Music Credits: “NY,” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

 Jo Reed:  For the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works. I’m Josephine Reed. Today, we’re exploring how opera is being transformed into a more inclusive and innovative art form. One of the companies leading the charge is Opera Praktikos or OPrak—New York City’s first disability-forward opera company. Co-founded by librettist Marianna Mott Newirth and journalist Greg Moomjy, OPrak’s mission is to break down barriers for artists and audiences alike. A champion disability creativity, OPrak is reimagining how opera is created and experienced.

My guests today  are the co-founder of OPrak Marianna Mott Newirth and mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy, who has cerebral palsy and stars in OPrak’s upcoming production of “There Will Be Cake.” a joyful presentation pairing two opera monologues with humor, food, and community.

Marianna’s and Hailey’s work on and off stage exemplifies how embracing accessibility and collaboration doesn’t just remove obstacles but enriches the art form itself. And demonstrates how a disability-forward approach to opera can open new possibilities for creativity, storytelling, and connection.

Mariana, Hailey , first of all, thank you both for schlepping into the studio when I know you have an opening night this week. So my deep appreciation to you both. 

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Absolutely. We are pleased to be here.

Jo Reed:

I want to just go back a little bit with both of you, and I'll start with you, Hailey.

When did you first fall in love with opera? What drew you to this art form?

Hailey McAvoy:

So I would say first off, I just fell in love with singing in general. And I really wanted actually to be like a singer-songwriter. I wanted to be like Taylor Swift. And I thought to myself when I was 14, like, "Oh, well, if I want to do that and I want to sing live, maybe I'd better take some voice lessons." So I went to my school music teacher and said, "Hey, I think I should take some voice lessons and what do you think I should do?" I grew up outside of Boston and she said, "Well, if you want to take really good lessons, I think you should audition for New England Conservatory Prep School," and I had no idea what that was, and I just said, "Okay." I prepared Reflection from Mulan to sing for my audition, and I was accepted and said to my teacher, "Okay, great, let's work on some pop music." And she said, "Oh, actually that's not what I teach. I teach classical voice and musical theater." And I thought, "Oh, gosh." And at first I wasn't quite sure that I was sold on it, but little by little, she very lovingly introduced me to one beautiful piece of music after another. And it was when I think I was 16, she assigned me a German song and told me to go home and look it up. And she said, "Find the translation and make sure that you find a translation that's literal.   You want to make sure that it is actually the German meaning and not just an overly flowery English version." And I said, "Okay." And I went home and looked and looked and looked, and I just could have sworn that I hadn't found the literal translation.

And I came back and said, "I looked and I really tried to find it, but everything I found was too beautiful. There's no way I found the literal words." And she looked at them and said, "No, that's it. Those are the real words." And that was when I was sold, because song lyrics had always been what really drew me in.

And then when I realized I could sing this incredible, incredible poetry from all over the world, in all of these different languages, and tell these stories that are larger than life. That I was super sold on and I've been pretty sold on it ever since.

Jo Reed:

Marianna, what drew you to opera?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

I actually didn't discover opera until I was 45. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I've grown up in theater my whole life, and was an actress for a while, a playwright better put. But opera had never spoken to me, never called to me, it never really registered. It wasn't until I discovered…. actually, I'm going to credit Jad Abumrad from Radiolab, when he produced a show called “The Ring and I.”  And this was about people who love the Ring Cycle, the Wagner's Ring Cycle, and who travel all over the world to go to a Ring Cycle. And then I heard there is a new Ring Cycle at the Met. We went out and we got tickets to “Das Rheingold”. And I was shocked at how touched I was and how moved and sad, because where had I been my whole life in many ways? And that got me on a path.

And I realized not only could I understand the mechanisms of opera and the reasons for an aria. An aria is like a moment out of time in someone's inner world. I realized as a playwright, because I was writing plays when I was in college and I love the theater, I always have. And I wanted to marry these two, like this new discovery of opera with what the knowledge that I had as a playwright.  Because I knew opera needed new stories and stories that empowered women, and that empowered men and women together, so that got me on a path to become a librettist. And in the process, I also discovered I've always also loved producing and bringing people together, people like Hailey, and then finding material for them to really dig into. So the two really came together quite organically that I want to write. It's not only producing my own operas, but it's producing operas and writing stories, and being part of the mechanism that makes new opera happen in New York and around the world as well.

Jo Reed:

Marianna, what led to the creation of Opera Praktikos or OPrak?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

It was an interesting confluence. So as I was working my way into opera circles, this was about 2015, and I knew I wanted to be a librettist. I knew I didn't know anybody in the industry. So I just started to network and go to events at OPERA America, and just insert myself in the world of opera as best as I could as an outsider. And OPERA America offered a symposium, like a weekend-long symposium on the business of opera.  At this symposium, was this young man in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, Greg Moomjy, and we started talking and then I asked him, I said, "So what do you want to get being here and being in this symposium?" And Greg looked at me and he said, "I want to run an opera company someday." And I thought, "That's awesome." I want to be around people like that”, and so we became friends. We had no intention of starting an opera company.   It wasn't like, "Hey, let's start an opera company," but it was just an idea. And Greg later told me he had no idea he was going to say that when we met, it just came out of his mouth. So I trusted that moment of speaking something into existence that really wasn't there before, and I remembered that moment. And as we were emerging from COVID in 2021, I had the opportunity to produce a Handel opera of “Orlando”.  We were going to produce a shortened version of” Orlando” in a garden on the Lower East Side. And I reached out to Greg, remembering that he said he wanted to help produce opera, so I said, "Do you want to co-produce this show with me?" So we did. And in the process of mounting Orlando, it was this beautiful little opera in a garden. People were gardening while the production was going on, 100 people standing in a garden.

It was just such an organic and wonderful event emerging from COVID. And during that time, we learned we have a number of people with wheelchairs coming to this show in a garden. We need to move the seats around. We need to make this more accessible.  I reminded Greg, I said, "Didn't you say once that you wanted to run an opera company?" And he laughed and I was like, "Why don't we do that?"

And he was like, "I think we should do that," so it was a time that wanted to happen. And we keep going forward step by step and learning what it takes and what do we need to do? And who we are as a disability-forward opera company, how do we do things differently from the way things are normally done in opera? And we are learning all these things but that was the kernel of it.

And I should step back a little bit to say, so Greg has been living in a wheelchair his whole life with cerebral palsy. He needs help in getting done the most basic things in the day, and opera has been something that has given him life and purpose his whole life. He fell in love with opera when he was two, so it's speaking to something that he has wanted to work in opera his whole life and he was never able to.

He has a degree in musicology and journalism, so he was an opera journalist, but he was never given opportunities to actually work in the field. So this is what we're doing.

Jo Reed:

And Hailey, you also have cerebral palsy, but it manifests quite differently in you than it does in Greg. Do you mind describing it for you?

Hailey McAvoy:

I don't mind at all. I'm happy to do that. Yeah, cerebral palsy is a very variable disability. Every case of CP is different. They range from very mild to rather severe. They're typically ranked on a scale of Level 1 to Level 4. I have Level 2 cerebral palsy, so my CP affects my legs and also my eyes a little bit. I can walk independently and I can live independently in life.  As you can hear, my speaking is very fluid. Like the muscles of my throat aren't really compromised by CP, which is very fortunate for my job as an opera singer, I suppose, but I do face some challenges with mobility. For example, I always use a railing when I go up and down stairs. It's difficult for me sometimes to navigate crowded places or icy places, uneven ground, these kinds of varied terrain. And it's interesting, I happened to pick a career that you have to navigate a lot of varied terrain when you're on stage. It's funny. When I was growing up, I didn't immediately perceive that it would be a challenge for me to really feel comfortable and secure on the operatic stage. I just thought, "I'm going to go for it and go for broke and see what I can do." And I have been able to do that to a large extent. I've been able to perform throughout the country and sing different roles in different places, which is wonderful. But it also has definitely come with its own set of challenges in terms of navigating those onstage environments, that they sometimes pose challenges for me that they don't pose for my colleagues. So that has been part of my singing journey for as long as I've been singing.

Jo Reed:

Can you give us an example of some of those challenges that you faced and how you dealt with them?

Hailey McAvoy:

Oh, certainly. Oh my gosh, certainly. For example, the very first main stage opera that I was ever in, I was a sophomore at the Eastman School of Music and I auditioned for the main stage opera, “Our Town” by Ned Rorem. And I was cast as a principal role, a small principal, but a principal nonetheless, and I was so excited. I prepared very well during all the rehearsals. I was doing great during all the room runs when everything's flat on the floor and all the set is just tape on the ground, everything was going fine. And then the first day in the theater, “Our Town” is a very sparse show with a sparse set. And I looked out at the stage, and it was basically the stage and three platforms of varying heights. And each of them had a staircase connecting them together. The staircases had no railings, there was no furniture anywhere, there was nothing to hold onto. And I walked into the theater and thought, "Oh my gosh, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this." And the minute I stepped on the stage… depth perception is one of the challenges for me that comes up with my eyes in cerebral palsy. And the minute I stepped on the stage, between the various levels on the stage, the levels from the stage into the audience, looking from the highest platform down to see the conductor and having no railings, no furniture, no safeguard. I basically became so frozen, I couldn't sing, I couldn't phonate.

