The barista asked me what I was up to tonight. I replied with a casual exhaustion I had a radio show, anxiously waiting for my coffee. (Which would no doubt make me crash well before my show slot at midnight.) He lit up instantly and asked me what my 'deal' on the air was, making a gesture toward the actual air. We spoke about local bands and another customer quickly chimed in asking me when my show was and what my name was. It's funny how the simple mention of this one activity makes you this fascinatingly cultured hip and informative person in a stranger’s eyes. It's like a secret sauce you can spread on the person sandwich you serve new people you meet.
Before you think I'm going to sit here and talk about how I am all of those nice things, please know I'm way too self-deprecating for such things. I'm going to tell you what’s in the secret sauce of the non-commercial, freeform, community and college airwaves that are KCSB FM and how it’s shaped me because that’s what’s ‘cool’. (My own cool factor is way more subjective.)
Being a DJ isn't really what pops into most people's heads these days. It's become, to the dismay of many of the people I work with, a man behind a laptop set up in front of a crowd of young drugged out fun seekers thanks in large part to the increased accessibility of technology. A man above the rest idolized for mixing the work of others ahead of time, which frees him to jump up and down in front of an excited crowd. Community radio meets the people where they’re at. Radio holds so much more power and potential than a hype man for the mainstream. It's more than playing the latest 'hits', more than scratching records, more than advertisements, more than even music, and way more than one person behind the mic. The concept of independent media in the form of radio is incredibly profound because it empowers the under-represented and underserved.
Radio is, to this day, the only free medium. You just need a transmitter to pick up your local stations and BOOM you’re connected to something outside of you. Everything else requires some sort of subscription, newspapers, TV channels, streaming services. Think about how important is for rural and poor communities to have access to a platform with which they can easily educate their populations and keep their culture intact. In our own backyard, farm workers are united under stations like KUFW 90.5 in Tulane, California, which allow them to demand humane treatment from their employers. Internationally, communities like Radio Benso’s in Mali, feel more connected to their own regional culture and practices with the addition of a local station. In fact, Mali has one of the strongest community radio networks in Africa with 86 of 110 stations being rural community stations. In these developing communities radio can play a large role in helping their citizens learn skills that can allow them to play a larger role in the economy. Access to the airwaves for these communities can mean better public health policies, improved human rights practices, increased literacy, and vocational opportunities.
Education is a huge component of community and college radio. It's how I ended up in KCSB's offices in the first place, begging the advisor to let me sign up for the first training even though I had missed the orientation. She graciously offered me the opportunity to crash one of them and I left relieved. You see, I come from the STEM world, so my opportunities for art and culture more were squeezed between piles of fact memorization and reaction diagrams. The decision to pursue art in any capacity immediately set off alarm bells in my mother's head, whether it was for life or a two-hour slot every week, in the event that it would impact my studies. I had made this decision calculatedly. If I didn't purse this, I thought I'd never know if the life of facts and evidence was all that I was destined for. It turns out that that's a rather complicated subject for a post college graduate, which elicits an existential crisis no one has time for. So we'll avoid discussing that altogether, thanks. Hilariously, my first show at KCSB, Sound Science, ended up being a public affairs scientific literacy show proving that you can’t take the science out of the art kid or vis versa. Listen Hear came next and I fell into the music industry and the love of telling its tale.
Perhaps the most obvious group that benefits from independent media like college radio are the musicians. Artists like Mac Demarco who start recording in their bedroom don’t necessarily have the resources or the desire to be tied to a label right away. Many of the artists seen on the main stage at the growing number of music festivals around the globe were first pushed through the veins of the college radio show. Locally, KCSB DJs have been hugely behind Anderson .Paak, myself being one of them, as he spent a part of his life residing in Oxnard. Besides being a highly anticipated act at our year-end music fest, Extravaganza, .Paak’s smooth drums and clever rap pop up in seemingly every brand new exciting track I come across. It’s passionate DJs who put the spotlight on these extremely talented artists that give them the notice they deserve. And might I remind you, we’re talking freeform and non-commercial radio, no payola, no prodding, and no bribes. These DJs truly believe the artists they push are talented. And what could be better than merit based art getting attention?
