INTERVIEW | GAPS IN THE DIAL: TAYO POPOOLA ON THE VOICES THAT SHAPED UK RADIO

Photo cred­it Fran Hayles

Few medi­ums have shaped mod­ern Brit­ish music and iden­tity like pir­ate radio. In Gaps in the Dial, a six-part audio series com­mis­sioned by the Bar­bican as part of their Rebel Radio pro­gramme, award-win­ning audio pro­du­cer, DJ and presenter Tayo Popoola dives deep into the rad­ic­al leg­acy of UK pir­ate radio. From the soul­ful trans­mis­sions of Radio Invicta and the jungle revolu­tion of Kool FM to today’s digit­al pion­eers like NTS and World­wide FM, the series is both a trib­ute and a rev­el­a­tion, told by those who built the sound and those car­ry­ing it forward.

Blend­ing archive record­ings, per­son­al memor­ies and inter­views with cul­tur­al icons like Gilles Peterson, Andi Oliv­er and Nor­man Jay, Gaps in the Dial cap­tures the defi­ant energy of under­ground broad­cast­ing and how it forged a last­ing cul­tur­al blue­print. With a career that spans both sides of the mic, from BBC Radio 1 and Kiss to doc­u­ment­ar­ies on polit­ics, sport and bey­ond, Tayo brings a per­son­al, deeply informed lens to the untold stor­ies of pir­ate radio’s past and present.

We sat down with Tayo to explore what drew him to this story now, the voices he chose to spot­light, and how pir­ate radio con­tin­ues to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of com­munity-led broadcasting.

Gaps in the Dial dives into the rad­ic­al his­tory of pir­ate radio in the UK, what drew you per­son­ally to tell this story now, and in this way?

Pir­ate radio – in fact all radio, had a huge impact on my life as a kid, offer­ing a glimpse into a world that at the time I was too young to be a part of. Pir­ate radio offered a music­al edu­ca­tion, where myself and my broth­er would dili­gently write down the names of songs that we heard, and make our ‘play and record’ cas­settes. Through the adverts, the DJs’ per­son­al­it­ies that shone on the radio, and all the clubs and records they spoke about, I knew it was a world I would want to be part of as soon as I could. So, telling these stor­ies, and find­ing the people behind the stor­ies appealed to my young­er self on that emo­tion­al level, as much as it did on a curi­ous, intel­lec­tu­al, and soci­olo­gic­al level.

These stor­ies of pir­ate radio are really the story of Lon­don and its development.

I’d like to stress here that these are par­tic­u­lar stor­ies about one city, my city — Lon­don. And doesn’t even try and be the whole story… There is a wider UK pir­ate radio and under­ground radio story out there that we haven’t gone near.

The series spans from soul and jungle to today’s digit­al plat­forms like NTS, how did you choose which sta­tions and voices to spot­light across the six episodes?

It was hard to decide. I tried to focus on the earli­er peri­od of pir­ate radio his­tory that has per­haps been less told – there’s a lot more you can read about or listen to around the era of Jungle / Gar­age / Grime, and I wanted to tell the story of some of the super import­ant sta­tions that got us to that era, and focus on some of the maybe less well known, but incred­ibly import­ant names that got us here.
Essen­tially it spans the 80s where there was loads of legis­la­tion around pir­ate radio at the same time as loads of social, and eco­nom­ic change in the UK, and the sta­tions I picked covered that, as well as cov­er­ing a wide range of black music genres that were devel­op­ing at the time — soul, rare groove, reg­gae, boo­gie, elec­tro, early house and more.

You’ve spoken to legends like Gilles Peterson and Andi Oliv­er for this — was there a moment in those con­ver­sa­tions that really stuck with you or sur­prised you?

So many — talk­ing to Gilles Peterson and Jez Nel­son togeth­er was fas­cin­at­ing – they both go back so far as friends, and it was so excit­ing for this par­tic­u­lar nerd to listen to them look­ing back on a time when they too were get­ting into radio and being music nerds. Walk­ing around Not­ting Hill with Mike Wil­li­ams from Dread Broad­cast­ing Cor­por­a­tion was really evoc­at­ive, hear­ing the inside track from Nor­man Jay MBE and Gor­don Mac on the sta­tion that I was glued to prob­ably most of all – Kiss FM. But per­haps my favour­ite bit was chat­ting to a legendary radio engin­eer, Pyers East­on, who built quite a few trans­mit­ters for a vari­ety of sta­tions, who told the tale of meet­ing Lee Scratch Perry in the founder of DBC’s flat while he was dic­tat­ing a let­ter to the pope.

