10/19/2005 - Updated 10:34 PM ET Page 4A
Musical heart and soul' back on the air New Orleans radio station returns after storm shut it down By Bill Nichols USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051020/a_wwoz20.art.htm BATON ROUGE Disc jockey Freddie Blue's fingers danced across his computer keyboard Wednesday morning, prompting the classic sounds of Dr. John, the Rebirth Brass Band and Ernie K-Doe to announce some good news to the people of New Orleans: The heartbeat of the Crescent City was back on the air. WWOZ-FM, a tiny public radio station that serves as a voice of the multihued New Orleans sound and a lifeline for area musicians devastated by Hurricane Katrina, made it back on the air for its first full day since the storm smashed its New Orleans studios. It's a beautiful day, Freddie Blue real name Fred Goodrich crooned from a temporary studio in Baton Rouge. And it's great to play some music. Oz, as the station is known to listeners, has become more than a radio station in the new world of New Orleans, where any link to pre-Katrina life is cherished. The city's musical community sees the station as its central nervous system, and the news that it was back on the radio dial was cause for celebration. They are to New Orleans today what Radio Free Europe was to the world of the Iron Curtain before communism fell, says Quint Davis, the producer of the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. I think it's one of the great radio stations in the world. And it's definitely the heart and soul of New Orleans music. In New Orleans, every survivor seems to have a story that could be the stuff of movies. The team behind WWOZ is no different. When Katrina hit, Ken Freedman, the station manager of New Jersey public radio station WFMU-FM, began to worry about what had happened to WWOZ. Freedman said he thought, Man, oh man, I've got to at least help them maintain their online audience. He managed to track down WWOZ station manager David Freedman no relation and a Rube Goldberg-style Internet broadcast was put together within days. Using WFMU's technical facilities and library of New Orleans music, WWOZ was able to stream a signal to its Internet home page using staffers' laptops linked from around the South. They dubbed it WWOZ in Exile, and along with music, the station put together a list of virtually every known New Orleans musician, whether they were safe and accounted for, and what their needs might be. Oz has always been the intangible glue that holds this community together, says jazz pianist David Torkanowsky, a WWOZ disc jockey. If you're going to restart the city, you have to start with the heartbeat. For musicians, it's a beacon. As the floodwaters receded, David Freedman was anxious to get the station back on the air and to be sure WWOZ's priceless collection of zydeco, Cajun, jazz and blues records and CDs had not been damaged. He sneaked back into New Orleans with a fake press pass and climbed 20 flights of stairs in the darkness to get to the station's midtown studio. The collection seemed largely safe, although some exclusive live recordings done by the station over its 25-year history were thoroughly baked when air conditioning failed. He was in Los Angeles on Wednesday to talk with officials of the Grammy Foundation about helping salvage the collection. The past few weeks have been spent trying to get the station's signal back on the airwaves by getting its transmitter in working order and locating enough of WWOZ's 120 volunteer DJs to begin live programming. Late Tuesday afternoon, the signal from the borrowed studio at Louisiana Public Broadcasting's office was successfully beamed to the transmitter in New Orleans. It's like giving birth to a large child, program director Dwayne Breashears says. Like most New Orleans institutions, WWOZ's future is unclear. Contributions totaling more than $100,000 have poured in from around the globe since Katrina hit, but manager Freedman worries that his subscription base could wither in a vastly smaller New Orleans. He vows that Oz will try to do its part to heal this wounded city by showing the world that its syncopated style has not been stilled. Communities aren't just buildings, Freedman says. Our job is to try to be sure that we don't lose this spirit that sets New Orleans apart. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.4/146 - Release Date: 10/21/2005 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _______________________________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
