OnAir January 2023

ON AIR

WKCR 89.9 FM

January 2023 Vol. xxii, No. 1

OnAir · January 2023

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WKCR 89.9 FM Station Manager Schuyler Rabbin-Birnbaum stationmanager@wkcr.org Program Director Sam Seliger programming@wkcr.org Director of Operations Benjamin Magid Student Life Director Ale Díaz-Pizarro studentlife@wkcr.org Publicity Director Jacob Grayzel publicity@wkcr.org Jazz Heads Melody Lu & Zachary Vanderslice jazz@wkcr.org New Music Head Razvan Matei newmusic@wkcr.org Classical Head Maria Shaughnessy classical@wkcr.org American Head Izzy Szyfer american@wkcr.org In All Languages Head Ann Vettikkal ial@wkcr.org Latin Head Leni Bryan latin@wkcr.org News & Arts Head Josh Kazali news@wkcr.org Sports Head Josh Kapilian sports@wkcr.org

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Dear Listeners, This (longer) issue of OnAir, which we are jokingly calling the WKCRestrospective, requires a slightly more in-depth introduction. At the beginning of my research for OnAir, I did quite a bit of talking with alumni and listeners – both of which agreed on one thing: they had no idea what’s been going on at the station since the beginning of COVID. As someone who only joined in September of 2020, postCOVID WKCR is all I’ve ever known; only through some extensive research have I been able to piece together a solid understanding of KCR’s history.

What I’ve found is that the dysfunctional bits and bobs that are integral in running the station are the same today as they were 30 years ago, and what has changed are the methods that we use to address them. The January issue of OnAir aims to shed some light on what has been going on at WKCR since the start of the pandemic, and how we’ve been able to come out on the other side of it more successful than ever. We hope that this issue gives you an inside look into the sources of technical difficulties that undeniably plague our station (and maybe even justify some of them).

You can expect some familiar articles in this issue like artist profiles (it’s Bowie-galore) and our third interview in the Senior Interview Series.

However, we’re also venturing into slightly new territories this month with multiple pages of statistics and infographics (who knew the music nerds could do math?) about our staff including our 100 favorite albums of 2022. If you are at all curious about the people who make the station run day in and day out, this is the issue for you!

Happy Listening!

Maria Shaughnessy Classical Department Head Cover photo taken by Sam Seliger.

Mailing Address

CONTACT US

2920 Broadway General Inquiries: board@wkcr.org New York, NY 10027 Listener Line: 212-854-9920 USA ©Copyright 2022 WKCR FM NYC

This Month OnAir Remotely Operating Sports Return to WKCR Meet a Member: Benny Magid Bowie & Glass: Back from the Brink

Summer at the Station Weekly Schedule 2022 Programming Changes Special Broadcasts

. . . page 4 . . . page 6 . . . page 8 . . . page 10 . . . page 13 . . . page 16 . . . page 18 . . . page 20

Show Listings for WKCR Listeners

. . . page 21

By the Numbers: 2022 at WKCR

. . . page 24

WKCR’s Top 100 Albums of 2022

. . . page 26 OnAir · January 2023

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FEATURE PIECE

Remotely Operating: How WKCR Made It Through the Pandemic

by Maria Shaughnessy

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would like to introduce a new member of the KCR team: the Remote Computer.

By this point, it seems like we should have given it a more endearing name, seeing as most of our staff is intimately aware—and tired—of its ever-persistent glitchiness.

Listeners will know it well, too: poor audio files? Blame the remote computer. The same African Show playing six weeks in a row? Blame the remote computer. Cereal Music never starting on time?

Well… that one has been going on for a bit longer than we’ve been using this technology.

The remote computer is an old (circa 2012) desktop computer, which was hurriedly set up in the two weeks of March 2020 before Columbia officially sent all of their students home, and which was the only way WKCR was able to stay on the air during quarantine.

To get slightly technical, the computer can be remotely accessed through the personal laptops of students (through a very complicated and delicate set of steps) to upload audio files of pre-recorded shows (made in software such as GarageBand or Audacity). These shows are then put into a playlist, which spans the length of one day. Each

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Graphic by Madelyn Elizondo.

night, a “Remote Engineer” is responsible for loading the computer with each new or archival show for the next day.

As a programmer who started at WKCR during Covid, I knew about the pre-recording process

and creative side of producing a remote show, but it wasn’t until I joined the mysterious Remote Engineering Team that I realized just how complicated the whole system was. I spoke to Red Stein (CC ‘22) to better understand how the 2020 WKCR board dealt with the sudden change to programming that had to happen due to the pandemic.

Red, who served as WKCR’s Jazz Head from February 2020 through September 2021, Summer Manager during both 2020 and 2021, and Director of Operations from May 2021 through February 2022, was one of the few people left to run the show while WKCR’s physical doors were shut. From the beginning of our conversation, they made it clear that this was a close-to-impossible situation: “We had no other option. We weren’t allowed into the station. We thought Columbia would make an exception and obviously they didn’t.”

When it became clear that the KCR doors were going to close, a frantic preparation began. The board had no time to digitize our archival shows before the station was shut down. The remote computer, set up by the station manager at the time, Jeremiah “Son of Man” Aviles (GS ‘21), was WKCR's saving grace.

It soon became clear that the hiatus was extending past the expected two weeks. Once staff members realized they would not be able to return to in-person programming, confusion ensued. “We were freaking out trying to get a remote system in place that was very much always supposed to be a band-aid. And then once we realized that was the way it was gonna be, it was a very demoralizing time at KCR”, Red told me.

By that summer, most of the board members had left, with the exception of about half a dozen people who continued to man the station until September of 2021, when the station doors opened again. In addition to the board members that left, many of the programmers also decided to call it quits. Though programmers were understanding on the whole, the newlyfashioned remote programming method led to one overwhelming response: “That sucks, I’m gonna leave for now.”

Over time, and with the reopening of in-

person programming, KCR's staff has not only returned to pre-Covid numbers, but grown to levels not seen for a decade. The remote computer, a “band-aid” system which was originally meant to last only a few weeks, was pivotal to supporting this growth, and has now been in place for almost three years.

While there is no denying that the system is imperfect, and often a real pain to deal with, it has allowed the station to advance in ways that had previously been unthinkable. Department heads are no longer required to take every single overnight show to ensure we stay on the air 24/7, and when an alumnus is out of town, they are still able to entertain their decades-long audience, who tune in weekly just for them.

Moreover, the remote system has allowed the station to shift its priorities and grow in unprecedented directions. Without the constant burnout of department heads and mad rush to fill the schedule, we have been able to dedicate the necessary time to restructuring station leadership, creating a streamlined onboarding process for new students, expanding our presence both online and on campus, initiating new projects (like this very OnAir guide you are reading). . . I could go on and on. Our mission has always been the same: to serve the fine listeners of WKCR some of the best (and arguably worst) alternative, commercial-free music that college students have to offer. What the remote computer has done is allowed the neglected parts of ‘KCR to flourish.

Though we're almost back in the full swing of normalcy, our in-person return to the station has made it clear just how urgently we need to revamp it to keep it running not just during Covid but for the future, proud as we are to be the"home of technical difficulties." If you enjoy the work we do and want to keep us on the air (or are persisently annoyed by the ubiquitous webstream outages or our increasinglyoccurring tech mishaps), please consider making a donation to WKCR. Information on how to donate can be found on the last page of this guide. Thank you so much for your listenership!

OnAir · January 2023

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SPORTS

Sports Return to WKCR: A Conversation

by Ted Schmiedeler

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ed: Hello to all our On Air Guide readers!

My name is Ted Schmiedeler, and you may recognize me from the live sports broadcasts that have been on WKCR over the last couple months. We have a special piece today: I’m sitting down with Sports head Josh Kapilian to talk about the return of sports broadcasting to KCR. Josh, can you introduce yourself for the readers?

