Great outfits, street parties, swagger: Tana Yonas’ essential summer tracks

So I think that the key to building a positive future for everyone is to make sure that everyone has access to personal superintelligence. So today, I am proud to share that we are open sourcing a new class of on-device models that we are calling Muse Glimmer. It's a 30 billion parameter dense model that runs on your laptop, and it's the highest performing model of its size. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video posted on social media today. The video and a companion essay he posted this morning lay out his vision for an AI future powered by models run locally on people's personal devices rather than in cloud-based data centers. He claims this approach allows everyone to benefit from personal superintelligence. It's the latest attempt by tech CEO to make AI more appealing to an increasingly skeptical and furious public. In his own letter released this morning, Senator Bernie Sanders called on AI CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg to pause development. Bernie Sanders says we are at a critical juncture where AI risks getting out of human control if we continue business as usual. We're going to talk about this now with Rebecca Boulon, senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers the AI industry. Welcome back to press play, Rebecca. Hey, how's it going? Great, thanks. All right, so tell us more about what Mark Zuckerberg's vision is for his, as he sees it, a more optimistic AI future. Yeah, I mean, well, in his essay, the future is for everyone. I mean, you heard him talking about it. He's basically he thinks superintelligence is coming and it's coming soon. Let's not try to slow it down or let a few governments and companies control it. Instead, we should make it broadly available so individuals have more power. And what does that mean by putting what he calls muse glimmer on our own personal devices like our laptops? So essentially, I mean, I think it's not entirely clear what it will look like yet, but what he's envisioning is some kind of world in which everyone. It has their own personal agent that can do things like help them learn and create and work and manage their lives, start businesses. So, yeah, like part of the vision, as you mentioned, is Muse Glimmer. So Muse Glimmer is an open source model. It's kind of a pared down version of their most powerful closed source model, which is called Muse Spark. And it can run locally on consumer hardware. So. you know, what that ends up looking like. Like I've asked, actually, and I'm waiting to hear back from meta about like what specific types of hardware? Like, can I just download this to my MacBook and power and have an agent power my life? But basically the point is that if you can have it on your local device and running off of, you know, one GPU rather than having to send information up into the cloud.

where it's no longer yours, then you can keep all of your personal data in one place, right? You can keep it all on the device. The agent can access all of your files, all of your personal, deeply personal, sensitive information that you wouldn't want getting out. But if it only stays on your device, then he's arguing that that's a more privacy forward way to integrate AI into your life. But wouldn't it have to go out into the world to fetch this information for you and to communicate with other people? I think, I mean, I guess it depends on like what kind of permissions that you give your agent. Like if you give it permission to access the internet, then yes, that's exactly what would happen. So I think that, you know, he's laying out kind of a beautiful vision, but I'm not sure that. it's necessarily going to happen in that way, right? Like as we've seen from, you know, open claw experiments throughout the last year, that once you give agents a task, sometimes they will do whatever it takes to complete that task. And, you know, if they have access to the internet and other systems, then things might. get out of hand. They might perform actions that you didn't want them to perform. So like there's a host of, you know, potential cyber and just practical issues that can arise from this. But I think this is, you know, at the end of the day, Mark Zuckerberg slash meta's attempt to. win at AI in their own way because they didn't, you know, they don't have the most powerful models like OpenAI and Claude or Anthropics Claude. So I think that they're trying to, you know, pitch it from a different way. But this wouldn't get rid of data centers, right? They're still going to build these massive data centers or try to. And didn't he announce he's going, he would give communities like a billion dollars to offset some of the concern about these data centers? Yeah, so data centers are still going to be essential for training and for inference. So, you know, I think that the way that they're splitting this up is that they're offering, you know, highly capable models that you can fine-tune and run on your local device. But for people who want more and who want more access to compute, that's when they'll be charged for it. And then they'll be using the compute from meta's data centers. So last week, researchers at Stanford announced that they had created 16 novel viruses using AI, as in real diseases, not computer viruses. And obviously, this is a hugely sharp double-edged sword. It could lead to some medical breakthroughs, but also there is an obvious biosecurity hazard there. What do you make of this development at a time when AI models are increasingly escaping their environments? And in, you know, the known instances have been relatively minor but still concerning. What does this mean to you? Well, I think that that's just one example of a myriad of ways that people can.

