Renegade Radio finds a home at the Museum of History

By Brian Wright-McLeod

TORONTO – Renegade Radio has been selected to be a part of a new exhibit, Retro – Popular Music in Canada from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, at the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa/Gatineau, opening June 6. Featuring more than 100 artists, this new exhibition looks at how musicians and listeners experimented, challenged the status quo, and sparked new forms of creative expression. Featuring a strong Indigenous music component, the exhibit also reveals how music can be social, personal, and political.

“Indigenous artists were an integral part of popular music in many ways – from Robbie Robertson’s enormous influence, to Kashtin’s breaking onto the scene in the 1980s. If we want to begin to understand popular music as culture in Canada, it is crucial that the creativity and breadth of Indigenous artists be part of that conversation,” stated Dr. Judith Klassen, ethnomusicologist, and Curator, Music and Performing Arts with the Canadian Museum of History. “Renegade Radio is significant for its social critique and activist voice, engaging directly with contemporary movements and issues in creative ways. Renegade Radio points to the broader significance of independent community/campus radio in the 1980s and expanding what, and who, is heard on the airwaves.”

To understand Renegade Radio, one must understand the journey. I first enrolled in the journalism program at Canadore College located in North Bay, Ontario, in 1978 and graduated from the graphic design program in 1981. It was there that I began working as a music journalist with published pieces in the college newspaper and for the North Bay Nugget.

After moving to Toronto, through selling my paintings to Indigenous-owned galleries in Yorkville, I found my way into the publishing and activist communities in the city. I began working as a writer and illustrator, and contributing poetry readings at numerous events and venues across the city. From those experiences, I eventually wrote and illustrated Red Power: A Graphic Novel.

To make a long story short, I was broadcasting at the campus-community radio station CKLN 88.1 FM from the former Ryerson University (now called the Toronto Metropolitan University), creating various Native programs from 1983 to 2011. The eventual result was the monster show Renegade Radio that featured an eclectic mix of music, live in-studio musician performances, and interviews with an unabashed attitude and unexpected perspectives.

A detailed account can be found in the book chapter, Renegade Radio: A Voice of Dissent in a World of Compromise, published in the anthology Indigenous Toronto: Stories That Carry This Place.

It was through the radio experience and amassing possibly the largest private collection of recorded Indigenous music in the country, combining numerous interviews with a galaxy of artists, and endless research that I wrote The Encyclopedia of Native Music, and produced the 3-CD companion set, The Soundtrack of a People. Both projects featured Indigenous music from 1910 to 2005 in every genre of traditional and contemporary music from the Arctic Circle to the US-Mexico border.

The Encyclopedia became a pillar for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian exhibit, Up Where We Belong, and the foundation for my multi-award-winning documentary film, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World.