Community through radio waves

You can learn a lot about a place by listen to the sounds of the community. By listening to KCSB for sporadically this week, I gained a new understanding of my new home away from home. In the mornings there was world news and weather, often followed by a history program of some sorts. One of the history programs I listened to was the final episode of a series about Joan of Arc, it was a lot more vulgar than I was prepared for. It was tied with modern storytelling and was being told from the perspective of Joan of Arc and it was her final days before her execution which contained the details of how she was raped and ridiculed before being burned at the stake. At other times in I listened, it was music. One of the afternoon programs I listened was a program that played soundtracks from video games. Other programs were playing electro music, strange/interesting music, rap music, and music from around the world. I found the program that was playing strange music really interesting because the radio host described the program as playing interesting music. When I joined the program it was playing an electro song that sounded completely insane and made me feel anxious but immediately after, a song that had calming lyrics and a calming tune started playing but it had an electro aspect of it that added a strange affect. When there was a program focused around music, I noticed that there tended to be less talking than other programs unless it was a program where they talked about the music they were playing to give history on it.

While I listened, I noticed that the radio hosts predominantly had feminine pitched voices and I only heard two masculine voices in my listening. One of the voices was a guest speaking on world news and the other was a radio host. This reflects the campus in a way because UCSB has a higher female population than male. Overall, I thought KCSB truly reflected how diverse this campus is. There are so many different styles, genes, subjects, people, voices, and bodies that there’s no way to group UCSB into a box and I think KCSB reflects that in its daily broadcasting. KCSB has someone in the FM radio booths 24/7 which mean you have to be quite passionate to commit to the job. Every time the radio host would talk about the music they were playing or the subject they were talking about, you can hear how passionate they were about what they were doing. It shows that UCSB is a passionate place filled with passionate people. By just listening to our local radio, you can easily tell that UCSB is a great place to be.