About

CONTACT US: squeezeboxstories [at] gmail.com

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Julie Caine (Senior Producer)
Julie is a radio producer, photographer and documentary filmmaker. Her radio work has aired on The World, Marketplace, KALW, KQED, KEXP, and a wide variety of regional and local NPR affiliates. She was a producer and associate producer on the public radio science series, The DNA Files and The Really Big Questions. She co-produced All the Way Home, a documentary film about PTSD and coming home from war, which broadcast on PBS in 2008. She has a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley, and believes deeply in Grace Paley’s assertion that you must be a story listener to be a storyteller.

Marié Abe (Producer)
Marié is an ethnomusicologist, composer, pianist, and accordionist. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University, and has a PhD degree in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. As an accordionist, she plays various styles ranging from folk traditions around the world to improvised music, and has actively been recording, touring, and performing with a wide array of musicians in the U.S., her native Japan, and beyond. Squeezebox Stories brought together her love of the accordion and commitment to bringing ethnomusicological perspectives to a wider public. She believes that informed and engaged listening can uncover hidden histories, invisible relationships, and distant places, and that active musical interactions with others can inspire creative social intervention.

Marco Werman (Host)
Marco Werman is a music reporter, a radio host, and Senior Producer with PRI’s The World. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Werman got his start in radio while freelancing in Burkina Faso, West Africa, for the BBC World Service, where he later worked as a producer. In 1995, he was invited to assist in creating the format for The World where he has worked since. In 1997, he began providing the daily punctuation mark for The World in the Global Hit segment, in which musicians and musical trends around the globe are linked to the news. Werman has been the recipient of awards from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for an original radio drama that he wrote; the Sony awards for an exposé on child labor in West African gold mines; from the New York Festivals for a BBC documentary on the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso’s president; and the first annual Unity award from the Radio and Television News Director’s Association for coverage of diversity issues.

George Lipsitz (Commentator)
George Lipsitz is an American Studies Scholar and a Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His areas of expertise include race, popular music, culture and social identities, twentieth-century U.S. history, urban history and culture, and social movements. He has published extensively on these subjects and is the author of Midnight in the Barrel House (2010), Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music (2007), American Studies in a Moment of Danger (2001), The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (1998), A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (1995), Dangerous Crossroads (1994), Rainbow At Midnight (1994), Sidewalks Of St. Louis (1991), and Time Passages (1990). Lipsitz serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African American Policy Forum and is on the board of the National Fair Housing Alliance. He edits the Critical American Series for University of Minnesota Press, and co-edits the American Crossroads series for University of California Press.

Loretta Williams (Editor)
Loretta Williams is an independent producer, editor and reporter based in the Los Angeles area. She’s worked as an editor and producer for NPR, SoundPrint and SoundVision Productions. She has taught advanced skills in story development, writing, and production to early career journalists, many of whom went on to become regular contributors to national, regional, and local public radio programs. She is currently working with SoundVision to develop their next series The Energy Project.

Robin Wise (Sound Engineer)
Robin Wise has served as audio engineer for radio documentaries, audio books, documentary films, and multi-media presentations. Robin’s business, Sound Imagery in Portland, OR, is about enriching words with sound – bringing stories to life. Project Awards include The Peabody Award (3), The Robert Wood Johnson Award, Silver Baton of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and many others.

California Council for the Humanities
This project was made possible with support from California Council for the Humanities in partnership with the Skirball Foundation. The Council is an independent non-profit organization and a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the Council, visit http://www.calhum.org.

Arhoolie Foundation
This project was sponsored by Arhoolie Foundation, a non-profit foundation based in El Cerrito, California. Arhoolie Foundation was established in 1995 to document, preserve, present and disseminate authentic traditional and regional vernacular music. For more information, visit http://www.arhoolie.org. For more information on Arhoolie Records, visit http://www.arhoolie.com/

Advisers
This story would not have been possible without feedback and input from the following scholars and specialists: Professor George Lipsitz (University of California, Santa Barbara), Professor Mark Dewitt (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Professor Josh Kun (University of Southern California), Professor Alejandro Madrid (University of Illinois, Chicago), Professor Scott Marcus (University of California, Santa Barbara), and Professor Deborah Wong (University of California, Riverside).