Afropop Worldwide Folgen

Vinyl is back! But there’s a difference between the world of glossy reissues and the format’s golden age. Skippy White’s record store in Boston has been selling records since 1961, and he’s seen it all—er, heard it all, maybe. Brian Coleman and Noah Schaffer produced this check in with a music lifer.

Brazil has seen its ups and downs since it became an independent empire in 1822: strongman leaders, military rule, populist democracy and more. In 2018, a politically weary nation faces a stark electoral choice between radically different futures. But whatever was happening in the halls of power, Brazil has always produced powerful, beautiful and ecstatic music, and always known how to party. On Afropop’s 2018 return trip to Brazil, We take a deep dive into the music and evolution of Carnaval in Salvador, Bahia, and dig into new developments in MPB, roots and rock from Pernambuco, Baile funk, new sounds from Amazonia and more from one of the most prolific musical nations on earth.

Borrowing the title from Cuban polymath Fernando Ortiz, producer Ned Sublette takes a group of travelers, including you, to multiple sites in western Cuba to analyze the musical impact of what Ortiz called the "Cuban counterpoint" of tobacco and sugar. We'll hear endangered species of drums in mountain farms and sugar towns, drilling down into the deep culture of the Afro-Cuban world. We'll hear sacred drumming as handed down from Kongo sources, from Yorubaland, from Dahomey, and more, in sites that are indelibly stamped with the imprints of Africa, above all in music. We'll hear an incredible poetic improviser, go to a block party in Matanzas, and talk to our guest scholar, Latin Grammy-winning record producer Caridad Diez, about the power of rumba and its meaning in Cuban society in the wake of UNESCO's designation of rumba as world heritage. Produced by Ned Sublette.