Inside Carbon Sound's mission to celebrate Black musical expression
by Diane
September 27, 2022
R&B, hip-hop, jazz, electronica, Afrobeats, and other forms of Black musical expression have a new home in public radio: Carbon Sound, a new 24/7 stream provided by The Current.
Local Show host Diane caught up with content director Julian Green to talk about how he got his start in radio and about the inspiration and mission of Carbon Sound. We’ll also discuss his favorite local artists and why, and how he uses social media to leverage community engagement.
Transcript edited for length and clarity.
Diane: Here with Julian Green, the content director of Carbon Sound. Good to have you in the studio with me.
Julian Green: Good to be here. Thanks, Diane.
Coworkers, basically, at The Current, and gotten to know you over the last year or so. And here you are now, the content director. You first started as an intern here at The Current, and now you’re running your own stream, which is so amazing. Let's start by just hearing in the background of how Carbon Sound came to be.
Yeah. It's a long story. But while I was interning, the first day I found out about this grant proposal they had out to the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) for a new urban alternative station, I had come here straight from college straight from Radio K. At Radio K I started The Vanguard, which is their 24/7, online hip-hop and R&B stream. So when I heard about them trying to do something similar at The Current, my eyes lit up because I was like, OK, I could maybe do this. It takes a while for the grant process. And then after the grant process is finished, they have to open up hiring.
Right.
But luckily, things worked out so that everything lined up so that there wasn't a gap between the internship and starting the position. Starting the position was a whole other thing. Because even back in January of this year, we didn't have a name. We didn't have a music library. We didn't have a host. So from January to June 16, a little bit before then, but from January to launch was pretty much getting our identity right, figuring out who's the host, figuring out who we want to be and how we want to serve the Twin Cities, and eventually serve the country too.
So to get more into Carbon Sound, it celebrates Black musical expression, hip-hop, R&B, electronica, all types. Can you describe in your own words what Carbon Sound is becoming and the sound.
So that idea of the whole depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression really guided us through those first beginning steps of everything and when we first launched. As I keep working more on it, I just realized we just play really good music that I don't hear anywhere else like on the radio or anything like that. And it's because of that initial shared vision of just depth, breadth, and influence, by not tying ourselves to a specific genre or a specific sound, or even a specific message necessarily, but just showing the full beauty of all of it.
It just happened so naturally. And we're able to really explore these family trees of different artists and these different movements that happened because of that whole depth, breadth, and influence thing. So it just all translates to just good different kinds of music you don't hear a lot of other places.
The Vanguard, you were a student at the U of M. And there wasn't a streaming service like that before at Radio K. Tell me about how that came to fruition.
It's a similar thing. Some grant monies appeared and the managing director of Radio K – her name is Sarah, told me about it and thought I'd be a good person for it. Basically, a lot of things happened between that phone call and when the Vanguard launched. The most important thing actually being the start of the pandemic. That's when time opened up to burn thousands of CDs to build a music library, and then build a staff, and then get to the point where we can launch it publicly.
So burning the CDs and everything was like the second half of my junior year. Starting it was October of my senior year.
And then throughout my senior year, I was also the program director of Radio K concurrently, but then also starting the new thing, The Vanguard. So throughout my senior year, it was just working with the staff to build it into what we all thought it should be, and then getting it to the point where they could run it. Because after I graduated, I would have to leave everything related to Radio K and stuff like that. So they're still running it today and they're still doing a great job with it.
But that's basically how it came together. That phone call that I described when Sarah told me about what it could be, that was summer of 2019, and it didn't launch until October of 2020. So honestly, the pandemic, the free time of all that is what allowed for it.
Tell me about – obviously, you have a strong passion for music, and I want to go back to even thinking about your earlier days before you went to college, and the role that music played in your life. And how you feel like you got to this point of being like, OK, this is what I want to do, I want to get into radio.
For sure. I never really considered music as being like a career field before I got to college simply because you're just not taught that. You're taught you have to learn how to build or program these robots that are going to be taking everyone else's job.
I was never really that into it, but I always loved music. I always listen to a lot of it, especially later in high school too, tried to listen to a lot of different kinds of it and was exposed to a lot of different kinds of music because of my family background. And then also just stuff like video games too, the Guitar Hero games, and Rock Band, and stuff like that. Hearing Metallica as a Black nine-year-old, most people don't have that experience, but that brought all that different stuff into my life and gave me the more eclectic kind of taste that at least I think I have.
