How technology amplified Black music’s cultural exchange

To celebrate Black History Month, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison has a new weekly series on the music of the African diaspora.

This week, he’s talking about the cultural exchange that happens between various Black music communities and traditions.

“It’s important and it’s empowering for us to realize that our differences and similarities alike can keep us connected regardless of where we are from or where we are,” Morrison says.

Plus, he’ll get into how the advent of recording technology has impacted Black music.

“Making records — the emergence of the record industry itself — sped up and accelerated this process of cultural exchange in unimaginable ways,” he says.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe‘s engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.