Francis Phillip Montoya (1951-2011): FM, Singing Wire and the Heart and Soul of KUNM

Published by KUNM on January 18, 2019

If you haven’t tuned in to the Singing Wire on Sundays, you’ve missed the heart and soul of KUNM’s programming.  Produced by the Singing Wire Collective, the noon to 4 pm program showcases traditional and contemporary Native American music, public affairs, community events, local artists, and a wealth of wisdom. Additionally, the collective maintains a lively Facebook page.

The Singing Wire is at the heart of KUNM’s programming thanks to the tireless work of Francis Montoya (Isleta Pueblo/San Felipe Pueblo) and others who began broadcasting the program when KUNM was located in the basement of the UNM Student Union Building (SUB) during the early 1970s.

In his early KUNM years Francis billed himself as the “Boy Wonder” or, sometimes in a humorous vein, “The Boy Blunder.”

But around KUNM and among his friends, Francis was appropriately known as FM.

“He identified himself by the initials FM because Francis Montoya was a humble and quiet man. Despite having a great voice for radio, deep and resonant, he kept his comments brief. He preferred to let the music speak for itself. Francis was a thoughtful observer who didn’t seek personal recognition,” reminisced former KUNM volunteer Juliette Craig.

“Public broadcasting was embedded deep in Francis’ soul. He was best known for being a founding member of the Singing Wire collective, but that was one of many areas where Francis left his mark…”

Outside KUNM, Francis held a longtime day job as a broadcast operator at public television station KNME. He was also a videographer and a founding member of Native American Media Productions (NAMPRO) in the 1970s, a multi-media organization dedicated to conveying community voices and concerns.

“We produced videos and music together, and doing what you see now, people with lyrics and music and singing about current events,” recalled NAMPRO activist Marley Shebala, who first met FM when the two were UNM students in the early 1970s.

Karl Stalnaker, the surviving original host of KUNM’s Home of Happy Feet program, met FM during the station’s historic SUB Basement Days during the first half of the 1970s.

“He was a really good super freeform deejay. He did a lot of substitute shifts and overnights. I was always so glad to see him come through the door. If he was going to do a shift after us I knew things would be swinging. He was just a really good person I liked,” Stalnaker said. “I think until he died he was the only volunteer that went as far back as (the Home of Happy Feet) did.”

Nancy Morris became friends with Francis soon after she relocated to Albuquerque from Colorado in 1973. The life-changing decision of a 20-year-old college student, and admitted “radio fanatic”, was motivated by the reputation of a then-low-powered but promising young station down the Rockies in New Mexico.

“Part of moving to Albuquerque was KUNM…,” said Morris, now a professor of Media Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. “There’s nothing like KUNM.”

Involved with KUNM until 1985, Morris worked both as a staffer and volunteer in news and public affairs, occasionally subbing for slots like Raices and the Blues Show. Morris was also the host of an early women’s show, named “Woman Time.”

Montoya and Morris soon exchanged musical and programming notes, and the new Albuquerque resident discovered her musical buddy delighted in introducing new sounds to Native and non-Native audiences alike, pursuing his radio craft with an attitude of “‘Like here’s this cool thing. I’m gonna share it,'” Morris recalled in an interview from her Philadelphia home.

In the mid-1970s, Francis held down the SUB Basement with the six to nine am slot between Monday and Wednesday, when he offered a musical breakfast menu that was variously titled “Hot Cakes n’ Syrup,” “Ham n’ Eggs” and “Cheerios,” depending on the day of the week.  The deejay’s alter ego for this sizzling, wake-up adventure was “The Boy Blunder.”

David Nereson, another KUNM veteran from the Basement Days, said the sounds heard on Francis’ daytime shows derived from “the underground scene” of the times, of which decidedly non-commercial KUNM was an important link in a national chain.

On Sunday afternoons, the Pueblo deejay hosted Singing Wire, when the show began at 5:30 pm, and was followed by Morris and Woman Time at 8:00 pm.

FM, standing left, at Dave Nereson’s party, Albuquerque circa 1975

What was KUNM like in the formative radio days of Montoya and Morris, when the two were cooking up their musical delights?

Morris recalled a “communal” atmosphere, a camaraderie among broadcasters and the frequent socializing of deejays on and off the station premises. Among the pivotal faces and voices that made KUNM click was Mr. Francis Montoya, who contributed to the bigger “decision-making process,” according to Morris.

“We were all completely into it. We were all very passionate about radio, the way we were approaching it..it was central to our lives…  (Francis) was a part of the station, not just somebody who came in and did a show.”

