WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Today’s show focuses on the history of radio in Angola – as an instrument for Portuguese settlers, the colonial state, African nationalists, and the postcolonial state to project power and challenge empire.
Marissa Moorman calls these distinct and sometimes overlapping interests Powerful Frequencies, the title of her new book, published by Ohio University Press. Its subtitle is Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931-2002. In her book Moorman narrates how early radio clubs by white settlers, clandestine broadcasts by guerrilla groups in Angola, and Portueguese counterinsurgency strategies during the Cold War era developed the independent state’s national and regional voice. It’s a history of canny listeners, committed professionals, and dissenting political movements as they used radio to transgress social, political, “physical,” and intellectual borders.
GUEST
Marissa Moorman is associate professor of African history and cinema and media studies at Indiana University. Her previous book is Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, 1945 to Recent Times. She is on the editorial board of Africa Is a Country, where she regularly writes about politics and culture.
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MUSIC
“Feno de Portugal” performed by Orquestra Dajos Béla Berlim
“Lemba” by Negoleiros do Ritmo
“Weya” by Manu Dibango
“Semba pra Luanda” by Paulo Flores
“Cuka” by Batida
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Studio Engineer: Bryce Martin
Executive Producer: Jar Turner