And after that first rehearsal in the theater, I went back to my dorm and cried, and thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to drop out, and what's more, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to do this." And one of my friends saw me and said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you do that, email the director. Just email him and tell him what's going on and ask him if he can help you."

So I emailed him and he wrote me back a very short email, two sentences. It just said, "I will be in the theater all day tomorrow. Come by anytime." So I went to the theater, and this is one of the interactions that my entire life is pinned around at this point. Because if he had had a different reaction to me, I might have believed right in that moment that there was no way for me to sing opera.

But he said to me, "What do you need?" And I was able to sit there and think about it and say, "Okay, I'm playing the town gossip, I'm playing an old woman, so if I could please have a cane, that would be wonderful. Because I'm the town gossip, if I could please enter the scene every time I enter, I'd like to be holding someone else's arm, so they're telling me the news of the town."

Every time I have to go up and down the stairs, could someone please give me a hand? Can they be telling me more stories, more rumors, whatever? And he just said, "Yes, yes, yes," every time. And he worked with me in every instance, to make sure that every accommodation I needed, I had. And that furthermore, all of those accommodations were enriching the story of the opera. They were all tied to my character. And I am a very, very firm believer at this point, that that is always possible, always possible. And that experience for me, being in that opera and being able to overcome that. Going from being so afraid on the stage because I couldn't go up and down the stairs. Because I couldn't feel secure looking out from a great height, having a castmate's hand to hold or having the cane that I had, or the different ways that I used to cope to tell that story. In the end, I did a really good job. I did a really good, professional job in my first opera ever, when I had had to overcome some serious challenges. And it's really also thanks to this one director, whose name is Steven Daigle, and the collaborative aspect that he took with me, to make sure that we could tell this story in a way that would work for me and would work for the character. And in that moment, he taught me something that has become the cornerstone of my life now. I just always, always, always believe that's possible. And if I meet people who are not so prepared to believe it, the first thing I like to challenge is their perception, rather than whether or not it's actually possible, because I really think it is.

Jo Reed:

Well, OPrak was founded to breakdown barriers in opera, but more than that too, because Marianna, you talk about disability creativity and you're a champion of that. So can you define that in the context of opera, because I think Hailey just gave an example of it?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

She gave a beautiful example of it, and that was exactly what I was thinking and wanting to say as I was listening to her, that disability creativity is a distinction. It's also disability artistry is another way of putting it and the term disability-forward. All of these phrases imply that we start where people are and empower them with what they have.  And I don't look at disability as a detriment. I actually look at disability as a doorway into something, a new possibility that we may not discover yet. We able-bodied people don't even have to think about certain things that someone like Hailey has to. And when you begin to look at the world from a different lens, from a disability creativity lens, things become apparent and creative accesses occur. And that is absolutely what we are about. And that we love to work with people with disabilities and people without disabilities, because in learning how to be interabled and to give and take and learn from one another, that's where we grow. That's where we start to change minds and assumptions. And that's happening more and more and more in the creative arts. It's certainly happening in Hollywood. It's happening at the public theater, it's happening in opera now..

Jo Reed:

I wonder how OPrak embodies disability creativity or artistry, not just in productions, but also in its organizational culture?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Organizationally, absolutely, we have a mandate that a third of our board are people with disabilities, and we are very much on a kick right now about venue. And that a venue is actually the most important decision that we make or choice that we make as we go into a new season. Almost more important than the kinds of shows that we want to be producing. Where we produce them, what the audience experience is like, is paramount to what we're doing. So for example, this show that we're about to produce,  “There Will Be Cake”, is going to be in the bar of a comedy club, Asylum NYC. And our reason for choosing the bar, was that A, we wanted a site-specific location, and this bar really fit the feeling that we were looking for. But there is a wide ramp from the street level into the bar itself. The bathrooms are spacious and there is enough room for Greg to do doughnuts in the bathroom and maneuver. That's very important that anybody that comes in, whether they have a wheelchair, whether they have a walker, whether they have assistance, an animal, a dog with them, there's room to maneuver and flexible seating, and we can move things around. And as more people come to our production that may be in a wheelchair, we can put them together. Greg has mentioned many times that he loves going to the Met, and he has a girlfriend, who is also in a wheelchair. When they go to the Met, they can't sit together because the accessible seating is on opposite sides of the house. So things like that, we pay particular attention to at the very beginning. And then from there, the ideas, that's what drives what our production will look like. What are the choices that we make, as we develop a production in a particular venue that we're in.

Jo Reed:

I'm wondering, Hailey, you wrote an essay called “Futuristic Dream”, in which you imagined a world where opera embraces performers fully as they are. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And what you find in the world of opera that you navigate in, in OPrak and outside of it, obviously?

Hailey McAvoy:

Yeah, of course, I'm happy to share about that. So opera, of course, is a huge team effort. There's so many people in an opera. There's the conductor, director, all the different singers, maybe there's an ensemble, like a chorus. There's the orchestra or the piano or chamber ensemble, there's a set designer. There's so many people. And amongst all that, with all the people, at the end of the day, the people who are in the spotlight the very most are the singers. We are the ones standing or sitting or moving as the case may be on stage, singing these arias and these scenes that are really challenging, really emotionally deep and varied. And at the end of the day, the audience is looking at us and looking at our faces, looking into our eyes, hearing the sound of our voice, which is because of the unamplified nature of opera as well, it's like the direct human voice with no acoustic interference or no electrical interference, I mean the acoustic instrument of the voice. And that is a really beautiful way to connect to someone, and it's also so vulnerable. So I think a big way that we can make sure that opera is as communicative, as connective, as thrilling as it can be, is making sure that every singer actually feels comfortable on stage. And this is, of course, something that I think about all the time, because for me, when I go onto a set, the first thing I notice is how many levels are there? Are there platforms? Are there railings? Where am I going to be able to walk? Where am I not going to be able to walk? And is the director going to help me with that? Or is the director, might I face some that the director doesn't quite understand what I need in order to make my work work right? And how much of a challenge is this going to be or is it going to be a harmonious space? And obviously, that can give me some anxiety, so then when it comes time to perform, that's a layer of concern that can be hard to manage. And of course, I do my best and all singers do. This is the thing, I think this is the crux of the matter that all of us get nervous about things, all of us get anxious about things. And at the end of the day, we have to somehow be able to connect to the deepest reason, why are we singing?  What are we trying to express? What are we trying to convey and how can we get that across? And that's a big part of what I think is so cool about making opera accessible, not just for people with disabilities, but for everyone. I can say I've been in a lot of operas, and the number of times that I've heard someone say, "Oh, gosh. It's so difficult for me to do that scene while I'm standing on a table. I just wish I could sit on the top of the table instead," and it's like these challenges that singers are facing and maybe wishing that they could speak up about. And maybe even knowing within themselves, that if that challenge were removed or changed or if there were another little layer of support, that they would be able to give a performance that is next level. That's like the intergalactic level of opera, that's so cool, it's the best. And that is the kind of opera that I want to see, and it's the kind of opera I want to participate in. So a big part of what I care about doing is starting those conversations, both empowering other singers to speak up. And then also from the other side, helping everyone who's in all the various angles of the opera. Everyone's already ideally very committed to making sure that the singers can do their best. But I think there's even more to be explored in terms of this how we can all collaborate in a way that's not just like what we can cope with, to all come together and make something slap together. But rather what we can really, really joyfully and enthusiastically say like, "Yes, I can do this and I feel great." And those are the conversations that I want to be facilitating and be part of, so that this art form also can go to its next level.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Amen.

Jo Reed:

Amen to that, and I see OPrak is playing a part in that. Because I would imagine having a company that is disability affirmative means a lot of conversations can happen that might not, probably are not, happening at other opera companies--where people, who have issues or have a disability, feel like they have to hide it.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Exactly. And there is a culture of fear oftentimes, as Hailey has talked to, about the singers wanting to be able to communicate. And there is such a hierarchy in the opera world, in opera business, and we are breaking down the hierarchy to a degree. There's still structures and time-honored ways of doing things, and levels of excellence and expectation of excellence that we maintain, but we also  provide room. I think that may be the best way of putting it, that, I, I'm acting executive producer right now and general manager, I'm wearing many hats for this young company. And I, in scheduling and creating what this show was going to be, made sure to add as much room as I could, and to allow for flexibility. It's the ability and the willingness to be flexible, to listen. I think listening probably is the most important ingredient. Being aware that we are a team and we are a unit working on this together. And it's not just my vision that's going to be created, but it's a vision we create as an organization. We can create a culture of togetherness and trust that starts with that, with listening and then acting on what people need. And it's for the work, we're here for the work. We're here for the whole piece, and what will it take? So it's just an awareness.

Jo Reed:

Well, let's talk about your upcoming production, “There Will Be Cake”. What are the dates?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

It will be opening on December 12th, which is a Thursday afternoon.  They're in the afternoon. They're matinees, 60 minutes, so it's short. Two opera monologues. The whole piece is called “There Will Be Cake”, and the reason is they're really two pieces about food. The first piece is “Bon Appetit”. This was a piece that was written in 1989. It’s about Julia Child, and it's literally the transcript from her cooking show of when she was baking a chocolate cake. It was set to music by Lee Hoiby and arranged by Librettist Mark Shulgasser, in coordination and consultation with Julia Child. And it was originally written for Jean Stapleton, who performed it at the Kennedy Center in 1989.

