DJ Lynnée Denise (Amsterdam, Johannesburg, London, Saturn‪)‬ lynnee denise

I am happy to announce the relaunching of my radio show and its new title, The Black Atlantic/Black Fantastic, on 1BTN every second Sunday from 4-6 pm (UK) and 11-1 (EST). Starts today!Shout out to Paul Gilroy’s text The Black Atlantic and the late Caribbean Canadian Richard Iton, whose epic work, In Search of the Black Fantastic, shaped much of my approach to the diaspora. For those of you who I’ve rolled with for years, you know his book has been cited like the bible. It has been since 2013.And speaking of the bible…I’m kicking off the show this month with a love letter to Black queer music. No, not just black queer folk who make music, but the music you might hear on a Black queer dance floor. Or music played by a Black queer DJ like Ron Hardy or Stacy Hotwaxx Hale. It might be white queer musicians like Bowie and Arthur Russell whose music crossed over into Black queer spaces. Or music Keith Harring heard at the Paradise Garage. It could even be all the gospel disco that Larry Levan mixed, from the Clark Sisters to the Joubert Singers.Tune in to hear the range and learn how long Black queer folks have been shaping much of the pleasure in your lives, or listen later (link in bio). Little Richard, of course, was the King and Queen of it all.

South Africa is one of my musical mothers. I discovered this nearly twenty years ago when I stepped on the continent for the first time and landed near the Indian Ocean in the city of Durban. By the time I pulled up to Durban, I had already spent that entire year listening to a Zulu musician, also from Durban, by the name of Busi Mhlongo. And while her name never really circulated in the States like a Miriam Makeba or a Letta M’bulu, I knew that her voice, her music, and her movement was an invitation to reacquaint myself with the long standing relationship between Black South Africans and Black Americans. So, whether we’re talking about the parallel musical and personal lives of Brenda Fassie and Whitney Houston or the parallel demonization of exiled political warriors Duduzile Ndwashlana and Assata Shakur, I know that South Africa has rhythmic resistance strategies that Black Americans have and should continue to learn from.

It’s been four years since I released my last mix, and six years since I released a musical essay from my Afro-Digital Migration series. House Music in Post-Apartheid South Africa. The gap in time is a reflection of the shift in direction my practice has taken since I’ve moved from behind the turntables into the university classroom. DJ Scholarship took me to new places—but South Africa continues to call me home to the decks. In November of 2019 I was indoctrinated into the sound movement known as Amapiano, a sub-genre of deep house that nods its head to the tempo of Kwaito and uses the organ as a primary time machine for Diasporic travel. Imagine if the global Black church had an 808 drum near the choir stand. Amapiano is closely related to what I call Blues Ministry, that genre of music that samples and creates an interdependent relationship between the sacred and the profane. Spiritually f****d by the bass.

I produced this mix while also thinking about global Blackness and how it informs how we listen to music and what we listen for. DJs were the first people to introduce me to music of the Black Atlantic. Sade’s residency on Quiet Storm Black American radio and Hugh Masekela’s imprint on Sunday jazz radio taught me about a transnational conversation that through music has remained in place representing a divine interconnectedness. To me, DJ Scholarship holds the intimacies that unfold within the worlds of the Black diaspora and the mix brings together multi-vocalities that speak to this unfolding.

Opening with the spokesperson for the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance party, Fadzayi Mahere addresses rising tensions in Zimbabwe after being arrested while protesting the government’s response to COVID and decades of struggles informed by the after lives of colonialism. It includes Nina Simone talking about her beloved chosen countries Liberia and Switzerland. I sample a call and response moment from the 2002 film Amandla and got blessed with a guest drop by Zama Dube, former radio host from YFM, and one of the most important people I’ve met this year. Zama Dube, again from Durban, was my thinking partner for this music. In this sense the mixed tape symbolizes what Louis Chude Sokei would call a "Diasporic echo chamber" that came together as we hit corners in the Crenshaw district blasting township funk.

The final voice is the masterful Dick Gregory from the 1972 Nation Time convention which took place in Gary, Indiana. I was invited by filmmaker and cultural critic dream hampton to produce a mix in response to the August 28, 2020 Black National Convention inspired by Nation Time. The Black Convention "recognizes a shared struggle with all oppressed peoples—and that collective liberation will be a product of all of our work. It is our hope that by building in solidarity and working together to create and amplify a shared agenda, we can continue to move toward a world in which the full humanity and dignity of all people is recognized.”

