AARDco

The O/Aural Tradition records and presents oral masterpieces from the medieval literature of Western Europe, restoring the texts to a spoken form such as they might have had at their inception. Modern techniques of producing radio drama are used to create an aural experience that can be appreciated by modern listening audiences.
The four existing one-hour programs in this series have been highly successful as radio programs, and have been widely used and appreciated as recordings by students and teachers of medieval literature. They can be found in A/V libraries at universities across the United States, and have been presented at cultural centers both here and in Europe. They are:

Charles Potter is a long-time spoken word audio producer who holds a doctorate in French at Columbia University. His interest in the literature of Courtly Love led him to want to know more about the performance aspect of the songs and longer narrative poems. While he was writing his dissertation, on nature imagery in Troubador love lyrics, he began organizing a group of friends to make radio drama at WBAI-FM. During the 1970’s he produced, among many other drama programs, a full length performance of the chantefable Aucassin et Nicolette, in English, (1975) and La Farce de Maitre Pierre Pathelin, in French, (1977). It was while he was exploring the possibility of dramatizing Beowulf, that he hit upon the idea of producing not one, but a series of productions exploring the development of the medieval hero, and The O/Aural Tradition was born.

David Rapkin discovered audio when he built a radio receiver at age five. With his first tape recorder at age ten he found his way into the world of audio production. Thereafter, college radio and a term as a recording and productions engineer at WBAI radio in New York cemented his career in audio mixing and technical production for broadcast. For the last two decades David Rapkin has dedicated his professional energies to the audio publishing industry producing and directing programs some of which have received the Audie and Grammy awards.