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, ...

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, ...

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 ...

Morning Maniac Music with host David Golden. Sundays, 10 AM – 1 PM; Imagine a friendly audio diner serving a specialty sandwich of jazz & jam, with a free-form garnish. The daily playlist is posted in real-time on TWITTER & SPINITRON (except for live, in-studio performances). I’ve served on various station boards and committees, hosted a bunch of live music, and hopefully kept you company. Bring your favorite mug and hang out. Learn More Listen on Soundcloud

WPKN Sunday Brunch Concert with host David Golden. Sundays, 1 – 2 PM. NOTE: Due to Covid-19, out of an abundance of safety concerns, we’re not hosting live performers in the studio for the time being. Until we can do so, we’re presenting a variety of recorded concert performances. I’ve served on various station boards and committees, hosted a bunch of live music, and hopefully kept you company. Bring your favorite mug and hang out. Learn More

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 WPKN for a two-day special on June 24 with Summer of Love Disco and June 25 with Summer of Love songs! You know that special song that screams IT’S SUMMER!!! to you. The one you played over and over while you got your summer groove on. We're going to share it with the world! As we are seeing an end to the pandemic restrictions, the Summer of Love special will kick-off several unique opportunities for you to help position WPKN for a sustainable future in our new location. Check out our WPKN MOVE giving opportunities. Special thanks to Martha Willette Lewis for supplying the Summer of Love artwork, ...

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), ...

WPKN Celebrates Frank Zappa Fundraiser brings you a tribute to Frank Vincent Zappa, an American multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, and bandleader. Zappa’s work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity, and satire of American culture. Zappa Music (7 AM to 10 PM ) — Crank the Frank! Donate I showed up at the WPKN studio as a college student and never went away. In the intervening years, I’ve served on various station boards and committees, hosted a bunch of live music, and hopefully kept you company. Learn More WPKN General Manager Music has always been front and center for me. It’s beyond ...

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 ...