How Will I Make It Through The Night

I can't really stand commercial radio. Between the bland sameness of the music selection ever since Clear Channel slithered its way into nearly every station, the repetitive, idiotic commercials that seem custom designed to drive me insane, and the loud, obnoxious djs who do their best to make the commercials seem intelligent in comparison, I've basically sworn off listening to commercial radio for the last decade.

My one exception for the last few years has been WQXR, the classical station here in NYC.

I'm an insomniac, so I've become quite familiar with Nimet Habachy's "New York at Night" program that runs all night. It was her show and her voice that got me listening to the station, even. I remember being up one night and flipping through the dials on my crappy little clock radio, probably searching for NPR. Her voice stopped me dead in my tracks. It's hard to properly describe, but if you've heard it you'd understand.

Part of her immediate appeal was her accent. There's something more elegant about it than a regular American accent. But you can't immediately place it. I would listen carefully every night trying to figure it out. There was a hint of a British accent, but she pronounced all her "r"s and there was still something slightly non-native in the rhythm. When she mentioned a French composer or a French word it pronounced with a perfect French accent. Well, at least as far as I can tell; It was definitely not how an American would typically pronounce it. But then it was the same for German and Italian words. I was more mystified than ever, but it made me realize something important about her english pronunciation. It was perfect. Every syllable perfectly enunciated with none of the laziness of a particular regional accent.

It reminded me of a time in China when a Chinese professor corrected one of my American classmate's English grammar. He was surprised and a little ashamed that a non-native speaker knew his own language better than he did but I thought about it and explained that while he'd been more or less passively learning English for about 20 years, the professor had been actively studying English for probably twice as long.

I eventually gave up trying to figure out the mystery of Nimet's accent and looked up her bio on the WQXR website. Then it all came together and made sense. Indeed, she's not from America; she's Egyptian, learned English at a British run school in Cairo but moved to the US at a young age. Furthermore, she used to be the French and Italian language coach for the New York City Opera, which explains the degree of precision to her speech in multiple languages.

Sadly, Nimet is retiring from WQXR after 26 years of doing the overnight show. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will dearly miss her voice, her stories, and her selection of classical music.

I've learned a lot from her and been exposed to a wide range of music that I might otherwise have never encountered. To give you a taste of that and make sure that there's a little actual music in this post, here's a video of Maxim Vengerov playing Ravel's "Tzigane", which is one of my favorite songs of all time and which I distinctly remember hearing for the first time on Nimet's show.