Radio Péka: live radio from Kourou

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Radio Péka

No format ever took hold.

Kourou's open antenna: dub, techno, maracatu, salsa.

Radio Péka is the antenna of Peka Projekt, an association in Kourou that runs Le Bocal, a room in French Guiana where anyone can turn up and make something — a podcast, a concert, a workshop, a public argument. Since 2016 the same people have staged Radioaktif, a biennial festival of alternative music and culture held out in the Amazon forest, and the station keeps that space's open-door rule: bring a show and the antenna is yours, whatever you had been planning to do with it.

It calls itself eclectic and holds to it: Brazilian maracatu and Amazonian singles run into club edits of American rap and French EDM, ragga and electro swing. The festival splits that range across three stages — rock and salsa under the Zéphyr canopy, dub and drum'n'bass in La Canopée, techno and acid in Le Brasier — and Bocal Live sessions, artist interviews and volunteer chronicles come back as podcasts.

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Kourou, French Guiana

Radio Péka

No format ever took hold.

Kourou's open antenna: dub, techno, maracatu, salsa.

Radio Péka is the antenna of Peka Projekt, an association in Kourou that runs Le Bocal, a room in French Guiana where anyone can turn up and make something — a podcast, a concert, a workshop, a public argument. Since 2016 the same people have staged Radioaktif, a biennial festival of alternative music and culture held out in the Amazon forest, and the station keeps that space's open-door rule: bring a show and the antenna is yours, whatever you had been planning to do with it.

It calls itself eclectic and holds to it: Brazilian maracatu and Amazonian singles run into club edits of American rap and French EDM, ragga and electro swing. The festival splits that range across three stages — rock and salsa under the Zéphyr canopy, dub and drum'n'bass in La Canopée, techno and acid in Le Brasier — and Bocal Live sessions, artist interviews and volunteer chronicles come back as podcasts.