HERITAGE: Ranking Miss P Explains The Importance Of DBC, Europe's First Black-Owned Radio Station (1980)

HERITAGE: Ranking Miss P Explains The Importance Of DBC, Europe's First Black-Owned Radio Station (1980)


April 18, 2019

Back in the late 1970s early '80s, community radio station Dread Broadcasting (DBC) made history as the first Black radio station in Europe. At the time, it was the only place you could listen to reggae on the radio.

Here's Ranking Miss P appearing in a documentary about the station founded by her brother DJ Lepke, in which she talks about DBC's importance as the first station of its kind, how valuable it is to black music in the UK, and the questionable legality of running a pirate station. What that led to was most of the presenters wearing masks to hide their identity, because the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Eventually, Miss P was approached by the BBC to contribute music to a weekly magazine show they were running called Ebony in 1983. Then, in 1985, she began presenting a weekly reggae show on Radio 1, the station's first ever show dedicated solely to the genre, making her one of the first black presenters on the BBC.

Fun fact: Both Miss P and her brother Lepke are the younger siblings of Rita Marley.




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