Before there was a Tuba Exchange, there was Ethel Simonetti, raised in genteel Louisiana privilege and with a family tree that leads to the Daughters of the American Revolution. This summer, Simonetti sat down with two students from the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) to discuss her journey from Louisiana to teaching in an all-black school in rural Alabama in the ‘60s and finally to the Tuba Exchange and community activism in Durham.
The Tuba Exchange, in the heart of southwest central Durham, is one of the city's unusual points of renown, a place that sells and repairs tubas, sousaphones and euphoniums for customers around the world. High school tuba and sousaphone players around the country have heard of it. Talking to the CDS students, Simonetti says living in Durham selling tubas is the place she wants to be.
"I'm in a pretty good spot right now," she said. "I'm always looking for how things fit together. I'm not very smart, but I keep working on it."
Telling Their Stories
If you happened to notice folks wandering around Durham a couple weeks ago wearing oversized headphones, carrying recorders and clumsily waving microphones about, you witnessed "audio camp" in action.
I was one of a handful of locals among the two dozen students from across the country taking part in "Hearing is Believing: Audio Documentary Institute" at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
Read more from CDS student Diane Daniel's story on the audio institute in the Durham News.
Click here to listen to Simonetti. (iTunes required)
Simonetti's story is one of 13 produced this summer by students at the audio institute. The institute is an intensive one-week course where students are immersed in audio documentary work. By the end of the week, students, who often work into the night, are expected to produce an audio documentary.
The stories this summer showcase interesting people and places of the Triangle area. Students Heather Carrie and Maura Walz interviewed Frankie Alexander, one of the legends of jazz in the Durham area. Click here to listen.
Other stories looked at local citizens working to save the Lakewood YMCA (click here to listen); the joy of riding the bus every day from Durham to Raleigh (click here); and the history of Durham's once famous Lakewood Amusement Park. The park closed in the 1930s. (Click here to listen.)
Simonetti herself was a student at the audio institute and did a report on a local man reflecting on his mixed racial heritage. (Click here to listen)
Listen to all the documentaries at the Duke iTunes U site. (The stories are found in the audio institute tab.)