Rinse FM, London
Last week Rinse FM, one of London’s leading pirate radio station, announced it has been granted a legal broadcast license from Ofcom after 16 years of illicit transmissions.
Inevitably, Rinse’s move to respectability will be seen in the context of the recent unprecedented success of black British artists such as Dizzee Rascal, Tinchy Stryder, Wiley and Tinie Tempah – all of whom unquestionably owe much of their success to the apprenticeship they had on pirate stations and especially on Rinse. But it is telling to note that when I spoke to the station’s co-founder and figurehead DJ Geeneus last year, he refused the label of “black music” which the BBC’s 1Xtra station uses, or the euphemistic “urban”, preferring instead to say that Rinse plays “LOCAL music” – that is, the music of London’s estates. If the majority of young people in many areas of London are black then so be it, but their music is not defined by genes or appearance, but by a genuinely local, grass-roots cross-class culture, and it is this which Rinse represents, even as its listenership becomes increasingly international via the internet.
The photo shows the cover of Rinse FM’s first compilation CD featuring station founder Geeneus
Article credit: theartsdesk.com
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