Community radio unites compatriots

By NICK SMITH

The music is exotic; pulsating, rhythmic and strange. It is the sound of the Congo and it is pumping out on the 810AM frequency for the last time.

From Monday, Auckland's Access Radio is reborn as PlanetFM104.6, an appropriate moniker for the voice of multicultural Auckland.

Indeed, with programmes broadcast in 45 different languages, Access Radio is truly New Zealand's version of the United Nations.

Kafeba Pergoleze Mundele, former president of the Congolese Community of New Zealand, is fluent in the four languages used in his former home - Lingala, Swahili, French and English.

Mr Mundele is relishing the prospect of an FM signal.

His Saturday show, produced with three compatriots, will sound all the better for stereo sound, given the dominance that music from the Congo is given on the show, Allo Congo.

He rates Congolese as among the finest practitioners of music, a view given credence by musicologists such as Graeme Evans, who believes the whole Zaire-Congo area holds the key to much of what is vital about all sounds emanating from the continent.

"Mainly we talk about our culture, the way of living, behaviour in general, values, marriage," he says.

He is talking about adjusting to the different values prevalent in Godzone. Like many migrants, he immediately cites respect for elders as a paramount virtue, an attribute seemingly absent in Kiwi kids.

With three children of his own, all aged under five, this issue is vital to Mr Mundele and the estimated 2000 Africans living in Auckland. He treads a fine line between adjusting to the New Zealand way of living and maintaining the connection with his culture.

"The show is very important because it has helped us to connect, just to be together, to have the same information," he says. "The main problem is we don't have too much time to meet.

"We've just come into the country, trying to adjust. Some have two jobs and the only way we have to connect is really just the radio."

He is not alone. Research conducted by Access Radio suggests that one in three Aucklanders "identify with other than the mainstream culture in language and tradition."

Spokeswoman Terri Byrne says the station is the "focal point of communications to this third of Auckland's population."

"One of the things about this station is that it really is a United Nations, bringing together 45 languages from all around the world, and they cooperate and support the whole process without any conflict."

Indeed, Assyria may not be a nation on a map but there are two shows broadcasting in the Assyrian language, Ashour Radio and the United Assyrian Voice.

Then there is Pukapuka, the dialect spoken by a remote Cook Island minority.

Yet, all these voices were nearly silenced when the land upon which the mast the station shared with Radio Pacific was sold. Pacific found a new home but Access was left high and dry.

Fortunately, influential local and national politicians, including the Speaker of the House and the former Minister of Broadcasting Jonathan Hunt, successfully persuaded the Government that one of the unallocated FM frequencies should be given to Access, said Terri Byrne.

After months of uncertainty, an estimated 200,000 listeners will hear Dutch, Punjabi, Kannada, Korean, Gujurati, Farsi, Arabic, Russian, Tamil, Finnish and others on 104.6FM.

"I always felt that it was really important that the media was not owned and made by an elite and delivered to people in a passive sense," said Terri Byrne. "We are the only medium I know of that exercises no editorial control besides that which is obeying the laws of broadcasting and the laws of the land."

There are occasional complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Authority, presenting special problems for the station.

Programmes are automatically recorded and a translator is brought in to provided an English transcript following a complaint.

Terri Byrne said that only one complaint had been upheld since the station's inception in 1987, and that regarded political comments in the Sunday Irish show.