WWOZ On the Good Foot

After 18 years on-air doing a Friday evening jazz slot on DC’s bastion of community radio, WPFW, one of my first priorities upon landing in New Orleans last October was a prospecting visit to the studios of WWOZ, community radio in the Crescent City.  GM David Freedman and Program Director Dwayne Breashears, clearly recognizing a community radio diehard, were quite welcoming.  I had been familiar with WWOZ mainly from many trips to Jazz Fest, the two New Orleans IAJE conferences, and assorted other conference and meeting trips down here.  Familiarity with WWOZ came courtesy primarily through the programming exploits of Michael Gourrier ("Mr. Jazz"), Michael Kline, and the late, lamented "Moose".  

I vividly remember pulling over on Canal Street one sultry April morning during Jazz Fest while Suz dashed across the street for a coffee and being thoroughly enthralled by a John Sinclair spin of George French’s unforgettablly rich-voiced rendition of the Hoagy Carmichael classic "New Orleans."  A quick trip to the now-defunct Decatur Street Tower Records store and I was introduced not only to George French but to his drumming brother Bob French and his Tuxedo Jazz Band.  Arriving down here last fall for this as yet undetermined spell in the Crescent City, 90.7 FM (listen live at www.wwoz.org) became my instant broadcast soundtrack for life in NOLA.  Flipping on the station Tuesdays and Fridays 9-11 am even yielded the sardonically-humored, New Orleans-proud, Musician’s Village-dwelling Bob French himself (hear him musically on his ’07 Marsalis Music Honors series disc).

WPFW is part of that last bastion of politically progressive radio stations the Pacifica network; a station whose motto "Jazz & Justice" is manifested by a balanced menu of jazz, Latin, blues, global rhythms, R&B and left-leaning politics, much of it from a decidedly African American perspective befitting DC’s populace.  On the other hand WWOZ is thoroughly, 100% about music; leave politics for others to ponder.  Much of WWOZ’s music is about roots — classic blues and R&B, New Orleans and Louisiana music, likely the most radio hours devoted to early jazz in America, modern jazz, a strong global strip on Saturdays, gospel on Sundays, and an "open door policy" towards resident artists’ recordings and interview opportunities.

Yes, I do know the drill at community radio; i.e. it wasn’t about walking in off the street with 30+ years of public radio experience in my pocket and being immediately installed in a programming slot.  The community radio pecking order calls for signing up as a program sub and abiding your time for openings.  Fortunately those openings have come at a decent clip for yours truly.  And in a fascinating twist I’ve been able to stretch a bit musically.  As is the case at WPFW programmers largely work from their own extensive record collections, in the case of WWOZ largely eschewing a station record library that was severely depleted by Katrina and is just now getting back up to speed. 

WWOZ, a station with an impressive percentage of ‘net listeners from across the globe who also contribute mightily during the station’s pledge drives, is a decidedly "character" driven radio station.  Besides Bob French the characters abound, including "Jelly Roll Justice", "The Problem Child", "Black Mold", "Gentilly", the stellar Saturday evening classic R&B spinner who goes by "The Soul Sister", "Hazel the Delta Rambler", "The Midnight Creeper", "Big D", "Jivin’ Gene", "The Minister of Swing", "Cousin Dmitri", "Brother Jesse", the Operations Director is the inimitable "Freddie Blue"… you get the drift.

My own stretching has enabled me to work towards fresh and unique combinations of music from my collection, often spinning styles of music I’d never had a previous opportunity to radio program particularly when subbing for one of the nightly "Kitchen Sink" 10-midnight slots which I’ve had the pleasure of doing on several occasions.  That particular format, as in "everything but…" has a tendency to be about R&B at the core with opportunities for myriad related spin-offs.  I’ve tended to take the format literally by its title, which might call for a set featuring for instance the neo-soul sista Sy Smith, followed by John Coltrane, Sekou Sundiata, the Neville Brothers, and concluding with some Jimi Hendrix.  Yes you can roll that way with the "Kitchen Sink."

Depending upon when/if you read this, the next upcoming opportunities to catch the Open Sky way on the WWOZ airways are Thursday, March 27 and Friday, March 28 subbing for the Morning Jazz Set from 6-9am CST; and sitting in for my man "Black Mold" on the daily New Orleans Music Show Thursday, April 11 from 11am-2pm CST.  And the WWOZ studio line is 504/568-1234.  Listen live at www.wwoz.org.

