Later in the broadcast, you will hear music from an Arab American composer, Mohammed Fairouz, who’s writing a concerto about what happened in Cairo a year ago.

It’s called “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra.”

It’s the first part of what Fairouz says will be a concerto in three movements.

Imagine a composer writing music as he watched the uprising on television — with the sound off.

That’s what Fairouz did, from his apartment in New York City.

What he saw happening on TV, thousands of miles away, inspired a piece he wrote for his friend, clarinetist David Krakauer.

Here’s how Fairouz puts it.

Fairouz says as a New Yorker, the events in Tahrir Square seemed far away, but he felt a personal connection, as an Arab American.

He says the confidence of the Egyptian protesters was inspiring. In Fairouz’s music, their voices are represented by the orchestra, while the clarinet expresses the voice of the individual protester.

There is a lot of tension and angst in the piece, as well as a restlessness and a dynamic sense that the protest movement is the only way forward.

Here’s a video of a performance of “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra,” which premiered at Merkin Hall in New York in July 2011.

Mohammed Fairouz is only 26-years-old, but he is incredibly accomplished.

He began to write music at the age of 4.

He studied composition in Vienna with the late Hungarian composer, György Ligeti, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

He’s already composed symphonies, concertos and one opera.

But his “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra” conveys the urgency of a breaking news story.

Tune in to our program to hear Mohammed Fairouz, in his own words, talk about his enthralling concerto-in-progress, “Tahrir for Clarinet and Orchestra.”

Serpa studied classical piano and jazz singing in her native Lisbon. She came to the US to study at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory in Boston.

Soon after graduation, Serpa landed a gig at the Village Vanguard, one of New York’s most iconic jazz clubs. She was grateful for the experience, which connected her with the New York jazz scene.

But as a newcomer to New York, it’s easy to feel lonely and stressed out.

A year after her move to the city, she realized that she’d been craving travel literature, perhaps to cope with the feeling that she did not completely feel at home in New York. She was attracted to stories by lonesome people who had abandoned their native lands to discover the world.

Her album “Mobile” is an illustration of those readings. Each tune takes the listener in a different destination.

One song, “Sequoia Gigantis” is inspired by John Steinbeck’s trip to California’s redwood forests, as told in his book “Travels with Charley.” Another, “Traveling with Kapuściński,” came from a book by Polish journalist Riszard Kapuściński about Africa.

She also wrote songs about classic literary heroes, from Ulysses to Captain Ahab. And there’s even a tune about an Italian comic book hero, “Corto Maltese,” a lonesome and mysterious sailor, who never looks back as he travels the vast seas.

But Sara Serpa narrates her stories differently than most singers. She prefers to go wordless, with vocalizes, and scat. Her quintet aims to create musical scenes and atmospheres, with Serpa’s voice as just another instrument in the band.

The only tune on the CD that Serpa didn’t compose is a love song: “Sem Razão” or “Without Reason.” It was made famous by the late queen of Fado, singer Amalia Rodrigues. Fado is Portugal’s version of the blues, a pillar of the nation’s musical culture, but Serpa didn’t listen to much of it growing up. After she’d moved to the US, people kept asking her whether she sang Fado, so she eventually began doing some research.

She found out the best way to study Fado was to listen to old records by Amalia Rodrigues. The song “Sem Razão” stuck in her mind. She took its melody and wrote her own jazz quintet arrangements for it.

So, like many before her, Serpa dug into her own culture once she’d left home.

In her hands, the Fado classic “Sem Razão” morphed into a new jazz song.

Watch the official video of Serpa’s City of Light, City of Darkness:

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Marco Werman on Twitter

One trio that played CMJ is considered very up-and-coming.

In fact, the group Revolver landed on an MTV list of top ten buzz-bands of the five-day festival.

The most surprising thing about that is that Revolver is from France, a country still not often associated with good pop music exports.

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Marco Werman on Twitter

Garment workers around 1900. (Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, photographer unknown)

“The average work week was 84 hours, 12 hours every day of the week,” said Ellen Rothman with the Jewish Women’s Archive in Brookline, Mass. “During the busy season, the grinding hum of sewing machines never entirely ceased day or night.”

Conditions had begun to improve by 1911, but just slightly. On March 25th of that year, fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in lower Manhattan. It was one of the worst workplace disasters in American history: 146 people died, mostly teenage girls and women, immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe and Italians.

Workers had few rights at the time. Garment factories were crowed, noisy and hot. Bathroom breaks were monitored. Workers had their bags inspected when they left for the day. When fire broke out at the Triangle Factory, the exits were locked to prevent theft.

“In trying to escape, there was no choice: be burned alive, or jump. And most of them jumped. And everyone who jumped died,” said Rothman.

Scores of people witnessed the horror, middle class patrons out for a Saturday stroll on a spring day in Greenwich Village. The accident made headlines across the country, and the labor movement in New York City, already in full tilt, was further galvanized by the Triangle Fire.

Within two years, New York State passed more than 30 labor laws, adding teeth to child labor protections, setting a minimum wage, and requiring safer conditions. Federal regulations followed during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930’s.

