Vandezine!

Words from the editor.

Customary apologies for the wait on this installment, it’s been 8 long, hard, tumultuous months.

We recently made a decision to stop broadcasting due to financial and capacity pressures. I could spend time expanding on this, but to be honest, I don’t think there’s much a point. I’ve spoken extensively about the struggles of running an independent radio station, broadcasting 24/7 - and nothing changed. Nothing happened.

We’ve grown so much in terms of roster and listeners, but that growth wasn’t matched financially or in resource. This could be due to a lot of things, including but not limited to, poor management, bad financial planning, not knowing how to apply for grants, and frankly not taking anything seriously. But in true Vandelay Radio fashion, we’re going to blame you, the listener.

Yes, it’s your fault that we’re currently shut down. All those times we asked you for money, you ignored us. And even if you did donate, why didn’t you donate more! Why didn’t you tell your friends to donate! Why didn’t you start a campaign to save the station, and create a national movement supporting Vandelay Radio? You could have done more, but you didn’t. Shame on you.

It’s going to be okay though. This isn’t the end of Vandelay Radio, even though others have said it could be to paint the picture that the music industry is dying and they need to get paid loads in order to protect it and not distribute any of the ludicrous fees they get paid from brand deals because they too are also in a financially precarious position.

No, it’s not the end but hopefully the beginning. For me, I realised we had strayed quite far from our roots, and in attempting to keep up, we had become something that I never want Vandelay Radio to be. We had become a business - a disgusting capitalist entity, looking at things through the lens of profit and loss, and time and resource.

But we were never meant to be a business. If anything, it was the opposite - a way of escaping the capitalist nightmare and being able to do things for the sake of doing it. Not for the money, not for the alleged clout, not for the followers - but because it’s fun. It’s fun to broadcast music we love, showcase DJs we like, talk shit, make funny videos, and enjoy the lack of responsibility.

So we’ll be back. And it will be fun again. Watch this space.

Do you care? Get in touch!

Lose the careless abandon and stop pretending like you don’t have a full time job that you hate. Put the green shit away and get back to reality with some tracks to make you feel grounded.

Love Come Down - Social Lovers

A wonderful take on the classic by Evelyn "Champagne" King, Social Lovers take a more dub-led sentimental approach that will definitely make you tear up, with the sweetest vocals from Megan Doherty. 10/10

Obama Runtz - BossMan Dlow, Wizz Havinn

“Cut the small talk, I like cash talk” are only a taste of the pure lyricism of BossMan Dlow, who raps about one thing and one thing only - making money. 10/10

That’s All Right With Me - Esther Phillips

Released in 1977, Esther Phillips sings about infatuation and submission, with a melancholy like no other. A true talent of her time. 11/10

Oiseau - Laurent Bardainne, Tigre d’Eau Douce, Bertrand Berlin

Oiseau (French for Bird), features French singer Bertrand Belin crooning lyrics about how he’s not a bird but a snake, sounding like an old man you came across in a bar. Beautiful stuff. 9/10

Sentimentale - Stella, Ed Longo, Alexandre Jaouën, Nadir Bahouche

Back to back French bangers, this time with the amazing combination of Stella and Ed Longo. The entire EP is amazing, but Sentimentale is particularly sultry and sexy. A must listen. 11/10

All these songs and more can be enjoyed by tuning in to the station.(when we’re back).

Surprise! Not much has. An opinion piece from Cosmo Kramer, President and Chairman of Kramerica. All opinions expressed in this piece are also shared by Vandelay Radio.

Remember when we all thought Covid was going to be the great reset?

When the world shut down, and suddenly everyone was spouting off about how everything was going to be different? The streets of London were eerily quiet, the air smelled less like exhaust and more like some weird promise of change, and we were all locked up with nothing but time to contemplate the future of our little music scene. "This is it," we said. "Things will never be the same again."

