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World Cafe celebrates 30 years: Hear the entire first show

World Cafe celebrates it's 30th Anniversary
Courtesy of WXPN
World Cafe celebrates it's 30th Anniversary

At 10 a.m. ET, on Oct. 14 1991, from the third floor of WXPN's broadcast studios in a turn-of-the-century building in West Philadelphia, original World Cafe host David Dye, along with a small production staff, debuted the very first Cafe. The then-new national show went out live to its five original affiliates, including WFUV in New York, KUMD in Duluth, Minnesota, KUNI (now Iowa Public Radio) and, of course, WXPN.

The very first guest on World Cafe was Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, who had just released his twentieth album, Nothing But A Burning Light, produced by T-Bone Burnett and featuring a handful of extraordinary players. With just an acoustic guitar, Cockburn performed songs from the album including "Great Big Love," "A Dream Like Mine," and "Soul of A Man."

Listen to the World Cafe's entire first show:

Copyright 2021 XPN

Bruce Warren is assistant general manager for programming of WXPN in Philadelphia. Besides serving as executive producer of World Café, Warren also contributes to Paste magazine and writes for two blogs: Some Velvet Blog and WXPN's All About The Music Blog.