Jobs for New Americans

Workers at the Nicole Miller Factory in NYC. Photo Credit: Jason Margolis

For decades after, New York City’s garment district thrived. In 1948, 354,600 people worked in the city’s garment industry, the peak after World War II. The numbers slowly started to decline in the 1960′s and 1970′s, then fell off a cliff. Today, only 16,700 garment workers are there, according to the New York State Department of Labor.

Like a century ago, most of today’s garment workers are immigrants: Jews and Italians have been replaced by Asians and Latinos. Workplace abuses still exist, but generally, conditions are vastly improved.

I visited the Nicole Miller factory in Manhattan’s garment district. The factory was well lit, clean, and ventilated.

“When it comes to the working conditions, I would say it’s good,” said Tony Persaud from Guyana.

Persaud works as a “cutter.”  He’s in a union. He earns $35,000 a year, plus benefits. He came to New York in the 1980’s. “It was very easy to get a job then. You could leave a job in the morning, go down to the 2nd floor and get a job,” said Persaud.

Persaud said he’s worried about his job though. His co-worker Mariana Franke, a pattern maker from Argentina, shared his anxiety. “Everybody is trying to save money so … I don’t know what to say?”

Shifting Work, Shifting Danger

Garment jobs have been shifting to lower-cost operations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Asia for decades, as have dangerous working conditions.

“Effectively what we have done is exported our sweatshops and exported our factory fires,” said Robert Ross at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. And it’s as if the 1911 conditions had been lifted up by an evil hand and dropped into Bangladesh.”

According to the Bangladeshi government’s Fire Service and Civil Defense Department, 414 garment workers were killed in at least 213 factory fires between the years 2006 and 2009. Last year, 191 people were killed in Bangladesh in a reported 20 incidents, according to Ross’ research. Last December, a fire killed at least 25 people in a garment factory there.

“And the pattern is disturbingly uniform,” said Ross. “The shops are often in high rise buildings, just like the Triangle. The pattern is that an electrical fire starts, and then without adequate, or any fire escapes, without sprinkler systems, the workers surge to get out. And in factory after factory, the newspapers report locked gates and locked doors. It’s a horrific duplication of what we earlier experienced.”

Why?

The question is: Why does this keep happening? Labor laws exist, both international and country-specific rules. But Heewon Brindle-Khym, with the Fair Labor Association in New York City, said laws are often ignored in places like Bangladesh and China.

“It’s cheaper for many factory owners to not abide by the law because it costs them money,” said Brindle-Khym. “In terms of the enforcement of the law, there’s just aren’t enough inspectors to go to each and every factory in China to ensure that labor rights are being enforced.”

New York City garment workers around 1900. Photo credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University. Photographer Unknown.

Most American clothing companies are completely removed from the manufacturing process.  They often don’t know what goes on in their overseas factories, or they choose not to investigate.

Still, part of the blame for unsafe working conditions in garment factories also lies with American consumers, argued Robert Ross.

“The average American has eight pairs of jeans,” said Ross. He said trends show that show Americans continue to spend less and less money on clothes, while buying more and more stuff. “People should buy better and fewer clothes. That would be good for garment workers.”

But that’s not something consumers generally want to hear.

Still, 100 years after the Triangle Fire, labor organizers, activists and social researchers want to remind people that there’s a worker behind the cheap clothes we buy. And in many parts of the world, The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire isn’t just an anniversary marking a bygone era.

• Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire – Cornell University
• PBS American Experience: Triangle Fire

Area in green shows the Cantonese dominant region in China (Photo: ASDFGH)

The language of Chinatowns across the world is changing. Traditionally, Cantonese speakers dominated most Chinatowns. But that is changing, as Chinese immigrants are arriving from many different regions of China.

Two people speaking different, mutually incomprehensible dialects are likely to fall back on China’s lingua franca, Mandarin.

But one Cantonese-American in New York has made it her mission to save her dialect. Every Thursday night you can find Kim Mui at a noisy café in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Mui teaches Cantonese to adults. Her students pay no tuition, just donations. There are no fancy flashcards, just a book she has put together over nearly a decade of teaching.

“My ancestors came to America during the gold rush to build the transcontinental railroad,” says Mui. “I know they struggled a lot. So I want to pay tribute to my ancestors by teaching other people Cantonese.”

A decade ago the majority of Chinese Americans were of Cantonese origin and Cantonese was the Chinese dialect spoken in Chinatown. Not anymore.

New immigrants from different regions of China have brought different dialects, like Fuzhou and Hakka.

Dialect differences

Chinese shares a common writing system. But when spoken, each dialect is mutually unintelligible.

The Cantonese class in progress with teacher Kim Mui on the far left

So no matter which Chinese dialect any two people speak, they can share the same newspaper. They can “read the same article and laugh about the same things but they may not be able to speak to one another,” says Tay.

More and more speakers of Cantonese and other dialects are turning toward the northern dialect of Mandarin. Mandarin is the broker dialect between dialects.

The growing influence of Mandarin in New York mirrors, to a certain extent, what’s happening more forcefully in China. Every city – in some cases, every town – speaks some dialect variety.