Jo Reed:

Wow.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Yeah, really just incredible. The energy around this piece is remarkable. And Bon Appetit became quite a popular opera for opera companies to produce during the pandemic, because it's one singer. You can have a full orchestra if you want, or you could have just a piano vocal. We're using a piano vocal. We, OPrak, wanted to produce a food-related opera, and Greg came up with “Bon Appetit”. And we also wanted to extend it so that I had written an aria, an aria in like a librettist, composer workshop through really spicy opera. It was one of the COVID things that I did, and Spicer Carr and I were tasked with writing an aria for a mezzo voice about joy. So he and I, as a librettist, went right to a childhood memory of fluffernutter sandwiches.

Jo Reed:

Fluffernutter? Back up, back up, back up. Fluffernutter, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

That is correct, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff on squishy white bread. Yes, a very New England childhood delight. In fact, one of the lyrics is a child's caviar, I think that was one of our lyrics. And how I remember fluffernutter sandwiches as a child, many people on the East Coast. People on the West Coast don't quite know this, but that's okay, they'll learn. But the fluffernutter sandwich is just a very close thing to the heart.  And in fact, there is a Fluffernutter Festival in Massachusetts every year, in fact, so it's a thing.

Jo Reed:

Who knew?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

So we wrote this aria about a woman trying to capture her childhood again, dealing with adulting and really just wanting to go back and feel like a kid. This was a standalone aria that was written, and Greg and I looked at it and we were looking for something to companion with “Bon Appetit”, and we kept coming back to “Fluffernutter”. And we ended up commissioning Spicer, and he and I worked together. And we pulled this aria into a 15-minute opera monologue. So it companions so nicely with “Bon Appetit”; they work together so beautifully, and we now have an hour-long presentation. And at the end of the show, we will be serving cake and fluffernutter bites. And we are planning a community event where we want to be toasting the audience, and encouraging the audience to toast the singers and to really connect and toast each other. And the messages of both of these pieces is life happens. Sometimes it gets messy, sometimes you do the wrong thing, but you're together and you honor each other. 

Jo Reed:

Yeah. And Hailey, you are performing as Julia Child.

Hailey McAvoy:

That's right.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

She's an amazing Julia Child, I got to say.

Jo Reed:

Oh, my. How do you prepare? How do you prepare? It's so iconic.

Hailey McAvoy:

I would say my prep process had a couple of different elements. First of all, when you hear it, when you hear this music, it sounds very nice and very pleasant. It's actually very complicated to learn, though. It's harmonically not predictable. And it's really nice because the music mirrors the process of the recipe and the steps of the recipe. And for example, when she's talking about bitter chocolate, there's a nice bitter chord in the piano and this kind of stuff. 

(music up)

So one of my major prep pieces was just working on this complicated score, so that was one thing. And then also, I talked a lot with Gwynn, our director, and she recommended a couple of resources that I could check out to get my Julia on. So of course, I've watched a couple of the original French Chef episodes from PBS. And then I also, I went back and watched some of the Julia special that they did the series on HBO. Oh my gosh, just what a wonderful look that is. It's like an extended biopic of her life, and just really fun to learn more about her through that. And also fun, I've also watched other people's performances of this opera, and watching people play Julia in movies and TV shows, and then watching the real Julia herself. It's a rare opportunity that you get to see the actual person and people play the person, and even other opera singers play the person. And so it's just been very nice for me to mix that all together in my mind, as I also embody her in my own way. And I think for me, one of the big guiding stars is she was just so, I think, she actually cared a lot about accessibility in her own way. Trying to make French cooking this thing that had been so complex seeming and difficult and far away from the American public and the American housewife. But actually making this something that's accessible to everyone and to say, " You can make this in your own home. And no, it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to know what you're doing. All you have to do is just show up and try, show up and try, show up and try. And I'm going to be with you and I'm going to show you how to do it.”  And I think she really radiates with a joie de vivre and just a real happiness and joy in sharing, and that's something that I relate to. So that's where I see myself in her. And then from there, I look at all the ways we're different and put in my little Julia-isms. But there are some things that we connect on very naturally, and I bring those back to.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

One of the things for me about Julia Child was that, and another reason why we chose this piece was because she embraced imperfection, and was okay with it and laughed at herself. In fact, there is a part where there's something gets a little messed up, and then it's like, "Okay. You pick it up off the floor or wherever and you continue to go forward."  Sometimes it got messed up, but most of the time it came out incredibly well. And that's a good lesson for life.

Jo Reed:

It also seems like a really terrific production that can serve as an entry point for new audiences to opera.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Yes. That is one of the things that we are really trying to do with our promotions. And as I speak with people like you and PR, that we want people, like I'm saying, opera and cake, bring it on. You can come in your blue jeans, it's fine. And it's in the afternoon. Take a lunch break, get out of work and come across town, and come see a short opera. It's short, it's sweet, it's digestible.

Hailey McAvoy:

If I may interject, both of the pieces are in contemporary English.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Yes, they are.

Hailey McAvoy:

That's not so common in opera.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

And it's understandable. And yes, there's so many levels of it, and we want people who are opera curious, who maybe never actually went to an opera, but this one is accessible. Our tickets are $35 and we are offering two pay-what-you-can options of $17 or $10, and everyone gets the same seating. So we are looking at so many levels of accessibility. Come and check it out and it's short, and you will get cake.

Jo Reed:

And Marianna, one more time, where and when can people see “There Will Be Cake”?

Marianna Mott Newirth:

It will be on December 12th, 13th and 14th. In New York City, it's at Asylum NYC, which is a comedy bar. And that address is 123 East 24th Street. We are also offering a livestream broadcast on Saturday the 14th. That will be an ephemeral broadcast in that it will not be up for later viewing. It's an appointment viewing only for people who will not be able to get to the bar.  Again, another layer of accessibility.

Jo Reed:

Well, Marianna and Hailey, again, thank you. Thank you for giving me your time. I really appreciate it. And thank you for the wonderful work you're both doing.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

You are most welcome. We are both really glad to be here.

And thank you for the work that you are doing to keep spreading the word and the NEA and helping artists out in the world, so thank you.

Jo Reed:

Oh, it's our pleasure. Thank you.

Hailey McAvoy:

Thank you so much.

Marianna Mott Newirth:

Lovely to meet your voice.

Jo Reed:

Lovely to meet your voices too.

That was the co-founder of Opera Praktikos or OPrak Marianna Mott Newirth and mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy. For more information about “There Will Be Cake” or about the company itself head over to OperaPraktikos.org and you can keep up with Hailey at HaileyMcAvoy.com. We’ll have a link to both in our show notes.

You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. If you like the podcast, leave us a rating and then follow us on the platform of your choice. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening

Hailey McAvoy: I have Level 2 cerebral palsy, so my CP affects my legs and also my eyes a little bit. I can walk independently and I can live independently in life.

As you can hear, my speaking is very fluid. Like the muscles of my throat aren't really compromised by CP, which is very fortunate for my job as an opera singer, I suppose, but I do face some challenges with mobility. For example, I always use a railing when I go up and down stairs. It's difficult for me sometimes to navigate crowded places or icy places, uneven ground, these kinds of varied terrain.

And it's interesting, I happened to pick a career that you have to navigate a lot of varied terrain when you're on stage. When I was growing up, I didn't immediately perceive that it would be a challenge for me to really feel comfortable and secure on the operatic stage. I just thought, "I'm going to go for it and go for broke and see what I can do." And I have been able to do that to a large extent.

I've been able to perform throughout the country and sing different roles in different places, which is wonderful. But it also has definitely come with its own set of challenges in terms of navigating those onstage environments, that they sometimes pose challenges for me that they don't pose for my colleagues. So that has been part of my singing journey for as long as I've been singing.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: For the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Since the Hulu series Interior Chinatown recently dropped on November 19th, I thought it would be a good time to revisit my 2021 interview with its author Charles Yu who won the National Book Award for the novel and served  as showrunner for the series writing the first and last episodes. It’s one of my favorite conversations and I hope you enjoy it…Here’s Charles Yu

Charles Yu:  I grew up in the '80s and '90s, watching-- basically never seeing Asians on screen, and when I did see them, it was often in these very kind of minor and very stereotypical roles. And, you know, I think the book was me trying to wrestle with what this does to-- both internally, but I think also what it does to everyone else as well. It can have a warping effect.

Jo Reed:  Charles Yu was a successful lawyer who was also a successful writer. What followed was a short story collection, a novel, numerous stories, book reviews, and essays in magazines. Then television came calling, and Yu found himself writing for the first season of the HBO series West World and has spent the last five years writing for and producing other series like Legion and Here and Now…and of course writing fiction.  I think the career trajectory is important when you consider the premise of his novel—the National Book Award winner Interior Chinatown.  Written in the form of a television screenplay Interior Chinatown is an insightful, funny, and searing exploration of Asian-American identity and representation in popular culture.  It’s the story of Willis Wu who is doomed to play various generic Asian characters in a TV procedural called “Black and White,” and that omnipresent television set dictates the roles of everyone in the book based on their race, gender, and age.  To call this limiting for the people involved is quite the understatement and at the heart of the book. Our hero Willis Wu wants more—he wants a story of a story of his own.

