Esperanto Language Blog

Screenshot of Muzaiko.info

Today, I’ll be talking with the all-volunteer team from Muzaiko, the new 24-hour Internet radio station completely in Esperanto!

How did you see a need for a 24-hour radio station in Esperanto?

A 24-hour radio station in Esperanto is one way to make the language a daily part of speakers’ lives. It can keep active Esperanto speakers in touch with the culture and happenings of the Esperanto community, even if they are only able to occasionally travel or attend events. For beginners or those interested in the language, it can likewise showcase the diverse culture, and offer plenty of passive exposure to the language. Furthermore, it is a great way for the international Esperanto community to come together and collaborate on a project that everyone can enjoy. A good example of this is the news team – where else can you hear international news from all over the world, as heard by the people living in those places?

How do you manage to get 24 hours of original content everyday? Isn’t that an incredible amount of work?

Our aim is not necessarily to develop 24 hours of new content daily, but to generate about a third of that, and repeat it so that people all over the world in different time zones can enjoy all parts of the program. Currently, Muzaiko is still in the beta stage, so we have not yet reached that goal. The program is currently 3 hours long, and repeats 8 times throughout the day. Music and spoken programs are intermixed, with one spoken program each hour. We have at least one new program per day, and the others are generally from our archives.

I heard that you dealt with some rather difficult issues regarding the copyright for the music. How did you overcome these barriers? Were there any other legal issues you had to tackle?

Initially there were indeed concerns and uncertainties about the legality of the radio station, since laws about copyright and broadcasting differ in depending on country, both the country from which one is broadcasting and the countries to which one is broadcasting. For now, these problems have been solved by using the the services of Radionomy, which takes on the costs of copyright and does its own advertising. Continued research into these issues is ongoing while we set up an independent server. As far as acquiring the rights to use the music itself, Vinilkosmo, Edistudio, and individual artists themselves have been a great resource for us.

How is Muzaiko financed? Do you accept advertising? If so, under what conditions?

Muzaiko is currently financed through donations, and the finances are publicly available on our website. Our operating costs are minimal at this point, but we are always accepting donations of money or equipment, which will be used towards improved sound quality, maintaining our own server, and related costs. We certainly accept advertising, as one of our goals is to improve the flow of information throughout Esperantujo. We accept donations from advertisers if possible, but realize that many are also working as volunteers, so we generally play ads for free. Ads should be relevant to Muzaiko or Esperanto, and about 30 seconds in length.

How many people listen to Muzaiko?

We don’t have an exact number, but we do know that our listener base has been growing. In the last month, using data from Radionomy, we’ve had over 20 people listening at once, but that doesn’t count everyone, since there are several ways one can listen to our station. We hope this number keeps growing, and aim to have more thorough statistics in the future.

What do you see in the future for Muzaiko?

In the future we hope to expand the program in several ways. We would like to add more contributors so we can have voices and ideas from all parts of the world. As stated above, we will be generating more new content on a daily basis and extending the program. On the technical side, we have been working towards gaining independence from radionomy.com and using our own server.

How can my readers get involved in helping the project?

We always welcome new contributors and volunteers! Anyone interested in doing interviews or reports, collecting and reading news, proposing new program segments, compiling the program, helping with computer and technical issues, or anything else is welcome to join our all-volunteer team! If you would like to help, or have any ideas or suggestions for what YOU would like to hear in the future of Muzaiko, feel free to contact us at info@muzaiko.info. Our work is done entirely in Esperanto.

So, I welcome you to listen to the station at Muzaiko.info.

Photo courtesy of Persona Films

Today I’m talking with Yan Vizinberg who recently decided to add
Esperanto subtitles to his film. Before we get to that though, I’d
like to learn more about the movie. What is the main topic of the
movie?

“Cargo” tells the story of a young Russian woman who is smuggled into America by human traffickers. She is driven from Texas to New York by a notorious Egyptian transporter. The film is about two very different people, who are trapped together for several days in a cargo van. They start as enemies but slowly form a certain bond, and finally see one another as human beings. So I would say that the main topic of the film is communication and empathy.

What inspired you to choose such a controversial topic?

The reason we chose this story was because of the inherent drama in the script. It had an immediate conflict, two enemies with opposing goals, but at the same time there are no traditional baddies and goodies here. There’s a collision, but no winners. It’s more of a redemption story.

Normally, controversial topics make raising money difficult for film projects. How did you find that influenced financing the movie?

Raising money for a film with a first time director is always difficult. This is an American movie, where there are no government grants, no state money, no co-production schemes. The only source of financing for a film in the United States is private investment. It’s a business, like any other. You have to go and convince people with money — and they are often smart and practical people — that this endeavor will make money and it’s worth investing into. So if you don’t have any history or stars attached, all you can talk about is the story and your passion for it.