No alternatives

There’s much more internal migration in China today, so people often have no alternative but to turn to Mandarin. What’s more, the Chinese government is stepping up its enforcement of Mandarin as the lingua franca of the country, according to lexicographer David Prager Branner.

Children speak Mandarin in school. Mandarin is used for government, business and commerce.

“There are a lot of people who simply don’t know the language of their grandparents,” says Branner. “That’s causing friction. “Local language is a big part of what makes you feel that you are who you are.”

Last summer, in the Cantonese-speaking province of Guangdong, a politician proposed that regional television news be broadcast in Mandarin instead of Cantonese.

His comments sparked demonstrations. Protestors held up signs that read, “If you can’t understand what we’re saying, then go back to where you came from.”

Julie Tay of Asian Cultural Exchange says Beijing was quick to recant the politician’s proposal. Tay recalls that a spokesman promised government support for Cantonese language and culture.

But, she says, the spokesman “was saying it all in Mandarin.”

In places like New York, no one is enforcing Mandarin over Cantonese. And while Mandarin is increasingly used for day-to-day interactions, Cantonese speakers find their own dialect more expressive.

“Most people see Mandarin as being pale and humorless,” Tay says. “And it’s not a language you can make love in or fight with.”

Cantonese is still the native tongue of more than 70 million people, in China and around the world. But outside the home, it’s spoken by far fewer people than a generation ago.

• Cantonese Social Club
• Subscribe to The World in Words Podcast
• The World in Words on Facebook

Flag Anthem of the Cantonese People

My favorite entries are for people or publications I haven’t heard of: Helkiah Crooke — what a name!– a 17th century physician and anatomist; Anne Baker, a 19th century philologist; the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue.

With budgets tight at American schools and colleges, and with a growing interest in Chinese, what happens to a language like Italian?

Once a heritage language, Italian is now more of a lifestyle choice. At Eataly – a new food emporium in New York City — TV chef Lidia Bastianich offers cooking and language classes. A latte just tastes better when you can order it in the original language, or so the thinking goes. Meantime, Italian has been canceled at SUNY-Albany, and appears imperiled elsewhere, at colleges and grade schools. It’s only through the rearguard action of people like Margaret Cuomo of the Italian Language Foundation that the language is still studied in the United States.

Also in the pod this week: Latin America is livid with the Royal Spanish Academy. That’s nothing new — there’s always been tension over how Spanish should, if at all, be regulated. But now, the academy wants to reduce the alphabet from 29 to 27 letters. The victims are a couple of couples: ch and ll, both beloved in the Americas. These sounds — or spellings — aren’t disappearing. They just will no longer have their special place in the dictionary. Those dictionary publishers will no doubt put out new editions, which will help their bottom line: they must love the Royal Spanish Academy!

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez must like the academy too: it’s given him something else to rail about. Now that ch is no longer recognized, he has proclaimed that he will henceforward be referred to Ávez. Sounds kind of cockney.

Helping us wade through the inter-Spanish linguistic warfare is Ilan Stavans, author of Spanglish, the Making of the New American Language. Listen to an interview with him on that subject here.

(Photos: André 3000: 2009 Declaration of Independence, Inc. / Lidia Bastianich: Alex Gallafent / Hugo Chávez: Wikipedia)

Download MP3

Bed bugs infest the UN (Photo courtesy: CDC)

Bed bug sightings are on the rise in hotels and apartments across the US. New York City has been especially hard hit. The dreaded pests now appear to have invaded the United Nations headquarters there. Colum Lynch, UN correspondent for the Washington Post, has more. Download MP3
(Photo courtesy: CDC)

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Fears of a bed bug epidemic has New York City on alert. The dreaded blood-sucking insects are more annoying than harmful. But they’re notoriously difficult to eradicate. And they’ve moved out of the bedroom into restaurants, department stores, schools and now into the United Nations headquarters building in New York. Colum Lynch covers the UN for the Washington Post. He also writes about this newest infestation in his blog, Turtle Bay. I hope it’s going to be a pretty tough review of security measures after this breach at the UN. How bad is the infestation of bed bugs?

COLUM LYNCH:  Well, it entered the building, the most recent episode, a couple of days ago over the weekend and a lot of the furniture at the UN is kind of vintage stuff. Lots of [INDISCERNIBLE] Naugahyde leather and so apparently they made their way into a couple of these chairs in the conference room in the old library where they put the UN press corp and some of the staff that’s responsible for overseeing a massive renovation of the building. And they brought in some sniffing dogs over the weekend and they discovered a number of them there. The UN officials who use that space insist that no one has been bitten, no one has received any rashes or any other problems and that they’re fairly confident at the moment that they have tackled the problem.

MULLINS:  But if nobody’s been bitten, how did they figure out they had bed bugs there in the first place?

LYNCH: This is a mystery which has not been uncovered. I asked them about it and they didn’t have an answer for that. But it did sound like there must have been a sighting or something like that. But the people who use the conference room insisted no one’s been bitten.

MULLINS: Now, I wonder if there’s a little bit of spin control going on here.

