For more than twenty years, Nick Spitzer has been producing American Routes from a studio at Tulane University. Each week, the two-hour long radio program explores American regional music from blues to rockabilly, zydeco, Latin, classical, and pop, uncovering intersections between music, cultural movements, and individual lives. The program, which also includes documentary-style features and artist interviews, is syndicated to more than 225 stations across the U.S .and reaches more than a half a million listeners each week. Since 2001, funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities has provided foundational support for the program, enabling it to maintain an excellent production staff and create programs that bring the history and music of the United States to a broad audience. Additionally, in 2020, the NEH awarded American Routes a CARES grant to help it manage the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“NEH funding has been essential, helping us dig deeply into cultural narratives nationwide and hire people who really know music and radio.”
–Nick Spitzer, Host
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American Routes traces American music and musicians to their roots in American vernacular culture and oral traditions. Episodes highlight the diversity of American regional cultures, taking listeners to rural Maine and Texas, and urban New Orleans and Philadelphia, among many other locales. One recent show, “Midnight Special, Shine a Light on Me: Prison Music from Angola, Louisiana, & Beyond” brings listeners to Louisiana’s infamous Angola Prison, where host Nick Spitzer speaks with Charles Neville, a saxophonist, about his time in the prison during the Jim Crow era before featuring the well-known prison performances of artists like Johnny Cash and B.B. King.
According to Spitzer, by broadcasting regional music and stories to the entire nation, American Routes “shows the ways Americans have put their lives together, rather than be riven apart.” It showcases our deep-seated commonalities through playlists and narratives that are cultivated by folklorists and ethnomusicologists. Episodes of American Routes air each Sunday on public radio stations. Its entire archive, with more than 300 shows, can be streamed on the American Routes website.