Radio GrenouilleRadio Grenouille

Richard Martin started it backstage at the Théâtre Toursky in 1981, weeks after France stopped prosecuting free radio, as a way of getting artists on air in front of people who would never have walked into the theatre. It moved to the old tobacco works at La Friche la Belle de Mai in 1991 and stayed. The association Euphonia runs it now, taking on residencies, documentary commissions and youth workshops alongside the antenna, and co-running the concert halls on the same site.

Two hundred volunteer residents build the playlist, and the log reads like a good record shop: Sugar Pie DeSanto into a Prosumer remix, Rachid Taha next to Suicide, then Frank Ocean, Django Django, Manu Chao and house edits cut in the building. The station files all of it as jazz and rock'n'roll of today, the hip-hop families, and sounds from the warmer hemispheres.