All For One: Harold Battiste

Dillard University has embarked upon an ambitious initiative to develop the Institute of Jazz Culture on one of New Orleans’ three HBCU campuses.  Under the direction of trumpeter-educator Edward Anderson one of the first projects of the Institute of Jazz Culture (IJC) is to conduct oral histories of some of New Orleans’ most important contemporary jazz musicians, including several who are Dillard alums.  Recently I had the privilege of conducting an oral history interview with the sage saxophonist-composer-arranger-educator Harold Battiste at his home adjacent to Bayou St. John in the Mid-City area.

Though physically slowed by some of the inevitable infirmities of age, at 77 Harold Battiste is blessed with exceptional recall of his rich and varied career in music.  A white-bearded, gentle spirit, the coffee-complected gentleman is one of the scions of New Orleans’ modern jazz — or if you’d prefer as he might — late 20th century NOLA jazz development.

Born and raised in New Orleans and a product of Booker T. Washington High School, Harold Battiste earned his Bachelor’s in music at Dillard in 1953.  In ’57 after connecting with producer Bumps Blackwell, Battiste experienced his first pop success as the arranger of Sam Cooke’s classic hit "You Send Me."  What followed was a raft of other work as producer and arranger for recordings and television.  These included Barbara George’s gold record "I Know", Lee Dorsey’s "Ya Ya" and a long stint as music director for Sonny and Cher, notably their hit records like "I Got You Babe" and their television show. 

Harold Battiste is also responsible for unleashing on the music world a quirky New Orleans music character born Mac Rebennack who under Battiste’s production morphed into Dr. John.  Rebennack is someone who literally learned much of the business under Battiste’s tutelage.  During our interview Harold chuckled as he recounted how Rebennack adopted the Dr. John moniker somewhat by default; a personna based on NOLA’s voodoo folklore, and how Mac’s intial records like "Gris Gris" and "Babylon" (both under the direction of Harold Battiste on the Atlantic label) were more spoof than anything thoroughly serious; a murky mix of folkloric expression leavened with bayou funk and edgy jazz inflections that recall Sun Ra.  But somehow that spoof caught on and Dr. John was born and transformed into one of the quintessential New Orleans-identified music personalities.

Despite all his successful pop hits, major tours, and television activity  — all achieved during an extended stint in Los Angeles —  Harold Battiste has always been at heart a jazz modernist, a saxophone playing disciple of Charlie Parker to the core.  Perhaps most significantly from his jazz perspective he was a contemporary of a coterie of fellow New Orleans modernists that included the clarinetist Alvin Batiste, drummers James Black and Edward Blackwell, pianist Ellis Marsalis, and saxophonists Nat Perilliat and Alvin "Red" Tyler.  These artists and others were all featured on Harold’s All For One, or AFO, Records label.  Formed in 1961 AFO was significantly the first African American musician-owned label.

After so much success in Los Angeles in the studios, Harold Battiste succumbed to the siren song of his hometown New Orleans and returned home in 1989, assuming a teaching position on the Jazz Studies faculty at the University of New Orleans under the direction of Ellis Marsalis.  In 1991, with the assistance of poet and fellow sage Kalamu ya Salaam (www.kalamu.com, where you can check out his dialogues and downloads on black music at Breath of Life) Harold re-birthed AFO. 

If you can locate it, perhaps the quintessential key to experiencing the early efforts of the very vital but quite overlooked work of Harold Battiste and his intrepid crew of New Orleans jazz modernists is the four-Lp boxed set New Orleans Heritage: Jazz 1956-1966.  These records detail a vibrant kind of New Orleans jazz underground.  Traditional New Orleans jazz has become one of the city’s trademarks, but little is known of these modernistic developments.  Its almost as if the modern approach to jazz expression was born with the NOCCA generation, including the Marsalis sons, Blanchard, Connick, Harrison, et. al.  The musicians represented by the earliest days of AFO were indeed the mentors of that very prominent generation.  One only hopes Harold is able to reissue this superb package on compact disc or perhaps make it available in some downloadable form.  It can certainly unlock what to many is the unknown story of modern jazz development in the Crescent City.