uncover potentially really scary capabilities with AI. And the fact that these AI agents are becoming more capable and open models, which anyone can download, are also becoming more capable and catching up to the frontier closed models. I think it concerns a lot of people. And that's why you have, you know, as you mentioned before, Bernie Sanders and other policymakers, you know, asking or urging AI companies to slow down. and stop development because it's getting to a point where we may not be able to control what AI does, right? Even if, you know, it's not necessarily true that in the cases of some of the jail breaks that we've seen, or sorry, some of the breaking out of sandboxes that we've seen that these agents were knowingly trying to, you know, break out and hack into other companies, but they... They did so in order to fulfill a specific goal or tasks that was asked of them. And so that's when things can kind of run away because you don't know what actions they're going to take and they're very, very capable. So tell me more about what Bernie Sanders said and what he could possibly do. He wrote this open letter, I guess it was an open letter, to several CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, and basically urged them to stop. Is there any indication that they would listen to him? No, absolutely not. And I think that, I think Mark Zuckerberg's letter is proof of that, right? He's saying we're not going to stop, right? AI's becoming insanely powerful. So society is better, you know, his argument, society is better off giving that power to billions of individuals rather than allowing a handful of institutions to own it. And meta is the company providing that layer. So, you know, going back to Bernie Sanders, you know, it's not too late to avoid disaster. He said, stop building machines that humans cannot control. He said, let me be very clear if you do not take appropriate action. Now, my colleagues and I in the U.S. Senate will. I'm deeply skeptical that that will happen. Congress moves exceptionally slow. You know, he did cite in his letter, previous statements from the companies saying that they would stop or pause development of AI systems became too risky or to safely control. But I think that that goalpost just keeps getting moved outwards, right? It's like what, you know, five years ago, would it have looked like, you know, very capable models escaping their sandboxes and hacking into other systems? I think it might have. But that. You know, that happened and the world's still turning. And that's just become the new normal. So it's like what will be the thing that I think policymakers have like are looking up now. They're looking around and saying we need to do something. But I don't know what will be the thing that will get anybody to actually pull back on development, especially when, you know, anyone can just cry China. And we can't possibly let China win. And China's not going to slow down. So you would need some kind of cross-border collaboration. And from the experts I've spoken to, that's nowhere close. What about when it comes to building data centers? Because there is a lot of pushback on that. I think New York State has banned any new data center for at least a year. And so could that be a way to slow this down, this community opposition to data centers?

I suppose it's possible, yeah. I think that they'll just find other places to build them, though. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, moratoriums. It's happening. You know, luckily, it's bipartisan. It's happening across, it's happening in red states. It's happening in blue states. But, you know, they could always just go to another country and build data centers, which, you know, they are in a lot of cases. I think, you know, you ideally want to have that kind of thing happening on American soil for a host of reasons. Yeah, I think that they, as we can see from this $100 billion promise from meta and a lot of the promises that other companies have made about data centers is they'll find a way to kind of smooth this over and offer to make it worth communities while to have data centers built there. Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for coming back on the show today. Thanks for having me. That's Rebecca Balan, senior reporter at TechCrunch.

