Voice of Times radio archive launched

Contemporary archives of activist Punjabi radio in Canada are rare. On Sunday, August 17, Vancouver Sath and the Society for Working Class South Asian Diasporas launched an online archive of the Samai Di Awaz (Voice of the Times) radio show which was broadcast on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio every Saturday from 1986 to 1989.

At a time when there is a generational change in South Asian radio broadcasting in Vancouver, as evidenced by the recent retirement of Sushma Datt from RJ1200/Spice Radio, the launch of the Voice of Times archive provides a broader historical perspective

The launch event took place at the Surrey Public Library and was attended by over 60 people. The collection of more than 70 cassette tape recordings in the Punjabi and English languages were found by one of the program producers, Rani Gill, from the personal archives of her father, the late Charan Pal Gill. Charan Pal Gill had secured the original broadcast slot on Co-op Radio on behalf of the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society (PICS). Rani Gill provided the recordings to Sukhwant Hundal, another member of the original producer group and Hundal digitized them into a podcast format. At the launch, presentations were made by Hundal, Gill, Sadhu Binning and Harji Sangra, amongst others.

As Hundal pointed out during his presentation, Voice of the Times differed from other Punjabi language radio broadcasts of the time because it was not beholden to advertisers to fund the show. Bilingual, in Punjabi and English, the broadcast tackled difficult issues related to racism, intimate partner violence, arranged marriage, farmworkers, and unionization, as well as interviews and reports on literary, theatre and other cultural activities. Given its limited volunteer resources, the program committed to an ambitious range of topics which, in addition to in-studio events, also included field recordings from various meeting, conference, rallies, demonstrations and processions.

Gill recounted a poignant story about how the weekly drive to and from the Co-op radio station offices with her father Charan Pal, provided a fond set of memories for her. Gill, who was also involved with the Local Color protests against the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1991-1992, had travelled to Surrey for the launch from her home in San Francisco, California.

Sangra, who had also been active with unionizing farmworkers and the Vancouver Sath collective, noted how the radio broadcast was part of a range of activist cultural production by the Punjabi community. The event concluded with a lively exchange of comments and participation from the audience, which also included some of the original radio show participants.