Charles Yu:  Willis's job at the beginning of the book is, you know, specifically, Generic Asian Man number three, slash delivery guy. So, he's kind of a utility player. He's very much a background, you know, character. He's the guy in the back delivering food or unloading a van, and he doesn't generally have any lines in the show. He doesn't have a story, to say the least, right? So he's just kind of there, as part of the scenery. And yet, you know, this book, what it-- I was trying to do was imagining a narrative from that person, who the story is very much not about. He exists in this show called "Black and White," which is, you know, a police procedural. If you imagine, you know, "CSI" or "Law & Order," some version of that. And it's called "Black and White," because there's one Black cop and one white cop, and they are the leads of the show, they're the heroes. And, you know, what Willis dreams of is actually being part of the show in a bigger way. The highest that he can-- you know, the highest level that he can attain, as an Asian in the world of "Black and White," is to become Kung Fu Guy, and use his sort of very specialized skills of Kung Fu to, you know, be part of the action, basically. And so, the book is about Willis trying to climb that ladder, and what happens when he gets closer to the top, and, you know, where that journey takes him.

Jo Reed: I know you spent a long time writing this book. How long? How many years?

Charles Yu: Yeah, it depends on how you calculate it, but I would say more than six, less than seven.

Jo Reed: Here’s the question. When you began this book, is this the story you were trying to tell, or did the story itself change throughout those years?

Charles Yu: That's a great question. I would say the latter. I think I didn't know what the story I was trying to tell was, and that was part of what took so long. I thought I knew, and I discovered, you know, it along the way. I think, in terms of the actual, you know, words, the prose, there were chunks of it that made it from the beginning to the end. Some of those kernels were like the backstories of Willis's parents were there pretty much from the first draft. But the story itself didn't have a form yet, you know? I just-- I didn't know how to write it. I couldn't hear the voice that it should be written in. And without those things, I just kept trying-- it's almost like I was trying on different outfits, you know, and none of them fit right. And so, it wasn't until more than four years into the process, where the current form actually sort of presented itself, for whatever reason. And that's when, really, the writing started to happen.

Jo Reed: When you decided, okay, I'm making this a screenplay.

Charles Yu: Yes. You know, it wasn't so deliberate. It was more like I heard the first lines of the book, and I thought, oh, you know, that's interesting. That felt like not me just, you know, rehashing the same things I'd been trying for years at that point. It felt like, oh, I can-- I hear a voice now. I got a sense of the tone and who Willis was. And then, from the fact that Willis was an Asian actor, you know, came a bunch of other choices. Like, well, if he's an actor, is he in a show? And if he's in a show, does that kind of dictate the form of the book?

Jo Reed: "Black and White" bears-- as you said, more than a passing resemblance to  "Law & Order." And, of course, we've all seen those episodes-- I don't know, how often do they happen, one every other year, it's set in Chinatown? Something like that?

Charles Yu: That was my memory. I mean, it felt like it-- yeah.

Jo Reed: And the cringe-worthy lines that Willis, when he's lucky enough to get a speaking part, is called upon to say, with an accent, even though, of course, he doesn't have one, having been born in the United States, we've all heard them, you know? I read them in the book, "It's a question of family honor," And anyone who has ever turned on a TV will find these cringingly familiar. And I want you to talk about that familiarity, because I do think, in a lot of ways, it's really at the heart of what you're talking about in this book.

Charles Yu: Yeah, it is, and I'm glad you highlighted that. It really was kind of the original thing that I was trying to get at, which was, you know, I grew up in the '80s and '90s, watching-- basically never seeing Asians on screen, and when I did see them, it was often in these very kind of minor and very stereotypical roles. And, you know, I think the book was me trying to wrestle with what this does to-- both internally for, you know, someone who has to watch that and say, okay, that's the representation of me or my family or my community, but I think also what it does to everyone else as well, which is, you know, when you only see certain groups in this kind of very limited like sometimes physical location, like a Chinatown setting, and you see them speaking with accents, or you see them doing martial arts, you know, and all of their storylines have to do with some sort of cultural difference or some sort of horrible secret, you know, that dishonored the family, it really skews the perception, right? I mean, for many people, this might be, you know, the main way they interact with Asian Americans, is through these stories. I mean, if you don't live in a big city where there's lots of Asians, you may think, oh, that's interesting, this is a sort of like window into this community. And I think, even if you do, it can have a warping effect, to only see this kind of story. So, you know, I think that's really what I was trying to do, is take that story and sort of investigate it from the inside.

Jo Reed: Right, because it's like the TV show that's America. And all of us having assigned roles, and some of us are at the center of the story, and, as you put it so beautifully, the light on the set hits our faces just right. And then, others remain the unnamed guests.

Charles Yu: Right, yeah. That partially comes from my actual experience on set, and partially comes from being a viewer. But I think, after having worked in TV, I even got a sort of more specific and deeper look into how much goes into making that reality, you know? How much attention is paid to how well the stars are lit. I mean, literally, most of the time you're sitting around on set is actually lighting setup, to make sure the shot looks beautiful, or looks how it's supposed to look. All of that attention is paid to these details. And then, you know, meanwhile, you're telling a story that isn't at all like reality, you know? So, that kind of disjunct is, to me, sort of both disturbing but also, in a weird way, amusing, that, you know, you can be paying all this attention to basically the plausibility of this fictional world, and, at the same time, be getting something else like egregiously wrong.

Jo Reed:  Exactly.  Your procedural is set in, of course, a Chinese restaurant, because why not, and it's called "Golden Palace." And Willis and his family live in an SRO above the restaurant. For those who might not know, what is an SRO?

Charles Yu: An SRO is single room occupancy, and it's essentially-- you know, you rent a room, maybe by the week, maybe by the month, and there's a shared bathroom down sort of at the end of the hall, and a shared kitchen area. Essentially, it's like a dorm, you know, for either individuals or potentially families.   You know, you see this sort of arrangement in Chinatowns. And it also functions, for me in the book in a kind of fictionalized way, as the place where all the Asians are kept, you know, when they're not being-- you know, when they're not playing the extras. It's like, okay, when you're done with your day of work as sort of the background players on this show, they all go live there. And it's very much backstage, you know, in this story, of like this is where they really are and they live their lives and they're human beings here, and then they go on-camera, and they're sort of playing these flattened versions of themselves, these roles as Asians.

Jo Reed: I really appreciated the scenes in the SRO, and the way the book explored the struggles of people and their poverty, and the various ways people in poverty cope. Because you don't see a lot of poverty in literary fiction. You just don't. Nobody ever has to work, as far as I can tell. And it's so important, I think, to understand economic struggle and the way it can compound racial inequity, and, you know, they're interlocked, frequently.

Charles Yu: Yeah, I agree. It's-- you know, I wanted to write about these characters in sort of all of their dimensions, and, you know, them as human beings, as bodies who have to eat and who have to clip their coupons and figure out, you know, what they've got left at the end of the month. I mean, those sorts of stories are-- it's-- at least up until very, very recently, it's sort of impossible to imagine telling that version of like the Chinatown story, of like what's it like for, you know, the shopkeeper who's actually worried about making the mortgage or-- you know, or paying the bills. And so, that was part of the kind of dimensionalizing of these characters as human beings.

Jo Reed:  We find Willis who wants to be Kung Fu Guy. That's really what he wants. And then, he's realizing, as the book unfolds  that Kung Fu Guy is really just another Asian stereotype. And, for him, deciding to be a father to his daughter really serves as his “Come to Jesus” moment with that, I think.

Charles Yu: Right. Yeah.  Yeah. I think the way you framed it is really helpful. It's essentially a decision between two roles, you know? As Willis gets more successful, you know, within the system that he's-- of "Black and White," he finds, one, that it's not all that it-- he maybe thought it would be, in terms of glory or feeling like he's made it. It comes with its own tradeoffs. And-- but, as you said, the key, really, is that it's just another role, you know? It ends up being-- even though, I guess, the pay is better, the visibility is better, he still very much has to play by someone else's rules, and he's still just as constrained as he ever was. And at the same time that's happening, another role is kind of emerging for him, which is to care about someone else, you know, to stop thinking about being-- and specifically, his daughter. So, the book-- even though it starts out in a place where Willis is very much trapped in a role defined by his race, I hope, and I think, it expands to incorporate so many other roles that he plays, you know? As a son, as a father, as a husband, as a member of this community.

Jo Reed: Yes, very much. Disappointing son, good son, you know, the son even has a multiplicity of roles.

Charles Yu: Right.

Jo Reed: You break out of the screenplay at moments, especially when we get the backstory of his mother and father. It's pretty much in narrative form, though it's framed by scene headings. And I thought that was a very moving part of the book. Did you do research as you wrote the story? I know your parents were both born in Taiwan.

Charles Yu: Yes, they were, and they did immigrate. And some of the, you know, I guess tangent points are somewhat very, very loosely based on, you know, stories they told me about their own time coming over, you know, from Taiwan to the US in the '60s. So, there was some research, I guess, just in the family sense, of like, you know, talking to them, interviewing my parents, and just trying to learn more about what it was like for them, what they felt, things that happened to them. And there was also, you know, some legal research, you know, especially towards the backend of the book, about, you know, as Willis goes deeper into the history, it doesn't just focus on his own familial history but, he learns more about kind of the long struggle of Asians in America, in terms of trying to secure rights. In a lot of these court cases, they're basically trying to figure out, (who) are Asians like-- you know, how can we analogize them? What minority group are they closest to? And so, for Willis, that's part of his education as well.