Josh: Hi everyone, my name is Josh Kapilian and I’m a senior in SEAS studying computer science and music. I’m librarian and Sports head here at KCR.

J: Yeah, it is really nice to see things get off the ground so quickly. I think that speaks to how many folks at KCR were interested and willing to put in the time and effort to get things up and running. If you just look at these first six games we’ve done, you see a good variety of backgrounds that people are coming from and the other types of shows they program at KCR, and I think that’s really exciting.

T: For sure. Josh, for readers who don’t know, what does it take to put on a sports broadcast?

J: First, there are the few weeks leading up to a broadcast when T: How do you feel we have to identify about sports coming which games work back to WKCR? in terms of finding programmers and J: I think being able to not preempting the diversify our airtime same show over and Photo by Bryan Zhang. is huge. Since COVID over again. Sports is hit, we’ve been pretty limited to exclusively different from a normal show because you have music shows, with a few interspersed News & people both in the studio and at the game, so it’s Arts shows. Being able to bring back something a much larger operation than a normal music that is such a foundational part of KCR’s show. Day of, we have the on-site team, which history serves both to enrich our experience as normally consists of two or three broadcasters programmers and also the listener experience. and a field engineer, announcing the game and monitoring the equipment to make sure T: Definitely. As a first-year, I never knew KCR everything is working. Then back on campus without sports, and broadcasting has gotten there’s usually just one person who’s receiving off the ground so quickly that it feels like it’s the signal from the field team and interspersing always been an important part of the station. station IDs, music like “Roar, Lion, Roar,” as well as coordinating with the shows

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before and after us to make sure the transition is seamless.

T: It’s been awesome to call the games so far this year. I’m normally part of that field team that you mentioned; we set up at the field or courtside and call the plays live. One of the most important steps on my end is researching both teams before the games. I always send Josh a message a day or two in advance asking for the stats packets because those are like the sacred texts of live broadcasting. Whenever there’s a break in the action I have some stat to fall back on, and sometimes they can get pretty ridiculous. One time during a timeout I joked that the visiting UMass Lowell men’s basketball team was 1-0 on Tuesdays, so it was looking rough for Columbia. Unfortunately, I did foreshadow a Lions defeat. Another thing that I find fun is building good chemistry with the person I work with. The broadcasts really get filled with energy when both announcers are bouncing back and forth naturally, and I think we’ve done a great job with that so far this year. I love doing the play-by-play announcing, especially for women’s basketball. I sometimes do my best Mike Breen impression (“Bang!”) when someone hits a deep three. Also, shoutout to the women’s basketball team for getting top 25 poll votes for the first time in school history!

So Josh, you’re part of the on-site team. I would kind of describe you as the mastermind behind the whole operation. What does that entail?

J: Yeah, so since sports broadcasting takes place in a different studio than our normal shows, the first step is to coordinate a broadcast transfer to the correct room. Then it’s a lot of coordination with the field team to take over when they need breaks, because talking for multiple hours straight is often exhausting.

If the field team does need a break, I can cut away to something else: For example, we aired an archival interview with WKCR alum Gary Cohen from a few years back; other times we’ll play different renditions of “Roar, Lion, Roar.”

We try to stay agile because a game could go to overtime and then we have to figure things

out with the next show. Once things are off the ground, it’s pretty easy and it’s awesome because there’s a lot of energy and excitement in the station when the broadcast comes in over the monitors. The Homecoming football game, as well as a few of the men’s basketball games, was very much down to the wire, and you really appreciate the energy from hearing everything unfold.

T: So if I’m correct, you’re working a DJ mixer in the station. Do you have a favorite station ID or sound effect from that mixer?

J: Yeah, so for context there’s a mixer from what has to be the early 2000s in the station, and it’s running on a physical hard drive that spins every time you boot it up. About a decade ago the sports department loaded up a bunch of old interviews, sound effects, as well as a bunch of station IDs said by famous personalities that I like to cut to during sports broadcasts for the fun of it. Somehow we have Samuel L. Jackson. I don’t know how that happened but I’m definitely a big fan of that one. We also have Al Bagnoli, the football coach, which was fun to use during the football games. In terms of other sound effects, we have things like the Olympic theme in there. I don’t think there’s any context in which we would use it, but it’s fun to play around with.

T: Very cool. To wrap things up, do you have any sports broadcasts that you’re especially looking forward to in the spring semester?

J: I am a huge baseball fan, so I’m very excited to be doing those games both here on campus and announcing up in the stadium. I also am excited to see more of where the women’s basketball team will go. They had an amazing run last year and it seems like they could possibly best that this year.

T: Hopefully a March Madness bid for them!

Josh, thanks so much for talking with me today.

Stay tuned for more WKCR sports broadcasting in the months to come!

OnAir · January 2023

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MEET A MEMBER

An Interview With Benny Magid

Drawing by Tanvi Krishnamurthy

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irst, can you introduce yourself? What do you currently do at the station?

My name is Benjamin or “Benny” Magid.

I am the Director of Operations at the station.

What do you do as Director of Operations does? How did you get into the engineering/ technical side of the station?

On paper it means I oversee the operations team, which itself consists of the Business Manager, Librarian, Archiving Head, and Head Engineer. That’s kind of in flux, meaning I oversee those four positions.

We all know you as the “tech” guy, so how did you get into engineering for the station?

So I was just a measly programmer freshman year. I came in and did my Daybreak on Thursday mornings. I kept to myself and didn’t

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by Leni Bryan

really know that anyone else did KCR, so when Covid hit during March of my freshman year, I kind of stopped. The only thing I really liked about programming was that I could play records, and when I was at home I was like, “Well, I can’t really play records, and don’t really need to do anything else, we’ll see what happens with the radio.” I come back the next year and before the school year even starts, I reach out to Red, our former Director of Operations. I was like, “Hey, how do I get back involved? Can I have a show?” and Red said, come meet with me, “we are in desperate need of a librarian and an engineer.” It was me and Josh Kapilian there. Josh and I looked at each other and he said he’d take librarian so I was like, “I guess I’ll take engineer.” So then I was doing a lot of the training. We had a bunch of people onboarding that spring, and the station was really busy. And so Red said, we need another Director of Operations, so that’s gonna have to be you. And so the job just sort of fell into my hands by chance. But yeah it feels like fate, it feels like where I should be.

WKCR is an (almost) completely analog station, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about what that means? Is this unique for college radio?

Even as you walk through, it’s really cool to see. We don’t use the reel-to-reels as much as we did even eight years ago. Even in the early 2010s we were still using the reel-to-reels a little bit. But seeing those around and then seeing the gigantic library shows you a little bit of the history of the station. It’s more–you could call it more established, or legitimate, or more recognized as an 81-year old station, and you

can see that visibly in the analog equipment. In terms of how we actually use that, a lot of the programmers, myself included, still use vinyl records on air. Sometimes we play cassettes on air, especially for In All Languages shows.

We’re still doing a lot of CDs, obviously that’s not analog but the idea is still there, and the fact that we’ve got these big, old soundboards.

All of it visually alludes to the history of the place, and we try our best to respect that.

You joined WKCR before the pandemic. Can you share a bit about how the station has changed?

Partially because of the weird time slot I had pre-pandemic (5am on Thursday mornings), I didn’t know the happenings of the station.

