The Current Celebrates Black History Month
• For the next 24 hours, Minnesota Public Radio’s KCMP (89.3 The Current)/Minneapolis is doing something pretty awesome to celebrate the beginning of Black History Month — the station is taking a deep dive into the countless contributions of African-Americans to our musical heritage.
The idea originated with APD Lindsay Kimball, said Current PD Jim McGuinn, who tells RAMP, “For the past five years we’ve had the audience choose an icon that we would feature each week — with audio and digital profiles and airing a song per daypart — deep dives into artists like Prince, James Brown, Public Enemy and others. But that only celebrated four artists each month, and we wanted to share more stories — with about 350 songs playing, we will touch on more like 150 artists today, while still playing the biggest names 5 to 6x through the day.”
McGuinn added, “I don’t know of any rock station that has ever dug this deep into this, but we’re excited to honor the music and share this with our audience. The playlist is pretty amazing — everyone from Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson through Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Prince and NWA, to Childish Gambino, Beyoncé and Gary Clark, Jr.”
The special programming kicked off at 12:01am this morning, and all of The Current’s hosts are starting their shifts by playing an Aretha track to pay special tribute to The Queen Of Soul. Scheduled on-air guests include PaviElle French, Cameron Kinghorn, Chastity Brown, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Representative Ilhan Omar.