Jo Reed: Were you surprised by those laws? You have them in-- I want to call it a preface, it's called "exhibits," and it's before a court scene, and it's the timeline of laws. Were you surprised by this? Did you know about all these laws? Or was it a discovery for you as well?

Charles Yu: It was a discovery. I was surprised. I mean, I'd had a vague awareness of, you know, the major ones, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, and, of course, Japanese internment, and the '65 Act, which actually opened things up, because that's actually what allowed, you know, my dad to come over in '65. So I kind of knew some of the highlights, but what really surprised me was kind of the number and scope of so many of these laws, and also learning about a lot of the anti-Asian resentment that happened, especially along the West Coast, where basically Asian workers had been brought over as cheap labor. And it caused a lot of conflict, because they were seen as basically taking jobs from people. And so, there were massacres of Asians in Washington State, in California, elsewhere in the Western US-- over 100 years ago, this was already happening. So, yeah, as I got deeper into some of that, it did surprise me.

Jo Reed: You know, "Interior Chinatown" is a book that deals with, as we've talked about, very important issues, very serious issues, often in a tone that's really light and playful. Talk about that interplay and that juxtaposition.

Charles Yu: Yeah. I think, for me, that was important in the writing of it. You know, in order to keep writing it, I had to entertain myself first, you know? If I start to get bored, I definitely stop, because I think, if I can't keep my own interest, then what reader is going to want to stay with me?

Jo Reed: That's always a good rule of thumb.

Charles Yu: And so, for me, you know, I don't think of it as like I'm writing punchlines or trying to make someone laugh, but I am aiming for a tone, as you said,  one, to not take myself or the book too seriously, even as it gets into some heavier subject matter.  I think there's people better qualified to write the serious version of some of these things. I wanted to bring whatever sensibility I have, and also just experience, as a TV writer, just to kind of come at it from that direction. So, yeah, it was mostly just a practical thing of, like, this is how I know how to write, and so this is how it comes out.

Jo Reed: And, at the same time, though, you're not afraid of emotions or deep feelings. Because there are moments where it's funny, and I'm laughing, and then there are moments that are so piercing, it just took my breath away. When Willis was taking care of his aging father, and you have a line where he realizes that he's still his father but he's not his dad anymore. Oh my god. I mean, people of a certain age will absolutely know that feeling. It's so profound.

Charles Yu: Thanks. Yeah. I-- when you say people of a certain age, I'm like, yes, definitely. And I agree. My editor, Tim O'Connell, calls it kind of revving my engine, when I'm sort of just writing sentences but not really getting to the heart of the matter. And then, sometimes the gears actually engage. And it's usually when I'm writing towards something that hurts, you know? It's like, oh, I know why I was avoiding this. It's because I don't like the way this makes me feel, you know? And then I have to keep typing, because that's when the writing's actually starting to happen.

Jo Reed: Well, we mentioned it's a screenplay, but man, you really went the whole nine yards. It's formatted like a screenplay, it's even in Courier font.

Charles Yu: Yeah, right, which was, you know, a choice that I had some anxiety about, to be honest, because it's not the prettiest font. But I just felt like, to go the whole nine yards, it was all or nothing, you know? The form of this was so important to me in the writing of it, and I think, as a reading experience, for people to say, oh, I'm really in this, you know? And what it does sort of visually and what it does for the sort of narrative, to be able for Willis to jump in and out of the story quickly, right? And for the reader to follow Willis as he jumps in and out of the story.   I thought-- early on, can I really sustain this for a whole book? And-- but I knew I had to try, so.

Jo Reed: You've had multiple careers, and you began as a corporate lawyer. And I want to know how you made the shift to writer.

Charles Yu: Yeah. Slowly, and then all at once.  I was writing for most of the time that I was working as a lawyer, up until just a few years ago. I graduated law school in 2001, and I started working. And that's actually the same year I started writing fiction. So, I was publishing stories. I then got to publish a couple of books, and then, a few years ago, I was working in-house as a lawyer for a technology company, and I got a call asking if I'd come meet  for this job on a TV show. And, you know, it wasn't completely out of the blue, because I'd started working with an agent for like TV and film rights, but it was somewhat unexpected because I hadn't actually been thinking that I could make that shift. But for whatever reason, I think, they were looking for somebody who could tell a story in a more serialized way. And so I got the job. And my wife and I had to talk about it, because it was-- you know, it's a scary thing. We have kids and a mortgage, and would we have health insurance, all these kind of practical things were part of the decision. But, you know, I made the kind of decision to leave the law then, and I have since been lucky enough to keep working.  

Jo Reed: You've been doubly blessed by the National Book Foundation, first, obviously, for winning the award for fiction in 2020, but years ago, for it's program, 5 under 35, Richard Powers chose you as a writer to watch.

Charles Yu: That was an amazing moment for me. I, you know, still remember when I got the email. I was at work, and--

Jo Reed: You were lawyering.

Charles Yu: I was lawyering, yes. And at the time, we'd only had our first kid. She had just been born. And so, what happened was, a few months earlier, my first book came out as a short story collection. And, you know, as debut short story collections go, it did all right, and it got a couple of reviews in major publications, and I was thrilled. But, honestly, you know, after a few weeks, the book just slips under the radar as books do, right? And so, I was kind of thinking, will I actually ever write a book again? I was, you know, somewhat discouraged, because it just felt like, you know, a miracle that it had ever happened. And then, I remembered that I'd gotten a sort of negative review in The New York Times, which was a bummer, because I'd been so excited to find out the book was going to be-- anyway, all of which ended up to this sort of like doubt that I'd ever do it again, and then, I find out that Richard Powers had picked me for that, which was incredible, because I had read him in college, and I admired his writing greatly, and it was just this huge boost of validation, of like, okay, well, if Richard Powers believes in me, then the least I could do is try again. So, I did.

Jo Reed: Well, you were at HBO, and you worked on "Westworld," and you went on to work at other networks and other series, but I wonder, when you wrote "Interior Chinatown," were you thinking of those writer's rooms where you had been in, and sort of your position there, and were you able to advocate for a more nuanced or subjective representation for Chinese Americans in particular, Asian Americans in general?

Charles Yu: Yes and no, you know? I was thinking about it after it became clear, oh, I'm going to really try to do this in the form of a script. Then I was like all of the experiences that I've had over the last few years came in handy, you know? I could, with some limited sense of authority and more just knowing the specifics of how things actually work, what it's like when you're trying to make a show, what it's like in the room, the decisions that go into that, in terms of the writer's room-- and so that was fun, you know, actually getting to map one world onto the other, you know? And use all those tools, and forms, and techniques.  So, in terms of being in the room, you know, I'd had, generally, a pretty good experience, in terms of rooms being run by people that were interested in inclusion, in being sensitive to cultural authenticity, you know?  I've worked on some shows where people are really listening and well-intentioned and trying hard to make sure that they don't fall into some of the same traps that TV has in the past. But, that said, I think it's more structural, you know? It's like, these are all stories that I'm not the one who created it. I don't get to tell that story. And so, there's only so much I can do. I'm really writing in service of someone else's idea. So, yeah, I mean, it was a somewhat limited influence I could have in anyone else's room.

Jo Reed: Well, that leads brilliantly to my next question, which is about the differences in process of writing for television as opposed to writing fiction. I mean, TV is so collaborative, whereas, with a novel, there's you and a page, or the screen-- and I get there are editors, but it's really your work.

Charles Yu: Right. Yeah. It's both the kind of freedom and the terror of being completely in charge of, you know, the domain of my fiction. I mean, maybe not completely. I guess my editor would probably take issue with that. It’s collaborative in the sense that I have a couple of really trusted readers, my editor and my agent, but, yeah, other than the two of them. You don't have to think about, is this filmable? You don't have to think about budget or location or actors, you just think about where can this take me. It's language and it's ideas and it's spaces that don't have to be physical or tangible. And so, in that sense, it's a completely different kind of activity than, you know, the very real and practical activity of writing for screen.

Jo Reed: Did you miss the collaborative process that comes with television?

Charles Yu: I mean, I do. I miss that. I miss people. There's a lot of fun with it. I think there's this cool thing that happens sometimes in a room where you see someone pitch an idea, and you're like: where's that coming from? And then, it sort of gets kicked around, and a few pitches later, you realize that it's kind of grown into something, but only through group activity, the random walk from one mind to another, it ends up getting to a place you never would have sort of imagined. And so, that's really cool. I try to import that a little bit into my fiction, is like imagining the voices of some of my coworkers, sometimes. It lasts for a little while, and then, after a few weeks, I'm just left with my own voice inside. I'm alone again.

Jo Reed: Okay, and, you know, here's the question, what are you working on now? And you can say nothing.

Charles Yu: No, it's definitely not nothing. I'm working on a number of things. So-- one of which is the-- a TV adaptation of "Interior Chinatown." So, that's for Hulu. And, you know, I'll have to try to figure out if I can, you know, come up with a device or a bunch of devices that make the show work in the same way or maybe not in the same way the book worked, but in a way that, you know, translates it from page to a visual medium.

Jo Reed: That's great. Well, thank you so much for giving me your time. Thank you for writing this book. I really-- I liked it enormously. I thought about it a lot. And thank you.

