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 melodious tones of Radio Pakistan; and being terrified listening to Studio 9’s Sunday radio play Sorry, Wrong Number.

From Radio Pakistan’s first transmission at midnight between August 13 and 14 to the many FM radio channels today, radio has transformed from the transmitter of culture such as classical music by Barray Ghulam Ali Khan, launching great names such as Mehdi Hasan, radio plays that trained 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 to 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 the internet. The website radio.garden allows listeners to hear live FM radio anywhere in the world.

Election results, news, sports commentaries and a variety of music make radio accessible to a range of tastes. In Karachi’s violent 1990s, when people had stopped going out except for essential journeys, the arrival of FM 100, with phone-in programming, lifted broken spirits as children recited poems and adults, especially women, expressed opinions on air 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. It provides company while listeners

continue with practical tasks such as cooking, driving, manual labour or exercising. Radio show presenters become intimate friends for listeners as they go about their daily activities.

During war-time, pigeons and trained dogs once carried messages. Coded radio transmissions made communication easier, with command headquarters as well as with spies. During WWII, 1,500 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.

During WWII, 1,500 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 (a music genre that originated in Jamaica in

the late 1960s) to dubstep (a genre of electronic dance music), that conventional radio would not touch. In Pakistan, ironically, the main illegal radio transmission was run by the Taliban’s “Maulana Radio” to spread religious violence.

Radio Art emerged almost as soon as radio began. In 1921, Mexican 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.”

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 is a Karachi-based artist and heads the department of visual studies at the University of Karachi
Email: durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 13th, 2019