September 24, 2007

• North, South, East, WEFT

  Well, Fratmom has let the cat out of the bag.    The community radio station I'm involved with, WEFT (weft.org), is now webcasting.  If you're ever free and near a computer on a Thursday afternoon between 2:00 and 4:00 PM central time, you can go here  http://s9.viastreaming.net/7510/  and fire up your media player of choice (Winamp works well for me), and you should be able to listen to me doing my world music show.  It's called "North, South, East, WEFT", and I figuratively circumnavigate the globe (generally excluding Europe, whose music I tend not to like though I love the continent) to bring you the best of the world's new music.

  [EDIT:  There is now a link directly from the weft.org site to the web streaming server, a green square or box that says "Listen Online".  It's in the upper right corner of the home page.  We've been having problems, though,  staying online.  Perhaps the problems will be resolved by Thursday.  Even if it says "currently offline" try to connect using one of your computer's media players, and you may be successful.  This transition to webcasting may require a few weeks to get all the bugs ironed out.  Thanks for your patience.]

  I typically start out with a Native American track, then some Cajun/zydeco, Hawaiian, Caribbean, and/or reggae.  The second half hour is Latin music.  The third half hour is what I call my "sacrosanct African half hour", and the fourth half hour is generally Asian/Indian/Middle Eastern music, or sometimes an eclectic blend of whatever else I find interesting.  My format is pretty standardized, because my theory is that if a given listener likes, say, African music, they know which half hour to tune in.  The downside, I guess, is that if they can't listen at that particular time, they're out of luck, at least on Thursdays....

  We have general world music Monday through Friday between 2:00 and 4:00 PM.  Each DJ has his/her own format and musical preferences, so no two days are the same.  We also have a number of more specialized world music shows scattered throughout the week - reggae, Latin, Jewish, Greek, Celtic, classical Indian, etc.  I'm the world music "genre director" at WEFT, so in the past three years I've become pretty familiar with the whole gamut of world music.

  Whatever else you do, at any rate, I want you to listen to MY show at least once.    If I know you're listening, I'll give you a shout-out on the air, and maybe dedicate a song to you.   If you phone in to the station you can even request a particular song or artist, and I'll try to find it if I can.  Happy listening!

  Speaking of Fratmom, I just this very day enjoyed a sweet but all-too-short visit with her as she was traveling home from her daughter's house.   She and I had corresponded before, of course, but we had never met in the flesh.  We had a lovely 2-hour lunch at an Indian restaurant before she had to get on the road again.  What a delight she is!

  I have so far greatly appreciated and been blessed by my Xanga relationships.  But on the flip side, go here

  http://www.wired.com/print/politics/law/magazine/15-09/ff_internetlies 

  to read about an internet relationship - an obsessive romance - that went horribly awry.  This real-life narrative has more twists and turns than an O. Henry short story or three months in the Big Brother house, and is definitely a cautionary tale that is well worth your time to read.

  All right, enough personal stuff.    I'll be back in a week or so with some more exciting and challenging political commentary! 

  • 5:32 pm
  • 23 Comments