Coming up, why Donald Trump keeps pushing back against Supreme Court decisions, can that work? And later, the man accused of killing Tupac Shakur wrote a book in which he says he did it. Those stories are next on Press Play. There's the story you hear, and then there's the story behind it. Who's telling it? What are their motivations? What's at stake? I'm Brian Reed, and on my show from KCRW, question everything, we tell stories about power and influence and the ways that people are manipulating the truth. And we do that by talking to the people living with the consequences. My feed was flooded without my consent. I was targeted by Instagram. Listen to question everything, wherever you get your podcasts. This is press play on 89.9 KCRW, I'm Madeline Brown. The Supreme Court gave President Trump much of what he wanted in the most recent term, but they did tell him no in a few instances. Namely, they rejected his executive order to end birthright citizenship, and they prevented him from firing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Well, last week, Trump issued new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, and he rebooted efforts to fire Lisa Cook. Will it work? We're going to talk about this now with our legal legal, Jessica Levinson. She's a professor at Loyola Law School, and she joins us most Mondays. Hello. Hello. All right, let's begin with birthright citizenship. It seems pretty clear in the 14th Amendment that it grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, and the Supreme Court upheld that. And yet, Trump says, we're not done with this. Tell us what he said and did. If at first you don't succeed, which is really the moral of our story today. So when it comes to birthright citizenship, what we know from the Supreme Court's decision at the end of the term is that the court emphasized what we know, which is that we don't look at the status of your parents when we're determining whether or not you are a citizen of this country. And there are very narrow exceptions. And the court said again and again throughout the opinion. these exceptions are small, these exceptions are narrow. And I think what the Trump administration is basically trying to do is blow a really big hole in those exceptions. So specifically, what are we talking about? There's an exception for the children of foreign diplomats. Now, Why is there an exception for them? Because they're not subject to the jurisdiction, which is a key part of the 14th Amendment's test for citizenship. They have diplomatic immunity. Now, what about another group? There's another exception. And that's an exception for the children of hostile occupying enemy forces. And so. Part of what this executive order is doing is looking at those two exceptions and then trying to significantly broaden them out. We can, of course, talk about the details, but I'll say, you know, based on my reading of that decision, the Trump versus Barbara decision at the end of June, I don't think the Trump administration is likely to succeed on anything other than reaffirming that there are narrow exceptions to the citizenship clause.

Okay, so if there are these exceptions, why issue the executive orders? So I think part of what we see from the Trump administration and other administrations in the past is that sometimes an executive order is issued in order to try and change behavior or change the law. And sometimes it's issued in order to make a political argument as well. I think there's no question that the Trump administration has taken a very... stringent and aggressive tact when it comes to immigration. And a big part of this executive order that we haven't talked about yet is banning so-called birth tourism and trying to prohibit the children of people who come to the United States in order to give birth to a child who will be a U.S. citizen, trying to prohibit those children from obtaining citizenship. Now, this is something that... has been discussed long before the Trump administration. But I think what you see in the executive order is, in part, it's a argument that we're going to keep trying when it comes to birthright citizenship. But in part, it's now narrowing its focus on something that is popular for a number of Americans, which is to try and, again, reduce that practice and strip the children of so-called of people who engage in birth tourism from... citizenship, which again, I think legally is likely to be found unsound. But do you think that this will eventually go back to the Supreme Court? I think it could go back to the Supreme Court because we have much... a much narrower focus now. Now, of course, long-time listeners can predict what I'm about to say is, well, the first thing we need is we need somebody who has standing to challenge this executive order. And we know that the executive order is forward looking. So you need a group or individuals or states who say, I have enough of an injury based on the fear that this executive order is about to be implemented. And then after that, you have to get over the second threshold, which was an issue in the first iteration of the birthright citizenship case to go before the court, which is federal district court judges can't issue nationwide injunctions. So you would probably need something like a class action to bring that suit. And then I think we could get to. the merits of the legal questions that these executive orders bring up. And yes, we could be having this conversation again at the end of June at some point in the near future. Okay, let's talk about Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Last August, Trump announced that he had fired Cook over some alleged mortgage fraud abuses. strongly denies that. The court in a five to four decisions said she couldn't be fired because she did not receive due process and didn't receive notice. So what is Trump doing now to revive this? Well, Trump is saying here's your process. So as you said, a big part of the original case was.

