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Sheltering Homeless Residents / Coronavirus Measures In Europe / Religious Services Go Virtual

We'll hear from San Francisco supervisors on the challenges the city is facing moving some unhoused residents into hotels to shelter from the pandemic. Then, we go to Europe and get the latest on the coronavirus situation there. And, religious communities can’t gather in person, but they’re still meeting up online.




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Puppy Adoptions / Melissa Jones's Soulful Sound / New Arrivals

Bay Area dog shelters are seeing a huge increase in interest despite being closed to the public. We’ll find out how dog adoptions work while we’re sheltered in place. Then, Oakland singer Melissa Jones says there’s no one sound for black artists. And, we hear a reading from San Francisco author Wendy Liu .




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Home Baked: How Pot Brownies Brought Some Relief During The AIDS Epidemic

The coronavirus is on all of our minds, and for some, it brings back memories of another public health crisis, when the federal government was slow to respond and communities had to take care of each other: the AIDS epidemic.




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Quarantine Diaries / From Reality TV Isolation To Sheltering In Place

Today, we hear how people around the Bay Area are experiencing their fifth week of quarantine in our continuing Quarantine Diaries series. Then, a reality show star and social media critic has tips for keeping in touch during the shelter in place.




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Online Learning / Body Positivity / New Arrivals

San Francisco Unified is pushing to get all students online and learning . We’ll hear why getting families computers and internet access in the age of COVID-19 is complicated. Then, we talk to body image activist Virgie Tovar about the new hidden messaging to teenage girls. And, we’ll continue our New Arrivals series featuring local authors.




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Coronavirus Pandemic Throws A Harsh Spotlight On U.S.-China Relations

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit NOEL KING, HOST: The U.S. and China have a complicated relationship - nothing new there. But during the coronavirus, it's getting worse and may even be at its lowest point since the Tiananmen Square crackdown more than 30 years ago. NPR's Michele Kelemen tells us what the diplomats have been saying, and it is not that diplomatic. MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: U.S. and Chinese officials have been trading barbs on Twitter. And when China's ambassador wrote an op-ed accusing the U.S. of playing the blame game, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came back with this. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) MIKE POMPEO: And I can't wait for my daily column in the China Daily news. KELEMEN: Beyond this tit for tat, relations seem to be deteriorating at all levels. The FBI, for example, has been warning universities about the dangers of working with China, especially in the scientific field. That was going on well before the pandemic, says Georgetown University's James




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One For The History Books: 14.7% Unemployment, 20.5 Million Jobs Wiped Away

Updated at 11:43 a.m. ET The Labor Department delivered a historically bad employment report Friday, showing 20.5 million jobs lost last month as the nation locked down against the coronavirus. The jobless rate soared to 14.7% — the highest level since the Great Depression. The highest monthly job loss before this was 2 million in 1945, as the nation began to demobilize after World War II. The worst monthly job loss during the Great Recession was 800,000 in March 2009. Loading... Don't see the graphic above? Click here. Unemployment was 4.4% in March as the coronavirus began to take hold in the U.S. It approached 25% during the Great Depression and remained elevated until World War II. Loading... Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The carnage was felt across industries in April. With most travel shut down, leisure and hospitality jobs fell by 7.6 million. The retail and health care sectors each dropped by 2.1 million. Manufacturing lost 1.3 million and government jobs fell by 980




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Lawmakers Want To Get Americans More Relief Money. Here's What They Propose

Updated at 3:20 p.m. ET Democrats and some Republicans are considering ways for the federal government to get money into people's pockets while the coronavirus is keeping much of the economy on ice. Proposals for the next round of aid are being floated, and Democrats in the House are prepping another relief package as jobless claims continue to rise in the country. The Labor Department announced Friday that 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, pushing the overall unemployment rate to 14.7 %. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hopes to release another bill, which is being crafted without the input of Republicans or the White House as early as next week. "This is a reflection of the needs of the American people," Pelosi said Thursday. "We have to start someplace and, rather than starting in a way that does not meet the needs of the American people, want to set a standard." The latest proposal from Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey D-Mass., is a plan




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Civilian Coronavirus Corps Aims To Get Pennsylvania Back To Work