But I really feel like organizationally, each department functioned as its own selfsustaining organism. The executive board was the only board, so that was the end-all-beall. We’ve expanded the board to have more positions, which also benefits and helps out the operations department. In general, it’s a much more integrated experience now. You’re going to be interacting with people outside of your immediate department or immediate show. It’s really streamlined, the onboarding process, and we’ve developed a better sense of community here. So that’s one way it’s changed. And then the most obvious way it’s changed is that we have the remote computer now, which means that the day-to-day life of a department head is very different. The job is a lot less stressful. The day-to-day is less stressful. I mean, the New Music head had to make sure someone was staffed every night for Transfigured (1-5am). That is insane. Jazz head was notoriously difficult because there is so much jazz throughout the week, and someone has to be on for every single one of those shows, including Daybreaks at 5am. The department head had to do the shows if no one else could, so it was in their best interest to have someone else fill it. But yeah that was the reality of the station, I don’t think it was because people wanted each department to be separate, but that’s just how it had to be because there was

so much work for each department head.

There wasn’t the amount of breathing room that department heads have now, and that the E-board has now, which allows us to work on different projects.

Has the general body of programmers grown?

I’d say [now] we are about where we were in terms of number of active members prepandemic. It’s tough today because we’ve never kept good records on it, but as far as I can tell, that’s where we seem to be. But that’s still a feat considering we were at—call it a dozen if you are generous—a dozen people actively present at the station during the pandemic, so that’s a 10x growth.

You are graduating! What are you going to miss about the station?

Oh my god! You know, Columbia is a somewhat small undergrad population, depending what you consider as undergrad population, but it’s still relatively small. Despite that, you’ve still got so many grad students, so much bureaucratic administration that it doesn’t feel like a small school. I needed a place like KCR these past two years to feel like I’ve got a physical place, and to feel like I’ve got people. You know, I’ve got my friends, but I had my entire sophomore year and the last half of my freshman year at home. And so I think the people here have a space to be together, to share interests and craziness, that’s something I’m really going to miss. I’m going off into the corporate world, and I’ve got a taste of that and I know people are not as weird as we are. You can’t just take a handful of corporate people and expect that they are going to be as fun as KCR people, so yeah, I’m really going to miss that. The fact that I can come here and call it my own space that I can share with people. I can still, hopefully, come in and do a Daybreak as an alum, but it’s different. I’m not going to be actively seeing the same people. It’s going to be a different involvement, and that’s not something I’m going to be able to get back once I’m out of school. The records will always be here, so that part I won’t have to miss.

OnAir · January 2023

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NEW MUSIC

Bowie and Glass: Back from the Brink

by Sam Seliger

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n 1976, David Bowie was on the brink.

Deeply alienated by the rock-star life in a foreign country, he was seriously hooked on cocaine and almost completely out of touch with reality. His six-foot frame was weathered down to a mere 90 pounds from subsisting entirely on white milk, white powder, and red bell peppers.

So he went back to Europe, spending the summer at a French chateau working on Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot before going to West Berlin, the city that would become his home base for the rest of the decade, and working on an album of his own, inspired by that city’s burgeoning experimental rock scene. Such a course of action was not necessarily the most logical way for Bowie to put his life back together—decamping to a French chateau and/ or embedding oneself in a underground art scene are typically ways that rock musicians nurture drug habits, not kick them—but it not only worked, it opened a period of unequaled creativity and inspiration.

Bowie had always made uniquely ambitious and complex pop-rock music. Even his biggest hits were compositionally intricate, with far

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more chords than the typical rock songs, not reliably beholden to the genre’s norms of chordal motion, and with uniquely complicated melodies that, even at their most direct (as on 1970’s Hunky Dory) were unpredictable and hard to sing. He made a kind of high-concept progressive rock that listeners could actually wrap their heads around, using the same musical building blocks as most other pop music to build something less predictable and with more pieces.

Low, the first album of Bowie’s B e r l i n Trilogy, has a different sound than everything that he had done before it, reflecting the growing influence of Krautrock and the input of new collaborator Brian Eno. The entire album sounds foreign and alien, from the synthesizer and keyboard sounds not intended to much resemble any instrument at all, to the drums run through early pitch-shifting equipment (creating a piercing and artificial sound that resembles a drum machine), to the wordless voice and synthesizer chants that comprise the album’s second side. Bowie’s label initially refused to release the album, and even the more discerning critics were not particularly fond of it, yet it sold about as well

as its predecessors and the singles did well.

At the micro level, the songs were well outside the bounds of mainstream commercial music: the instruments were unrecognizable, bathed in strange effects and often turning up in strange places, with guitars often taking over secondary melodies while the chords merely echoed in the background. Yet at the macro level, they are actually quite accommodating.

The compositions on Low and throughout the Berlin trilogy, particularly the second album Heroes (among Bowie’s crowning achievements), are far simpler than his previous output. They reliably maintain tonality, with melodies that are leagues more direct than anything else in his catalog at that point. Many of the songs are two-chord romps, rolling back and forth between the tonic and subdominant for fiveminutes or so. Bowie’s lyrics, which had gotten progressively more esoteric and obtuse as the decade wore on (barring several episodes from the disappointing Diamond Dogs and Young Americans), were suddenly concise, and often quite direct. Even on the instrumental tracks, the music was easy to listen to, and put the earfriendly melodies at the forefront.

A

t the same time, Philip Glass was working on a career-defining trilogy of his own. As a rising figure in the New York experimental music scene, Glass, along with his contemporary Steve Reich, had pioneered a new approach in the Western art music tradition. With tonality fully obliterated and melody and harmony short on uncharted territory, they explored the nuances of rhythm and texture through repetition, phase shifting, and other experimental angles. A decade in, Glass had his star turn of sorts with the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, a tangle of abstract tableaus, poetry, repeated numbers and solfege syllables, little in the way of actual lyrics, and no plot. Artistically groundbreaking, the work was a critical and conceptual triumph, and although it was not particularly popular, it did have a level of musical consonance and direct melodicism that audiences could grab on to,

atypical of the avant-garde.

Glass followed Einstein on the Beach with two more semi-biographical operas: Satyagraha, about Mahatma Gandhi, in 1979; and Akhnaten, about the titular Egyptian Pharaoh, in 1983. Although all three maintained Glass’s signature focus on repetition and texture, they were increasingly approachable, with Akhnaten having something of a legible plot, as well as legitimately memorable and melodic arias. He was a composer of the avant-garde, to be sure, but not beyond the scope of contemporary popular music. He signed a recording contract with a major label in 1982, and his first album, Glassworks, which was expressly composed as a chamber work for popular audiences, sold quite well.

I

n 1992, after years insisting against joining the canon of classical symphonic composers, Glass finally capitulated to his friend, conductor Dennis Russell Davies. For inspiration, he turned to a surprising source: David Bowie’s Low. It wasn’t the first musical encounter between the two: a young Bowie, along with Brian Eno, had attended Glass’s UK debut in 1971. It wasn’t even their second musical encounter: Bowie had been a featured guest artist in John Cale’s set at WKCR’s 1979 Carnegie Hall benefit concert, at which Glass was the headlining act.

Beyond merely using the album as spiritual inspiration for his debut symphony, Glass actually used the album’s musical material. The boundary-collapsing intention was obvious: if he was going to bring his work into the symphony hall, he would be taking his less classicallyoriented peers from the underground scene with him. The “Low Symphony” took many of Glass’s standard musical tools—repeated arpeggios, gradually-building arrangements, and less-than-traditional orchestration, but the three instrumental tracks from which the material is sourced (each corresponding to a movement) are undeniably recognizable. Given the simplicity of the source material and the familiarity of the orchestral setting, Symphony

OnAir · January 2023 11

No. 1 - Low is surprisingly approachable for a work rooted in the avant-garde. More symphonies followed, and Glass eventually finished his Bowie trilogy with Symphony No. 4 - Heroes in 1996 and Symphony No. 12 - Lodger in 2019.

