Where It All Began...

A Message from Jonathan Bristow - Ascent Radio Creator and Director; Written September, 2021 with Ascent on the threshold of going on air for the first time.

Hey, friends!

My name is Jonathan Bristow. I am the creator and director of Ascent Radio, and a lifelong, ardent music enthusiast.

I believe music matters.

​Music moves us.

​As the universal heartbeat, music holds an incredible and unique capacity to inspire us, challenge us, even transform us!  With Ascent Radio, my aspiration is to provide music listeners with an innovative and dynamic craft-radio experience. 

Ascent Radio will offer listeners a unique programming recipe and process, playing diverse music and artists from the Civil Rights Era to today - curated entirely upon the unifying concept of our collective human ascent, or music for a better world.

Music and People.

My inspiration for Ascent Radio draws from my innate and lifelong passion for both music and people.

​At 37 years young, I grew up at the tail end of the “mixtape” generation, spending hours as a kid in front of the stereo, cassette recording and paused, in anticipation of the perfect song to come across the radio to add to my mixes. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me will likely recall talking music in some form or fashion (whether they wanted to or not!), connecting a lyric, a song, or an album to any given moment. Curating music for friends, family, communities of which I've been a part, and for countless events, gatherings and occasions has been a lifelong joy and craft. As the creator and director of Ascent, my dream is to take my passion and artistry to the next level, working to curate a meaningful musical experience - and cultivate a unique online community - for listeners and enthusiasts far and wide!

Pandemic and Social Unrest

p/c: Clay Banks via Unsplash

The seeds that would become Ascent Radio were first planted in my brain  in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the stay-at-home orders from the global pandemic, and during the heights of our social unrest. 

Regarding the impact of the Covid lockdowns, I was deeply moved by the innovative and creative ways people learned to come together for beautiful things right from their own living rooms and kitchen tables - (think John Krasinski’s “Some Good News,” or the “home shows” of countless other creatives, public figures and musicians.) In the midst of these unthinkable times, we found community and connection with one another in the most inspiring of ways, transcending space and time. 

These experiences began to dramatically alter the ways I was learning to think about community, and about our oneness and common humanity. Our context in the pandemic has truly provided us with new imagination, dreaming up possibilities as to how we might find and explore community and connectedness in ways we never could have previously.

In a somewhat similar way, I was also deeply moved and inspired by ways I observed people coming together - across the barriers of space and time - in unity and conversation regarding our most urgent social matters and in the fight against racial injustices. Everywhere online, I observed (and was invited into) groups discussing these critical matters of our time, utilizing mediums like film, books, speeches, poetry, and television shows as centerpieces to gather around, sitting with the most important of authors and voices and allowing their work and words to lead us in critical conversation and learning.

For months, however, I continued to find myself thinking we also ought to have a platform or outlet to explore these types of conversations through the medium of music - the universal language! I couldn’t help but wonder what we might learn and discover together if we had a gathering space to listen to, discuss and learn from works like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” album, or “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” centering discussions on the profound social commentary, insight and wisdom contained in musical masterpieces such as these!  (To be explicitly clear, in NO way do I - or anyone else involved in the station - consider myself as any kind of expert or voice on these critical topics. Quite the opposite! We at the station are passionate about listening and learning from the experts, which in our case are the artists and musicians we play. Thus, the station is simply and sincerely an endeavor to cultivate a holding space for learning and honest conversation.)

The Dream: A Community Radio Station...

In the following months, as these seeds began to germinate in my heart and mind, the concept that would become Ascent Radio (and the Ascent Listening Community) began to grow. By the early months of 2021, the concept and ideas were emerging more fully formed specifically around the idea of a community radio station.  Before too long, a clearer vision for Ascent began taking shape in me, and my wife and I made the decision to take a leap of faith and fully step into and engage Ascent as a serious endeavor! Since that time, I have spent the past six months researching, learning, imagining, drafting, pitching ideas to others, revising and refining the concept, establishing the business, collecting other creative types and music enthusiasts interested in partnering with the station or serving as board members… and now we’re HERE! On the threshold of Ascent Radio going on air for the first time!

Ascent Radio has already been an incredible journey, involving remarkable gifts and help to get to this point - and we’re just getting started! To get us to this exciting next step, Ascent Radio needs YOU to #JoinTheClimb! We are excited to turn Ascent loose and see how far it will fly!

Thanks for reading along. We're glad you're here, and look forward to sharing the ascent with you!

Sincerely,
​Jonathan

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More About Us...

We're all about inspiring hope and change through the power of song! Read more about the ways we are committed to building community and amplifying music by women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized artists.

These five values inform everything we do, everything we are, everything we will become, and every decision we make - from the choices of programming and content we offer to our internal decision making processes.

A little treat from the Ascent Radio Blog, our reflections at the intersection of great music and social change: "With its mystical, transformative power, music is hard at work in and among us, drawing a better world ever more near."