Freedom Needs a Soundtrack
Freedom Needs a Soundtrack is a narrative podcast that marks the 30th anniversary of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts by tracing how Erin Potts, who co-founded the concerts with Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys, and a small team of twenty-somethings built one of the largest concert series of the 1990s. In 1996, the first concert drew more than 100,000 people to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Learn more at www.freedomneedsasoundtrack.com.
Across six weekly episodes, the series tells the story of how the concerts came together and explores what their legacy offers at a moment when freedom and hope feel especially urgent. Freedom Needs a Soundtrack launches June 15 on podcast platforms everywhere, before airing on KALW's Bay Made beginning June 30.
Latest Episodes
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Just two weeks before President Clinton’s trip to China, the D.C. concert becomes the biggest and most consequential yet. After lightning injures concertgoers, the movement carries its message to the Capitol, Beijing and beyond. Erin and others look back on what it set in motion, and ahead to what the fight for freedom needs now. -
The Tibetan Freedom Concerts head to New York, where the team faces slow ticket sales, city bureaucracy, and the pressure of turning one breakthrough concert into something bigger. But even as the concert nearly breaks them, U2’s surprise appearance fulfills Erin’s teenage promise and helps carry the movement toward Washington, D.C. -
After two years of near misses, Erin, Adam, and a young team of organizers finally bring the first Tibetan Freedom Concert to life, with one of the most talked-about lineups of the 1990s and a bold new model for turning music into action. -
After protest photos and freedom songs are smuggled out of Tibet, Erin returns home, where a dinner with Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys transforms what she witnessed into a new kind of action. Together, they begin imagining what music, culture, and activism could do for Tibet, leading Erin to attend Lollapalooza with the Beastie Boys and a group of Tibetan monks. -
After studying Tibetan in Nepal and meeting Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys in Kathmandu, Erin Potts travels inside Tibet for the first time. In Lhasa, she and Sam Chapin leave their government-assigned tour, move into the Tibetan part of the city, and come face to face with life under Chinese occupation. When they witness a protest, tear gas, gunfire, and a violent police crackdown, they are left holding proof the world needs to see. -
Before the Tibetan Freedom Concerts became one of the biggest shows of the 1990s, teenage Erin Potts dreamt of a concert for Tibet featuring her favorite band. Meanwhile, imprisoned Tibetan nun Nawang Sangdrol reveals what it meant to resist from inside Tibet. Their stories meet in the same place: the power of music.
