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3.10 The Power of Radio
214 Plays5 months ago
How did the radio, a major technological development in the history of sound and music, change the social, cultural and political landscape of the region?
In this last episode of the season, we speak to audio curator Hazem Jamjoum, and Elias Anastas and Saeed Abu Jaber, two of the co-founders of the Palestinian radio station Radio Al Hara. We find out more about the history of the radio in the region and also it's present – specifically looking at how this new technology was used by imperialists, technocrats, intellectuals and liberation groups to broadcast and connect groups. Through Radio Al Hara's activity, we learn how radio works in similar ways to this day.
Hazem Jamjoum is an audio curator and researcher with an interest in history of audio and music recording in the Arab world
Elias Anastas is a co-founder of Radio Al Hara. He is an architect based in Bethlehem, Palestine and runs an architectural studio with his brother Yousef called AAU ANASTAS. They also run Wonder Cabinet, a not-for-profit cultural platform.
Saeed Abu Jaber is one of the founders of radio al hara. He is a graphic designer and runs a studio called Turbo in Amman, Jordan.
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Transcript
Introduction to Season 3
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to season three of Instant Coffee. I'm Nadine Almanasvi. And I'm Sima Shehab. And this latest season is an exploration of technology and its developments in the region.
Exploring Regional Tech Developments
00:00:14
Speaker
Beyond the emergence of Czech GPT and Sofia the robot, we wanted to speak with people who are applying, adapting, and reimagining technology in their fields. We will be exposed to medieval Islamic hospitals, failed Gulf techno cities, emerging Iraqi fintech startups, inclusive artificial intelligence, and much more.
Music Production & Media Changes: Middle East
00:00:33
Speaker
Thank you for staying with us until the very end. This last episode of season 3 looks at radio and sound in the region, charting the changes in music production and broadcast media in the contemporary Middle East.
00:00:45
Speaker
We speak to Hazem Jimjoum, an audio curator and researcher with an interest in the history of audio and music recording in the Arab world, as well as Ilyas Anastas and Saeed Abu Jabir, two of the co-founders of the Palestinian radio station Radio Al Hara.
Sound & Radio in Political Contexts
00:01:00
Speaker
We think about the role of sound and the technical medium of the radio throughout some of the major political moments of the contemporary age. Through world wars, British colonialism, anti-colonial liberation movements to present day, specifically in Palestine.
00:01:16
Speaker
We first asked Hazim about some of the main technological developments that come to mind when considering the history of sound and music production in the Middle East. Well, you know, there's the technology of the instruments, there's the technologies of travel that enable musicians to move around or audiences to move around. 1925, you have the kind of like mainstreamizing of the microphone. This enables electronic recordings. So before 1925, recordings are acoustic.
00:01:44
Speaker
And performers and musicians would have to crowd around the actual horn of the recording machine. And so a sound engineer really had to arrange the room in a certain way where certain instruments would be put further to the back. And sometimes they'd create sort of almost like these stands so that you'd have musicians almost on top of each other. So that, you know, you get the sound as close as you can to it.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, but what the microphone enables is that you can just kind of feed that in as an electrical pulse. And so it doesn't really matter where people are sitting. That also really contributes to much better quality sound for the listener. And the cost of making them also starts to go down. You know, it's very much a luxury item. The gramophone, the phonograph was very much a luxury item.
00:02:37
Speaker
which meant that to own one was a luxury item. To encounter one was much more common after World War I because if you have a cafe, it became very important that you get one of these and that you keep your collection, what you're playing interesting. And that's still the case. So since then until now, you will judge a place on its playlist, right? So that becomes a part of public life.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, and then, you know, there's some heavy hitters that come in with broadcast media, which is
Impact of Cassette Tapes on Music
00:03:05
Speaker
radio. Radio really has a very significant effect on everything, from performance practice to global geopolitics and almost everything in between. But the cassette tape, the cassette tape in the 1960s is the first medium since the original wax cylinder.
00:03:25
Speaker
which didn't really take off for reasons that are, again, beyond the scope of this conversation. The cassette re-enables people to record themselves. So if you think about the shellac disc or the vinyl record, it moves in one direction from the producer to the listener. But cassette tapes mean that all of us can be producers in a way that having microphones and recording apps on our devices also enables us to kind of be our own recording company in a way.