Harold Battiste has established AFO as a foundation, in the main under the credo he lays down on his web site (www.afofoundation.org) "One of the focal points of my life’s work has been the documentation and preservation of New Orleans Music of the Post WWll era."  In that light he has produced and released a series of recordings, some of which are issues of previously unreleased sessions from the late 50s and early 60s that chronicle the vitality of these New Orleans modernists.  You can access these recordings at www.afofoundation.org, which is also where you can catch up on Harold Battiste’s efforts on behalf of what he refers to jointly as "The Second 50 Years" of New Orleans jazz, gazing into the future or what he dubs "The Next Generation"; a generation typified by such promising young artists as pianist and AFO recording artist Jesse McBride, who holds forth weekly at NOLA’s bastion of modern jazz Snug Harbor under the Next Generation banner. 

We’ll try to make that Harold Battiste oral history available to Independent Ear Blog readers as a transcript becomes available.  Next up for Dillard’s Institute of Jazz Culture are anticipated oral history sessions with clarinetist Dr. Michael White and Ellis Marsalis.

Recent articles and reports in the daily New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper have detailed ongoing home demolition efforts in various still-devastated parts of the city.  Yes, now 29 months after the calamity of Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent collapse of the federal levees and resulting floodwaters, there are still hundreds if not thousands of devastated and dilapidated homes, unoccupied and abandoned yet still standing as ghostly reminders that New Orleans is far from whole. 

Other newspaper articles detailed the coming legions of good folks, many on Spring Break from school, who are on their way to New Orleans to further stoke the ongoing volunteer recovery efforts, including home building.  Yes… 29 months later this place remains in recovery at a snails pace.

Driving through various neighborhoods, notably the Ninth Ward, Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly, and Ponchartrain Park areas, one is struck by their ghost town quality.  As Suzan Jenkins and many others have remarked, you can drive down those streets and sure you see homeowners who have persevered and determined to remake their abodes, but one cannot get beyond the fact that basic services are minimal (schools, hospitals, grocery stores, etc.) and the ongoing blight of abandoned structures tilting on their sides in various states of complete disrepair represent ongoing health and safety hazards even to those laudable post-Katrina pioneers.  So what must the quality of life be like on what one writer described as those "gap-toothed" streets?

Two young friends recently visited the city on holiday for the NBA All-Star game festivities.  That was a splendid weekend in the city, full of parties and various hilarity, and the presence of a galaxy of "stars".  The spotlight shone brightly on New Orleans during NBA All-Star weekend and the city came through like the champion host it has always been.  Numerous visitors, pretty much confined to the Central Business District (CBD) and the adjacent French Quarter, couldn’t help but leave satiated, impressed, and feeling the city was back together, made whole… it’s all good!  The total picture of New Orleans is quite a bit less than whole, as our friends were fortunate enough to experience.  We afforded them opportunities to contrast the real deal with the gloss of NBA All-Star game weekend festivities. 

In consideration of the fact that New Orleans is gearing up for the seven glorious days of it’s second biggest annual tourism period, the peerless event known as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (last weekend of April/first weekend of May), I asked one young lady, Adrienne Winston a budding ABC television producer, to reflect on her experiences that weekend and those glaring contrasts; thus offering a kind of preview for the thousands of impending Jazz Fest visitors.

Willard Jenkins: Had you ever previously visited New Orleans, and what were your past impressions of the city?

Adrienne Winston: I had never been to New Orleans but of course had heard wonderful things from people who had visited and friends who went to school there (pre-Katrina).

WJ: What was your sense of the city on foot; in the vicinity of your hotel in the CBD, the French Quarter, your NBA All-Star Game experience, etc.?

AW: Well obviously NBA All-Star weekend is a slightly skewed sample so it was incredibly crowded everywhere on Canal Street, especially in front of the Sheraton and Marriott on Canal, which were just two blocks from our hotel.  We stayed in a great location which was just feet from the French Quarter which we did some touring of, on our way to and from different restaurants.  Walking around even on the first day I understood why people loved the city so much, it is incredibly charming.  Even if you never go into the stores just walking by them and taking in the presentation and the architecture you can feel the history all around you.

I had heard before on the news that the French Quarter sat higher up than other parts of the city and so it hadn’t sustained much [flood] damage which I was really able to appreciate.

