Musings of a Student Radio DJ
I’ve called many places home throughout my life—my birthplace, the house in which I live with my family where I’ve spent 12 years in, my Cathedral Gardens double-turned-single, and a little room in the basement of the Barnard Quad that many people refer to as the WBAR studio.
Since the spring of my first year at Barnard, I’ve been a DJ for WBAR, Barnard’s Freeform Radio. I’m also on WBAR’s executive board as the Webmaster. WBAR has over 70 DJs each year who come into the studio once a week for two hours to do their radio show. We are broadcasting 24/7, which means we have DJs who come in to do their shows during the middle of the day as well as DJs who come in to do their shows in the middle of the night. At the beginning of each semester, we put out DJ applications for students who may be interested in being a WBAR DJ. We get a lot of applications each semester, so we choose the DJs whose applications we feel like best represent WBAR’s mission statement, which is to ensure that the shows we’re broadcasting reflect the diversity of identities and interests on campus.
The application requires that you have an idea of what concept you want your show to embody, creating an example playlist or example script for what one of your shows could look like. For example, and these are all real examples of shows WBAR has had, some DJs have talk shows where they might do improv or talk about important issues on campus or interview people’s moms, and some DJs have shows where they play music, having shows that focus on all kinds of music ranging from Bollywood music to songs that have sampled other songs to video game music. Some DJs who have been DJs for multiple semesters choose to have a different show each semester, while others, like me, choose to stick with the same show.
My show is called “Facing East,” and I’ve been doing this show for about two years. During my show, I play music by Asian artists with Western influence, highlighting my identity as an Asian-American. I play lots of different kinds of music on my show, including (but not limited to) K-pop, Taiwanese math rock, Indian electronic folk, Japanese shoegaze, Chinese R&B, and Indonesian indie pop. One of my favorite parts of my week is finding songs to put on my playlist. A lot of the music I find myself listening to regularly now is music that I’ve discovered while looking for music to play on my show. Once I have my playlist ready (which I create in Spotify, although other DJs might create theirs in Apple Music or YouTube, or even just download files to their computer to play), I am now ready to head to the WBAR studio, plug in the aux cord, and play my show for everyone to hear on wbar.org.
One of my favorite things about WBAR is that the community it builds, both among DJs and music lovers on campus who aren’t necessarily WBAR DJs. I’ve had friends from around the world tell me that they were tuning into my show from completely different time zones as well as other DJs who had found out about my show and were interested in the music I was playing who have told me that they listened to my show. This year, WBAR has hosted lots of community-building events within the DJ community such as CD sorting in the studio and mixtape swaps, which have allowed me to get a lot closer with other DJs. WBAR also hosts Winter Formal in the fall and WBAR-B-Q in the spring, which are both concerts that we have on campus that are open to everyone, bringing people together through our shared love of music.
When searching for colleges to apply to, I knew I wanted to attend one where I could become involved with the campus music scene, and I’m so glad that WBAR has given me the opportunity to meet so many people who enjoy music as much as I do.
- Ramisa Murshed