Siri Pattison

LISTEN LOCALLY. Community radio stations operate on a small scale and budget while also successfully sharing the voices and art of local musicians, particularly those of color. KRSM, WFCU and Radio K are just a few of the numerous options to choose from when listening to local radio.

On the way to school, many will connect to Bluetooth and shuffle a known playlist on Spotify. Maybe some will plug in the aux cord and listen to a podcast. Listening to music and commentary is a crucial part of many students’ days, yet the process of discovery can become tedious and time-consuming– so why not outsource it to local taste aficionados? A small number of students and staff skip the music apps altogether and tune into FM radio from around the Twin Cities. Community radio stations bring background noise to the foreground, highlighting local artists and DJs, and hyper-localizing the process of music selection and culture consumption.

“I listen to the radio every time I’m in my car,” senior Clare Kimmel said. Kimmel enjoys the popular, larger stations, but finds that smaller stations are sometimes better. “I really like the smaller stations because it’s less talk-radio and more music. It’s a more intimate experience,” Kimmel said.

Community radio stations operate independently, often working out of shared community spaces and lower budgets than their commercial counterparts (such as KDWB or The Current). Often guided by amplifying the voices of their respective communities, community radio stations are political and social engines.

Tucked away in Minneapolis’s Waite House Community Center, local DJs curate set lists and shows for local radio station KRSM. KRSM launched in 2017 after Minneapolis residents and local leaders from Little Earth of United Tribes and Hope Community met in frustration over the lack of representation in broadcast media. With the goal of controlling the narrative of their community, KRSM was born in the Phillips neighborhood of Central Minneapolis. 13 years later, the operation has grown into a grassroots media vehicle. The station hosts over 82 hours per week of scheduled shows, with breaks consisting of community-submitted poetry and music. Inclusion is paramount. The station broadcasts in six different languages, and 73% of its hosts identify as BIPOC.

According to the KRSM website, the station is “a hyper-local platform for amplifying the voices, stories, cultures, and conversations happening in our neighborhoods,” with a focus on “communities that are marginalized, misrepresented, and erased by traditional media.”

Started at the same time as KRSM and under the same financial umbrella, Frogtown’s WFNU community station shares the goal of hyper-local radio, just across the river in Saint Paul.

Their website reads, “With our hyper-local focus on Frogtown and surrounding communities, we are able to tap into fresh talent and engage our listener base in ways larger radio stations cannot.”

Small radio stations also often rise out of university or college communities. The University of Minnesota’s Radio K is a local favorite for its genuine DJs and eclectic mix of tunes.

Upper School assistant cross-country coach Wendy Surprise listens to Radio K for its variety and authenticity.

“They’re just folksy. The U of M one, the DJs are students at the U, and they’re real. They don’t have some company telling them to push this album, or this artist is coming into concert, lets try to get people to go to the concert. It’s just, ‘this is what we like, see if you like it too.’ And that’s what I like,” Surprise said.

For Surprise, listening to the radio reminds her of familial connections to the industry and her own childhood, when radio options were few, and one pop station dominated the local waves.

“My uncle is in the radio broadcast hall of fame, he had the first radio station on FM between Chicago and the Western States,” she said. “Whenever we’d spend time with him, it was ‘look at these records, look at this collection.’ It was the only way to hear music. When I was a kid there were only AM stations, meaning there was really only one station.”

Now with wide-reaching FM radio, there are hundreds of stations for Twin Cities residents to choose from. Listening to local radio supports smaller artists, the Twin Cities community, and amplifies marginalized voices. Take a break from the Spotify playlist and discover something new.