Juxtapositions of old/new, urban/rural, serious/popular point to the complex political underbelly of colonialism, especially when it comes to music. Radio in the Maghreb presents an ideal context for studying this as its administrators considered the medium a “powerful instrument of propaganda and diffusion.” Most stations had their own studios with orchestras for western classical music; some also hired local ensembles playing indigenous music. In 1936, when there were from 15,000 to 30,000 radios in each major North African town and growing numbers of indigenous listeners, the Governor generals appointed official committees to oversee radio programming; in Rabat Moroccans were in the majority. Radio’s capacity to educate (or reeducate) and form taste had become too powerful not to control. In this paper, I examine musical repertoire on the radio in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia from 1928 to 1939, focusing on live performances and recordings of indigenous music. French writers of the time pointed to radio’s potential to distract locals from political unrest, and indigenous music’s potential to encourage radio sales and openness to the medium. Drawing on archival work in Paris, Aix, Nantes, Tunis and Rabat, I have concluded that French administrators, with the help of local elites, sought to shape public perception of indigenous peoples through exposure to their music, and local peoples’ attitudes toward French settlers through official support for it. Budgets for this grew substantial, especially at the radio. Importantly, Radio-Alger, Radio-Maroc, Radio-Carthage, and Radio-Tunis pursued such goals at different rates. Whereas, beginning in 1928, Radio-Maroc regularly presented “arab” music, eventually with “Chleuh” and other “berber” music, until the late 1930s radio in Algeria and Tunisia instead programmed concerts of “oriental” music (often Egyptian). Radio sheds light on not only varieties of musical taste across the region, but also evolving attitudes towards “Andalousian” music, whose importance as a marker of local identity emerged later in Algeria and Tunisia than in Morocco. Music on colonial radio thus points to how colonial administrations—from the Direction des affaires indigènes and the Direction des affaires chérifiennes to the Service des arts indigènes -- not only used radio to reach the broad population, but also increasingly promoted “Andalousian” music, despite some resistance, to both locals and listeners in France. From a postcolonial perspective, radio contributed to the “invention” of this tradition, perhaps as a way to suggest, or even forge, cultural unity in North Africa.