Peabody Award-winning media company Afropop Worldwide is calling for pitches for the 2017 season of Afropop Closeups.
Pitches must relate to Africa (anywhere on the mighty continent), the African diaspora—in a broad sense— and music and culture.
We are looking for pitches with a compelling story, a strong plot, and potential to appeal to a wide audience.
Length—Between ten and twenty minutes.
Here are two examples from the 2016 season to consider for general style:
Haitian Radio on American Airwaves
Fees Must Fall: A Voice Of Change In South Africa
The 2017 season will use narrative-based journalism to tell stories that about identity, politics, economics, race, class and gender, through music.
Themes to consider in your pitches:
Current events
Diaspora and trans-Atlantic connections
Amplifying voices of Africans and people of African descent
“Micro-musics”- regional popular music, as related to identity, ethnicity, religion, etc.
Music as a transcendent factor that can unite across difference.
The editorial process will include pitches, scripts, basic audio demos and multiple rounds of feedback. We use a studio and engineers for production, so audio mixing skills are not necessary.
Deadline for pitches: March 1st 2017
Contact: morgan@afropop.org
More info:
In June 2016, Afropop Worldwide launched the Afropop Closeups podcast series, building on twenty-eight years of public radio programming. These succinct podcasts tell poignant and provocative stories from the African planet and feature the voices of curious and talented producers focusing on single topics. Our debut season featured episodes about underground Haitian radio stations in New York; a young South African rapper and the #FeesMustFall movement; stories about social activism and music in post-conflict Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo, and much more. Each Afropop Closeup is a fresh, twenty minute window into history, culture and current events across Africa and the African diaspora, using music as a lens.