Charles Yu: Well, thank you for reading it and for this conversation. I really appreciate it.

Jo Reed: That is writer Charles Yu we were talking about his National Book Award winner. Interior Chinatown. And as we know Charles succeeded in adapting the novel for television. It can be seen on Hulu. Charles was the showrunner and wrote the first and last episodes. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts.  Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Today, we’re celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday by revisiting my interview with Nick Spitzer. He is the 2023 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow, a Folklife Presenter, and the creator, producer and host of the award-winning radio program, American Routes. Trained as a folklorist with an anthropological lens and marked by the rhythms of radio, Nick’s work blends sounds, stories, and cultural insights to create unique narratives that resonate with a wide and diverse audience. 

With his early experiences in radio, and his groundbreaking fieldwork in Louisiana, Nick’s deep-rooted passion for music and culture has guided his career in exploring and presenting vernacular or folk culture. For example, he launched the Louisiana Folklife Program, he curated programs for the Smithsonian’s American Folklife Festival, he spent seven seasons as artistic director of Folk Masters at Carnegie Hall and Wolf Trap and created the American Roots Independence Day concerts on the National Mall.   Nick would go on to create, produce and host the acclaimed radio show American Routes, which for 25 years has been playing Cajun, Creole jazz, blues, gospel, country, Tejano, Latin and Caribbean music, roots rock, and soul along with insightful interviews with the artists. A long-time supporter of the National Heritage Awards, each Thanksgiving, Nick creates a special American Routes episode devoted to the music and interviews of the year’s recipients. In fact, from 1997 through 2014, Nick Spitzer was also the host of the National Heritage Fellowship Concert—which is how I met him. So in many ways, interviewing Nick was like having a conversation with an old friend—one who still has the ability to surprise. 

Jo Reed: Nick Spitzer, 2023 National Heritage Fellow. I've known you for years, and in preparing for this interview, I was shocked at how much I didn't know about what you do. So how do you describe your own work?

Nick Spitzer: Well, I'm trained as a folklorist from an anthropological point of view, but I also grew up through radio ever since college days, and I've continued to do radio. I see the sound recordings of people's personal narratives and conversations about culture as part of the way we exchange understanding of cultural difference and similarities, and a way to take deep understandings of culture, and with the addition of music and various environmental sounds and conversation, reach a really wide and diverse audience. So you could say I'm a public scholar, an engaged scholar, a public folklorist. I guess I'm a lot of different things, but most of the time I just see myself as somebody having a cultural conversation with somebody about the past and cultural continuity into the present, and what the possibility is for the future of culture's traditions in a creative sense and in a sense of maintaining continuities from the past to the future.

Jo Reed: Nick, where were you born and raised?

Nick Spitzer: Well, I was born in New York City in 1950, right at the middle of the so-called American century. I lived there until I was about three and a half, and then we moved out onto Long Island for a few years. But I really grew up formatively in a small town in Connecticut called Old Lime on the Connecticut River. And my mother, who was the single daughter of a suffragette always had a very strong sense of public culture and learning who people were around you and respecting them and so she made it clear to me all the time that, enjoy and watch, but don't say things unless you know what you're doingand I credit my mother introducing me to people and never being afraid to ask questions and just in goodwill try to build conversations. So that had a lot of impact on me as life went on and I grew up in this small town, Old Lyme. I just got a very strong sense of the totality of the town and learning to respect all the different people in the town and I just feel extremely lucky that I had that experience. 

Jo Reed: Where was radio in your life when you were a kid?

Nick Spitzer: I grew up just as we were beginning to get FM stereo on the radio and my brother is four years older than I and when we shared a bedroom, I'd be hearing Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill,” and I'm thinking, what thrill, what hill? What is it? Dion's there singing away with Doo-Wop and anyway, so listening to my brother's music, I liked that. But when we got FM stereo, all of a sudden, here's Bob Dylan. Here's the Beatles. Here's all the new music that's coming out. It’s 1965 and everything is going forward in a new way and so for me, radio was magic. So, by the time I left to go off to college in Philadelphia, I was already very attuned to what I loved on the radio, whether it was a hockey game from Montreal in French, a baseball game from out west or all these wild and crazy DJs and just especially the music. I just felt they were playing these songs just for me and so I felt very good about radio for a long time and I never stopped loving it and then I started actually producing it when I was in college at WXPN, the college radio station.

Jo Reed: Before we go there, because I definitely do want to go there, you went away to college. You went to the University of Pennsylvania. Did you even know there was a thing called Folkloric Studies when you went there?

Nick Spitzer: No, I didn't. At Penn, I was listening to my mother and father. My brother had been an environmental kind of wunderkind at the age of 14. He was being interviewed by the congressional panels on why ospreys were dying in the Connecticut River Valley and I was much more into art and culture side of life and so I started to, I guess, find my way. They wanted me in the Wharton School because they said, “Well, he's going to be in ecology and we need someone in this family who will have a real business.” Ecology wasn't seen as a science at that point. My dad was a scientist. So my mother was very tolerant of what she would call my creative side, and said, “Now, Nick, Wallace Stevens and also Charles Ives and I know you like Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens poetry you've been reading in school. Both of these men became insurance workers. They were businessmen and then once they'd made a decent living, then they did their work, poetry and music.” She said, “You should be like that. You should go to the Wharton School at Penn,” and my father said, “You better go to the Wharton School.” But within one semester, I realized I didn't want to be an insurance person. I didn't want to be a business person. I didn't want to be a lawyer or a doctor. I wanted to just have the freedom to enjoy the music that was now coming to me through the college radio station and also going out and hearing Coltrane's old band in Philly and hearing Doc Watson play on campus and Mississippi John Hurt and I was just being open to this whole wide range of music and it did turn out that Penn had a very well-respected folklore and folklife department and so I started taking courses there and in anthropology and one of my key mentors was John Zwide, who actually ended up being the person that nominated me for the Heritage Awards. He's still alive. 

Jo Reed: When or how did you connect your studies in folklife culture to the music you were playing at the radio station.

Nick Spitzer: I just opened up to the idea that avant-garde jazz could be understood as vernacular, like folkloric music and at the radio station, there's 20,000 records, this is the LP days and that wall of records was the sounds of people, their rituals, their festivals, their music. Their narratives and I stumbled onto two records in particular filed in the Caribbean bin that I said, “Well, this should be not in Caribbean because they're in Louisiana,” and there were two important records to me. One was the Ardoin family, Bois Sec, Ardoin, Alphonse Bois Sec, “Dry Wood” Ardoin accordionist, and Canray Fontenot, the fiddler and the other was Clifton Chenier, the big beat rhythm and blues Zydeco man and I said, “This music can't be in North America. This sounds Caribbean. That's why someone filed it here.”  And so that set me on a course of how much more diverse is America than I've been taught and I began to realize it's much more diverse, not just the culture areas, but urban ethnicities and migrations and all these things are flowing through my mind.

Jo Reed:  When you graduated from college you got a job in radio. How did that happen?

Nick Spitzer:  So there's not much you can do with a B.A. in anthropology right off the bat. But I could do radio. So I ended up at WMMR Philadelphia. It was a Metro Media FM that was doing stereo roots, rock, pop, very eclectic and I was the afternoon guy and I did it for two years until I began to realize this just wasn't for me for eternity. But I did get to interview members of the Grateful Dead and the Kinks and Bette Midler and just lots of different people, because when the artists would wake up after their gigs, they didn't want to do anything live on the radio till one or two in the afternoon. So I'd always get the interviews and I got used to interviewing people live. I was under some pressure to play all these British hair bands and I'd say, “Why am I going to play Foghead when I could play Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters? Why don't I play some modernist jazz and make that work with Randy Newman and then go to Ray Charles?” We were told we were given complete freedom, but I was increasingly under pressure to play the latest pop acts and I just thought it was sleazy and I also just didn't want to stay and keep doing, even though was hip and a million hipsters would have loved my job, I just wanted to go deeper and wider. 

Jo Reed:  Deeper and wider---How did you go about that? What did you do?

Nick Spitzer:  So I left there and I went on what I call my Jack Kerouac meets Woody Guthrie trip and went down through Virginia and I went to the Carter Family fold and I went to see Doc Watson at his house and I started doing interviews with people as I went and finally got down to the Gulf Coast and came along through Florida and Alabama. New Orleans for a day and I landed in Lafayette where I knew somebody and that that really set me on coming back to French Louisiana after that. But then I went to Austin, decided I would go to graduate school at UT Austin in anthropology and folklore. and I came back to Connecticut and basically packed up and moved to Austin and that's when I started grad school. And in Austin I did radio. I worked on what people called a hippie country station and I was the only non-Texan and they did make some fun of me, but I knew a lot of music they didn't know. Old Carter family and classic old country, certain types of blues. But they knew all the classic Texas stuff and I had to learn how much I liked Ray Price and Waylon and Willie and the Armadillo was going strong, the club there that became famous and since I was on Saturday nights because all the locals wanted to go out and party and I'd been working in grad school all week, to me, nothing was more fun than being up there with a friend or two and playing the music. Come midnight, the Armadillo closed. Who comes in the door? Willie, Waylon, Commander Cody, and I got to know those guys.

Jo Reed: Willie Nelson.

