When mnartists.org's editor asked me to choose ten highlights from the new Ampers website, I knew I'd face tough choices. After all, there are more than 750 stories, documentaries and live concerts on the site, which features audio produced by member stations. Ampers is a collection of 12 Minnesota community or university-based radio stations, including KMOJ in Minneapolis and KSRQ in Thief River Falls.

With help from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, our producers have been eavesdropping on artists, recording the sounds of their instruments and just getting out and meeting interesting people. Take the Flarf story, for example. Flarf is a poetry movement that celebrates "awesome bad" poetry by talented poets. Or head out on a boat with Joe Carlson, a North Shore fisherman. He fishes Lake Superior. For a living. And even if you don't speak Ojibwe, it's fun to listen to Ojibwemowin, a multilingual program from KAXE in Grand Rapids. (Maybe you can learn a phrase or two and impress your friends!)

One of the deepest strengths of the website is music. We've got hundreds of live performances and interviews with musicians as diverse as Mayda, a Korean-Minnesotan singer/songwriter and John Berquist, a man who memorizes Scandinavian folk songs so they're not lost forever. Oh, and check out the recordings we have of Spaghetti Western String Co., a Minneapolis band that stepped into Radio K before calling it quits in June.

Happy listening!

--Todd Melby

About the organization: Ampers is a network of 12 independent public radio stations in Minnesota. Each station is locally managed and programmed by and for the local communities they serve. Ampers is the second largest public radio network in the state of Minnesota and one of the largest public radio networks of its kind in the United States. From Grand Marais, and Thief River Falls, to Mankato and Winona, and just about everywhere in between, we've got Minnesota covered. Our combined audience is about 250,000 devoted listeners. Ampers has no affiliation with Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and receives no financial support from MPR.

Ampers website
Listen to hundreds of original radio features by the 12 participating public radio stations, based throughout Minnesota, on the new Ampers website.

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