![]() Lowers his head, charges at me full bore," Metzner recalls. And one of the steer saw me and sort of didn't like what he saw. "The steer which they were herding were longhorn steer. Those pursuits took Metzner around the world and into situations ranging from the ordinary to the unforgettable, whether that's a Berber wedding festival in Morocco, a Japanese pottery village, New York's Saratoga racetrack or the scene of cowboys herding cattle in the plains of Brazil - where he tried to run out ahead of the herd in order to get sound of the vaqueros singing to them. His adventures filled thousands of tapes as tech evolved It ended in June after more than 30 years and 8,000 segments, but continues as a long-form monthly podcast under the same name. He then turned his attention to producing Pulse of the Planet, a daily radio program that brought hundreds of public and commercial stations two-minute segments of soundscapes and interviews mostly focused on science, nature and culture. He produced You're Hearing Boston and You're Hearing San Francisco before broadening out to You're Hearing America and, for several years in the 1980s, Sounds of Science. Metzner continued to focus on those sound-rich moments over the years, even as the scope of his work broadened from local to national to global. Metzner interviews Kate Jackson and Elliot Gould during a film shoot at Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Mass., in 1977. Here it is.' And it was, like, handing it to me on a platter." And it was the microphone and the recorder that said, 'Wake up. "But it wasn't a coincidence - this stuff was happening all the time, I just hadn't been paying attention to it. What an extraordinary coincidence,'' he recalled. "And I was going like, 'Wow, this is amazing. Metzner recalled pushing the red button and hearing a veritable symphony: a couple walking and talking nearby, a bicycle riding through gravel, a bird flying overhead, bells in the distance. Metzner's career began with a moment of realization in the 1970s, when he first ventured onto the campus of UMass Amherst equipped with a stereo recorder, microphone and earphones. "Whereas many recordists focus entirely on a single subject - nature, music or science - Metzner's recordings convey a full spectrum of human experience accompanied by the vast array of sounds from the natural world." Metzner collects poignant moments on a global scale "They include soundscapes of every description from around the world and interviews with scientists, artists and indigenous peoples," Matt Barton, curator of recorded sound at the library's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, said in a statement. Metzner has shared those sounds with many listeners over the years, mostly through radio programs including his own nationally syndicated series, Pulse of the Planet, which aired daily from 1989 until earlier this year. You receive something extraordinary, the first thing you want to do is say, 'Oh my God, listen to this! Let me share this with somebody!' " "Right from the get-go, I never felt that I was capturing anything. "Sometimes you hear people say, 'You know, I captured this sound' and 'I captured that sound,' " he adds. He sees his job as listening to sounds, not capturing them, as he told NPR's Morning Edition in a recent interview. Jim Metzner has spent nearly five decades documenting and sharing the sounds of the world, from immersive portraits of American cities to indelible moments with people and wildlife in places as varied as Alaska, Australia, Japan, Greece, Cuba, Nepal and Morocco. ![]() While he's honored that they will be archived, he says he wants to make sure people actually listen to them. The Library of Congress has acquired the life's work of radio producer Jim Metzner, who has spent decades traveling the world to capture rich soundscapes. ![]()
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