WPKN Celebrates... Music from Stage & Screen... Your Radio Station... Your Soundtrack! A special fundraising event Monday and Tuesday, Feb 13 and 14. Get a great gift with your donation! Your contribution helps WPKN, a 501(c)(3) organization. Choose a great subscription with your sustaining donation to WPKN! I have been on the ‘PKN airwaves thirty years (yikes!) - feels like a few lifetimes - and I also served in several positions on the station’s board of directors. In my other life, I have worked as a clinical social worker for way too many years, am a longtime resident of New Haven, ...

Join WPKN on the air on March 18 for a special day of programming and fundraising that will feature the women of WPKN’s on-air staff. We will be raising spirits and funds for WPKN from 7 a.m. until midnight on March 18. Get a great gift with your donation! Your contribution helps WPKN, a 501(c)(3) organization. Choose a great subscription with your sustaining donation to WPKN! WPKN Board of Directors, Program Director WPKN has been an essential part of my life for more than thirty years. I feel lucky to have moved to an area with such great radio ...

Joni Mitchell's Birthday and an Americana Music Celebration! November 7 and 8, join WPKN for a fundraising celebration of folk and Americana music! We'll help Joni Mitchell celebrate her birthday! The best donation you can give us is a monthly donation to our station. For a monthly donation above $15 per month we will add in a digital subscription to the Washington Post or the New York Times. Get a Great Gift with Your Donation!→ Your contribution helps WPKN, a 501(c)(3) organization. ←Choose a great subscription gift with your sustaining donation to WPKN! Al Bell celebrates the Blues and R&B, ...

Spirit Matters with Annette Szczesiul airs every third Wednesday of the month  12- 1 pm. Spirit matters is a monthly program dedicated to meditative sitting and making time for quiet and reflection.  Every third Wednesday listeners are invited to enjoy a slowed-down lunchtime getaway of calm.  Each episode Annette will guide listeners through a period of quiet sitting (no religious bent or denomination required) accompanied by beautiful sounds, music, and thought/feeling provoking readings.  Sometimes pre-recorded, sometimes live in the studio, occasional interviews and guests; always going easy and softly and breathing deeply.  A peaceful break from a chaotic world.  Join me! Annette has been with WPKN ...

British Invasion! From the beginning of the record industry, American blues, jazz and rock-and-roll inspired musicians all around the world, particularly in Britain. In the mid-1960s, the proverbial turn-tables turned when British music and culture took the United States by storm. This phenomenon has come to be known as the British Invasion. American youth frenzied around British pop and rock groups such as The Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, and, perhaps most notably, the Beatles. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, America was ripe to accept the spirit of The Beatles music. Walter Cronkite featured a special on the Beatles in December of that ...

Write On! A singer-songwriter is a musician who writes, composes, and performs their own musical material, including lyrics and melodies. In the United States, the category is built on the folk-acoustic tradition, although this role has transmuted through different eras of popular music. Get a Great Gift with Your Donation! Your contribution helps WPKN, a 501(c)(3) organization. Al Bell celebrates the Blues and R&B, playing songs in accordance with his own unique desire to hear one creative piece in juxtaposition with the next. Learn More What inspires me about ‘PKN is that amidst all the differences, there is a ...

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. Charles Mingus, Jr. Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist, pianist, composer, and bandleader. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered ...

Created by African-Americans in the United States in the late 1800s, the blues is a music genre, a style of music, a way of presenting musical ideas, different musical cultures, and an emotion. Its roots are in African American slave songs such as field hollers, work songs, spirituals, and country string ballads. Rural music that captured the suffering, anguish, and hopes of 300 years of slavery and tenant farming, the blues was typically played by roaming solo musicians on acoustic guitar, piano, or harmonica. Early on, the lyrics and instruments of the blues were improvised, giving rise to the one-stringed diddley bow, the percussive washboard, the jug, the spoons, and ...

Muscle Shoals Sound Join WPKN on December 16 and 17 for a special fundraiser celebrating the Muscle Shoals Sound. In 1969, The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, widely referred to as “The Swampers” started a recording studio. The founders, Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Jimmy Johnson, were originally session musicians at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios and, together with Hall, they created the “Muscle Shoals Sound.” The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section provided musical backing and arrangements for major hits by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and the Staple Singers. Success in soul and R&B prompted rock and pop performers to record at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. Recordings included Elkie Brooks, ...

