Last Friday night, I got stuck in rush hour traffic coming home. I was impatient and annoyed and just wanted to be there already.
And then, unexpectedly, Rosalie, a radio announcer who has been on air back at home ever since I can remember, came through the speakers...in all of her soothing dorkiness. Of course, it wasn't the local station from San Francisco (who I swear isn't paying me for these posts), where she's a veteran broadcaster, but rather the World Music Hour, rightfully named not only because it highlights world music, but also because the show airs around the globe. I guess, I shouldn't have been so surprised to hear it in New Jersey. It happened to H, who is not a big Rosalie fan, a few years ago in Cairo (oh Egypt, let's hope things settle down there soon), of all places. He likes to tell the story about the time when the show came on while he was sitting in taxi there -how he couldn't escape her, even thousands of miles from home.
It's a funny thing. Makes me think about a teacher in high school who talked about her time abroad (among other off-topic subjects) pretty frequently. She mentioned that one of the things she missed the most while she was away was the local radio. I have to agree somehow. Even though most of the time I didn't even listen to it so much during my last few years in the Bay Area, I missed as soon as I left. We've had webradio for years now, but it's not quite the same either - almost a tease. There's just something about the way a radio station can capture the spirit of a place, like nothing else...
Anyway, the show that was on air last Friday night, the music anyway, didn't really do it for me. It must have been a really old rerun (I looked for the playlist afterwards and couldn't find it) highlighting French music. Like the music on the French channels on Sirius, it felt more like an anglophone's idea of what French music should sound like rather than the real deal. Like cheap modern re-workings of Charles Aznavour, set in a crusty Parisian bistro, with lots of smoke (even though cigarettes have been banned for years). In short, not my thing. I'm not even sure the World Music Hour is (or ever was) for that matter.
But somehow, it spite of this, it was oddly comforting all the same, to hear this familiar voice, to hear some French in the car. And it made me relax for a few minutes and forget about the traffic and all the other worries that were on my mind that evening. I even took a few extra spins around the block at the end so that I could listen to the rest of the show (just like my sister and I used to do when Axel was belting out "Patience" on the radio in the 80s).
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