Non-commercial radio & podcasts
We produce and distribute the Listen & Be Heard Network — weekly, ad-free programs for readers, writers and musicians, carried by community radio affiliates nationwide.
Our mission
Sound System Culture, Inc. empowers and activates communities through the arts. We produce immersive performance, non-commercial radio and podcasts, and multimedia storytelling, and we train the next generation of artists, journalists and producers in the craft of listening and being heard.
We were founded on a simple conviction: all human beings are inherently artists. What most people lack is not talent but access — to a microphone, to a stage, to an editor who takes their work seriously, to an elder willing to teach.
Sound System Culture exists to close that gap. We commission and produce new work, we operate a non-commercial podcast and radio network syndicated to community stations across the country, and we pay young people to learn the crafts of journalism, sound design and production from working professionals.
Our work is rooted in New York — in Harlem, the East Village and the jazz rooms of lower Manhattan — and connected outward to artists and listeners worldwide.
Read more about who we areWhat we do
Six kinds of work, one purpose
Every program we run exists to put creative tools and a real audience in the hands of people who have been left out of both.
Paid youth media training
Graduating high school seniors join a paid summer internship in podcast production, independent journalism, video editing and scoring — mentored by professionals, with published work at the end.
Immersive performance & recording
We commission new music and multimedia work, record it properly, and present it in spatial and immersive formats — from club stages to installations.
Intergenerational ensembles
Elders and young players in the same room, learning repertoire and rhythmic systems from each other. Cultural preservation as a living practice, not an archive.
Arts journalism & documentary
Interviews, oral histories and documentary audio that record how music actually gets made, and by whom — before those accounts are lost.
Open submissions
Poems, stories, columns and show proposals are read year-round. Selected work is published and broadcast, and contributors keep their rights.
Fresh this week
Latest from the Listen & Be Heard Network
New episodes publish weekly. This list updates itself directly from our podcast feed, so what you see here is always current.
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Youth media internship
We pay young people to learn the craft
Each summer we bring on a small cohort of graduating high school seniors and pay them a stipend to work as apprentice producers. They learn interviewing and research, field and studio recording, editing, scoring and publishing — and they leave with real credits on real broadcast work.
Unpaid internships filter out exactly the students who most need the opportunity. Ours are paid, small and hands-on, with mentorship from working journalists, engineers and composers.
Program detailsRooted in Harlem
Arts equity begins with a signal
A neighborhood that can broadcast itself controls its own story. We are building community radio capacity in Harlem and connecting it to the intergenerational ensembles, open mics and jazz rooms that have always carried the culture forward.
Releases & archive
Exclusive recordings that fund the free ones
Everything we broadcast stays free. Alongside it we release a small catalog of limited editions — full concert recordings, immersive spatial mixes, scores and stems, and documentary cuts — plus a membership that opens the unedited interview archive. Every dollar goes to intern stipends, artist fees and studio time.
By the numbers
Small organization, wide signal
Weekly programs produced
3
Community radio affiliates carrying our shows
13+
Episodes published to date
40+
Cost to listen
Free