By Jada F. Smith
Al Letson is not your typical radio host. He doesn’t warp the daily horoscope for laughs, he doesn’t acquiesce to the latest celebrity gossip and his face will probably never appear on the side of a bus. He’s more likely to be found hovering around one of those bus stops or at a local poetry reading, getting to know the stories of real people who are often talked about, but rarely actually listened to in mainstream media.
Much has been said in politics this year about the residents of “Main Street” – what they supposedly want, need and are not receiving from their leaders. Letson, understanding the basic human desire for self-expression and the comfort of a listening ear, found a way to broadcast their stories to an audience bigger than most of the small towns he reports from.
Three years ago, Letson entered a competition sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting aimed at finding a new voice in public radio talent. The Public Radio Talent Quest offered a grant that provided a year’s worth of funding for an independently produced radio show that would speak to a new generation of Americans. There were no guarantees that the winner of the contest would have his or her show aired on the radio, or even played for audiences outside of the judging panel. But Letson, a professional poet and spoken word artist, took his vision for a program that valued the insight and stories of regular people and produced “State of the Re:Union” that now airs on more than 170 NPR stations nationwide.
SOTRU focuses on the way small communities across the country band together to solve their problems for the greater good. “The way our media tends to portray this country is not how it’s lived on the ground,” he said. “I went to a small town in Kansas, one of the reddest states, and it had been destroyed by a tornado. Everybody in the community chipped in their own money to rebuild downtown. That’s socialism. I’ve traveled the country and seen places where you think ideas like that would not be able to take route, but people figure out ways to make things work.”
A career in public broadcasting was the destination on an unlikely path. He maneuvered most of his career throughout the Poetry Slam Movement, which helped him develop as an artist and ease the transition into nationally syndicated radio host. Before NPR, he was lending his voice to HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, CBS’s Final Four PreGame Show and commercial features for Sony and Adobe Software. Each step unknowingly prepared him for this moment.
“The idea was really born from my unique experiences in America,” Letson said. “For more than 8 years I was a flight attendant flying all over the country, but I was also doing poetry. So I would use my flight benefits to go to different cities to perform. I ended up being connected to so many different artistic communities and it taught me that there was a different narrative playing out than what I was hearing and seeing on television. When you’re out there dealing with real people, things are a little more nuanced.”
Around the time that Letson began conceptualizing “State of the Re:Union,” President Obama was running for office. Naturally, hope and change became central themes in his message.
“At the end of every episode, I sign off by saying, ‘remember, things fall apart. But our job is to put it back together.’ That’s what my mission has been with poetry, theater and this radio show. All sorts of bad stuff is gonna happen, but what’s important is how you get up to fix it. That’s what the show is about, that’s what I’m about,” Letson said. “I think art without purpose is vanity, and I don’t want to be involved in that vanity.”
The modest dilettante quickly adjusted to his new role as small business owner and media figure, branding his ability to connect with the average person into a symbol of working class hero.
“The show really speaks to people and I think that it has made me a business person,” Letson said. “Right now I have 7 employees that work for me, so it’s made me into a small business owner. I think that our success on what happens next really depends on what we do business wise. I think we’ve got a good business plan that will take us into the future. We’re making a great product and I think Americans are hungry for the way we do our stories. A lot of our media is focused on how things are coming apart, but we don’t really deal with that. We tell the stories of everyday people living in America. And people are longing for that connection.”
