Chapter 3: Radio as Collective Improvisation

Emergence

Improvisation is inherently a practice of emergence, while complex adaptive systems are models in which emergence is a key phenomenon. Pioneering complex adaptive systems theorist John Holland once wrote that “the hallmark of emergence is [the] sense of much coming from little” (1998, 2). I understand the “creativity and vast access” that one of my aforementioned colleagues mentions as central to community radio as emerging from the operating procedures of community radio another aforementioned colleague depicts as “those little, small things.” Relation and experimentation are key ethics that inform the shape and substance of what emerges. In his capacity as a generative artist, computer scientist, and experimental musician, as well as from his orientation as a philosophical and creative devotee of Ornette Coleman, Hermeto Pascoal, and John Holland, my father, Michael Pontecorvo, has written about the importance of attending to emergence in what he describes as ecologies of design, writing:

The inter-relationship between designed objects and spaces and their surroundings is composed of the fitness pressures of function and aesthetics. Look at any system within the range of human creation and you can find more than a tenuous analogy with what have been traditionally studied as biological systems… A central factor in the vitality of such systems is that of emergence. Emergence is the tendency a system has to form new and persistent structures of increased complexity. Emergent phenomena are a ubiquitous feature of our reality. (1998, 202-204)

This is also true of the station’s airwaves, on which emergent phenomena express social-sonic-spatial interactions in diverse and often unpredictable ways.

Some of the clearest examples of responsiveness in radio emerge from factors somewhat out of a programmer’s direct control: operator errors, technical glitches. These aberrances are, objectively, not good things. They suggest shoddy materials and sloppy habits, the least desirable aspects of amateurism. It is important not to minimize this. For as low a barrier as a station like WFHB sets, community radio has an educational mission and a vested interest in engaging its audience on a long-term basis. Encouraging mistakes does not serve these goals and may even be counterproductive in garnering support and participation. In an essay written in 1963, Lorenzo Milam writes of what he frames as a failed experiment:

We felt at one time—for instance—that normal conversation should be carried into announcing. Thus if the announcer could not pronounce “Slenczynska” or “Ockeghem,” he could feel free to ask anyone else in the room while he was on the air. It didn’t work, and we do it rarely now. The microphone, with its monophonic orientation, made [Seattle community radio station] KRAB sound like a hang-out of radio juvenilia—which, of course, it well may be. (1986, 7)

Simultaneously true: accidents and even failures give programmers opportunities to indicate their presence and positionality and enhance their connections with listeners. In the same essay, Milam argues that “volunteer announcers bring a variety and freshness to KRAB: they might stumble and worry, but they are alive” (ibid.). Here, Milam gestures toward the value of signaling liveness even when it originates in infelicitous circumstances. Accidents are inevitable. The sounds that emerge from them, though, matter, just as they do in cases of collaboratively borne surprises in Harmolodics and the experiments inherent in música universal. In each of these, the emergent, unexpected in character, is the audibly beating heart of the participatory experience.

Several colleagues I interviewed expressed their own thoughts on the importance of the unexpected in their WFHB tenure. They, too, found value in irregularities. Asked about the most memorable parts of the on-air training process, one programmer told me, “I felt safe enough to make a mistake, and that everybody would be okay. And that was the biggest thing for me” (Interview 1). For this programmer, who began in 2021, simply knowing that even longtime broadcasters make mistakes was crucial in feeling comfortable with participating. This same programmer clarified to me that this did not mean needing to feel that the station was low quality, continuing: “I like things to be good. And I think things are, but I don’t feel like that is the number one goal. I feel like the number one goal is getting people involved, and the community feel, and taking it as it comes.” Emergence does not require the sacrifice of programming standards to remain at the forefront.

Another WFHB colleague, whose tenure at the station already extended back several decades at the time of our conversation, extolled the amount of live programming on the station as compared to many other, more automated outlets. This colleague, too, took a balanced but overall positive perspective on the sonically unexpected:

Actually, as a listener, I like having people be a little different. Maybe make some kind of silly statement or something. I mean, I don’t like it if somebody completely, you know, has a total disaster, but people keep it together. If they make a little mistake, push the wrong button or something, I like it, because it makes you human. It makes it real people. Just those little things. You catch a little bit from somebody. (Interview 8)

The ideas of “real people” here and “community feel” in my newer colleague’s statement are significant for their linking of emergent sounds to not only a kind of presence but authenticity and connectedness. Against the backdrop of radio as a virtually mediated experience, these are crucial beliefs to take into account.

In the previous chapter, I discussed dynamic senses of place emerging from whole radiophonic performances. I spend the rest of this chapter listening on a more granular level to aesthetic details of performances in their systemic contexts. In doing so, I trace the emergence of what Pontecorvo might call “new and persistent structures” of technology and practices on air and behind the metaphorical scenes and discuss their importance and that of relation and experimentation within the context of collective improvisation in fulfilling specific people-centered ideals of community radio. There are countless examples of emergence in day-to-day operations at WFHB, not all of them desirable. Stammers may emerge when programmers encounter unfamiliar artist names. Silences may emerge when programmers encounter unforeseen equipment malfunctions. There are, though, many more productive moments of improvisation and emergence that are often audible on the airwaves. I focus here on sounds and practices that emerged at WFHB throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a particularly acute trial of the station’s capacity for improvisation and ability to foster collectivity.