like you know I mean good very good advice you know so if you don't block with seafood I mean that's good

advice. But instead of that is more of I hope a way of saying for people well how do I think about how do I think about this you know what am I having here maybe maybe I'm not the milieu with this dish maybe I'm not familiar with this wine how we get into context I can make a good guess about what approximately is going to go. I think it's really important to point out your book and I appreciate this about it is that you know there's any number of wine books out there but I think overall sense of your book is to give people permission to like what they like and not like what they don't like oh you and I can say right here on the radio there's some stuff I love that you hate. Let me just tell you this I mean this is this is this we expected this is you know not everybody is going to like everything. That's just completely natural would be that way about music will be that way about if we have a conversation in the battlefield about our of the wine expert they feel like well I don't want to grill you know you know what I just said right there. Wine experts write this in some ways is at the very very

core of our in our American could just speak for I mean me and perhaps us as Americans. You know that's our core of our of our uncomfortable feeling and our intimidation. We have in the U.S. this it's almost a cult of expert. You know these these different wine a master and master some gays and people who were I don't know I don't know what these are all very knowledgeable people who have you know who know a lot about wine. But the lingering sense that we get is you know I you know I have to have a Ph.D. in wine before I can say hey I like this or hey not for me. And it's a real problem it's one of those things that like I said before about how how wine is kind of an extra you know wine is out there. That's one of the things that keeps it out there people say well I you know just. You know you know people a lot of times you

say well I couldn't tell the difference just you know just just do it you know just just grind up some dirt in a glass of water I'll be fine don't worry don't worry. What are you kidding. You know food if you know food. My feeling is if you know food you know wine and if you can talk about yourself in terms of the kind of food you like it's a very short just a very little baby step to start talking about wine like food and and then what you like about wine in that same way. One of the things I like also in the book is that you have a little cheat sheet about helping people who have to bring wine so that's really great. Several tips out of the book. Yeah is there any passage in here that you would like people to particularly pay attention to to particularly pay and while you're thinking about that I have to say that I love the game and keeping it in the mode of just being relaxed about this. I love your section about storage of wine and you know start with build a wine cellar a little wine.

Right don't start. Yeah yeah yeah I want everyone to excavate your basement you know that's just yeah. You started with what under the stairs I was well under the First under the sink. Yeah you know and for a lot of people that's a big step. You know it's like it's like if you really want to keep wine for months or weeks or whatever you know get it on Friday or just get it under the sink and then from there get it under the stairs and then from there get it downstairs and you know baby steps a lot lot of the lot of the wine books that you'll read you know they seem to go from zero to two to 100 like that you know you're supposed to go from one to from wine zero to wine hero overnight by like reading one book and that's not really you know that's not really how it works I mean if this book takes you 300 I mean this is not Faulkner this should not take you 365 days to read it but if you read just one entry every I mean every so often people still

do this. Yeah still you know they do it you know and if you you know you know don't read it all at once take it a day at a time take your time winds been here for eight thousand years. You'll be here for another 8000 years and and slowly but surely become become more of a wine lover. Every every single day. Now do you want me to look at a passage was released and just like a couple lines would be great as we conclude. Well the Latin phrase in vino very toss captures a peculiar trade of wine known for thousands of years. The phrase does not mean that wine contains an enduring romantic artistic truth but rather that when people drink wine they tend to talk sometimes even speaking trues they don't mean or more accurately don't mean to say out loud in front of people. The active ingredient in wine alcohol causes these slips which is why it's really wise to keep your vino and

your very last in valleys. I couldn't think of a better way. That's so just my thanks to Johnson also of our contributor and founder of the Boston wines go. His new book is wine lovers devotional 365 days of knowledge advice and lore for the Arden afficionado. You can keep on top of the galley Crossley Show by visiting our website WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley. Today's show was engineered by Alan Mathis and produced by Chelsea murders and a white knuckle beat and Abby Ruzicka. We got special production help from lucky shell Landrum. This is the Calla Crossley Show a production of WGBH radio Bostons NPR station for news and culture.