CiTR -- Give 'em the Boot

This is community radio doing what community radio does best: one person with deep knowledge, an hour of airtime, and a record collection nobody else is playing. Give 'em the Boot runs on CiTR 101.9 FM, broadcasting from UBC in Vancouver. Linda Bull hosts. The theme is Vittina Crozza, a Sicilian folk tune recast by Michael Occhipinti and the Sicilian Jazz Project, and it returns week after week like a signature. The Italian music that follows refuses to stay in one lane. There is traditional song from Tuscany and Basilicata. There is jazz from Sardinia, including Paolo Fresu and his Devil Quartet. There are Italian-Canadian musicians such as Dominique Mancuso, of Sicilian descent, recording out of Toronto. The show is genuinely bilingual, and the switching is casual rather than formal — a full stretch of Italian for listeners who want it, then English for everyone else, with no apology in either direction. What lifts the track introductions above liner-note recitation is the storytelling. A recording is played precisely because the singer's voice was rough that day, and she said so on tape, and whoever was recording told her to keep going anyway. Another song gets explained by its own composer as the tale of a cook rising before dawn to build a masterpiece for an evening feast, which becomes an argument that Italian food and Italian music work the same way — a few simple ingredients, alive at the centre. Live music matters here. She reports back from the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and Vancouver Island MusicFest, tracks touring bands through town, and mentions CiTR's own live broadcasts from the festival grounds. Visiting artists come through the studio, and those conversations rarely stay narrow: farmers markets, shops around Main Street and Chinatown, and the historical fact that Vancouver's Little Italy once stood where Chinatown is now. Because it is a station broadcast, the edges of the hour belong to CiTR — sign-offs, handovers from the previous host, promos for the electronic music show and the skepticism show that share the schedule. That is part of the charm rather than a flaw. The pacing is unhurried. Nothing is oversold. Her stated purpose is simply to play music and introduce musicians, some new to the listener and some not, and then to come back next week and do it again. For anyone whose sense of Italian music stops at opera or restaurant playlists, this is a persistent, affectionate correction — north to south, field recording to jazz quartet, sung mostly in a language the host is happy to translate or happy to leave alone.