I'm going to have brush up on my pirate talk and learn my starboard from my aft.  Just announced:  I'll be sailing aboard the good ship M/S Westerdam as WNUA's representative during next month's Dave Koz and Friends at Sea Cruise. 





You've heard us talking about it on the air.  This past week we've been giving away passage for two each day as part of our Trip-a-Day Giveaway.  And there are more trips to win this coming week (each weekday afternoon at 2:00 during Dave Koz's weekday airshift). 

You can take a closer look at what this Koz Cruise has to offer here, but in a nutshell, we set sail from Ft. Lauderdale on November 2nd and return November 9th.  During that week we'll be putting in at various ports in the Caribbean:  Samana in the Dominican Republic, St. Thomas in The Virgin Islands, St. Barths, and Half Moon Cay in The Bahamas.  And in between our time ashore, we'll be savoring live sets from the creme de la creme of Smooth Jazz.  Just check out this musicians roster:  Dave Koz (of course), Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Candy Dulfer, Jeff Golub, Jonathan Butler, Najee, George Duke, Tower of Power, and lots more. 

I'll be traveling with my trusty digital camera and my portable studio, so the plan is to treat you to daily reports from our journey.  But since I'll be aboard with a captive audience of so many of your Smooth Jazz favorites, I thought I'd ask you if you have any questions you'd like answered by any of the musicians.  You can use the link at the bottom of the left hand column of this page to send me your ideas.  I'll post the answers right here as I get them. 

It should be a fabulous trip.  And you'll be able to look over my shoulder as we take to the seas come November.  I hear Smokey Robinson singing in my head: 

"You're goin' to fly away.  Glad you're goin' my way.  I love it when we're cruisin' together."

...so I'm away.  (It's that cold that's going around.  The one where you have a sore throat and runny nose for a few days so you think it's not going to get any worse.  And then, BAM!)  Hope to be back in action again soon.

You've been hearing us play the music of French guitarist U-Nam for most of this year.  (His latest CD, Back from the '80s, is chock full of tasty tracks.) 





But you may not have heard how he came by his unusual moniker.  He was born Emmanuel Abiteboul, but naturally his friends tended to call him by the shorter nickname, Manu.  It's easy to see how he made the jump from Manu to U-Nam simply by flipping the letters.  It also turns out to have additional meaning, too.  When you say U-Nam in his home country, it sounds very much like the French phrase, une âme,...which translates in English as "one soul".  As U-Nam himself has explained, "I guess that's what I'm all about."