ANNOUNCING UPCOMING local commencements and shouting out grads on a late spring day, Adi in the Afternoon is spinning Journey, Cher, and Stevie Wonder for Graduation Class Song Day at KSWV-99.9 FM. “We love our community,” she says. “Whether you went to Santa Fe High or you grew up in Chicago or Pittsburgh—you live here now. Text me your class song, and we can all be in the nostalgia machine together.”
Adi Gonzales and her younger brother, Amado Abeyta (also known as Amado in the Mid-Morning), DJ back-to-back lunchtime sets Monday through Friday at Santa Fe’s enduring family-run radio station, known to locals as Que Suave. The station played all day from a radio atop their grandmother’s freezer when they were growing up in the 1980s and ’90s.
“They used to broadcast the rosary every day, and she’d pray every morning,” Abeyta recalls. “The whole family listened to Spanish music when we cleaned the house on weekends.”
Broadcasting from an unassuming adobe off Cerrillos Road, the station is comprised of Santa Fe music legacy and legend. Owner Estevan Gonzales took over for his late father, former Santa Fe Mayor George Gonzales, who’d been in New Mexico radio 40 years when he bought the KSWV signal in 1991. (He was also a crooner in a Spanish-language trio for 30 years.) Adi is Estevan’s wife, and she and Amado are the youngest children of Chris Abeyta, the late leader of Lumbre del Sol, a Santana-influenced outfit going strong since the 1970s that Amado now leads.
KSWV started as a Spanish-language station and evolved into bilingual programming. In 2015, Que Suave added popular music from 1960 to 1999, with a bit of leeway in both directions. George Anaya Jr.—a singer with his family band, Los Anayas de Santa Fe—anchors weekday mornings with New Mexico music from 9 to 11 a.m. “I really play anybody from New Mexico,” he says. “But the one who started it all is the late Al Hurricane.”
Known as the Godfather of New Mexico music, Hurricane fused traditional Mexican mariachi, ranchera, and folk music with rock, country, and R&B. The expansive sound remains the foundation for KSWV’s embrace of multiple musical genres. Adi and Amado both gravitate to ’80s and ’90s new wave and pop. (“My favorite band is Oasis,” Amado admits. “It’s very controversial.”) He offers copious music history and trivia during his sets, while Adi turns her hour into a chatty visit with friends. Both consider New Mexico music to be any music made by a New Mexican.
“There’s traditional music from up north,” Adi says. “Antonia Apodaca is a great example of that,” she adds, referencing the late accordionist, guitarist, and songwriter from Rociada, who died in 2020 at age 96. “But my dad sounded nothing like her, and my father-in-law sounded nothing like either of them.”
Santa Fe keeps tuning in to KSWV because it’s tradition, Anaya adds. “The music we play—in Spanish and in English—brings people to their memories of going to the bailes with their tías and tíos, going to the weddings, the graduations,” he says.
“New Mexico has produced great indie rock bands, too, like the Shins and Beirut,” Amado says. “They’re into the same things all New Mexicans are into—red and green chile, family traditions. We play them all, we love them all.”
KSWV-99.9 FM can also be found at 810 AM and kswvradio.com.
THANK GOD FOR THE RADIO
Going strong since 1973, KANW-89.1 FM’s Saturday-morning New Mexico music dedication show is the Albuquerque public radio station’s highest-rated program, playing traditional Spanish ballads, ranchera songs, waltzes, polkas, and other songs in Spanish, English, or both that pay homage to the region. “We try to play music with a nNew Mexico sound and style,” says Michael Brasher, a host of the weekend show, “artists like Al Hurricane, Tiny Morrie, and the Blue Ventures.”
Although KANW also plays New Mexico music every afternoon, the Saturday show features live dedications read on-air by longtime co-hosts Jorja Armijo and Yvonne Vega, who sweetly and carefully relay callers’ memories between musical segments. “It’s more than just music. It’s community involvement,” Brasher says. “They tell stories, and we get to know a little bit about the people who are calling. It’s a chance for people to celebrate the important events in their lives, from first communions to high school graduations to the passing of a loved one.”
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