IDI Amin, African gospel music, Albanian chants and an Armenian wrestler were among the items featured on two unique radio services transmitted this week.
The first service was provided to Kosovar refugees by RTE which utilised part of the medium wave band, normally taken up by 2FM, to broadcast a selection of Albanian programmes, including news, sport, drama and of course links back to the Kosovo capital of Pristina.
The idea was first suggested by RTE's director of radio, Ms Helen Shaw, and the service would continue as long as it is required by the refugees, according to a spokesman.
The other service was provided by Near FM 101.6, a community station licensed by the IRTC serving the north-east of Dublin. It devoted the whole week to refugees and asylum seekers, with many of them acting as presenters.
RTE's service is available to the Kosovars staying in Co Kerry and Co Kildare and the nightly selection of programmes is presented by an accomplished Albanian presenter, Mr Albert Baja, who has been living in the State for more than a year.
Mr John P. Kelly, the co-ordinator of the service, said it was directly shaped by the tastes of the refugees who held discussions with RTE about what they wanted. "Their main concern is to get news from back home, so we provide an Albanian news service sourced from the BBC World Service," he said.
While the refugees enjoy the chance to hear news from home and the familiar voices of their own broadcasters, Mr Kelly said from next week they would be doing some hard work.
"All going well we hope to offer English lessons to them next week. The lessons are badly needed because it looks like they will be staying here for some time and need at least a few words".
Also planned were Albanian children's programmes and a guide to the history and folklore of their new homes in Co Kerry and Co Kildare, he said.
"Many of these people have just left the horror of Pristina and are totally disorientated. To hear their own people and their own language, while they find their feet in a new place, has to be of some benefit," he said.
Because it serves an area where large numbers of asylum seekers live and where racial tension has occasionally bubbled to the surface, the Near FM service set itself the task of breaking down barriers between the small number of hostile locals and the new arrivals.
Station manager Mr Ciaran Murray said Near FM tried to do this by providing a fuller picture of the refugee community in Dublin than is often given in the lazier sections of the media. He said by giving refugees access to the media they could attack the misperceptions which have created a menacing climate in Dublin - which forces many of them to remain inside at night.
The career of an Armenian wrestler in Dublin was used to illustrate the wide sporting interests of refugees, while the realities of African politics were brought home in a play about life in Uganda under dictator Idi Amin.
The decision to portray the heterogeneous nature of the refugee community did not go down well with everyone and predictably at times the airwaves crackled.
A typically forthright radio phone-in with the title, "They take our houses, benefits etc - the truth about refugees?", broadcast on Tuesday, exemplified this. Like the shows offered by 98FM and FM104 in Dublin, it dealt with the issue of asylum seekers in a frank and blunt fashion.
However, unlike the other programmes, behind the microphone was a Nigerian refugee, Mr Remi Antogboro, who found himself in an animated conversation with Ms Aine Ni Chonaill, the public relations officer of Immigration Control Platform, which is opposed to the State's policy in relation to asylum seekers. She asked the young Nigerian: "Are you seriously telling us we should open our borders to the teeming masses of Africa?" He replied that often people had no choice about their final destination, but are simply told they have 20 minutes to leave their home.
However, Ms Ni Chonaill incurred the wrath of subsequent callers when she said there was no comparison between the refugees who have fled the conflict in Kosovo and African and Asian asylum seekers.
After further heated calls, most of them critical of Ms Ni Chonaill's views, Mr Antogboro said people who were hostile to asylum seekers had a "personal failing" and it was a rewarding experience for a refugee to be on the other side of the media coin.