Ethiopian And Eritrean Immigrants Bring A Piece Of Home To Moorefield With Traditional Coffee Ceremony
For West Virginia Public Broadcasting and The West Virginia Folklife Program
Moorefield, West Virginia, is home to about 3,300 people—about one in 10 are immigrants. That includes a small community from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Many of them work at the chicken processing plant in town, Pilgrim’s Pride, where the hours are long and don’t leave much time for socializing. Still, members of that East African community continue to practice a tradition they’ve brought from home: the coffee ceremony. This audio story was produced by Clara Haizlett with Emily Hilliard. Listen via West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Out of the Blocks
In 2020, WYPR Out of the Blocks podcast producers Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick expanded their audio work into the video format, sending iPhones to members of four communities across the country: West Baltimore, Maryland, the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Seattle's Chinatown-International District in Washington state, and the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia. Community members were charged with the task of documenting how their lives had been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emily Hilliard field produced the Charleston segment, which features co-directors Adrian & Ashley Wright of Dem 2 Brothers and a Grill, Recovery Point Program Director Fran Gray, Loren and Michael Farmer of Risen City Church, and Sali Janem of Sali's Deli.
The result is a powerful portrait of the pandemic's effects on recovery, faith communities, families, and food and service workers in Charleston and neighborhoods across the country. Watch it via PBS.
OUT OF THE BLOCKS: CHARLESTON, WEST SIDE
Through the West Virginia Folklife Program, Emily Hilliard worked with WYPR producers Aaron Henkin & Wendel Patrick to field produce two episodes of the Baltimore-based neighborhood podcast, Out of the Blocks highlighting the West Side Neighborhood of Charleston, West Virginia. The audio collages feature Charleston West Side locals in their own words, mixed with an original musical score, and is presented in two parts: Part 1: History Laid Down Like Shellac and Part 2: We May See a Harvest, released in January 2020. You can subscribe to Out of the Blocks on all major podcast platforms, or listen to the the episodes at https://www.wypr.org/programs/out-blocks.
Honey from the Lion: A Companion Soundscape
For Ecotone Magazine
Ecotone editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell offered the dream assignment of compiling an annotated soundscape for Matthew Neill Null's stunning novel Honey from the Lion, about a union uprising at a turn of the century West Virginia logging company.
The novel is teeming with sonic description—of crows, trains, saws, African American hymns, Syrian prayers, and even a cameo by Greenbrier Valley fiddler Edden Hammons. All of those sounds are represented in the soundscape, along with labor songs from the 1902 UMWA anthracite miner strike in Pennsylvania, a play-party game ditty from Phyllis Marks, Melvin Wine's "Peg 'n Awl", recordings by John Harrod and Gerry Milnes, Mennonite Harmonia Sacra, and a field recording of a certain other wordly drainpipe in Thurmond, West Virginia.
Weirton’s Serbian Heritage Is A Chicken Blast
For West Virginia Public Broadcasting & The West Virginia Folklife Program
A feature on Weirton, West Virginia’s Serbian heritage and the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church Men’s Club “Chicken Blast” events, held weekly in the summertime at the Weirton Serbian Picnic Grounds. These short audio and video documentaries were produced as part of a collaboration with the West Virginia Folklife Program and West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow: Neon Sign Maker James Day
For West Virginia Public Broadcasting & The West Virginia Folklife Program
A profile of neon sign maker James L. Day of Day Sign Company in St. Albans, WV. These short audio and video documentaries were produced as part of a collaboration with the West Virginia Folklife Program and West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Building A Broom By Feel: James Shaffer of Charleston Broom & Mop
For West Virginia Public Broadcasting & The West Virginia Folklife Program
A profile of Charleston Broom and Mop Company's James Shaffer, the last handmade commercial broom maker in West Virginia. This short documentary was produced as part of a collaboration with the West Virginia Folklife Program and West Virginia Public Broadcasting and screened at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress event “Reel Folk: Cultural Explorations on Film.”
Never Whack: George O’Neal of Lil’ Farm
For Scene on Radio
"Never Whack!," a profile of "punk farmer" George O'Neal of Lil' Farm in Timberlake, NC, was produced for John Biewen's "Intro to Audio Documentary Course" and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke's "The Art of Farming" project. In 2016, the piece was featured on John Biewen's podcast "Scene on Radio" from the Center of Documentary Studies.
The Wharf
A Greenhouse Film for the Southern Foodways Alliance by Emily Hilliard and Ashley Melzer, The Wharf is a snapshot of the historic Maine Avenue Fish Market in Washington, DC.
The Maine Avenue Fish Market, or The Wharf, as it’s referred to by most locals, is not a place you are likely to stumble upon. It’s tucked away under the I-395 overpass and sits on floating docks on DC’s southwest waterfront. It wasn’t always so hidden.
Opening in 1805, the market is the oldest continuously operating fish market in the United States, and one of the only open-air fish markets on the East Coast. It has undergone several iterations in order to stay afloat, though. In the 1960s, it was relocated from its original location on the Washington Channel due to an urban renewal project on the waterfront. The threat of closure loomed, but vendors refused to leave, citing a clause in their lease which allowed them to stay for 99 years. Thus, the market was moved to its current location, tucked under an overpass.
As we interviewed customers and employees for this film, we learned of other changes in the local seafood industry that have affected the Wharf and contributed to its evolution. Many of the vendors we talked to are from nearby fishing communities: the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, as well as Smith Island. As seafood jobs have declined in their hometowns, they have found jobs at the Maine Avenue Fish Market. The pay is good, and it allows them to keep working in seafood.
The market has also changed in terms of what it offers. Though the two main companies there, Captain White’s and Jessie Taylor’s, still offer some local seafood—Virginia clams, Chincoteague Oysters, and some Maryland blue crab—they also import some products, such as tilapia and squid from national and international ports.
Customers and DC locals remain loyal to the Wharf. They cite its affordability, diversity, and history as assets to the city. As the waterfront is yet again on the brink of redevelopment, it’s unclear what changes that will bring to the market, but developers have stated that it will be renovated and preserved.
This film aims to be a snapshot of this historic DC fish market at a crucial moment in time.
The Billy And Bobby Show
"The Billy and Bobby Show," about a make-believe radio show my brother and I recorded as kids, was produced for "Recycled," a compilation of short audio documentaries produced by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The piece has aired on KGNU Boulder, KZYX Mendocino, KXOT Tacoma, WNIJ Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin, WMBR Cambridge, and WRIR Richmond.