Hip Deep Fourteen years ago, with support from the NEH, we created Hip Deep, a subseries integrated into the overall Afropop Worldwide program offering. Hip Deep programs build on the techniques and format developed for Afropop Worldwide, but are enhanced by rigorous academic and field research that translates into higher production values. Every episode of Hip Deep actively involves leading humanities scholars to illuminate a wealth of history, culture, politics, ethnic and spiritual contexts. Over 15 years, Hip Deep has produced over 110 humanities-focused programs and a wide range of supplementary Web resources (interviews, videos, text/photo features, podcasts), all easily accessible within the Hip Deep section of our website. Hip Deep amplifies Afropop Worldwide’s longstanding commitment to disseminate humanities themes to the general public through world music via a growing set of media pathways.
Hip Deep April 11, 2024
Part 1 of Afropop Worldwide's HIp Deep audio biography of Thomas Mapfumo focuses on his upbringing, musical education and the bands that lead up to the Blacks Unlimited. These are the war years, when Zimbabwe was fighting to throw off the burden of the racist Southern Rhodesian regime. This episode documents the birth of "chimurenga" music in the voices of those who made that history, many of whom have now joined the ancestors. Produced by Banning Eyre.
Hip Deep February 1, 2024
This Hip Deep episode presents the stunning radio premiere of "Oh, David," the traditional song of the annual Easter Rock in Winnsboro, Louisiana.
Hip Deep January 4, 2024
Ned Sublette and Gwendolyn Midlow Hall explore the French, Spanish and African origins of New Orleans culture.
Hip Deep December 21, 2023
Explore the rich traditions of Tarab in Arab music, its emotional ecstasy, and cultural values, through the insights of A.J. Racy, a renowned ethnomusicologist, and the artistry of legendary Tarab singers like Umm Kulthum, set against the backdrop of Aleppo's Aleppian Tarab tradition and Syrian music culture.
Hip Deep October 12, 2023
The program samples a rich variety of Malian Tuareg music and includes conversations with Tuareg musicians and cultural authorities in the wake of Mali’s crisis, along with University of Houston anthropologist Susan Rasmussen.
Hip Deep August 10, 2023
Part 2 of Afropop's Al Andalus series focuses on the effects in Africa and the Middle East.
Hip Deep August 10, 2023
Hip Deep July 20, 2023
Hip Deep July 6, 2023
Mali: Ancient Empires to Multi-Cultural Democracy
Hip Deep February 16, 2023
This program tells the story of how jazz emerged in the context of all the other African American musics that proliferated in late 19th and early 20th century New Orleans: blues, ragtime, Mardi Gras Indian music, vaudeville and minstrelsy, spiritual church music, and more.
Hip Deep February 9, 2023
Jazz pianist Maurice Rocco was a star of American nightclubs and Hollywood films in the 1930s-40s, playing in an ecstatic, stand-up style that left a deep impression on rock and roll.
Hip Deep February 3, 2022
Hip Deep June 10, 2021
This Hip Deep program delves into the complex history of Cuba's intervention in Angoa's civil war.
Hip Deep May 13, 2021
In this Hip Deep program, Ned Sublette takes a deep dive into Mbanza-Kongo spiritual tradition and music.
Hip Deep May 6, 2021
In this episode we look at the business side of African music, through a series of vignettes from around the continent and diaspora that illuminate the deep connections between musical creation and the economies that sustain it.
Hip Deep August 13, 2020
Ancient Text Messages: Batá Drums in a Changing World” explores an endangered tradition of drum speech in Nigeria, and how that tradition changed and thrived in Cuba, where large numbers of enslaved Yoruba arrived in the 19th century.
Hip Deep July 9, 2020
In this Hip Deep edition, Banning Eyre and Gerhard Kubik explore the connections between Africa and American blues.
Hip Deep April 16, 2020
In this Hip Deep program, we'll hear how Edo highlife musicians have found sustainable careers by simultaneously rooting their music in their local communities and appealing to diasporic enclaves in Europe and the United States.
Hip Deep February 20, 2020
In this Hip Deep program, Peter Manuel reveals Indian music incorporated into the multi-cultural mix of the Caribbean.
Hip Deep October 24, 2019
Hip Deep December 27, 2018
Hip Deep September 20, 2018
Hip Deep August 2, 2018
Ned Sublette takes a group of travelers, including you, to multiple sites in western Cuba to analyze the musical impact of what Ortiz called the "Cuban counterpoint" of tobacco and sugar.
Hip Deep June 14, 2018
In this program, we explore the phenomenon of trance through a survey of musical and spiritual traditions, discover how different cultural and spiritual ideas are expressed musically, how the mathematical complexity of mbira dzavuzimu music may lead to Shona spirit possession, and how experiments in neural imaging give us insight into how the brain works in a state of trance.