At this point in his career, Glass was in the midst of a turn not unlike the one that Bowie went through during and after his Berlin period. He had for years been on the cutting edge of the visible avant-garde. Frequently acknowledged (and at times praised) by critics, Glass had enough prominence to engage with the major gatekeepers of the Western Classical Music tradition, yet he had largely refused, preferring collaboration with rock stars and soundtracking popular experimental films to buttoning up for the concert hall.

Yet Glass’s life was changing, as was his catalog. Throughout the previous era of his career, he had increasingly become interested in spiritualism and East Asian religious practices. He was reaching middle age as he entered the third decade of his career. His previous works had begun to reveal an affinity for the classical canon.

Glass’s decision to betray his antiestablishment stance didn’t lead to overnight popular success or acceptance—his first symphonies were not performed by major orchestras, but that would come with time.

The works themselves were ready-made for appreciation by a large-scale audience. Much as Bowie had with his original triptych, all three Berlin symphonies take Glass’s avantgarde building blocks and combine them into a digestible product.

Bowie's original trilogy continued his run of solid, but not superstar, sales; however, much of the post-punk music it inspired quickly began to surpass it in the market. And as a result, Bowie began to walk back from the brink, giving more overt musical expression to a process that he had been experiencing since his initial move to Berlin, building a new life of greater stability. By the mid-1980s, he had become a major pop star on the back of collaborations with Nile Rodgers and Mick

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Jagger.

Glass was making a somewhat similar decision as he began to reinterpret Bowie's work, moving gradually from the most visible figure of the avant-garde to a figure of the mainstream. Like Bowie, Glass’s work was widely inspirational and widely aped. His style of broad composition within tonal constrains became the soundtrack for any corporate audiovisual content cynically aspiring to any level of sophistication or positivity, and the textural approach to composition has remained popular and substantive among the avant-garde. While his first symphonies were premiered by smaller ensembles, the Lodger symphony was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

With the Berlin Trilog(ies), Glass and Bowie began the process of reconfiguring their avantgarde approaches into mode approachable material in the most uncompromising way possible. This was pop music, not in the sense of the genre that ABBA and Britney Spears perform, but in the sense of populist music, music made for the masses, even if such mass recognition wouldn’t come until later.

T

hey both go back from the brink of the self-destructive avant-garde to make something modern and populist— and maybe even (gasp!) popular—that uses forward-thinking, non-traditional pieces to build something that can not only be enjoyed on a large scale, but broaden people’s horizons.

A closed-minded avant-gardist might accuse them of selling out, but that would miss the point. Populism can be easily degraded and used for profit and malice (something that we are very familiar with today), erasing the more noble elements. Works like the Berlin Trilogies are unique in this regard, as they maintain sophistication and artistic ambition but aspire to a broad appeal. As Bowie and Glass walked back from the brink, they landed in a unique space, in which these avant-garde elements could be used to construct populist art.

FEATURE PIECE

Summer at the Station

by Ale Díaz-Pizarro, Student Life Director

F

or the summer, most college radio stations students interested in joining the station. pack up along with the students who run Though all E-Board members begin their yearthem, either closing down until the start long tenure in February, the changing-of-theof the fall semester or kept barely afloat by a guard occurs right as the busy semester picks meager summer staff or by automation. up, making summer “an incredibly valuable But WKCR has never been like most college time for WKCR’s leadership to step back and radio stations, and this is certainly not the make higher-level goals for the year to come,” exception. In fact, summer at the station is in the words of Director of Operations Benny often its most productive time.

Magid (CC ‘23).

That was certainly not what I expected This was especially important in the summer when, as Student Life Director, I joined the of 2022. WKCR had not had its full roster of WKCR Executive Board in February 2022. summer staffing since before the pandemic, Though I later learned that there was a depriving it of two crucial summers of planning summer component to the job, I expected it to and reorganization. 2020-21 had been about be a passive commitment, a ‘life support’-style mere survival via remote programming, and engagement that was the minimum needed the focus of the 2021-22 school year was simply to keep the station running during the four to bring the station back to life by returning to months Columbia students were off for break. live staffing. Fall 2022 would be the first chance Instead, as Station Manager Schuyler Rabbin-Birnbaum (CC ‘23) puts it, “the summer period gave all of us on the board a great opportunity to put our best foot forward for the coming semester.”

The WKCR E-Board is comprised of the Station Manager, the Program Director, the Director of Operations, the Student Life Director, and the Publicity Director. Together, the five members oversee all aspects of WKCR’s daily operations, From left to right: Recruitment Director Andy Wang (CC '24), Director of Operations from programming choices Benny Magid (CC '23), Station Manager Schuyler Rabbin-Birnbaum (CC '23), to administrative decisions to Student Life Director Ale Díaz-Pizarro (CC '25), Budget Manager Olivia Mitchell the onboarding and training (BC '23), and Classical Department Head Maria Shaughnessy (BC '24) during the Activities Fair, one of the recruitment events planned-for during the summer. processes for new Columbia Photo by Publicity Director Jacob Grayzel.

OnAir · January 2023 13

in two years that the station, now back on its feet, would get to start building instead of just reconstructing. “As we entered our first full year post-Covid,” describes Benny, “we laid some essential groundwork for new policies, recruiting procedures, and live programming.”

Over the sixteen weeks we were on duty, the E-Board worked closely with Director of Broadcasting and Operations (and Columbia liaison) Philip Masciantonio, who took inventory of everything that had to be done around the station and guided us through each phase. During the first phase, lasting about four weeks, E-Board members got a thorough course in FCC regulations and copyright law, preparing to devise a new mission, vision, & values statement that aligned with the station’s purpose, its history, and our new goals for it.

MISSION

WKCR exists to preserve and share music, the arts, and history with listeners in the New York metro area, curating content (both musical and spoken) with an eye to historical and artistic value regardless of commercial significance.

VISION

WKCR will continue the pursuit of artistic exploration that is mindful of historical precedent. We will maintain communityloved programming while giving a platform for critical radio segments that engage with the current musical, artistic, and journalistic landscape.

VALUES

access · preservation · exploration consistency · passion

With the new mission statement at the helm, it was full steam ahead for the following twelve weeks, as the E-Board hammered out new station policies that had fallen by the wayside

14 OnAir · January 2023

Director of Operations Benny Magid (CC '23) MCing WKCR's Fall Welcome Concert, planned during the summer and in conjunction with Undergraduate Student Life.

Photo by Jacob Grayzel.

during Covid, developed a plan (and a palette) for WKCR’s social media presence, and—in a move long awaited—finally managed to bring back alumni programmers, a step that Schuyler deems as “really [going] a long way in getting KCR back to full strength."

Two of the most crucial building blocks to realize WKCR’s vision were laid during the summer. The first was the coordination of our scheduling changes (see p. 18-19): at the crossroads of Phil Schaap’s passing in September 2021 and the return to full live programming, the station faced the need to rethink and revamp its schedule. Several weeks of deliberation yielded a weekly schedule that both preserved the storied shows of KCR while offering new room for programmers to experiment, providing a necessary balance of novelty and tradition. These changes were not undertaken lightly: we knew to expect pushback, so we made sure that the new elasticity (without which an educational station cannot grow) did not infringe on the storied shows that have made KCR a staple of New York radio.