00:03:52
Speaker
For the Middle East, and not just the Middle East obviously, but for the region, this is hugely important because you can start to move recordings, especially of people who are deemed illegal or dangerous. And so banned and censored, you can start to have illicit recordings. Move through and you can make your own. So if you democratize the process of actually producing it.
00:04:17
Speaker
Even with select discs, you could have discs that were deemed dangerous and banned in a place, but the fact that people can record their own stuff now changes that significantly.
00:04:29
Speaker
So part of your research interests lie in exploring the commodification of music production. How can we understand the changing nature of music production with the onset of new and emerging technologies? Could you maybe set the scene for its development? For example, paint the picture of the socio-political context in which music production was changing?
00:04:50
Speaker
Sure so I mean you have musical production for as long as you have I guess people and but it does change the kind of the mode of musical production kind of changes obviously over time. So you know by the 19th century you have a system where it's
00:05:07
Speaker
You know, music is being produced for life cycle events or weddings, circumcisions, also kind of things we would maybe think of as religious or devotional. So big festivals for things like mullets, saints days, and so on. You know, music being produced as work songs, you know, famously the Pearl Divers and the Gulf, but
00:05:27
Speaker
Work songs are very common across the region and so on, but in the mid late 19th century you begin to get, I mean effectively capitalism starts to spread its tentacles into music production in more, in ways that start to affect that production.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so the chances to kind of to live off of performing music and then increasingly even kind of maybe taking a more specialized role like composing or different aspects of production become more possible. And you begin to really see this in the cafes. So, for instance, you get more complaints by the Musicians Guild who effectively are there as a taxation mechanism on people who are making money off music, but then also sort of police if anybody's not in the Guild if they're performing publicly.
00:06:12
Speaker
And so you get more kind of complaints about that in the late 19th, early 20th century. And the Guild becomes kind of irrelevant in a way. And by World War I, sort of isn't really around anymore. And then of course, music recording. By the turn of the century music recording, especially by these particular multinational corporations for our region, mostly based out of London and Berlin, but then also some other American companies like Columbia and so on. They go global at the turn of the century effectively.
00:06:40
Speaker
By 1905, 1906, 1907, there's a proper competition between different companies. And by 1907, you even have two indie companies set up in Beirut and Cairo that are part of this. And this competition generates a whole new avenue for people to be professional musicians, or even to be amateur, but also kind of dabble in something quite public in a way.
00:07:10
Speaker
You mentioned radio earlier, which we'd like to zoom in on a bit. How can we understand radios usage, particularly at a time when it could be used as a tool for political change?
Radio's Role in Political Change
00:07:21
Speaker
recorded audio, so something like a shellac disc, did have its own kind of soft power angle to it. You know, a lot of musicians also would slip in almost like dog whistling patriotic slogans into their music. Definitely in live performance but also in some of the recordings.
00:07:41
Speaker
And so, for instance, you'd have Syrian records that were patriotic and patriotic against the French, right? Then sort of taken up in a place like Tunis or Morocco or Algeria, you know, sang and it's a song for Syria, but really what it will mean in a place like Tunis or Algeria or Morocco at the time is this is also a song for my own freedom against this French colonizer.
00:08:00
Speaker
So you start to find like an Imperial military and intelligence personnel all of a sudden very interested in who's listening to what music and what music is crossing the border and so on. But radio changes this dramatically because radio doesn't see borders, it's a wave and so it crosses borders and depending on the power of your transmitter and if you're transmitting on something that can be received on the types of radio sets prevalent, especially like amongst the group you want to be listening to this,
00:08:28
Speaker
Radio becomes a way for anybody with the ability to broadcast, which is mostly state-level power. Do you have any examples you can share of radio stations that emerged around that time? You have the Palestine Broadcasting Service set up in Jerusalem. And these have a huge effect on music production because this creates yet another avenue. But notice this is not really in the commodity form.
