Across the Waves: Radio Bari, the Fascist Radio Heard Across the Mediterranean

Fascist radio station Radio Bari broadcasted propaganda in Arabic from Italy towards the Middle East and North Africa from 1934-1943. My project delves into the radio station’s use of music as propaganda, arguing that the music was in fact politically efficacious. The final dissertation will take the form of a longform audio piece. This is a project of recovery and discovery. As Radio Bari has received relatively little scholarly attention and its music has received almost none, I will use this grant to travel to the archives to discover firsthand the details of the musical programming. This project enters conversation with scholars of transnational media studies, sound studies, Mediterranean studies, Arab nationalism, and Arab music, and addresses a Mediterranean-shaped lacuna in Anglophone radio scholarship.