Dear friends,
This week on Reckon True Stories, Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon chat with writer, poet, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, about music and making playlists, growing up in Ohio, and his new book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.
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Abdurraqib on Seeking Out New Music and Making Playlists
“There’s real infrastructural challenges to finding new music. It is harder today to find new music than it’s ever been. And I say this because I relentlessly seek out new music on a weekly basis. I am an obsessive and it’s hard for me. And so there are barriers in place to keep people [from] new music that is not just filtering them back to the big stars or the soundscapes they’re used to. And I don’t know how to disrupt that. I mean, for me, part of it is making a playlist every week and saying, Look at some things I found that you might like as well. But I don’t want to lose the excitement. When I was a kid, I remember my older sister came home — this is in the peak of college radio, and I was very young, and it had to be 1991. And she put on a tape that had Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ and I remember hearing the beginning of that song, and I can still feel that feeling if I pursue new music with a real curiosity and with a real sense of pleasure.”
Get the full show notes—and an epic reading and listening list—over at Reckon.
More Reckon True Stories in the World
This week, Deesha and Kiese chatted with Sari Botton, editor of the wonderful newsletters Memoir Land and Oldster, about the origins of the podcast and the art of nonfiction writing. Thank you Sari for the conversation, and for all the great work you do to publish essays from so many writers.
And thanks everyone for all your support and positive reviews of the show so far. If you like what we’re doing, leave us a written review on Apple Podcasts.
-Dawnie, Deesha, and Mark
Photo credit: Hanif Abdurraqib by Kendra Bryant