LYNCH: Well, I can’t say for sure but I suspect that there might be. I mean there have been efforts to minimize the extent of the bed bugs. There was a case off campus last year where the UN discovered a serious infestation in one of the buildings that UN staff has been using during the renovation. They detected a presence of bed bugs in 90% of the floors that were tested in the building. They fumigated the place twice and months later the head of that division complained to UN headquarters that the place was still infected. Now, the UN sort of indicated that this guy was probably exaggerating the problem and the problem is that they can’t really tell whether the bed bugs have been eradicated or not because when they bring the dogs into sniff for presence of these bed bugs, they can’t tell the difference between a live bed bug and a dead one.

MULLINS: By the way, how do you know if your blood has been sucked by a bed bug?

LYNCH: I guess you get sort of welts on your skin and other sort of awful signs of it. We sort of worry about it. I have kids in New York and you’re sort of always wondering are they going to come back into your apartment and require an incredibly expensive effort to get rid of them and, so far, we’ve been fortunate and we haven’t been struck, but…

MULLINS: Colum, you’re the one who works at the United Nations. They’re probably wondering if daddy’s going to come back and infest the rest of the home.

LYNCH: Well, ever since I wrote this story I’ve been wondering whether I should be reporting from a remote location. We’re about two floors away from the scene of the crime and I’ve been asking around to see whether they brought these dogs in to sniff our area which is all covered with carpet. So, you sort of wonder whether it’s just a matter of time before they get us.

MULLINS:  Keep doing what you’re doing, Colum. Stay bite free. Longtime Washington Post correspondent Colum Lynch giving us the latest on the bed bug infestation that has spread to the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Thanks again.

LYNCH: Thanks a lot, Lisa. Take care.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Gauldin has a good record of improving ELL students’ English skills, in marked contrast to many of the schools in neighboring Los Angeles. The situation there is so dire that the the U.S. Department of Education has launched a investigation to determine if if the Los Angeles Unified School District is violating the civil rights of English Language Learners. The feds are also taking a look at Boston schools. (A few months ago, Carol Hills and I discussed Arizona’s decision to penalize ELL teachers whose accents are deemed too foreign. Arizona is still defending its policy, which itself has come under federal scrutiny.)

Also in the podcast, a Creole-speaking Haitian girl newly arrived in New York City enrols in a high school, with help from a community group in Brooklyn. The girl fled Haiti after the earthquake there earlier this year. Like most Haitians, she wants to master the language and stay here permanently. But she only has a U.S. visitor visa. Then it’s back to California as an Arabic immersion program gets underway at FAME a public charter school in Fremont, CA.

Reporter Hana Baba provided us with this nice slideshow of scenes from the school, including the photo (left) of school founder Maram Alaiwat. Not surprisingly, many of the students at this K-10th grade school are of Arab and/or Muslim descent. More surprising is that the school has opened its doors to the FBI. The bureau offers FAME 5th graders the chance to become “junior special agents” .

Finally, the first Zulu-English dictionary in 40 years has just been published in South Africa. Some English speakers already know a few words of Zulu (also known as isiZulu) — words like ubuntu. Zulu has also borrowed from other South African languages such as Afrikaans, and many Zulu words offer their own linguistic takes on apartheid and AIDS. We talk with the publishing manager of Oxford University Press South Africa. Download MP3

The fastest growing minority group in Port Richmond is Mexican

The working-class neighborhood of Port Richmond on New York City’s Staten Island has recently been the site of attacks against immigrants, all of them Mexicans. Police say most of the suspected attackers are young black men. There’ve been ten reported incidents since April. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
Download MP3

Staten Island has long been home to newly-arrived immigrants – now a wave of attacks against Latinos has both officials and residents worried, as PRI’s The World reporter Alex Gallafent reports from the New York City borough.

Since April there have been 10 reported incidents of violence against Hispanic immigrants on Staten Island, a borough of New York City.

The attacks have all occurred on the island’s North Shore, principally in the community of Port Richmond.

The most recent attack came on Saturday, when an 18-year-old student was beaten and robbed by a group of young African-American men while on his way home from working at a late-night restaurant.

Juan Paz Guatemalan Juan Paz feels more at risk than at any time in the last decade

His attackers reportedly shouted anti-Mexican slurs.

At a news conference in Port Richmond, New York City council member Debi Rose condemned the violence.

“We will never give up on our youth, we will never give up on our neighborhoods and we will never give up on our island,” she said.

“This is our home and we will do whatever it takes to make it safe and welcoming for everyone.”

Ms Rose announced plans to combat the wave of violence, including the addition of security cameras and the expansion of diversity training in the community.

‘Always afraid’

Staten Island has long been home to generations of new immigrants.

A sign offers a reward for help solving a violent crime Officials have announced measures to curb the violence

Officials on Staten Island have announced a raft of measures intended to curb the violence.

Port Richmond was once a destination for Jews from Eastern Europe and immigrants from Ireland.

Economic shifts meant that by the 1980s and 1990s, African Americans formed the dominant population.

Today the fastest growing minority group in Port Richmond is Mexican.

Mexico’s Consul General in New York, Ruben Beltran, says he is “angry and frustrated” at the string of attacks.

Earlier this week, he sent a consular representative to support Mexican immigrants in the neighborhood.