WJ: On Saturday of that weekend you got a chance to get out and see more of the city, in particular St. Charles Avenue on a taxi ride to Loyola University, and areas which weren’t as hard hit by Katrina as others.  What were your impressions?

AW: Our ride to Loyola and later with Suzan throughout the Garden District was breathtaking, it makes me want to buy property down there.  The homes are beautiful and they are all so different, you can see all of the cultural influences the city has absorbed over the centuries.

WJ: On Sunday you were given a small slice of what I refer to as the New Orleans misery tour.  What was your impression of the areas in disrepair and recovery that you visited?

AW: What struck me first was that literally just a few blocks from where we had been partying there was a very literal tent city below the highway.  [At the corner of Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue, under the I-10 overpass is an ongoing encampment of the homeless, many of who were made homeless by the Storm.]  Dozens of people living in tents, homeless.  It doesn’t take a genius to know these people are victims of Katrina, which is evident by their mounds of belongings surrounding their tents.  As we continued on, the difference between the attitudes of the city became more plain.  Damaged structures were becoming more numerous.

We crossed a bridge and were able to get our first glimpse of a neighborhood and it’s shocking proximity to the levees that failed.  Dozens and dozens of homes were simply left abandoned and there were piles of debris everywhere.  The trip over the second bridge however was by far the worst, presumably because the land sat ever lower.  There are no words for what I saw, we all started crying.  As you came over the [St. Claude] Bridge, even hundreds of feet away you could see the barren trees and homes with no roofs.  There were literally blocks and blocks of decimated houses.

Homes that sat directly in front of the levees had been swept off their foundations.  It seemed as though only brick homes had been able to withstand the force of the water.  We did see some homes that had been rebuilt but that was one in every few dozen; there was no neighborhood left.  You couldn’t even call it a neighborhood because the area was so big; it was [more like] a city.  A city that had been allowed to wash away and was left to fend for itself.  We actually passed a home that looked like it had been stepped on; honestly the house had been squished like an accordion.  I presume that it had been picked up by the flood water and dropped.

You can’t help but feel a hopelessness. [as though] the town has been completely abandoned, and it doesn’t look as though the government has any intention of putting it back together.  Among the blocks we drove you never saw any construction equipment, no sign that something was being done.

WJ: Give me your overall impression of New Orleans, considering both sides that you experienced.

AW: Overall the trip was a positive one.  We got to experience the spirit of New Orleans and enjoy her excellent food.  Even though the trip to the lower wards was very painful it had a positive impact on me.  It made me angry in the best way and I feel as though if more people were able to get one-on-one time with the destruction they would be just as outraged as the people who live there.

Yes indeed, the Yin & Yang of New Orleans!  Here’s one place music lovers in particular are encouraged to assist in the recovery of the very real human needs of New Orleanians:

Sweet Home New Orleans

1201 Saint Phillip Street

New Orleans, LA 70116-2931

504/596-3924 or toll free 877/933-8466

www.sweethomeneworleans.org

Based purely on that fratboy nonsense one sees every year as the mass media depiction of Mardi Gras I must say I was less than impressed and never truly compelled to visit New Orleans during that annual carnival.  Being here in the mix is a decidedly different story.  Mardi Gras came early this year, colliding rather closely with the dreaded post-holiday bill receipt season and in direct conflict with the Super Bowl on the last Sunday of carnival.  (We had a Super Bowl party at our house and some of the revelers split to make the short walk to St. Charles Avenue for the big Bacchus parade that evening.)  All that aside from all accounts Mardi Gras ’08 was a much closer return to pre-Katrina levels of both attendance and celebration for the local folks.

Though it seems somewhat discounted as more of a lark than an "official" part of the Mardi Gras season, the season kicked off for us royally with the tongue-in-cheek Krewe du Vieux parade through the Marigny and the French Quarter on Saturday, January 19.  There’s something about witnessing a squad of guys dressed as sperm, followed closely behind by a phallus-festooned parade float and led by a smokin’ brass band that’s bound to get you in the spirit!  I’d been forewarned that Krewe du Vieux was not to be missed.  This was the parade with the most over-the-top and biting political satire of all, and the only parade of the entire Mardi Gras season to employ 18 brass bands — including such outstanding examples of the form as Rebirth Brass Band, Treme Brass Band, and the Hot 8.  This was also an excellent taste of nighttime parading and it didn’t take long for that to be a personal preference over the daytime parades. 

