The delivery and discovery of music, it appeared, required not just a messenger, but a filter too. Most traditional music radio instantly felt old-fashioned, still a slave to playlists and ad breaks. Yet throughout this period, one radio DJ emerged as perhaps the most consistently influential in the art of popular music selection. Despite the access-to-all-areas listeners and viewers and fans have to songs and artists - across streaming and social media - the beauty and comfort of structure, knowledge and the generosity of sharing, remains something to gravitate towards.
Irishwoman Annie MacManus, known as Annie Mac, is an architect, builder, and resident of popular music. It is her domain. And through her broadcasting, she gives both artists and listener alike, shelter. The fifth edition of Lost and Found was underway, a May-time festival across multiple locations on the island of Malta, founded by Annie Mac in The crowd: an up for it bunch of British and Irish twenty-and-thirty-somethings, and plenty from further afield.
As the bus drove towards the entrance, MacManus, in a neon dress, was standing at the back of the stage. Lost and Found offers a lot - a sun holiday with an exceedingly good festival lineup thrown in, and excellent production values in terms of sound and staging - and one of its features is proximity to artists, including MacManus.
DJs and acts wander around, snapping selfies with fans in the crowd. MacManus is cheered wherever she goes, the Lost and Found equivalent of people whooping whenever Michael Eavis drives past in a Land Rover at Glastonbury. Dubliner Krystal Klear finished his set and handed over to MacManus.
After studying for her Masters in Hampshire, she moved to London, where her brother, frontman of the band The Crimea, was living. Her events series, Annie Mac Presents, was born in a room at Fabric, the same week she presented Top of the Pops for the first time.
Now, millions listen to her on evening shows every weekday on BBC Radio 1. It would be easy to view Annie Mac within the lineage of the totemic radio DJs that came before her.
Maybe she succeeded the skittish Zane Lowe, yet he remains a DJ whose impulse to insert himself at every juncture creates more obstacles than transitions. It may also make sense to view Annie Mac as a successor to John Peel, yet she retains none of his sardonic obstreperousness. Individuality ultimately defies comparisons. MacManus is a pull-up-a-pew broadcaster. She invites the listener in. Her transmission style is outward, lateral, inclusive, non-hierarchical.
Sitting on a lounger in a bathrobe by her hotel pool having an afternoon lager mid-festival, MacManus is decidedly chilled out for someone at the helm of a large event. The number of young women at Lost and Found feels pronounced. Meeting those attending the festival is something that thrills MacManus. She was at the front all night, and we were chatting and waving.
She came on her own to Lost and Found, and it just blew my mind. That makes me so chuffed. Annie Mac Presents is now AMP, and MacManus has built a mostly-female team around her of like-minded, detail-orientated, mission-focussed people, deeply invested in both the current AMP projects, and future plans. Annie, can you just DM that person? I would like more time to write fiction and to create podcasts. Thank you for allowing me into your lives. Thank you for brightening my days. Thank you thank you thank you for listening.
I picked the flowers from the garden that morning, and we got a taxi there and we got welcomed by the loveliest woman and we waited in a hall for a bit. Everything was wood panelled and grand. Share this article via comment Share this article via facebook Share this article via twitter.
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