Music
with Steven Cantor
Oregon
Public Broadcasting
91.5 FM
9 pm Saturdays
and Sundays
David Christensen
hosts a great hour of music every weekday on OPB, starting
at 2 pm.
Steven Cantor doesn't look like the hippest DJ in town, but
he is. Closing in on 50, he often sports a faded denim jacket,
blue jeans and a single small hoop earring below a head of
thinning hair.
Cantor's whiskey-smooth voice anchors one of the best radio
shows--if not the best radio show--in the country.
At a time when National Public Radio's programming runs
from middle-of-the-road zany to aging-urbanist lite, Cantor's
Oregon Public Broadcasting-produced Saturday and Sunday
night shows sprawl over four- and three-hour time slots,
setting his encyclopedic musical knowledge in hot pursuit
of his curiosity and enthusiasm.
It's hard to think of any other radio show on which, in
the course of a summer, you can hear Kid Koala, Emmylou
Harris, the Tango Kings, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Vivaldi
and Kool and the Gang jostle each other. For Cantor, though,
this multifarious mix barely satisfies an almost scary appetite
for sound. His full-tilt enthusiasm shows when he discusses
his heroes, like the late electric bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius.
"He was on fire, man," Cantor says, gathering momentum.
"He was on fire."
The same could easily be said of Cantor, though his mellow
voice, seemingly made for radio, belies this heat. He speaks
softly and deliberately, concentrating on his words, choosing
them as though he were picking notes for a composition handed
down as an edict in a dream. "For me, the shows where I
can say 'mission accomplished' are the ones when I've traveled,"
he says. "It's got to be a journey that covers some territory.
Another piece of the puzzle is trying to engage people to
listen to something they wouldn't have otherwise."
He knows volumes about a litany of forms ranging from rock
to gamelan to gagaku, and recently incorporated a riot of
turntable-based genres into his shows. This summer, after
the syndicated AfroPop Worldwide devoted an hour
to turntablism, Cantor followed with his own celebration
of the wheels of steel. He unleashed nearly three hours
on this single subject, cutting amazing sonic journeys from
recent releases with segments focusing on innovators like
Grandmaster Flash, Christian Marclay, John Oswald and Steinski.
Cantor's ability to forge links between far-flung genres
is his deepest strength, and the hardest to fathom. "Over
the years, I've developed certain screwy methods," he says.
He developed his unorthodox alchemy after studying at Reed
College and Boston's legendary Berklee School of Music.
He then held a slot at Tufts University's radio station
for 10 years, where he cultivated his uncanny ability to
connect widely separated musical dots.
"I would introduce a program by saying, 'This week's program
is brought to you by the key of F,' or whatever it was,"
he explains, "and then play a particular fugue or prelude
by Glenn Gould. I would try to do a free-form set of things
in that key. I found myself able to make connections that
ordinarily would never have been possible."
Cantor is indeed capable of astounding leaps. During a
September show, he dropped Vivaldi's Concerto No. 7 in B-flat
right after XTC's "We're All Light," and they seemed to
flow together effortlessly. That kind of daring seems to
come naturally for Cantor. After all, he's had quite a journey
himself, playing in Pat Metheny's guitar ensemble and winning
two Grammys for production on Metheny recordings to go with
several nominations for work with Lyle Mays. If those years
helped him build his formidable musical alchemy, his current
stand in Portland is the payoff.
"To me, this show is a way of giving back," Cantor says.
"I think there's a real audience for what I'm doing. I have
no illusion about it being a big audience." But Cantor may
be wrong about that. This weekend may find many more of
us journeying across time, geography and cultural frontiers
as we sit in front of our radios, ears cocked to the coolest
disc spinner in town.
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