Dr. Jonathan Øverby
Dr. Jonathan Øverby began in radio as a student sports play-by-play announcer at Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School. After attending San Francisco State, he traveled as a concert artist. In 1994 he joined WPR as host of “The Road to Higher Ground with Jonathan Øverby” talk show. In 2007 he reinvented it as a world music broadcast.
In 2013, UW-Extension conferred on Øverby the “Distinguished” WPR Broadcaster title for his radio and statewide community service. In addition, Øverby served for two terms as Vice-Chair on the Wisconsin Arts Board. He has produced Wisconsin’s Annual “Tribute” honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for more than four decades. In 2014 he became the first Post-Doctoral Fellow in the history of Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.
Dr. Øverby, continues his remarkable career in broadcasting, as an artist, and as an internationally recognized scholar and ethnomusicologist, honored in 2016 by U.W. Colleges and UW-Extension with the “Wisconsin Idea” Award for “outstanding contributions of service, education to society, and the quality of life in Wisconsin, the nation and the world.”
Elevated to a Chief in the Warmeru Tribe, Mount Meru, Tanzania in 2018, Dr. Øverby, a Smithsonian music lecturer, was in 2022 inducted into the Folk Alliance International Hall of Fame. He believes “music has the power to bridge cultural divides and increase the understanding of diverse groups worldwide.”
Congratulation you have truly been a leader. The community has been blessed by you.
Thank you
Hearty congratulations, Jonathan! I enjoy “The Road to Higher Ground” almost every Saturday night here in Madison. Also have fond memories of appearing on the old “Higher Ground” in Vilas Hall. Thank you for your service to our community — and the world!
This is a well-deserved honor.
Dr Øverby is phenomenal! He & his voice both inspire and sooth!
~MOMic/Kristine Marie Gallagher
You have mentioned and/or featured recorders in several iterations of your sessions on NPR. I identify as a “primary” recorder player though I play other more “normal” instruments. I’m listening to your recorder thing again right now and remember the gag of “did he pay me for the bass or not?”
I still have my Roessler bass that I played 6.5 million notes at King Richards Faire before it became Bristol Ren Faire back in the 1980’s.
There is a church in Mt Horeb, where I used to be a member, where they still call me back now and again to play recorder on the parts where the flute gals say “It’s too much, it’s too fast! Give it to John!” and I end up playing it on a recorder. That’s what they’re good for!
Thanks for pointing out the recorder on your show!
John