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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. In 1982, Chris Evert won the US Open Tennis tournament, and Jimmy Connors beat John McEnroe at Wimbledon. In 1982, Queen Elizabeth announced a new constitution for Canada, and Prince William was born. In 1982, construction began on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. In 1982, a big new movie was ET, a big new play on Broadway was Cats. John Hinckley went on trial in 1982 for the assassination of John Lennon. In 1982, a big new show on TV was Late Night with David Letterman, on how television and Letterman's facial hair have changed.

In 1982, the big economic issue in America was inflation. Not everything has changed that much. In 1982, in music, Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat on stage in Des Moines. Think about how much popular music has changed. Did you hear that in his new book, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner says rock and roll is headed toward becoming only a niche genre, and the Rolling Stones on stage now look like characters from Lord of the Rings? Sort of related.

In 1982, WABC Radio in New York gave up on rock and roll on the radio and changed its format to talk, and would eventually pave the way for conservative talk radio to become a big national thing. It was a few years before Rush Limbaugh, but if you're old enough to remember the old DJs, you might say it went from music with Dan Ingram to politics with Laura Ingraham, who had a talk show there before her one on television on Fox. There was another big moment in New York Radio. In 1982, John Schaefer was hired to host the music show called New Sounds on WNYC FM. It was the year the music died on AM Radio in New York, and a new era of New Sounds was born on FM.

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That's the song Esto Es Real by the band Combo Chimbita. They will be playing tonight at the Brooklyn Bowl for a very special event celebrating 40 years of John Schaefer and his groundbreaking show, New Sounds on WNYC. I am thrilled to welcome and to say congratulations on 40 groundbreaking years to my colleague John Schaefer. John, I always love when you come on this show to talk music with us. Welcome back, and congratulations. Wow.

John Schaefer: Thank you so much, Brian. What an intro. I feel old. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Well, you keep presenting what's new, and that's what's amazing about you. Can we do a little New Sounds origin story here before we get into the full music preview-

John Schaefer: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: -that you've come with just proving that you're still looking at what's ahead? What was the original concept for the show, and what were you doing before you got this gig?

John Schaefer: I was hired here at the end of 1981 to be the local host of All Things Considered and then the evening music host. We were doing classical music all through the day except for Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and we were doing a lot of very gnarly, modernist classical music, which props to WNYC for doing that. I thought, "There's a lot of music out there that people might actually like." I thought, if you could clear a little bit of time late at night and stretch the definition of classical music a little bit, that maybe you might get some of those disaffected rock listeners that have been cast adrift by, as you mentioned, WABC, and were already leaving the other FM stations that were doing music as well. That was essentially the idea behind New Sounds. It was basically, at the beginning, just me playing my record collection.

Brian Lehrer: Do you remember any of your first show's playlist or artist you were featuring a lot in those first weeks or months?

John Schaefer: Yes. Definitely, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, a lot of the early ECM Records, Keith Jarrett, Ravi Shankar. It was all over the map from day one. The funny thing about that first playlist is we can't find it right now, but I remember it clearly it was the work, Brian, of a person who does not think he will be doing this 40 years hence because I literally scribbled that first playlist in the margins of a Xerox copy of a review of a Richard and Linda Thompson concert. It's just a Xerox thing from a newspaper with all my scribbles around the margins telling me [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, then. What defines the New Sounds group of genres as you see it today, because it's not new hits exactly? The commercial stations still play things that are new, but that's not what you play.

John Schaefer: No, and what I've always been looking at are the things that commercial radio isn't playing. The things that fall into those gray areas between rock and classical, and jazz, and folk, and global music. The things that you have a tough time saying, "Well, what is that?" If you can say, "Oh, I know what that is," it's probably not New Sounds.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, have you read any of the Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner's book yet, or have a reaction to this breakout quote from it in the news, that rock and roll is becoming just a niche genre like jazz has become?

John Schaefer: Yes. I read that and I was very disappointed. What it says to me is that he's simply not listening in the right places because there are tons of young musicians who are making very much their own sound with the tools and the techniques of rock. Maybe it's going to, and you would hope that it is going to, evolve with each passing generation.