Longtime KUNM volunteer and Freeform host Peggy Hessing crossed different, but connected paths with FM over the years. She remembered first encountering him at a KUNM party in the 1970s when “he was friends with my friends,” and again when he was working as a production technician at Navajo Community College in Arizona and ultimately reuniting with a kindred radio spirit at KUNM.

FM was an inspiration for Albuquerque poet and community organizer Jaime Chavez, who even mentioned his friend in poem. Chavez, who helped found KUNM’s Chicano/Latino programming block in the mid-1970s, collaborated with Francis and musicians Willie Johnson and the late Robert Nakaidinae on getting the word out about critical issues like the health and environmental impacts of uranium mining on Indigenous and Chicano communities in New Mexico.

“We would do live shows,” Chavez recalled, focusing on topics that “faced New Mexico’s land-based communities.” Many years later, Chavez surveyed the staying power of KUNM programs such as the Singing Wire and Raices that broadcasters like Francis and himself had a role in launching.

“These have become institutions now. It sounds terrible to think we institutionalized radio,” Chavez said with laugh and a twinkle in his eye. “But we laid the tracks, did the groundwork.”

photo: Dawn of Nations Today, 2011

When he was a college student majoring in Native American Studies, Francis belonged to the Kiva Club, the Native student organization founded in 1952 that remains active to this day on the UNM campus. Veteran Kiva Club member Marley Shebala explained how she, Francis and other members rose to the occasion in an era when events such as the occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians of All Tribes (1969-1971) and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota between the U.S. government and Lakota traditionals supported by the American Indian Movement (AIM) activated a generation of Indigenous students.

“There was a lot of activity in Indian Country,” Shebala said. At UNM, the Kiva Club sponsored speakers like Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya and AIM activist Russell Means.

According to Shebala, Kiva Club members ran up against a brick wall in getting local media- including the student-run New Mexico Daily Lobo- to cover Native American events and issues.

Shebala remembered conveying the club’s concerns to a New Mexico Daily Lobo editor, who told her there weren’t many Native students on campus, an attitude she found racist. The Kiva Club then started its own newspaper, Four Directions, as a means of keeping Native students and community members informed. Francis and KUNM also helped fill the media gap.

“We understood why it was important to stay connected to our community,” Shebala said. “That’s where FM played a pivotal role. He had this really strong history on the radio and he had a great radio voice and presence and knew all kinds of Native music, not just one genre, and he wanted the community to be informed.”

Now working as the Diné Bureau Chief for the Gallup Independent newspaper, Shebala defined FM’s role as that of a “bridge.”

“He was the one who brought us onto Singing Wire and people started tuning in,” the Native journalist said, adding that knowledge of the program spread by word-of-mouth.

Writing in Dawn of Nations Today (UNM Native American Studies) in 2007, FM reflected on being a UNM student, the history of the Kiva Club and the meaning of Native struggles in the 1970s.

“Qua tsina, qua tsi, Hopa Hano. I have been a student off and on for decades, but it was March of 1973 which had an enormous impact on my life,” Francis wrote.  “KIVA Club members were concerned about threats to sacred sites and our environment. Back in those days, Black Mesa was our primary focus. Today, the mining activity has ceased and the Mohave Generating Station is shut down. Other victories have come to be since then and the protection of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona is the latest and greatest.”

FM wrote how the Kiva Club got involved in issues affecting Native Americans in the western New Mexico border town of Gallup, including the proliferation of liquor outlets that profited from alcoholism.

The appointment of Gallup mayor and liquor store owner Emmett Garcia to the UNM Board of Regents outraged Kiva Club President Larry Casuse and others, triggering Casuse and Robert Nakaidinae to hold Garcia in his store and force a March 3, 1973 stand-off in Gallup which ended with Casuse killed by the police. The Native American movement then took to the streets.

“The “People’s March for Humanity” brought together a force who marched from the ceremonial grounds to the downtown courthouse in Gallup,” Francis continued. “Hundreds of people joined together en masse to celebrate our collective humanity and Casuse’s message. Security forces were on hand in the case of possible violence but we are and were peaceful.”

Like her friend FM Shebala recalled grim times in Gallup, fanned by the profitable but deadly liquor business. “People were getting killed,” she said. “Morning, day, nighttime. It was horrifying.”

Hope Alvarado (Dine/Mescalero/Comanche/Mexican), UNM Kiva Club vice-president for the 2018-19 academic year, laid out how the memory and legacy of Francis and others from his generation lives on in her group, passed along by oral history, the education of new members in the organization’s history and the archival record the club keeps.

In remembering where individuals like Francis have their place in history, the “story telling, story sharing” tradition of Indigenous peoples- essential for community cohesion and revitalization- is part of an Indigenous pedagogy that’s not recognized by dominant academia, Alvarado said.

