One of WHRW’s weekly radio programs, the European Ethnic Melodies Show, will be honoring Mother’s Day Tuesday night as it has for the past 22 years.
The program will feature ethnic music for Mother’s Day from Europe and America ‘in the widest range of styles, tempos, languages, and performed by vocalists, choirs, ensembles, bands and orchestras,’ Daniel Jan Walikis, an alumnus of Binghamton University and producer, director and host of the show, said.
Walikis said the Mother’s Day program has continued to reflect his reverence for women, including his own family members, living in the patriarchal society in Europe. He also wanted to commemorate the difficulties immigrant women, including his own relatives, faced as they made the long journey alone across Europe to join their husbands and families in the United States.
This year’s program will honor the music of Kvitka Cisyk, a Ukranian vocalist and alumna of Harpur College, who recently passed away from breast cancer. Walikis said her music brings profound meaning to the Mother’s Day Program.
In between songs, he said he will discuss how the role of the women has transformed as they began to work in factories and later became more independent in many areas of society.
‘I have taken the time to honor all the women in our lives on Mother’s Day for the past 22 years because I learned about the conditions in Europe firsthand as well as in my research,’ Walikis said.
He has interviewed immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who migrated to the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century and eventually settled in the Southern Tier area. His interviews are recorded, and he uses the information from those interviews in his pursuit of a master’s degree in American history.
Walikis, who is half Lithuanian and half Slovakian, will also discuss the Balto-Slavic music in Europe and the United States that contains hundreds of songs that are written to honor women.
‘I am now more able to connect the music with and to my audience on multiple levels of appreciation, enjoyment and understanding through the language, culture, customs, traditions and the religion of our European ancestors ‘ and all for Mom!’ Walikis said.
Walikis is an ethnomusicologist ‘ he studies music from a cultural perspective ‘ who brings in a significant degree of leadership, according to Joe Monte, the incoming general manager of WHRW radio.
‘He is very knowledgeable. He doesn’t just play the music ‘ he lives in the music and knows the culture behind it,’ Monte said.
Walikis started the European Ethnic Melodies Show in 1988 in an effort to broadcast ethnic music that never got played.
Influenced by the ideas of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author who focused on music as treatment, Walikis has developed an interest in music’s ability to heal and prevent the aging process.
The program will air from 7 to 10 p.m. Tuesday.