There's just so much interesting work being done by people who have discovered classic rock from their parents or whatever, and who are in their 20s and making really strong music. It's everything from singer-songwriter types like Phoebe Bridgers, to more progressive rock types like Black Midi over in the UK. There's a lot going on. The scene is fermenting, I think, in a way now that it might not have been 10 or 15 years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Ms. Nurse, who wants to call in with a quick congratulations, or for that matter, a question about upcoming concerts for John Schaefer, who you know from New Sounds, who you know from his Gig Alerts. 212-433-WNYC on this, the occasion of his 40th anniversary, hosting New Sounds on WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. We'll see how many things we can get through here in our available time, but we're going to go in chronological order, more or less.

Therefore, let's start with the event tonight to honor your show turning 40. I mentioned in the intro, it will take place at the Brooklyn Bowl, Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn. Doors open at 7:00. The show starts at 7:30. In addition to Combo Chambita, who we heard from, who else can we expect to hear tonight?

John Schaefer: There will also be a live set by Red Baraat, who, like Combo Chimbita, are a New York band that bring dance music from other places. Combo Chimbita from Colombia. Red Baraat is rooted in that hard-partying Punjabi wedding music. If you've ever seen the film Bend It Like Beckham, some of that great rhythmic music is at the heart of what Red Baraat does. In between the two bands, Ira and Georgia from the veteran rock group Yo La Tengo are going to do a DJ set. It's going to be a pretty fun event.

Brian Lehrer: Tickets for tonight's event, there are some tickets still available at wnyc.org/events, and from the Brooklyn Bowl website. I should pass this along, by purchasing a ticket, you acknowledge you'll be required to show proof of vaccination or a negative test result. It looks like that's still in effect there for the moment. Oh, by the way, I have to correct something from my 1982 timeline. I said John Hinckley went on trial for killing John Lennon. No, he was the one who tried to kill President Reagan. Correction from my own too quick take, too quick read of 1982 history there.

Let's see. Moving on to the rest of your full music line-up, the Rolling Loud Festival rolls into New York City this week. The festival at Citi Field in Queens will run all weekend long. I guess the Mets are out of town. With headliner Nicki Minaj kicking off Friday night. Let's take a little bit of a listen.

[music] All right, John, who else can listeners expect to hear on the Bowl field?

John Schaefer: Well, Rolling Loud is a big festival with all the littles. You got Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Tjay, Lil Baby, DaBaby, A$AP Rocky, Busta Rhymes, Future. It is the biggest hip hop festival, and it's in town early this year. It's the first weekend of fall. That's where our fall music preview starts.

Brian Lehrer: We go from probably the biggest rap festival of the year to something a bit more niche. Up next, Tyshawn Sorey's piece is coming to the Park Avenue Armory from September 27th to October 8th. Let's take a listen to a little bit of his piece Monochromatic Life.

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This is an instrumental piece. Correction again of myself. I said Monochromatic Life. It's Monochromatic Light. Why did you pick this piece for us, John?

John Schaefer: Well, it's Monochromatic Light, but it is subtitled Afterlife. The reason I like this piece, first of all, I think it's a good example of one of those pieces we say, "Well what kind of music even is that?" 50 years ago, Rothko Chapel opened in Houston. I'm a big fan of Rothko's paintings, so was the 20th-century American composer Morton Feldman. His perhaps most famous piece is called Rothko Chapel.

What Tyshawn Sorey has done is he's taken the exact same forces as Morton Feldman's old piece and created a new work for Rothko Chapel in Houston. They're going to reconfigure it for that huge, expansive drill hall at the Park Avenue Armory. It's going to be directed by Peter Sellars. It's going to feature artwork by the Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu, and flex choreography by Regg Roc, plus this immersive, ambient, beautiful music by Tyshawn Sorey.

Brian Lehrer: Now, continuing on a New Sounds journey here, you are looking forward to a Neo-Pagan, Norse folk metal band. Now I know we're talking like John Schaefer and New Sounds. A Neo-Pagan, Norse folk metal band. We could do a whole half hour on what folk metal even is. They're called-- am I saying this right? Wardruna?

John Schaefer: Vardruna.