“Not only do we honor Larry Casuse and Francis but people like Larry Emerson, and it’s understood that a lot of them created the power of the Kiva Club,” Alvarado said. “Francis, I know, played a fundamental role in making sure that Kiva Club members were updated throughout the years.”

According to the UNM senior, FM would visit the club and mentor new members well into the 2000s. Shebala, too, was impressed by Francis’ commitment to new students, saying he urged them to “keep it real” and stay connected to their community.

Similar to FM’s generation, the contemporary Kiva Club has been immersed in activism. From 2015 to 2018, Kiva Club members joined with allies to battle racism, colonialism and extractive capitalism on and off campus.

The activists got UNM to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day after a long campaign, convinced school officials to finally change the controversial, official university seal that contained a Spanish conquistador as the symbol, and challenged the long-criticized “Three Cultures” mural in Zimmerman Library that puts a white man at the center.

Kiva Club members also participated in the historic Standing Rock fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and successfully protested the Entrada ceremony at the annual Santa Fe Fiestas that celebrated De Vargas’ reconquest of Santa Fe in 1692. The 2018 cancellation of the Entrada was a “major, major victory,” according to Alvarado.

Still, as in Francis’ time, the struggle continues on many different fronts on campus, in the Southwest and across the world, the Kiva Club’s vice-president said.

Back at KUNM, Francis became an enduring figure who also lent his hand to successive generations of broadcasters. By the time Juliette Craig entered the KUNM universe in the 1990s and went on to become volunteer coordinator, FM was a seasoned station veteran who helped a newcomer learn the ropes.

“…When I met him, he was hosting overnight Freeform Monday mornings (1:00 – 5:00 A.M.)…. I was a frequent Morning Edition host, so I would come in to relieve him from the overnight shift. Later, I found out how flexible, versatile and reliable he was,” Craig wrote.

“Francis told me to call him whenever I needed anything. He meant that he was often available at the last minute to help out if someone couldn’t host a show, or if we needed production support for a remote broadcast. As a man of few words, Francis didn’t have a phone. Instead he carried a pager. He was true to his word and solidly reliable. Whenever I paged him, he always found a phone to call right back.”

Rachel Kaub, former KUNM operations chief and current manager of public radio station KGLP in Gallup, likewise retains vivid memories of Francis from her days at 89.9 FM.

“He had also subbed on NPR shifts and did radio theater, notably including roles as a newscaster, voiceover, and, though not Dine  (rather, Pueblo), was fluent enough to portray a Navajo caller in “INET Radio”, a spoof of Native America Calling,” Kaub recalled.

“An avid bicyclist, Francis adapted after losing a leg to diabetes.  ‘FM’ was gifted with a wonderful sense of humor, dulcent tones, and a love for his community.”

Craig added that her “fondest memory” of Francis originated from an internal station conflict, in which his “thoughtful, mellow style paved the way for a harmonious resolution.”

In 2002, Francis and three other KUNM volunteers accepted a Bravos Award from the Albuquerque Arts Alliance on behalf of all the station’s many volunteers.  For decades a vital volunteer member of KUNM’s broadcasting crew, FM was a “trainer, mentor and coach to many” at the station, according to General Manager Richard Towne.

For Marley Shebala, Francis exemplified dedication and a volunteer spirit throughout his life:

“He remained involved in doing what he did, and what he loved. If you really love what you do, you’re going to stay involved. He really kept the alumni from the Kiva Club together. After he passed away, there was a real void…he was the glue that kept up the Kiva Club. He kept the alumni connected to the Kiva Club and what was happening at UNM and the community…there was something about FM. He just had that energy. He had that positive energy, karma. It was family….”

Francis was the “unofficial ambassador” of the Kiva Club, Shebala said, adding “We were more than an organization. We were friends. When we heard about FM passing on it rippled across Indian Country,” she said.

True to his vocation, FM carried around a tape recorder, dutifully documenting events, she recalled. Once, after Francis’ health deteriorated, Shebala ran into her good friend, trusty tape recorder in tow, at an event featuring Dine scholar/activist John Redhouse.

“He was there in his wheel chair and he had his tape recorder. I gave him a hug. Who would do that?” Shebala marveled.

For the longtime Native journalist, Francis Montoya embodied a “well-balanced, well-rounded” individual who maintained ties to community, ceremonial tradition, family, friends and the broader community he so loved. “He could be serious, he could be sarcastic, everything you could think of. He was really funny. He’d just crack me up,” Shebala fondly recalled.

“From now on, when we say KUNM-FM it’s going to mean Francis Montoya (rather than the formal broadcast designation of Frequency Modulated.),”  Richard Towne wrote after FM’s passing in 2011.

