Singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun, Plus Bryan Washington

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun recently released her fourth album, called “Proof of Life.” Raised near Phoenix, Oladokun had aspirations of becoming a preacher before turning to music in earnest. Like many of the great songwriters, she has a way of staring down the hardest parts of life with an offbeat sort of wit. The New Yorker’s Hanif Abdurraqib calls her a “writer’s writer,” someone “interested in the lyric as an opportunity to build narrative worlds.” Oladokun talked with him about seeing a video of Tracy Chapman performing in a Nelson Mandela tribute concert: “I was ten years old, watching someone who looked like me play the guitar,” she recalls. “I asked my parents for a guitar that Christmas.” Chapman remained a lasting influence on her as an artist. “You could just tell that what drove her to open her mouth in the first place was conviction. Belief in her values and belief that if people would only think about this, it would change the world.” While in New York on tour, Oladokun performed “Trying” and “Keeping the Light On”—both from her new record—live at WNYC. Plus, the fiction writer Bryan Washington on the joys of a Houston ice house.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.3	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Hanif Abdur-Rakib writes about music for the New Yorker,
0:16.5	and he's also a celebrated poet. Songwriting is his obsession.
0:22.5	And lately, one of the people that Hanif has been following most closely
0:26.6	is someone named Joy Oladakund.
0:30.4	Sometimes it feels like I never got out of the water.
0:36.5	I never got out of the water even though I did. Here's Sonif.
0:44.0	Joy Laudacoon is one of my favorite writers, not just songwriters, but writers of anything, of all language.
0:50.5	I have been along for the ride with her career since what seems to me like near the beginning.
0:56.3	I found her music around 2017, 2018.
0:59.9	And what I love about it is that I believe that she's a writer's writer, which is a phrase I use with talking about musicians where I think they are invested in not just the lyric as a vessel for a one element of a song,
1:13.6	but they're interested in the lyric as an opportunity to build narrative worlds,
1:18.2	to build, to reshape what a song can do.
1:21.9	And Joy is really committed to that.
1:24.1	That comes to life most vibrantly on her newest record, Proof of Life, which is her fourth
1:29.0	album and the album of hers that has gotten the most attention thus far in her career.
1:34.9	I was thrilled to get to talk to her while she was visiting New York getting ready to play
1:38.8	Radio City Music Hall.
1:41.0	This is really exciting for me because I'm such a big fan of your writing and your songs, but as a writer, I'm just so drawn to your work.
1:51.0	But this is not on the new record, but it's a song of yours that I talk about a lot that I've actually literally used in writing workshops, talk about anticipation and breath.
2:01.5	You have a cover of My Girl that I adore because of how it is sung, right?
2:07.0	Like, My Girl is one of those songs that has been covered so much and can be sung in
	...

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