Danyel Smith’s ‘Very Personal History’ gives Black women of pop music their due

Capehart

The Washington Post

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this rerun conversation from May 4, author Danyel Smith explains why she wanted to give Black women their due in “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Jonathan K. Parton. Welcome to K-PART. Since this is still kind of the holiday weekend,
0:06.7	I figured we'd rerun one of my favorite interviews from the first half of this year.
0:11.2	veteran music editor and writer Danielle Smith and I totally nerded out over her new book
0:17.4	Shine Bright, a very personal history of black women and pop. This was a very personal
0:23.6	conversation where Smith and I reminisce about some of the great songs of our childhood,
0:28.9	including Midnight Train to Georgia. The thing that was most important to me and I stayed with me
0:34.8	my whole life is that I have never believed that Gladys and I got on that train. In this conversation
0:40.8	first recorded on May 4th for watching him post live, Danielle Smith details the stories of the
0:46.2	black women and pop she highlights in Shine Bright and explains why she was determined to give
0:52.3	them their due. Danielle Smith, welcome to K-PART on Washington Post Live. How are you?
1:02.1	I am great. I am so excited about this conversation we're going to have to talk about your book
1:08.5	and I want to start by quoting something that you told Jamel Hill in the Atlantic that to just
1:15.6	Shine Bright on behalf of myself is new. Why is that? And answer that in talking about why you
1:23.0	entitled your book Shine Bright. Wow, I really did say that and it's absolutely true.
1:30.9	I titled Shine Bright. I titled the book Shine Bright for a number of reasons and really too.
1:36.1	One is the song that we kind of all know and love which is this little light of mine.
1:41.6	I'm going to let it shine. That song that's sung by everybody from Mahalia Jackson to Natalie
1:47.3	Cole. Everyone sings that song as a little girl. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. And then
1:53.7	as you just quoted Rihanna, we talk about Rihanna's command to us that we all sort of Shine Bright
2:00.7	like a diamond. And what I realize is how many black women we need to be out in the front even more
2:09.3	than we already are. There's so many times where we're doing amazing things, we're making
2:14.4	amazing art and still and yet we're not shining as bright as we could. And as you said, as I
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.