Islands of Resistance Pirate Radio

NSB Islands of Resistance cover_NSB Islands of Resistance cover 10-04-21 12:06 PM Page 1 Media Studies / Activism Inspired by a passion for social justice, a defiant libertarian ethos, a desire for autonomy, or for purposes of artistic expression, radio pirates snub the legal edicts of regulated broadcasting. Islands of Resistance puts you behind the eyepatch, giving you a collection of inside views on pirate radio in Canada. Contributors include: Ron Sakolsky Marian van der Zon Andrea Langlois Stephen Dunifer Anne MacLennan Sheila Nopper Neskie Manuel Charles Mostoller Gretchen King Bobbi Kozinuk André Éric Létourneau Christof Migone Anna Friz Kristen Roos Stephen Kelly Eleanor King Kathy Kennedy Roger Farr Langlois | Sakolsky van der Zon A New Star book Cover design: Clint Hutzulak/Mutasis.com Illustration by Maurice Spira Printed on % post-consumer recycled paper Printed and bound in Canada Islands of Resistance Islands of Resistance Pirate Radio in Canada edited by Andrea Langlois, Ron Sakolsky, & Marian van der Zon new star books • vancouver • 2010 Islands of Resistance Contents 1. Setting Sail: Navigating Pirate Radio Waves in Canada Ron Sakolsky, Marian van der Zon and Andrea Langlois 3 2. Latitudes of Rebellion: Free Radio in an International Context Stephen Dunifer 23 3. Resistance to Regulation Among Early Canadian Broadcasters and Listeners Anne MacLennan 35 4. Freedom Soundz: A Programmer’s Journey Beyond Licensed Community Radio Sheila Nopper 51 5. Secwepemc Radio: Reclamation of Our Common Property Neskie Manuel 71 6. Awakening the ‘Voice of the Forest’: Radio Barriere Lake Charles Mostoller 75 7. Squatting the Airwaves: Pirate Radio as Anarchy in Action Ron Sakolsky 89 8. Amplifying Resistance: Pirate Radio as Protest Tactic Andrea Langlois and Gretchen King 101 9. The Care and Feeding of Temporary Autonomous Radio Marian van der Zon 117 10. The Voyage of a Gender Pirate & Her Toolbox Bobbi Kozinuk 133 11. Pirate Radio & Manoeuvre: Radical Artistic Practices in Quebec André Éric Létourneau (translation by Clara Gabriel) 145 12. Touch That Dial: Creating Radio Transcending the Regulatory Body Christof Migone 161 13. The Art of Unstable Radio Anna Friz 167 14. Repurposed and Reassembled: Waking Up the Radio Kristen Roos 183 15. Radio Ballroom Halifax Stephen Kelly and Eleanor King (with Marian van der Zon) 195 16. The Power of Small: Integrating Low-Power Radio and Sound Art Kathy Kennedy 201 17. Voices in a Public Place: A Docudrama in Seven Acts on/for Micro-Radio in Canada Roger Farr 213 Rip-Roaring Radical Resources 229 Bibliography 233 About the Contributors 240 List of Illustrations Cover: Maurice Spira Table of Contents: Charlie the Headcase (illustration) Chapter 1: Moss Dance (illustration) www.rainbowraven.ca Chapter 2: Stephen Dunifer (photograph) Chapter 3: Duncan Macphail, (photograph) Source: in Duffy, Dennis. Imagine Please: Early Radio Broadcasting in British Columbia. (Victoria: Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1983. 64.) Chapter 4: Matta (illustration) Chapter 5: Gord Hill (illustration) Chapter 6: Image 1: Charles Mostoller (photograph); Image 2: Charles Mostoller (photograph) Chapter 7: Tomás Hayek (collage) Chapter 8: Gretchen King (photograph) Chapter 9: Image 1: Sandra Morlacci (illustration); Image 2: Gary Eugene (photograph) Chapter 10: “Wild and Infinite Flight” by Anais LaRue (illustration) Chapter 11: Image 1: Photomontage by Phillipe, still photography by Jeff, courtesy of Diffusion système minuit du Québec archive center, Laval, Quebec (photomontage); Image 2: Photo taken by Pouf’s brother (photograph); Image 3: Abribec, suppôt de la novelle humanité fiscale (http://www.iso1000000000.ch/abribec) (illustration) • islands of resistance Chapter 12: “Absolute Final Intimacy of an Ear” by Chris McClaren (collage) Chapter 13: Image 1: Alexis O’Hara (photograph); Image 2: Claire Pfeiffer (illustration) Chapter 14: Kristen Roos (illustration) Chapter 15: Andrea Lalonde (photograph) Chapter 16: Image 1: Destanne Lundquist (collage); Image 2: Kathryn Walker (photograph); Image 3: Kathy Kennedy (illustration of score) Chapter 17: Jesse Gentes (collage) RRR Resources: Beehive Design Collective, anti-copyright, www. beehivecollective.org (illustration); Vrindavanesvari Conroy (illustration) Acknowledgements The editors wish to acknowledge the Black Ink BC Anarchist Writ- ers’ Group and the Inner Island retreat where the idea for this book was born. We extend our gratitude to New Star Books: Rolf Maurer, Stefania Alexandru, Jamie Nadel and Michael Barnholden, for their support of this project. A huge thanks to all of our intrepid authors and incredible artists! We thank the ever fastidious Clara Gabriel for her work in translation. We acknowledge our pirate comrades Dennis