Sophie A. Brady is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Arkansas. Her research examines the relationship between radio and African and Afro-diasporic twentieth-century experimental composition. She is the 2022 recipient of the Paul A. Pisk Prize from the American Musicological Society, and her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Sophie received her PhD in musicology from Princeton University.

From Neuilly to Douala: Crossing musical and geographic boundaries at Radio-France’s Studio-École

Abstract: Between 1955 and 1969, more than 300 students from 18 African countries participated in Radio France’s Studio-École, a Paris-based school for radio broadcasters, technicians, and producers. These students lived through a pivotal epoch; many left their countries as colonial subjects and returned as citizens of independent nations. Although framed as altruistic investment in African radio, the program’s purpose was to maintain French soft power in the region in the face of decolonization. Nevertheless, many Studio-École trainees used radio’s ability to transcend physical and cultural boundaries to resist, exploit, and subvert France’s (neo)colonial power. Drawing upon oral histories and archival research conducted in France and West Africa, my paper will examine how these students blurred musical and geographic boundaries between Africa and France to develop new, hybrid musical genres and identities.

The Studio-École played a foundational role in shaping post-Independence radio in Francophone Africa, but its local context in France was also important. The Studio-École’s African students presented weekly broadcasts to nearby audiences in Maisons-Laffitte, a middle-class Parisian suburb w here the school was housed, via an “experimental antennae.” While archival sources reflect institutional and alumni activities in Paris and cities throughout Francophone Africa during these turbulent decades, there is virtually no documentation of locals’ interactions with and opinions about the Studio-École. I argue that while politicians and colonial administrators were debating how to craft a postcolonial state—both in France and in its former colonial territories—the churches, living rooms, and public squares of Maisons-Laffitte paint a vivid picture of how French and African citizens negotiated and renegotiated these physical and cultural boundaries in the wake of decolonization.