Voicing America: Georges Collinet, Leo Sarkisian, and the Sounds of the US State

In this proposed paper, I will consider the careers of two Voice of America (VOA) presenters: Leo Sarkisian, the child of Armenian immigrants, ethnomusicologist, and longtime host of “Music Time in Africa,” as well as Cameroon-born producer and host Georges Collinet, who modeled his on-air personality in the popular Francophone radio program “Bonjour L’Afrique” on Black DJs he heard in Washington, DC in the 1960s. Examined together, the voices and programs of these distinct hosts offer an important space in which to investigate the impact of the Cold War on radio programming, but also to thoroughly consider how the Cold War sounded. While their early careers were distinct–and defined in no small part by their different yet marked racial identities–both Collinet and Sarkisian were enormously popular in Africa, where listeners tuned into their radio programs on a regular basis. It was through their relationships with listeners, forged in letters and in official state-sanctioned visits, that both men became increasingly interested in hearing and recording African and concerned about the loss of these musical traditions in the face of globalization. This paper will draw on archival research in Sarkisian’s own archives held at the University of Michigan, an oral history interview conducted with Collinet, as well as material found in the US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), all of which will provide unique vantage point to consider the relationship these men’s careers (and their distinct voices) had to the mechanisms of Cold War administration, public diplomacy efforts, and their reception overseas. By analyzing the musical content of their radio programs–as well as Collinet and Sarkisian’s own roles as intermediaries of musical taste in Africa and elsewhere–this paper demonstrates the importance of attending to sound as a conduit for US power in the postcolonial world.