Why WWOZ matters: reflections from Charmaine Neville

Published on: March 2nd, 2023

906 Charmaine Neville [Photo by Leona Strassberg Steiner]

Charmaine Neville [Photo by Leona Strassberg Steiner]
Charmaine Neville [Photo by Leona Strassberg Steiner]

When I think of WWOZ I think about how great the music is, and how the music WWOZ plays caters to everyone. Anybody and everybody can be a part of WWOZ, and a part of New Orleans that way. It’s that gumbo factor. I can’t tell you enough how much I care about WWOZ and the OZ family. Not just the volunteers, not just the musicians. It’s my neighbor, the woman running the streetcar. That guy sitting on the corner playing his trumpet. WWOZ is an every body thing. WWOZ is the people who LISTEN, they are the biggest part of the station. Because when they hear OZ, no matter where they are, they are a part of it. A part of WWOZ and of New Orleans.

I wish everyone would tune in to learn about not just the food and the music, but the people. New Orleans is the biggest little neighborhood in the whole wide world and ‘OZ plays such a big role in that. You feel that energy, that sensation of everything that is so New Orleans. That’s exactly what it is when you’re listening to WWOZ.

As a musician, WWOZ factors into my life greatly because it plays my music. It’s very special as a musician to have a radio station that you can call home. To know that you can turn that dial to 90.7 and if you don’t hear yourself, you hear your uncle, your cousin, your children, your neighbor, that man down the street and around the corner...

I don’t care where you come from, if you’re here living in New Orleans now, you’re a part of it. It’s in the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we stir the beans to the right, to the left and then beat on the pot and make a rhythm. All of that. The way we turn the radio dial to 90.7 and we turn the volume up!

Support the music and support WWOZ at wwoz.org/donate!

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