The first story I listened to was The Men Who Fed America, told through the perspective of Johnny Itliong. Johnny was a young child during the 1960s working as a farmhand throughout many grape fields in California. His father is Larry Itliong, the Filipino farmhand who put in a lot of sweat equity to get union recognition after rights of access to some major and seminal grape endeavors. This story starts with graphics on the screen detailing historical points about some key figures in the narrative, paired with horns and drums. When the graphics exit the screen, so do the drums and horns and the narration begins—thus making it important to pay attention to the audio, not the graphics. Yet during this narration, some soft outside noise, like breathing and sighs, are heard as the storyteller reflects on the more emotional parts of his life—which adds to an authentic, believable storytelling. Ultimately, when the narration starts to fade at the end, a light string instrument comes in as it builds in volume almost as if it’s triumphant—for building into its crescendo. As it slowly fades out, however, the fade ins and outs work well to suggest purpose and a triumphant finish.
The second piece, A Daughter on Living with, and Relating to, a Father with Mental Health Conditions, similarly has an outsider narrator who provides important context and rejoins about a quarter of the way through to explain more. This is a stitching together of two recordings—one from 2013 with Shotzy and her distant father who had mental challenges, and the second a follow-up without her father five years later, done by Shotzy herself. The quality of the piece is emotionally charged, but it still finds elements of warmth and humor. For Shotzy’s part 1, she and her father discuss the good and bad things about them living together in her house (where she also raises her two daughters) at the same time. Between parts 1 and 2 is a fading in and out of gentle guitar and percussion music which plays softly underneath. Shotzy’s part 1 audio is high quality, probably because it was done in a studio; part 2 is lower quality because it was done on her own but still clear. The outside narrator returns to the piece at the end to clarify who is speaking and to round out the ending. I enjoyed listening to this piece as well because, like the first one, it utilized effective sound design.