Fifty years ago, on November 12, 1969, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired The Latecomers, a sound documentary by Glenn Gould, the accomplished pianist who at that point in his career had stopped performing live in favor of studio recording. The latecomers in question are from Newfoundland, the last Canadian province, which joined the federation just twenty years earlier. It’s produced in a unique style, which Gould called “contrapuntal radio,” a reference to his favored musical approach where numerous independent melodies are played simultaneously. In this case, he interweaves the voices of thirteen Newfoundlanders into overlapping and layered stories about solitude, politics, hard work, and identity. Interspersed, and at times overpowering these stories, is the sound of the ocean beating against the rocky shoreline. The waves are an organic through-line, ushering voices in and out of this non-linear collage. In our current era of highly produced podcasts and audio stories, this experimental radio piece from five decades ago holds up extremely well.
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The Latecomers
