Time Frame: Tuning in to the sounds of the Emirates

If you want to know more about the cultural diversity of the Emirates, you need do no more than experiment with your car radio dial.

As the FM frequency changes, so too do the musical tastes and languages of the shows and those broadcasting, from Khaleeji Arabic to English, spoken with an endless variety of accents, to Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Tagalog and even Russian.

Today’s frenzied airwaves are in marked contrast to the 1960s when the only voice in public radio was broadcast from the British Royal Air Force base in Sharjah.

Forces Radio Sharjah provided news and entertainment until the base closed with the withdrawal of British forces in 1971; however, it had such a limited selection of records that a DJ remembers one particular Elvis Presley song being banned for being overplayed.

Photographs released by the National Archives to commemorate the 50th anniversity of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s accession as Ruler of Abu Dhabi on August 6, 1966, include this one, which was taken at the launch of Abu Dhabi Radio in February 1969.

All too soon local coffee shops were serving up news and music and the listening landscape, much like the emirate, would become much more crowded.

* Clare Dight