The Role of the Universities
Alongside these public stations, other important agents supported the development of art radio: university radio stations, professors, colleges, and some local radio stations associated with colleges or universities. One of the most remarkable works in a university station was developed by Janete El Haouli with Rádio UEL, from the State University of Londrina (Paraná). As a professor of the Music Department, she produced a program called Música Nova: Rádio para ouvidos pensantes (New Music: Radio for Thinking Ears) from 1991 to 2005. From 2001 until 2005, under her direction, the station broke with established production and programming standards, expanding artistic boundaries, extending the music selection, and proposing new formats, such as abolishing the divide between concert and popular music. Producers were stimulated to depart from the traditional models of radio journalism in favor of more essayist documentaries. Following this period as director, El Haouli continued to act as a promoter and researcher of new possibilities for radio broadcasting, promoting meetings, events, and workshops, such as “Radioforum – In Search of an Inventive Radio,”[8] organized in September 2008 and sponsored by the Casa de Cultura of UEL, with the support of MINC (Ministry of Culture), Curitiba’s Goethe Institute, Rádio MEC FM, Rádio Cultura SP, and other institutions. The workshop brought together a unique group of radio producers, theorists, and radio artists from various corners of Brazil, together with Harri Huhtamaki (from Yleisradio in Finland), the Curitiba/Berlin composer Chico Mello, and composer and musicologist Vera Terra, the most famous Brazilian interpreter of John Cage’s work. El Haouli also produces radio pieces, some in partnership with composer and sound designer José Augusto Mannis,[9] with whom she also curated, produced, and edited the programs of the Brazilian Radio documenta 14 in Kassel, some entirely dedicated to music, sound art, and radio artworks by Brazilian radio artists.
In terms of innovative sound creations, Eduardo Vicente, a professor in the Department of Cinema, Radio, and TV (CTR) in collaboration with a group of (former) students produced the series Sonoracidade: um retrato sonoro da cidade de São Paulo, which was awarded the Roquette Pinto prize in the radio art category during the First Competition for the Promotion of Radiophonic Programs promoted by the Brazilian Public Radio Association (ARPUB) in 2010. Composed of 72 episodes, each lasting five minutes, the series presented soundscapes and field recordings of iconic sites in São Paulo.
Another production awarded a prize in the same category was the series Sound and Sense - Since Reality Is Not Enough, produced by a team of professionals of Rádio UFMG (the University station of Federal University of Minas Gerais). Inspired by the words of poet Ferreira Gular and the theoretical perspectives of the book O Som e o sentido (Sound and Sense) by José Miguel Wisnick, the series consisted of 36 programs, each 10 minutes long, produced with artists from Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. It sought to explore questions related to sound experimentation and the discovery of possibilities of creating meaning through sound.
To conclude this overview, projects of independent or community radio stations, such as Rádio Muda from the Campinas University (São Paulo) or Rádio Kaxinawá should be mentioned. Kaxinawá was linked to a project at the FEBF. After the appearance of the radio station, an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research group was created, Kaxinawá Pesquisas Sonoras (Kaxinawá Sound Research). This led to the establishment of rederadioarte, an online network of radio artists and radio art groups active since 2013. Rederadioarte defines itself as a web portal that hosts groups and individual radio and sound artists as well as university research groups from Brazil and elsewhere. Its goal is to enable the exchange of knowledge between artists and producers as well as the collective production of radio programs for the site’s web radio and for various university or educational stations (see, for example, their series at UFMG Educativa in Belo Horizonte since September 2015 and at Rádio MEC FM in Rio de Janeiro since January 2016).
