Producer Ian Brennan on Amplfiying the Voices of Persecuted People, Most Recently, in Tanzania

Producer and author Ian Brennan has worked with world music, folk music, traditional music, and has a feel for the DIY and lo-fi punk aesthetic. He produced Tinariwen’s Grammy-winning album, Tasili, but he has also recorded and amplified many voiceless communities – like the Zomba Prison Project (Malawi), Khmer Rouge Survivors (Cambodia), The Good Ones (Rwanda), and now, most recently, one of the most persecuted groups on the planet- people living with Albinism in East Africa - the Tanzania Albinism Collective.

Ian Brennan joins us in the studio to talk about traveling to the island of Ukerewe, the largest inland island in Africa, and “a place so remote that historically people often traveled there to abandon their children with albinism and now serves as a haven for many with the condition.” There, members of the Standing Voice community held workshops and worked with the local community of those with albinism – the “unheard,” hunted, feared, & murdered for their supposedly magical body parts. Hear the "un-professional" musicians of the Tanzania Albinism Collective, who grew up separated and shamed about their condition, not allowed into places where people gather and sing – like church, and relegated to “other-ness.”