Madonna Hamel


I live a hyphenated existance as a writer-broadcaster, documentary-maker, singer-songwriter and spoken-word artist.

I prefer that place where truth and creation meet. Some call it Creative Nonfiction, others, Literary Journalism. I call it 'telling true stories with a flourish'.

I have found the best way to find and tell great stories is to stay still and listen, being alert and relaxed, engaged and detached at the same time.

But moving helps too. So far, I've lived in nine fineNorth American towns, including Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway,

The Home of The Blues and the belle basse ville of historic Quebec.

One summer, while digging through the archives of the other-wordly Museum of Magic in iMarshall, MI, I met a magician who dubbed me Collector of Miscellaneous Wisdoms.

You find what you look for. If it's wisdom, you'll spot in just about anyone- the "seen-it-all's" and the "never-been's", the celebs and the rest of us- the 'etceteras'.

The stories never end and they just get better with age. As do their tellers.

 

 

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As a documentary producer for Sunday Afternoon In Concert, hosted by the enigmatic Bill Richardson, I had the luxury of creating art for radio, and exploring the idea of Creative Nonfiction for Radio. One of my favourite Canadians is Glenn Gould, immortalized in a life-like statue sitting outside the Glenn Gould studio in Toronto. The statue became the inspiration for a piece called "Lunch With Glenn".

(click here scroll down to Echoes of A Dream)

Last April I celebrated my 50th birthday by returning to Memphis to honour Martin Luther King Jr.who died on my tenth birthday, April 4th, 1968.

I marched in the rain with preachers, poets and polititians toward the Lorraine Motel where King was shot 40 years ago at 6:01pm, after chiding Jesse Jackson for not wearing a tie to dinner.

 I immersed myself in the writings of King. His exquisitely crafted sermons, lectures and speeches are still being quoted and paraphrased by public speakers of all stripes and parties yearning to captivate a listening audience. I later made a piece examing how Barack Obama's speeches often carry hints and referencesces to the works of King. It was aired on CBC's Dispatches.

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One of my missions as a doc-maker was to introduce orchestral music to 'timid but willing' audiences. I am forever thankful to have met two men through this assignment:

:the Vancouver-based composer and maestro Bramwell Tovey and George Green, from Owen Sound, ON, whose ancestors fled the American South and slavery via the Underground Railway.

 

1968 was an exceptional year. I wanted to create a kind of fly-over of the events that shaped the direction both social movements and music took as a response to the ruptures and inevitable changes that overcame the world. :

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(Interviews courtesy of CBC radio)

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