Indigenous musician Roger Cultee is among many artists and community members who have performed on Singing Wire over the years.

For the rocker and bluesman from the Pacific Northwest’s Quinault Nation, FM was a pillar of KUNM and its Sunday afternoon program produced by First Nations peoples. “He was KUNM. He was Singing Wire,” Cultee said. “He held the torch when it almost went down.”

The mere existence of Singing Wire speaks volumes about power relations in New Mexico, a place where Native Americans should have had their own radio station, the guitarist/singer/song writer commented.

“We have no radio outlet whatsoever, no newspaper. We’re lucky to be on Facebook. (Singing Wire) is all we have,” Cultee said.

Hope Alvarado credited FM for building a bridge between the Kiva Club and Singing Wire, and helping to allow a space to flourish where community concerns get a public hearing.

“I think it’s great. I really love it that Singing Wire has people come in and talk not only about Native issues but about everything,” she added. “Singing Wire created a platform where Kiva Club could talk about its events, that’s one of our biggest appreciations of Singing Wire as an organization.” Whether it’s fracking near Chaco Canyon, water rights or disappeared Indigenous women, “more than ever we need platforms to talk about things like that,” Alvarado said.

Broadcasting strong in the 21^st century, Singing Wire features traditional tunes from all corners of that vast land known as Indian Country. In addition, Native country, folk, rock, blues, reggae and hip hop are for the listening. Often the songs are a fusion of the traditional and the contemporary.

Ron Bryan, FM, KUNM General Manager Richard Towne

Forming part of Sunday’s broadcast fare, the playlist frequently includes Keith Secola’s “Indian Cars,”  Vincent Craig’s “Rita,” Robert Mirabal’s “The Dance,” “She Had Some Horses” by Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice, Sharon Burch’s “Yazzie Girl,” “Native Girls” by the Black Mesa Coyote Clan Band, Arigon Starr’s “Junior Frybread,” Black Lodge’s “Mighty Mouse,” Redbone’s classic 1974 hit “Come and Get Your Love,” and “What is an Indian?” by  A. Paul Ortega, to name a few.

On “The Wire,” listeners will hear prayers; interviews with artists, musicians, activists and community members; call-in requests and dedications; announcements for pow wows, gourd dances, feast days and community events; shouts-out for birthdays and graduations; live greetings from people out fishing or gathering wood; culinary tidbits on fry bread; and live remotes from the Gathering of Nations or the Indian Village at the New Mexico State Fair, a broadcast technique Francis actively promoted.

Above all, Singing Wire delivers music and information that keeps Indigenous communities connected and informed while educating non-Natives about the original peoples of this conquered land. The show has even made a splash in popular culture, mentioned for instance, in the Duke City Native rock band Red Earth’s song “Rez Rocket.”

Such is the living legacy that Francis “FM” Montoya and Singing Wire have gifted to KUNM’s listeners here in New Mexico and, in this Age of the Internet, the world over.

In his Dawn of Nations Today essay, FM urged Native students to join the KIVA Club and keep their ears tuned in to KUNM.

He wrote: “Today the KIVA Club is active and open for your participation and gatherings are held on a weekly basis. One way to get involved is to take part in Nizhioni Days and don’t forget to tune into “Singing Wire” on KUNM 89.9 FM on Sundays from noon to 4:00 p.m. You’ll hear about area events, music and maybe join in the conversation. You might even catch the Boy Wonder from San Felipe Who Made Good aka “FM” who is otherwise known as Francis Montoya. Thanks for hearing me out, Peace!”

A Poem for Francis, Bob and Humanity

Willie can you slide

On your guitar

A song for Bob &Francis,

& all humankind.

Yes, they have,

Passed on

To the other side…

Nakaidinae, Mexican people

Who speak through their actions

& in their songs…

The paint is still wet and we are moving on..

FM-Montoya what will I say?

A voice like silk, baratone

Tuba notes are floating

Way above the Milky Way.

Oh brothers, oh comrades,

Oh warriors from the land,

Let your hearts be clear

Oh this island made of sand.

-Jaime Chavez

Information: Juliette Craig, Rachel Kaub, Marley Shebala, Roger Cultee, Karl Stalnaker, Hope Alvarado, Peggy Hessing, David Nereson, Jaime Chavez, Nancy Morris. New Mexico Daily Lobo, July 3, 1975; August 31, 1976; November 21, 2016. Dawn of Nations Today (UNM Native American Studies), May 2007. Airwaves (old KUNM internal newsletter) February/March 1996 and April 2002. Zounds! June 2011. The Singing Wire/KUNM, September 23, 2018; October 28, 2018; December 9, 2018.