“What about the Black woman who does not care to save you?” asks Adia Victoria. “How about the Black woman who is trying to look after her own skin, because you're not looking out for her?” Adia’s forthcoming album, A Southern Gothic, is rich with these questions and the characters who ask them, moving between romanticizing the South and interrogating it, all while embracing the complexity of Adia’s Southern identity. On this week’s episode, Adia and Hanif dig into the widespread influence of Black Southern culture, and the legacy of the blues as an artistic gesture towards freedom—one that is still alive to this day, and remains as vital to American music as ever before. For the playlist of songs curated for this episode head over to https://bit.ly/southern-identity.
Music In This Week’s Episode:
Adia Victoria, Magnolia Blues
Big Mama Thornton, Your Love Is Where It Ought To Be
Memphis Minnie, New Dirty Dozen
Shirley Brown, Woman to Woman
Shemekia Copeland, Salt In My Wounds
Ida Cox, Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues
Alberta Hunter, My Handy Man Ain’t Handy No More
Bessie Smith, Devil’s Gonna Git You
Show Notes:
Adia Victoria’s third studio album, A Southern Gothic, is out September 17. Spotify & Apple Music users can pre-save/pre-add the album via Adia’s website. The first single, Magnolia Blues, is out now. You can listen to her Sonos Radio Hour on mixcloud and read her open letter to Spotify on her instagram, here.
Adia hosts Call & Response, a podcast that draws upon the blues tradition of communal music making and listening. Call & Response has just entered its second season. The first episode, featuring Lucy Dacus, is available now.
To pass the time during quarantine, Adia read: Subduing Satan by Ted Ownby, There Goes the Neighborhood by William Julius Wilson and Richard P. Taub, One Writer’s Beginning and The Eye of the Story by Eudora Welty.
Check out this video of Chaka Khan leading an ensemble performance of “I’m Every Woman” at Newport Folk. The performance was curated by Allison Russell, whose debut record, Outside Child, is out now.
Credits:
This show is produced by work by work: Scott Newman, Jemma Rose Brown, Mayari Sherina Ong, Kathleen Ottinger and by Hanif Abdurraqib. The show is mixed by Sam Bair.