Hip Deep May 10, 2018
Lagos and the Rise of Nigerian Afrobeats tells the story of the birth and development of this scene straight from the influential and foundational figures who lived it including 2Face Idibia, Iyanya, Yemi Alade, Adekunle Gold, Flavour and more.
Hip Deep May 3, 2018
Beneath the gloss of Nigeria’s contemporary pop, older roots styles, mostly derived from Yoruba tradition, still thrive.
Hip Deep March 15, 2018
Building on prior Hip Deep explorations of the origins of house and techno in the American Midwest, “Roots and Future” explores how a community of (primarily) black British musicians, fans, D.J.s, and radio pirates recreated dance music in the United Kingdom during the 1990s and 2000s.
Hip Deep February 1, 2018
How jazz music came back to Africa, South Africa in particular, by way of America.
Hip Deep January 11, 2018
This program presents a musical portrait of Bamako in the wake of crisis. We explore the precarious lives of griots in today’s Bamako, focusing on the upbringing and education of children in these hereditary families of historian-entertainers.
Hip Deep December 14, 2017
In recognition of the end of Robert Mugabe's 37-year rule in Zimbabwe, we are rebroadcasting our program on the career of Thomas Mapfumo during the Mugabe years.
Hip Deep August 28, 2025
From early Baghdad to Qawwali and Iraqi maqam, Joseph Braude and Islamic scholars explore how Islam shapes music across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Hip Deep August 21, 2025
This Hip Deep edition explores the sonically vibrant realm of Afro-Peruvian music, a young genre identification that has flourished since the 1950s and has now produced artists of international renown, such as singer Susana Baca, and the black folkloric company Peru Negro.
Hip Deep July 31, 2025
Hip Deep July 10, 2025
Hip Deep May 29, 2025
This week, Afropop revisits the home of styles such as merengue and bachata, but this time we’ll be looking towards the most deeply African side of Dominican music—little known outside of the island.
Hip Deep May 15, 2025
On this Hip Deep edition, we take you on a journey to Lisbon, a city facing both the sea and 600 years of its own history.
Hip Deep May 8, 2025
This program will initiate listeners into one of the most enchanting and mysterious musical practices in Africa, BaAka people music.
Hip Deep May 1, 2025
Afropop visits Kano in Northern Nigeria to meet local nanaye artists and meet young Hausa hip-hop artists.
Hip Deep April 17, 2025
In this Hip Deep program, Afropop explores musical connections between Africa and India.
Hip Deep April 15, 2025
This program explores the Gnawa music and tradition in Morocco with author and scholar Deborah Kapchan.
Hip Deep April 10, 2025
Hip Deep April 3, 2025
In this Hip Deep edition, Joseph Braude reports on the lives, legacy and music of Africans in Gulf States, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Hip Deep March 20, 2025
Hip Deep March 13, 2025
This program offers a rare musical portrait of Somalia’s formative, pre-civil war years (1960-90). In a rising mood of patriotism and hope, Somalis sought to forge a culturally authentic, but also modern, national identity
Hip Deep February 27, 2025
In this Hip Deep edition, Marlon Bishop and Marilyn Halter explore the Cape Verdean, creole experience in New England.
Hip Deep February 25, 2025
This Hip Deep edition tells the history of African influences in Venezuelan music.
Hip Deep February 13, 2025
For this Hip Deep edition, Afropop digs into the close-knit scene, talking to dancers, producers, MCs, and managers from over 30 years of bounce, all to explore the beat that drives New Orleans.
Hip Deep January 30, 2025
Hip Deep January 30, 2025
Hip Deep January 23, 2025
By the mid 20th century, Cairo had become the unrivaled center for music and film production in the Middle East. Producers, writers, composers, actors, musicians, star singers, and creators of every stripe flocked here to take part in the city's fervent, international, progressive artistic milieu.
Hip Deep January 9, 2025
In this Hip Deep edition, Joseph Braude recounts the Zanj Rebellion and the origins of the Suni Shiite divide in Islam.
Hip Deep January 2, 2025
Hip Deep December 19, 2024
Every year on Sierra Leone’s Independence Day in late April, musicians and revelers descend upon Freetown from throughout the country.
Hip Deep October 10, 2024
In this Hip Deep edition, we find out how cumbia left Colombia in the ‘60s and ‘70s and traveled to other countries.
Hip Deep August 15, 2024
Hip Deep July 4, 2024
In this Hip Deep episode, we use music to explore that history as we take a road-trip across the country in search of sonic traces of Afro-Mexico.
Hip Deep June 20, 2024
This Hip Deep program tells the story of Senegal's mbalax music.
Hip Deep May 30, 2024
Kelley Askew talks us through the history of East African Taarab music.
Hip Deep May 9, 2024
This Hip Deep program describes the Ethiopian musical diaspora around the world.
Hip Deep May 7, 2024
This Hip Deep program explores the role of the Ethiopian church and monarchy in building the country's unique brassy pop music.