“We are travelling around Port Richmond to take stock of what’s happening and also to let them know that the consulate is here,” he said.

Not all of the Hispanic members of the community are Mexican, and others are also feeling threatened.

Juan Paz, a restaurant worker from Guatemala, has lived in the area for more than a decade. He says things have never been this bad before.

“It’s very dangerous now. When I come from work I have to be very careful,” he says.

“I don’t put in gas at night because I’m always afraid of something happening. I go straight home.”

Economic pain

Civic leaders say there are many possible reasons for the violence, from racism to summertime boredom.

Lloyd Land says people are economically depressed and hurting financially

But a local pastor, Lloyd Land, says it boils down to economic pain.

“People are economically depressed and hurting financially. Mexicans come and work for less money and they work longer hours than average people,” he says.

“So they feel that Mexicans are taking jobs whereas in reality the Mexicans are hard-working people; they want to put a meal on the table just like everyone else.”

Mr Land says it will take attention from the Obama administration to fix the problems of Port Richmond.

He complains that last year’s massive government stimulus had little effect on his community.

“I love Obama, I respect Obama. But here on Staten Island, whatever it is he’s doing, it isn’t working.”

• Read the full story “‘Hate crimes’ plague Staten Island”
• Slideshow: See Alex Gallafent’s photos from Port Richmond
• Alex Gallafent on the BBC

• BBC coverage
• Faisal Shahzad profile
• President Obama on the attack
• New York Times coverage
• In pictures: Times Square bomb

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  U.S. authorities have brought formal terrorism charges against a suspect in the failed bombing attempt on Times Square.  Thirty-year-old Faisal Shahzad is a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan.  Officials say he admitted receiving bomb making training in Pakistan.  He is being charged on multiple counts, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.  Shahzad allegedly planted a crude bomb in an SUV and drove the vehicle into one of the busiest parts of Manhattan on Saturday.  U.S. officials say if the bomb had detonated as planned, it would have killed many bystanders.  President Obama made a short statement today about the investigation, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL:  The President said U.S. officials are learning everything they can about the alleged plot, about the suspect in U.S. custody, Faisal Shahzad, and whether he has any connections to terrorist groups.  Mr. Obama added that this incident is another sobering reminder of the times in which we live.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  Around the world and here at home, there are those who would attack our citizens and who would slaughter innocent men, women and children in pursuit of their murderous agenda.  They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life.  But once again, an attempted attack has been failed.

BELL: The President said the plot failed because a few ordinary citizens were vigilant.  They reported suspicious activities to the police and then, Mr. Obama said, authorities at all levels, local, state and federal, worked in a swift and coordinated fashion to apprehend the suspect.  He was pulled off a plane at JFK Airport last night, shortly before it was scheduled to take off for Dubai.  Finally, the President had some words of praise for New Yorkers.  He said once again they have reminded Americans how to live with their heads held high.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  We know that the aim of those who try to carry out these attacks is to force us to live in fear, and thereby amplifying the effects of their attacks, even those that fail.  But as Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized.  We will not cower in fear.  We will not be intimidated.  We will be vigilant and we will work together and we will protect and defend the country we love to ensure a safe and prosperous future for our people.  That’s what I intend to do as President, and that’s what we will do as a nation.

BELL: In the nation of Pakistan, there were reports of several arrests today in connection to the Times Square plot.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was asked about those reports during news conference this afternoon.  He said he was in no position to confirm any arrests in Pakistan.  Holder declined to say if there were other suspects in the case, or if Faisal Shahzad was connected with any foreign terrorist groups.  The Attorney General did say, however, that authorities are looking into a number of leads.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:  The investigation is ongoing and I wouldn’t want to reveal at this point any of the information that we gleaned from him other than to say that he has been talking to us and providing us with useful information.

MALE VOICE 1:  Has he admitted involvement in this?

HOLDER:  He has done that.

BELL: Holder said the failed car bombing was an attempt to carry out a terrorist attack aimed at killing as many people as possible.  Shahzad is being charged with terrorism and the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.  Holder said investigators are looking at evidence found in the suspect’s car and at his Connecticut home.  The Attorney General also praised law enforcement and Homeland Security officials for a job well done.  Counter-terrorism expert, and former FBI official, Matthew Levitt echoes that sentiment.

MATTHEW LEVITT:  The fact that they were able to run down these leads this quickly, stopped the suspect from escaping the country, just hours really after the attack, running down all kinds of leads, to me, as someone who is former FBI counter-terrorism, is impressive.  And I think that should give American citizens a lot of comfort.  No less important, by the way, is the role that regular citizens played in helping the authorities do their job.

BELL: The Times Square car bomb plot is also stoking an ongoing and highly politicized debate about the best way to prevent terrorist attacks.  Levitt says the issue is often framed in a misleading way.

LEVITT:  There is this debate which paints a black and white picture between a law enforcement approach to counter-terrorism and a military approach to counter-terrorism.  I think it’s a false distinction.  Counter-terrorism demands the strategic approach that involves the use of all tools of national power.  And on a case-by-case basis assessing in which case the right tool is most applicable.

