Gapers Block:
"The best thing I heard this year in Chicago happened right on my own couch. I was lying down with my headphones plugged into the Chicago Independent Radio Project app on my phone. I had been researching questions for an interview with CHIRP about the new website they launched in late November, and I thought I might spend some time listening to the station as a way to get more familiar with it. The DJ was Matt Garman. It was Tuesday, Nov. 27. The time was 2:41pm (I know all of this now because of the easily navigable playlist features on the new CHIRP website). Anyway, I heard Garman play a few songs that were fine, but at 2:41pm, he played "Kehna Ghalat Ghalat To Chhupana Sahi Sahi" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. No need to go into background about the song or musician because at 2:41pm, I had no idea what was going on. It was Sufi devotional music, but I didn't even know that at the time. All I knew was that I was hearing this droning, steady beat on hand drums that backed some increasingly rowdy and joyous male vocals. An entire choir of male vocals, really, but with a lead singer that would break out into passionate, nonsensical vocal expressions — more akin to an American soul or gospel freakout than to anything I would otherwise recognize as "Sufi devotional music." It kept going, too. It made me take for granted how long the song ended up being. Good songs usually end. This one, curiously, showed no end in sight.
By the time the DJ came back on the air to name the last few songs he had played, it clocked in at 14 minutes flat. I wouldn't call this a normal radio-listening experience. How often do you turn on a radio station for about 20 minutes and hear only three songs? How often is the song that takes up 14 of those 20 minutes so engaging? I've listened to that song repeatedly since then, but I now know what to do if I ever need a few moments of unexpected awe at the hands of an independent radio DJ." - Marc Fishmon
