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Posts tagged ‘Durham North Carolina’

DONALD BAKER ON WAFR

Donald Baker, among the first staff members at Durham’s WAFR radio–also known as Wave Africa–reflects on the freedom afforded by the station’s format in a 2010 interview with Joshua Clark Davis:

One morning during the week I played Aretha Franklin’s “Holy, Holy,” and it was off of her double album, it was a gospel album, it’s a double album. It was a live recording. And I followed it with John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme.” The thing about working at AFR is that you could experiment. And if you knew the music, if you knew much of the music: the R&B, the gospel, the jazz, you could mix. You could go a lot of places.

As historian William Barlow writes, “nothing else sounded remotely like WAFR on the Durham market.” (Voice Over, pg. 287) Mr. Baker’s interview will soon be available online via UNC’s Southern Historical Collection.

An ad for a WAFR fundraising marathon connects the station to Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper

A newspaper advertisement for a WAFR fundraising marathon invoking Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper

WAFR RADIO–DURHAM

In 1971, several young African Americans in Durham, North Carolina founded WAFR–the nation’s first ever public, community-based black radio station.  WAFR catered to Durham’s black listeners with politically engaged, Black Power programming that included jazz, funk, African music, selected local and national news, and even an African American take on Sesame Street’s Children’s Radio Workshop, called the Community Radio Workshop, whose staff is seen in the photograph above. Key WAFR staffers included Robert Spruill, Obataiye Akinwole, Ralph Williams, Donald Baker, and Kwame and Mary McDonald. Although the station ceased broadcasting after just five years, it left an indelible influence on activist media in North Carolina for years to come.

In the coming year-and-a-half, the Media and the Movement site will share interviews, photographs, audio recordings, and commentary on the media outlets and activists that our project examines.  Our preliminary work with WAFR of Durham, North Carolina and WVSP of Warrenton, North Carolina (both of which inspired the larger Media and the Movement project) gives us a perfect starting point for this undertaking.

Staff of the Children’s Radio Workshop, an African American interpretation of Sesame Street, gather in WAFR’s offices in Durham, NC.

Staff of the Children’s Radio Workshop, an African American interpretation of Sesame Street, gather in WAFR’s offices in Durham, NC.