But I didn't realize radio could be a thing until I was working at this grocery store when I was 16. I had this same voice back then too. And I always work in the morning, so a lot of older people were in there shopping and stuff like that. They told me, “You should be on the radio.” And then when I got to the University of Minnesota, it was the Welcome Week thing at the Mariucci Ice Arena with all the different student groups. And I saw Radio K, and I just made the connection.
So I just started going to the meetings, and then from there, became a DJ. And then at the same time as all that, I was actually running my own blog. So I was doing written pieces, and I was doing a podcast and different kinds of mixes at my website that nobody visited. But I just enjoyed doing it, and I did it a lot. And from there, just continued just doing all kinds of different facets of the music industry.
But radio and specifically making content like how we do it here has always been the most gratifying thing simply because they're not trying to sell anyone anything. You can have a perspective, and you can also give people a platform.
You mentioned your family. Are your parents really heavily involved in music?
My dad was a DJ, and he lived in Chicago when all the house music stuff was first starting. He still used to DJ when I was a kid, but not in public, just like for himself. And just always played a lot of music, a lot of different kinds of music.
You talk about having a blog, I look at your Twitter following – you have an amazing Twitter page with a lot of followers. And I'm curious to know how you use Twitter to connect to other people. In such a really – how do I want to say it? Just really creative, but real … I'd love to hear you talk about social media a little bit.
I don't know what to say (laughs). I always was into memes and stuff. I was pretty — after my sisters left for college I was pretty lonely, so I spent a lot of time just on the internet. This was 2011, 2012. That's actually when a lot of the meme metas that we know today of top text, bottom text image in the background. That's when all that stuff was first starting.
So I saw a lot of that. And then I would just see a lot of just funny people and stuff. I didn't really gain a following on Twitter until I got to college, but that was just because I understood more just what makes a good tweet and how to really fill the volume of the container.
I think a lot of tweets are too long. I think people don't realize the power of an image or just not saying every single thing that comes into your head and just using your drafts. It just feels natural for me. It's funny — I was looking at my yearbook this morning, I was voted biggest social media addict in 2017.
So I was able to do that and turn it into a job. But it all works into each other because — I don't know, you have to think about — if you're tweeting something, does it fit this format? Is it short enough? Is it funny? Do I want this to be in a public ledger? Am I OK with people knowing this opinion about me? If the Twitter mob comes for me as it does for people, am I going to care about this opinion enough to do it, to stand behind it? It's an interesting place. It's not a happy place. But I laugh more than anything on there. So I just enjoy it.
Well, that's the thing about social media though – it’s an essential tool for musicians to promote themselves. So you've found a perfect way to use social media to hype other artists. And I'm most recently thinking of one of (Carbon Sound’s) first YouTube videos, where you engage with fans of Destroy Lonely and you interview them. And then you had the most epic ending to the video, the most opposite person that you would think would be into this type of music, an older man, white man.
And he listens, he's like, “Oh, that's really good, I like that beat.” Nobody would have thought – and it just blew up, has over 10K views, even just that part of the section. I was just – this is brilliant. I loved seeing that, and I think it's really entertaining and really cool. And I appreciate how you connected with the fans. They felt (they could) just totally be themselves.
Thank you.
Tell me a little bit about the background of conceptualizing what you were going to do for that concert.
Well, we were very inspired, myself and videographer, Liam (Armstrong), very inspired by YouTube channels like Channel 5, and then just other things we had seen. And we thought that there's a lot of on-the-street interviews that happen at concerts. You see a lot of them on TikTok. A lot of them just boil down to people saying stupid stuff in front of a camera, misogynistic stuff, sometimes racist stuff, just because they have a camera in front of them and they're young teenagers that want to act stupid because they're away from their parents for the first time.
What Liam and I wanted to do was, of course, make something that's funny and lighthearted, and has just those moments that are like, OK, this person is a super fan. But we didn't want to make a cringe compilation. We didn't want to make something that would harm people down the line, the people that are in the video. And we didn't want to make people something that would just harm people in general.
The “Music for Life” tagline, which the old man said, verbatim, in the video, it's about just showing how music can connect all of us and connect all these dots, and we can just have these meaningful experiences. So in essence, the video was about that, and trying to package that in an entertaining – "edutaining," some would say – way, I guess. And just making it short and enjoyable, I guess, was the goal.
Cool. Destroy – I mean, we're here on The Local Show, and Destroy Lonely is not a local artist. But Carbon Sound does, on regular rotation, play local artists, which is really awesome, another great way to showcase the amazing talent in our state of Minnesota. So yeah, let's talk about some of your favorite local artists and some of the people that have been catching your ear and why.
