Category: Station News

Introducting ExCITeCast

By: Maren Larsen

ExCITeCast, the official podcast of Drexel University’s Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies Center (ExCITe), is coming to WKDU!

The ExCITe Center houses a unique piano which has been retrofitted with an array of sensors and electromagnets. This allows it to produce music with the timbre of a piano and the creative capabilities of other stringed instruments, like vibrato and pitch bending. On it, you can play music that ExCITe’s beat-sensing robots can dance or play along with. Those robots are outfitted in sleek protective armor created on the digital knitting machines housed in the center’s Shima Seiki Haute Technology Lab. All of this is located at 3401 Market Street–right on Drexel’s campus.

The ExCITe Center also houses the Drexel App Lab, the Entrepreneurial Game Studio (known for its involvement in the Cira Center’s giant Tetris and Pong games), a digital inclusion lab, and space for various other multi-disciplinary, highly-collaborative projects.

Pretty ExCITing, right? (ed note: groan.)

ExCITeCast airs the first Tuesday of each month at 9 a.m. on WKDU. I, Maren Larsen, Civic Innovation Co-op at the ExCITe Center and DJ of “What The Folk?” on WKDU, am the host of the program.

Each episode focuses on one of the center’s many projects. The first ExCITeCast, at the beginning of October 2014, highlighted the collaboration between the Shima Seiki Lab and our Hubo robotics researchers to create a technologically-advanced protective armor for the robots, allowing them greater mobility and durability. In case you missed it, it can be found on ExCITe’s SoundCloud.

November’s ExCITeCast will feature an interview with the Digital On-Ramps team, part of the Digital Inclusion Group based at ExCITe. Digital On-Ramps is in the process of developing an ePortfolio for jobseekers to store their resumes, work samples, and digital badges. They are also building career pathway maps for Philadelphia’s biggest industries so that those looking for jobs can see the next steps in their careers.

Join us on Tuesday by tuning in at 91.7 FM or wkdu.org!

2014 CMJ Nominations are Open!

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Are you a person involved with CMJ/College radio? Do you like us at all? (just a little?) Then consider nominating us for the 2014 awards! Whether it’s “Best use of limited resources,” “Most creative programming,” or “most likely to inappropriately hit on me,” we’ve got to qualify for something that last one, at least.

Additionally, and more excitingly, the 2014 artist line-up for the festival has just been announced, and includes the Wytches, 2:54, Juan Wuaters, Porches, Saint Pepsi, and even GERARD WAY among others!

We’re #stoked.

Gerard

See you there! 

 

Reggae Marathon Re-Cap: Sweet Daddy Fish & Duprex Snape Break Down the History of Reggae on WKDU

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Fishley, Danny Roots, and DJ Wayne, noting that the master control panel on the door has Rastafari lives, handwritten on it.

By Chris Burrell

If you listen to WKDU regularly, you know that we don’t take reggae lightly – we currently have eight reggae shows on our schedule for the summer term. The only way that kind of support for one specific genre can exist is through cultivating a grassroots and dedicated listener base over many years.

The reggae marathon, which takes place every Memorial Day weekend, was instrumental in forming such a strong reggae listener base and connection with the Caribbean community in West Philly. Now in its 31st year, the reggae marathon is still going strong, as over 30 DJ’s from West Philly and beyond came out and fundraised in support of WKDU and the Red Cross Jamaica to be a part of the 100+ hour marathon.

On Saturday afternoon of the marathon, I was able to catch up with Clinton Fishley (aka Sweet Daddy Fish) to chat about the history of the event. Fishley has been involved with the marathon for 29 of its 31 years, and is heavily entrenched in the reggae scenes in West Philly and Germantown.

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Fishley showed me his Drexel alumni card from 1990, indicating his B.S. in Accounting and proudly told me, “I finished my degree in two and half years, with a 3.84 GPA.”

The reggae marathon started in 1983, when Hopeton Brown, General Manager of the station at the time, gathered DJ’s from Boston, Virginia, New York, Maryland, and beyond to connect through good reggae music and a charitable cause. The success of initial marathons was influential in establishing a large and dedicated listener base that has continued on today, where we still have numerous streams from Jamaican IP addresses each week. I phoned up my friend Duprex Snape of Jamcity Rock, who I go back to back with on Thursday nights, to get the scoop as to how reggae became such a big thing at the station.

“Once reggae was on the air, it just took off, and it was a way to stay connected to people – down in Jamaica and all over.”

Duprex has had his show, Jamcity Rock, on Thursdays from 6-9 PM for 14 years, and keeps a musical focus on the local scene and undisputed classics in the genre. One of the artists Duprex has supported on his show, who was also in the studio on Saturday, was Germantown artist Danny Roots.

Roots was born in Jamaica, grew up in East Flatbush Brooklyn, and made his way to Philly some years ago. He opened up on his musical upbringing to me, and recalled buying his first record, Dr. No Go, in Jamaica for 13 shillings and 6 pence.

This short blog post doesn’t come close to doing justice to the amazing work that these DJ’s have put in connecting the Caribbean community of West Philly through the thousands of hours they’ve logged on-air. If you’re ever looking to learn more about the genre, check out our summer schedule, tune into a reggae show, and call our studio to send BIGUPS to our amazing selectors.

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Communiqué is BACK!

Hey readers,

As you could probably tell, Communiqué  has been on a bit of a hiatus recently. I figured I should probably give an explanation for that. As editor-in-chief, it’s solely my responsibility to upload content to the blog, as well as write much of the content and goad others into contributing. However, I’ve been neglecting my duties as of late because I’ve been busy studying abroad in Istanbul. While orientation left me little time to do anything, I should be moving to a more regular schedule which will allow me to pick back up with my duties at Communiqué. We have a whole bunch of posts coming up, so keep your eye on the blog! Thanks very much for reading.

Nick Stropko, Editor-in-Chief