Pennsylvania's governor wants to attempt a New Deal-inspired solution for getting the state's more than 1.7 million unemployed residents back to some semblance of regular work. This week, Democrat Tom Wolf announced a still-vague plan for a "Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps" which, he said, would ideally be a broad program to train workers to test for COVID-19 and conduct contact tracing to monitor infection rates, while simultaneously reducing unemployment. Wolf's spokeswoman, Lyndsay Kensinger, said it's no accident that the proposed program's name is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Great Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps , which focused on the preservation of state parks and forests. "The governor will announce more details in the coming weeks, but the corps would be a 21st-century approach to historic programs like those in the New Deal," Kensinger said. Still unknown: When exactly the program would start, how many people the state might hire and




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Top 5 Moments From The Supreme Court's 1st Week Of Livestreaming Arguments

For the first time in its 231-year history, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely by phone and made the audio available live. The new setup went off largely without difficulties, but produced some memorable moments, including one justice forgetting to unmute and an ill-timed bathroom break. Here are the top five can't-miss moments from this week's history-making oral arguments. A second week of arguments begin on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Here's a rundown of the cases and how to listen. 1. Justice Clarence Thomas speaks ... a lot Supreme Court oral arguments are verbal jousting matches. The justices pepper the lawyers with questions, interrupting counsel repeatedly and sometimes even interrupting each other. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has sat on the bench for nearly 30 years, has made his dislike of the chaotic process well known, at one point not asking a question for a full decade. But with no line of sight, the telephone arguments have to be rigidly organized, and




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COMIC: Hospitals Turn To Alicia Keys, U2 And The Beatles To Sing Patients Home

Dr. Grace Farris is chief of hospital medicine at Mount Sinai West in Manhattan. She also writes a monthly comics column in the Annals of Internal Medicine called "Dr Mom." You can find her on Instagram @coupdegracefarris . Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.




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Week In Politics: U.S. Jobs Report, DOJ Drops Criminal Case Against Michael Flynn

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.




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Cinema Chat: 'A Hidden Life,' 'Uncut Gems,' 'Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker,' And More

You can find a good flick anywhere this week, whether it's just down the street or in a galaxy far, far away! In this week's "Cinema Chat," WEMU's David Fair sits down with Michigan and State Theater executive director Russ Collins to talk about the latest movie news and all of the new films coming to the silver screen this pre-holiday weekend.




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Cinema Chat: Oscar Noms, '63 Up,' 'Bad Boys For Life,' And More

Hollywood's biggest night is on the way, and if you want information on nominations, snubs, and Vegas odds, we have them for you. In this week's "Cinema Chat," WEMU's David Fair sits down with Michigan and State Theater executive director Russ Collins to talk about the latest movie news and all of the new films coming to your local movie house this weekend.




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Cinema Chat: Ann Arbor Film Festival Continues And Michigan Theater Movies Go Online During Shutdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected so many industries worldwide, and the movie business is no exception. In this week's "Cinema Chat," WEMU's David Fair and Michigan and State Theater executive director Russ Collins discuss how movie theaters, especially those found in Ann Arbor, are adapting to this difficult situation.




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Aliza Li Releases New Single ‘Bit a Lemon”

Aliza Li Releases New Single 'Bit a Lemon".

Listen to the song on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/30giEStQMHnB4wiawDuKHH?si=bKr4Kpa9RFGaj8Bx2BNd6g

Aliza Li is an Atlanta based singer-songwriter known for her soulful vibes with blends of Neo-Soul, RnB, and TrapSoul. She recently released her first EP titled "Sometimes I Get High".

IG: @h3yalizali https://www.instagram.com/h3yalizali/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/h3yalizali
Spotify Artist page: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0AloD8IYrcnleR7KtfMmwM?si=NWsFsLTTQfuEE6KUyF3aCQ

The post Aliza Li Releases New Single ‘Bit a Lemon” appeared first on Singersroom.com.




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Beatroot Music Presents The Beatroot Suite Live Performance + Q&A Series

Welcomes Grammy Award-Winning Superstar Lyrica Anderson For Latest Edition

Invites Viewers To Donate Live To Historic Memphis Community Orange Mound

April 30th 2020 (Memphis, TN) – Triple threat Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer, Lyrica Anderson will appear on Beatroot Musics The Beatroot Suite for a live performance of her new single “Marriott” and Q&A on Thursday April 30, 2020 at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT. 

