Adele Horn's new documentary, The Tailenders, chronicles the unique audio evangelism of Los Angeles based Global Recording Network. At last count, the group had recorded bible stories in over 5,500 languages. In their quest to tell the story of Jesus in every language and dialect on earth, GRN takes these recordings into remote villages where the recordings are played back and distributed via hand cranked record and cassette players known as The Messenger:
The Bible stories played by the missionaries are sometimes the first encounter community members have had with recorded sound, and, even more frequently, the first time they have heard their own language recorded. Gospel Recordings calls their target audience "the Tailenders" because they are the last to be reached by global evangelism.
Here is a very short quicktime file of the crank-up vinyl player in action: download video, 5 megs, Quicktime format. The Tailenders will be broadcast on PBS's POV show on July 25th. Thanks Fabio!
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