Since March 2003, your folksy and enthusiastic host has been traveling North, South, East, and WEFT, circumnavigating the earthly orb in the belief that the melding of musical motifs can contribute in a pleasant and positive way to greater global harmony.
In more prosaic terms, I host a world music show on WEFT 90.1 FM, a volunteer-operated and listener-supported community radio station in east central Illinois. "Diversity" is our watchword at WEFT. Along with jazz, blues, and an eclectic selection of other more-or-less non-mainstream music and public affairs programming, we broadcast general "world music" Monday through Friday from 2 to 4 PM. In addition, we offer a variety of "specialty" world music shows in such relatively esoteric sub-genres as reggae, Jewish, Greek, Celtic, Indian classical, Argentine tango, and Japanese pop. All in all, we broadcast over 20 hours of world music per week - more, I feel reasonably safe in saying, than any other radio station in Illinois, Chicago included. And I have the rare privilege of being the world music genre director at WEFT.
My own show, entitled North, South, East, WEFT, can be heard on Thursday afternoons. My emphasis is on what might be called "global fusion" - music that incorporates, blends, and transcends the disparate cultural influences that comprise it. For reasons of personal preference, I generally eschew "traditional" cultural music and most European music.
After a five-minute public affairs segment featuring Native American news, I launch the musical portion of my show with a Native American track or two. This is followed by Cajun/zydeco, Hawaiian, Caribbean, and/or reggae. My second half hour is Latin music. The third half hour is what I call my "sacrosanct African half hour". And the final half hour features Asian/Indian/Middle Eastern music, or occasionally an eclectic mix of music that I find particularly interesting. Since I can play only about 20 songs in two hours, I never have enough time for all of the wonderful world music that I'd like to play.
Our most recent innovation at WEFT is live streaming. Go to http://weft.org , find and click on the green box in the upper right hand corner of the home page that says "Listen Online", then select your media player of choice. But if your schedule doesn't permit live listening, see the podcast folder below for the next best thing.
Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by! As they say in Swahili, "Muziki Ni Chakula Cha Roho." ("Music is good for the spirit.")
