You're listening to Wopop on Kexp online at KXP.org.

I'm here with Brian Shimkovic, aka Awesome Taves from Africa.

Howdy.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me.

This place is like such a legendary spot in my mind.

Thank you.

Now you're here.

Yeah, and finally.

How did Awesome Taves from Africa the name come about?

Because it's so, it's awesome.

Well, I was sitting in my apartment one day in New York, and I had recently come back from a year in Ghana.

I was doing a Fulbright research project on hip-hop in Ghana.

I studied ethnomusicology in school, and then I was

lucky enough to win a grant after applying twice to go to Ghana. And so I had all these tapes, and I was

talking to my roommate because I was just really bored and really poor and just staying in my apartment

all the time. And I was like, I'm going to start a blog called Awesome Tapes from Africa.

I don't know, it just kind of came into my head.

Wisdom.

Sometimes I think about the name and I'm a little bit tired of it,

or I think it's a little too much,

but it says what it means,

...