WXPN in Philadelphia will make the most of the nation’s 250th anniversary next month with a series of semiquincentennial celebrations honoring its city’s musical legacy and spotlighting local musicians.
The station’s endeavors will include a song contest, a city-focused on-air countdown, original music commissioned from established and emerging local artists and Philadelphia-themed segments within its World Cafe radio show.
WXPN GM Roger LaMay said that the guiding principle across the initiatives is to help audiences discover new music by embracing and celebrating local artists, which aligns with the station’s mission.
The initiatives are “really about celebrating Philadelphia, both the history and local music, through commissioning artists” on a scale the station has “never done before,” LaMay said. The station is commissioning around 14 local artists to create original music across the initiatives, he said.
Eliza Hardy-Jones of the Philadelphia-based group The War on Drugs is creating original music as a participant in the Philly Anthems song project and serving as a host for the song contest. She said WXPN’s semiquincentennial initiatives demonstrate the range of opportunities noncommercial radio stations have to engage in exciting local events while creating a significant impact both at home and nationwide.
“Philadelphia is this legendary, incredible music city and continues to be a place where really exciting and innovative artists are coming out of,” she said. “We’re all so lucky to have a radio station that’s … excited about building community and really investing in the folks here to make sure that we can continue to work, share our music and make a cultural impact on a more national scale.”
‘What else can we do?’
When planning last year for the semiquincentennial, LaMay said the station took into consideration not only that it would be a monumental national anniversary but also that Philadelphia would serve as “ground zero for the celebration.”
The team “knew there were a lot of activities and events that were going to happen” citywide throughout the year, so it wanted to take the opportunity to “celebrate and elevate Philadelphia music and Philadelphia artists,” LaMay said.
The first objective was to secure funding. The station applied for and received a grant of approximately $300,000 from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to lay the groundwork for the first 250th initiative, a project featuring original commissioned works inspired by independence.
The project, titled Philly Anthems, will feature original music from established local artists such as Hardy-Jones, Lady Alma, Christian McBride, Eric Bazilian and Devon Gilfillian, in addition to seven “newer and emerging artists,” LaMay said.
Simultaneously, the station was in contact with local nonprofit ArtPhilly about a collaboration for its inaugural citywide arts and culture festival, which will overlap with the semiquincentennial, LaMay said.
The station thought the festival might be a good fit for a partnership with its Black Music City project, which awards grants to local Black artists in collaboration with Philadelphia jazz and classical station WRTI and marketing agency REC Philly, he said. So it partnered with the Museum of the American Revolution to commission two participants in the Black Music City project to create music linking 1776 to 2026 through the lens of the Black experience. The works will premiere during the festival on Juneteenth.
With the two initiatives in place for the upcoming summer, LaMay said the station realized there was room to lean further into semiquincentennial celebrations.
“We said, ‘We got these two things, what else can we do? Let’s go all in on this, because it really aligns with us celebrating artists,’” LaMay said.
The station turned to its programming. The popularity of its annual song countdowns, such as last fall’s countdown of the 885 greatest cover songs, prompted the team to adapt the format for the 250th-anniversary celebrations. To embrace the city’s history as the nation’s birthplace, the station will air a 250-song countdown of music “by, from or about Philadelphia” to coincide with the anniversary weekend, he said.
“This could range from Elton John’s ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ to David Bowie recording an album in Philadelphia to any number of prominent local artists, from the Hooters to John Coltrane,” he said.
As the station began planning research for the countdown, LaMay said the team realized the city’s extensive musical history would lend itself well to World Cafe’s “Sense of Place,” a series of segments within the show that profiles music scenes and their contexts in cities across the world.
LaMay said the city-centered segments will take a deep dive into “pivotal moments in Philadelphia music history” beginning June 19.
Additionally, the station decided to expand on the Philly Anthems project and support local musicians by incorporating a version of its 24-hour song challenge, which it introduced in recent years. The contest asks participants to write, record and submit an original song based on a prompt. The winning contestant’s song will be featured on the Philly Anthems album in addition to the typical prizes, which include studio time, $5,000 and a $500 gift card.
These initiatives play a role in bringing greater awareness to Philadelphia music and “giving opportunities to create new work” for local artists, LaMay said.
‘Topical and relevant’
With WXPN being a noncommercial Triple A station, LaMay said, the semiquincentennial celebrations presented an opportunity to acknowledge the tumultuous moment in the nation. Initiatives like the Philly Anthems project give artists the freedom to “process what’s going on in the world” through their original works, he said.
“As an all-music station, we really position ourselves as an oasis from a lot of what goes on in the 24-hour news cycle … but at the same time, an oasis is in a bubble,” LaMay said. “We certainly expect the music to be topical and relevant to the times we’re living in — and that’s something the audience expects.”
For Hardy-Jones, the Philly Anthems project provided a chance to explore how themes of American patriotism and the nation’s fundamental values contrast with its past and contemporary history, she said.
“This has always been the story of this country, that we’ve always been really stuck in the dissonance between the dream of what we could be and what we can represent, and also the reality of a violent nation,” Hardy-Jones said.
Pulling from her family of folk musicians, Hardy-Jones said her piece is inspired by folk tradition and early American music. She said one of the most valuable facets of the initiative is the range of the involved artists’ backgrounds, which she expects to inspire a range of interpretations of the prompt.
The project encompasses “a really diverse range of ages, of styles, of experiences, of storytelling, and I’m really excited,” Hardy-Jones said. “Clearly, as a nation, as a people and as a culture, we continue to struggle with ideas around liberty, equality, equity and all of that. So I’m really excited to hear what piece of that story is resonating with other people and what they’re hoping to inspire in the audience.”
‘A great opportunity’
Speaking May 6 at this year’s Non-Commvention, the annual conference for noncommercial Triple A stations held at WXPN, LaMay outlined the station’s “tentpole” strategy, which delineates the central events and programming that resonate most with audiences while supporting the station’s commitment to artist development and supporting local music. This year, LaMay said, the station saw the semiquincentennial celebrations as a pillar of the strategy.
The various facets of WXPN’s America 250 celebrations all tie into its mission and goals, LaMay said at the conference, adding that noncommercial stations should lean into their strengths when seeking to engage their communities.
Much of the station’s planning took into account that though the initiatives might be hyperlocal, being the nation’s birthplace meant that there would inherently be more eyes nationwide on the city and its happenings, LaMay said.
At a time where “national entities are turning their attention to the 250th, we’re going to have a lot of content and wonderful art to offer them,” LaMay said. “We’ve been more focused on it for longer than probably anybody else. We tend to sort of leverage that to get greater exposure for what’s happening here.”
For Hardy-Jones, the station’s commitment to highlighting local artists during a celebration of this magnitude exemplifies the power of noncommercial radio to invest in and empower the community.
“People are going to be looking to Philadelphia, which is where all of this happened 250 years ago,” Hardy-Jones said. “So at this moment, when people are really looking to the city and looking to us, to [highlight] what Philadelphians are making right now, what kind of art is coming out of Philadelphia, is a great opportunity for us established artists and emerging artists.”