In addition to this fan experience, Lyrica invites viewers to donate live to support COVID-19 relief efforts in Orange Mound—the oldest African-American community in Memphis, TN. Beginning May 2nd, the team will supply residents of the community affected by the pandemic with care packages comprised of food and hygiene items as part of the Zone 6 CAReavan. All residents in Zone 6 are eligible to the generosity of those who donated across the country. 

Tune in and watch on Instagram Live HERE

The Beatroot Suite is a new music initiative launched by artist-centric label services platform Beatroot Music. In addition to empowering artists with tools and resources to succeed independently, the company hosts this innovative online venue as a stage for its talent roster to showcase and discuss new material. Last week, The Beatroot Suite welcomed award-winning, multi-platinum selling songwriter and artist Elijah Blake.

The post Beatroot Music Presents The Beatroot Suite Live Performance + Q&A Series appeared first on Singersroom.com.




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Identity Politics and Elite Capture

"The black feminist Combahee River Collective manifesto and E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie share the diagnosis that the wealthy and powerful will take every opportunity to hijack activist energies for their own ends."

On the origins of identity politics with black feminist activists:

The term "identity politics" was first popularized by the 1977 manifesto of the Combahee River Collective, an organization of black feminist activists. In a recent interview with the Root and in an op-ed at the Guardian, Barbara Smith, a founding member of the collective, addresses common misconceptions about the term. The manifesto, she explains, was written by black women claiming the right to set their own political agendas. They weren't establishing themselves as a moral aristocracy—they were building a political viewpoint out of common experience to work toward "common problems." As such, they were strongly in favor of diverse people working in coalition, an approach that for Smith was exemplified by the Bernie Sanders campaign's grassroots approach and its focus on social issues that people of many identities face, especially "basic needs of food, housing and healthcare." According to Smith, today's uses of the concept are often "very different than what we intended." "We absolutely did not mean that we would work with people who were only identical to ourselves," she insists. "We strongly believed in coalitions and working with people across various identities on common problems."
On the concept of elite capture:
The concept of elite capture originated in the study of developing countries to describe the way socially advantaged people tend to gain control over financial benefits meant for everyone, especially foreign aid. But the concept has also been applied more generally to describe how political projects can be hijacked—in principle or in effect—by the well positioned and resourced, as Yang's "step up" demand exemplifies. The idea also helps to explain how public resources such as knowledge, attention, and values get distorted and distributed by our power structures. And it is precisely what stands between us and Smith's urgent vision of coalitional politics.
On the concept of value capture:
To better understand the broader dynamic, we can look to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen's work on games. As he explains in his new book Games: Agency as Art (2020), confusing the real world with the carefully incentivized structure of game worlds can lead to a phenomenon he calls "value capture," a process by which we begin with rich and subtle values, encounter simplified versions of them in social life, and then revise our values in the direction of simplicity. Nguyen is careful to point out that value capture doesn't require anyone's deliberate or calculated intervention, only an environment or incentive structure that encourages excess value clarity.

Nguyen stops short of noting that another risk of gamifying values is the unequal distribution of power across participants. But outside of the world of games, power differentials do shape outcomes. Value capture is managed by elites, on purpose or not. In other words, elites don't simply participate in our community; their decisions help to structure it, much in the way that game designers structure the world of games. After all, elites face a simpler version of oppression than non-elites do: whereas working-class black folk are pressed by racial slights and degradation alongside economic problems that might require "socialized medicine" to solve, elites's economic position makes them comfortable enough to focus on their own status and cultural power—often at the expense of non-elites.
On a telling example of value capture:
The Congressional Black Caucus's cosponsorship of Ronald Reagan's 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act helped supercharge mass incarceration by establishing mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and adding $1.7 billion toward the drug war while welfare programs were cut. This legislation solved the problem for the black elites of the CBC of how to seem involved with respect to the crack cocaine epidemic. But with the law's passage, working-class African Americans went from dealing with one very complex problem to weathering two interlocking ones: the drug epidemic itself—unsolved by this draconian measure—and the surge of discriminatory law enforcement the legislation unleashed.
On other forms of elite capture:
Elite capture is not unique to black politics; it is a general feature of politics, anywhere and everywhere. I could just as easily have focused on the world of elite universities. In Philosophy of African American Studies (2015), for example, Stephen Ferguson II makes a similar argument about the elite capture of black studies, which owes its existence to the radical student movements of the 1960s and '70s but has since been "turned into a bureaucratic cog in the academic wheel controlled by administrators, with virtually no democratic input from students or the black working-class community." I could also have kept the general perspective but reversed the role of race and class. In socialist organizations, for example, we might find that white people likewise tend to capture the group's politics.