Nick Spitzer: Yeah, Willie Nelson. So I integrated myself into that world. But then the kind of new world of public folklore, my great hero was Archie Green, a labor folklorist and he and I started producing features for NPR. I did one on Folk Festival USA on Cajun and Zydeco.  I did a 90 minute documentary and I told all the people I was starting to meet, both Afro-French and Cajun, “This is going to be on,” and they got a huge response and I began to think, well, I can just use radio to reach all these people and support them in a public place and they don't have to go to the same bingo parlor or the same dance hall.. They can just all hear themselves, they'll be together on the medium.

Jo Reed: Because you went to Louisiana for fieldwork with Afro-French Creole music and that was really pivotal and I'd love to have you talk about that because that really opened up the music of Louisiana that's been central to your career.

Nick Spitzer: Well, it also opened up the idea that cultures aren't static, that cultures change and that there are cultures we don't even understand fully because the Afro-French people were neither fully French. They were not white Cajuns. They were not white colonial descendants, but they were somewhat separated from Black folks too. They were not Black Americans. They were Afro-French people and they used the term Creole and their music was a mix of French sources from West Africa and the Caribbean rhythmically, sonically in various ways and American blues. So I began to see that the lines between people and culture were not as static as I've been brought up to believe and one of my key teachers was Americo Paredes who I'd never known before. I was in grad school, but he was a border scholar, also a singer and he worked on the Texas-Mexican border and dealt with the culture that was neither fully Texas nor fully Mexican, but a place where a lot of different culture, music flourished and was very creative.

Jo Reed:  Okay-- you went back to Louisiana, to Lafayette—how did you connect with Alphonse Bois Sec Ardoin

By then I was starting to go all the time to little correo de Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras runs and all these little dance halls and I had met a Bois Sec Ardoin at Mariposa.  I went to this festival up in Canada, near Toronto. Alphonse Ardoin was there with his son.  I talked to him after his set and I didn't speak any French. I had only studied Spanish, but he said to me something I never forgot. He said, "Quand tu visites la Louisiane, visite nous à la maison." When you come to Louisiana, come see us at the house and so when I got to Lafayette, I told that to a couple of friends and then they sent me, said, “Well, go see Dewey Ball for the Cajun fiddler,” who, like Bois Sec, would become a National Heritage Fellow in the early 80s. and Dewey let me live at his house.  I lived out back in his outdoor kitchen and for breakfast and dinner and a place to sleep, I fed his cattle. I made sure the electrical fence was working. I harvested corn. I delivered insurance checks. He had a little insurance business. I helped him move furniture. He had a furniture store and one night, I came home and I said, “Dewey, I saw a sign that said the Ardoin family, Quatre Coins, ce soir, Four Corners Club tonight and he said, “Oh, Nick, you got to go there and see them. They're the best.” So I go there and there's Bois Sec, the man who told me, come see us at the house and by now I'd been learning pretty good. I had Louisiana French going. So I walked up to him and I said, "Monsieur Arduin, est-ce que tu te rappelles de moi? Moi, je suis un experte, on a rencontré longtemps passé." And he says to me, "Moi, je t'ai dit visite à la maison quand tu visites la Louisiane." I said, “Exactement, that's right. Come to my house,” and so he said, “Tomorrow, at my son's club, we'll have an afternoon fais do-do. You should come to that.” So I went, it was about 15 miles from where I was staying and I went there mid-afternoon and I went to this little club. I never looked back. I eventually moved there and rented houses there and eventually I would live in the Ardoin house for three months It was like the deal with Dewey except I was gardening and I was going to the store. I would always be there for family dinner. I shared a room with the youngest son who was a couple years younger than me. I really lived the life. I lived the life under a very strong matriarch of the family. Madame Ardoin took no guff from her husband or any of her guests.

Jo Reed: Let me just interrupt for a second. But in the meantime, you were able to record them and interview them and hear their music.

Nick Spitzer: Oh, yeah. I interviewed them and actually I got a grant from the NEA and I made sound recordings of the Ardoin family and many others. I recorded old Creole songs, old French songs and I did two albums. One called Zodico, Louisiana Creole music. That was a wide range of urban, rural, more French, more Afro and I'm in the process of getting all this stuff out. I never brought it out as CDs and then I did another one with the Lawtell Playboys. So I did those and I started doing more radio and once my grant ran out, I was substitute teaching in schools which was another way, great way to learn what's going on culturally somewhere. So on and off for a year and a half, I was there for months at a time. Go back to Austin to handle some formality or do something related to my graduate work. But basically I just lived it and loved it.

Jo Reed: You ended up doing work for the Smithsonian for the 1976 Bicentennial. What did you do for them?

Nick Spitzer: Well, I went to Washington as a presenter of Louisiana French and Creole. But also old-time country and blues and all the things that I knew something about and that's where I met Bess Lomax Hawes. Bess was the deputy director of the Office of Folklife Programs and she was very good friends with Joe Wilson, who ran this nonprofit National Council For Traditional Arts and Joe introduced me to Bess.  Bess was extremely excited that I had learned Louisiana French and had background in folklore training and wanted to do public work and was at the festival and was learning how to be on a stage and introduce people and do interviews and translate for publics and stuff.  So after that happened, she said, “We really want a state folklore program in Louisiana. If we post a listing, I hope that you will apply for that,” and I said, “Why wouldn't I?” So I finished all my coursework and the listing came up and I applied and she was close to Al Head, the director, he met me and we got along very well and so he hired me to be the state folklorist. So now I've moved from making recordings and public radio and doing the scholarly stuff towards a dissertation to suddenly being a Louisiana state official, if we could call me that. And I had pretty much free rein to lobby and I got pretty effective at it to where they started giving us money to do grants and projects and in that time we did a state recording series, blues, old time country, Cajun, Zydeco. We did a state guidebook, “Louisiana Folk Life Guide to The State”, like the WPA guides of the ‘30s, but focused on living traditional arts and culture and then the biggie, the World's Fair, Louisiana World Exposition. Russell Long and Carolyn Long got us a million dollars from the timber industry to run a pavilion in an old warehouse, a tobacco warehouse down in New Orleans and so we put a crew together and for six months by hook and crook, we ran a stage, a little nightclub inside this place called The Back Door by then I'd gotten an exhibit together called the “Creole State” and we had every Louisiana traditional artist we could find, the craftspeople, boatmakers, weavers, spinners, older ladies that sing cantiques, Cajun, Zydeco, Native American.  And within a month, we got a tremendous review in Newsweek, a full page review in Newsweek as the best thing at the World's Fair.

Jo Reed:  Congratulations! So tell me, first of all, how long were you in the position of folklorist in Louisiana?

Nick Spitzer: Seven years.

Jo Reed: You moved to  the Smithsonian, curating programs for the American FolkLife Festival—what goes into that work

Nick Spitzer: Well, the first one I did at the Smithsonian was before I was hired to be there. I did the Louisiana state program. What goes into that is doing a lot of field work, but because I've been doing the World's Fair programming and helping a great team of folks there and working all around the state, I already had a easily to find 120 people that we knew could go to Washington whether they were old time lace makers, fiddlers, French folk, African-American, Vietnamese, all the different people in the state, lots of Native Americans. We knew who would be willing and able to be out there for two weeks on the National Mall.  I had had some experience before that where I'd come in and helped, so I understood what the festival was more or less about and so that year, the two featured areas were the state of India, the country of India and Louisiana, and they seem to go pretty well together. There are both very strong differences of color and religion and magical rituals and festivals and music and it was a festival to remember and it was through that really time that it was cinched that I would come up there and so in the October of ‘78, I moved to Washington. I enjoyed my time at the Smithsonian and I did five years as a federal and then I decided not to stay and continue. But I said, I'll be an adjunct and so I became a research associate and then's when I really became independent.

Jo Reed: What was some of the work were you doing as an independent presenter

Nick Spitzer:  I started doing tours to the Seychelles Islands with Louisiana Creoles, Zydeco people out in the Afro French islands and the Indian Ocean and the most important thing for me was I did the Centennial of Carnegie hall with a series called Folk Masters and that was got me going with, how do you do traditional arts on proscenium stage with all the attendant stylistics of Carnegie Hall and that in turn led me to actually after that first year, just to come to Wolf Trap and do it there the next six seasons. And then in the middle of all this, from 1990 to 1997, we did the American Roots R-O-O-T-S Independence Day concert and I got it out live on NPR around the country, all stations that wanted to carry it and we could see 250,000 people from there, their bodies in front of us and I brought up Rebirth Brass and all these great New Orleans people that I knew and we had great Cajun music and Zydeco and traditional fiddling and over the years we had Carl Perkins and we had the Staples Singers and we had all manner of gospel. And the evening events from six to nine when the fireworks would start. Those were when we really laid it out and I co-hosted it with Fiona Ritchie and Georges Collinet and a lot of different people. But so suddenly this idea of concertizing on a big stage was outside a festival and then it was out on public radio and the Park Service just helped us at every turn. After doing that for all those years, I went to Santa Fe for two years to a think tank and then I said, “I'm going back to Louisiana. I miss that.”

Jo Reed: What led you back to Louisiana, Nick?

