Harvesting the FAM, CJAM, and the Windsor Music Scene

On Friday, September 14 the second, highly successful Harvesting the FAM festival took place. Congratulations to Murad Erzinclioglu and all of the volunteers for an incredibly well organized day of film, art, and music, all from Windsor and Essex County and all free. The events were very well attended and showed off the tremendous amount of talent that exists in our area. It made me stop and think about how vibrant Windsor really is.

As you can guess, what most interested me about the festival was the music -- 32 acts on 3 stages over 12 hours, with much of it broadcast live on CJAM. By any reckoning, that's a massive logistical undertaking, both for the festival organizers and for the station. The sound was crystal clear and helped to showcase the diversity of music for the listeners who couldn't make it down in person. If you missed the programming on Friday or want to relive some of the musical highlights, go to the CJAM archives and have a listen.

As a campus-based community radio station, our mandate at CJAM is to provide music and information programming not offered by the mainstream media in the Windsor/Detroit area. That's why we broadcast live events such as this one and play local bands like Academy, The Locusts Have No King, and Citywide Vacuum, who all appeared at the FAM festival, as well as Square Root of Margaret, who are currently touring Western Canada. Excellent local music across diverse genres. All they need are the listeners and a way to get their music heard. That's where grassroots and volunteer efforts like Harvesting the FAM and CJAM (where all four of these bands are currently charting) come in.

To me, it's that ability and desire to search beyond what's offered on commercial radio that makes campus/community radio important and relevant. And that's what I hope makes Steel Belted Radio relevant to the listeners -- a place to listen to the kind of country and roots music that doesn't get played on commercial radio. There's so much good music out there and if I can guide you towards some of it, maybe introduce you to a new artist, then it's a program that's worth doing. Let me know what you think.