De Jong Knight of Music

   What do WOBO-FM broadcaster Diederik De Jong and famed maestro Neeme Järvi have in common?
   Both are Knights of the Order of the North Star of Sweden. De Jong was knighted in 1981 for airing more programs of Swedish music than any program host in the world. Järvi, father of Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Järvi, received the distinction in 1990 for his leadership of the Gothenburg Symphony, the National Orchestra of Sweden.
   It’s an honor De Jong - a botanist who earned his Ph.D. in plant taxonomy from the Michigan State University and taught at the University of Cincinnati’s Raymond Walters College for 25 years - wears lightly.
   "I have worn it only once, when we had our convocation at Raymond Walters. I had my robe on and I put on my medal, but I felt self conscious about it, to be honest with you."
   De Jong, who has hosted a Tuesday afternoon show on WOBO, "Music of Our Time," since 1989, could be honored similarly by many other countries. His program, presented live from 3 to 6 p.m. on 88.7 FM, is devoted exclusively to contemporary classical music from other countries (of the more tonal variety, he stressed). He owns 3,000-4,000 recordings, mostly CDs (he recently donated most of his LP collection to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s Gorno Library). They represent more than 2,000 composers from over 55 different countries.
   "The majority of these are unknown to my listeners," said De Jong, a world traveler and musical omnivore who speaks with the hint of an accent from his native Holland. "Every five to six weeks I play film music or ‘music with a beat’ (he loves big band jazz). So far I have done 747 three-hour programs."
   His focus may be unique (calls to other radio stations in the U.S. turned up no similar programs). It is also appreciated by many fans in the Cincinnati area.
   "Diederik has given Greater Cincinnati music lovers a wonderful gift over the years, namely a chance to hear the work of numerous composers whose music is not routinely programmed on other classical radio outlets," said Kenwood resident Jerald Nidich, a librarian at UC.
   Among Nidich’s favorites are Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, Vagn Holmboe (Denmark), Hanns Eisler (Germany), Silvestre Revueltas (Mexico) and jazz.
   Shut-ins and people who get their music from the radio also love De Jong, including Irene Canter of Florence, Kathleen Still of Mt. Carmel and Carol and Wayne Tate of Mason.
   "He gives us music from all over the world," said June Baldwin of Kenwood, who listens to De Jong with her husband Jack. "You don’t get tired of the music he presents."
   "You don’t have to understand the music to enjoy it," said Still, a long-time listener who phones De Jong every Tuesday to thank him for his show.
   Helen Lundie of Mount Washington, who listens to WOBO around the clock, calls it "the best radio station I’ve ever listened to. Diederik is very knowledgeable, he plays gorgeous music and he has a great personality."
   Some of De Jong’s listeners have been fans since he hosted "Do You Know This Composer?" on WGUC-FM, a 15-year show with a similar format that was canceled in 1988 when the classical music station changed its focus to more familiar programming.
   It was a painful separation for De Jong, who was suffering from malaria at the time.
   "I had been in Nigeria and was bitten by a mosquito and didn’t know it." After stumping doctors in Latvia and Sweden, he ended up at University Hospital in Cincinnati, where they correctly diagnosed his illness. "It was falciparus malaria, the worst you can get, but once you get rid of it, that’s it. They took out all my blood and gave me a complete transfusion. I was in the hospital for three weeks and lost 60 pounds."
   When WOBO, a small independent station in Batavia, advertised for broadcasters in 1989, he applied and was accepted. Recent shows have been devoted to music of Malta, Italy and Croatia, Spain, the "Benelux" countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxemburg) and during the holidays, music of Christmas, including 19th-century American composer William Henry Fry’s "Christmas Symphony," an annual favorite in which you can hear Santa soaring over the rooftops.
   De Jong’s travels have taken him to over 100 countries with his wife Maryl, a professor of art at UC’s Clermont College in Batavia. They pick up music at every stop (except Antarctica, where he found "no composers," he said).
   That is how it all began.
   "We were in Sweden in 1972 and I bought a lot of Swedish records," Said De Jong, who had been hosting a five-minute ecology show on WGUC. The next year he went on the air with "Do You Know This Composer?" starting out with ten programs of Swedish music (he did 750 programs in all for WGUC).
   De Jong’s collection of new music is constantly expanding. He added 195 CDs to his collection last year (some are donated, some are purchased), 345 the year before. He was a reviewer for American Record Guide from 1989-98 and has contributed articles on 17 composers to the 1,201-page "Essential Listening Companion" published by Backbeat Books in San Francisco in 2002.
   One of De Jong’s pet peeves is "sugar-coating" contemporary music, which he has loved since he was a child and fell in love with the music of Bartok and Martinu (the only pre-20th century composer whose CDs he still owns is Anton Bruckner).
   "The Cincinnati Symphony may play a piece by Eduard Tubin, but they also put on the same program something by Schubert or Beethoven. That makes me so mad. Don’t you think people are curious?"
   Although he is pleased that CSO music director Paavo Järvi is performing 20th (and 21st) century music, he would like to see an even larger commitment.
   De Jong has a wish list for Järvi: Eino Tamberg’s Concerto Grosso Gosta Nystroem’s "Sinfonia del Mare" Jan Carlstedt’s Symphony No. 1 Allan Pettersson’s Symphony No. 7 Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Symphonies No. 6 or 7 Vagn Holmboe’s Symphony No. 8 or "Sinfonia in Memoriam" and Ernst Hermann Meyer’s Violin Concerto.
   De Jong is reluctant to name a favorite work or composer, though Martinu comes the closest, he said.
   "You don’t know the music of Bohuslav Martinu? How lucky you are! There is so much beautiful music you have yet to hear."
   (You can begin March 4-6, when Järvi and the CSO perform Martinu’s Symphony No. 2 at Music Hall - they performed his "Frescoes of Piero della Francesca" last season.)  
De Jong challenges his listeners not to subscribe to the "all-too-human tendency to like a work less or ignore a work because its composer is unknown. It is only through listening that the unknown becomes familiar."
   (first published in The Cincinnati Post Jan. 28, 2005)