Rebel Radio is all about amp­li­fy­ing under­heard voices. How does Gaps In The Dial reflect or chal­lenge the idea of who gets to shape music cul­ture in Britain?

I think what the Rebel Radio exper­i­ence, and my pod­cast series cel­eb­rate is the lengths these mar­gin­al­ized voices went to make them­selves heard, des­pite the risks. It’s not the illeg­al­ity that stays with you, but the zeal – the NEED to do it. It’s not for money that you crawl to the 14^th floor of a build­ing so you can broad­cast two step soul, or com­munity mes­sages on Lon­don Greek Radio, or on a Nigeri­an Pente­cost­al network.

As far as shap­ing music cul­ture, you only have to look at how many of those DJs made their way through the music busi­ness and main­stream music radio to see the impact.

You’re a rare tal­ent who’s been both in front of and behind the mic. How does that dual per­spect­ive shape the way you tell audio stories?

That’s kind ha. It doesn’t really shape how I tell the stor­ies; I guess it just means I can say what’s in my head as well as write a script for oth­er people to say. I star­ted on the oth­er side of the mic as a presenter on Kiss and for the BBC, so it’s a minor really. I just want to tell stor­ies to people, find out some­thing inter­est­ing over ‘here’, and then shout about it over ‘there’. Much the same as my old job of DJing – find a song I like and then find some way of telling people about it.

There’s a clear rev­er­ence in the series for pir­ate radio as a form of cul­tur­al res­ist­ance. What do you think today’s digit­al broad­casters are inher­it­ing or miss­ing from that legacy?

I don’t think they are miss­ing any­thing at all. I think today’s digit­al broad­casters are embra­cing the DIY aspect of radio, put­ting out their shows on all the myri­ad plat­forms avail­able, are cel­eb­rat­ing the fact that they can be as niche as they like. Big or small, they are also aware of the need to estab­lish a com­munity and an iden­tity along­side their sta­tions. That’s hope­fully some­thing we touch on in the last epis­ode in the series.

Can you talk a bit about the use of archive audio and music in Gaps in the Dial? How import­ant was it to you to bring the son­ic tex­tures of those eras into the present?

From an audio pro­du­cer per­spect­ive, I always try and make pro­grammes like that as I would a mix­tape — with beats, rhythm and lay­ers. I wish there was some more music in places, but you can’t have it all.
Essen­tially, I wanted to make each story as evoc­at­ive as pos­sible, so tak­ing archive audio from that peri­od was essen­tial to help recre­ate that sense of place and time.

You’ve made everything from polit­ic­al doc­u­ment­ar­ies to sport pro­grams, what made Gaps in the Dial dif­fer­ent or par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful for you?

That’s a good ques­tion – because it really was. I guess it was because it was per­son­al and answered ques­tions that the teen­age me had been won­der­ing about. Some of the people I spoke to were guys I admired as a youth and grew up listen­ing to, who I have got to know very well since, like Nor­man Jay and Gilles Peterson. Some of the stor­ies were of sta­tions that had a myth­ic­al place in my mind, like LWR, so to talk to the founder of the sta­tion Zak Dee was fas­cin­at­ing. I could go on. These were stor­ies about people and places, but they were also stor­ies that made me think of my music­al and cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion. All my story telling starts with a curi­os­ity of sorts of course, but not all of them are so personal.

The series is part of a wider push for com­munity media and DIY plat­forms, what role do you see pro­jects like this play­ing in shap­ing future broad­casters and listeners?

If it can encour­age any­one else to real­ize that those small stor­ies of com­munity action and defi­ance are worth doc­u­ment­ing, then job done. Hav­ing pro­jects like this legit­im­ized by insti­tu­tions as fant­ast­ic as the Bar­bican are an encour­age­ment and an acknow­ledg­ment to keep mak­ing sure that people are mak­ing them­selves heard, by tra­di­tion­al meth­ods as well as through more mod­ern story telling techniques.

What’s next for you after Gaps in the Dial, and what kinds of stor­ies are you most excited to tell in this cur­rent chapter of your career?

Next is a doc­u­ment­ary for World Ser­vice about a Nigeri­an fash­ion design­er called Ade­ju Thompson and his “Lagos Space Pro­gramme” label, and also a six part foot­ball series (my oth­er love apart from music ha). The stor­ies I’m excited to tell tend to be about the ‘why’ of cul­ture, or sport, or polit­ics, rather than just the ‘what’. The reas­ons behind it, the jour­ney (meta­phor­ic­al or actu­al) of people towards that moment. That’s what gets me excited. Fur­ther still I’d like to return to the story of pir­ate and under­ground radio, but I’ll tell you more about that

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

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