More than a means of communication, however, radio in the Los Angeles barrios became an instrument in an ambitious project of cultural assemblage. Listeners used the request and dedication lines to shape a regionally distinctive playlist out of B-sides, album cuts and obscurities. But in those sudden bursts of multipart harmony that so often greet a telling line, or in the falsetto voice spiraling giddily above the bridge, an imaginative listener can hear a powerful metaphor. These voices ignore borders. They soar free of pigeonholes and stereotypes, of gang turf and familial obligation, even when their owners might not.
Aesthetics are independent of income.
Chicano radio shaped the area's musical landscape as surely as developers striped its hills, and with a style as evocatively Southern Californian as pink stucco and orange tile. What emerged in the process was a sense that radio was a tool that could be adapted to the community's needs. No wonder, then, that e-mails from outraged listeners flooded ''The Sancho Show'' Web site when at the end of February, the program, a fixture on KPCC for 16 years, was abruptly canceled without even the traditional farewell broadcast. When I first moved to California from West Virginia 11 years ago,'' one man wrote, ''I felt the Chicano culture was alien. After 'The Sancho Show,' I am much more sympathetic.