Who Tolls The Bells In Chicago?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you hear church bells ring in the Chicago-area, it’s likely they’re automated. Some bell systems are pneumatic or electronic. Others pipe digital hymns through amplifiers. But do real people ever ring real bells? That’s the question we’re exploring in this week’s episode. And the answer is yes! We head to five different spots, each with its own sound, unique history and distinct community.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Curious City producer Stephen Jackson, and I want you to hear something.
0:10.0	Obviously, the sound of church bells. You've probably heard bells that sound a lot like this,
0:15.7	and you've probably ignored them, and you're not alone. Here at Curious City, we never paid much attention to bells either,
0:22.7	until we met a guy who made us start thinking about not just the bells, but the bell ringers
0:27.8	and the communities that are built around them.
0:33.0	Coming up, we revisit a story we did a few years ago about the origins of bell ringing, plus who or what told the bells of Chicago Land. The answer to that is next.
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1:13.6	slash donate.
1:18.6	It all started with questioner Kent Oliver. One evening over dinner, Kent and his wife heard the sound of church bells wafting over from a nearby church.
1:28.4	He thought it was pre-recorded. She thought it was real bells.
1:32.5	I don't know there was an argument, but she seemed surprised that maybe someone would record it.
1:37.2	It was beautiful music, and I just suspected that there wasn't anybody who was actually
1:42.2	playing that every night at 6 o'clock.
1:44.5	Then Ken started wondering, are there any churches in the Chicagoland area that have
1:49.2	bells played by real people? There are several churches in the Chicago land area that have
1:54.4	bells played by real people. Well, there you go. That's Kimberly Schaefer, a local bell
2:00.1	expert and a self-described bell advocate.
2:03.0	She says bells are kind of like the first radio. In the Middle Ages, they'd ring across the whole town, and people going about their business would soak it in.
2:10.3	And it was also a radio in the sense that it was playing the popular hits of the day.
	...

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