WFCR's Cuts Sadly Silence An Institution In Folk Music

Susan Campbell, January 24 2007

The curtain closed last week on Amherst's WFCR-FM "Valley Folk," and the program's host for the past 22 years, Susan Forbes Hansen, was summarily dispatched. A jazz show took its place.

Big deal, right? Radio stations add shows and drop them all the time, and Connecticut listeners have choices.

Except this is different.

Other programs were canceled as well. Another locally produced show, the Latin culture show "Tertulia!," was originally canceled and then reinstated in a shortened version early this week after listener outcry.

"Valley Folk" had attracted a homey host of listeners every week since the late 1990s, when it moved to Saturday night, a time slot that is "death for all radio," said Ed McKeon, longtime folk-show host at WWUH-FM. Hansen's show was originally on Sunday afternoons and had more listeners there.

Helen Barrington, WFCR program director, said the station suffers from a "serious budget problem," in part because as the number of listeners increases, so do program fees. The decision was made to cut some shows - including Hansen's - and use the money to do things like hire a bilingual reporter, Barrington said. She says nice things about Hansen and acknowledges, "This has been hard for her and for us."

You can't argue with a bilingual reporter, and I would never presume to be the standard-bearer for folk music. Folkies do fine without me, but there's something infuriating about the death of a fine, locally produced show like "Valley Folk" and the silencing of Hansen. Jazz is wonderful, but the listening landscape just got a little more homogenized.

McKeon, a fierce supporter of Hansen, says shows like hers have helped build the area's folk scene. Artists fill venues because listeners come to shows after hearing them on "Valley Folk." Every time you unplug one of these shows, you squeeze an already small genre into a tinier box.

And we need folk music. When stations were running bulldozers over Dixie Chicks CDs, folk stations were proudly hoisting the banner of protest against that awful war in Iraq. And that was several years before the opinion polls swung their way.

Hansen's interest in folk stretches back to high school. She remembers going to Middletown to hear Pete Seeger. The music, she says, just fits her ears.

Over the years, the West Hartford resident has hosted concerts and given folk fans a first listen to artists like Mary Chapin Carpenter. And she's made a multitude of friends. One protest e-mail called her the First Lady of Folk in New England. She recently vacationed in Florida, and as she stood on a dock taking pictures, another photographer suggested she move for a better angle. A little miffed, she turned to correct his notion that she needed guidance; the Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret will host a gallery show of her photographs in July.

Turns out the man was one of her listeners.

She's still hosting "Sunday Night Folk Festival" at WHUS-FM, out of the University of Connecticut, as she has for nearly three decades. Last week, she filled in one morning at WWUH.

And here's irony for you: Hansen is among five nominees for folk radio host of the year, to be awarded at the International Folk Alliance Conference next monthin Memphis. Hansen, a purist, thinks the alliance should focus on something besides honoring DJs, but that's just her way.

If there's a bright spot in this, it's the support she's received from longtime listeners. Wrote one: "After almost a quarter of a century of listening to your music - one mobile home, two houses, six vehicles, two wives, one daughter and almost half my life later - where am I supposed to go now?"

Copyright 2007, _Hartford Courant_ (http://www.courant.com/)