Late-night jazz and weekend soul from Berkeley.
KPFA went on air in Berkeley on 15 April 1949 at 94.1 FM, the first station of Lewis Hill's Pacifica project and the first listener-supported, non-commercial radio station in the United States. Hill had moved west from Washington in 1946 to build it, and in 1951 Pacifica won the first major foundation grant ever given to a non-commercial broadcaster, from the Ford Foundation. The station still runs on listener donations and a large crew of unpaid staff who make many of its programmes.
Weekday daytime is given over to talk, and the music takes over at night and through the weekend, handed to specialist hosts. Jazz has the deepest bench, from bebop and Afro-Cuban sets to standards. Soul and Latin music get several shows each, and there are weekly hours of reggae and bluegrass. Late at night the station gets stranger, with sound collage and obscure finds from forgotten records.
Old radio, new ears.