A broadcasting education extents beyond the ability to name drop bands that no one’s ever heard of, discuss why indie is dead or Pitchfork sold out. Putting together a show every week requires discipline, especially when your station broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and you're lucky enough to have that 3AM slot that only insomniacs could possibly be listening to. Depending on the type of show, public affairs, cultural arts, music or whatever crazy freeform beauty you host there's almost always research involved. You've been given a platform to educate others and so must use your time slot responsibly. You want explain to people why you chose to fill those minutes with those specific sounds. Why they need to hear and listen to what you've got to present. You control all of the music choices, volumes transitions, PSAs played, every piece of content put out. This is part of what makes non-commercial radio so special, instead of having a separate engineer, host and producer for each show you wear all of these hats at the same time. The opportunities for learning and volunteerism are endless: between learning how to conduct interviews, recording live bands, covering concerts, marketing, rewiring studios, who controls the media, working with others to keep everything running, it all entirely reeks of knowledge and opportunity.
These opportunistic DJs essentially use their time and knowledge to inform people about cultures, news, and music in and outside of their own community and around the world. Local community shows bring people together from the grassroots level. This is probably the most powerful way to make any societal change, as people are more likely to act on something that they feel is close to home. Being a part of KCSB, you learn so much more about people than you thought possible. More than your psychology and sociology degree could ever lend you. Community radio is very obviously people powered. You work with some of the most interesting people, with some of the best intentions on the planet. They want the best for their communities, the country, the planet, and they want to empower people to understand and participate in all of it. One of the things I'm going to miss most about KCSB is the people, the reliability of the fact that I could walk down the stairs spiraling around Storke tower and find human beings who I could engage with intellectually. Who could lie on the floor with me whining about our privileged college student lives, make me watch Beyoncé’s Lemonade in the middle of the night when I had a midterm the next day, buying way too much coffee with me and most most importantly challenging me to no end. Seriously sometimes these people made me want to scream. But I grew, we grew, and became closer.
Community radio expands your boundaries as an individual. Yes, you listen to music you never thought you'd ever actually enjoy. The type of stuff your parents would no doubt think is angry noise. All of it with so much merit that I'd easily get myself into an argument now defending the profane madness that is Death Grips or the "random" sampling and ‘beep boops’ of the Avalanches, Animal Collective, or Ariel Pink. I arrived at the doors of KCSB with a naive love for singer songwriter indie-ish Americana bands, cutesy YouTube artists, and a toe dipped in the UK rock scene. Within its walls, I discovered my love for angry punk music and heavy bands featuring females that pushed the boundaries of femininity. This was really important to me personally as a woman participating in the male dominated music industry and the STEM field. While my mother had planted the seed of unique femininity for me, these women allowed me to further shed the image and role of the good Middle Eastern woman. These women opened my eyes to the issues still present in society for women as musicians and re instilled those for scientists and honestly everything in-between. But more importantly, they showed me that they could thrive as themselves, where-ever they landed on the spectrum of femininity, despite discrimination. They gave me the push I needed to participate in the Vagina Monologues. Me, a scrawny brown girl with no acting experience, having the audacity to get on the biggest stage on campus and talk about my genitals? I'm telling you this is powerful stuff people.
Empowerment is what radio is at its core. It empowers you with technical skills, literacy and research skills, a support system, cultural knowledge, acceptance and the ability and desire to think critically about what the world presents you. It pushes you to learn more, do more, and say more. It allows you to present yourself to the world exactly the way you are and get it to listen.
The sound waves that I was given the privilege to send over the air for the past year and a half do a lot more than vibrate the hair cells in your ears. In the most dramatic sense, they change lives and shape communities for the better. I am incredibly grateful for all of the experiences that I had within the walls of KCSB, at all the concerts (especially the mosh pits), and with the people of KCSB. Thank you. You made my person sandwich tastier.