We were invited that evening to a parade viewing party by Jason Patterson, who books the acts at NOLA’s most vibrant modern jazz club Snug Harbor.  Jason and his affable spouse live upstairs above the club and throughout the night a host of parade revelers — some costumed, some not… all fueled merrily by the spirits of the evening, passed through their place, either to gawk at the passing parade on Frenchman Street below from the balcony or as a refueling stop before re-joining the hooting, hollering & "throw" catchers on the parade route. 

The "throws" are one of the keys to Mardi Gras.  Though Krewe du Vieux was high on hilarity it was not one of the big float-dominated parades; more of a walking/marching parade with guys dressed up in full female regalia, gals dressed up in all manner of garb and plenty of spectator shout-outs.  But the "throws" were indeed in evidence.  Those ubiquitous Mardi Gras strands of beads are the main "throw", as parade participants toss their booty and bounty to parade watchers along the route, and the catch is the thing.  We’re not talking about big ticket items here, the main thrill being in who can make the catches and stack up the booty.  Yeah I know, you have to be there.

After an excellent trip to Panama (see earlier post) in the wee hours after Krewe du Vieux (we’re talking 2:30am wake-up call!) it was back to NOLA and back to the Mardi Gras mix.  As I said I never really had a bead on the Mardi Gras vibe and was amazed at the sheer number of parades and parties.  For roughly ten days there was a parade every night — sometimes more than one — and both daytime and nighttime parades on the weekends.  Some of the faves were Muses — the all-women parade where males seemed to receive the same preferential "throws" treatment reserved for females on the other parade routes — Tucks was pretty funny, with mini-toilet plungers as one of the prized "throws" (you hadda be there), and two of the so-called "super" parades (so-called because they employ the biggest floats) Endymion and Zulu.

Zulu is of particular interest because as the social aid & pleasure club’s name implies it is the major and traditional black parade; some will recall that Louis Armstrong, the Heavyweight Champion of New Orleans music, was the Zulu King for the 1949 parade.  Zulu was started precisely because of the Jim Crow prohibition of black folks from "rolling" (as the parade route movement is referred) in the other parades.  As a result what started out as a spoof or slam on the other parades — black folks "rolling" in blackface — continues to this day, with Zulu also including a share of white folks in blackface. 

As I viewed the other parades — with some floats for example populated by crazy looking costumed cats all in greenface, yellowface, purpleface or whatever — I was able to somewhat overcome my initial shock (I knew it was coming, but when the afro bewigged black and white faces on the Zulu rollers came around it was still a shock to the cultural system) by putting the cumulative hilarity of parade participant face painting and all-round masquerading of both the rollers and the spectators in context.  And we nabbed two of the prized Zulu "throws" — one black and one gold painted and decorated coconut (and dig the symbolism there as well).

The general parade "rolling" practice appears to be floats sometimes preceeded by  marching revelers (one parade had marching skeletons) and followed by high school and college marching bands.  And that’s where Krewe du Vieux captured the prize, with their rolling procession of brass bands; not to mention the fact that Krewe du Vieux was the only parade other than Zulu to have a black King & Queen.  I found it curious that the Zulu King & Queen were Katrina evacuees still living in Houston.  Would it have been more apt to have a Zulu King & Queen who persevered, weathered the storm and proudly returned to NOLA to assist in the recovery?  You be the judge…

A Bit of the Yin & Yang of Life in the Crescent City

Columnist Chris Rose, in the 1/16/08 edition of The Times-Picayune newspaper, wrote a humorously penetrating column on the eternal question those of us who live in NOLA inevitably face when venturing out: “How’s New Orleans Doing?”  This question is particularly acute for someone like me who is still a relative newcomer to the city, and may even be posed in a more pointed manner.  My standard response is this city is a place of enormous Yin & Yang — a term loosely generalized here to denote Positive & Negative — and the Yin outweighs the Yang… so far.  Or as Rose characterizes it: “things are much better than they are worse.”

 

It’s so easy to forget for a moment the Yang of life in New Orleans, to momentarily dismiss the misery index that might be lurking just around the corner.  If one were to confine oneself to the areas most visitors experience — namely the French Quarter, the Garden District, and most of the Uptown area (where we live and where the Monk Institute is housed at Loyola University) — one would get the impression that all’s well nearly two and a half years after the calamity that is referred to here as The Storm. 