Or we could look away from race to a different set of identity characteristics altogether. In the Buzzfeed article "You Wanted Same-Sex Marriage? Now You Have Pete Buttigieg," Shannon Keating laments the trajectory of mainstream queer politics away from the more radical elements dramatically on display in the Stonewall riot of 1969 and ACT UP. Or take how The Wing, a coworking space touting itself as a "women's utopia," exploits the women who work for it.
On what co-optation looks like outside the United States:
And, of course, elite abuse of identity politics isn't limited to the United States. It is also a particularly salient problem in Global South politics, where national, ethnic, and caste identities are shaped by an unstable mix of indigenous and colonial history. Peace studies scholar Camilla Orjuela argues that, from Sri Lanka to Kenya, politics in multiethnic Global South societies easily fall into cycles of expecting elites to allocate resources along blatantly ethnic and regional lines. After all, the thinking going, the elites of every other ethnic group will do the same when they're in power. Journalist John Githongo describes such ethnic elites as "creatures of patronage and . . . influence peddling" who treat the state as a ladder to their own goals rather than an institution of collective responsibility. These conceptual strands are vividly illustrated by the history of the U.S.-backed Haitian dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvaliers cynically used tropes drawn from the Vodou religion, popular with the country's poor, to intimidate the citizenry while enriching themselves. At the same time, they unleashed unspeakable violence upon actual Vodou practitioners, fearing the revolutionary potential of the religion, which was instrumental in ending slavery on the island.
On a more hopeful final note:
As the Combahee River Collective acknowledged, simply participating in activism is no guarantee that we will develop the right kind of political culture; its founding members were veterans of important radical political movements that nevertheless made crucial oversights along the way. Elites have to get involved—actually involved—but that involvement needs to resist elite capture of values and the gamification of political life.

We have our work cut out for us, but fortunately we aren't starting from scratch: there's a rich history to draw from. In the 1960s, feminists held regular group meetings, in houses and apartments, to discuss gender injustice in ways that would have been taboo in mixed company. A set of such "consciousness raising" guidelines by Barbara Smith and fellow activists Tia Cross, Freada Klein, and Beverly Smith provides an example of identity politics work as the Combahee River Collective envisioned it. The exercise starts by asking participants to examine their own shortcomings ("When did you first notice yourself treating people of color in a different way?"), but ends by asking how they can use an element of shared oppression as a bridge to unite people across difference ("In what ways can shared lesbian oppression be used to build connections between white women and women of color?"). Because, in the end, we're in it together—and, from the point of view of identity politics, that is the whole point.
Previously on the co-optation of identity for elite capture.

And previously on identity politics in general.




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Polish Sound Postcards

Techmoan looks at a unique music format from Poland - records pressed into thin plastic, originally with a cardboard backing. They were designed/intended for mailing. More from PRX.

He also branches off into a discussion of and comparison with Russian records cut into old radiographs - 'ribs' or 'bones' music - previously 2012 / previously 2014





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Leading God’s Children to the Light

God has billions of children who are still trapped in spiritual darkness globally. Today, you can help liberate them with the light of God’s Word through your sacrificial gift for Amazing Facts’ soul-winning work. Will you please stand with us?




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GPB Evening Headlines For May 7, 2020

GDOL Has Distributed $1.7 Billion In Unemployment Benefits Over Past 7 Weeks Georgia Lawmakers Meet Virtually, Discuss Budget Cuts In Upcoming Fiscal Year Coalition of Acitivists, Legislators Petition Gov. Kemp To Discuss COVID-19 In Black Communities USDA Reports Georgia Leads Nation In Blueberry Production




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OST Full Show: The Merits, Risks, Politics Of The Swedish Model; COVID Dreams; Sue Monk Kidd

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy, and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” Now, as the U.S. weighs further spreading the disease against the impact of a tanked economy, some Americans — particularly conservatives — are looking toward Sweden’s model as an option. On Second Thought unpacks the merits, risks and strategy behind Sweden’s approach, and what has become a political talking point here in the U.S.




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GBI: 'Sufficient Probable Cause' Led To Arrest Of 2 Men In Arbery Killing

The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a Friday briefing that after two days of investigating the two-month-old shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery there was “sufficient probable cause” to arrest two men on charges of aggravated assault and felony murder. And GBI Director Vic Reynolds didn't rule out more arrests in the future.




