Each month here we visit with a member of the community
to find out what music they’ve been digging.
Hmmm…yes yes y’all. The weather is getting warmer, which means fewer clothes and more dancing (consensually, of course!). Being two-legged freaks does not exonerate us from these more-than-human transitions happening. Luckily though, we have music. “Ascendant (Mother Fxcker)” by Yaya Bey: This is a song that can pick me up and reminds me that everything is gonna be okay. Over a beat that resembles a zooted Casio preset, YaYa Bey speaks from a place of radical honesty. “Thunder” by Duendita: Not to be that guy, but I was obsessed with Duendita before 2018. Since entering the end of my 20s, I have come back to her first full album. Duendita, a Queens baby by way of the Dominican Republic, gives us godspeak and unconditional femme love as she contemplates life’s direction. “A Estos Hombres Triste” by Almendra: [There’s] something about Latin American poets from the ’70s that gets my heart moving. Latin American funk. The way the song is composed takes us on a journey of death and rebirth. Think Queen but add more of a poet’s mystery.
Bby Waxt’a is the radio moniker for Aru Apaza, a visual artist and poet processing the world around them in Kingston. Their work is for their lineage, past, and future. Aru is committed to dialogue in uncomfortable situations, abolition in our hearts and in the state, and learning/growing together in softness and patience (slow but steady). Find them on Radio Kingston’s “The Intergalactic Boogie Down” on Fridays 5 to 7pm.
This article appears in June 2023.
