Part of why #ReadingAfricaWeek is so important to us is that we believe that art from the continent— it’s diversity, it’s longevity, it’s complexity— is worth sharing. With that in mind, we’re proud to bring you this year’s #ReadingAfrica playlist. Like last year’s, which was curated by musician Amanda Khiri, this playlist contains a multitude of sounds and genres.
This year’s playlist is brought to us by Nico Rosario. Nico is an artist, researcher, and activist, whose work meets at the intersections of creative arts, politics, culture, and education with a focus on youth and subcultures. A writer and photographer, she is the director of the Academy for Theatre Leadership at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles and the host of Maximum R&B, a monthly radio show on Oroko Radio, based in Accra. When not on a dancefloor or making mixtapes, Nico is working on two long-form writing projects: a novel centered on underground dance culture and the art world and a screenplay about straight-edge culture and militant veganism in ‘90s-era Salt Lake City. She can be found on Instagram and Mixcloud: @DJ_Zira and at her website: www.nicorosario.com (which is currently being spruced up for the new year!)
Enjoy!
Vantablack, “the world’s darkest material,” seemed a fitting name for this playlist. Vantablack is so black that light can’t refract from it; the light is absorbed and becomes a part of it. Vantablack then harnesses that energy and dispels it as heat. Vantablack is an all-encompassing mass—not a void, because it generates new material from all that it absorbs but it never loses its own energy. To engage with Vantablack is be consumed by it and reborn as something of its essence. Vantablack is the beginning and the rebeginning.
Much like the continent of Africa is the foundation of this earthly world’s civilization, African music is the foundation of western pop music as we know it; it is the antecedent of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, disco, hip-hop, techno, and house music… it is literally the beginning and the rebeginning. We owe everything we think of as pop music to Africa, and I created this playlist in humble gratitude to the abundant wealth that this Vantablack culture has graced the rest of the planet with. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I loved making it!
