Pirate Radio in New York City 1939-1998: From Booger Brothers Broadcasting to WBAD-Bad Radio

Pirate radio stations have been sneaking onto New York City’s radio dial since the 1930s, mixing up a sonic stew ranging from self-proclaimed, “buzzy sounding, lousy sounding, get-your-ego-off radio” to a profusion of outsider and cultural content broadcast over the barriers imposed by the commercial radio industry and government regulators. Radio historian and archivist David Goren traces the development of pirate radio in New York city: from on-air jazz jam sessions on musician Les Paul’s station in Queens in 1939, to the Free Radio pioneers taking cues from 1960s counterculture and Haitian broadcasters taking to the air in Brooklyn after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti in 1986. The second half of the talk will spotlight WBAD, Brooklyn’s bold and uncensored Hip Hop pirate station of the mid-90s that offered a platform to local artists. 

 

Participants

 

David Goren is a radio documentary maker, audio archivist and pirate radio historian based in Brooklyn. After several years researching and recording local pirate radio activity, David created “New York City’s Pirates of the Air” for the BBC World Service, "Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD” for KCRW’s Lost Notes podcast, and the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map. The Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map project is a partner of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress.

 

With special guest: DJ Cintronics (Founder of WBAD).