In studio, the second cornerstone for the year ahead was the refinement of recruitment & onboarding procedures. In the first full year back, we expected an influx of new programmers, and we made all the

preparations to welcome them. These included The summer functions as a sort of trial period segmenting the options open to new members that ‘greases’ the E-Board to work well together, into programmers, engineers, librarians, and ensuring all five enter the year working as a publicity team members, coming up with unit, familiar with each other’s perspectives, a pathway for each that did not necessarily ways of working, strengths, weaknesses, and include a licensing exam. We also reformed interests. That makes all the difference: only a said exam and added an FCC Licensing Tutorial, strong E-Board can spearhead the changes and created intern and member rosters, crafted all developments WKCR needs, and provide the onboarding materials, and set dates for events leadership required to get the station there. such as the club fair, our general interest And with sixteen weeks’ worth of planning, the meeting, our welcome ‘WKCRBQ,’ and our path is already laid out. bonding-focused record store crawl. No one With a semester of hindsight, Jacob puts it appreciated these preparations more than I did: best: “the summer session is when the station as Student Life Director, I oversee training for leadership defines their legacy, the school year all new members, which often has me juggling is when they execute it.” I’m sure I speak for schedules for over fifty people every week—a all five of us when I say how proud I am of the process that was streamlined thanks to our work we’ve done at WKCR this semester and summer work, and which ensured no potential how it’s both restored the soul of and breathed WKCR member fell through the cracks. new life into the station we all love. As we enter This was a pattern across all summer the penultimate month of our time as E-Board, achievements: the work undertaken during I’m also certain I speak for us all when I say these sixteen weeks allowed us to run at full it’s been an absolute honor to steer the station efficiency once the year started in earnest, the through this time, and what a pleasure it’s been brunt of the work having been done already. to serve as part of your 2022 E-Board.

As Program Director Sam Seliger (CC ‘24) explains it, “the momentum that we built and If you value the work we do during summer maintained was absolutely crucial for WKCR sessions and would like to support us in becoming so robust in the past four months, continuing them, please consider making a and our work finally set us on a course for our donation to WKCR. Information on how to donate can be found on the last page of this long-term future.” guide. Thank you so much for your listenership!

But logistics aside, and no less importantly, the summer period afforded the E-Board the vital opportunity to come together. “Since the station’s board is mostly isolated from its general body during the summer,” explains Publicity Director Jacob Grayzel (CC ‘23), “we were really compelled to rely on each other’s potentials and collaborate with one another.” When you are one of five people tasked with keeping WKCR running for the summer, meeting at least weekly and running frequently into each other in the studio, you develop a rapport with your four Business Manager Olivia Mitchell (BC '23), Student Life Director Ale Díazcolleagues that is already rock-solid Pizarro (CC '25), and Station Manager Schuyler Rabbin-Birnbaum (CC '23) manning the table during the WKCR Fall Welcome Concert. by the time the semester kicks in.

Photo by Jacob Grayzel.

OnAir · January 2023 15

5:00 am 6:00 am 7:00 am

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDN

Jazz ‘til Dawn (cont’d)

Daybreak

Field Trip

8:00 am 9:00 am

Amazing Grace

Monday Morningside

10:00 am 11:00 am

Cereal Music

The Moonshine Show

12:00 pm 1:00 pm The Tennessee Border Show

Out to Lunch

2:00 pm

Sin Fro

3:00 pm 4:00 pm 5:00 pm

Sunday Profiles

Afternoon New Music

6:00 pm 7:00 pm 8:00 pm 9:00 pm 10:00 pm 11:00 pm 12:00 am 1:00 am 2:00 am

Raag Aur Taal SoundStage Live Constructions Back in the USSR Seachran: The Celtic Show

PopTalk Caribe Latino Urbano Latinx

News + Arts P Honky Tonkin’ Tuesday’s Just as Bad

Nueva C

Som do

Coordinated Universal Time

3:00 am 4:00 am

Jazz Alte

Phil Lives

16 OnAir · January 2023

Transfigured Night

Night Train

Transfigu

NESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY Transfigured Night (cont’d)

k Express

Sounds of Asia

5:00 am 6:00 am 7:00 am 8:00 am 9:00 am

Birdflight Eastern Standard Time Early Music

10:00 am 11:00 am 12:00 pm

Across 110th Street

Out to Lunch

onteras

2:00 pm

Something Inside of Me

Bach Hour

Programming

Canción

o Brasil

ured Night

Hobo’s Lullaby

Middle Eastern Influences

Sonidos Colombianos

The Mambo Machine

Transfigured Night

8:00 pm

10:00 pm

Saturday Night at the Opera 11:00 pm 12:00 am

Notes From Underground Alternates every week.

Offbeat

7:00 pm

9:00 pm

Workaround The African Show

5:00 pm 6:00 pm

Traditions in Swing

ernatives

3:00 pm 4:00 pm

Afternoon Classical

Extended Technique

1:00 pm

El Sonido de la Calle Alternates every week.

1:00 am 2:00 am 3:00 am 4:00 am

Jazz ‘til Dawn

OnAir · January 2023 17

2022 Programm

P

art of the 2022 WKCR Executive Board's summer tasks (see p. 13-15) included rethinking and reworkin grammer interest and expertise. Between February and December 2022, six new shows were added to blends tradition and innovation, keeping WKCR as both the home of old classics and the nest for new

DEP'T Classical/ New Music News & Arts

CHANGE Extended Technique

REPLACING Afternoon New Music Wednesdays 3-6 pm

Wednesdays & Thursdays 3-6 pm

Afternoon Classical

Monday Morningside

Birdflight

Thursdays 3-6 pm

Mondays 8:30-9:30 am

Mondays 8:20-9:30 am

IAL

Expanded Sunday Night Back in the USSR 11 pm-12 am Celtic Show 12-1 am CUT 1-3 am

Alternating Balkan/Celtic

American/ Latin

Reconfigured Sunday AM Notes from Underground 12:30-2 am El Sonido de la Calle 2-4 am

Notes from Underground

New Music

Fridays 9-10 pm

Workaround

Previously Wednesdays at the same time.

Sin Fronteras

Out to Lunch

Jazz/ Latin Jazz Jazz/ Stationwide 18 OnAir · January 2023

(Alternating)

11 pm-12:30 am

Coordinated Universal Time 12:30-2 am 12:30-2 am

Jazz Till Dawn 2-6 am

Wednesdays 12-3 pm

Wednesdays 12-3 pm

Phil Lives

Monday Mornings in Mono

Sunday Profiles

Sundays 2-7 pm

Mondays 3-5 am

Sundays 2-7 pm

Mondays 2-5 am

Jazz Profiles

IAL/Jazz Profiles

Sundays 2-4/4-7 pm

Provid contem allows

Our co studen intere

Allow orient

Allow and in langua

Becom sched

Wedn succes listene

Offers the co

Expan divers

ming Changes

ng the weekly schedule, a process that occurs every few years as the music landscape shifts along with proo the weekly schedule and five reworked. In line with WKCR's 2022 vision (see p. 14), the resulting schedule w sounds.

RATIONALE

ding different benefits for each department, Extended Technique aims to cement a place for mporary classical music in radio and to push the boundaries of what is considered Classical. It also s for our ever-growing contemporary collection to be frequently used.

ommunity can be served well by a beginning of the week news show, and gives a platform for our nt news programmers to program in the morning hours. A lot of student programmers have expressed est in programming a short form news show.

ws each dedicated regional show to have weekly airtime, allowing listeners to hear specific communityted programming more frequently.

ws WKCR to continue its history of supporting and promoting burgeoning underground music communities ntroduce a focus on contemporary latin hip-hop, making the program analogous to the typically Englishage Notes from Underground.

mes a student-only live DJ set on Friday nights to better accommodate student DJs' weekday evening dules.

nesday OTL will become Latin Jazz show Sin Fronteras, our second interdepartmental show following the ss of Extended Technique, to represent the vast body of Latin Jazz in our collection and in interest to our ers, especially of the Latino community.

s a dedicated Schaap archival to preserve WKCR's invaluable Schaap heritage and to provide loyal listeners ontinued opportunity to listen to his shows.

nds breadth of jazz catalog, and allows other departments to coprogram more of the schedule, sifying our program offerings.

