Exalting Earth Eclectic

Bart Everson shares the story behind the new ecospiritual radio program Earth Eclectic.

I’m beyond thrilled, pumped, excited, and delighted, to announce the premiere of a new radio series.

We’re calling it the Earth Eclectic radio hour. My co-conspirator Laura Dedelow and I have been working on this production for well over a year. We’ve kept after it through many challenges because we feel the world needs to hear this.

It’s a weekly program featuring new music that celebrates the Earth and speaks to the heart. We think of it as “ecospiritual” music. The program encompasses a diverse array of sounds, including sacred music from various traditions, popular music of every genre, experimental excursions that don’t fit neatly into any category, and more.

The common thread that weaves this tapestry together is the love of Mother Earth. Once we started listening, we were amazed to discover how much music in this vein is being released right now. As our global ecological crisis deepens, such expressions seem to be rising. We believe this emergent body of work needs to be shared. It’s medicine, a balm for healing. Our mission, then, is to celebrate the music that celebrates Gaia.

If you’re in New Orleans, you can tune into WHIV 102.3 FM at the ungodly hour of 5AM Central on Sunday morning, right before the gospel show. Of course, while the station streams live via their website, you can also visit EarthEclectic.org where you can listen to the show on demand via Mixcloud.

The premiere aired April 21, 2024. It’s a weekly program, so by the time you read this, there will be several more episodes in the archives.

When you have an hour, please take a listen, and by all means let us know what you think. We’re just getting started, and we can use all the pointers we can get.

I’m especially proud of our premiere episode. A few words on how it begins and ends:

• I realized that the first selection needed to be something special, and I found what I was seeking in a medley of Neo-Pagan chant, Jewish folk song, and African American spiritual: “The Earth Is Our Mother / Shalom Chaverim / Wade in the Water,” performed by Symphony Chorus of New Orleans. I was there when this was recorded live at St. Mary’s Assumption Church in the Garden District of New Orleans on March 3^rd, 2024. In fact, after the performance, I approached the guy who recorded it and explained our plans for the radio show. He immediately caught my drift and said, “This would be perfect, wouldn’t it?” You can watch the whole performance on YouTube.
• It’s our intention to focus on new releases, and most of the songs in this episode were released in 2023. But I also like the idea of reaching back to honor the ancestors, so to speak, and so I plan to end each episode with something a little older. The premiere episode ends with “Let Us Go Forth in Peace” by Paul Winter, from the Missa Gaia.

There are another ten tracks included in the opening show, ranging from a song inspired while hiking to one commissioned by a soil scientist, a jazz song incorporating owl song, to the ancient Hymn to Gaia. For more extensive notes on all twelve tracks in the premiere, please visit my personal site.

We are grateful to WHIV-FM for providing us a home on the airwaves. In this internet-driven era, we could have done a podcast, but we feel it’s critically important to be broadcasting on the air. There’s a host of reasons behind this rationale, but chief among them is getting to more listeners. We think this program has immense potential for global syndication through community-oriented radio stations. I can think of no better home base for Earth Eclectic than WHIV, a community station dedicated to social justice and human rights. As we know, these concerns are deeply intertwined with our need for ecological wisdom.

Finally, we are also grateful to the Gaian Way for financial and spiritual support.