As a result of the Dobbs decision, those states have banned abortions. So I think that's what he's talking about. This is an example of Congress leaving on the books a law that wasn't used, but now all of a sudden it's there and it might be revived. And that would obviously be challenged and make its way up to the highest court. If that should happen. I think that would be challenged. And of course, you could have a Congress saying we're repealing this law and that would significantly change the legal landscape. So you could have two routes. You could have Congress saying we don't want this law to be enforced anymore or you could have the court saying we think that there's a legal challenge here. And it's possible that both efforts will happen simultaneously if Todd Blanche does in fact try and use the Comstock Act. Our legal legal, Jessica Levinson, teaches law at Loyola Law School, and she joins us most Mondays. Thank you. Thank you.

Coming up, Tupac Shakur was killed 30 years ago. Today, a man goes on trial for killing him. Dwayne Davis was out here talking about being the only living person left in that white Cadillac, and he seemed to do so without facing any consequences. That story is next on Press Play. This is press play on KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. Nearly three years ago on a quiet residential street in suburban Las Vegas, police arrested a 60-year-old man named Dwayne Davis. And while Davis sat in the back seat of the squad car, he made small talk with one of the officers. So what they got you for, man? Oh, my biggest case in Las Vegas history. Oh, yeah? Like recent? September the 7th. 1996. Oh no shit. Wow. So it's a little hard to hear there, but Davis says the biggest case in Las Vegas history on September 7, 1996. And that surprise from the officer is also his recognition because Davis is talking about the murder of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur. Davis was charged with first-degree murder, and the trial begins today in Las Vegas. It's the first time charges have ever been brought in the killing that happened 30 years ago next month. Back when Davis was arrested, I spoke with Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times. He and his colleagues poured over hundreds of pages of grand jury testimony in this case to reconstruct what led up to that night and how it changed hip-hop history. Okay, so let's go back to that night in Las Vegas, September 7th, 1996. Tupac and Shug Knight, who was the head of Death Row Records, were cruising the Las Vegas strip. Tupac in the passenger seat, and he had been leaning out of the window talking to some women in a car next to him at a stoplight. That car drives up. off, and another car pulls up. It's a white Cadillac with Davis in it and three other guys. They had been looking for Tupac, and here is Davis describing that moment in a 2018 interview with BET. He wouldn't even been out the window. We wouldn't have never seen him. Pulled up. I was in the front seat. Happen to see my friend. Sure. Should look over. He sees you. Yeah. He looks right at you. He says, yeah, he looked right at me. What happened next? I mean, shots were fired from the Cadillac towards Shug Knight's BMW, hitting both Tupac and grazing Shug Nite in the head and eventually taking Tupac's life. Yeah. So he died a week later. He was just 25 years old. Why were they looking for him? So this is a story that goes back.

hours and then days and then weeks and then years. And it really involves two local Southern California gang factions from Compton, the South Side Crips and the Mob Piru Bloods. And Tupac and Shug Knight with Death Row had become closely aligned with the Bloods, whereas the South Side Crips, their sworn enemies had a bit of an alliance with the East Coast label, Bad Boy. What started as a rap rival, between Tupac and his one-time friend, Notorious B.I.G. They have their own little beef going, and that's mostly musical. But when it combines with this sort of long festering gang beef from Compton, that's when it explodes this night in Las Vegas in 1996. And also... There had been a brawl at a mall. Yes. Right before, a few weeks before they all ended up in Las Vegas. And they were in Las Vegas to watch a Mike Tyson fight, a boxing match, right? Correct, yes. And the fight lasted less than two minutes. So already this night is topsy-turvy because Tyson does this insane knockout in the first round. And that sort of sets off this chain of events that goes all the way back to this mall brawl that you're referring to. Right. Well, first before we get to the brawl, why was it that the fight lasting? So short, why did that set off a chain of events? I think everyone's night just didn't go exactly as planned. Tupac is supposed to be performing later that evening at the new Death Row Club, Club 662, which on a telephone pad stands for mob. So he's supposed to be there for the after party. Some people in Tupac's crew, as we know from this grand jury testimony that was recently released, didn't even make it to their seats in time before Mike Tyson ends the fight. So I think, you know, people are just trying to figure out what their next move is and everything is thrown into question because of the accelerated schedule of the evening. Okay, so let's go back a few weeks previously to the Lakewood Mall brawl. Why is that an inciting incident and what happened? So we already know that the Bloods and the Crips, especially in Southern California, in Compton, are sworn rivals. It's basically on site when they see one another out. Now, we learn from the grand jury testimony of Devonta Lee, who was an affiliate of the Compton Southside Crips at this time. He said that Mr. Davis, better known as Keefe D, the local sort of general of the Crips. who was arrested last week, he had sent a football player to the mall to go back to school shopping. Star football player, getting ready to go to college. He's affiliated with the Crips. So they're going to protect him at the mall and they're going to go on a little shopping spree before he goes off to school to represent them on a more national level. Now, they're walking through the mall and they see a group of bloods. And one of these bloods is wearing a death row chain. He's also a football player.