Brian Lehrer: Vardruna? They'll play at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn on October 15. Let's get a little taste of what that will be like with a song called Isa.

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All right, talk to us about the genre of folk metal.

John Schaefer: Well, these musicians, many of them come from Norway's Black metal scene, but they've gone back to traditional roots. When they play horns, they are playing literal animal horns, and when they play drums, they're playing drums that had been hollowed out from tree trunks. They sing in Old Norse. Interestingly, they have reclaimed the old Nordic runes, which had sort of been co-opted, by the far right in Scandinavia. They're basically saying, you're not going to get away with taking our cultural heritage and dragging it into the extreme like that. All of this gets wound up in their music. You probably won't be surprised to find that this music was used in the TV series of Vikings.

Brian Lehrer: To kind of a segue, I think, we're going to go into two minutes of congratulations for John. We have a whole lot of people lined up calling in who want to congratulate you on 40 years. Because we have about two minutes left in the segment, folks, we're going to keep you to 20-second soundbites. Think of it as a congratulations greeting card to John Schaefer, and do it in a soundbite. As a segue, I say from the last piece of music, Elsa is calling from Stockholm, Sweden. Hi, Elsa, you're on WNYC. Give me a 20-second congratulations for John.

Elsa: 20 seconds. I hope both of you will stay for another 40 years. Thank you so much. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm happy I caught this because I'm actually running to Silk in Stockholm. Sometimes when I work late at night, if it's 1:00 or 2:00 AM, I'm like, "In three hours, it's New Sound."

Brian Lehrer: Elsa, thank you so much.

John Schaefer: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We got a little closer to home. Jonathan on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hello, John. This is Jonathan from Spanglish Fly. When we were on your show-- Hey, how you doing?

John Schaefer: Good.

Jonathan: I'm just calling to say congratulations. When we were on your show, playing some Latin Boogaloo a couple of years ago, is really one of the highlights of my musical life. Thank you very much, and I hope to keep going forever.

Brian Lehrer: Jon, thank you very much. Sydney and Scarsdale, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sydney.

Sydney: Hey, how you doing, guys? John, somebody introduced me to WNYC 43 years ago, and I heard your original show, and then eventually New Sounds. I've been with you from Gamma Lonza gun, until Miyamoto is Black enough. That's the whole span. Thank you very much.

John Schaefer: Wow, that is impressive. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: That is great. Oh, and one more. We'll throw in Vinson from New Rochelle, who wants to agree with Jann Wenner. Vincent, you're on WNYC with John.

Vincent: Hi, how are you? It's a respectful disagreement that rock and roll is on its way to becoming anything other than niche. I feel that hip hop is more of the mainstream standard. When a hip-hop song, for instance, is infused with rock and roll, that's the novelty now. I also feel like your language about not listening in the right places and oh, there are interesting things going on. That to me is--

Brian Lehrer: Almost defines niche. John, you want to get 10 seconds on this?

John Schaefer: Well, that's actually a very good point, except that the niche is a pretty big one. You're talking about artists who can really pack in the arenas. Friday night, the National are playing at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. Port Chester is calling it Capitol Theater day. There are bands that that can do that every night that they choose to play. They're not the younger generation that I was talking about, but I just I kind of feel like niche suggests something that doesn't have that kind of draw, and attention-getting power.

Brian Lehrer: Once again, folks, John Schaefer, 40 years of new sounds big celebration with lots of live music, and maybe even bowling at Brooklyn Bowl tonight. Some tickets are still available at fast, and we're going to go out with something else that you highlight coming up this fall in New York. Jake Blanc show on October 18, at the jalopy theatre and School of Music in Brooklyn. We'll go out with a little sampling of a song once there was no sun. Tell us in a soundbite what's exciting about this artist.

John Schaefer: He takes American folk songs and in his new album out Friday, Black spirituals and recasts them for a society that has been decimated by a climate catastrophe. It's a concept record. I think it's brilliant, and he's just an amazing musicologist and musician.

Brian Lehrer: John as we go out, congratulations on 40 years for me, you know you've got an eternal big fan on the news talk side of the stage.

John Schaefer: Thank you so much, Brian.

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