Professor Bob Brinkmeyer teaches in the English department and is the director of southern studies, but every Tuesday evening you can find him in the WUSC-FM studio as host of “The Source,” a radio show devoted to a variety of African music.
How did you get started in African music?
“Youssou N'Dour” // Birima
“Sam Fan Thomas” // Si Tcha
“Orchestra Baobab” // Sibou Odia
“Fela Kuti” // Zombie
“Franco et le TP OK Jazz” // Aida
In the 1980s I had a friend who went into the Peace Corps in Africa, she came back and gave me a bunch of cassettes that she had recorded and I just fell in love with it. And then in the 1990s, I spent a year in Finland teaching on a Fulbright and there was this great world music store right down the street from where we were living in Helsinki. One of the owners kind of adopted me, they had all these listening stations in the store, and he would tell me “You’ve gotta listen to this, you’ve gotta listen to that,” and so he kind of tutored me in what he thought was great African music.
Do you tell your students about your show?
Yeah, you know, I don’t — I don’t want to make students feel like they have to listen to it. Some students ask me, because they’ll hear me and be like “Oh, is that you on the radio?”
Africa is so enormous and diverse. Is there any region that you focus on in particular?
I probably play west African music more than anything else because it’s the music that I like most, but I try and show, not to just play my favorite music. I want to have a diversity.
Who do you think would be able to get into African music?
Anybody. I just tell people when I first start the show, “Give me 30 minutes and you’ll probably like it." I see it kind of as a public service, to introduce some diversity into people's listening. I get calls from people occasionally, people from the African American community in town, who are really thankful to have this kind of show.
