Imagine radio broadcasts with no commercials, no top-five playlists that loop every half-hour, and no DJs pandering to their corporate bosses. After listening to WMFO, Tufts freeform radio, your imagination can take a vacation because finally, a station is just about the music.
Tufts students, alums, and surrounding community members have been fighting the good fight against senseless commercial radio during their weekly WMFO timeslots since 1970.
Broadcasting on 91.5 MHz from Curtis Hall and streaming on TuftsLife.com worldwide, WMFO offers solace and refuge from the blandness that is Clear Channel commercial radio.
One long-running show is "On the Town." "O.T.T." has aired for sixteen years on Wednesday nights from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. The show features live local bands that come into the studio to play a 45-minute set and talk on-air with DJ Joel Simches.
Perhaps the longest running show on WMFO, "Something about the Women," showcases female artists from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. It was "started in 1973, back when women got very little airplay on the radio at all," said Sue Edelman (J '85), the senior member of the "Something About the Women" collective. Each week, a different DJ in the five-member collective takes creative control over the show. The rotating hosts keep the show fresh.
The show goes beyond "hit songs" to play rare cuts, in-studio performances, and listener requests. "Sometimes we learn about new artists from our listeners," says Edelman. "It's a great collaboration."
Another mainstay on Saturday mornings at WMFO is community member Alex Piandes' "Coffee 'n' Smokes" from 7 to 10 a.m. Piandes serves up "garage punk and other lo-fi slop from the 1960s to the present" that is sure to, according to WMFO's website, "cure your existing hangover...at the crack of dawn."
Phisheads and jam band aficionados unite on "Runaway Golfcart Marathon," from 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesdays. Hosted by "Terrapin," (aka Jake Cohen, J '03), the show draws heavily on the DJ's personal collection of over 1,000 hours of live music. Featured music includes everything from Grateful Dead shows from 1969 to Phish concerts from this past summer. Anything of the jamband variety from funk to rock to bluegrass to electronica is fair game.
Part of the beauty of WMFO's freeform style is its ability to allow longer pieces airtime, assuring Cohen the space and freedom he needs for the long jams of Phish and The Dead. He assures listeners that there's something for everyone. "People can get turned off by the term 'jamband,' thinking it's just hippie music, but really it encompasses almost every genre, even classical music."
"British Accents" plays Britpop, U.K. indie, and new-wave for anglophiles everywhere on Sundays from 3 to 5 p.m. Host David Virr, a Somerville community member, feels that Tufts students should tune in "because there's more to British rock than Coldplay and Radiohead." Virr, who also keeps his day job as a WFNX DJ, highlights such bands as the Super Furry Animals, Snow Patrol, Kasabian, and Belle & Sebastian.
As a freeform station, the shows on WMFO are incredibly diverse. Some feature political commentaries, others focus on specific genres of music, whether they be blues, indie rock, hip-hop, world music, folk, or otherwise. While a particular show might not be everyone's cup of tea, there are over 80 weekly shows for listeners to enjoy.
WMFO is one of the few freeform stations still up and running in the nation. The "freeform" format means that the DJ (whether a student, alum, or community member) has ultimate control over what songs and musings carry over to listeners via the 91.5 wave.
Jennifer Sekelsky's show "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" is a long-time fixture on Sunday mornings from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Featuring an eclectic mix of indie rock, electronic, ambient, and hip-hop, "Dilemma" is a perfect example of just how far-reaching and creative freeform radio can be.
"College radio should be a place to hear music you won't hear elsewhere," says Sekelsky. "For me, that's mostly new music, or at least stuff that's on smaller labels. WMFO is just the place to hear new music and local bands."
To find out more about WMFO or to listen to a live, streaming broadcast, visit www.wmfo.org.
