The Human Interest And Oral History Interview
by Alwyn Owen And Jack Perkins
This segment, written by long-experienced broadcasters Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins, has been extracted from their book Speaking for Ourselves (published by Penguin in 1986). It is a collection of oral history interviews drawn from Radio New Zealand National’s long-running Spectrum series, with an appendix detailing interviewing techniques.
Although the audience for this appendix was the amateur oral historian, it sets out an approach towards capturing human-interest interviews which are equally relevant to the budding radio interviewer.
We’re delighted to bring you an abridged version of the appendix – as it makes interesting reading for anyone with a love of radio, and a desire to learn more about how programmes like Spectrum are put together.
Oral History and its Techniques
Oral history is so subjective and personal a thing that historians are often divided in their approach to it. Some accept it as a discipline in its own right, and others reject it, on the grounds that human memory is fallible and subjective, and that cross-checking and verification is frequently difficult and often impossible. Others take a middle ground.
The very qualities that give rise to uneasiness at times in the formal historian make for wider acceptance of oral history by the public at large. This is almost certainly because it is so frequently history at a common social level, in which the shared experience of emotions, if not of actual events, engenders a sense of participation.
Much of our formal written history outlines and analyses policies, decisions and events which have had a significant impact on our way of life. In so doing, it largely reflects the activities of legislators, statesmen, strategists and others whose exercise of power has helped shape our modern world. It goes without saying that historians must always be vitally and validly concerned with such decisive matters, but history, like a mountain, can be observed from many viewpoints, and from each, a different perspective emerges.
The necessarily broad brush of formal history will fill in the light and shade of great events, but the fine detail of the effects of such events on ordinary people is often ill-defined. The scope and depth of the political and economic dislocation caused by the Depression of the 1930s can be amply illustrated by unemployment statistics, various economic indicators, and from Hansard and press reports, but the scope and depth of the day-to-day human misery which resulted is largely implied, and viewed at a distance.
Oral history can, however, provide us with first-hand accounts of those times; personal experiences which bring into sharp and close focus ordinary individuals coping with deprivation — and perhaps even more importantly, their feelings in so doing. Oral history, then, gives back to the people their own history. It holds a mirror to our shared past, and at the same time allows the uniqueness of individual experience to be expressed.
Oral history sits generally uneasily with politicians, officials, and wielders of power. Their recollections can be guarded, often unconsciously, perhaps programmed by years of public life and the understandable desire to conceal matters which may be embarrassing to them or to others. The recollections of ordinary people rather than those of former civic officials are thus more likely to bring alive the history of a small town, for example.
Among the sources of oral history are many individuals whose background and education dissuade them from recording their memories in written form. Yet these same people frequently have an eye, ear, and memory for detail — and a narrative skill — that equips them superbly as subjects for the tape recorder.
The type of history taught in the classrooms of many decades ago — ‘battles and dates history’ — has left a legacy in the minds of many. History, as they see it, is a ledger recording the debit and credit facts of past events, penned by the educated and professional classes. As an extension of this belief, they consider that only those in positions of authority are equipped to provide reliable historical evidence.
We have often found that enquiries for informants capable of bringing alive the history of a small town result in our being directed to former town officials, and a range of people respected for their prominence in community affairs. While the recollections of some of these people may be valuable, there is often a blandness and formality about them. It is often individuals whose names have not been disclosed — or indeed, those we have been warned to avoid — who have the powers of detailed observation, the narrative gifts, and perhaps the slightly eccentric perspectives which make the town’s past live again.
Because oral history applies to a time period within the span of living memory, it does not follow that all the material gathered must be fifty or sixty years old. The present becomes history in an instant, and the present and the recent past should also be a focus of attention. There is little point in waiting sixty years before recording, for instance, the first-hand experiences of the social division and conflict caused by the 1981 Springbok tour. In fact, there is much to commend recording, if not at the actual time of the event, certainly while memory is still fresh, uncoloured and unmodified by the passage of time.
One reason oral history concentrates on the early years of the twentieth century is simply a sense of urgency, the need to record information from this period while informants are still alive. The comparatively recent and widespread availability of small, cheap recorders, and the growing interest in, and acceptance of, oral history have naturally meant that the elderly have received the greatest attention.
There is, however, another strong reason for concentrating on the elderly. Despite the obvious drawbacks of failing memory, and the altering of perspectives with the passing of time, there is a well-known tendency which develops with old age — people want to remember their past, particularly their childhood. Early memories are intensely programmed, and many old people whose recollections of middle life are blurred and sketchy, and whose memory of recent events is even more vague, recall their childhood with a vigour, candour, and degree of accuracy rarely found in the memories of younger people.
The value of oral history is not limited to the material gathered on tape, or transcribed on paper. There are also what might be termed social benefits to the informants themselves, especially the older ones. This is because the oral historian is drawing on a living, responsive source, as opposed to the mainly inanimate documentary evidence of more formal history. And so it is not uncommon to find among people that the very process of sifting-back through their lives develops an awareness of the value of their personal past, and stimulates a sense of dignity and purpose which may have been dulled with advancing years. These benefits may also be enhanced by the feeling of new friendship and mutual trust and confidence which often develops between interviewer and informant during recording. The establishing of confidence and trust will be discussed in more detail when the interview itself is considered.
In one respect, the broadcaster who employs the techniques of oral history is in a unique position, being able to reach an audience with material in its original form — as speech. Radio New Zealand has within the collection of Sound Archives / Nga Taonga Korero a recording made by Florence Nightingale — and another by a centenarian who recalled the great Wellington earthquake of 1855. In neither case is the information itself of outstanding interest, and certainly contemporaneous written accounts would furnish it in greater detail. The fascination lies in the voice, in the first-person account, from somebody who was there.
Thus, paradoxically, one of the greatest strengths of oral history is also one of its weaknesses — that in transcription to the printed page, its emotional intensity is lessened.
The purely informational content, of course, remains after transcription, and there is some compensation at least in its comparative accessibility in print.
Section Contents
- 1 - Oral History and its Techniques
- 2 - Preparation
- 3 - The Interview
- 4 - The Location Approach
- 5 - The Magpie Syndrome
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