For those of you who are musically minded, or those who are always on the lookout for the latest tunes (or maybe something other than Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball”), I interviewed the president of Emory’s very own radio station, Senior Wilma Qiu! Read on to find out about WMRE (see what they did there?) and how to tune into to its daily shows.
HerCampus Emory (HCE): Tell me briefly about WMRE.
Wilma Qiu (WQ): At its core, it’s a radio station. We play music on the internet so people can tune in. We see ourselves as the source for alternative music on campus, so we have a music publication with album reviews and we usually have big concerts once a semester; we have one coming up at the end of October!
HCE: How did you become involved with WMRE?
WQ: It was actually at the student activities fair freshman year. I saw them… they were giving out magazines with a picture of Matt & Kim on the cover and I absolutely love M&K and they were like, “Yeah you can apply to be a DJ and play your own music and stuff,” so yeah, it was history after that. I applied to be a DJ and I was accepted and I’ve been involved ever since.
HCE: What kind of music do you typically play on your own show?
WQ: The show that I have with my co-DJ plays remixes, mashups and covers so I like to say we’re Top 40 with a twist. It’s music that’s familiar but at the same time, something new and different. I like basically everything, really.
HCE: Where can you find the shows?
WQ: Go to wmre.fm and then you can watch and/or listen to the live shows. You can do two things: you can listen through a mp3 feed or you can [creepily] watch us on our live video feed. We’re also Channel 26 on Emory cable, so you can watch there if you’d like. Hopefully nobody gets naked on camera… That’s always one of my concerns.
HCE: How can students become involved with the station?
WQ: We have applications for DJs that open up at the beginning of the semester… We have sports shows, some play jazz music, study music. Every show has a different theme so you just come up with an idea for a theme and you apply and then if you get in, you have your own show! A lot of other people get involved through helping out with concerts and writing for the magazine.
HCE: Is this something you’d like to pursue after graduation?
WQ: I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to do something with music, probably not in the foresseable future but it’s something that I love and it’s college and so I get the chance to do something really fun for right now. I’d really love to be a DJ—that’d be sick—but I always have to pay my bills (laughs)
Be sure to log on to their website and check them out! And here’s a short video summing up what WMRE is all about.