Afropop Worldwide

This program draws on the groundbreaking documentary work of Lucy Duran, exploring how hereditary musicians apprentice and grow in various cultural contexts.

This program looks at four singer/composers with roots in tradition and unique ideas about how to keep them current in the fast-changing milieu of today’s African music.

Author of “Escaping the Blues: Robert Johnson the Invention of the Blues”, talks with producer Ned Sublette, and plays lesser-known recordings by Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and others, who provided source material for some of Johnson’s classic tunes.

This episode traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own.

This episode traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own.