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Reduced Listening + Afropean, 2024
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Afropean Podcast

We’re very excited to introduce our new 6-part documentary podcast series, The Afropean podcast. An original Reduced Listening production, made in collaboration with Johny Pitts.

Johny is a long-term friend and collaborator with Reduced Listening. Since our first documentary together back in 2015 Johny has developed a powerful broadcasting presence. He is now a regular host of Radio 4’s Open Book and presenter of the authored Radio 4 series Failure of the Future, released earlier this year, exploring unfulfilled utopian visions, recorded in Japan.

Afropean Podcast sheds light on a Europe often missing from tourist guides and official national narratives. For centuries, the continent has been shaped by the intercultural exchange of people and ideas, often under exploitative conditions. In recent years, public debate has become dominated by culture wars and now, with the rise of far-right parties in Germany, France and beyond, it is the right time to reflect on the cultural impact and resilience of an African diaspora that has redefined the major metropolitan centres of Europe.

Each episode dives deep into a different European capital: Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon and Paris. With on-the-ground recordings it is an immersive listening experience, featuring Decolonial canal rides in Amsterdam, Black history walking tours of Brussels and Paris, architectural wanderings from the hinterlands of Stockholm, musical journeys to the Buracas of Lisbon, and psycho-geographic strolls along the former fault lines of the Berlin Wall.

The series also features interviews with some of Europe’s leading black scholars, artists, activists and musicians, such as Gloria Wekker, Sibo Kanobana, Zap Mama, Les Nubians, Joy Denalane, the Black Archives in Amsterdam, Stephen Simmonds, Olivette Otele, Bonaventure Ndikung, Kalaf Epalanga and many more.

The Afropean podcast is the latest iteration of Johny’s major multimedia project, centred around his non-fiction book Afropean: Notes From Black Europe, which was published by Penguin in 2019, winning numerous awards, and since translated into eight languages.

Afropean Podcast will be released by Reduced Listening and available on all major podcast platforms. Produced and sound designed by Femi Oriogun-Williams.
This project was made possible with the kind support of National Geographic.