John Burnett, the recently retired, globe-trotting Texas-based NPR reporter (and ace harmonica player/amateur musician) recently decided that Austin really needed a series on world music. So he promptly turned himself into an unpaid promoter and started contacting musicians.
The result: World Music Encounters, a groundbreaking nine-part performance and interview series starting in September in an unusually economical Austin venue that happens to be the historic church, St. David’s Episcopal, where Burnett himself recently got hitched. “We just happened to belong to this really wonderful downtown church that’s open-minded and has a gorgeous 170-year-old sanctuary that just got renovated in time for this series.”
But there’s a more complicated backstory about why this famed radio raconteur decided to start promoting world music for free in the so-called Live Music Capital of the World. He recently spoke to Texas Observer senior reporter Lise Olsen.
