WEFUNK Radio
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WeFunk is a weekly radio show held on Montreal's CKUT 90.3, McGill University's radio station. The show began airing regularly in 1996. The show is usually very light on talk as both DJs Professor Groove and DJ Static play a symbiotic mix of Funk, Soul, R&B and Rap, both old and new.
WeFunk expanded to include an internet radio stream in 1998; it is now among the oldest continuously operating internet radio streams. In 2001, Apple featured WeFunk in its new iTunes radio directory, bringing the show to a larger worldwide audience.
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[edit] The Program
Every Friday at midnight, WeFunk's recurring introduction music kicks in, a sampled production of unknown source, and is usually finished off with a few rhyming words by Professor Groove; after that, 2 hours of music follows. Professor Groove is the one responsible for most of the Funk as DJ Static takes care of most of the rap. The duo often divide the show in four to six parts of 20 to 30 minutes.
The show features little talk. Typically there are two voiceover segments, at the start and end of the show, that usually last the length of a song. During those, the duo often report on the local music scene in Montreal, upcoming shows and news about CKUT.
Shows sometimes includes guests, some of them part of the 'WeFunk family', to either perform sets, give interviews, perform live rapping, freestyling and beatboxing. There have also been a number of interviews with important members of the music community or part of history. Some of these include Marva Whitney, Kool Herc, Sharon Jones, Miles Tackett etc.
There are a few recurring guests on WeFunk which are sometimes referred to the WeFunk family (or extended family). Members include Butta Beats (rapper/beatboxing), Tony Ezzy (singer), Rawgged (rapper/beatboxing), and Rawsoul (DJ).
Another subtle yet important part of WeFunk culture are the 'sample moments'. As both music genres played go hand in hand in the creation process of producing beats by mashing up sampled breaks, both DJs will sometimes end and start their sets by playing corresponding songs. These do not happen every show as they often come about by coincidence; Either DJ sometimes will remember having a song that was sampled or that uses a sample that was played by the other in his record bag. These 'sample moments' are often explicitly mentioned in the archives, but there are a lot of hidden ones; Treasures for the keen listener.
WeFunk has had a website for a number of years which has been taken care of by Professor Groove and offers shows for streaming as well as a shoutcast radio stream. The WeFunk radio website offers most of the show's history available to stream, starting at show 168, dating back to 2001.
In 2007, WeFunk shows reach an audience of at least ten thousand regular listeners. Consistent with their roots in community radio, WeFunk has maintained a DIY, ad-free ethic from the start, a position they've managed to sustain throughout a decade of growing listenership thanks to hosting contributed by longtime listeners.
[edit] Show Archives
Since 1998, the iterations of WeFunk have been recorded, and made available for streaming purposes. For every show, there is an accompanying playlist listing the songs that were played during that weeks show, including interviews and live freestyling sessions. The combination of shows and playlists are extremely useful for fans of obsure funk as the title is a few keystrokes away.
Shows are not added to the archive in real time; the usual delay is around 2 or 3 weeks.
Prior to 2002, the shows hosts were not always diligent with the note keeping process. This led to a good number of shows in the archive for which either a limited playlist or no playlist was available. Johnathan James started the WeFunk Playlist Project, which sifted through the unnotated shows to identify many of songs featured. While some songs have not been identified, this is now rare; All shows available have a playlist, and very few of those feature the odd unknown song.
[edit] References
- WeFunk Interview in Cream Magazine (France), December 2005 (in French with English translation)
- Brief history of WeFunk on the WeFunk official website