OnAir · January 2023 19

Special Programming SPECIAL BROADCASTS

DAVID BOWIE

Sunday, January 8, 12:00-10:00 PM

With our first special broadcast of 2023, WKCR will celebrate legendary English art-rock singer and songwriter David Bowie. Bowie famously appeared as a special guest at the station’s 1979 Carnegie Hall benefit concert, performing with John Cale.

The broadcast will survey the vast range of the chameleonic artist’s more than sixty-year career, covering his most renowned commercial hits, legendary avant-rock albums, and lesser known deep cuts and live recordings.

MAX ROACH

Tuesday, January 10, all day

As we have done every year for over four decades, WKCR will celebrate the 99th birthday of legendary jazz drummer Max Roach. A core member of some of the greatest bands of the Bebop era, Roach also pioneered Hard Bop and was a member of highly innovative groups in the post-bop idiom. The broadcast will include archival material from Phil Schaap, Roach’s most classic recordings, obscure live cuts, and more.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO Tuesday, January 17, all day

WKCR will celebrate the work of innovative Japanese electronic musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, best known for his work with the group Yellow Magic Orchestra, his pioneering experimentation with electro-funk, his award-winning film score work, and even the music for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics!

DOLLY PARTON

Thursday, January 19, all day

January 19th is Dolly day on WKCR! Our broadcast for this country (and all-around) legend doesn’t just go from 9 to 5, but for a full 24 hours to celebrate the 77th birthday of the newly-induced Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. Tune in to hear old favorites and deep cuts, including her duets with Porter Wagoner, her smash hits in the 1970s and 80s, and her bluegrass records at the turn of the century.

20 OnAir · January 2023

ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM Wednesday, January 25, 12am-12am

Tune in for an entire day of programming dedicated to the father of bossa nova! Born in Rio de Janeiro, Jobim is ubiquitously regarded as one of, if not the most, influential Brazilian musicians, whose composing, instrumentation, and performance spread the sound of Latin jazz internationally.

ROY ELDRIDGE

Monday, January 30, all day

Join us on January 30th as we celebrate what would have been the 122nd birthday of the legendary big band and swing trumpeter—said by Ella Fitzgerald to put “more soul in one note than a lot of people could get into the whole song”—with 24 hours of music from across his trailblazing career.

PHILIP GLASS

Tuesday, January 31, all day

Considering an entire department was created for this composer and his peers, it seems absurd that we have never had a Philip Glass birthday broadcast. Allegedly, Glass would listen to WKCR on his car radio when he worked as a cab driver. Tune in on the last day of the month to celebrate his 86th birthday!

THEMED SHOWS

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OPERA Saturdays 9:00 PM-12:30 AM January 7 & 14: TBD January 21: Eugene Onegin (Tchaikovsky) January 28: Mozart Birthday Special Host: Ale Díaz-Pizarro

SUNDAY PROFILES Sundays 2:00-7:00 PM

Labeled: Muse Records January 1, 2:00 - 7:00 PM Hosts: Steve Mandel & J Cohn

Milt Jackson January 15, 2:00 - 7:00 PM Host: Sid Gribetz The remaining two profiles (1/22 & 1/29) remain TBD and will be announced on our social media.

Show Listings

JAZZ

Daybreak Express, weekdays 5-8:20am Out to Lunch, weekdays 3-6pm Jazz Alternatives, weekdays 6-9pm These three programs comprise the core of our jazz offerings. Programming consists of everything from New Orleans jazz, jazz age, swing era, bebop, hard-bop, modal, free, and avant-garde. In short, you’ll encounter the entire range of recorded jazz on these programs. Hosts rotate from day-to-day, offering an exciting variety of approaches, some of which include thematic presentation, artist interviews, or artist profiles Birdflight, Tues.-Fri. 8:20-9:30am Archival programs from the late Phil Schaap, one of the world’s leading jazz historians, who hosted this daily forum for the music of Charlie Parker for about 40 years.

Traditions in Swing, Sat. 6-9pm Archival programs hosted by the late Phil Schaap, this award-winning Saturday night staple presents focused thematic programs dealing with jazz up until about World War II. Schaap presents the music, much of it incredibly rare, from the best sound source, which is often the original 78 issue.

Afternoon Classical, Fri. 3-6pm.

Similar to cereal music, most of afternoon classical has no restrictions on what type of classical music to play.

The last hour of the show, however, is dedicated fully to the music of JS Bach.

Saturday Night at the Opera, Sat. 9pm-12:30am.

One of NYC’s longest running opera shows, Saturday Night at the Opera is a 3.5 hour show that allows operas to be played in their entirety, with room for commentary, descriptions, and some history.

NEW MUSIC Afternoon New Music, Mon. & Tues. 3-6pm Our daytime new music program features a wide variety of music that challenges boundaries and subverts categorizations. Shows include everything from seminal new music compositions to the most challenging of obscure deep cuts and new releases.

Transfigured Night, Tues./Thurs./Sat. 1-5am Our overnight explorations into the world of new music, Transfigured Night rewards our late night listeners with a wide range of sounds and experimental music.

Workaround*, Fri. 9-10pm WKCR presents Live DJ sets from Columbia students Phil Lives*, Mon. 3-5am This overnight show features archival broadcasts of long- and local artists. form programs from late NEA Jazz Master Phil Schaap.

Live Constructions, Sun. 10-11pm This weekly program features a live in-studio CLASSICAL performance or a performance pre-recorded specially for the show.

Cereal Music, Mon.-Thurs. 9:30am-12pm An entirely open-ended classical show to start your AMERICAN weekdays. Tune in to hear the most eclectic mix of classical music on the New York airwaves!

Honky Tonkin’, Tues. 10-11pm One of WKCR’s longest-running American music The Early Music Show, Fri. 9:30am-12pm programs, Honky Tonkin’ lands in the harder side of Dedicated primarily to European medieval, Renaissance, Country music. Emphasizing the greatest voices in the and baroque music, all from before 1800 (plus or minus genre, Honky Tonkin’ is a country music dance party 50 years). every Tuesday night.

Extended Technique*, Wed. & Thurs. 3-6pm WKCR’s first interdepartmental show (in the New Music and Classical departments) dedicated to contemporary classical music. You’ll hear everything from 12-tone and minimalist compositions to film and video game scores, and all things in between.

Tuesday’s Just as Bad, Tues. 11pm - Wed. 1am Tuesday’s Just as bad explores the world of blues prior to World War II. Shows weave their way through the first decades of recorded music history and turn to the postwar years in the final half hour.

* Indicates show was created after January 2022

OnAir · January 2023 21

LISTINGS FOR LISTENERS Night Train, Wed. 1-5am All aboard! One of our two overnight programs in the American department, Night Train rolls through the post-war R&B and soul tradition, from the genre’s emergence in the 1940’s and 50’s through the funk revolution in the 1970’s. Shows often feature extended live recordings and concerts.

the genre’s pioneers in the 1940s and 50s and advancements in the 60s and 70s, through the leading innovators and stars of today.

The Tennessee Border Show, Sun. 12-2pm One third of WKCR’s country music programming, along with Honky Tonkin’ and the Bluegrass Moonshine Show, Tennessee Border highlights the singer-songwriter tradition, from Hank Williams and Townes Van Zandt to Lucinda Williams.

Offbeat, Fri. 1-5am Offbeat is committed to broadcasting undiscovered new hip hop music. Shows typically focus on exposing underplayed or up-and-coming new artists, including LATIN experimental instrumental artists not typically played on mainstream hip hop radio.

