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Thursdays 2:00 00-4: -4:00 00 PM Barking Dog with Juliana Young 2: MISHA FALK Misha: Last time you chatted with Stylus you talked about the importance of folk music history. Could you speak to what you find important about sharing this history on your show? Juliana: The thing that really gets me interested in old recordings is that so many of them are rural artists who didn’t record other than maybe four tracks for a certain recording company. Now we have these recordings digitized, but they still aren’t widely available or people don’t go looking for them. These rural artists didn’t really have opportunities for being recognized outside of their communities for the most part and were recorded by chance, so we have these small snippets of the wider tradition that existed. So often in mainstream music we don’t focus on the rural. It’s very much what’s happening in the cities and people who have access to the technology and the means to record their music and get it out there. M: How do you go about finding and researching different artists for your show? J: I find a lot of things through Folkways which was a really important record label that started in the 1940s by this guy named Moses Asch who was putting out field recordings by people who generally wouldn’t get the chance to record. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution and they continue to put out recordings and make their recordings available digitally. Probably the most important thing for my show is that they have most of the liner notes from all these recordings online that they make available. So, if I know that the person had been on a Folkways recording, I can find information about them that way. That is a really useful resource even for people who don’t have folk radio shows but are just interested in folk music. Also, my partner Dylan sends me about half the music a week and he also edits the show. Through that we get a lot of diversity as he has an interest in old gospel and old blues and then I bring a lot of the Canadian content and just other stuff that I’ve come across. We’ve become more diverse with him sending me music because he goes off on tangents and gets interested in African blues music from Mali especially. We were playing a lot of Japanese folk recently as well. M: How do your academic studies inform your CKUW show?
06 Stylus Magazine February / March 2022
JULIANA YOUNG OF BARKING DOG
J: Folk music got me interested in studying folklore as a degree. It also got me interested in doing radio. I’m in a stream for my MA called Public Folklore which means that I want to work at an institution that connects with the public and gets information about folklore out there for the public. I see Barking Dog as my first step into public folklore as I’m getting it out into the community and hopefully connecting people to traditions listeners otherwise wouldn’t know about. M: What do you like about radio as a specific medium for sharing folk music and history? J: I like community radio specifically because it has a long history with folk music. Some of the first recordings were broadcast over community radio and even some folklorists have had community radio stations. It’s the most accessible form of communication with large audiences. With TV you need a TV, you need cable or at least a digital transmitter or streaming services and there are too many options sometimes, but with the radio, you just need a radio or a phone and it’s very easy to access compared to all these other technologies. It’s also easier to get a radio show on the air and you’re just communicating with the local audience. I know people can listen online, but I feel like there’s more community focus with radio and specifically with CKUW. M: What initially got you interested in folk music?
week, but I’ve been playing more Stan Rogers on the show recently. Jake Xerxes Fussell has been my favourite contemporary artist for the past two years. He’s doing a really good job of taking old recordings and creating entirely new things out of them that still follow the same tradition but still makes sure to reference the same people he learned the songs from. I think his dad was friends with a bunch of folk musicians and the people he learned the songs from so he’s a very exciting musician. M: What are your future aspirations for Barking Dog?
J: I took a class in Grade 10 called English and the Contemporary Song Lyric and we did a whole unit on Bob Dylan and on the folk revival of the 1960s. From there, I started listening to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and all his other folk influences. From there, my interest expanded, and I came to realize most of my interests even outside of music are related to folklore.
J: The big thing now is that I just bought a personal website and there’s going to be a big Barking Dog section. I’m planning on putting old archives of the show on there. I also want to have resources on there like the notes I make for the show and maybe other things I learn about the artists or the music that I don’t have time to talk about on the show.
M: Is there a particular artist who you’ve been excited about lately?
And then when I have more time to work on the show itself, I’ll maybe do more themed episodes or episodes exploring specific artists more in depth.
J: My big obsession this past few months has been “Barrett’s Privateers” by Stan Rogers which I listen to every day. I know I can’t play that same song every
Barking Dog broadcasts every Thursday from 2:00pm – 4:00pm.
