Inspirations 2/19/2021

Inspirations will air Saturday 2/20/2021 at 8pm Pacific on RadioPNW.
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It occurred to me recently while working with a customer that we had similar feels about the music each of us appreciated. Not just the artists, but the rubric by which we choose the music in our life. This got me thinking about trying to reach outside of my music comfort zone.

And thus, RadioPNW Inspirations was born…

The foundation of this episode happened when 40 Watt Hype (https://www.facebook.com/40watthype/ , https://www.40watthype.net/) came across my music feed on Spotify. This Fresno band just seemed to reach out of the speakers and grabbed me by the scruff with a fusion of hip-hop, rap, Latin, jazz and funk. A times they feel like a Latin version of Rage Against The Machine with their socially conscious lyrics and rock guitars and the next track floats over to classic big brass sounds layered with driving rap over the top.

For those of you familiar with my Sunday Morning Vinyl shows, I chose to develop a playlist differently. Instead of finding artists in the same genre and adjacent, I used some different tools to find out what other people who listened to 40 Watt Hype also listened to. Oh, and I added another artist I was already familiar with to give the playlist a little more familiarity. Filling in the part of the ‘Hall Monitor’ for this episode will be played by Ozomatli (https://www.facebook.com/ozomatli/ , https://ozomatli.com/). Another group whose strength is in their Latin musicality and mix it with other solid genre choices; salsa, jazz, funk, reggae, rap, and others are represented with a distinct social activism present in their lyrics.

Buckle Up Folks! It’s time for Genre Bending

This will not be a direct lineage of music by any means! In fact most of the artists in this playlist I have never come across before and I found it quite exciting. I was toe-tapping my way through the entire set while building it. In spite of hip hop and rap not being a primary music resource for me I seemed to melt right into it and found myself wanting to grab Erika and dance.

So sit back, relax, grab a drink – or not! Get up and move some furniture, grab your favorite dance partner. Either way, I hope you enjoy this show. If you do, one new feature of the radio service will be an hour put into the daily schedule with ALL of the scratch list music (including the tracks that didnt’ make the show) on random for an hour. Keep an eye out for that.