Join us on November 22-23 for a special fundraiser celebrating the inimitable Joni Mitchell. It’s a day of music, stories and fun as we take a look at the impact and accomplishments of one of this decade’s greatest living artists. A true favorite of WPKN programmers and listeners alike, we are delighted to be dedicated to all things Joni and will have special premiums including a brand new, totally unique t-shirt in her honor (designed by Wendy Flanagan and hand-screened by Liz Squillace). Get a Great Gift with Your Donation! Your contribution helps WPKN, a 501(c)(3) organization. What inspires me about ...

IMAGINE by John Lennon Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky Imagine all the people Livin’ for today Ah Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Livin’ life in peace You You may say I’m a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You ...

BRILL BUILDING A two-day fundraising special – September 9-10! The Brill Building is located at 1619 Broadway and 49th St. in New York City. The 11 story building was built in 1931 and is famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the most popular American songs were written. It dominating the pop charts in the early 1960s. The “Brill” name comes from a haberdasher who operated a store at street level and bought the building. Composers and Lyricists at the Brill Building Burt Bacharach, Jeff Barry, Bert Berns, Bobby Darin, Hal David, Neil Diamond, Luther Dixon, Sherman Edwards, Buddy Feyne, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie ...

80 Years - Bob Dylan Birthday Special celebrates Bob Dylan who has been a major figure in popular culture for more than 6 decades. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist. Some of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (1964) became anthems for civil rights and anti-war movements. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and within 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), ...

Join WPKN for a special fundraising event American v. British Folk from 7 am to 10 pm on Friday, March 26, 2021. It’s now half-a-century since British folk rock became A Thing, with the early practitioners breaking new ground and inspiring an entire scene that peaked in the late Sixties/early Seventies. Earnest young post-Dylan singer/songwriters moved away from the intimacy of the folk clubs in favour of the nascent college/university circuit. Countercultural iconoclasts The Incredible String Band became a seismic influence on a whole raft of bands now categorised as acid-folk, Pentangle’s use of acoustic instrumentation within a nominally rock framework attracted many emulators (though arguably no real equals), ...

Jazz Love Songs: An all-day music and fundraising special only at WPKN 89.5 FM and streaming at WPKN.org. No genre does it better, and nothing says, “I love you” like jazz. If your theme for February is romance, the volunteers at WPKN want you to know how they feel: We LOVE our listening audience! Over the course of the day, we’ll be reading Valentine’s Day Tributes from our listening audience to their loved ones. Donations from this fundraiser will be used for the station operations, allowing our continued success. Cliff brings music little heard on the radio or the mainstream. Learn More What inspires me ...

A special two-day fundraiser in honor of a special label: WPKN celebrates Blue Note Records all day on October 26 and 27. It was 81 years ago that a German immigrant and passionate Jazz Aficionado, Alfred Lion, produced his first recording session in New York City. The rest is history: Blue Note Records is one of the longest-running Jazz labels in the world. Its contribution to jazz recording is legendary for its breadth, creativity and quality. Current Blue Note president Don Was continues the tradition, in documenting today’s golden age of jazz and beyond. At WPKN we love Jazz, we love innovation, and we love quality. Blue Note has always stood ...

Be prepared to be glued to your radio! Join us for LennonMcCartney, September 28/29 from 7 am -10 pm. This special fundraiser offers a two-day celebration of two rock geniuses, together and on their own. Featuring music, stories, special premiums and a deep dive into Lennon and McCartney’s Songbook from a kaleidoscopic array of our wonderful programmers. It’s fundraising as only WPKN can do it: Live, entertaining, distinctive, personal and always opinionated. Help support your community radio station and experience a feast for your ears. WPKN Board of Directors Library Director I have been Library Director since August of 2012, and have been dubbed ‘the ...

In Her Own Words:  Iconic Women is a two-day fundraiser celebrating some of this century's most phenomenal singer-songwriters... join us June 22 & 23 from 7 am to 10 pm. Donate I am grateful to be involved with WPKN, which is such a great community listener-supported station. It has been an honor to be the general manager of WPKN (since 2013). Learn More I have been on the ‘PKN airwaves thirty years (yikes!) - feels like a few lifetimes - and I also served in several positions on the station’s board of directors. Learn More Emily hosts the show "All Levels", a show ...

Annette Szczesiul features anything musical, spoken or written down (poetry, essays, comedy, eastern philosophy, metaphysics) that I think is worthwhile is fair game! First and fourth Saturdays of each month 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.; occasional fill-ins Annette has been with WPKN since 1989 as a volunteer, programmer, and sometimes member of the Board of Directors. Learn More Listen on Soundcloud