It made sense for me to co

I woke up in Paris this morning reflective and excited about how I found my way here. I’m in Paris because I’m a DJ and because I fell in love with house music enough to ask questions about its roots. In that asking I studied liner notes, read books, watched documentaries, and travelled globally to learn of house in the African Diaspora. I made my way across dance floors to get a sense of the network of underground club culture that’s existed in the name of house for multiple decades. My work as a DJ led to the development of research skills and I’ve applied those skills to unearthing the stories of hidden black artists and communities—from the areas of dance, film, literature, and music. If we don’t, who will? I’m here in Paris to shift the way people engage and understand the role of a DJ. I’m here to share the sonic stories of people buried beneath the shallow histories that place less value on the cultural contributions of women and gay folks from Black and Brown America. James Baldwin is included in my life work and I was here in Paris to present a paper titled “Don’t Let me be Misunderstood: The Personal Relationship Between James Baldwin, Nina Simone and Lorraine Hansberry,” as part of a conference titled, “A Language to Dwell: James Baldwin, Paris and International Visions,” at the American University of Paris.


Today I walked into “Café De Flore” the venue where Baldwin made final edits on his first book, "Go Tell it on the Mountain." I’ve been feeling his energy all up and through these streets. When I walked in the café and read the menu, I searched with pride for Baldwin’s name, somewhere between Truman Capote’s and Tennessee Williams’, especially because this was a café that boasts about its connection to the greatest of literary giants. Baba Baldwin’s name was nowhere to be found and for a second I felt deflated--betrayed even.

Then I thought, France you fancy, but you don’t fool me. Just when I’m taken by the architecture, cheese and fine wine, I get pulled back into a particular kind of remembering. You have an empire and the legacies of French Nobility to protect, which may explain why Baldwin’s house in the South of France is scheduled to be demolished soon. That said, in the spirit of Buggin Out from “Do the Right Thing,” I walked out of the establishment like “Yo Sal, how come you don’t got no brothers [black people] up on the wall?” But let’s build our own walls, create our own spaces to honor the geniuses that are not exceptions to a rule, but in fact representative of the brilliant communities they were shaped by. James Baldwin, we call your name even when the places where traces of you can be found choose not to and we recognize you as one of the ancestors of house music, the children who walk on beat in spirit alongside you…

In 2012, I released my first double mix titled “The Children of Baldwin,” a musical essay about the history and possible future of house. At the core of house music is joy, a rhythmic theory of escape, accentuated by what could be called fatal pleasure—the war on drugs and addiction, coupled with a dangerous freedom marked by a lurking “big disease with a little name.” I’m grateful for the many unnamed house producers, DJs, dancers and promoters whose voices we will never hear because in addition to many of them passing too soon, I’m not sure enough of us care to ask why house music speaks directly to the needs of Black and Brown queer bodies. My curiosity feels like a form of respect, a living altar I can create every time I share house music on a dance floor, in the academy, in my community and here on this platform.

Please accept this offering as a sequel to the “Children of Baldwin” cause we still out here building on the legacy and cramming to understand the answers to unasked questions before we leave this planet…for a new one.

Most of the songs from this mix are early classic hou

In 1985 Loose Ends performed on Soul Train and just like all other performers who graced the stage, Don Cornelius strolled up with a mic and a series of music journalistic questions. When guitarist Carl McIntosh opened his mouth to discuss how the band met, I experienced my first ever encounter with Black Britain. With a precious amount of naiveté my nine-year old mind asked, “So Black people exist outside of America and outside of Africa?” As far as I knew we were between those two places and those two places only.

Prior to discovering their British voices my family had Loose Ends “Hanging on a String (Contemplating)” on repeat. It was a new soul classic, #1 on the US R&B charts, and I couldn't get enough. After their Soul Train appearance, I went through my sister's tapes to conduct a proper review of their discography, which at the time consisted of two albums (1984’s A Little Spice and 1985’s So Where are You?). I did everything I could to find out what their experiences were with love, joy, soul and pain. I read liner notes in search of clues and discovered that a few members of the band were responsible for arranging and producing material for the group Five Star, who I had no idea was Black and British as well.

Amused by my obsession, my mom said with little fanfare, 'yeah, Sade is from over there too.' What? Now you playing! Pretty ass, heartbroken ass, emotionally brilliant ass Sade is Black British too? I'm sold and possibly down for life. And now that I think about it, I’ve been digging in the crates for three decades strong.
My digging is what led me to 'Keep on Movin' by Soul II Soul and shortly following that single the group hit us with the monstrous 'Back to Life' track in 1989. They, too, appeared on Soul Train and at the end of the performance I heard the same British accent falling from their lips of African descent.

By this time my questions were more refined. How did the Black British community come to be formed? What is their parent’s history? What do they eat? I knew that most of my family was from Louisiana, Texas and Missouri and landed in Cali by way of migration. Were there places where people travelled from to be in the UK? A hostile home they escaped by the thousands to feel ‘The Warmth of Other Suns?’ Isabel Wilkerson I see you. Grandma and them were part of the 1950s crew who packed cold fried chicken and biscuits for the train from Mississippi heading west to the left coast.