Caribe Latino, Mon. 10pm-12am Caribe Latino is a music program that features Across 110th Street, Sat. 12-2pm the diverse, upbeat music from numerous Latin Kicking off our Saturday afternoon American music run, communities in the Caribbean. Popular Latin rhythms Across 110th Street airs soul, funk, and dance music from such as Salsa, Merengue, Bachata and Latin Jazz take the 1960’s through the 1980’s and 90’s. center stage throughout the program.

Something Inside of Me, Sat. 2-4pm Something Inside of Me is WKCR’s Saturday afternoon blues show, focusing mostly on the electric and post-war styles.

Hobo’s Lullaby, Sat. 4-6pm Rooted in the folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, Hobo’s Lullaby airs American folk and traditional music styles from the early 20th century through the present day.

From old staples like Leadbelly, Elizabeth Cotton, and Woody Guthrie to contemporary stalwarts like the Carolina Chocolate Drops and lesser known artists, domestic traditions are alive and well on Hobo’s Lullaby.

Notes from the Underground, Sun. 12:30-2am Notes from the Underground showcases contemporary hip hop and rap music with an emphasis on emerging and experimental artists. The program also hosts local and visiting artists for interviews, freestyles, and guestcuration.

Amazing Grace, Sun. 8-10am Greeting listeners on Sunday morning, Amazing Grace shares with listeners the world of the African-American gospel tradition.

The Moonshine Show, Sun. 10am-12pm On the air for nearly 60 years, The Moonshine Show showcases the American Bluegrass tradition, from the earliest roots in vernacular string-band music, through * indicates show was created after January 2022

22 OnAir · January 2023

Urbano Latinx, Tues. 12-1am A weekly Latin show airing contemporary sounds from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diaspora, Urbano Latinx features mixes of salsa, merengue, Latin punk rock, and more.

Sin Fronteras*, Wed. 12-3pm Falling in the space of Out to Lunch on Wednesday afternoons, Sin Fronteras explores the tremendous Latin Jazz tradition.

Nueva Canción, Wed. 10-11pm Nueva Canción is an exploration of protest music created throughout Latin America during the 60s and 70s and its numerous other manifestations throughout other countries and time periods.

Som do Brasil, Wed. 11pm - Thurs. 1am From samba and bossa nova to MPB, hear the numerous and enchanting sounds and rhythms of Brazil.

Sonidos Colombianos, Fri. 10-11pm Sonidos Colombianos presents music from one of the most culturally diverse countries of Latin America: Colombia! Our bilingual musical tour is guaranteed to include not only cumbia, but also the guitar-based bambuco from the Andean region, the harp llanero music from the Eastern Plains, the marimba-infused currulao from the Pacific Region, and the accordiondriven vallenato of the North Atlantic Coast.

LISTINGS FOR LISTENERS The Mambo Machine, Fri. 11pm - Sat. 2am The Mambo Machine is the longest running salsa show in New York City. The program presently plays a wide spectrum of Afro-Latin rhythms, combining new and old into an exciting, danceable mix.

El Sonido de la Calle*, Sun. 2-4am A companion show to Saturday night’s American Notes from Underground, El Sonido de la Calle highlights the diverse world of contemporary Spanish-language hiphop and dance music.

IN ALL LANGUAGES Seachran: The Celtic Show, Mon. 12-1am Seachran features music from across the island of Ireland throughout the era of recorded music, particularly focusing on traditional folk and vernacular music forms.

Coordinated Universal Time, Mon. 1-3am Coordinated Universal Time brings our listeners the latest cut of music from anywhere in the world, especially highlighting music that does not get attention in America. Our programming tries to bring the hottest and the most recent tunes to WKCR’s airwaves.

The African Show, Thurs. 10pm-12am The longest running African music radio show in the United States, the African Show brings you a variety of music from the entire continent of Africa.

Middle Eastern Influences, Fri. 12-1am During the hour-long show, Middle Eastern Influences features a wide range of beautiful tracks from regions of the Middle East, North Africa, and even, at times, South Asia.

Field Trip, Sun. 6-8am Field Trip focuses on the music and practice of field recordings: music recorded outside of a studio. Tune in and you may catch field recordings that were recorded fifty years ago, others that were experimented with by your favorite Afternoon New Music artist, or even those documented in New York City by WKCR itself.

Raag Aur Taal, Sun. 7-9pm Raag Aur Taal explores the sounds and rich cultural heritage of South Asia. The term “Raag Aur Taal” roughly translates to “melody and rhythm,” indicating the classical nature of this program.

Back in the USSR, Sun. 11pm-12am Back in the USSR features music from across the former Soviet Union and soviet states across Eastern Europe and East and Central Asia, from the mid-20th century through the present.

NEWS & ARTS Monday Morningside*, Mon. 8:30-9:30am Monday Morningside is WKCR’s morning news broadcast to kick off the week, featuring news segments on events around Morningside Heights and upper Manhattan. If you’re not an early bird, all episodes are available as podcasts on Spotify!

PopTalk*, Mon. 9-10pm PopTalk examines current developments in pop music and the latest top-flight releases.

SoundStage*, Sun. 9-10pm SoundStage features audio dramas and radio plays from the WKCR archives as well as new compositions by students and contemporary writers. Some shows also feature interviews with dramatists and directors.

Sounds of Asia, Sat. 6-8am SUNDAY PROFILES Rechristened from Sounds of China, Sounds of Asia explores the recorded musical traditions and innovations Sunday Profile, Sun. 2-7pm* of Asia and the Pacific islands.

With the return of the five-hour profiles slot, programmers will showcase longform Eastern Standard Time, Sat. 8am-12pm profiles as they have done for decades. While the One of New York’s most popular Reggae programs, primary focus remains on jazz music, we also feature Eastern Standard Time takes listeners through Saturday other styles and traditions from across WKCR’s different morning from 8 am to noon with the hypnotic sounds of programming departments.

Reggae and Jamaican dance music.

* indicates show was created after January 2022

OnAir · January 2023 23

By the Numbers On Air Programmers

Listeners

Favorite Department

Favorite Department

Favorite Show to Program

Favorite Show to Listen To

1. Daybreak Express 2. Out to Lunch 3. Night Train 4. Middle Eastern Influences 5. The African Show 6. Cereal Music 7. Tennessee Border Show 8. Hobo’s Lullaby 9. Honky Tonkin’ 10. Early Music

1. Birdflight 2. Jazz Alternatives 3. Traditions in Swing 4. Cereal Music 5. Out to Lunch 6. Sunday Profiles 7. Daybreak Express 8. Across 110th Street 9. Eastern Standard Time 10. Raag Aur Taal

Data collected from 26 responses to a survey sent to WKCR programmers in December 2022.

Data collected from 491 responses to the WKCR Mailing List Sign-Up, collected through December 28th, 2022.

24 OnAir · January 2023

s: 2022 at WKCR In Studio

48 36 92 86 6 6 1,204 6 46 24 3 5 new WKCR members

newly licensed programmers

Fall 2022 interns*

active WKCR members*

live performances broadcast

sports games called

*completed at least one step of the interning process

*programmers, engineers, librarians, & publicity team

library items scanned and catalogued

new shows added to weekly schedule

birthday/special broadcasts

hours of live programming for the first time since March 2020 merch campaigns

fundraising events

OnAir · January 2023 25

2022 ROUNDUP

WKCR’s Favorite Albums of 2022

E

compiled by Sam Seliger, Program Director

ven when not on air, you can always count on WKCR to engage with everything from the classics to new releases. 2022 was no exception: from the programming team and the most active programmers on the WKCR team, here are our top 100 albums of 2022.

