Listen In: LES Oral History Montage

This is a guest blog post by NYPL Community Oral History Project volunteer and audio producer, Walter Petrichyn. You can listen to Walter's podcast Mission Island, where he shares true and fictional stories that happen in cities. In the following post, Walter describes his process for making an audio montage from our LES Oral History Project collection.

My first question when going into making this audio montage was, "How do I edit over ten hours of tape into a six minute story?" This sounds like the hard part, but truly the hardest part of this montage was, "How do I represent an accurate depiction of the Lower East Side through its many diverse storytellers?" 
In this montage, you will hear storytellers sharing stories from the 1940’s to the present. You will hear stories ranging from well-loved restaurants to the close bonds neighbors have with each other. In editing this audio montage, I wanted to reveal some difficult moments in history, like Hurricane Sandy, alongside the romanticized moments people share with the LES. 

This montage also featured every interviewer who has contributed to the Lower East Side archive so far. Thank you to all the storytellers and interviewers who are featured in this montage: Frank and Lori Rothman, Nancy Montanez, Stanford Daly, Yolanda Doe, Francine Baskin, Dyna Moe, Allen Ranz, Al L, Carol Cramer-Markel, Donald Vega, Carolyn Laws-Parker, Je Jae Cleopatra Daniels, Andrew Fairweather, Claire Henry, Eddie Brawley, Elaine Daly, Janet Bryant, Jenny Andrievna, Kara Buckley Thompson, Meave Sheehan, and Tobi Elkin. Thanks also to Eddie Palmer, Brett Zehner and WFMU’s Free Music Archive for the music that is featured in the montage.

You can listen to Walter's montage below: