WQSV Profile:
Ben Leonard
How did you come to be involved with WQSV? And how long have you been involved?
I met WQSV founder and previous station manager Tom DuMontier in late 2017 through some mutual friends. I think I griped about there not being enough soul and hip hop played on WQSV and Tom was essentially like, “Well, let’s see if we can do something about that, then.” I pitched the Astral Traveling show concept to him and after a few Monday night training sessions with the inimitable Mr. Don Hawks, I began occupying the Tuesdays from 7-9pm slot in February of ’18 and have resided there on the schedule since.
When did you start DJing? Are there any DJs who influenced you? Or something/someone else who influenced you?
I was a middle-of-the-night DJ on WXJM during my brief time at JMU years ago but that was the extent of my on-air experience. I’ve always been more of a mixtape and playlist guy. I also come from a music performance background and while I’ve DJ’d a few parties and events, I’d much rather be playing an instrument, to be honest. This may sound cloying but I get so much inspiration from the other WQSV DJs. As I also wear the hat of program director, I have the privilege of previewing their playlists in advance on occasion and can’t help but marvel at the variety of music, show ideas, themes, and overall creativity they put into their shows week after week.
Talk about your connection to music/the role music plays in your life.
Music has really always been a close second to the people in my life for just about as long as I can remember. It’s a tired cliche but yes, there was always music playing in the house growing up. My dad loved his Stax and Motown records and my mom was an ’80s MTV junkie, so James Brown would be playing on the stereo in one room while the Thompson Twins were blaring out of the TV in the other. It fascinates me that music provokes these neurological responses in us that science still hasn’t been able to fully understand. I’m always listening to music for inspiration or checking out songs to see if they would fit into the general station programming or my show. I get podcasts and television series recommended to me all the time but they never stick. Ultimately, I would just rather be listening to music.
Describe your show.
Miles Davis had this theory that every note of music that has ever been played on Earth eventually travels up into space and hovers there for eternity in this kind of cosmic web of sound. Inspired in equal measure by Pharoah Sanders and Parliament-Funkadelic, Astral Traveling is a voyage through that sonic cloud in space. I’ll draw threads from obscure ’70s fusion records that were interpolated by hip hop producers two decades later or try to recontextualize more modern songs by placing them next to older ones, and letting the listener connect the dots. Sometimes I just want to bask in the glory that was Prince Rogers Nelson for two hours.
Who are some of your favorite musicians and why?
It’s difficult to overstate the impact that hearing Public Enemy for the first time had on me. Encountering “Fear of a Black Planet” as a twelve-year-old really laid the blueprint for how I still hear music and sound in general, and was just an incredible, monstrous, life-changing moment. Herbie Hancock for sure, particularly his Mwandishi band and the “Sextant” record. I also adore everything Andrew Hill played on. Then Roy Ayers, Alice Coltrane, Jorge Ben, just way too many artists from the 1970s to mention. I’ll go far down rabbit holes and listen to little else but Duke Ellington for months. Discovering electronic music in the mid-90s was also a seismic event for me, so Mouse on Mars, Fila Brazillia, The Orb. A recent favorite is a duo from Oakland called Brijean who make this unique flavor of dreamy, Latin house that resonates 100% with me. Stereolab is still probably my favorite band of all time.
What is your first memory involving music?
My mother sang in the church choir and I have a distinct memory of me as a toddler, attending mass one Sunday morning and watching her sing.
What was the first concert you attended?
I’d love to say something hip like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation tour, but when I was maybe fourteen years old I accompanied an older friend with a driver’s license to see Cracker at Trax in Charlottesville on a random weeknight. There were promises of beer and college girls. Shockingly, neither came to fruition that night.
How do you go about building your show?
If it’s a show with my co-host Tony Davenport, we’ll usually bounce show ideas off each other, settle on a theme and playlist, then add shared notes and potential talking points to a Google doc. We love it when listeners think we’re this wellspring of music trivia, but we’d be lost without scouring Wikipedia ahead of time. If I’m just flying solo for the evening, anything goes, really. I started digitizing most of my CD and vinyl collection about ten years ago and every song I play comes from there. It’s just a matter of picking a couple hours’ worth of songs and arranging them into something cohesive as far as mood, tempo, style, etc.
Do you have any particular criteria when selecting music for your show?
For whatever reason, I’ve always gravitated to music made by people of African descent and that’s the primary focus of the show: soul, hip hop, jazz, funk, and fusion from the 1970s through the 1990s. I admittedly have a weakness for disco and will play it at every opportunity – there are so many underrated and forgotten disco records from the late ’70s that were nearly lost to time forever.