For the past few years I’ve been an avid listener of KZSU’s “Day of Noise,” a celebration of live experimental music. The tightly scheduled 24-hour broadcast features non-stop live performances from Stanford University’s college radio station.
Palo Alto Weekly previews tomorrow’s event, which will feature 36 artists beginning at midnight. According to the piece,
‘Day of Noise is a celebration of all strange and beautiful music,’ event organizer and KZSU DJ Abra Jeffers said. ‘Noise,’ in this case, broadly refers to genres including but not limited to free jazz, drone, ambient and minimalism.
The station will host live performances in half-hour and hour-long sets, all broadcast from the campus studio, located in the basement of Memorial Auditorium.”
Some of the artists participating include Antimatter, Thomas Dimuzio, Henry Plotnick, Jacob Felix Heule/Aurora Josephson/John McCowen, Voice of Doom and Lost Planet. The full line-up can be viewed on the KZSU website and listeners can tune in online or terrestrially at 90.1 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Charles Parker Prize Call for Submissions for Student Radio Work in the United Kingdom
The deadline is looming for students to submit radio features for consideration for the Charles Parker Prize. Those studying radio in further education or higher education settings in the United Kingdom are invited to submit radio features by the deadline of midnight February 28. Features should, “…in some way reflect an essence of Parker’s own work – for example, story-led documentaries (or short features) that bring life to the concerns of ordinary people through creative radio production techniques,” according to the Charles Parker Prize website.
American Student Radio Podcast Showcases Narrative Storytelling
The popularity of both podcasting and narrative storytelling means that college students and college radio stations are also embracing these formats. At Indiana University, American Student Radio is a program that features, “a group of two dozen producers who make a one-hour narrative storytelling program every Sunday at noon,” according to the show’s executive producer Matt Bloom. Bloom told Indiana Daily Student that, the show’s rotating hosts “pick a theme, and every story in that episode has to relate to the theme somehow. It’s a student-produced podcast, focusing on narrative storytelling.”
Griffith College Dublin Station Griff FM to Air this Week
I have visited a handful of college radio stations in Ireland over the years and I find it fascinating that some of the stations operate over FM for very short periods of time, sometimes for just a few special weeks a year. That’s the case for Griffith College Dublin, which will be running Griff FM from January 30 to February 7 over 107.8 FM. Radio Today writes, “Griff FM is produced and run by students in the Journalism and Media Faculty.”
Guilford College Radio DJ Has Deep Roots in Music & Club Culture
Winston-Salem Journal profiles DJ Clash, a long-time staple of WQFS Guilford College Radio in Greensboro, North Carolina. According to the piece, DJ Clash was initially immersed in hip hop culture in New York, but eventually became a fan of house music and as a DJ has listeners from all over the U.S. The piece states:
Clash grew up in New York, and his immersion in the music world coincided with the rise of hip-hop. He first made a name for himself as part of that culture, spinning records in clubs and on the radio, and working as a sound engineer on recordings by LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane and many others…”
WSOU Broadcasts Through Blizzard
Seton Hall’s student radio station WSOU continued broadcasting despite a campus shut-down and blizzard conditions. According to Radio World, “Student staffers…worked in shifts to provide weather and traffic reports, news updates and other updates during Winter Storm Jonas.” WSOU adviser Mark Maben told me that the campus got approximately 26 inches of snow.
Happy 55th Anniversary to WMCO
In a piece for Radio World, WMCO Station Manager Lisa Marshall recounts the 55 year history of the college radio station at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. She writes about meeting station founder Hal Burlingame in 2001, saying,
Burlingame and his story are one-of-a-kind. As a student, he wanted FM college radio at Muskingum after gaining experience working at a local station. Burlingame received favorable permission from the college president to find a staff, programming and a transmitter. Having enough equipment from radio production classes to get the operation started, Muskingum’s first 10 watt transmitter came from Kent State University, a few hours north of New Concord. Since FM radios were not yet common in the early 1960s, the campus bookstore had to special order them for the community to purchase for $19. I never get tired of Burlingame telling the story, especially the part where students weren’t permitted to play rock’n roll on the radio.”
