American Songster Radio
American Songster Radio is a look at the roots of American Popular music. It’s hosted by world renowned musician and folklorist Dom Flemons who playfully refers to himself as The American Songster.
The American Songster takes us on a musical journey exploring the tunes, trails and tales of Black Cowboys. He illuminates an oft-hidden Wild West history through songs and poems, casting new light on a part of American identity that is often overlooked in the telling of American history. The series accompanies his album for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings calledDom Flemons presents Black Cowboys.
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Songs We Love is a series and a podcast that looks at the stories behind some of the songs we're playing on our new music discovery station, WUNC Music.On…
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The second season of Dom Flemon's American Songster Radio podcast is released today, Friday, October 26.In this episode of American Songster Radio, Dom…
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This is episode two from season two of American Songster Radio.African-Americans made up as much as a quarter of the cattle range work force in the Old…
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This is episode three from season two of American Songster Radio.Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly") met the song collector John Lomax at the Angola…
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This is epsidoe four from season two of American Songster Radio.In 1854, Nat Love - aka "Deadwood Dick" - was born into slavery in Tennessee. At a young…
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This is episode five from season two of American Songster Radio.Bass Reeves was born into slavery in 1838 in the "Texarkana" region of the South. Legend…
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This is the sixth and final episode from season two of American Songster Radio."Goodbye, Old Paint" is one of the most famous cowboy songs. The first…
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The cowboy is an icon of American culture. But the popular image of the white cowboy skews our perception of what kind of Americans did—and do—cowboying…
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When Dom Flemons set out to make his 2014 release Prospect Hill, he knew he wanted it to be an eclectic record. For variety, he assembled two different…
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Young banjo players Jerron Paxton and Kaia Kater hail from places that are pretty far removed from the American South. But as they learned their…
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When Dom Flemons visited a legendary fried chicken joint in Nashville, inspiration struck him like a wave of cayenne heat:Dom knew he was onto a song. And…
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When Dom Flemons first came across the story of African American songster Gus Cannon, one fact took him by surprise. "[Gus Cannon] was a blackface…
