Hey Cuzin, and All Our Relations—a new radio station is launched

The Aboriginal Multi-Media Society (AMMSA), publisher of Windspeaker.com, and owner/operator of the Windspeaker Radio Network—country music stations CFWE, CJWE 88.1 Calgary and (everything but country) 89.3 The Raven—announces CUZIN Radio, which launched yesterday, June 28, online at CUZIN Radio (czinradio.ca) or via the CUZIN Radio app.

The CUZIN Radio app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. Apps are available for Apple and Android. When you download the app to your phone, switch to Bluetooth in your vehicle and listen while you drive. Be careful when that jigging music comes on. You’ll want to start jigging while you’re driving.

When AMMSA launched The Raven radio back in February, a call was put out for Indigenous music, “and we got hundreds of artists submitting their music to us,” said AMMSA CEO and founder Bert Crowfoot.

Not being able to play all of it on the new Raven station, the music went into a stockpile that could be used on a new digital Indigenous station and that’s what inspired CUZIN Radio, Crowfoot said.

It would be just like any other radio station except it doesn’t have a terrestrial signal; it doesn’t have a transmitter or a tower, he explained. But it can be heard anywhere in the world if you have WiFi.

Crowfoot said AMMSA is always striving to keep up with evolving media technology.

“And when looking down the road, you just have to look at today’s youth and they’re all staring and listening to their handsets…. They rarely listen to terrestrial radio, and this is where I see CUZIN going. It’s the next step in the evolution of the technology that AMMSA’s has been using.”

He said AMMSA will not treat CUZIN Radio like a jukebox. “It has to be a real radio station.”

 “We’ve taken all the Indigenous music that we have and added to it. This station is going to be 100 per cent Indigenous,” said Crowfoot.

The music is blocked into different genres—country, rock, pop, hip hop, Indigenous Voices, Inuit throat singing, Navajo songs, etc.

We want to get hosts to represent different parts of Indigenous country. So far, we have a host from Bella Bella, BC, Winnipeg, from Eastern Canada and from our other three stations.

“We also want to make sure language is shared,” said Crowfoot. “We’re working on getting splitters and greetings from different Indigenous peoples.”

“It’s going to be a cool radio station,” said Crowfoot.  “Launch date was June 28 and it’s just the beginning as we add music and features.

Crowfoot said when the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society first started in 1983, we focused on print (Windspeaker) and when radio and television became available, we chose to focus on one other media – CFWE radio. We wanted to make it strong and to have a solid foundation to build on.”

“We started off with 10 small satellite receivers along northeast Alberta and we also had an hour on CBC TV in the mornings.” Over the next three years, we added another 38 sites, expanding the reach of CFWE across the isolated communities of northern Alberta.

When AMMSA started Radio Bingo, revenues allowed the society to expand. AMMSA took some of the smaller 10-watt sites along the Slave Lake and replaced them with a 10,000-watt site in Joussard, Alta.

“That took out seven of those small repeaters,” explained Crowfoot, saying AMMSA then moved those small receivers to other parts of Alberta to increase CFWE’s reach, and so on and so on.

We started replacing those low power sites with more powerful transmitters as dollars allowed. And then 100,000-watt sites went up in major centres, including Moose Hills (96.7), Edmonton (98.5), Grand Prairie (105.7), Calgary (88.1), Red Deer (88.7). Fort MacMurray (94.5) was 30,000-watts but it is being increased to 100,000 watts. Lac La Biche (90.5) and Joussard (91.7) will also be increased to 100,000 watts.

Currently, AMMSA has “three-quarters-of-a-million watts of Indigenous power throughout Alberta.” Plans are to put 100,000-watt sites up in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and High Level in the next few years.

AMMSA also works to help Indigenous communities expand their own community radio stations. CUZIN Radio will be available to any community station that wants to use it as a wrap around service or when they are not on the air.

And now comes CUZIN Radio and the proud Indigenous musicians that sent AMMSA their music over the past couple of years, said Jeremy Harpe, program director of the Windspeaker Radio network.

“We’re excited to get this going.”

Listeners can get CUZIN on the website at CUZIN Radio (czinradio.ca)

Or download all four radio apps to your mobile device (IOS and Android) —CFWE, CJWE, CUZIN Radio and The Raven Radio.

Readers can follow CUZIN on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CZINRadio