He has his own alliances on the other side. Now, immediately they start bickering. They start throwing up their sets to one another. And before you know, there's a brawl that ruins the footlocker in the Lakewood Mall. And the chain, the death row chain, which is described in this grand jury testimony as like someone's crown. It's a trophy. It's a jewel to be protected. And the crypts steal it from the neck of a blood affiliate. But I guess I'm wondering, like, what is the link between this brawl in Lakewood, the stealing of the chain, and then this group of guys hunting down Tupac are looking for him that night on the Las Vegas trip? So that's another fight that happens in between. So when Tupac and Shug are at the fight, they're leaving the hotel at the MGM Grand, the arena there. And they happen to upon a man named Orlando Anderson. He's the nephew of Keefe D, the nephew of Dway, the nephew of Dwayne Davis, who was arrested in the killing. And he takes a moment to go to the bathroom on his own without his friends. And Tupac and Shug and their group of blood spots Orlando. And they're with the chain snatching victim from the mall. He says that guy right there was part of the group that took my chain. And immediately, Tupac and his friends, and this is caught on security camera. This is known at the time, even almost three decades ago. They jump on Orlando Anderson and they start to punch and kick him. And that's retaliation for what happened at the mall. So Orlando Anderson is in the car, in the Cadillac that pulls up alongside Tupac Shakur and Shugnight. And for many years, it was thought he pulled the trigger. Do we know if that's true? We don't know exactly who pulled the trigger. For many years, it was assumed that it had been Orlando Anderson and that he was in fact... retaliating for being beaten up in the MGM Grand after the Tyson fight. So after he gets jumped by death row, he goes back to Kee-D., his uncle, you know, the big time Crip who's with them, and says, Tupac and Shug, they got me. And so they spend the rest of the night trying to track those guys down to get their own revenge. So it's this endless cycle of little fights where these guys see each other in public, they get one over, and then it's that person's turn to respond. So. So Orlando, his uncle, and two others get into this Cadillac, and at first they think they're going to find Shug and Tupac at the club where the after party is supposed to be. They do a little bit of a stake out there in the parking lot, and they're basically giving up and going home. Keevi-D writes in his memoir, which came out in 2019, that they were just going to stop by the liquor store and go party and figure out their revenge another night. But as they're rolling down towards the strip, that's when they spot Tupac and Shug in the BMW, and they take their chance right then and there. But had they intended, and I guess maybe this will come out in trial or not, to actually kill Tupac, or just to scare him? You know, I think they went there with the intention of doing serious harm.

