The Municipal Radio of Lefkada broadcasts on 96.7 FM from Karyá, a mountain village on the Greek island of Lefkada that has spent more time known for embroidery than for broadcasting. The station started life in 1997 as Radio Karyá and became the official municipal station of the Lefkada Municipality in 2010, and it still runs its news, talk, and music programming from the same village its original name came from.
A village known for a needle, not a note
Karyá sits at roughly 500 metres of elevation on the northern slopes of Mount Elati, about 15 kilometres from Lefkada town, and its fame long predates the radio station broadcasting from it. The village is known across the island for a distinct embroidery technique called Karsanikí, developed and perfected by a woman named Maria Stavraka, according to local history compiled by myvillage.gr. A school for the technique was later established in the village with support from the Royal Welfare Foundation, and Stavraka passed her method on to generations of young girls in Karyá, turning a single woman's craft into a village-wide tradition still associated with the place today.
A wedding re-enacted every summer
Karyá's other claim to fame is seasonal rather than permanent. Every summer the village stages the "Chorianós Gámos," or Village Wedding, a traditional re-enactment of a Lefkadian wedding ceremony complete with period costume, music, and dance, drawing visitors from across the island for a single day of staged festivity. It is the kind of event a municipal station is built to cover, tying the radio directly into the same community calendar its home village has followed for generations.
Serenades and a folklore festival that has run since 1962
The station's music programming sits inside a wider Lefkadian tradition built around the kantáda, a multipart serenade typically sung with guitar and mandolin accompaniment at feast days, tavernas, and New Year gatherings. Groups like the Orfeas Friends of Music Association keep that tradition active through choir, mandolin orchestra, and folk dance sections, and every August the island hosts the Lefkada International Folklore Festival, running since 1962 and drawing music and dance groups from around the world. For a station serving an island where serenading is still a living practice rather than a museum piece, that context shapes the programming as much as any playlist would.