It’s been over 12 years since starting Silence and I’ve done quite a few playlists summing up each year’s “best music”, but I’ve taken this year a bit more seriously. I haven’t been able to keep up posting every song that’s been stuck up in my head this past year, but I’ll start making a habit to at least get it in a yearly round up like the one below.
I’ve been pretty on & off on this “blog” over the years with having a definitive Music of the Year playlist (I plan to go back), but I’ve kept track of my #1 musician more intentionally since 2014. That year it was Doja Cat with her Purrr! EP and this year it’s Doja again for so much more. Which I’ll need another seven years to unpack. But even more than Doja, seeing an afrobeats festival live was my most defining moment of 2021.
It’s crazy how most of my music discovery has been online over the past 25 years (since Napster), but the one thing I’ve learned writing for Silence Nogood is how much more influential it is seeing a musician live. I didn’t get to more than a few festivals in 2021, mostly because of the pandemic, but one festival influenced this best of 2021 playlist the greatest, Lost in Riddim. It introduced me to afrobeats on a level like I’ve never been introduced to any music culture in one weekend. It was a 20 act crash-course into the world’s hotspot in music right now.
The playlist is just over 10% afrobeats and nothing but dance and soul music. I’ve played this list of 50 songs over 50 times all the way through to trim it down as much possible – it started with over 100. That’s days of listening straight to only a few handfuls of music and I never got sick of any one of these 50.
—
A special thanks to Liz for being my third and fourth ear on this list. And everyone else listening with me over 12 years++ Sincerely, thank you. Many more to come o_0
Lost in Riddim was a healthy introduction to afrobeats. I’ve looked back at using afrobeats in the past on Silence Nogood and I should’ve done more research. As much as Chiddy Bang and Bixiga 70 I’m sure had some sort of afrobeats influence, it’s not even close to the music that I listened to at Lost in Riddim – a two-day festival in Sacramento with performers mainly from Nigeria and the Caribbeans.
I went through at least 14 hours of afrobeats music in two playlists (1, 2) to prepare for Lost in Riddim, and made a 15-track playlist of my own (see below).
London produced two of my favorite tracks off the playlist. Tiwa Kawa’s Koroba and Rema’s Soundgasm. I’ll talk about Rema’s music next paragraph, but about this time last week, I heard my partner humming Tiwa’s “Koroba”. She told me that’s how she first hears the music I love – from me humming a tune, only to listen to the song later and recognize it from my humming. This is how music spreads. From your partner humming.
Other than Koroba, Rema’s music has been buzzing around my head and lips all month, especially after hearing him live. He’s got the best catalog and I got the best shots of him at Riddom (pics & video below). His fine detail in word choice and style is something I haven’t heard since JID. Finesse at its finest, especially after the “beeeeep” on “Soundgasm” ~2 minutes in.
If Tiwa had the song and Rema was best overall, Sho Madjozi had the performance. She was the first set I saw on the last day of the festival. She was the most charismatic performer and her audience reflected it. From teaching us all stepping moves to coming out into the crowd for a short performance, she hit the timing right more than once.
Lost in Riddim was a festival of the future. Not just the afrobeats music, but the niche festival itself. I got to dive into another culture for a weekend and experience more than just one set on the side stage. It was everything and the crowd reflected that.
BottleRock had some amazing emerging artists play, but besides going through all 70 or so performers before the festival on Spotify, there wasn’t any easy way to find what performance to go to next. Discovering new artists is a problem I see at all festivals, but I think there is a solution – something I briefly go over in my 2019 SXSW recap.
Unfortunately, I was only able to listen to half of the performers before BottleRock, and of course, by the time I got around to listen to the other half, I missed my top discovery, Watchhouse (but Jessie Reyez was an excellent alternative).
SXSW was all digital in 2021 and it didn’t go as well as I would’ve hoped. The schedule was off so I only saw a few shows (if any). I did do my yearly ritual of going through all of the thousands of SXSW performers on Spotify to find a few gems.
Since there were only a few hundred performers in 2021, I went back to the 2020 list I was creating until the pandemic hit last March. SXSW continually expands my taste in music and 2020 and ’21 seem to be the biggest expansion yet. 2019 may have been my biggest move internationally, but these past two years expanded into a genre I rarely touch, country. It wasn’t all solely country by any means, but it still heavily pushed my tastes and that’s what SXSW does best. Can’t wait for 2022 when we’re live again.
