Dr. Jonathan Øverby - The Road to Higher Ground
Dr. Jonathan Øverby
There is a natural connection between a culture and its music. It’s the music’s interpretation of the group’s inner thoughts, feelings, and yearnings that can intersect with other cultures and bridge social gaps in ways mere rhetoric cannot. At the end of the day, music helps us realize that we’re all more alike than we are different, leading to a means of social understanding and healing far more effective than other human interactions because music speaks to us all with the same emotional language.
So says Dr. Jonathan Øverby, the enduring host of “The Road to Higher Ground with Dr. Jonathan Øverby,” his long-running Wisconsin Public Radio program that celebrates music from cultures around the world every Saturday evening from 5 pm to 9 pm on WHAD 90.7 FM.
Øverby, a Milwaukee native who grew up on North Second Street, and musician who cut his teeth as both a singer and play-by-play sports announcer at Rufus King High School, has been preaching his unique gospel for 31 years on WPR, and before that on WORT community radio in Madison. He also is an accomplished vocalist and conductor.
“I had the good fortune that someone saw some talent in me early and as a high school freshman I was admitted to the school’s A Choir,” Øverby says, “which is something that didn’t happen to many freshmen back then.”
Many Forms of Music
In addition to becoming steeped in the classics thanks to his choir participation, Øverby grew up in a musical family. His grandmother performed on the “Chitlin Circuit,” a collection of entertainment venues throughout the East, South and Midwest aimed primarily at Black performers and clientele. His mother sang in the high school choir, and his father owned the former Club Chateau Lounge, a jazz joint on lower Third Street. The mix of classics, gospel and jazz gave the young musician a comprehensive introduction to many forms of music, a mix that further deepened during his undergraduate work at San Francisco State University.
“My stay there helped me refine my sense of purpose,” Øverby says. “In touring Europe I performed the classics, but I began adding spirituals at the end of each concert, to which the audience responded enthusiastically.”
That realization led the young singer to wonder about the purpose of music. Which culture’s music is the most highly celebrated and which is mostly marginalized? And why?
Building Connections
“I wanted to use music to reduce human hatred and build connections among various groups,” Øverby says. “Letting music create a narrative of understanding can bring humanity together in ways that other things can’t.
The songs he plays on radio reflect a moral appeal that isn’t necessarily just protest but an attempt to step into the space that this music takes place. “It’s learning to have a deep affinity and understanding of what these people are experiencing,” he adds.
Øverby worked with Madison’s Edgewood University to create its first post graduate doctoral program in world music studies. As an ethnomusicologist, he holds degrees in administrative arts, vocal music and choral conducting, a master's degree in religious studies and a doctorate in administrative leadership in higher education.
In recent years he has been inducted into the Folk Alliance International's Folk DJ Hall of Fame and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. His musical travels have taken him around the globe, including the Caribbean, Cuba, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Japan, Peru, Morocco, Poland, Scotland, Switzerland, Tanzania and Zanzibar.
Ancestral Research
He also recently discovered through ancestral research that he is 60% Nigerian and 40% Norwegian, which further increased the radio host and producer's desire to blend the classics with other forms of world music in hopes of creating greater understanding and unity among cultures, a major hurdle given what's going on in the world today.
“In my research about sacred world music, all the religions say that you are to treat the stranger well. It struck me as a real moment to pause and absorb this fact,” he explains. “The marginalization of different groups of people is a real insult to humanity. When people don’t understand people who are different than they are, there is a pattern—distrust, marginalization, hate, and finally removal from society.”
Global protest music plays no small part in “Higher Ground’s” play list. Some forms, like American R&B, lament what’s lacking in the musician’s culture and life, while other are incendiary in their calls for action, Dr. Øverby says.
“On of the earliest American protest songs was ‘Go Down Moses, Let my people go’,” he explains. “The American civil rights movement is filled with straight-up protest songs.”
But in some countries including those in Africa and Middle East, he adds, it’s dangerous to openly protest.
“Some songs are critiques of social conditions, but they don’t always suggest answers,” Øverby says. “The unresolved moral dilemma is reflected in a mirror. It can be an invitation to go into the space and contemplate the story being told rather than the storyteller suggesting a solution.
“This is where the listener comes in,” he adds.
Tune in this Saturday and see what he means.
