Radio City Launches New Indie Radio Station Today

Swarathma. Photo: Avinash Shetty.

Among the things the world at large can be thankful to the folks at Radio City for is bringing Baba Sehgal back into public consciousness. The self-described King of Indian Rap’s new video was exclusively streamed on the FM station’s website. The country’s independent musicians, some of whom may be lamenting Channel [V]’s decision to do away with music programming, are grateful to the radio channel for quite another reason altogether—a new web station that will be dedicated to music by indie artists across languages and genres. Called Freedom Radio, it will officially be launched this Tuesday, July 3 as part of the 11th anniversary celebrations of Radio City 91.1 FM. We tuned in while writing this post and caught tracks by Auroville-based fusion pop band Emergence and Chennai-based playback singer and indie rock vocalist Sanjeev Thomas. They’re among the 300 artists that will make up Freedom Radio’s playlist, which for now hasn’t been divided into time slots or shows but is programmed to run as a series of tunes that share roughly the same tempo, said Radio City’s digital head Rachna Kanwar.

This, no doubt, makes listening in bit of a hit and miss affair and though we did detect a predominance of up and coming Hindi pop and rock acts, Freedom Radio is slated to play everything from “Assamese folk to Tamil rock” and even electronica. Indian indie rock fans are likely to stumble upon tracks by Susheela Raman and Swarathma. Freedom Radio is Radio City’s second online channel, following the multi-genre web station of its parent website Planetradiocity.com, which focused largely on Bollywood along with a smattering of commercial Indian and Western pop. The irony that none of the 300 acts on Freedom Radio are likely to get air time on Radio City 91.1 FM was clearly not lost on the people behind both enterprises. Starting this Saturday, July 6, the station is scheduled to play an hour-long show of Freedom Radio programming.