IT WAS by accident that I discovered a rather obscure radio station in the Toledo area. I was checking my newly repaired turntable-cum-radio by scrolling from station to station when I heard the music of the 1950s and 60s. It stopped me in my tracks. Here was a station playing my favorite music without the “in your face” disc jockeys and without the ever irritating long commercials. Instead it played old music with very few interruptions.
Music is a dynamic art form and it changes with time. What was popular once, say in the 1930s, is not popular any more and tends to turn off many younger listeners. For some people, however, the scratchy old vinyl records of 45 rpms and 33 rpms and even 78 rpms hold special pull. I take solace in the fact that the old music was also new at one time. It just happened that some of us did not move fast enough with fast-changing musical tastes. We still long for the tunes that can take us back to an era long past but remain very much relevant for us.
This station goes by the call letters WNLB 97.7 FM and is operated by Springfield High School in Holland, Ohio. It is also called Dare Devil radio after the school’s football team. Its coverage area is rather minuscule and is limited to the town of Holland, parts of Toledo, and the surrounding suburbs. However, because of a free app, one can carry it anywhere one wishes as long as there is availability of the Internet. To my delight I found that out during my recent travels abroad.
Recently I wrote a column about my visit to Swat in the northern mountains of Pakistan in the company of my grand nieces and nephews. They are all into the ‘new’ music that I don’t understand and can’t relate to. Music is supposed to transport us to familiar realms. I tried hard to go with the flow and listen to alternative rock, college rock, and folk punk. All I got was un-natural pounding of my eardrums and a throbbing headache.
I don’t mind stating that I am hopelessly stuck in the subcontinental and American music that is almost 70 years old. So I tried to listen to my collection on my computer and then as if by magic I started listening to the broadcast from Springfield High School.
Sometimes the miracles of science are hard to comprehend. An email sent from my study at home to someone in the next room and someone in Australia reaches in just about the same time. How could I tune in and listen to a radio station 8,000 miles away when at home I always lose the coverage when I cross the state line into Michigan?
So there it was, the little radio station broadcasting my favorite tunes interspersed with greetings from the superintendent Matt Geha, teachers Mark Davidson, Susan Muller, Cory Meinhart, and student broadcaster Kyle Lenahan keeping me company in the snow-bound mountains of Pakistan.
Music evokes strong memories. Some memories are fuzzy, cozy, and soothing while others are prickly and painful. Who has not identified with the agony, lament, and rationalization of Vicky Carr’s “It Must Be Him.” Or Dionne Warwick’s all-time classic ‘Walk On By.’
One song reminded me of the time when I had left the U.S. for Pakistan and had planned to have my wife Dottie (now deceased) and our two children join me after I had secured a livelihood there. I imagined her singing from Little Peggy March’s famous song “I Will Follow Him,” follow him, wherever he may go. She later told me it was just my imagination, she never sang that song while I was gone. And even if she did, she said, with a twinkle in her eyes, she didn’t sing the song with me in her mind. I knew better.
When Mel Carter’s famous song, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” came on, I was transported to a diner in Phoenix where one late evening we found ourselves in an empty place. The tabletop jukebox played the tune and we danced in an empty diner weaving a path between the tables. It was our signature tune and it was magical to recall a life well spent together.
So it was in the mountains of Swat that this little radio station from Springfield High School transported me to places I had since forgotten and the people who have long departed. Such is the magic of enduring music.
S. Amjad Hussain is an emeritus professor of surgery and humanities at the University of Toledo. His column appears every other week in The Blade. Contact him at: aghaji@bex.net.
First Published February 25, 2019, 11:45 a.m.
