Remember that Sesame Street song, “These are the people in your neighbourhood?”  Well, here’s a feature about the people at your Community Radio station!  You like to party, and we like to party, so why don’t we party together?  Join us for...

Get to Know a CFCR Volunteer! 


Meet Jean-Philippe Deneault (JP), one of the Saturday evening hosts of Couleurs Café, CFCR’s weekend Francophone program. In 2011, JP was an interviewee on Couleurs Café, speaking about Francophone live theatre in Saskatoon. The host was so impressed with JP’s musical knowledge of Francophone music that he recruited him to be a host on the spot! JP has been the team lead of the multiple-host show on and off since then.

For the past 2 years, the Couleurs Café team has hosted a unique FM-Phasis fundraiser dinner at the Jamaican Food Basket with great success. JP is a community builder, and in May 2019, he became the newest member of the CFCR Board of Directors. He chairs the Marketing Committee and sits on the Fundraising Committee, and we’re happy to have him!


How did you first come to learn about CFCR? 

The francophone live theatre I worked for at the time was an advertiser.

Why do you volunteer? Why is CFCR important to the community?

Volunteering is in the DNA of my family. I am originally from Ontario. When you come from an official language minority community in Canada, common/shared spaces are essential for the vitality of the community. Theatre or gallery spaces are good examples, but radio plays such a unique role in community building, most importantly by engaging the imagination of listeners with music, a truly universal language. I have been involved in community radio since 1993/1994, working one summer as the off-air production coordinator at CHUO 89.1 FM.

Saskatoon’s Francophone Community is made up of people of different ancestries: North and Western Africans, French-Caribbean, European French, Quebecers, Métis, Acadians and Francophones from other Canadian P/T, Franco-Americans, etc. Shows on CFCR like Couleurs Café (CC) are very important to these communities and the Saskatoon community as a whole. CC’s mission is to explore the musical universe coming from culturally distinct communities that share a common language base and interact through common institutions, businesses, educational establishments, etc. Currently, our hosts come from Ontario, Northeast Saskatchewan, Western and Central Africa and France. None were born in Saskatoon.

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you on the air?

On December 24, 2011, I was anxious to be hosting my first Christmas music show ever. I diligently spent weeks preparing a comprehensive and well-researched playlist with all of my all-time favourite instrumental, vocal, international, pro or anti-Christmas songs. I digitized some of the music that was on vinyl or copied it from various other sources and burnt it all on a master CD. The problem was that in a hurry to beat the snow blizzard happening on that evening I rushed out of my place and ended up bringing an empty CD case to the station, leaving my Master CD behind. Since it was now too late for me to go get it, I scrambled throughout my show to find any Christmas music I could in CFCR’s music library and that is what I ended up playing on the air that night… I had friends and family listing in on that night who told me that I sounded a little out of my element. This would be an understatement.

What’s your favourite CFCR show(s)?

I must admit that recently I have a real soft spot for The Voice of Saskatoon on Sunday mornings, a show that gathers, from one week to the next, an impressive roster of community leaders that work with or are coming from the immigrant community. The hosts are also very active on social media, which makes it that more engaging.  

Who is your favourite local band right now? Non-local band?

Ponteix, Dumb Angel, Minor Matter, Rosie and the Riveters are local acts that I always look forward to catching live. That said, the two albums that I am listening to the most right now are “Chaos Theories” by The Souljazz Orchestra (give it a listen, you will thank me for it later) and an old-school hip hop album, “Stereo” by Sam Faye and D-Track. Over the years we have been playing on CC many tracks from African Reggae godfather Tiken Jah Fakoly, especially from his 2004 release called “Coup de gueule” and tracks from a much lesser-known artist from Québec, Sébastien Lacombe, who recorded in Dakar in 2012 a small gem called “Les Maîtres du Temps”. You can also expect to hear on our show a lot of music from Polaris-nominee Pierre Kwenders.

Aside from radio, what else do you like to do?

I write in local and national arts publication exhibit reviews, artist's portraits and interviews with contemporary artists, mostly lens-based but also with musicians. I am currently preparing a piece on Andy Warhol and jazz music.

What’s your favourite/least favourite pizza topping?

Favourite: Mozzarella di bufala

Least Favourite: Anchovies

What’s the best book you’ve read or movie/show you’ve seen recently?

A documentary called Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992, an in-depth look at the culture of Los Angeles in the ten years leading up to the 1992 uprisings.

 

That's a wrap for this month's "Get to Know a CFCR Volunteer"!


 

Who do YOU think we should feature next time on "Get To Know A CFCR Volunteer?" Let us know who your favourite CFCR host or volunteer is and you could win some great prizes! Just email us at cfcr@cfcr.ca and we'll take it from there.

Be a part of the community at CFCR by volunteering! You can apply to be a host and pitch your show idea --- OR you can be a part of the CFCR Army of Volunteers!

You could be the host of one of our existing daily/weekly programs (like Green Eggs & Ham, The Buzz, The Swing Shift, etc), or you can pitch your own idea for a show to CFCR Program Director Jay Allen. You can contact Jay at the station by calling 306-664-6678 or by emailing pd@cfcr.ca. Your friends and neighbours will envy you, and you may even be featured here, for all the world to see--or--hear--or whatever!

And, if you just want to help out in the community or around the station without hosting a show, shoot a message to CFCR’s Volunteer Coordinator Rebecca Zakreski at volunteers@cfcr.ca, or call 306-664-6678, and the next time the station needs an extra set of hands, you’ll hear from her.