Abstract
This chapter will discuss how a popular Jamaican dancehall protest song, ‘Pirates Anthem’ (1989), captured the cultural and political significance of free community radio stations that emerged during the 1980s within the UK’s urban cities such as Birmingham and their pioneering free radio station, The People’s Community Radio Link (PCRL). The histories of Black led pirate radio stations and their intertwined relationship to sound-system culture can be understood in terms of how sound systems and pirate radio stations have operated as two sides of the same coin. What made Birmingham distinctive was the dominance of reggae and dancehall music at the heart of the pirate radio scene. Birmingham was and perhaps still remains the capital of reggae-oriented pirate radio in the UK.
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