A Mass to Honor the Life of Maggie Pelleyá

The Fernandez and Pelleyá family have requested a memorial mass to honor Maggie Pelleyá on Wednesday May 24th at 10am at St Augustine Church – 1400 Miller Rd, Coral Gables, FL 33146. Family, friends and the public are welcome to join them.

Born May 14, 1950, she was 72 years old when she passed away unexpectedly on May 9, 2023. Born in Havana, Maggie came to Miami at age 10 in December of 1960 to live with family friends. She would reunite with her mother a year later, while her father Jose Luis remained politically imprisoned in Cuba—he finally came in 1970.

Maggie began volunteering at WDNA-FM Community Radio in the early 80’s while she still worked at Delta Airlines. She hosted on air programs and became one of the station’s first full time staff members. She served as WDNA’s general manager from 1994 until her passing.

She worked tirelessly and gracefully to ensure that WDNA, community radio, and independent music grew in South Florida. Maggie Pelleyá paved the way for countless artists, musicians, listeners, students, radio staff, hosts, and music lovers. WDNA is able to continue on thanks to the strong community she helped to build and the incredible legacy she gifted us.

Maggie is survived by her husband of 45 years Luis Wifredo Fernández, sons Wifredo “Wifi” Fernández and Diego Fernández, Sister Maria “Mimi” Pelleyá. Her brother Jose Luis Pelleyá passed away in 2016.

Please read this beautiful obituary, written by Miami Herald’s Howard Cohen. It highlights the many ways Maggie Pelleyá changed south Florida while remaining committed to community.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you please make a gift to WDNA in Maggie’s honor.

WDNA also invites you to leave us your memories and stories of Maggie and the impact she had on you.

Please leave a voicemail with your message on our Listener Comment Line: 305-662-8889.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-MAGGIE PELLEYA – A GRACEFUL LEADER

May 11, 2023

Tuesday, May 9th, we lost a great and graceful leader – WDNA’s General Manager, Maggie Pelleyá. 

Lots of folks have contributed and been instrumental at WDNA throughout the years, but truly Maggie Pelleyá is the reason we all have a place to be called WDNA.

No other person has been such a consistent and determined force for protecting and growing this community radio station… and nurturing all the beautiful things that spring from it… for many of us a form of family and home.

Few people can pull off this level of tenacity and passion with such poise, grace, and kindness, but she always did. She inspired and impacted so many.

For the moment, the Fernandez-Pelleyá family, as well as, the WDNA family need to pause and grieve. We will let you know of plans for a memorial service, as well as a celebration to match the magnitude of her impact on our community.

We will share updates at WDNA.org
You can also subscribe to the WDNA Newsletter.
Or, look for updates on social media.

In lieu of flowers, Maggie’s family asks that you please make a donation to WDNA in her honor.

This Friday, May 12th, is our Jazz Encounters concert with The Tim Jago Group. This night will be a celebration of Maggie. You can also livestream the concert from home. Tickets and livestream link are available here. 

We would also love for you to share your stories about, and your love notes to Maggie.

Please leave a voicemail on our listener comment line at 305-662-8889.

We lost a powerful and important part of our family. Maggie Pelleyá paved the way, and it’s our job now to build upon the incredible legacy she gifted us.

Thank you for being part of WDNA – Community Public Radio.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-MAGGIE PELLEYA – FOREVER THE HEART OF WDNA

May 10, 2023

It is with a heavy heart that we share this news.

On May 9th, 2023, this world lost an incredible powerhouse of a human being – Maggie Pelleyá.

Maggie was WDNA’s general manager for over thirty years, not counting the years she volunteered. She worked tirelessly and gracefully to ensure that WDNA, Community Radio, and independent music grew in South Florida. She impacted countless artists, musicians, listeners, students, staff, hosts, and music lovers.

Maggie’s husband, Wifredo Fernandez, and her sons Wifredo Jr. and Diego Fernandez ask in lieu of flowers, that you please make a gift to WDNA in her honor.

We also invite you to leave us your memories and stories of Maggie and the impact she had on you. Leave a voicemail with your message on our Listener Comment Line: 305-662-8889.

WDNA will keep you informed with on-air announcements, here on the website, and via the WDNA Newsletter regarding a memorial service and the many ways we plan to honor the legacy of an incredible pillar of our community – Maggie Pelleyá.