Inherent to DJ culture is research and my travels today can be traced back to questions I began to ask in the late eighties. I kept my ear to the streets of Black British music and by the mid-nineties I was knee deep in UK Soul and Acid Jazz. The Brand New Heavies, D'Influence, The Rebirth of Cool series, Massive Attack, and Omar were but a few of the folks who put me on to new parts of myself. See that's the thing, these people were me, but at the same time not, and while the similarities between our music and theirs, our social lives and theirs were in some ways parallel, there was a wealth of information to be found in the distinction of our experiences. That said I committed to learning what makes communities of the African Diaspora unique; that feels like the respectful thing to do. White supremacy teaches us to shun difference, as opposed to use it as a tool to cultivate humanizing curiosity. Checking for the lives of Black folks around the planet matters because it's an extension of self-love and a way to strengthen voices of resistance.

In 1998, I left the country for the first time to travel to Brixton and Bristol. This was my first experience with a Black global community and it was electronic music that pulled me in. When in grad school, I learned of an opportunity to attend a summer program at the University of Liverpool to study the influence of Black American Blues on the Beatles sound. I jumped on it and from there took my ass to a San Francisco post office to gets, and I d

An unreleased mix recorded in Berlin in 2015. In a sentence I would describe it as Diasporic Quiet Storm music. A lover once called me emotionally rigorous and when we broke up, these songs came to me, an archive of sonic heart reflections.

This mix is for Black women who love Björk Guðmundsdóttir. For some of us Björk is one of the guiding forces in the most secret parts of our emotional lives. And there is something to be said about the fact that my deepest, most intimate romantic relationships have been with Black women who speak Björk. She is one of the most brilliant artists of our time, with relevance far beyond the boringly sensational Academy Award swan dress debacle, which on the low, I believe was a challenge to American popular cultural values. Like on some fashion resistance shit. “I thought I could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of me?”

During my New York years, I had the opportunity to witness Björk live at the Apollo with three other Black women. Björk at The Apollo? What a combination and what an honorable way to honor the Black folks that get down with her like that. Aside from the sheer weight of the decision to perform in Harlem, we, like thousands of her students, made sure to have loot in hand ready to buy tickets the moment they went on sale. We managed to get tickets, but please understand, in less than five minutes the show was sold out. And to be honest, it wasn’t Harlem or Brooklyn who showed up to see her, which I understand; Björk is ‘strange fiction.’ It was the usual crew at the Apollo concert; former club kids, angsty white women and entitled hipsters. And of course some of us were in the house. My crew and I represented for all the Black women inspired by her audaciousness, by her work ethic, and by her willingness to make whatever screw face necessary to offer ‘love scholarship’ through song. We cheered from the balcony squinting to experience what looked like an Icelandic ball of glitter performing unapologetically to self-composed electro folk music. I will never forget her relationship with the microphone, dancing around it, stepping away from it, looking into it and making it sing her songs. She’s a beast of a live performer.

After the concert I kept thinking about how to build on the energy felt from the experience. So I reached out to Greg Tate, one of the only Black men in my life who loves Bjork as much as I do, to discuss the possibility of the Black Rock Coalition’s involvement in a tribute to Björk, at the Apollo Theater no less. The vision was to have my favorite artists, including Tamar Kali, Joi and Taylor McFerrin, to not so much perform, but interpret her music. I believe that only an original interpretation is possible. A night of Björk covers would never do. Later I decided to hold off on the tribute in fear of not having the resources to do the event justice. One cannot half step when the name Björk is attached to a project and slowly but surely my budget fronted on my vision.

While a major tribute event was not possible, I kept thinking of ways to express the impact this creature of an artist has had on my artistic and personal development. I’ve turned to Björk’s music so many times for heart education and the inevitable ‘feeling of feelings’ that happen when you find yourself brave enough to face the dark beauty of a song like ‘Unravel’ from the Homogenic album. For years I’ve waited for whatever it is I am supposed to do with this special place that I hold for her work in my heart. It turned out to be this mix, which was partially inspired by the release of her latest and ninth studio album, Vulnicura. My Black girl Bjork tribe was surprised, maybe even betrayed to learn that I don’t love it. It’s brilliant by default, but part of why I love her so much is because she speaks to lovers wherever they are on their journey, excavating lessons buried deep in the nuanced exchanges between intimate partners in any given space and time. A breakup album felt too obvious for me.

Before listening to Vulnicura I had to ask myself if I even had the emotional capacity to hold Björk’s heartbreak this winter? Björk’s triple Scorpio heartbreak? Triple Scorpi