Morning blues and late-night jazz on Atlanta's free radio.
WRFG went on air in Atlanta in 1973 as Radio Free Georgia, a non-commercial community station set up to give a voice to people the mainstream airwaves kept out. It pioneered programming for the city's Latin, African, Asian and Caribbean communities and carried the first live broadcasts from the Atlanta Arts Festival. Between 1977 and 1980 it produced Living Atlanta, a fifty-part series on the city's history that won national awards, and a couple of hundred volunteers keep it running.
Music fills most of the week. Weekday mornings open with four hours of blues followed by soul, and afternoons travel through world rhythms before the news and public affairs block. Evenings switch to bluegrass and Americana, then late jazz. Weekends turn global, from Saturday's African and reggae shows to Sunday's zydeco and Celtic hours, with doo-wop and gospel at dawn.
Still radio for the left-out.
