Why Play Music: A Conversation with Questlove and Maggie Rogers

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

🗓️ 27 September 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this month, two acclaimed musicians—Questlove and Maggie Rogers—joined The New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh live onstage for a conversation that probed at an essential question for musicians and music lovers alike: How can music provide a spiritual experience, and how do we sustain that feeling in our lives? Questlove—the co-founder of the Roots and the musical director of the “Tonight Show”—was one of Rogers’s professors while she was an undergraduate at New York University, and the two have stayed in touch. Rogers received a 2019 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, after the release of her début album, “Heard It in a Past Life.” Onstage, both musicians reflected on the space that the pandemic has given them to turn inward, finding a more sustainable path in their careers. “Music is not a job, it’s a way of being,” Rogers said, to which Questlove laughed. “I’m glad you know that at twenty, because I had to learn that at fifty,” he said. Rogers also performed songs off her new album, “Surrender.”

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.
0:10.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.4	Maggie Rogers came on the music scene in 2016 when she was 22 years old and had a viral hit song called Alaska.
0:22.6	I was walking through wacy streams that took my breath away.
0:31.6	Moving slowly through westward water over glacial plains
0:40.1	and I walked off you
0:42.0	Rogers' debut album wound up on a lot of
0:45.7	best-of lists and this summer
0:47.4	she released a much-anticipated follow-up called
0:50.5	Surrender.
0:52.7	And I don't know if this is considered a hot take in this room, but I think it's even better.
0:58.9	Please, let's remind her how excited we are to have her in this building, and on this stage, Maggie
1:07.5	Rogers.
1:10.7	Staff writer, Kelifasane
1:12.6	welcome Rogers to the stage
1:14.6	at a New Yorker live event just a couple
1:16.6	of weeks ago. And the evening was
1:18.6	something special because she was there to talk
1:20.6	with a mentor of hers, a musical legend,
1:23.4	the renowned hip-hop artist, producer
1:25.0	and band leader, Questlove.
1:27.4	Now let's turn things over
	...

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