WBAR
Barnard College Radio
WBAR is an independent, free-form, non-commercial, non-profit radio station broadcasting from the Barnard College campus in New York City. All of our programming is generated entirely by on-campus DJ's, with a new show spinning every 2 hours. Our staff is a fine bunch of Barnard and Columbia students, and every one of us is just as aesthetically pleasing as we are qualified for the job.
WBAR's mission is to provide an outlet for the music that you won't find on mainstream stations, so we don't stop at broadcasting. We also put on some of the best shows in New York City.
The stereotype of Latin rock music falls somewhere between mariachi and Menudo. And Argentine rock? It’s so off-the-radar that you couldn’t even come up with an example (No, Shakira’s from Colombia and Marc Anthony’s from…um…don’t know…). But spend a bit of time in the country and you’ll quickly learn that Argentina doesn’t just have a thriving rock scene, it’s got a long history with the genre. And a lot if it’s good. You see, while we were busy with the like of Chicago and Creed, Argentina was whipping up its own brand of rock music and over the course of forty years has amassed quite an impressive collection of crooners. While some of it sounds familiar—globalization has, after all, made bands like the Rolling Stones and the Ramones nearly unavoidable—most of the music is a reflection of a different place, a different language, a different culture and a different history (in Argentina’s case, a repressive dictatorship until the early 80s and a major economic crisis in late 2001). So why combine it with UK/US rock music (i.e. the canon)? To start with, kids are kids, and despite being hundreds of thousands of miles apart, both countries’ rock music is fueled by the same emotions (love, frustration, love, anger, love), making the music sound and feel surprising similar at times. Side A/Lado B places these musical movements side-by-side, point-counterpoint style, as a means of revealing and reveling in the resemblances and variations. This isn’t just an “auditory experience to thrill your ears and toes,” this is a cross-cultural, anthropological survey of rock music, presenting the ways in which it is filtered and spit back out.