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Political Rewind: The 2-Month Timeline Behind Murder Charges

Friday on Political Rewind , a brief look at the two-month timeline that led up to murder charges this week in the case of Ahmaud Arbery. New developments draw into question decision-making at the local level.




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LISTEN: 911 Dispatcher Doesn’t Understand What Arbery Is ‘Doing Wrong’

In the 911 call regarding the fatal incident involving Ahmaud Arbery and his assailants, Gregory and Travis McMichael, the 911 dispatcher said she didn't understand what Arbery was "doing wrong."




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GPB Evening Headlines For May 8, 2020

GBI Make 2 Arrests In The Shooting Death Of Ahmaud Arbery Georgia Tests 2% Of State Population For COVID-19, Expecting To Test Another 2% By End Of May Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Voices Displeasure With Gov. Kemp's Reopening Strategy Delta CEO Thinks Testing, Contact Tracing Critical Before Customers Become Confident Enough To Fly




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The Merits, Risks And Politics of Sweden's Herd Immunity Strategy

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” But striving for herd immunity without a controlled vaccine in place can also prove risky.




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What You Need To Know: Keeping Small Town Newspapers Alive

Georgia Public Broadcasting’s new series What You Need To Know: Coronavirus provides succinct, fact-based information to help you get through the coronavirus pandemic with your health and sanity intact. The news industry is being hit hard by the economic downturn triggered by the pandemic. One Georgia paper struggling is The Walton Tribune in Monroe. It’s been around since 1900, and prints twice a week. Since the start of the pandemic, the paper has had to cut salaries to avoid layoffs. Publisher and editor David Clemons tells GPB's Virginia Prescott he hopes to eventually return those salaries to normal.




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Macon's Little Richard Dies at 87

One of Georgia’s most iconic musicians, Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard, has died at age 87.




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Macon Remembers Hometown Music Icon Little Richard

"The Architect of Rock 'n' Roll" is being remembered in his hometown of Macon, Georgia, after he died Saturday at 87. "Little" Richard Penniman created music like no one had heard before. And, growing up in Macon’s historically Black Pleasant Hill neighborhood, he was a kid like no one had seen before.




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From the Lions’ Den to the Angel’s Den (Lesson #7)

'What kind of witness do we present to others in regard to our faithfulness to God and to His law? Would people who know you think that you would stand for your faith, even if it cost you your job, or even your life?'




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Daily Life (original song) ??????? ??? ??????????

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319792 washizawa - Daily Life (original song) ??????? ??? ??????????




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MITCHYSLICK FT COCAKAZI,ASHYNUXX ---PAID YA Dues

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319812 HUNNAFIEDRECORDS - MITCHYSLICK FT COCAKAZI,ASHYNUXX ---PAID YA Dues




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COKEBOY BROCK FT MITCHYSLICK -COOKING CRACK

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319813 HUNNAFIEDRECORDS - COKEBOY BROCK FT MITCHYSLICK -COOKING CRACK




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gangsta love,mitchy slick,B.F.L.Y -Make it mix final

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319828 HUNNAFIEDRECORDS - gangsta love,mitchy slick,B.F.L.Y -Make it mix final




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Collide

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319841 Death to Neverland - Collide




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Someone Like You

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319846 RobertNorbergLejon - Someone Like You




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BelieveYou_Scratch

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319848 LaramieMusic - BelieveYou_Scratch




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Luh Guccii - Cant explain this feeling

http://www.musicxray.com/xrays/1319880 Luh Guccii - Luh Guccii - Cant explain this feeling




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Live Session: TORRES

Before she performed under the name TORRES, she was Mackenzie Scott, a teenager in Macon, Ga. Hear Scott perform three songs off her album Sprinter and talk about what its like to come home in this performance at Capricorn Studio in Macon. Listen above, watch below.




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Live Session: Brett Harris

Brett Harris writes the sort of crystalline pop songs that hearken back to the days of Power Pop. Plus, he's a really good guitarist who knows better than to upstage his own voice. Between songs from his new album Up In The Air, Harris talks about how he first discovered music he could call his own and about to how adapt songs he wrote for a band to a solo tour. Brett's new album Up In The Air will be released on March, 4. Listen above or watch below.




