Baba Singh: Edmonton's beloved CKUA voice
The CKUA radio host who built a devoted following through eclectic taste and deep respect for music died in mid-May. Friends and family remember a man defined by his passion for connection.
Dilbagh Singh Bhangoo — better known to CKUA listeners simply as Baba — died in mid-May. The details of his life were scattered across time zones and decades, told in fragments by those who knew him.
"We don't even know his real birthday," says his daughter Namananda Singh. Baba guessed at his own, celebrating on September 8. He was born in Chandigarh, India, in 1947, when record-keeping there was loose. He drifted across countries and jobs in his early years — a cab driver in Toronto, a newspaper deliverer, stints in a machine shop and a nuclear power plant. The details were never fully clear. Baba didn't talk much about those days.
He arrived in Edmonton with his wife Margaret and their young family in the 1980s. Tall, robed, with a Sikh turban and ceremonial knife, Baba was already a known figure around town. But radio was where he belonged.
He started at CJSR, the free-flowing university station, in the late '90s, taking the name Master Crocodile and hosting a show called Crocodile Connection. His taste in music was eclectically vast. Fellow CKUA host Grant Stovel remembers Baba practicing crossfade transitions between songs on a little DJ deck, obsessing over how to make one track flow into another. There was premeditation beneath what sounded spontaneous.
At CKUA, Baba kept applying for a slot until finally, one Christmas, former programme manager Brian Dunsmore offered him a shift. "He just never left," Stovel says.
Baba's daughter remembers watching the Woodstock movie with him, bonding over '60s music as a teenager. Her father would play American music — Jimi Hendrix especially — and when his own sisters told him to turn it off, his grandmother would stop them. She loved it. Music was the language Baba spoke fluently.
What set Baba apart was his respect for the work. He wouldn't countenance disrespect to an artist. Namananda says, "He always loved music, and that was such a big part of my growing up."
For decades, Baba hosted his show, building a devoted following among listeners who came for the eclecticism and stayed for the connection. He needed that connection — it was the fuel of his life. In 2024, health scares forced him to step back. Retirement came hard for a man built for the work.
He is survived by the city's memory of his voice, and by listeners who heard in it a deep love of music and a profound commitment to the artists who made it.
Baba was loved, and he loved his listeners in return.