American culture is rich in forgetting. Every day we see it taking place; we see news cycles coming to an end, we see ideas and trends that were formerly imperative to the culture wiped from the collective consciousness, we see villains inexplicably rehabilitated and heroes consigned to the dustbin of history. Forgetting is so hardwired into the American identity that we almost seem to forget that we remember anything.

So what do we remember?

One thing we all seem remember is the music of our youth. In fact, if Marcel Proust were alive now and were living, in Defiance, OH, or Truth or Consequences, NM, or just about anywhere else, he (or she) would be just as likely to experience a sudden upsurge of the sense memories of childhood in the chorus of a song from childhood as from the crackers or cookies from the past.

Everyone can remember the first songs they heard, and the first songs they heard in turn carry untold amounts of sentimental freight–the carpet in the living room where the song in question was once heard, the smell of that car interior where the AM radio played, our father’s hairstyle, our mother’s dress, our siblings’ annoying habit of trying to sing the harmony but being unable, and so forth.

The Song & Memory Series is an ongoing catalogue of these kinds of these youthful memories, a sampling that includes songs both well-known and all but unknown, and rememberers of all ages, stations, ethnicities, creeds, etc. The series emerged, quite simply, from a desire on the part of the producers to preserve and compile these voluminous memories. And because almost every story of one’s remembered childhood is moving, there just isn’t a bad story on this subject.

The Song & Memory Series appears regularly on Weekend America, a radio program from Public Radio International, but in this web version we intend to post interviews not available on radio. We intend to offer unedited versions of the interviews and the songs, and other items that can’t be found elsewhere. We’ll be updating this page pretty often, so check back frequently.