We recently reported on Destination Music, a BBC World production that was featuring the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in it’s first episode.
As a follow up to that post, I recently had the opportunity to speak with one of the producers from BBC World and ask her some questions regarding the choice of bluegrass music, and specifically the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, for the opening episode of Destination Music. Here’s my feeble attempt at transcribing our phone conversation.
Brance: How was the decision made to feature bluegrass music?
Caroline: The show travels to a different country each episode and explores the music of that country. We knew we wanted to go to the US for an episode and bluegrass came up as a genre we wanted to feature because a lot of people outside the US don’t know a lot about it. We felt it represented a fundamentally American music style.
Brance: Ok, how was the decision made to film at Grey Fox?
Caroline: In part, we had a rough time schedule of when we could be in the US, so we looked for an event that would occur during that time frame. But ultimately, we chose Grey Fox after doing quite a bit of research. The festival had a lot of history, and a diverse line up that showed a real cross section of the music. The festival is quentisentially American, it couldn’t really have been filmed anywhere else.
Brance: Did you originally intend for this to be the first episode in the series?
Caroline: Not really, but we weren’t opposed to it, we made that decision because we thought it turned out to be quite a strong program that was fast paced and showcased what we wanted to do with the series. It was very upbeat and we thought it was great way t0 kick off the whole thing.
Brance: What are the future plans for the show? Any more bluegrass?
Caroline: Probably not. The series is only 13 episodes and each episode will occur in a different country. We are planning a second series of 13 more episodes that will follow closely on the heels of the first series. We do hope to return to the US during the second series, but at this time we are toying with the idea of taping somewhere near Memphis and featuring American blues and jazz.
Brance: Is this series being aired here in America?
Caroline: Unfortunately, BBC World is trasmitted globally but not in the US at this time.
That is the end of our conversation as I’ll reproduce it here for you. As she said BBC is not available in the US. BBC World News is available for 3 hours each weekday morning (0600 to 0900 ET/0300 to 0600 PT) and as a 30-minute bulleting each weekday evening (1800 to 1830 ET).BBC World News bulletins are also rebroadcast daily on Public broadcast Stations across the coutnry. But other BBC World programming is not currently broadcast in the US.
