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How technology amplified Black music's cultural exchange

American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in concert in Deauville (Normandy, France) on July 20, 1991.
Roland Godefroy
/
Wikimedia Commons
American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in concert in Deauville (Normandy, France) on July 20, 1991.

To celebrate Black History Month, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison has a new weekly series on the music of the African diaspora.

This week, he's talking about the cultural exchange that happens between various Black music communities and traditions.

"It's important and it's empowering for us to realize that our differences and similarities alike can keep us connected regardless of where we are from or where we are," Morrison says.

Plus, he'll get into how the advent of recording technology has impacted Black music.

"Making records — the emergence of the record industry itself — sped up and accelerated this process of cultural exchange in unimaginable ways," he says.

Featured Songs

  • Mongo Santamaría, "Cloud Nine"
  • Dizzy Gillespie, "Manteca"
  • Bo Diddley, "Bo Diddley"
  • Fela Kuti, "Water No Get Enemy"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe's engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).