BBC Asian Network: Asian Network Reports Special, Don't Label Me.

                                                        Listening Journal #1

Title of the documentary: Don't Label Me.
Produced By: BBC Asian Network, George Casey.
Narrator: Nihal.
Length of documentary: 26:10 minutes. 

The documentary discusses why the music industry for the British-Asian artists seems to be tough. Nihal, the BBC narrator, takes two different approaches to tackle the topic. He interviews several aspiring young British-Asian artists who all seem to agree that being labeled as an "Asian" artist rather than simply an "artist" limits their music to a certain crowd, which is accordingly impeding their mainstream success.  However, Nihal interviews two producers in the British music industry who on the contrary think that Asian-British artists have every chance to go mainstream, but it simply depends on their talent and potential.

I found the documentary of great interest as it took on two different sides of the story to cover.  The narrator was really able to bring two different voices, the young artists and the experienced producers, which really contrasted against one another. Having gone to England myself, I could easily see how the Asian culture has been assimilated in the British society in so many ways.  But according to the documentary, the Asian success hasn't yet reached the British music industry.

The audio quality of the documentary was very good, and since it was about the music industry, there is no need to say how exceptionally well the music was embedded into the documentary.  There was constant use of different music throughout the documentary, and it was a great mix of pure Asian music and common urban music but with an Asian touch. The use of nat sound was not that common as music mainly dominated the background sounds, but there was still a sound of a crowd , or a live concert every once in a while.

Sonna Rele-one of the artists interviewed

source: http://www.flickr.com/

The narrator had a very upbeat and fresh voice, that clearly reflected his interest in the topic. He made sure that throughout the 26:10 minutes of the documentary the tone of his voice  never became monotonous.  The narrator had six interviewees who all seemed very eager to share their opinion and thoughts. Accordingly, Nihal's narration worked very well to integrate all these different voices together. When paying attention to different segments of Nihal's narration, especially in the first couple of minutes, I could notice how he tried to use rhetorical questions often to keep the listeners interested and eager to continue listing to the documentary.

The length of the documentary might be considered a bit long as it almost reached half an hour, but the content of the documentary was very enriching throughout, that the length wasn't a problem. The documentary started by four soundbites of the British-Asian interviewed artists which made it a very strong beginning as they were very passionate about their opinions.  As for the ending of the documentary, it was quite interesting as Nihal left the judgment open-ended for the listeners to decide for themselves the "true" reasons behind the industry difficulty for Asian-British artists. The BBC Asian network website was very user-friendly and easy to navigate, it was not a difficulty for me to play the documentary or pause it whenever I needed to jot down notes.