Los Angeles is not a jazz city in the sense that New York or Chicago are jazz cities — the music has never been as central to LA's identity as it has been to those cities. But Los Angeles has produced important jazz: the West Coast cool jazz style associated with Dave Brubeck's college years in the Bay Area has its LA counterpart in the musicians who recorded for Pacific Jazz Records in the 1950s and 1960s, and the city's entertainment industry connection to jazz through film scores and television production has kept a substantial jazz community alive and working. What Los Angeles has been, more consistently than any other American city, is the center of the entertainment industry's music machinery, and from that machinery has come KCRW — the Santa Monica public radio station that grew from a small college station into one of the most influential music radio operations in the world, breaking artists before anyone else and documenting the full range of independent music through its Morning Becomes Eclectic sessions. These eight stations cover Los Angeles's rich musical life from its jazz tradition to its globally influential indie present.
KCRW — Los Angeles's Global Music Station
KCRW — Santa Monica, CA
KCRW is Santa Monica College's public radio station and one of the most globally influential music radio operations in the world — a non-commercial station that programs independent music, news, and culture with a curatorial intelligence that has shaped what independent music listeners hear across the United States and internationally. KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic program, hosted for decades by Nic Harcourt and now continuing with his successors, has produced thousands of live studio sessions with artists from every corner of independent music and has been one of the most important venues for breaking new artists to national audiences. The station's programming spans indie rock, electronic, folk, world music, and the genre-hybrid styles that LA's extraordinary cultural diversity generates — a playlist that could only emerge from a city at the intersection of American culture, Latin American culture, and the global entertainment industry. For any music listener anywhere in the world, KCRW's online stream is essential.
Los Angeles Jazz
KJAZZ 88.1 — Long Beach, CA
KJAZZ 88.1 is the Los Angeles area's dedicated jazz station — a non-commercial public radio station operated by California State University, Long Beach, that programs the jazz tradition with the depth and seriousness that the music deserves. KJAZZ programs the full jazz spectrum from swing and bebop through contemporary jazz and the fusion styles that LA's entertainment industry musicians have contributed to the tradition. The station's connection to the CSULB jazz program gives it access to the academic jazz community that Los Angeles supports through its university system — the musicians in training who will define the next generation of the tradition. For Los Angeles jazz listeners, KJAZZ is the radio equivalent of the Blue Whale jazz club or the Catalina Jazz Club: the dedicated space where jazz is the entire program rather than an incidental element of a broader format.
101 Smooth Jazz — Los Angeles, CA
101 Smooth Jazz programs contemporary smooth jazz for the Los Angeles metropolitan area — the polished, accessible jazz that fits the restaurants, hotel lounges, and professional environments of one of the world's most affluent urban regions. Los Angeles's entertainment industry creates a professional class with sophisticated tastes and an appetite for music that is simultaneously upscale and accessible, and 101 Smooth Jazz programs for that audience: jazz that is melodic, rhythmically engaging, and appropriate for the social environments where the LA entertainment world conducts its business. The station provides the smooth jazz format for a city whose music industry knows how to make sophisticated sounds commercially viable.
Los Angeles Public and Community Radio
KUSC — Los Angeles, CA
KUSC is the University of Southern California's classical music station — one of the finest classical radio operations in the United States, programming the European classical tradition for a Los Angeles audience that supports the LA Philharmonic, one of the world's great orchestras, and the Colburn School, one of the finest music conservatories in the country. KUSC's programming reflects LA's specific relationship to classical music: the city's film industry has always employed composers trained in the classical tradition, and the resulting connection between the Hollywood film score and the concert hall has given LA's classical music community a commercial dimension that most cities' classical scenes lack. KUSC programs this tradition — the concert hall repertoire alongside the film music that draws on it — with the intelligence that USC's music faculty brings to the enterprise.
KPFK 90.7 FM — Los Angeles, CA
KPFK 90.7 FM is Los Angeles's Pacifica Radio station — the most politically independent and programmatically adventurous radio station in America's second-largest city, programming news, commentary, and music that no commercial or mainstream public station will broadcast. KPFK's music programming reflects the station's commitment to the margins: the avant-garde jazz that LA's experimental music scene generates, the world music that the city's extraordinary demographic diversity produces, and the independent music that falls outside even KCRW's adventurous mainstream. The station has been broadcasting from Los Angeles since 1959 and represents the tradition of progressive politics and cultural experimentation that has always coexisted with Hollywood's commercial culture. For the LA listener who wants radio that challenges rather than comforts, KPFK provides the uncompromising alternative.
Los Angeles Soul and Independent
Soul Public Radio — Los Angeles, CA
Soul Public Radio programs soul, R&B, and the jazz-soul tradition for Los Angeles — the music that connects LA's large African American community to the Black music tradition that runs from gospel through soul to contemporary R&B. Los Angeles's Black community, centered in South LA and Compton, has produced significant contributions to American music across genres from jazz (Central Avenue's historic clubs produced bebop-era musicians) to hip-hop (West Coast rap emerged from LA's Black neighborhoods). Soul Public Radio programs within the soul and R&B tradition that connects those musical histories, presenting the music that has been most consistently central to the LA Black community's cultural identity. The station represents the soul music that has always been made in Los Angeles even as the city's music industry has focused on rock, hip-hop, and pop.
95.5 KLOS — Los Angeles, CA
95.5 KLOS is Los Angeles's classic rock station — one of the most storied classic rock operations in America, programming the rock tradition for a city that has been at the center of rock music's commercial development since the 1960s. Los Angeles helped define classic rock: the Sunset Strip clubs where Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and Van Halen played, the recording studios where the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Jackson Browne made the records that define the California rock sound, the FM radio culture that made album-oriented rock the dominant format of the 1970s. KLOS programs this tradition with the authority that comes from being in the city where much of it was created — the classic rock that is, in LA, not merely historical but local history. For the Los Angeles listener who wants to hear the rock that was made in their city's studios and clubs, KLOS provides the definitive format.
For more California and West Coast radio content, see our posts on Los Angeles radio stations, jazz radio online, and indie rock radio online.