00:08:53
Speaker
You're not exactly producing a commodity, but you're taking state patronage to perform for whatever reasons a state puts money into a radio station to broadcast sound. But one of the fascinating things that music takes on in this space is that it's very quickly recognized by everyone who starts to set up radio broadcasts.
00:09:13
Speaker
that listeners really like music. And again, the vibe of your playlist is going to attract and detract. You'll find that BBC Radio, which is established in January 1938, BBC Arabic and the World Service. So the BBC has only ever broadcast in English. Even its Imperial broadcast was for its British subjects abroad, for its Imperial agents, and the very small select few of super elites who cared to hear what
00:09:41
Speaker
British radio had to say. So 1938 is the first time Britain broadcasts in another language, and it's Arabic. And it was very much about propaganda to the Middle East, but they didn't want it to seem like they were just kind of this very clear sigh of. So they called it the World Service, and they chose another language to also broadcast in a few months later, which was Spanish, which would reach all of the South American continents as well.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so, you know, so you have these kind of conversations in the BBC Arabic Foreign Office colonial service type correspondence where they're effectively talking about what music is the music we want to use to reach these Arabs, you know, and so you get feedback from the Gulf that says, for example, okay, everybody here loves Abdul Wahhab and Umm Kulthum, but they want to also hear some of their own kinds of music, some South music or something like this, you know, so you effectively have the local like Imperial resident or agent
00:10:34
Speaker
having people over for dinner and asking them, you know, what did you think of the broadcasts and whatnot, and gathering that feedback and sending it to the BBC, which is effectively sending it to people also going to be read by foreign colonial service, right?
00:10:49
Speaker
You know, and initially these broadcasts aren't very long. You know, we're talking about one to three to five hours a day. It's not this 24 hour thing that we think of now. And definitely not just music, because I mean, these are newscasts and the analysis and I mean, it gets quite sophisticated. I know the most about so well, I mean, for instance, in Palestine, it's it's quite a compounded kind of operation because they're basically kind of targeting the Jewish community.
00:11:17
Speaker
and then an English broadcast in the Arab community each day each broadcast is kind of split into those three parts but then what you end up with is that each part has its own sort of administration and the people who come in through the Palestine broadcasting are some pretty heavy hitter intellectuals so you have like the major poet Ibrahim Tukhan is there a person who's a kind of very notable figure in the Palestinian communist movement. Najati Sitri is there and then he's going to end up
00:11:44
Speaker
going to Russia and then to Spain during the Spanish Civil War where the Soviets are using him as part of their radio propaganda for Moroccans in Franco's army. Bring them over to the Communists or get them to just desert from Franco's army. You have a group of Arabic speakers, most famous among them an Iraqi called Yunus al-Bahri.
00:12:07
Speaker
who is a really fantastical character. But for this moment, during World War II, he is the main kind of spokesperson and presenter on Radio Berlin in Arabic. He's very famous for his opening line, each broadcast, which was Huna Berlin, Haiya al Arab. So this is Berlin calling, you know, a salute to the Arabs. Yeah, and so this was basically like the Nazi party behind this kind of Arabic broadcast. The people who were the first out of the gate
00:12:36
Speaker
with Arabic broadcasts for the Middle East where the Italians actually were under Mussolini, Radiobari. And it was the fact that Mussolini started broadcasting in Arabic that the British, who were actually the slowest at this game initially, like I said, they broadcast in no other languages other than English before. But they said, oh, the Italians are doing it, we have to do it. And one of the great radio powers to emerge in the history of the 20th century
Radio as a Tool for Liberation
00:12:59
Speaker
was, of course, Egypt. So when
00:13:02
Speaker
Nasser takes over, he quickly realizes that this is one of the most powerful weapons he has. I found a kind of like a set of reports where they were talking about how many languages each of the major kind of radio powers was broadcasting in. This is during the Cold War, right? They were talking about Nasser era. And Egypt was up there with the US and the Soviet Union. Like it even left the BBC and its international service behind on many of the metrics.
