Liberation spans the full spectrum.

Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice

November 23, 2023

"Stand up for your rights."

Episode 03 is BVA's most explicitly liberation-focused transmission: a 23-track argument that the vast world is what borders can't contain. The Abyssinians' "Declaration of Rights", a Rastafarian anthem that calls on listeners to stand up for their rights, follows Hugh Masekela's "Colonial Man," which calls out the colonial presence on African soil by name. Bob Marley's "Slave Driver" drives the slave ship straight through the middle of the episode. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings reclaim "This Land Is Your Land" as the Black soul revival it should have been all along.

Palestine appears through multiple voices: Residente rejects US hegemony over Latin America with "This is Not América," while Saint Levant, born during the Second Intifada, sings of "Nirvana in Gaza." Connected struggles, held in the same signal.

Transmission 04: Break Open the Dark

December 7, 2023

"Backlash blues."

Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues": a Langston Hughes poem set to music, written for the civil rights era and still waiting for its answer. Charles Bradley testifies that the world is going up in flames, and it doesn't sound like a complaint. It sounds like someone stating what he has seen.

Transmission 05: The Longest Night

December 21, 2023: Winter Solstice

The liberation frequency stretches across the Sahara and through Palestine. Gil Scott-Heron returns with "Whitey on the Moon": a poem from 1970 about Neil Armstrong, about money, about who pays for the view and who pays for everything else. Saint Levant's "Mandela." Aziza Brahim sings from the Western Sahara, a Saharawi voice carrying songs of exile from the refugee camps. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe closes with traditional dabke: dance as resistance, as memory, as survival. Hurray For The Riff Raff's "Palante" pushes forward.