Burton (Radio Radio), Peter Cloud Panjoy (Free Radio Hornby), Rob Schmidt (Free Radio Sundridge), Sean Coyote (Free Radio Cortes), Susan Kennard (Radio 90) for their early participation in this project. Finally, for their researching and networking tips, a tip of the hat to: Afua Cooper, Bob Sarti, Chantal Gutstein, Frederic Dubois, Gayle Young, Jane Parkinson, Jo Mrozewski, John Harris Stevenson, Leslie Regan Shade, Lorna Roth, Marc Raboy, Mary Vipond, Michel Sénécal, Naava Smolash, Pam Bullick, Sarita Ahooja and Steve Anderson. Ron thanks Sheila Nopper for her indomitable pirate spirit. Marian thanks Gary Eugene for his patience, direct action and piratical support. She extends this thanks to her family and friends, particularly to Asta, Alex and Linda. Andrea thanks her friends and family (especially Mom, Dad, Rick, Mélanie and Clara), and Ken Tupper for jumping aboard her pirate ship with his dictionary and spirited love of ideas. MOSS DANCE CHAPTER 1 Setting Sail Navigating Pirate Radio Waves in Canada Ron Sakolsky, Marian van der Zon and Andrea Langlois join us as we set sail for those islands of resistance known as pirate radio. Bypassing the treacherous waters of licens- ing and the doldrums of institutionalization, we have eschewed the fixed maps of entrenched power in favour of a cartography of autonomy. As navigators along these diverse routes, we have been guided by an illuminated chart composed of pirate ports of call burning as brightly as the star constellations relied upon by all mariners at sea. We begin our voyage in concrete terms — what is “pirate radio”? The use of the term pirate radio is a controversial one. It has been burdened with the negative connotations of theft and mayhem, and exoticized with romantic swashbuckling imagery and Hollywood production values. Perhaps the term “free radio” would carry less bag- gage, but we chose pirate radio because it is more immediately under- stood by North Americans as referring to an unlicensed form of radio broadcasting that relies on the airwaves for transmission, rather than the internet-based mechanisms of podcasting or web radio. As Anne MacLennan points out (Chapter 3), the word pirate had a pejorative ring to it even in the 1920s and 1930s, being associated with predatory US broadcasters overriding the signals of Canadian-based stations. While this particular connotation might still exist in some quarters, for us it is the “no quarters” transgressive quality of the word pirate • islands of resistance that we embrace as inspiring to both the radical imagination and the practice of direct action. If pirate is a word that has been used disparagingly by the radio industry and its counterparts at the Canadian Radio-television Tele- communications Commission (CRTC), then we hereby reclaim it as a badge of honour. We prize the fact that it evokes an outsider status1 in relation to the dominant cultural assumptions and practices of the radio industry and the government bodies that are theoretically sup- posed to regulate the airwaves in the “public interest.” As to those regulatory agencies, in practice they have been captured by the very same vested interests within the radio industry that they are mandated to oversee. The legal climate in which they operate facilitates the corpo- rate theft of the airwaves and squelches autonomous alternatives with a bureaucratic arsenal of administrative rules and sanctions. In essence, what all radio pirates have in common is a refusal to obey these legal edicts, whether out of a sense of political injustice, a defiant libertarian ethos, a desire for self-realization or for purposes of artistic expression. In this regard, what links the radio pirates in this book is that their projects can all be placed on a spectrum of illegality. On such a spectrum, illegality is viewed in a positive light rather than vilified and dismissed. It is the transgressive nature of radio piracy — or “electromagnetic deviance” as André Éric Létourneau (Chap- ter 11) describes it — that concerns us here. Transgression can take many forms, from intentional interference with licensed broadcasts to floating islands of sporadic insurrection and temporary autonomous zones, as well as more permanently-situated islands of resistance that are rooted in geographical, ethnic, gendered or culturally-based forms of community. It is the interrelations and interactions among these transgressive pieces of the pirate radio puzzle that allow us to understand the larger picture. The nomadic radio pirate strategically broadcasting the loca- tion and movements of the police to global justice activists during the heat of confrontation in the streets engages in direct action by occu- pying the airwaves. So too is the stationary pirate radio broadcaster

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