00:13:30
Speaker
Like for example in terms of different African languages, languages spoken on the African continent, Egypt was like number one, like they even beat the Soviets and the Americans in terms of how many different languages they were broadcasting. This is, and I wish more research can be done on this, but it would require access to Egyptian archives in Egypt, but I've seen a few mentions so far where effectively what you'd have is for example like a liberation movement
00:13:55
Speaker
in Angola and what NASA is providing by way of support, direct, very material support to these movements is airtime using the radio broadcasting infrastructure that Egypt has.
00:14:10
Speaker
that was initially built by the British and the monarchy, but then really vamped up under Nasser. I think it's one of the great contributions of that Nasserist moment that is, yeah, I don't think it's quite appreciated or understood, and definitely a mega unwritten chapter in global broadcasting history, but also Middle East history.
00:14:34
Speaker
With this history in mind, what does radio look like in the region right now?
Radio Al Hara: Cultural & Political Connections
00:14:39
Speaker
Hazem spoke of colonial and anti-colonial histories of sound, with radio going beyond borders, in defiance of and as a result of imperial technical infrastructures. So how is radio connecting people, if at all, in this moment in time? We spoke with Ilyas Anastas and Saeed Abu-Jabir, two of the co-founders of the Palestinian radio station Radio Al Hara,
00:15:01
Speaker
about the station's origin story and how they too see radio as a way of moving across geographies. They also describe radio as going beyond borders, emphasising how they are trying to push its limits, trying to understand what radio technology can look like in 2024. My name is Saeed Abjabir. I'm one of the founders of Radio Harar. I'm a graphic designer and I run a studio called Turbo in Amman, Jordan.
00:15:31
Speaker
My name is Elia Sanastas, I'm as well the co-founder of Video Alhara. I'm an architect based in Palestine, in Bethlehem. I run an architecture studio with the use of my brother and partner, that's called Elia Sanastas, but as well we run a not-for-profit cultural platform that's called Wonder Cabinet.
00:15:54
Speaker
Radio Al-Hara has emerged from the region as an exciting new platform for musicians and DJs, but there's also a strong political element to the work they do. From the Sonic Liberation Front campaign that emerged out of Israel's illegal expulsion of the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Sharrah in Jerusalem to Israel's current assault on Gaza now, we asked Ilias and Saeed how they began the radio station and how they've changed their programming in light of October 7th. In the summer of 2020,
00:16:22
Speaker
the very beginning of the radio, three, four months after its start, Israel took the opportunity of everyone being preoccupied by the COVID, the corona situation. The entire world was really trying to focus on how to get out of this.
00:16:37
Speaker
a horrible situation. So they started doing annexation, they started annexing more and more lands, lands that are internationally, according to international law, part of the Palestinian territories. And this project that Israel started really to push further during the pandemic was kind of approved by the Trump administration at that time, etc. And so at that time, the region was really, you know, wasn't really the only link with Palestine was that we were in Palestine and
00:17:06
Speaker
many contributors were from Palestine etc. But at that time we started thinking how can we use the radio as a new form of media that can speak about this illegal action that Israel is conducting. I remember it was like one Sunday night we were like having a group call and we were like what can we do with what would be like a proper response to that thing and we're like why don't we just launch an online protest where we would invite 24 artists to come together to contribute by one hour mix and four hours would become like an online protest.
00:17:34
Speaker
And so we send the email and we're like, maybe tomorrow we'll get only three or four people that would respond positively. And then we would decide what to do. And basically just a couple of hours later, we got 24 artists saying, yes, we're in and bringing in.
00:17:47
Speaker
other artists. So it went up from being a 24-hour lineup to a four-day lineup. And it was that specific moment where the radio reached its peak in listenerships as we reached, I think, 17 or 18,000 people listening to the radio. So imagining what protest, if you Google search a protest of 18,000 people, it's quite massive.
00:18:10
Speaker
So this idea of trying to look at struggles and trying to bridge in between different struggles that are very specific to other places in the world. And once they're put into a form of analogy or once they're put into a form of mirroring, they create a very strong form of solidarity. And we started thinking about what's the sense of solidarity and how to use sonic and music content as a way of protesting. But we can really offer a huge interest.
00:18:39
Speaker
What was really powerful is to look at this part of the world that is constantly being isolated. We live in a place where borders are not controlled by us. And so having the epicenter of the radio emitting from that specific place but being listened to throughout the globe, basically people contributing to the radio and their contributions being sent and then being emitted from that part of the world in reflection to this isolation was really powerful.
