Strangers Guide: Complicating Colonialism Playlist
It was an honor to contribute research and curate the playlist for the latest issue of Strangers Guide: Complicating Colonialism issue in partnership with Coda Story. This selection could be centuries long, but I condensed it to just under three hours.
Stranger Sounds: Curated Playlists from Around the World
Over the past few years I have curated over a dozen Spotify playlists for ASME Award winning travel and literary magazine Strangers Guide. Each one has been a deep and profound musical journey into the city, state, country or region covered in each issue. Enjoy.
A few years back, Strangers Guide magazine invited me onto their Editorial Board. Among other things editorial including research, story ideas, and connecting writers with story editors, I curate the Stranger Sounds Spotify music playlists for each issue.
Each issue is about either a region, a country, a US state, or a city which presents a unique and formidable challenge. Where to begin? How broad or deep should I go, knowing that far more great music will be left out than can be included? With this in mind, I asked myself “what artists, songs, and styles—famous or unknown—serve to collectively form to the soundtrack of that place or the myth of it, what do I personally dig, what is available on the streaming platform, and what is the middle ground between these worlds.
I hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I enjoyed researching and curating them.
Stranger Sounds: The Stranger’s Guide Playlist
Stranger’s Guide recently invited me on as contributing editor to create curated soundtracks to each of their issues (12 so far and counting). Enjoy!
Spring 2021 News
One year and counting into this pandemic. So much of what I do and love has been put on ice, indefinitely.
We (Antibalas) didn’t win the Grammy this year, but to quote Bill Withers, “I’m flattered to have mattered.”
I’ve been raising a baby, composing and recording new music, restoring a 1975 Rhodes piano (and playing it). I’ve been getting together regularly with a circle of synth geeks to make improvised electronic music and collaborating with my Antibalas bandmates on new material for our next album.
I was recently appointed contributing editor at Stranger’s Guide, one of my favorite travel/culture/literary magazines. I curated a collection of music for their latest Colombia issue and will be doing a brief chat at their issue launch (online like everything else these days).
UC Berkeley invited me to do a workshop for students and resident faculty on Critical Genealogy. I helped a student and a professor get back to the 1750s in their respective family trees in the span of 45 minutes which was fun and intriguing.
Right now I’m reading “Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica” by Jovan Scott Lewis, “Intimations” by Zadie Smith, and spending far too much time than I should scrolling my Twitter feed.
So many people are dying, I’m blessed and lucky to remain alive.