 

The Monk Institute engages jazz masters to visit Loyola on residency teaching gigs with its grad students on a monthly basis, for weeklong stints.  Thus far such illustrious artists as Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, Nnenna Freelon, Danilo Perez, Benny Golson, and John Scofield have come down.  Danilo Perez in particular got an eyeful.  Initially once on the ground he hopefully exclaimed that all seemed well, all appeared to be back together, up and running.  That is until the program’s education coordinator Jonathan Bloom (musician and member of the family of the late clarinet master Alvin Batiste, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, Stephanie Jordan, etc. and a family musician tradition going back seven generations), who literally knows where all the bodies are buried, took him on the obligatory Yang tour of such neighborhoods as the now-infamous Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly, and Lakeside.  To see street after street of either ruins or ghostly concrete slabs where once were lively homes is a sobering immersion into the Yang of New Orleans ’08.  And we’re talking about black folks’ neighborhoods here — but not purely poor folks’ neighborhoods; black folks of all stripe have suffered over the last two+ years of lingering misery index.  The gap between have and have-not in New Orleans is as stark as any I’ve envisioned — even dating back to my former life in the euphemistically titled “criminal justice system” in my post-grad days.  Danilo and the other masters who’ve been on this tour through the lingering misery came away changed.

 

The Yin: the spirit here remains very high.  I have a friend who lost four houses to the Storm.  After decades of paying out homeowners insurance he settled for a grand total of $80K… for FOUR HOUSES!!!  But like so many he is determined to slowly but surely remake those houses, to make them viable dwellings once again — on his own.  You see and experience so much of that spirit that it raises your own sensibilities and optimism.  All over town are legions of work crews, largely Latino, working steadily to rebuild the many ruins.  Traveling a short distance from home to the monthly and quite bustling outdoor marketplace (for a Midwesterner who spent 18 years in the Northeast, the mild, often balmy winter weather here is a major Yin) at Freret & Napoleon on a lovely Saturday afternoon in January we navigated our way around work crews and the occasional neglected ruins — caved in roofs, sides ripped off, in all manner of disrepair — sitting starkly alongside homes brightly decorated for the holidays.  The market was buzzing — a blues band raucously followed the Treme Brass Band onstage while we were there soaking up the spirit… the Yin of New Orleans.

 

It’s Mardi Gras season and the spirits are further boosted.  The markets are chock full of seasonal king cakes and all manner of goodies designed to get your food & drink on for carnival season.  And if you think Mardi Gras is all about that fratboy French Quarter nonsense you see on television… think again.  We’ve learned in no uncertain terms that idiocy ain’t the real Mardi Gras, and we should prepare ourselves for a grand old time.  This weekend is the must-see Krewe du Vieux parade with its over-the-top humor and jamming brass bands — the Yin fo’ sho’.  All these years of disinterest in Mardi Gras based on no interest in that other ridiculousness appears to have been missed opportunities.  We’ll be right there chasing down the Mardi Gras Indians activities like so many Mardi Gras season revelers.  At times like these its so easy to forget the misery index… but it’s here, perhaps just around the corner. 

 

But again, the spirit is strong & high and the will to overcome must inevitably triumph.  The Second Line parades have been jumping every Sunday since late summer.  The rich African cultural traditions embodied in those parades is soul deep and yet more manifestation of the Yin of New Orleans.  The community radio station here, WWOZ 90.7 FM (sample it’s eclectic, New Orleans-centric music menu around the world at www.wwoz.org), is supported nearly as much by folks outside this region who yearn for that New Orleans’ sound as part of their daily life rhythm.  Each odd hour of the day WWOZ runs the Live Wire, detailing who’s playing the clubs.  For a city whose populace is still creeping towards 300,000 from it’s pre-storm 400,000+, the amount of musical joy to be found in its myriad clubs on a nightly basis is amazing.  And some of these joints have 9:00 a.m. hits and others that begin at 2:00 a.m.!

 

After 18 years on-air at beloved WPFW in Washington, DC part of my New Orleans’ Yin is finding opportunities on WWOZ, a station about which I’ll speak in detail next time.  Stay tuned…

Peace,

Willard Jenkins

Jazz Cultural Warrior