Everyone said they wanted change: less gatekeeping, more innovation, more risks. And for a while, there was this electric sense that something big might actually happen. A time to rethink what our nightlife could be, a chance to break the cycle of the same 20 DJs rotating through the same five clubs. But now, it’s back to business as usual, like we collectively decided that shaking things up was just too much effort.

Didn’t we all just suffer through two years of absolute crap so we could do better than this? Yet here we are, pretending we’re back in 2019, like the world didn’t just stop spinning for a while.

Same faces behind the decks, same tracks recycled from the depths of some Spotify playlist, and the same crowd patting themselves on the back for being oh-so-authentic. The industry is still obsessed with big names and predictable sets, and everyone is still queuing up for their overpriced drinks, hoping for something real to happen.

Sure, a few new spaces popped up with some fresh paint and fancy cocktail menus, but underneath, it’s business as usual. The same promoters pushing the same lineups, the same crowd chasing the same tired sounds. We went through two years of absolute chaos, and what do we have to show for it? A scene that looks eerily like 2019 with a slightly different dress code.

Turns out, comfort’s a lot more appealing than risk. Nostalgia’s easier than innovation. What’s left is this dull ache, this quiet realization that maybe we were always going to end up back here, right where we started. We wanted a clean slate, a fresh start, something that felt meaningful after everything we’d been through. But all we got was more of the same, only now with this lingering sense that we missed our chance.

Maybe we all just got too tired, too quickly. Too eager to go back to something familiar, to pretend we hadn’t spent months questioning what we actually wanted from any of this. And now we’re stuck, pretending the same old nights out mean what they used to, hoping no one notices the cracks in the facade.

Maybe it’s just easier this way, easier not to care, not to hope for something different, to just accept that this is it. The same faces, the same sounds, the same unchanging city.

And maybe that’s the saddest part of all, realizing that in a time when everything could’ve been different, we chose not to be.

CK x

Stop oversimplifying the diverse, rich, and locally rooted musical traditions of Africa, and begin to recognise their unique cultural, social, and historical contexts. A letter by Dare Balogun.

There used to be this ad that disgusted me.

It opened with soft-pan shots of an idyllic fruit farm in Kenya or South Africa, with the underpaid workers preparing their luscious produce for an important visitor. And then he arrived. European of course. Colonial. Distinguished. Aristocratic. Wearing a white linen suit and a Panama hat. He tasted the fruit, smiled, and then nodded his head in approval.

Cue spontaneous celebrations from the peasants who shouted: “The man from Del Monte says Yes!”. They would then pick and pack the fruit, and send it to Europe, where it would manifest as juice, to be drank by a blue-eyed blonde family. A perfect representation of colonialism - westerners going to countries and taking whatever they want, and packaging it up as their own.

In 2022, I went to Nairobi, Kenya and visited The Real Vinyl Guru record store. I had always been interested in traditional African music, but this experience single-handedly opened my eyes. 

Hearing and witnessing the exploitative behaviors of DJs who would raid the store and sell the records they purchased on Discogs at a 300% markup made me realize that the same disgusting neo-colonial mentality existed in music. A mentality that looked to exploit, rather than explore. It made me realize that I had to commit myself to presenting this music as authentically as possible, looking beyond just playing records, but educating myself and others on the cultural significance of the music I was playing.

While doing this, I’ve met so many people who share the same interest in the music I play, a lot not being from the countries or even the continent where this music comes from. It’s been extremely validating, but at the same time, I’ve had a growing concern about appropriation. The approach I take is presenting, celebrating and educating people on traditional music from Africa, however what I see is more of a conflation of this music under the idea of playing “global” or “world” music. 

I understand as DJs, people like to play a wide variety of music, but my worry is taking this approach, it’s actively contributing to the erasure of the history of this music. Playing record after record, without acknowledging where it’s from, and more importantly what it means, is extremely problematic. Labeling these very varied and distinct genres of music from The Global South as “tropical” or “exotic”, is so unfair to the artists and local music scenes that worked tirelessly to produce music. It removes all context and nuance from their art.

