New York Caribbean pirate radio

The unlicensed half of the story. From at least the 1990s, unlicensed stations ran throughout New York — concentrated in Brooklyn's Caribbean enclaves, the epicentre of the diaspora and of the first wave of American-made dancehall — precisely because the licensed dial did not reflect those communities. Stations including Fire, Wah Gwan and Bashment broadcast reggae and dancehall to neighbourhoods commercial radio had no reason to serve.

The dial got crowded enough that established pirates such as WBAD defended their frequencies against newcomers with persuasion, jamming and sabotage — an unlicensed spectrum policing itself, in the same competitive idiom as a sound clash.