So I will admit, this will sound nerdy, but I love a good speech. In fact, I used to study them. When I was in high school I compiled several VCR tapes of famous speeches – political and otherwise. I own a reproduction vintage record player and sometimes I play a multi-record set of very old recorded speeches going back to the turn of the century. I think the delivery is key to a good speech, the cadence and rhythm (or flow) is hard to master. I think all good speeches employ the use of liturgy. A good liturgical flow, punctuated by elements unique to the speaker – be that humor, the dramatic pause or even a physical action (think dramatic arm movements like Huey Long fist pounding his opposite hand) can make or break a speech.
Back in the late 1820’s speech making captivated our country. Back then it was called “oratory” and a whole movement that history now calls the Lyceum Movement spread over the land.
People would come together in groups to hear speeches – speeches on religion, on science, the arts, literature, philosophy and lectures on just about any subject. Yes, these talks were viewed as educational but they were also viewed as entertainment.
The Lyceum Movement lasted in bits and parts on into the 20th Century, but not like what it enjoyed in the 1800’s.
Perhaps the last real show of strength of the movement was in New York City during the 1930’s in a building called “The Town Hall”, built for live audiences to watch lectures. The building still stands today, but is a functioning theater, with plays and acting replacing the discussions of yesterday.
During the height of The Town Hall buildings lecture days, NBC radio broadcast their lectures nationwide. This was before the advent of television, when the entire nation would gather around their radio every night and listen together as a family. The Town Hall radio broadcast ran for about a decade during the 30’s and 40’s and made the on air personalities who hosted it house hold names.
I collect autographs and other pieces of history and one of my prizes is the book you see pictured in this post. The book is entitled “Town Meeting Comes to Town”, and it’s the official story of the founding of The Town Hall in NYC and the history of the NBC radio show broadcast there.
Every member of the original hosting radio cast has signed the book. In the pages I have stuffed a monthly schedule they put out of all the broadcasts they had planned for the month of February, 1939.
Pretty cool stuff.
I share this post today, because it recently dawned on me that even though society today knows nothing of the Lyceum movement of old, and though programming like The Town Hall has completely disappeared from the public’s memory, today we are actually in the beginning stages of a new Lyceum movement
The rise of digital programing like Ted Talks and Khan Academy and Prager U, show a hunger of our people to learn and to learn specifically through the spoken word.
The medium has changed, and the spoken word is often enhanced with info graphics, but the concept of entertaining by sharing an experience from an expert in the field is back, has millions of followers and is growing.
