"Music discovery is such an integral part of my life, being able to share some of my discoveries with listeners is really important, it makes everything else easier. Marmalade serves a music discovery platform through somewhat of a decolonial lens."
No matter where you go in the Sydney creative scene, whether it's a backyard poetry slam in Lewisham, a noise set in a Parramatta car park, or a wallet-burning gig of your ‘ride or die’ artist at the Opera House; you’ll run into someone from fbi.radio.
Some are well known to us, but others move silently in the crowds, quietly observing the set from the fringes of the throng.
It was off to the side wall of an improvised Paddington church gig that I first met Tommy Boutros. A man wearing a Radio Alhara Sonic Liberation Front shirt tucked into fashionable striped balloon pants (from the Vietnamese label Push Push) beat up all black TNs, and tattoos on his arms.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had met the current Music & Programming Director of fbi.radio. When someone hears the word director they expect a loud, boisterous person unafraid to network in a crowd. Tommy, in contrast, steadfastly dedicates himself to unearthing brand new music, independent artists on our home soil, and genre-defying albums that will stand the test of time.
He’s the co-parent of an fbi.radio program, known as Mosaic from 11:00 PM - 1:00 AM on Mondays, that is dedicated to creating a community for the Middle Eastern, Asian and African diaspora in so-called Sydney.
And he also acts as the heart and host of Marmalade On The Moon, a fbi.radio show that explores the psychedelic ley lines that weave throughout all cultures and history through sounds that are borderless and genreless. A show that I help produce.
If there’s anyone that knows just how crucial fbi.radio is in connecting the creative diaspora in Sydney, it’s Tommy.
fbi.radio Tommy Boutros. Who are you? What do you do?
TOMMY My name is Tommy. I am the Music and Programming director at fbi.radio. I also host two shows on the grid. Mosaic on Monday nights at 11 p.m., and Marmalade on the Moon on Saturday nights at 10 p.m.
fbi.radio How long have you been at fbi.radio?
TOMMY I've been volunteering with fbi.radio for around two and a half years. I started through presenter training, where I was lucky enough to be gifted some knowledge from the amazing Darren, Freya, and Bindi. I’ve been a part of fbi since hosting Mosaic and Marmalade on the Moon, just loving the capacity to share that space with as many people as we do.
fbi.radio How did Marmalade begin?
TOMMY Marmalade actually began at another radio station. It was a show that I was really passionate about. Psychedelia as a genre spans borders outside of the West but it’s not something that is inspected through a more autonomous, non-white lens. Also functionally at the time, COVID-19 had hit and the station I was previously at unfortunately didn’t survive. So I brought the show to fbi.
fbi.radio You’re now the music and programming director. That’s a big job. With your job I wouldn’t want to stay later at the station than necessary. Why did you keep your shows?
TOMMY Music discovery is such an integral part of my life, being able to share some of my discoveries with listeners is really important, it makes everything else easier. Marmalade serves a music discovery platform through somewhat of a decolonial lens.
Being Arab and being able to share music from the SWANA and MENA region means a lot to me, there is so much music in all forms coming from the region and being able to be at the helm of sharing that in so-called sydney allows us to facilitate connection and create/maintain community.
fbi.radio A huge part of running the station, and of your job as Music & Programming Director, is music meetings on Wednesdays. What kind of work goes into these meetings, and how many volunteers are involved?
TOMMY Music meetings, or auditioning meetings, are weekly meetings where myself and about six other volunteers basically lock ourselves in a room. We create a spreadsheet with roughly eighty tracks on it which we listen to for the whole day, anywhere from six to eight hours. It is populated through emails, submissions, music that we've found, that’s been shown to us by other people, music that we really like, that we feel needs to be heard. We listen to every song put on that spreadsheet.
Taking our own musical bias out of the process is really important, because there's tracks that we know need to be listened to by everyone, but it might not be a genre that we're fond of. We still do our best to put those tracks on as well.
There's different categories that we listen to. We have location-based categories, and certain quotas to hit, so a certain percentage of music that ends up on the playlist has to be from a non-male artist, a POC artist, or a First Nations artist. It's a real labor of love that the music team gives their time to every week.
fbi.radio That ends up being the music that we hear on the fbi.radio playlist.
TOMMY Yeah, roughly thirty tracks are chosen every week from the eighty on that spreadsheet. For shows that run between 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., about half an hour of every hour-long show is music from that playlist. That is what allows us to hit the classic quota of fifty percent music from Australia and twenty five percent of that from Sydney.
fbi.radio What is the centrality of fbi.radio as a music station connected to the broader Sydney nightlife and music scenes?
TOMMY fbi.radio is a cultural hub. It's almost like the meeting point of all the micro scenes, events, and artist curations that go on in so-called Sydney. The beacon of light that helps to promote, share, and platform local emerging talent
And I think that it’s one of those places where you can really feel the necessity of connection. There's a wide array of different cultures meeting each other and coming together to portray what is the Sydney music, arts, and culture scene.
fbi.radio Why should people support fbi.radio?
TOMMY Without people supporting fbi.radio, it doesn't really exist - at least not in its current capacity. There's so many things that each and every volunteer does on a daily basis that ensures the survival of the station. Your support helps us stay at the helm of the culture.
I think as well that there's no other radio station doing what fbi.radio does on a musical level. We play so much local music, and your support is so important to be able to take the time to look for that music, to spend time with it and decide which tracks and artists should be playlisted.
That’s the nature of these give-and-take relationships and community spaces. We can't do it without the support of our listener, without those who look to us for recommendations, for what arts and culture they should be allowing into their life.
fbi.radio is only able to do what it does because of the supporter, so thank you. We appreciate everything that you do for us.
Words by Zachariah Tritsiniotis