What organizations were critical in making Cargo possible?

There are several great non-governmental organizations working towards raising awareness of human trafficking who are helping us to bring “Cargo” to movie theaters: FAIR Fund, HTA Council, Freedom Week, Captive Daughters and COVA. We need all the help we can get to spread the word about “Cargo,” and having these organizations’ support is great because their members care about the issue and see our film as a vehicle to raise awareness about the problem.

Photo courtesy of Persona Films

From what I understand, you’re Russian. You’re working with a famous Egyptian actor. Your producers are English and American. Your publicist speaks Esperanto. What was it like working with such an international team in New York?

Well, if you think about “Cargo” — the story takes place in the United States, but there are no American characters in it. The lead is Russian, the transporter is Egyptian, the main trafficker is Polish… It’s a new world — the world where cultures collide on a daily basis, the world of misplaced people, permanent immigrants who are no longer attached to any land, the world that exists under the radar of regular Americans. So having an international cast and crew was only natural.

At the same time, it was very important to me to keep things authentic: the main character is Russian and she is played by a Russian actress, Natasha Rinis; the transporter is Egyptian, so we invited an Egyptian actor Sayed Badreya. They have their own accents, they bring their sensibilities to their roles, when they fight each other, they scream and swear in their languages.

How do you think the movie could benefit from a more international audience?

This story is about colliding cultures — and by cultures I don’t mean just Egyptian, Russian or American. It’s about a man who sees women as inferior and an ambitious woman who has more guts than most men. It’s about a religious person and a woman who doesn’t have faith. It’s about people who are forced to communicate to each other in a language foreign to both of them. It’s about a land that worships freedom above all and at the same time — about the slavery that is happening on a daily basis. So I think it’s not a film that is of interest to just one culture — we would love to show it everywhere.

Photo courtesy of Persona Films

What made you come to the decision to add Esperanto subtitles to your movie?

“Cargo” is in many ways a film about communication. Communication between two very different people: an older Egyptian man who is a devout Muslim and a young Russian woman who used to dance in a strip bar. They are so different that in the beginning they don’t even know how to talk to each other — as if they are different species. But when they do talk — there is one more barrier to overcome: they are forced to communicate in English, a language that is foreign to both. When they fight they scream at each other in Arabic and Russian — and in these instances we made the decision to not subtitle these lines for the English audience, because if our characters do not understand each other, the audience shouldn’t either.

So communication and language play a huge role in “Cargo,” and I think subtitling it in Esperanto, a planned language that is designed to help people from different cultures communicate, adds a new layer of meaning to this. What’s interesting about people is that despite all their differences and animosity, they actually desperately want to communicate with each other and understand each other.

As of this writing, there are now six days left to finish raising the money needed for its theatrical release. Please support the film on Kickstarter if you can!

Ĉi tiu intervjuo aperos en sia originala Esperanto en la revuo Kontakto (majo 2011), do abonu tuj, por certiĝi, ke vi ricevos ĝin ĝustatempe.

Since July 2009, the Esperanto music label, Vinilkosmo has offered a service to buy and download music, but sales have not been as good as originally hoped. A lot of effort has gone into the system, but it can be a bit confusing to buy music, since you buy CDs at vinilkosmo.com, mp3 and ogg files at vinilkosmo-mp3.com and lossless FLAC files at cd1d.com. A bit complicated to say the least. Floréal Martorell will explain how these complications came to be and help you understand how things evolved the way they did. Learn how to navigate this cybermaze to enjoy Vinilkosmo’s music the way you want it.

Why aren’t there links from vinilkosmo.com to vinilkosmo-mp3.com?

I’ve been working with Mark Eaton since 1994. He created the graphics for the CDs and Rok-gazet’. Later, he put the collection online at www.vinilkosmo.com. He continues to administate it and it seems to me that only he can do that, because the system is complicated and needs to be renovated. Unfortunately, there’s neither time nor money for that now.

In the meantime, technology evolved and people asked for the possibility to download music from our website, and at the same time the CD crisis began along with the fall of CD sales. I asked Mark to add a download service to the website. He immediately opposed the idea and refused. For him, creating a download area for Vinilkosmo would be speeding up the death of the CD, effectively drowning the publishing company and collapsing production. He absolutely refused to participate in that and announced that he would not make downloading easier. That’s why there are no links between Vinilkosmo.com and the two download sites.

Even though Mark was right, we couldn’t go against the rapid flow of evolving Internet technology and customer requests becoming more and more insistent from people to make our music downloadable. I then needed to research possibilities alone and find a way, because I couldn’t wait without doing anything since I saw the fall of CD sales. I needed to find a solution to at least try if digital download sales would compensate for CD sales falling… and also to continue production for new artists and albums… and try to keep the balance that way.

In our next part, Flo will answer why you can’t buy Vinilkosmo’s music on iTunes!