Seun Kuti became the bandleader to Egypt 80 as a teenager after the original bandleader, his father, afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, died. He was filling heavy shoes. Today's Sound Off features a discussion with Seun about the working class struggle, the power of music and his new album Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head) deluxe edition with collaborations with De La Soul, Adi Oasis and Kamasi Washington. Listen in to hear tracks from the album and Katy Henriksen's conversation with Seun.

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The joyfully D.I.Y. 90s band Tsunami recently received the box set treatment from Numero Group. Bandmates Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson join Sound Off to recall the “long welcoming shadow” of Discord Records, running their own label Simple Machines and the importance of communities created through music and a strong DIY ethos. We'll also hear some of their music.

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Journalist Liz Pelly joins Sound Off to unpack her new book Mood Machine: On the Rise of Spotify and Costs of the Perfect Playlist. Beyond the fact that Spotify is a tech platform more dedicated to the advertising industry than music, Pelly joins Sound Off to discuss the incentivizing of passive over deep listening and the ways in which the platform itself can be a starting point to looking at systemic issues of hyper-individuality, surveillance capitalism and the billionaire tech class.

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Today’s guest is multidisciplinary artist JJJJJerome Ellis. Through music, text, performance, video, and photography he researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. He has a remarkable new solo piano album out this December on NNA Tapes called Compline in Nine Movements. Recorded in one take back in 2017, it’s a longform improvisation on a theme Ellis developed with longtime collaborator James Harrison Monaco. Listen in to hear Ellis discuss the new album, disability rights, time and the value of public school music education as well as music from the album.

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Today’s guest is harpist Bridget Kibbey, who’s been described as the Yo-Yo Ma of the harp. She has a new album out tomorrow on the wonderful label Pentatone called Crossing The Ocean. She commissioned contemporary composers who span the globe to write music specifically for her resulting in a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of sounds that meld the classical to folkloric traditions.

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Today’s guest is cellist and arts leader Amanda Gookin. Her Forward Music Project, launched in 2015, commissions new multimedia works for solo cello that elevate stories of feminine empowerment through raw performances and educational initiatives. The new music site I Care If You Listen describe it as “a premier example of feminist advocacy done right.” Host Katy Henriksen talks to Gookin all about arts advocacy, trauma, and finding agency through cello in a society that tells girls that they can’t.

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Today’s guest is composer/violist Jessica Pavone, a NYC based artist whose new album Clamor, is out in October. The album, which features string ensemble and bassoon, includes works that are inspired by women’s inventions created out of a desire to circumvent the limitations to their freedoms, including the See Saw, 17th century, Korean women invented the standing see-saw to help them see what lay outside. These women weren’t allowed to leave their homes, so the see-saw gave them the ability to peek out the walls of their property, if even for just a second. In addition to the interview, you'll hear from the forthcoming album.

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Today’s guest is the South African percussionist Tumi Mogorosi. His album Group Theory: Black Music, out on the label Mushroom Hour Half Hour was one of Katy's favorites in 2022.

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Today's guest is Damon Locks, bandleader for the genre-shattering Black Monument Ensemble. The group released the critically acclaimed album NOW in April of 2021 on the International Anthem label. It’s a viscerally poignant, joyous album created outside in the swelter of Chicago summertime at the height of lockdown, a tumultuous moment that coincided with the national protest movement following the police murder of George Floyd. From the power of gospel and its roots in the Civil Rights era to the distinct power of music for community building and imagining a better future, Katy discusses this and so much more.

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Today’s guest is pipa virtuoso Wu Man. She’s carved out such an impressive career collaborating with orchestras worldwide and through performing as a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. She’s an inspiration in what cross-cultural musical collaborations can be.

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