KCAW-FM (aka Raven Radio), the community public radio for Sitka Alaska recently celebrated its 20th anniversary on air. This is the station that gave Afropop producer Sean Barlow his start in radio, and helped incubate his dream for a national radio series on African music. Several Raven Radio alumns gathered in Sitka, including longtime Afropop collaborator Marika Partridge (who envisioned the station and served as its first Program Director before becoming Director of NPR's "All Things Considered"). Sean could not make the reunion but sent this tribute to Raven Radio.

Happy 20th anniversary to Raven Radio! I wish I could be there to celebrate with you but I can't so I'm sending along this greeting and little memoir.

The first time I heard Raven Radio was March 1982 as I was heading out to sea on a commercial black cod boat. I had just flown in to Sitka from Seattle that day. After stocking up on groceries and bait, we pulled out in the twilight. While trying to learn the foreign new world of knot-tying and longline gear, I scanned the radio dial and heard Irish music! A brand new public radio station I was told. Wow! This little town in southeastern Alask where thickly forested slopes met the Pacific Ocean had its own public radio station! Impressive. Made me feel a little less alone in the close quarters with my tough, 20 year old crewmates who only wanted to listen to heavy metal.

Fast forward to the end of a summer of either fishing or working 100 hour weeks at the Co-op cold storage. I walked into Raven Radio and met the friendly staff there--Marika, Rich, Jake and Mary, John, and others. I think that very first day I mentioned to Marika I was interested in world music, and she said, "Great, we don't have a world music show; do you want to do one?" Sure! After my volunteer training, my weekly program "Explorations in World Music" was born. I was especially fond of playing African pop music and it pleased me when fishermen told me they enjoyed the joyful sounds from Africa as they trolled for salmon or worked on their gear. Those were the days of LPs. Remember vinyl? There was not much world music out yet. But our record library did have the Nonesuch Explorer series and I had brought cassettes of juju and highlife and Congolese rumba from my last home in New Mexico.

One thing led to another and I immersed myself in production. My seasonal work as a deckhand and cold storage worker allowed me to travel in the off season. One year, I traveled around the world, stopping in South India to gather sound for a radio series on Indian classical music.

In 1985, I went to Ghana, Cameroon and Zaire to gather sound for what would become the Afropop series which I still produce today. Sitka and Raven Radio and my party-hearty, hard-working friends always awaited me at the end of a long travel season. Rich let me produce my first nationally syndicated radio series, The Carnatic Music Tradition, in the Raven studio. Through many, many all night sessions, I slowly, painstakingly made those five half hour programs on the four track machine (remember that?) doing everything--editing, voicing the narrative, mixing, marketing and promoting the series. I learned what I was good at and enjoyed and what I didn't particularly enjoy or feel good at.

To this day, I am so thankful to all my teachers and fellow radio explorers at Raven. Truly a great community institution. A place where everyone from the community could create a program. A place on the radio where we heard our friends and neighbors doing their thing-Chris' reggae show, Barnaby's new wave show, Jake's free form show, and many more. I miss doing live radio. That was a lot of fun. And in today's world of public radio--most of it highly formatted with a high share of national programming, all professional staff--the freedom we volunteers and staff had to explore the possibilities of what we could do on radio seems all the more tremendous!

I also remember fondly the fun we had off air: Sitting at a big comfy booth at the P Bar and BS'ing with radio friends and fishing buddies over the hub-bub...The Raven Radio dancing contingent in the Alaska Day parade. The station-sponsored dance parties we had in the fall. The house that Eric Hart and I shared where we had the greatest parties-full of live music, dancing, and sauna action. The poker parties at Jake and Mary's.

Cheers to Raven Radio and to all my friends in Sitka celebrating!!

Sean Barlow
Afropop Worldwide