BELL: President Obama might have had that debate in mind today when he said the FBI and its partners have all the tools they need to conduct the investigation into Saturday’s attempted bombing.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP:  Alison Hayes is Oxfam’s Policy Manager for Haiti.  She is in New York.  Alison, first before we talk about this survey of Haitians needs that Oxfam has been doing, just your reaction to that story.

ALISON HAYES:  I think the story sums up the desperation quite well.  Although the rain is due to start in April, the last few days when I left they had already started and the golf club camp that your colleague referenced is one of the worst examples of what can happen.  They built on a steep slope without adequate drainage and sanitation in the camp.  Everything runs downhill.  People at the bottom of that hill are in the worst situation and it is an area that has had landslides before, so this is one of the top priority sites for us to relocate to safer sites.

SHARP: Now Oxfam has been really pushing Haitians on what they need.  You’ve done a survey.  What are the most urgent needs now that Haitians are voicing?

HAYES: One of the most urgent needs is for shelter, for homes as your colleague referenced.  And the number one priority was for employment.  Jobs, jobs, jobs.  We know that before the earthquake there were one million unemployed in Port au Prince alone.  In the recovery effort coming up there will be lots of opportunities for employment whether it’s cash for work projects such as Oxfam and others are doing, paying people to help clear the rubble which will also help to create more space in the temporary camps.  And also, importantly, in the agricultural sector.  It’s been historically underfunded and under supported by the government and yet it accounts for 60 to 75 percent of the employment opportunities.  So we really need to support employment opportunities in the countryside because it will provide the employment, it will also reduce the dependency on food aid, which has been crippling to Haiti.

SHARP: And related to this, one striking thing from the poll was that it showed how little trust Haitians had in their own government and how much they feel NGOs are in a better position to help them.  But what are the implications of that going forward?

HAYES: I think it can be taken a couple of ways.  The way that Oxfam would like to explain it is that this is now a moment where we can change that lack of confidence.  If we can work with the government to facilitate them, to take more of a leadership role, and to be providing basic services to their people in place of international agencies, that would help Haitians to have more confidence in their government.  If the government were coming forward sooner and louder with their plans for the recovery, for example saying where the relocation sites are, that would help give more confidence to the people.  We want to take this as an opportunity to change that negative perception that some of the Haitians we interviewed felt.  The government can do that.  They have to be as transparent and accountable as possible.  And at the same time we, the international community here, are calling for that need to hold ourselves up to the same standards that we’re demanding of the government.

SHARP: Alison Hayes, there is a very important conference coming up.  What needs to happen there for Haiti?

HAYES: At the conference tomorrow, there needs to be a long term donor commitment to the future of Haiti.  The government need to be empowered to lead that program. If something is imposed from the outside, whether it’s a multi-donor trust fund or any recovery program that is not Haitian led and owned, it will not take root in the country.  Haiti is rightly a very proud country and very sensitive to perceived external interference.  So they really need to be leading it.  The donors need to give long term commitments so that the government can plan and budget wisely.  It needs to be the start of a process of dialogue with Haitian civil society groups who have been neglected in this process so far.  One of the reasons we did the survey is because the government has not been consulting it’s own people adequately.  So our survey and other things that we have done have been trying to be a small microphone for the Haitian voices into the donor conference tomorrow.

SHARP: Alison Hayes is Oxfam’s Policy Manager for Haiti.  She spoke to us from New York.  Thank you very much.

HAYES: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The rest of the pod is devoted to the second part of the BBC’s documentary on Yiddish. Reporter Dennis Marks picks up the story in the 1960s, when Yiddish was staring extinction in the face, after many decades in which it language thrived among Jewish Eastern European immigrants, as in this World War Two-era poster). But more recently in New York City, the language has began to undergo a modest revival. A big contributor to that was Aaron Lansky who founded the National Yiddish Book Center, which rescused thousands of Yiddish volumes from depositories and dumpsters: as he puts it to take books “out of the dustbin of history and put them back into use.”

We also hear from YY Jacobson, a rabbi in the Crown Heights section of New York and editor of the Hasidic Yiddish newspaper Algemeiner. His contribution to the survival of Yiddish is the most overtly religious. Others have cultural or ancestral reasons for investigating the language: people like klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals, novelist Dara Horn, and a family who speak with each other in both English and Yiddish. The teens in the family text message each other in transliterated Yiddish, complete with texting shorthand: ZG is zei gezunt (be well) and BSH is biz shpeter (until next time/goodbye). Download MP3

• Photo gallery
• Wikipedia: Frederic Franklin

1. Faust, Ballet Music: V. Les Troyennes (Moderato con moto)
Composer: Charles Gounod
Performer: Berliner Philharmoniker & Herbert von Karajan
CD: Famous Ballet Music / DGG 2894594452 (disc one, track 22)

2. Suite from “The Firebird” (1919 version): Introduction
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
Performer: London Symphony Orchestra & Leonard Bernstein
CD: Bernstein Century: Stravinsky / Sony B00000C29B (track 14)

3. Voulez-Vous de la Canne à Sucre?
Performer: Josephine Baker
CD: The Very Best of Josephine Baker / Master Classics Records 884385492953 (track 42)