It’s particularly frustrating, especially when for millions of people, this music is quite literally their heritage. It’s my heritage. When I play and talk about these records, it’s a way for me to access my culture. Like many, I don’t live in the country where I’m from. I’m extremely far away from my tradition, but I’ve found a way to explore my own heritage, and connect with my roots, and provide people with a way to do the same. It’s important that this is acknowledged, and we treat the music we’re choosing to play with the attention and respect it deserves.

The homogenisation of very distinct and different genres of music is doing nothing but a disservice, and actively painting a very neo-colonial picture of music from The Global South. We should be going a lot further, learning and speaking about the importance of this music not only to ourselves, but to the people where this music is from, sharing the much needed context required for people to truly understand and be impacted by this music, moving from appropriation to appreciation. 

I urge all DJs, collectives and platforms to stop this cultural exploitation, and go beyond using the sounds of The Global South as an aesthetic, to stop whitewashing traditional African music, and to encourage their audiences to delve deeper into these genres, by providing them with the resources to do so.

It’s the least we can do, to reverse the damage that has been done, and actually create tangible change not only in the Diaspora, but in the countries where this music is coming from. I write this with no judgement, but to hopefully to inspire people to do better - including myself.

With love,
Dare Balogun

Some helpful places to start include the Africa Music Archives, International Library of African Music, and "The Music of Africa" by J.H. Kwabena Nketia.

Letters from our listeners. Opinions shared do not reflect the views of Vandelay Radio.

Let me paint you a picture. There I am, slogging through another miserable commute, headphones on, trying to drown out the chaos with a halfway decent Vandelay mix, pretending I’m not about to spend another eight hours in some office hellhole.

But then there was always that one bright spot- the Swedish Meatball Wrap.

It was warm, it was tasty, and it was dependable. The meatballs had that perfect mix of spice and juiciness, like they’d been crafted by someone who actually cared. The sauce, bloody hell, that sauce, had a tang that felt like a proper wake-up call, a little slap in the face that made you think, “Alright, I can get through this.”

But now? Now it’s like they’ve given up. The meatballs are dry, bland as hell, and taste like they’ve been left to die on some factory line. And that sauce? What the fuck happened to it? It’s basically just red water now, like they’re trying to punish us for daring to want a bit of flavor in our lives. And don’t even get me started on the wrap itself. Used to be soft, held it all together—now it’s just some soggy nonsense that falls apart the second you pick it up. It’s like Pret’s decided we should all just settle for disappointment.

I’m not trying to be dramatic here, but this is a fucking tragedy. I used to actually look forward to lunch. It was my little moment of peace, my break from the bullshit. But now? Now it’s just another reminder that even the things you thought you could count on are going straight down the drain.

I just wanted my lunch to be the one thing I didn’t have to complain about.

Yours,
A sad listener.

We’re always looking to hear from our listeners, get in touch.

Poetry written on the London Underground.

You turn the volume up,
Eyes closed, head nodding,
Lost in the layers of the beat,
The room dim, the air thick,
Vinyl spinning under low light

She sits beside you,
Curled on the edge of the sofa,
Smiling politely,
Trying to catch your rhythm,
Trying to hear what you hear
“This track,” you say,
Voice low, almost a whisper,
Synths weaving through air,
The room vibrating with each note

Your heart races with the sound,
The rhythm pulling you in,
She’s waiting, her breath is still,
You move closer, lips almost brushing her ear,
And you whisper softly,

“I actually heard it first on Vandelay Radio”

Northern Line, 11:03pm

The Vandelay Radio Test Kitchen has finally found out the correct way to drink those glorified milkshakes full of choking hazards and 40 grams of sugar, and it’s blown our minds!

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Throw it in the trash.

The Vandelay Radio Test Kitchen is always on the look for talented cooks, chefs and dishwashers. Get in touch.

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