Afropop Worldwide Folgen

Look around today’s musical mainstream, and you’ll quickly realize that dance styles are everywhere, filling stadiums, topping charts, and gathering tens of thousands in festivals around the country. Yet few know their full history. Building on prior Hip Deep explorations of the origins of house and techno in the American Midwest, “Roots and Future” explores how a community of (primarily) black British musicians, fans, DJs and radio pirates recreated dance music in the United Kingdom during the 1990s and 2000s. Connected to the musical mainstream during 1989’s drug and rave-fueled “second summer of love,” these once-segregated musicians learned to combine American hip-hop, dancehall toasting, dub bass, and techno euphoria to create style after chart-topping style, from drum-twisting jungle to the slick sounds of garage, the ferocious rhythms of grime, and the all-encompassing low end of dubstep. In this episode we’ll speak to legendary pirate radio DJs, underground label owners, and groundbreaking producers. We’ll check young MCs spitting their bars on illegal frequencies, and hear veterans playing to their beloved audiences. And most importantly? We’ll rave. See you on the dance floor. Produced by Sam Backer. APWW PGM #733

​Trinidadians call their annual Carnival festivities "the greatest show on earth" and with good reason. The Carnival season is overflowing with art and music: steelpan, calypso, soca and extravagant masquerade costumes. On this Afropop program, we take a look at how the Carnival arts are kept alive in today's Trinidad, in an untidy, evolving cultural, economic and political landscape at home and abroad. Open your ears to some life-giving music and conversations about Trinidad and its brilliant bacchanal. Produced by Sebastian Bouknight. APWW PGM #774​​

Since the launch of the second Afropop Closeup season in the summer of 2017, we’ve taken you through the stories of producers, lovers, activists, poets and musicians from Africa and the diaspora finding their respective ways in the world and connecting through music. Since this series is only available online, we are bringing you highlights of some of the most captivating stories in this season. You will hear the voices of our regular Afropop producers and some newcomers narrating these stories from around the world. Produced by Akornefa Akyea. APWW PGM #772