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Live Session: Lobo Marino

Lobo Marino is Jameson Price on percussion and Laney Sullivan on harmonium and voice. Together they make atmospheric music that echoes the sounds they've experienced on their global travels. It's world music that asks you to slow down and just be. Produced with the Field Note Stenographers and students from the Mercer University Center for Collaborative Journalism.




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Live Session: T. Hardy Morris

T. Hardy Morris has moved some molecules in his day as a member of the very loud Athens, GA band Dead Confederate. In recent years, Morris has turned it down a notch with solo work both quieter and more personal. In this Field Session Morris talks about how turning into your Dad isn't so bad, about work life balance for a touring musician with a wife, a kid and a baby on the way and on the difference between a poet and a songwriter. Produced with the Field Note Stenographers.




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Heart For Violin, Ear For Pop And Soul

Ashley Pointer says with her violin, she can pretty much do anything the human voice can do. Ironically, she says it wasn't her decision to pick up her bow. But today, as the first violinist to be accepted into the competitive Grammy Camp summer program, she is glad it happened. Ashley's mother Charlita Whitby put a violin in Ashley's hands way back when the junior at Howard High School in Macon was in the first grade. A choral teacher had seen some potential for musicality in Ashley that her mother was convinced she should nurture. For the first two years, mother and daughter went through the Suzuki books together. Whitby said though she loves music, she didn't enjoy making it. But it was the price for keeping Ashley on track. "Well I knew that it was something that I wanted her to do and if she's going to do it I wanted her to do it right," Whitby said Ashley kept at it but admits the violin didn't really click for her until the seventh grade. That summer, at home with the violin




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Napean sells Mobile Marketer publication, retains events business

Napean LLC has sold its Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily publications, but retained the events business comprising conferences, webinars, podcasts and awards, founder Mickey Alam Khan announced today.




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OST Full Show: Arts After COVID-19, Billy Bragg, Julia Alvarez

Artists and arts organizations were quick to adapt to coronavirus. Museum tours, operas, Broadway shows, author talks, home concerts and classes for kids sprung up online shortly after closures were announced. But as the dust begins to settle on our new normal, many worry about the long-term economic impact and outlook for the artists, performers and independent organizations essential to the cultural ecosystem. Doug Shipman , president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center, joined On Second Thought to talk about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the arts world now – economically, culturally, and artistically – and how that might change as things open back up.




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Julia Alvarez Grapples With Grief, Aging And The Immigrant Experience In Her New Novel, 'Afterlife'

For nearly 15 years, National Medal of the Arts award-winning poet and author Julia Alvarez has focused on writing picture books and novels for children. But earlier this year, she published her first novel for adults in more than a decade, called Afterlife . The protagonist, Antonia Vega, is a woman in her late 60s reckoning with isolation and her new identity after her husband’s sudden death. In a world upended by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and wrestling with its own kind of communal grief, the themes of the novel resonate in ways that Alvarez never could have predicted.




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Musician And Author Billy Bragg Says Free Speech Depends On Accountability, Music On Empathy

Billy Bragg is many things: a poet, punk rocker, folk musician, and singer-songwriter. He’s also an activist, music historian, and best-selling author. In the words of another poet, he contains multitudes. Bragg’s newest work, The Three Dimensions of Freedom , is a slim volume that makes a weighty argument. It’s a pamphlet in the tradition of Thomas Paine, whose influential polemics helped spark the American Revolution, and later got him convicted of sedition.




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From Pitbulls To Political Humor, 5 OST Segments For Your Week

From pit bulls to political humor and feminist literature to Folsom State Prison, we’ve got five more stories from the On Second Thought archive to help you weather another Monday. 1) One Man's Mission To Protect 'The Dog America Loves To Hate' This past January, we interviewed Jason Flatt, founder of the Dallas, Georgia-based “ Friends of the Forlorn” Pitbull Rescue . Flatt moved to Georgia after a family tragedy and faced his grief by adopting a pitbull puppy named Angelo. He was inspired to create a sanctuary for pitbulls, which have been widely stereotyped as violent. His organization has become nationally-renowned for its open arms and willingness to take on the most disadvantaged dogs. 2) Rebels and Ramblers: New Ken Burns 'Country Music' Documentary Ken Burns has won acclaim for his documentary work covering wars, disasters, and social movements. His most recent work, “ Country Music, ” aired on PBS in September of last year. We sat down with writer and producer Dayton Duncan to