African Sounds in the American South: Community Radio, Historically Black Colleges, and Musical Pan-Africanism

In exposing local listeners to Fela Kuti, WAFR in Durham, North Carolina wa one of a number of noncommercial institutions in the American South that celebrated African music ans musicians from the 1950s to the 1980s. The station's call letters stood for Wave Africa because as station co-founder Obattaiye Akinwole explained, "we wanted to have our heritage in our name" (Akinwole 1995). Indeed, the sounds of African artists reverberated from the control booths of the South's noncommercial Black ratio stations - not only WAFR, but also WVSP in Warrenton, North Carolina and WRFG in Atlanta.