Let the Music Play

Who can stop the music?

No-one can stop the music!

Thus goes a song that had a lot of radio-play in the seventies and eighties, over the SLBC, and Musical Bandbox. The SLBC, is of course, the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, and 'Musical Bandbox was that very famous western music lunchtime slot on All India Radio, Calcutta.

The All Asia Service of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation has fizzled out, in the same way as Short Wave Radio stations have, all over the world. Since the introduction of FM, and the phasing out of SW receiver production, Short Wave music programmes have suufered, simply because you can't match FM radio quality.

AIR Calcutta B and the SLBC would receive an immense amount of requests from the Anglo-Indian community, the Goan community, and both these radio stations and their announcers were part of the family early morning and lunch-time rituals. In Delhi, what is now AIR FM Rainbow, used to receive a lot of requests from the North-eastern Student community. Whenever I'm in Delhi I never fail to tune in to AIR FM Rainbow, and I really enjoy the afternoon and late night shows.

It's a shame tha one cannot access AIR FM Rainbow in a radio-link via AIR patna, though AIR stations in Dehradun and elsewhere have linked with AIR FM Rrainbow to provide their listeners with a third AIR channel.

One can receive Radio SriLanka, the English Services of SLBC via the website on the internet.

The Pasar Bharati, or AIR website doesn't have such streaming links. If it did, a lot of fans of the Western Music Services of Al India Radio would keep in touch with AIR FM  Rainbow.