One last note. I haven’t been curating as much music lately, but I have been doing so with podcasts on a podcast app, called Hark. We’re doing some interesting stuff over there – check out some of my work.
I haven’t made many personal playlists for people, but I’m moving in that direction with technologies making it much easier. Imagine if Spotify or some other music service made it so simple to compare your music taste with someone close to you and serve up suggestions, building something that constantly updates based on each of your moods, new music, new connections, and so much else.
Until then, here’s a static playlist I made for my pops for Father’s day. I actually don’t call him father or pops, so here’s to you dad: a mix of old soul to get familiar with again and new soul that’s already among the greats for me, and hopefully one day for you too. Thanks for introducing me to the music that inspired what I love today!
The first 50 or so songs (up to Prince) were meant to tell a story of our physically distant lives, but all the rest are here to keep you calm. I hope it helps when things go to shit. Or when you just need to relax.
Inspired by brandonstosuy.
what music do you find calming? i just put on deafheaven's sunbather, without thinking about it, and realized it's a strangely relaxing, meditative thing for me. you? your recommendations could be useful for folks, if you have them.
— brandonstosuy (@brandonstosuy) March 12, 2020
I probably screwed this up and included some heartbreak song. It’s not about the lyrics when I select. Always the feeling.
A few weeks ago, my girlfriend said all I had was heartache playlists and nothing for love (a few exceptions,) so here one is. For her, Miz Liz. She inspires me as much as this music.
Music is about feeling. And is best described through it. Even the words are written for the heart more than the head. My last decade has been defined primarily by music, curating here and at TuneIn, but more recently I’ve shifted towards spoken word. Podcasts, not specifically poetry.
Podcasts have the buzz these days, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the substance. They’ve got more of it for the head than music does. The insights from the conversations and questions that come out of podcasts are only matched by the feelings I get from music. But I can find dozens of new inspiring podcast episodes each day. I can’t say the same for music. Music has a greater barrier to greatness and is far more subjective as an art, but the ones I do love I can listen to forever. All the more reason why curation is so important to music. People need as much context and connection when discovering something.
Most of the new music I found in 2019 came from SXSW and I guess that’s how I found Channel Tres. He wasn’t at the 2019 showcase, for all I know, but he was there in 2017 supporting Duckwrth. It was one of the most memorable shows of my life. Dudes could dance, in unison.
Channel Tres has grown into his own thing since then and I was so honored to see him at the Starline Social Club in Oakland this last December. The presence him and his dancers, Jessie & Nique, embodied on stage reflected in his audience. Their routines livened the whole club up. A progression from his dance moves with Duckwrth just two years ago. It felt like something out of a movie. The whole experience. It’ll be etched in my body forever. And the music even more so.
Trying to describe in words something that is far deeper is challenging. I’ll keep it simple, Channel Tres can make a Jew from Minnesota feel like a cool ass black dude from Compton. And it’s mostly through his beat. Empathy at its finest.
I first heard about the term “music is like fire” from the Music Tectonics Podcast. It comes from “music is like water,” where music is treated as a commodity because of music streaming services. In other words, it’s cheap and you can get it anywhere. As opposed to music being like fire, spreading onto smart speakers, into social media, and everywhere else in our lives.
Dmitri Vietze, host of the Music Tectonics Podcast, printed up 18 trading cards with themes similar to “music being like fire,” which could be collected at the first-ever Music Tectonics Conference. The trading cards were a fun way of getting to know others at the conference, as well as a helpful way to know what’s going on in the music industry. The next best ways were the panels. Two of which, my favorite and least favorite panel, got me thinking about how AI, blockchain, and podcasts relate to music, specifically music curation.
I find at least one insightful thing a day in a podcast. I wanted to put together a dozen or so music podcasts that have been particularly memorable, but I noticed my top picks had two themes in common: they’re all interviews with current and former employees of Spotify and have to do with music discovery.
Spotify’s VP, Paul Vogel, recently stated that music discovery is one of Spotify’s main focuses. As Vogel describes, “When you own discovery, you own so much of the ecosystem; you own demand generation. Over time, you end up owning gross margin when you own discovery and demand generation.” In other words, the first music service to make music discovery a viable business will be the leader in music streaming.
The four podcast episodes below helped me verbalize my thoughts on how music editorial and curation will help Spotify get there. This article only scratches the surface of the future of music, so I plan to start a series that will highlight other podcast episodes with great conversations around music. Let’s call it “Great Talks in Music Podcasts.”