2004-8-5
HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.
(THEME)
This is Doug Johnson. On our show this week:
Girls and video games.
Music from the Newport Jazz Festival.
And a question about Jesse Owens, the black Olympian who competed
in Nazi Germany.
Females and Video Games
Americans bought two hundred forty
million computer and video games last year. All those electronic
games added up to seven thousand million dollars in sales. Most of
the game designers are male. Not surprisingly, so are most of the
players. But as Bob Doughty reports, the industry says it wants to
get more females interested and involved in its games.
BOB DOUGHTY: Next month, the first National Women's Game
Conference will be held in Austin, Texas. The conference is for
anyone interested in the video and computer game industry.
Discussions will examine the part that women play in the industry
and the job situation for them. Conference goers will also discuss
how games present women. The event is being produced by an industry
group called the Game Initiative.
The Entertainment Software Association says thirty-nine percent
of players are women. The average age of all players is twenty-nine.
But experts say females enjoy different kinds of games than males
do. Males generally like computer games with competition and some
kind of violence. Females generally like games with cooperation and
social interaction.
One series of games that many girls and women do like to play is
The Sims. Sims are simulated people. Players guide groups of these
electronic people through different situations and decide what they
will do. There are game titles like The Sims House Party and The
Sims Hot Date.
The company that produces them, Electronic Arts, says at least
fifty percent of the players are women. A spokeswoman says the games
are about building relationships, so they appeal to females. They
must appeal to lots of players: The Sims is the best-selling
computer game of all time.
Jesse Owens
DOUG JOHNSON: Our VOA listener
question this week comes from Borno State, Nigeria. Adamu S. Onakpa
asks about the life of American athlete Jesse Owens.
Jesse Owens may be in the thoughts of some American athletes this
summer. Those athletes are preparing for the summer Olympic Games
that begin next week in Athens, Greece. Jesse Owens competed in the
summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany in nineteen-thirty-six.
Adolph Hitler was the leader of Germany at that time. He and his
Nazi party believed that white people were the best race of people
on Earth. They believed that other races were almost less than
human, especially those with dark skin.
Jesse Owens was a black American. He said that he was not
thinking about Hitler or the Nazis during the week he competed in
four track and field events in Berlin. He became the fastest runner
in the world.
Jesse Owens won the highest award – the Gold Medal -- in all four
Olympic competitions he entered. He equaled the fastest time ever
run in the one-hundred meter race. He set new Olympic records in the
long jump and the two-hundred meter race. And he helped set a new
world record for the four-hundred meter relay race as part of a
four-man team. He was the first American in the history of the
Olympic track and field events to win four Gold Medals in a single
Olympics.
Jesse Owens returned to the United States a hero. But he
struggled financially all his life. Later, in a book about his life,
Jesse Owens wrote about the beliefs that had helped him gain
athletic success. He wrote that people have a chance to succeed if
they believe they can do it and really try. He said a person would
probably fail without that belief.
Many other athletes also believe in themselves, and will try to
become Olympic champions this month in Greece. In a few weeks, we
will see if they succeed.
For more information about the life of Jesse Owens, listen to the
Special English program "People In America" broadcast on Sunday.
Newport Jazz Festival
DOUG JOHNSON: The Newport Jazz
Festival is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. A party
on August twelfth in Newport, Rhode Island, will honor many of the
artists presented by the jazz festival over the years. And a special
CD has been released. It is called "Happy Birthday Newport! Fifty
Swinging Years." Gwen Outen has more.
GWEN OUTEN: The Newport Jazz Festival was the first jazz festival
in America. It presented live jazz performances outdoors during the
summer in Newport, Rhode Island.
The first Newport Jazz Festival in nineteen-fifty-four was a huge
success. Experts say it was one of the most important events in the
history of jazz. In the past fifty years, the festival has presented
some of the greatest American musicians. They include Miles Davis,
Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane.
The CD "Happy Birthday Newport!" has twenty-seven songs recorded
by famous jazz musicians. Here is Louis Armstrong and His All Stars
performing "Tin Roof Blues." It was recorded at Newport in
nineteen-fifty-six.
(MUSIC)
The CD "Happy Birthday Newport!" also includes a small booklet.
It has photographs of the jazz artists and notes about the songs and
performers. George Wein [pronounced ween] wrote the booklet. He
started the Newport Jazz Festival and continues to produce it.
Ella Fitzgerald was one of the performers at the first Newport
Jazz Festival. Here she sings "I've Got a Crush on You."
(MUSIC)
George Wein says there are now probably one-thousand jazz
festivals around the world. He says this year's Newport Jazz
Festival is honoring John Coltrane. The saxophonist died in
nineteen-sixty-seven. We leave you with the John Coltrane Quartet
performing "My Favorite Things."
(MUSIC)
DOUG JOHNSON: This is Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed AMERICAN
MOSAIC. Join us again next week for VOA's radio magazine in Special
English.
Our program was written by Shelley Gollust and Nancy Steinbach.
Paul Thompson was the producer. And our engineer was Jim Sleeman.