Mostly Folk is a radio program. As you can probably guess, what we play is mostly folk music. The show airs on WRPI, Troy, NY, 91.5 FM, which is the college radio station of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It is on Sunday evenings, 6:00-8:00pm, Eastern time. If you are not in our broadcast area, you can listen online from the WRPI web site.
Mostly Folk was started sometime in the late 1960s by Donald Person. (The exact date is not known even by Donald Person himself.) Sometimes the start of the show has been
officially dated from September 1971, when Jackie Alper (who was then Donald's mother-in-law) began speaking as the voice of Mostly Folk, with Donald doing the engineering. Jackie was once known as "the fifth Weaver," leaving the group to spend more of her time on social and political activism
but retaining lifelong friendships with the members, particularly close to Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger.
Mostly Folk has aired on Sunday nights throughout its history, running from 6 pm to 8 pm for all but several
semesters when the time varied. Jackie Alper was the sole Mostly Folk DJ until the fall of 1984. In November of '84, Howard Jack began spelling her once a month. In 1993, Jackie retired from the show and a group of DJs began hosting it on a rotating basis. The show has continued that way since, with the various DJs including Billy Aul with Cathy Sullivan, Addie Murray and Olin Boyle, Sonny Ochs, Wanda Fischer, Laura Fairweather, Chuck Munson, Michael Slik, Margie Rosenkranz with Jackie Alper, Leah Walsh and Matt Toomey, Terry Hayden, and Howard Jack.
The current lineup is:
First Sundays: Sonny Ochs
Second Sundays: Terry Hayden or Michael Slik
Third Sundays: Howard Jack
Fourth Sundays: Matt Toomey
Fifth Sundays: Michael Slik
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