Yeah, for sure. There's tons of people. I remember being at Afropunk on Juneteenth earlier this summer. And I was talking with someone and they literally couldn't tell the difference between, oh, is this person local, or are they from out of town? Because there was already such intense production. So much – just artistry going into all of it. And that's what I like a lot about being here – is that there are so many people that you can tell they're really trying to push themselves. And through pushing themselves, raising the bar for everyone else.
When I talk about that, of course, people like Blu Bone, Kamilla Love, Ricki Monique, MMYYKK, all kinds of people come to mind. But I'm hesitant to name one person. But anybody that's just really doing their own thing really, doing their own thing for posterity's sake, realizing that what they're doing is going to make things easier for everyone else. And just creating because it feels good and because it's something – it's how they can express themselves best and connect with people, rather than trying to run up streams or trying to be rich and famous. Just creating for creating's sake. And you can do that across any genre. It doesn't have to sound super artsy either. As long as you have that ethos, that's what it's all about to me.
That's the other thing that I appreciate about Carbon Sound. I feel like The Current definitely plays a lot of hip-hop and R&B. But there's definitely music out there that The Current doesn't play, and I see Carbon Sound as perhaps a stepping stone for The Current to even have more Black expression and forms on The Current. And I mean, The Message, of course, is one spot you can hear it. But yeah, what's your take on this? Are you hoping that Carbon Sound might influence The Current in some ways?
I think it's inevitable because The Current has already definitely influenced Carbon Sound in a way just because those songs that were already in The Current's library were the first tracks in our library.
Anything we can do to make The Current's playlist more diverse is a good thing because it's going to turn into a more interesting experience for the listener, in my opinion. If you love the music, you definitely will love just hearing more of it that you wouldn't have heard before. I think that's why people listen to The Current. But it's not about making The Current a hip-hop and R&B station. Of course, we should be playing that. We shouldn't be as afraid of playing that as maybe we were in the years past because I think people as a whole are just becoming more accepting of hearing a lot of different genres all the time because we're just exposed to more of them through social media and stuff like that. But yeah, the goal is just to keep up a strong, healthy symbiotic relationship.
Absolutely.
And we're definitely going to influence how each other sounds. But definitely want to keep things distinct. But it's also part of the family tree.
One of the reasons why I love The Current is because it plays so many styles of music. But it definitely has a sound, and it has an audience. And you don't want to go too far out of the way, otherwise you might alienate your audience. So I see there's this – you really have to be intentional about everything that you play … And the more that I can see it grow in ways of diversity, I certainly appreciate being a person of color, being queer, being all of that stuff.
So yeah, tell me about your team a little bit, Sanni Brown and Andre Griffin. I love Sanni Brown, her work, so much.
Yeah. same here. So Sanni was already host of The Message on The Current. She was host with Sean (McPherson) when he was here. And she's been doing it by herself since he left earlier this year. She applied for the position of host on Carbon Sound. Just hearing about the project naturally because she was already here. And she was just a great fit for it, regardless of the fact that she was already here.
She has this really cool perspective on music, and has been around to hear so much of it and how it changes through time, and still appreciates the new stuff and can still put you on to a whole lot of really cool old stuff. She has this really cool personality that draws you into the music and keeps your attention while you're listening when she's on from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday. And even as we start to do more interviews and in-studios and stuff like that too, just the personality and the way she can make artists open up is really cool, and we're super lucky to have her be the voice of the team.
Andre is somebody that actually came as a result of some of the research we were doing before we officially launched. He was a part of the focus groups we were doing. He stood out because of the music that he was into, and then also because of his understanding of just the history of the Twin Cities and his work doing community engagement while he was a student at Augsburg in Minneapolis.
Andre's been great with just helping us become a part of these community events so that we can amplify them, have a presence there, and promote them through all of our channels and stuff like that. And then also some of the more philanthropic stuff that we want to do in the future too, Andre is going to be taking on, and especially as we start to do our own events and stuff like that too. But super lucky to have both of them on the team.
That's so cool. Thank you for being here and giving us the background and the 411. Julian Green of Carbon Sound. You can find it at carbonsound.fm, or even at thecurrent.org if you click on the different streams and go to Carbon Sound. It is so great. I'm having such a good time listening to it all the time. Anything else you'd like to add or that we might not have covered?
Please sign up for the newsletter. Visit carbonsound.fm. Other than that, just thanks for having me here, Diane.
Such a pleasure to chat with you. Thanks, Julian.
