I’m finding part of the point of this blog is not only to share music I’ve been enjoying but to document how I found it to show all the non-algorithmic vectors of music discovery. There are millions of good songs out there but I’m more interested in it being part of an interesting community or connecting in some way to deeper ideas. Having extra context gives music so much more power.

So with that said, I’m a big fan of the curation of Mississippi Records and the care they put into their reissues of music from all over the world so when they emailed their year end reflections I made it a point to go through the recommendations (which unfortunately don’t seem to be archived anywhere online). My favorite rec so far has been the Reimagining Country radio show on NTS online radio. I was immediately pulled in by host Jamal Khadar’s conversation with musician and educator Valerie June about the African roots of Americana music and the porous boundaries of genre histories. Plus the music selections interspersed throughout were really on point, I’m excited to follow future episodes.

One track that stuck out to me was the minimalist hill country blues of Jessie Mae Hemphill so I’m including her song Standing in the Doorway Crying

🎵