Nick Spitzer: Well, I said to myself, where is home in my life today? And I can't go back to Old Lyme, Connecticut. I'd left all that. I love Philadelphia, but I'm not a college kid anymore. I had moved to Louisiana twice.  I'd gone in to do my field work there. Then I worked for the state. And I said to myself, I will move to New Orleans where I always had loved it and New Orleans is a Creole city, deal with people called Creoles with a mixing and the mingling of Sicilian, French, African-American, Afro-Creole, it's a global city almost of the 19th century and through the Park Service, I had become friends with people at the University of New Orleans and they hired me as a folklorist there and I taught cultures of the Gulf South. I taught oral history. I taught Creolization cultures and Creoles and cultural Creolization and I did that through Katrina. 

 Jo Reed: You mentioned Creolization and the concept is pretty central to your work—say more about what you mean by it and how it drives your work

Nick Spitzer:  So you could argue that on one level, there's people called Creoles with a capital C here and other places in the Caribbean and parts of South America. But moreover, you could look at things that are Creolized and mixed and mingled. So from my point of view, the world is in Creolization. We're in constant contact where continuities of old culture are mingled with new creativities and new things emerge. The easiest example is Ray Charles. Ray Charles grew up, going with his mom to church and he also went to the j uke joint where he learned how to play blues piano with Wiley Pittman. He mingled the blues, the lonesome sound, the piano playing with the gospel shouts for joy and he ends up with a new music. We call it soul and so to me, soul didn't exist before. There was gospel over here and there was blues over there. So he made soul out of sacred and secular music around him and that's why we call him a genius. He wouldn't call himself a Creole, he'd call himself a Black American, but the music is a mix that represents something new based on the merging of traditions. So I'm really into that in American society, a creative society where we have to look at the future as much as the past and creativity from the past will lead us to more creative things in the future. So I see the world in Creolization and I don't look for the barriers between groups of people. I look for what they've done together.    

Jo Reed: And you created your radio show American Routes when you moved to New Orleans—I want that origin story 

Nick Spitzer:  Well, I also said to myself, if I go back, I'm going to start a new radio show and I can more efficiently reach more people if I do a post-produced show, not a live event and so I decided it would be called American Routes, R-O-U-T-E-S and in ‘97 is when I moved back and the university gave me financial support and allowed me to apply for grants and I was very dutiful. I wrote the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and said, "Look, we'll do all the background research on this to show you why we think it'll work." Because I was very wonky. They wanted all that information and they said, “Just send us a demo.” So I created a half hour demo. We sent it in and a week later, the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called me and said, “We're going to fund this. We want you to do this for at least a year. Just do what you're doing. Everyone thinks the demo is fantastic.  It's what America needs to hear,” and I said, “That's what I think too,” and so we started on the air in April of 1998 with seven stations. Little by little, within about a month, we had 30 stations. By the end of the year, we had 60. A coffee company was underwriting us in Louisiana and life just went on producing the show out of an old bottling plant, water bottling plant in the French quarter and it just continued for 25 years to the current moment and in that time, we now have 385 stations. We had continuous support from the NEA and the NEH and local businesses and we made it to 25 years and just has continued to grow. We're one of the very few cultural performance programs left in public radio. We're the only thing on the air between Austin and Chapel Hill, North Carolina that could be understood as cultural programming, going to the national network and TV or radio and it's just been slow and steady. Keep going, keep going. 

Jo Reed: I know you received offers from television but you always stayed with radio. Why? 

Nick Spitzer:  I just felt radio is better for me because the microphone disappears. It's just your voice, somebody else's voice. We can record a live event. We don't need the lights everywhere. We can just have a conversation and people get comfortable and they go deep with their hopes, their joys, their sorrows, the why and what and how they make the music or do the craft they do. I just began to see the world more interconnected, more creolized and more capable of having the kind of eclectic program that argues for what Americans share, like country music and blues and jazz and gospel music and then what distinguishes regions. 

Jo Reed: For people who are unfamiliar with American Routes, how would you describe the format

Nick Spitzer:  These days I refer to American Routes format as a Gulf South by Southwest with sojourns to the Caribbean and all points across the country.  I feel like in New Orleans, there's a lot of pride that we're inclusive of something as eclectic as what we do. Something that many program directors said, “Oh, you can't do something when it's mixed like that.” Well, we've done it and we keep doing it and we're not the biggest show. We're not a news show, but we kind of commingled information in a newsy kind of way with culture and performance  What we try to do is find concordances in words, in mood in sonic things, contrasts and continuities that we can do segues, which is sort of the art form of radio flow of sound and maybe every third sound, every third song will be very familiar to somebody, but it might be a familiar artist with a song they've never heard him sing or a song that is quite familiar by a familiar artist, but not the one they might've expected to hear it sung by and so you're always messing with things that work together. You can play old time string band music and make it work with New Orleans traditional jazz. You can play blues and gospel and make it work with Klezmer. You can play country and make it work with Hawaiian. You can do all kinds of things based on the sonics, the semantics, the moods for the segues. That’s one thing we're proud of, that while we can narrate who the artists are and where they sang and a bit about the biography and the culture, we want people just to enjoy the show whether they're listening in the foreground or the background and so the eclecticism is not a barrier. It's an invitation.

Jo Reed: You’ve also, in the midst of everything, been teaching at Tulane now, first the University of New Orleans and now Tulane for many, many years. I wonder how teaching and radio come together for you. Somehow it just seems to me being around students and younger people has to be good for what you bring to American Routes.

Nick Spitzer: Well, , we have probably a half a million to three quarter million listeners each week, depending on the season and the show and whatever. I go to a classroom, I have anywhere from 10 to 40 people. I've done a couple of bigger classes, but in a funny way for me personally, radio is a lot easier to do. It's all post-produced, you can always do a pickup on a fix. I'm working with an engineer and co-producers and interviewing artists and trimming the interviews and mixing music. It's a team effort and when it's made into its one hour and 59 minute iteration for being sent out, I just feel great and I hear it on the radio. But I've done radio for so long and it's so common to me to do that. I don't feel pressured by doing it. I love the interviews and everything. But when I'm in a classroom I'm always trying to figure out how to reach students. It's very challenging, exhausting in some ways. At Tulane, more of the students are not from Louisiana though that's beginning to change. Now it's gotten to where there's more and more younger people who are hip to deep roots and especially blues and gospel and the sources of rap and hip hop and certain Black genres that are classic forms of Jubilee and this and that, and a lot more Cajuns and Creole descendants and so they're really excited to hear how the old music ends up as French rhythm and blues. They go along for the Creolization ride and discussion and enjoy it. But it is a lot to try to emote and intellectually work with audiences of students versus something where I've been knowing what I wanted to play and scripted and ready to go with the team. It's sort of an interesting balance between the worlds but it does take a lot of energy on both ends.

Jo Reed: You were also the host for many years for the National Heritage Fellowship Concert and I wonder first what your memories are of that experience, but then having been in DC as the recipient of the award.

Nick Spitzer: It was weird. The first ones Heritage were 1982 and who's getting the awards? My teachers in Louisiana, Bois Sec Ardoin, Canray Fontenot, Dewey Balfour, all these people, I wasn't the host then. Pete Seeger was hosting and there were many, many other hosts over the years. I see the people in the families where I lived as as much my teachers of folk and traditional arts and how to make policy and how to produce programs as anybody in the Academy that I learned from, more so. Those people were like my new family, a lot of them, especially in the Creole communities. But it was a huge moment for me to start going on stage in ’97 when the last host retired, they asked me to do it. And from ‘97 to 2014, I did it. It was a lot of fun to go on stage and improv with people and help them get comfortable for that moment and some of them were very shy and quiet but we always found ways to enjoy one another's company I tried to give them two or three days of fun, humor, what we could talk about and so I just loved these shows. They were just like group improvisation with a Ukrainian egg decorator, a shy older lady that did quilts in North Mississippi, people that you've never heard of, but also some of the greats of the culture, of cultures that we knew like B.B. King, and people that I'd always loved, all kinds of different blues people, Zydeco man, Boozoo Chavis, his family, just all manner of people, some of whom I'd already known well, but most of whom I'd never met before.

Jo Reed: But I also have to ask, the fact that you're given the Bess Lomax Hawes award has to be particularly gratifying because I know she was such an influence on your work. 

Nick Spitzer: Oh, definitely. There's a picture of myself and Bess that somebody took at the 1985 Smithsonian Festival. We were in the Louisiana area and we're both kind of smiling and talking and I remember how much she influenced me and made me feel that I could be a state official, that I could manage not just working in Louisiana, but that maybe one time I'd come to Washington eventually, that really everything I could do to better understand and present culture could flow from the work. and I saw her as kind of a matriarchal grandmotherly blessing figure in my life and so then it was named after her-- yes. It was very meaningful to me for it to happen that way.

Jo Reed: I could not be happier, Nick, that is the truth. So many, many congratulations on a well-deserved award and many years ahead for “American Routes”  I think that is a great place to leave it, Nick. Thank you for giving me your time.

Nick Spitzer: Yeah, thank you for asking me the questions.

Jo Reed:  That was folklife presenter and the  producer and host of American Routes, the  2023 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow Nick Spitzer.  To find out more about American Routes, check out its website, Am Routes.org. That’s a-m-r-o-u-t-e-s.org. And don’t forget to check it out on Thanksgiving when American Routes presents the music and interviews with the 2024 National Heritage Fellows. You won’t want to miss it.  We’ll have links to American Routes in our show notes.

You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating. It helps other people who love the arts to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.