Hosted by KALW · EN
Crosscurrents is KALW Public Radio's award-winning news magazine, broadcasting in the Bay Area Mondays through Thursdays on 91.7 FM. We make joyful, informative stories that engage people across the economic, social, and cultural divides in our community.
Today, a tenant who is about to be evicted commemorates their apartment that hosted 35 years of performance. Then, a classic Dracula story gets revamped. Plus, a poem about another monster that refuses to die.
It’s been nearly 130 years since Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” was published. Over time, artists have reimagined the blood-thirsty monster in many ways. Now, San Francisco Playhouse is taking a stab at the classic story, with a feminist twist.
A dancer is evicted from a San Francisco home with deep roots in their experimental dance community.
Revisiting The Gay Life is a new 12-episode series from KALW’s Queer Power Hour. It explores a pivotal moment in SF’s LGBTQ history — from the rise of Harvey Milk to the early days of what would later be called AIDS.
It’s World Cup fever! So today, we go on a little Bay Area tour of how Jordanian and Algerian fans are getting hyped for their big match.
The Jordanian national soccer team is playing in the World Cup for the first time in history. The Bay Area Jordanian American community is a tightly knit community of just a few thousand people. A group of enthusiastic fans gathered for a street party in downtown San Mateo to celebrate. Today, Crosscurrents host takes us to that street party, to hear what this historic moment means for Jordanians in the Bay Area.
"Nashama" is the nickname of the Jordanian national soccer team. It's a word for a group of people who are chivalrous and brave...but it also relates to being generous and hospitable. Mazra, a restaurant in San Bruno, serves food from the Levant—the area that covers Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Today, how this spot on the Peninsula embodies Nashama through food.
Ahead of the Jordan-Algeria World Cup match, KALW's Hana Baba headed over to a favorite community store—South Berkeley Meat and Produce. People visit from all over the state to shop for nostalgic items from Algeria. It’s got a large butcher counter with all kinds of halal meat cuts, including a staple Algerian sausage called Merguez.
How far would you go to get your hands on a cassette tape? Today, we meet two music archivers from Oakland. First an Afghan man’s odyssey to preserve his cultural music. Then, a young woman from Sudan is digitizing old music cassettes for a new diaspora generation.
The Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in 2021, after the hasty conclusion to a 20 year U.S. occupation. Since then, music has been officially banned in the country. Musicians are driven underground, instruments are destroyed, and recordings are contraband.Here in the East Bay, one Afghan-American is working hard to preserve what he can. He’s digitizing tapes he’s sourced from back home and posting them in an online database he started calling the Afghan Cassette Archive. But getting those tapes out of Afghanistan is not as simple as an online order… It's an illegal, expensive, and dangerous odyssey.Reporter Christopher Alam met up with Omid J, aka OMJVinyls, at his Oakland studio to check out his rare collection.