4. Coppélia, Suite: I. Prélude – Mazurka
Composer: Léo Delibes
Performer: Berliner Philharmoniker & Herbert von Karajan
CD: Famous Ballet Music / DGG 2894594452 (disc 2, track 1)

5. Fox Movietone Follies of 1929: Medley
Performer: The Brunswick Salon Orchestra

• www.calypsorosediva.com
• Wikipedia: Calypso Rose

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: All across the United States there are celebrities.  Not the kind of people who regularly grace Hollywood gossip shows or people magazine.  These are people who are celebrities in their home companies.  But move to relative amenity and the hope of a better life here in America. For today’s Global Hit I would like to introduce you to such a person.  She lives in New York City and is a musical legend in her native Trinidad and Tobago.  Along with Harry Belafonte she introduced Calypso to listeners far beyond the Caribbean.  I have the chance to meet McArtha Sandy Lewis earlier this year.  I know not exactly a household name but her stage name should ring a bell.

CALYPSO ROSE: I am McArtha Linda Sandy Lewis otherwise known as Calypso Rose.

WERMAN: And McArtha, I understand was a name that was given to you because somebody in your family must have admired Douglas Macarthur the famous American general.

CALYPSO: My mother.

WERMAN: What did she like about him?

ROSE: In the late 30′s and early 40′s, I was born in 1940.  When the war was going on it appears that General Macarthur they used to be dropping leaflets in Tobago.  I was born in Tobago.  About what was going on in the war.  And at night the planes would come and drop the leaflets and drop food and rice and all different things so she loved that.  So she says this baby I’m carrying if it’s a boy I’m going to call him Macarthur.  And if it’s a girl I’m going to call her McArtha.  M-C-A-R-T-H-A.  And there I came.  So that’s how come I got the name McArtha.  [LAUGH]

WERMAN: So Americans were dropping rice and food and leaflets during Trinidad and Tobago during the war.  Was that to win the hearts and minds of the Trinidadians?

ROSE: Of the Caribbean people [LAUGH] yes.

WERMAN: So tell me where the name Calypso Rose came from.

ROSE: It was given to me by a tent manager.  When I see a tent manager in Trinidad and Tobago they have what you call the Calypso tent.  The Calypso tent where I put kind of a season, a lot of Calyposians go and do their new compositions.  And the two tent managers they say, “Now we gonna change your name.  And we go call you from today Calypso Rose.”  Calypso is identifying the island of Trinidad and Tobago and Rose is the mother of all flowers.

WERMAN: A lot of entertainers think long and hard about picking a stage name.  You were given a stage name were you happy with it?

ROSE: Oh yes, I was happy, indeed I was happy.

WERMAN: I think a lot of Americans think about Calypso and they think steel pan and they think parties.  But Calypso has a very strong social, kind of observational tradition.

ROSE: It has been.  Years ago before I start singing “you can buy news people” so the Calypsonians they used to create and write Calypso so we could hear.  And say, “Oh, like the envision [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Pharaoh when the world was greener and all this thing with  this be writing Calypso and then we used to know what was going on in the other world.  But now that things have changed immensely that the [SOUNDS LIKE] media for the public.

WERMAN: Why not?  What changed?

ROSE: They are not writing anything more to make the public aware consciously of what is happening.  In politically, economically, or Calypso to make you laugh like that.  Look, I have written a lot and lot of calypso’s and one of the calypso’s I’ve been questioned lately, “A Man Is a Man”.  Why did you write that calypso “A Man Is a Man”?  2 girls in an argument, an argument on the pavement, 2 little girls were in an argument, the argument on the pavement.  They been arguing about a man.  Whatever will it be like when they become a woman.  So I join the conversation, they asked me to give them my opinion, so I tell them look, a man is a man.  The man is [SOUNDS LIKE] faced like a frying pan.  Oh be a man oh man a cool man.  Any man, could give you satisfaction.”  Now this is something that I have created and by bringing it to reality people are saying, “Oh you know that is true.”  Women are speaking true of man, so why must you pick and choose a man, when a man is a man?  So I said there’s no distinction.  Whether the man be one foot or one hand he could still make you happy.  [LAUGH]

WERMAN: That’s a very modern feminist statement.

ROSE: Thank you very much.  Today Calypso tend to have lost all of those flavors.  The people still want Calypso and that is what I intend to give them ’till I die.  Give them Calypso.  “[FOREIGN LYRICS IN CALYPSO SONG]”

WERMAN: That is Caribbean legend Calypso Rose, I spoke with her in her apartment in Jamaica, New York where she’s lived for the past 26 years.

ROSE: “When Calypso’s rose was small, mommy, mommy used to make me [INAUDIBLE] says before you get my ring she will choose the man for me.  Take the women out because every man in the hospital she said, she can’t [INAUDIBLE] where I tell she a man is a man…”

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC Archive: The Berlin Wall
• BBC Audio Documentary: How the Wall Fell

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. IN Berlin today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sworn in fro a second term. Merkel famously grew up in communist East Germany. And 20 years ago in the weeks before the wall came down she was helping organize protests against the government there. The wall of course was the most potent symbol of the cold war dividing the city of Berlin in two. Many who attempted to cross form east to west were killed at its base. The collapse of the wall signaled the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Here’s Dan Rather on CBC.

