Some transmissions don't need a melody. The word, spoken into a microphone, carries its own frequency. On BVA, poetry is music. A different instrument. The same frequency.

Transmission 02: High Wind Warning

November 9, 2023

"The revolution will not be televised."

Gil Scott-Heron's defining poem, recorded in 1970. A statement of purpose disguised as a list of things that won't happen. The Operator lets it play in full. No introduction. No commentary. The words do the work.

Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice

November 23, 2023

Gil Scott-Heron returns. "I'm New Here": a late-career meditation from the album of the same name, recorded shortly before his death. The wisdom of having survived. A different register than "The Revolution" but the same voice, the same commitment.

Transmission 05: The Longest Night

December 21, 2023

"I think I'll send these doctor bills, airmail, special, to Whitey on the moon."

Gil Scott-Heron appears for the third time, more than almost any other artist on BVA. "Whitey on the Moon" from 1970: a poem about Neil Armstrong, about money, about who pays for the view and who pays for everything else. Fifty-three years later, it has not aged. It has ripened.

Then poetry becomes the centerpiece. Yusef Komunyakaa's "Anodyne", the Pulitzer winner's meditation on loving the body you were born into, runs for nearly four minutes. "This sack of dung and joy." A ghost humming through the bones. A compass needle floating inside nighttime, always pointing toward West Africa. The Operator does not introduce it. He lets it land.