What is your name and DJ name?
My name is Serafina, and my DJ name is DJ Fina.
What is the name of your show and when is it on?
The name of my show is Desert Rose and All That Chit Chat and it’s on every other Thursday, 7-9pm.
Please describe your show. What is its format?
I think before all of this, my show was prominently based on the potential of interacting with live music from locals and traveling bands, to play that on the air, and also recorded. Having worlds of different demographics come on the air live and digitally: that was the format. That’s still happening – I’m still having a lot of local bands on the air, and then friends from different areas – which is kind of why I love the radio station, because it’s still interacting people globally. But right now the format is a little more up in the air.
What drew you to participate in KMRD?
I think that moving from the Pacific Northwest to here, I was so much more involved and at house shows and all this live action, and coming here the music seems a little slower. Just the connection, the connection to the community, to other DJs. And yeah, meeting actual local musicians has really brought me closer to music in general, and why people like to perform, and share communal interests.
What is the appeal of doing a radio show? How does it fit into the rest of your life?
I think the connection of being around live music or even listening through the airwaves – there’s just like this sense of oneness. Regardless of if you’re live, or you heard a new song that’s like really awesome, you can connect to someone else who knows that band or knows that song and there’s just like a communal oneness, and I really like that.
What difference has being a DJ made in your life?
There’s this meditative process when I sit down to make a show, or I’m sitting down to interview a band, that just kind of shuts the rest of the world out for a second, and I can focus in on new music, or a new genre, or new origin of where music comes from, and I really like that process. Outside and inside the studio… definitely when I’m in there, it’s just like me and the music, and it seems very meditative. Especially traveling from Santa Fe to Madrid, it’s like this pilgrimage of “I’m going to go listen to music.” That feels really nice.
What are your hopes for your show?
When music is back to being a thing… I don’t know if I’m supposed to be saying pre- or post-Covid, but it has a lot do do with my show. I really do love live music, and people creating that: it changes a room and it changes an evening. I would love to have more people on the air and interview people from New Mexico and around the country, specifically the Northwest, to intertwine people, and intertwine music and shows and performance. I guess more live music! But people just kind of making community even if it’s far away.
I think radio in general is just a community act, regardless of if I’m in there by myself. Getting feedback from people, and then also sharing my feedback with other people, is prominently what will keep things happy and going and respectful.
What are your hopes for the station?
I hope the station keeps poppin’! That it can be eventually this more involved, people in and out, place, safe space for a lot of people, to feel inclusive. But also that people are just so intrigued to tune in every week, and every time at different times of day, because there’s always variety going on, and so that it can appeal to different demographics at any given time. And that being spread constantly, and the knowledge of that going on and continuing would be so awesome.