DAN RATHER: In Berlin this is the definitely the “in” place to be. The sites and sounds – all the joy and the history in front of the Brandenburg Gate with West Berliners partying literally on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the gate.

CLARK: But when the wall came down it didn’t disappear. It just went other places as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT: When I started working on this story I put something up on Facebook which just said, “Do you own a piece of the Berlin Wall?” The answers came flooding in from the United States, Britain, and beyond.

MONTAGE OF VARIOUS VOICES: My husband has a piece in his office. There was some at a lunch I went to last week. I think my brother’s got a piece. My sister owns a tiny, tiny chunk.

GALLAFENT: The Berlin Wall is kind of everywhere now – especially in the West. It wasn’t just bulldozers and wrecking balls that took the wall down. It was hammers and chisels – individuals claiming fragments of history, wrapping them up to keep or sending them home to family or friends – to people like Noah Isenberg. He owns a chunk too.

NOAH ISENBERG: It was just in this little yellow cardboard container that I used to always have on my bookshelves and yet for some strange reason it’s gone missing.

HOWARD ROSENBERG: Well it’s interesting. I sort of feel like I have a piece of the wall too but it’s a different kind of a piece. It’s the piece that’s in my memory.

GALLAFENT: When the wall came down Howard Rosenberg was the TV critic for Los Angeles Times. He remembers how each of the major networks sent an anchor to be live at the wall. As Rosenberg puts it, “to validate the story for Americans back home.”

ROSENBERG: I mean television does this all the time. I always think of these stories as like a whale being carved up by Eskimos in which they use every bit of the whale – every part of it goes for something and everybody takes a little chunk out of it as if they were … . In this case individually taking a chunk out of the wall. A couple of them even climbed the wall on a ladder. You can’t say that they eclipsed this momentous event but they certainly chipped into it.

GALLAFENT: Even as it came down the wall and its meaning were being claimed. It meant the end of oppression or the triumph of freedom or capitalism. Today in Los Vegas it means something … . Well I’m not quite sure what it means. At the Main Street Station Casino Brewery and Hotel there’s a hefty section of the wall positioned behind the men’s urinals.

ROSENBERG: [LAUGHING] Oh I love it. That’s just great.

GALLAFENT: Since 1989 the wall has been sold, bought, and donated. It’s been broken apart and reconstructed. There were the small fragments. Some real. Some fake. And then there are the larger pieces. Entire sections of the wall transplanted to new homes. A few of that type are here in New York including one in the heart of the Midtown Business District. A section of the wall has been placed in a courtyard next to an office building.

JULIANE CAMFIELD: It’s still very intense. It seems so out of place.

GALLAFENT: I met someone who knew the wall when it was still The Wall.

CAMFIELD: It almost seems unreal. It seems like … . It looks like a movie prop. It seems to me like it can’t be really here.

GALLAFENT: Juliane Camfield was born in West Berlin in 1968, seven years after the wall went up. She left in 1989, the year it came down. Now she’s a New Yorker. Camfield is her married name. She studies this section of the wall from a distance. It’s painted with colorful graffiti faces, as much of the western side was. And set behind the wall there’s a fountain, a curtain of water framing the whole thing.

CAMFIELD: I think that’s part of what makes it so unreal for me. To have this weird fountain thing in the background because the fountain is sort of something soothing and you know a little tacky. And I think the wall it’s not beautiful, it’s something very provocative and shocking and symbolizing terror and death and separation and I don’t want it to be smoothed out.

GALLAFENT: Juliane Camfield more than anyone else I spoke to, seemed like she really owned a piece of the Berlin Wall. She had relatives in the East. The wall prevented her from knowing them. Her only link was what she learned from her two grandmothers on walks around West Berlin, a little island of freedom.

CAMFIELD: And we’d eventually end up at the wall because wherever you went at some point you would end up at the wall and they really, I guess, they kept their memories alive. They kept their connections to their nephews, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts. It was very close to their heart. So when I heard them speak about it I guess these two grandmothers more than anything for me established the outrageousness of that piece of architecture.

GALLAFENT: Not everyone has a story like Juliane’s. Even people in Berlin itself are no longer defined by the wall as they once were.

CAMFIELD: When I think about Berlin it is mostly a divided Berlin because I grew up in a divided Berlin. When I go back and visit I realize it’s a very different city now and the people I knew when I grew up and who did not leave Berlin, for them I think it is much less present even thought hey live there, than it is present for me even though I live away from Berlin. It’s a paradox.

GALLAFENT: But Camfield’s certain of one thing. She will never own an actual piece of the Berlin Wall. In fact she says she doesn’t even think of it as an object. Thinking about its meaning is enough.

CAMFIELD: Do I need to look at it to be aware of that? No, I know that. I don’t need to have it.

GALLAFENT: And so she walks away carrying only the idea of the long gone Berlin Wall. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

CLARK: You can see photos of Juliane Camfield and the Berlin Wall at The World dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.