[Harp-L] Some Riffs?

[Chris Hofstader]

Hello Harpers,

I’m involved in a project with two other blind people to create a new podcast we’re calling “The Blinkoverse.” For background, the word “blink” is kind of like the n-word but for blind people: we can use it to describe ourselves but a sighted person who used the term would get a kick in the nuts. Also, people in our community know my fictitious alter ego, Gonz Blinko and as I’m the primary host, the name works for us.

We’re trying to do something very different in the world of blindness. The Blinkoverse will be an adult themed production that hopes to have an adult audience. By “adult” in this context, we do not mean sex, sexuality or sexual health although they may come up from time to time but, rather, issues involving employment, household tasks, woodworking, the politics of disability and other issues an adult audience would hopefully enjoy. We also hope to include a lot of humor while avoiding “this blink can tie his own shoes, isn’t he amazing?” crap that makes us puke. 

So, why am I posting this to a harmonica mailing list? I would like to ask one or more of you really good players to provide us with some short (2-3 seconds) riffs we can use as connectors in our production. They will be used in our “news of the blindness world” segment separating one story from another and I’d like it to have a bluesy sound. We cannot afford to pay anyone for this but will happily include a credit with a link to your own site in our outro and in the show notes. If we had a dozen or so, we’ll be good as we hope to do five or six news stories per episode and we can repeat them in a different order in every episode.

So, are any of you interested in recording some riffs that we can use as bumpers? You don’t need to edit them, you can make one recording containing a bunch of them and we can cut them down to size as we need. As above, no more than a few seconds each is preferred as they’re being used to separate one story from another.

BTW: This podcast is intentionally controversial. Other publications in our community avoid controversy like the rest of us might avoid poison but we’re diving into the deep end and discussing the issues other blindness related publications refuse to acknowledge exist. We will be turning over the rocks that hide the reality of blindness and will likely be condemned by some advocacy organizations in the blindness space for even mentioning that we have a 70% rate of unemployment and that life isn’t rosy for our community. A lot of blindness stuff intends to “inspire,” we hope to deliver reality wrapped in humor.

Thanks and Happy Hacking,
cdh