TAKOMA PARK, Md. – The cheerful rhythms of Remy Ongala’s electric guitar fade as Dr. Kevin Roy comes on the air, embodying all the lively energy of the music he is broadcasting. You can hear his smile.
“You're listening to 94.3 FM, WOWD. Welcome! It's a party, it's Friday morning and this is Kevin on No Maps.”
Roy takes off his headphones. “I love to wake up in the morning and be part of an engagement and an exchange across difference – to learn and grow and contribute what I can.”
In fact, most Friday mornings you’ll find Roy, a prominent expert on fatherhood and masculinity and a professor at UMD’s School of Public Health, at WOWD radio station serving up musical deep cuts from North and South America, the Caribbean and Africa.
“There are no maps, we can go anywhere,” Roy says as the lilt of a 1950s early Bossa Nova song plays in the background – Chega de Saudade by Brazilian great Joao Gilberto.
“So I play old hip hop and blues and soul, and I mix that with stuff from all over Africa and Latin America. The musical diaspora travels from one part of the world, bounces back and someone reinterprets and sends it back out – it's a lot of fun to hear the connections.”
Roy is one week away from co-leading a trip to Tanzania, where faculty and students from UMD work with local community groups to implement maternal health, mental health, and mentoring research and intervention projects.
He sees his lifelong interests in culture and music and his career in public health as not entirely separate.
“My work in public health and my passion for music kind of feed each other. I can't say there's a direct link – I'm not coming on the radio talking about public health in particular. But with music as with public health, there's plenty to say about social justice and addressing the disparities in our lives.”
With music as with public health, there's plenty to say about social justice and addressing the disparities in our lives.
Whether working with youth in Tanzania or with justice-impacted fathers and Central American immigrant families here in the U.S., Roy is attuned to the challenges young men in particular are facing in the modern world.
“Young men are still coming into the world with a lot of very calcified ways of thinking about what being a man means and how they should be in relationships and what family looks like.”
Personal histories and community stories are an important part of Roy’s research and, for him, music is one more way to hear the vast constellation of human stories, and offers other possibilities for men struggling with narrow views of masculinity.
“Music allows me to present a different way of being as men, as people. Music can break a lot of assumptions and push people to think in a different way. I want [this radio] show to be a lot about rhythm and justice, because I think that's part of resistance, resilience and growth.”
When he tells his community partners in Maryland about his radio show and the music he plays from their respective cultures, Roy says people get excited to share their favorite music from their home countries.
“Music is a way of connecting and sharing. In these times, it's a lot about thriving and joy. You don’t go to research for that – research is a tool we use to make change. Music is different – more about the human spirit.”
Olivia Ellis Randolph, WOWD Station Manager, says Kevin’s show is a listener favorite.
“Listeners benefit from his curiosity about the world and its art — he plays music that he literally picked up in a country he was in days before. Then he tells you about the artist, the context of the music and how it resonates with him,” she said. “Prepare to be entertained, surprised and fully-engaged when you tune into No Maps.”
As a young man himself studying Russian, Roy DJ-ed throughout college, playing mostly American music. He then branched out into global roots music as a graduate student with a radio show he called Continental Drift.
“There are limits to who I am: I'm only myself, a middle-aged white guy. But I don't want to hesitate in trying to understand and enjoy other people through music and culture and learn about myself and other people through that. No Maps gives me that chance.”