Skip to main content

 Radio Waves

We spent many a late night turning the dial on the radio to catch beautiful sad music from radio Moscow, afternoons after college, curtains drawn and radio tuned to the soft  dulcet tones of Radio Pakistan or being terrified listening to the Sunday Studio 9 radio play "Sorry Wrong Number".

From Radio Pakistan’s first transmission at midnight between 13th and 14th August to the many FM radio channels today, radio has transformed from the transmitter of culture -  classical music by Baray Ghulam Ali, launching great names such as Mehdi Hasan,  radio plays  that formed  our best loved television stars,  talent shows, heads of state announcing the onset of war or the imposition of Martial Law -  to the light hearted entertainment of today’s chatty FM transmissions. 

While WWI introduced the destructive face of technology, long range guns, aerial bombardment and mustard gas, it also developed entertainment radio from advances in wireless transmissions.  Commercial radio took the world by storm, bringing entertainment into people’s homes, especially the working classes who did not have access to concert halls or academic discussion venues. Radio created a shared national, and, in time a shared international culture.

Families once sat around the radio until the transistor radio arrived in 1954, allowing  radio to travel with the listener. Today listeners can access radio via internet. The website radio.garden allows listeners to hear live FM radio anywhere in the world.

Election results, news, sports commentaries and of course, a variety of music, makes radio accessible to a range of tastes. In Karachi’s violent 90s when people had stopped going out except for essential journeys, the arrival of the FM 100, with phone in programming lifted broken spirits as children recited poems, and adults, especially women, expressed opinions in ways they had almost forgotten.

Studies have revealed that radio has the most mood enhancing effect of all media including television and the internet. Radio provides company while listeners continue with practical tasks such as cooking, driving, manual labour or exercising.  Presenters become intimate  friends for  listeners as they go about their daily activities.

During war time, pigeons and trained dogs carried messages. Coded radio transmissions made communication easier, with command headquarters  as well as with spies.  In WWII 1500 radio amateurs were recruited to intercept secret codes broadcast by the enemy. During the 1971 war, while fiddling with the radio dial, we overheard an SOS which we reported.

Pirate radio stations, operating  from hidden locations, played an important role in introducing new  music, from  reggae  to dubstep, that conventional radio would not touch. In Pakistan,unfortunately, the only illegal radio transmission was run by the Taliban "Maulana Radio" to spread religious violence.

Radio Art emerged almost as soon as radio began. In 1921 the Mexico futurist poet Manuel Maples Arce  was using radio as a medium for sound poetry.  Purists, writing the Radio Art Manifesto, say “radio  art is not sound art - nor is it music. Radio art is radio.”  The  Polish artist Katarzyna Krakowiak in her project Radio Free Jaffa (2009) pulled a shopping bag on wheels with a hidden radio transmitter  across Jerusalem broadcasting:  "We’re very sorry for the inconveniences on the road. On the corner an Arab mother with six children are being evicted from their home in a social housing estate. ". There are You tube  videos that demonstrate  “how to build an FM Radio Station in 15 minutes”

Radio in Pakistan has yet to fully explore its potential to create cultural awareness – bringing back radio plays, literature, classical music, discussions, educational programming in mainstream transmissions as well as its possibilities as an art form. 


Durriya Kazi
January 6, 2019
durriyakazi1918@gmail.com   


x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decorated Trucks of Pakistan

International Institute for Asian Studies / Association for Asian Studies / Asia Committee, European Science Foundation First International Convention of Asia Scholars Leeuenhorst Conference Centre, Noordwijkerhout , Netherlands , 25-28 June, 1998 Panel: “ Shaking the Tree: New Approaches to Asian Art” / Session: Decorated Transport Decorated Trucks of Pakistan Durriya Kazi June 1998. Karachi Meaning is always in process, what has been called “a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations of interpretations”. This paper pauses at some facts and some observations about decorated trucks of Pakistan , a subject that has elicited tantalisingly few studies. Pakistan is often presented geographically and thus historically as the corridor of land between the mountain passes that separated the near East from the plains of India . Less mentioned and more significant is its identity as the valley of the River Indus which has historically ...
Post a Comment
Read more
  How Much is Enough? Most discussions about what is considered ‘enough’ centre around money and power. To be the most powerful, the wealthiest or the most famous, once the desire of mighty kings and despots, has now filtered down in modern societies, with rags to riches stories becoming commonplace. However, the modern world is increasingly characterised by insatiability, an inability to say “enough is enough”, and an insatiable desire for more money or power. Enough means having enough to live, enough to be happy, and enough to thrive. So how does one arrive at what is enough? Enough is not a number. Individuals have their own measure of enough. The wise know what that limit is, for others, society’s limiting systems — legal or moral — determine when enough is enough. King Ashoka won a battle against the Kalinga kingdom, with 100,000 deaths and even more taken captive. That was his ‘enough’. Appalled by his own ruthlessness, Ashoka became a Buddhist, dedicated to spreading th...
Post a Comment
Read more
  ‘o Travelling Together or Going Our Separate Ways We live, and have lived for centuries, in a politically and economically divided world.   Unable to accept these differences, there is always one group that takes the further step of dominating another. The most direct way is for a stronger group to take over a weaker group by sheer force. Where the two forces are equally matched, subterfuge, divide et imperia – divide and rule, is effective. Sometimes all it takes is cultural seduction. Something as innocuous as blue jeans became an important symbol of the Free West during the Cold War. Bruce Springsteen told the East Berlin youth in a July 1988 concert “I’m not here for any government. I’ve come to play rock ‘n’ roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.”   History books are filled with the constant constructing and dismantling of alliances, based on the perceived enemy of the moment. All the great wars in Europe, India and China ...
Post a Comment
Read more