THE WEEK’S RADIO Glimpses Of The Past In Africa

Press, Issue 29236, 21 June 1960, Page 20

THE WEEK’S RADIO Glimpses Of The Past In Africa

Within the memory of living people Africa was “The Dark Continent,” its interior largely a blank. Although, the whole continent has now been geographically explored and archaeologists and scholars are working unceasingly to discover more about its/past, our historical knowledge is incomplete and broken by long gaps.

In a series of 8.8. C. talks beginning from 3YC at 9.30 p.m. on Thursday a number of authoritative speakers survey present knowledge of Africa’s story up to the time of modern European colonisation. In the first talk, the distinguished archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, says: “Africa may well be the homeland of man himself.” He tells of the half-man, half-ape whose skeletons have been found in the Transvaal, and who may have lived nearly 750,000 years ago. The second talk is about the civilisations which flourished Jn the Nile valley for nearly 3000 years. The third speaker tells of the large well-organised negro states which were established in the Sudan, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, during the European Middle Ages. A later talk is on migrations which took' place across this belt. Other negro civilisations described are those of East Africa and Zimbabwe, in Southern Rhodesia. There is also the remarkable story of the negro state of Congo, which for a short time in the sixteenth century, under Portuguese influence, adopted a European, Christian culture. For several reasons the experiment ultimately failed and now the sleepy village that was once Sao Salvador retains no traces of its Portuguese past.

JV.Z. Music Owen Jensen’s programme of two records (YC’s, 7.30 p.m. tonight) this month features New Zealand compositions played by

the Alex Lindsay Orchestra. The record includes Douglas Lilburn’s “Landfall in Unknown Seas,” with Allen Curnow reading his own poem, Larry Pruden’s Dances of Brittany, Ashley Heenan's arrangement of "Cindy,” and John Ritchie’s arrangement of “Turkey in the Straw.” Also on the programme is the great Russian pianist, Svyatoslav Richter, who will be heard in two Schumann piano solos. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Reiner and with Lisa della Casa as soprano soloist, will be heard in part of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Dietrich FischerDieskau will sing Schubert songs. Portrait Of Smuts

Although it is still too soon to be impartial about Field-Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, it will soon be too late to collect accounts of the remarkable South African from the people who knew him. David Lytton and Maurice Brown, who respectively wrote and produced the 8.8. C. radio portrait of Smuts to be heard from 3YC at 10.5 pm. on Friday, realised this and spent 18 months gathering material in England and South Africa. David Lytton travelled 10,000 miles with his tape recorder and used many miles of tape in working on the programme. Maurice Brown follows the pattern he used in his portrait of Gandhi, which won the Italian Press Association Prize in 1957. The contributors include Sir Winston Churchill, Bernard Baruch, members of the Smuts family and those who worked with him. Smuts himself is heard in a recording made on his , eightieth birthday. **The Race 11 Dramatised “The Race.” the novel by the Christchurch writer, Ruth France, has been dramatised for radio by William Austin and will be heard in an N.Z.B.S. production from the ZBs at 9.15 p.m. on Sunday. It concerns the crew of a yacht which meets a severe storm in a race from Wellington to Lyttelton and the women who wait for them in Christchurch. William Austin has turned the book into blank verse, paraphrasing the original words in places and leaving them unchanged in others. The five crew members are played by Roy Leywood, Barry Hill, Peter Read, Alan Jervis and lan Macintosh. The women who wait helplessly are played by Dorothy McKegg, Dorothy Munro and Lynda Hastings. The blank verse narrative is read by Bernard Kearns and Tim Elliott.