Arizona State University Professor and author Rashad Shabazz discusses why Prince’s genius is boring, how Minneapolis is an underrated music city, and what Prince served for snacks at a 1998 secret Paisley Park show.
My favorite part of the book (and this interview) was learning about how compulsory music education in Minneapolis from 1911 to the mid-1950s create a community with incredible levels of music literacy, creating just the right conditions to cultivate a musical genius like Prince.
Do you have a Prince fan in your life? Please share this episode with them. They’ll love it!
Recommendation
Our discussion ran long, so you won’t hear a recommendation at the end of the episode. But if you want more Prince and more geography of music, I recommend listening to this Minnesota Public Radio story about the writer Frank Bures’s walking Prince tour.
[Fun fact: Frank Bures, Minnesota rapper Yung Gravy, and I are all staff alum of YMCA Camp Olson.]
Links
Prince’s Minneapolis: A Biography of Sound and Place (University of North Carolina Press)
“ICE Can’t Silence Prince’s Minneapolis” by Rashad Shabazz, Zocalo Public Square