00:19:08
Speaker
And then it went on until, I mean, the organic program of the radio, its malleability, being able to adapt to different talk shows, but as well, cooking shows, political shows, music, et cetera, continue to develop by the mere fact that people started to reach out, suggesting programs. At the beginning, we were really thinking about the radio as a public space. We wanted the radio to act as a public space, so the only way
00:19:33
Speaker
could be able to contribute was to drag a file into our Dropbox as if you're appropriating a public space and then we would just take this file and program it. So this is the way it started. So the way it started at the beginning with Piyousif, Saheem Mufan, and Yazan. Yazan Hamili is a visual artist.
00:19:50
Speaker
currently based in Amsterdam, Saidenmuthana, based in Oman, and also in Palestine. And then we were joined by Braheem Awais, that is as well currently based in Palestine and Bethlehem. And now we have as well an additional member, more shares, that is based on the route.
00:20:07
Speaker
For us, what was really incredibly important to see is how, for us, the region was as well a moment where we were trying to respond to what a cultural institution of 2020 could be.
00:20:21
Speaker
how to defragment and to deinstitutionalize culture. Being a pirate radio that really relies on the amount of work that we are doing and the residents are contributing really went beyond these limits of production. There's no limits, you can express yourself the way you want and we do not depend on any, there's no body or there's no entity that drives the content in a specific way.
Operating Radio Al Hara Independently
00:20:50
Speaker
What do you think being a pirate radio station gives you that an institutional affiliation or being an official organization doesn't? I mean, till now, one form is that there's no funding for the radio at all, you know, I've spoken to a guy here who owned one of the biggest radio stations, like, why don't you run ads? And it's just, I mean, I know, but, you know, who, like ads for who, you know, it can't be just ads, ads for what, for Percile, you know, like, what are we doing?
00:21:20
Speaker
So I think the fact, we always say the fact that it's not funded, and in fact, I think everyone knows that, or the people who get to know that it's unfunded. So everyone, including us, it's all a passion. And recording a monthly show, by the way, it's very difficult. It's not, you need to find the time. You spend a couple of days. This is the thing, like last year, we said, okay, we need to register the radio lane every time
00:21:49
Speaker
Every time I want to do something with an official, they're like, it needs to be registered. We will not register in Jordan or in Palestine. And if I go register in Jordan, I'll be at the intelligence office every other day.
00:22:01
Speaker
You know, I like my life without being there. So it still needs to happen. No, no. And I think it's actually maybe the radio is more known in Europe, in South America, in the States. I mean, looking at the analytics, but Kamal, another thing we used to say a lot in the beginning was we were proud of it because suddenly we have a cool platform as Arabs and, you know,
00:22:29
Speaker
Meena, Arbs in general. Once you have your show, you want to talk between the tracks. You want to get a friend of yours. This openness, I think, is a lot of fun sometimes. It's weird sometimes. We have a show that airs once a month at like three in the morning. And it's just recordings from a cafeteria somewhere in Italy. This lady works there.
00:22:52
Speaker
It was just ambient sounds of a kitchen or a cafeteria in Milan or somewhere, I don't know. And it was also experimenting, the idea was like experimenting with sound and we're like, what could be broadcast, you know? You know what? The funniest thing is that the other day, some days we think that the radio is very pirate and it's very underground, which we kind of like. But at the same time, the other day, we had someone that came here to the office, brought him in to do some painting work.
00:23:21
Speaker
And he started painting and then suddenly we turn on the radio and he was like, ah, the radio is hot. And the guy was so, so it's, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's underground, but it's people listen to it. And what do you think of radio in the region at
Current Radio Landscape & Pirate Stations
00:23:39
Speaker
the moment? Does it excite you? Are there a lot of other pirate stations out there?
