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• WRFU hosts benefit show at Cowboy Monkey

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WRFU Benefit Show »

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• Cowboy Monkey »
  6 Taylor St. Champaign, IL 61820
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There is a lot happening on the stages of CU this Saturday with Willie Nelson at Assembly Hall, a Pink Floyd cover band at Canopy, and other strong bills booked throughout downtown Champaign and Urbana. If you’re looking to enjoy a diverse lineup of artists while also helping the community out, though, Cowboy Monkey is the place to be this Saturday evening.

Come, then, to the WRFU, 104.5FM benefit concert featuring a long list of local musicians and poets, all performing short 15 minute sets in hopes to raise money for a new permanent tower for the Urbana-based radio station. buzz talked to WRFU station manager Andrew O’Baoill about the radio station and what it hopes to achieve.

“Our mission is to get the community to be the media,” O’Baoill said. “Not to think of themselves as audience members or consumers, but producers, shaping the media environment that they want to have for themselves.”

The three-year-old station, located in the Independent Media Center (IMC) downtown Urbana, has accomplished this by providing a space for community members to produce their own programming. With 14 shows serving many niches in the community from a variety of religious groups and social interest groups to Native Americans, the Spanish population, and home school parents and kids, WRFU strives to provide a service to the community that might not necessarily be profitable.

Currently operating with a temporary tower on the roof of the IMC at 202 South Broadway, it’s time for WRFU to find a permanent solution and expand their broadcasting to a greater portion

of the community.

“As it is now, our signal reaches reasonably well through most of Urbana and with some difficulty, through much of Champaign,” explained O’Baoill. “The station wants to erect a permanent tower on the 100 foot level in order to get a much purer signal into Champaign and reach more people.”

The project will cost the station around $20,000 and has already received many generous gifts from community members, putting them just $6-8,000 short of the desired amount.

Meeting with event coordinator and an active member of the local music scene, Aimee Rickman, the station looked for ways to fundraise the tower that would be compatible with their mission as a radio station.

“As a non-commercial community station, part of our goal is to provide a space for our community members and a space for them to express themselves,” O’Baoill said. “We wanted to reflect the culture and diversity of our community through the fundraiser.”

WRFU and Rickman booked a wide variety of local musicians and poets who were all very enthusiastic about supporting the station for the benefit. Showcasing everything from the hip-hop of local act Krukid to the more organic sounds of the Turinos, O’Baoill said he looks forward to the show being an “opportunity to learn what’s available in our community and to realize its diversity of creativity.”

The show starts at 6 pm with a cover of $4. For more information, and to find other ways to help the station get their tower, visit http://www.radiofreeurbana.org.