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Record: Two Lochs Radio

Two Lochs Radio

Two Lochs Radio
Gairloch
IV21 2LR

Tel: 01445 712712 / 712106
E-mail: tlr@gairloch.co.uk
Web: http://2lr.co.uk

Organisation type
Broadcaster / Media Company
Other info: n/a
Our collections Primary collection, our copyright:
Over five hundred 1-hour duration local radio programmes primarily of local (Wester Ross) people in conversation about past times, places and anecdotes, interspersed about 50:50 with Gaelic/traditional music.

Secondary material, others copyright but unlimited permission to use (not included in total hours below):
A collection of Gaelic music programmes produced by a community radio station in Cape Breton. Presentation is bilingual but they are 95% music based. Also a collection of local radio programmes produced in Barra featuring maybe 20-30% Gaelic chatter between music tracks.
Recordings (duration, dates & recording formats) Duration: 501-1,000
Other info: As noted, these are 1-hour (nominal) radio programmes, each featuring a conversation between 2-4 people mainly talking about life and times in Wester Ross in the past, although some are interviews with others in the Gàidhealtachd talking on topical matters (eg from Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Clì, An Comunn etc). The conversation is broken into chunks of 2 or 3 minutes speech at a time interleaved with commercial Gaelic/traditional music items, so each programme contains approx 28 mins speech. In most cases we also have the conversation as recorded in one unbroken flow of 30-90 minutes. Some programmes are based on recordings made by the late Roy Wentworth and held at Gairloch Heritage museum (which we believe has also submitted its own information), mainly focused on local place names or words, and similarly split into short segments interspersed with music.

Format: Other- please give details
Other format(s): Some early programmes originated on minidisc or CD, but all are stored digitally on hard drive file server.

Date(s): 1980-89, 1990-1999, Since 2000
Other info: All our own recordings are from 2003 onwards, but the programmes also include material from the Roy Wentworth recordings from Gairloch Heritage Museum in the 1980s/1990s
Geographical locations Ireland: n/a
Other info: n/a

Scotland: The Highlands
Other info: Some recordings also relate to the Western Isles, but the majority relate to Wester Ross.

Canada: Nova Scotia
Other info: As mentioned we do also have music programmes in bilingual presentation from Cape Breton. The music in this programmes is exclusively Gaelic (ie no English lyrics traditional Scottish music), but the speech content is minimal.

Other areas: n/a
Other info: n/a

Any other area: n/a
Other information Content types: Speech (including oral history, folktales and so on), Song, Instrumental Music
Other info: n/a

Access: Only by direct approach to us.

Completion status: 100% digitised
Other info: Most of the recordings are archived in uncompressed wav format, but some older ones are in 128k-256k MP3 only.

Background info: Two Lochs Radio is a very small (UK's smallest!) local radio station established in Gairloch in 2003. From the first day we have produced a weekly Gaelic language conversation/music programme called "Ceòl is Criomagan". Initially the programmes were based on recordings from an existing local Gaelic conversation group, but after around 50 editions we generally switched to purpose-made recordings in our studio between 2-4 people in conversation.

Pilot editions of the programme produced before we went on air in 2003 also won the Highland Council Wallace Sword Award for Best Gaelic Community Radio programme for three years.

Collection descriptions: Yes

Any other information: There is no formal catalogue for the material, beyond terse file names indicating the topic and/or participants. However we do have printed listings for around 80% of them. The listings are limited - they consist of the opening script of the programme, which gives a one-sentence description of the speakers and topic, plus a music listing. They are printed only, not digital.

We would welcome the provision of resources to fully catalogue the programmes and transcribe the written descriptions to digital form.