00:23:45
Speaker
With the M10 platform, there was a few. But most of them started during the pandemic, and some of them are still active, like Tarantino and Lebanon. There's the other one that is based in Raju Fluka, that is from Morocco, but in France. There's still a few. No, the radios we have in Palestine and Jordan are the same. The big radios they play,
00:24:11
Speaker
No, it's not nice. It's not fantastic. Some people I know tried to get shows with the big radios. It worked, but they were always, you know, we have a problem. And I'm not going to talk about Palestine. I'm going to talk about Jordan. It was just like, everyone treats the general public as they have an IQ of three, you know, like, no, no, we can't, we can't, we can't play them with that kind of music. They won't understand.
00:24:36
Speaker
Why are you dictating what people listen to? Even if it's a jazz show, the jazz show has to be like really stupid, basic jazz. You can't go like, I'm going to play like a 30 minute experimental track. It's impossible. But I think radio, I mean, essentially, I mean, for me, when I think about radio in Pakistan, the first idea that comes to mind is, you know, these public transport services, when you take this common bus that takes you from one city to the other end,
00:25:05
Speaker
When you travel, for example, from Bethlehem to Ramallah, it's a very long way because you have to take all these bypass roads. It's only, you know, Bethlehem to Ramallah is 20, less than 20 kilometers. So in reality, it's like a 25, 30 minute ride. And in reality, it takes us minimum one to one and a half hours to get there. So it's a very long way in the mountains. So when you are in the service and, you know, going from Bethlehem to Ramallah, there's the radio on and the radio most of the time is
Community Interaction through Radio
00:25:33
Speaker
one guy that is speaking about a show where someone is talking about problems of a neighborhood and someone calls and he starts saying shit on the municipality and then, you know, and this is incredible. We should start thinking about that. We had something that was similar at the beginning, wasn't really
00:25:52
Speaker
It was Yousif and Mutana Yousif to have a show together. It was called the Chabirmiyotel. It was like a night show, like 10 p.m. And people would call them on the waves of the radio and they would ask for a song. And then there's this whole conversation that starts around this song. And then people would start interacting in the chat box of the radio saying they're
00:26:12
Speaker
You know, and it's really super nice to have this, when you really feel the community that has been shaping. The Scamana, and I always say this, the radio has become like, wherever we land, maybe, but in whatever city, there's somebody that's already played on the radio.
00:26:30
Speaker
And because of the radio and its political stance, and I hate this because people like such a Western question, like, why do you have a political, like, why is it a political radio? And our answer is always like, we live in an overly politicized area of the world. It's like, it's not so like, I'm going to get into politics. It's not up to you.
00:26:47
Speaker
You know, it's in the air that you read around you. But so that also assured that the people we meet, whether we go to Athens, you go to Colombia, like, they're also on the same wavelength because they know what Rajahara is about, you know. So most of the time, I'm really surprised that they're really beautiful people. When we meet, you know, in real life, it's a very nice thing in that sense. It's like a meeting point, let's say, for different people, artists. Once you're a resident, you're free to do with your show as you wish.
00:27:15
Speaker
you would like to invite friends, one day, and we're open in that sense. It's up to you, but most of the programming that's happened since October, it's been residents. There's shows, and in between the shows, there's no show, you have the library playing. During this time, we used some other audio recordings that we play in between, but many people also, I think,
00:27:41
Speaker
put that into their shows. We played the Learning Palestine program, which was done by Yazan and a group of friends, I think. It was 24 hours of, you know, relevant material, whether it's audio recordings, music from Palestine. And even during the Sonic Liberation Point, what was really beautiful is that it was around like 80 radios at that time. Not at the same day, but they would be like, okay, we're going to mirror your programming today or for two days or for a whole week.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I know some people tell you, okay, what would this bring, you know, would it bring change? I don't know, but the fact that, you know, you tune into Muflen, your other favorite, if you don't listen to Rajeev Hari, you can tune into Montez Radio in New York, or NTSA, and have a takeover happening there, I think was fantastic really, and just showed support.
Conclusion & Social Media Details
00:28:36
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Instant Coffee, a podcast brought to you by the LSC Middle East Centre. We hope you enjoyed this season as much as we enjoyed producing it. And thank you to all the people we spoke to during the season who shared their thinking on technology in the region. You can follow us on Instagram at instantcoffee.pod to stay up to date on future releases.