1

2

Renaissance Beyoncé

6

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Big Thief

7

God Save the Animals Alex G

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

CAPRISONGS FKA twigs

3 Ants From Up There Black Country, New Road

8 Un Verano Sin Ti Bad Bunny

The 7th Hand · Immanuel Wilkins Wet Leg · Wet Leg Preacher’s Daughter · Ethel Cain Gemini Rights · Steve Lacy I Walked with You a Ways · Plains Laurel Hell · Mitski SOS · SZA If My Wife New I’d Be Dead · CMAT CRASH · Charli XCX Big Time · Angel Olsen Together · Duster HORSESHIT ON ROUTE 66 · The Garden

26 OnAir · January 2023

4 Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers Kendrick Lamar

9 Hypnos

Ravyn Lenae

5 Blue Rev Alvvays

10 Hellfire

black midi

JAZZ ROCK A LT E R N AT I V E R&B COUNTRY INDIE POP R&B A LT E R N AT I V E POP A LT E R N AT I V E ROCK PUNK

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

61

Aethiopes · billy woods De Todas Las Flores · Natalia Lafourcade Pre Pleasure · Julia Jacklin And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow · Weyes Blood NOT TiGHT· DOMi and JD Beck The Forever Story · JID Remember Your North Star · Yaya Bey Four Songs · Blood Orange Natural Brown Prom Queen · Sudan Archives It’s Almost Dry · Pusha T GREENZONE 108 · Greentea Peng Crowd Can Talk · LIFEGUARD Galerie · Anomalie SOLIDARITINE · Gogol Bordello FLAWLESS LIKE ME · Lucki Florist · Florist Beatopia · beabadoobee Xaybu: The Unseen · Steve Lehman/Sélébeyone Few Good Things · Saba Quality Over Opinion · Louis Cole Cheat Codes · Black Thought & Danger Mouse 2 Alivë · Yeat MOTOMAMI · Rosalía The Elephant Man’s Bones · Roc Marciano & The Alchemist The Parable of the Poet · Joel Ross Being Funny in a Foreign Language · The 1975 Melt My Eyez See Your Future · Denzel Curry Versions of Modern Performance · Horsegirl Red & White · Lil Uzi Vert Angels and Queens - Part I · Gabriels Solo Piano · Micah Thomas Sometimes, Forever · Soccer Mommy Song · Sheku Kanneh-Mason Crest · Bladee & Ecco2K Greatest Hits, Vol. 3 · Jacob Mann Big Band Black & Loud: James Brown Reimagined · Stro Elliot Raving Dahlia · Sevdaliza YTILAER · Bill Callahan Her Loss · Drake & 21 Savage

HIP HOP MEXICAN FOLK A LT E R N AT I V E A LT E R N AT I V E JAZZ HIP HOP R&B R&B R&B HIP HOP A LT E R N AT I V E PUNK JAZZ PUNK HIP HOP FOLK POP JAZZ/HIP HOP HIP HOP A LT E R N AT I V E HIP HOP HIP HOP L AT I N P O P HIP HOP JAZZ A LT E R N AT I V E HIP HOP ROCK HIP HOP SOUL JAZZ A LT E R N AT I V E CLASSICAL A LT E R N AT I V E JAZZ FUNK/HIP HOP ART POP FOLK HIP HOP

OnAir · January 2023 27

JAZZ 62. Americana, Vol. 2 · JD Allen A LT E R N AT I V E 63. From 2 to 3 · Peach Pit JAZZ 64. Furikake · nobuto & friends AFRICAN BLUES 65. Timbuktu · Oumou Sangaré JAZZ 66. Jazz Codes · Moor Mother POP 67. Nymph · Shygirl FOLK/ROCK 68. La Luna · Daniel Romano’s Outfit JAZZ 69. ATALAYA · Dezron Douglas A LT E R N AT I V E 70. Dance Fever · Florence + The Machine COUNTRY 71. American Heartbreak · Zach Bryan ROCK 72. Natural Part · Horse Jumper of Love ROCK 73. Skinty Fia · Fontaines D.C. DANCE 74. THE FUNK WILL PREVAIL · Kaelin Ellis DREAMPOP 75. Once Twice Melody · Beach House JAZZ 76. consistency · i-sef u-sef HIP HOP 77. Dollar Menu 4 · Mach-Hommy ELECTRONIC 78. Darklife · death’s dynamic shroud.wmv POP 79. Glitch Princess · Yeule A LT E R N AT I V E 80. Are You Happy Now? · Jensen McRae JAZZ 81. The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism · Tyshawn Sorey Trio ROCK 82. A Light for Attracting Attention · The Smile J A Z Z / A F R O B E AT 83. Could We Be More · KOKOROKO HIP HOP 84. I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You · Quadeca A LT E R N AT I V E 85. a picture without a frame · nico daglio JAZZ 86. Kabaka International Guitar Band · Kabaka International Guitar Band HIP HOP 87. HEROES & VILLAINS · Metro Boomin A LT E R N AT I V E 88. Spiderr · Bladee JAZZ 89. Let Sound Tell All · Julius Rodriguez FOLK 90. Palomino · First Aid Kit ROCK 91. Kumoyo Island · Kikagaku Moyo HIP HOP 92. Sick! · Earl Sweatshirt A LT E R N AT I V E 93. Sadnecessary (Acoustic Version) · Milky Chance HIP HOP 94. Back 2 Life · Thaiboy Digital A F R O B E AT 95. Agadez · Etran de L’Aïr FUNK 96. MAHAL · Toro y Moi JAZZ 97. UMDALI · Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O HIP HOP 98. Church · billy woods FUNK 99. Here We Go Jack · Vulfpeck JAZZ 100. The Couch Sessions · Nicholas Payton

28 OnAir · January 2023

SUPPORT WKCR TOP 5 REASONS TO DONATE TO WKCR 1. You’d be helping a student-run, listener-funded, and volunteer-based radio station continue to bring you the absolute best in what radio has to offer. Music, arts, news, and sports— we’ve got the works!

2. You wouldn’t be a free-rider anymore.

3. WKCR donations are tax-deductible (so make sure you donate before tax season). For more info on that, or anything else business-related, email business@wkcr.org 4. Being “the Original FM,” our equipment is getting a bit old. For example, Buzz, the hamster that runs the wheel that powers the station, is getting a little worn-out and arthritic. We need a new hamster. Sorry, Buzz, but it’s gotta be done!

5. Isn’t OnAir cool? Without proper funding, projects like this can’t come to fruition and, if they do, don’t make it very long. Donate to allow the little OnAir minions to stay in the job (we are all OnAir minions).

HOW TO DONATE TO WKCR IN 4 STEPS

BY MAIL Step 1: Locate your nearest checkbook

ONLINE Step 1: head to www.wkcr.org

Step 2: Indicate “WKCR” as payee and fill out as usual

Step 2: Click the yellow “DONATE TO WKCR” banner at the top of the page

Step 3: Mail cheque to CU Gift Systems, 622 West 113th Street, MC 4524, New York, NY 10025

Step 3: Fill out the form in the giving portal and enter your information...

Step 4: ...and VOILÀ! Just like that, you have become a WKCR supporter!

WKCR also accepts checks to our direct address. Just Follow the same steps listed above but mail the check to: 2920 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

Step 4: ...and VOILÀ! Just like that, you have become a WKCR supporter!

Did you know you can make recurring donations to WKCR when you donate online?

Just indicate your frequency preferences on the giving portal when prompted!

OnAir · January 2023 29

30 OnAir · January 2023

WKCR 89.9 FM

2920 Broadway New York, NY 10027

Sp e c i a l t ha n ks to Ale Díaz-Pizarro, August Phillips, Benny Magid, Br yan Zhang, Jacob Grayzel, Josh Kapilian, Leni Br yan, Madelyn Elizondo, Maria Shaughnessy, Red Stein, Sam Seliger, Sarah Barlyn, Schuyler RabbinBirnbaum, Tanvi Krishnamur thy, & Ted Schmiedeler.