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WDNA Valentine

February 14, 2023

For Valentine’s Day, we at WDNA would like to send lots of love to all the folks who listen to the station. To our members, we send endless hugs and gratitude. Today, we’d also like to highlight one special woman – our WDNA galentine <3

Nicole Yarling is a violinist, vocalist and educator here in south Florida. For 13 years, she has co-produced WDNA’s Jazz Encounters concert series, booking artists and connecting these professionals with young musicians through performance. Through her participation, this WDNA concert ensures a space for young musicians to jam, to grow confidence and skills.

As a young musician in Brooklyn, Nicole received countless hours of training, insight and tutelage from jazz greats in the city who dedicated their time to free music programs for young people. Here is south Florida she works tirelessly to pay this kindness forward through the Jazz Education Community Coalition (JECC).

Each Saturday in the WDNA Jazz Gallery, Nicole & guest clinicians with the JECC host a $5 workshop for young musicians interested in learning jazz. The program runs 1 – 4pm and is open to all skill levels. Nicole aims to make music accessible to EVERYONE. The training students receive goes beyond what’s learned in school band class teaching kids how to improvise, how to communicate, performance etiquette, composition.

So today, on the heels of another excellent Jazz Encounters concert with a packed house, a killing band, and an awesome jam (watch the video here), we send our love and gratitude to our dear friend, Nicole Yarling.

The JECC Saturday Jazz Bootcamp is enrolling new students! Learn more about the JECC program here.

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Frank Consola’s Top 10 of 2023

January 31, 2022

Frank Consola is WDNA’s walking encyclopedia of jazz… and really of all styles of music. For any of us, it would be difficult to select just 10 albums as our favorites, and Frank said it was hard this year, but he was able to whittle his selections down to share his Top Ten Albums of 2022 with us all!

Give them a listen. Be sure to support artists by buying their music from them, buy concert tickets, and support Community Radio!

1. Allison Miller, Carmen Staaf – Nearness
2. John Hebert – Sounds of Love
3. Lyle Lovett – 12th of June
4. Joe Fiedler – Open Sesame
5. Martini Bejerano – CubanAmerican
6. Carmen Lundy – Fade to Black
7. ARC Trio & the John Daversa Big Band – ARCeology
8. Charles Lloyd – Trios: Sacred Thread
9. Yelena Eckemoff – I am a Stranger in this World
10. Walt Weiskopf European Quartet – Diamonds and other Jewels Not There

Listen to WDNA at 88.9fm or Click Here to learn the different ways to stream!

Thank you for listening to and supporting WDNA Community Radio <3

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Song Info on Your Radio

June 17, 2022

WDNA Techincal Director, Alex Audritsh wrote some code to make sure that your radio will tell you what song is playing.

You’re in the car listening to WDNA on the radio. A song plays that makes you feel all kinds of things. “What’s this song? Who’s the artist?” You glance down at the radio expecting to see this info scrolling on the radio display… But… It’s not there. 

Well, now it is! Thanks to WDNA’s technical director, Alex Audritsh. Listener support helps to pay the lean and dedicated staff at WDNA and enables us to make updates and improvements to the community service we call WDNA <3

Here’s a note from Alex about this recent station update:

WDNA’s operation is increasingly rare in the modern FM broadcast world. Most of our music is manually hand-selected by our program hosts and played in-the-moment from CD, vinyl, or personal libraries. Unlike a commercial station that’s automatically playing a corporate-selected playlist of digital tracks that have attached song information, WDNA alone cannot automatically create the “Now Playing” information you see from commercial music stations.

To save you the time of “Shazam”-ing each new track that grabs your ear, and to save our program hosts the time of manually entering information on every track they play, WDNA subscribes to Spinitron, a service that constantly listens to our broadcast and generates the playlist and “Now Playing” information you see on wdna.org, based on what it hears, similar to Shazam.

We’re excited here to share that this “Now Playing” information from Spinitron is now available directly on 88.9FM as RadioText. Reception- and receiver-depending, you should be able to see the title and artist of the currently playing song right on your FM receiver!

Much of broadcast engineering is conceptually about making different systems that each speak different languages, talk to one another. Before this fix, the missing piece was the “translation” between the way that Spinitron “talks,” and the way that we need to “talk” to the device that puts text on air.

To do this, we whipped up a little custom program that regularly “asks” Spinitron “What’s playing now?,” filters any profanity from Spinitron’s response, trims the text to fit, and, if the track has changed, translates to tell 88.9FM to display the artist and track titles on your radio for as long as the track plays.

If you’re an open-source developer interested in volunteering contributions to WDNA’s growing “codebase” of custom prototypes that streamline many of our ancillary operations, don’t hesitate to reach out by email to [email protected].

Thank you for listening to and supporting WDNA Community Radio!