to both Shug Knight and Tupac. This was, as we've said, a long simmering rivalry and the beatdown that they give to Orlando Anderson only hours later. That we learned from this grand jury testimony and from many years of these affiliates talking about what happened that night. That was a huge sign of disrespect. And Orlando Anderson was because of his relationship with Keefei D., with D. D., his uncle, he was a member to be protected. He had a high ranking. They talk about him having a sort of silver spoon of gang affiliation because of his family connections. So for Tupac and Shug and their friends to beat this guy up, that demanded a very serious. response. Now, the thought is that because Orlando Anderson was the one who got beat up, that he should be the one to pull the trigger in revenge. But because of the arrangement of the car with Keefe Dee sitting in the passenger seat, his nephew sitting behind him, and Tupac on the other side, now we learn from this grand jury testimony that, in fact, it may have been the other man in the back seat with Orlando Anderson to his left who fired out of the window and eventually hit and killed Tupac. So all three are dead now. The guy that you just mentioned, D'Andre Smith. He died in 2004 from health reasons. The other two, including Orlando Anderson, the nephew, killed in gang-related shootings. And so Dwayne Davis is the only one who's still alive, who's in that car. So Dwayne Davis being arrested, I think, is one of the more shocking developments in recent hip-hop history. This is a case that even though the broad outlines of this beef that we've been describing were known and even the events of that night, Orlando Anderson being beaten up, we've seen that security footage for decades now. Yet Dwayne Davis was out here talking about being the only living person left in that white Cadillac. And he seemed to do so without facing any consequences. So I think that emboldened him. And as a gangster getting up there in age, you know, he calls himself a five-star general. He's very proud of the things that he accomplished in his underworld lifestyle and career. You know, he was known as a big drug trafficker. He called the shots in his neighborhood. And I think as he's speaking more and more about this over the years, people are starting to wonder, like, you know, if this guy's saying how this all went down, why have we not seen charges in this case? So I think the Las Vegas police jumping on this now is meant to bring closure, really, to what has long persisted as one of, you know, the most jarring pop culture deaths of the 20th century. And I think... Getting Davis on it, using his own words against him, the many interviews he's given over the last few years, I think that is meant to be a sense of closure, not only for Tupac Shakur and his family, but also the fans who have followed the ins and outs of this case, which really, really disrupted the path of hip-hop through popular culture.

Joe, thank you so much for bringing us up to date on this incredible story. Sure. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. That's Joe Koscarelli, music and culture writer for The New York Times, and author of the book Rap Capital and Atlanta Story. Coming up, we conclude our summer music series with our newest DJ Tana Yonis. She gives us a world music playlist and her pick for Song of the Summer. Stay with us. That's next on Press Play. This is Press Play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. You've been hearing it for years. Monoculture is dead. And Long Gone is the song of the summer. That single Inescapable track, bringing us onto the same proverbial dance floor, it is no more. However, that does not mean there aren't great summer songs. Finding them is the work of our K-SERW DJs, and this year we've welcomed six new hosts to our airwaves, and we've been introducing you to each one here on Press Play over the last several weeks, hearing their favorite summer songs as well as their pick. for Capital S Song of the Summer. Well, today, shed a tear. It's our last episode in the series, and this week my guest is Tanya Yonas. Tana has a new global music show here on KCRW. In each episode, she dives into a specific musical movement, tracing its roots, celebrating the artists who defined it, and following its influence through time. The show airs on the first Sunday of every month from 8 to 10 p.m. And Tommy Jonas joins us now. Hello. Hello. So wonderful to be here. Welcome to KSRW. Thank you. I can't believe I'm hearing those words, honestly. But yes, I'm so happy to be. Well, we're so happy to have you. And tell us more about your show, a global music show. Tell us what kinds of music you play. Really all over the board. I've always been like the child of the globe. And I love music from all over the world. And my catchphrase for the show is making the world you love even bigger. So it's really diving deep and exploring really interesting sounds from every corner of the globe. And for longtime listeners, that will sound somewhat familiar because of Tom Schnabel. And he had a show called Rhythm Planet, which is credited by a lot of people of introducing a lot of people in America to world music way back in the day. And he's still an emeritus. So do you model your show in any way after his? No, but I've been going through the archives and thoroughly love his music. But also it's...

One thing to be an enjoyer of global music, but it's another thing where you can really hear that person's taste as you explore these different countries, these different traditions. And so his taste is just so rich and deep. And you can hear that curiosity in his selections as well. But definitely I wear the same cloak as Tom, and I take that into every episode. And your debut set, you played Ethiopian jazz. Describe... what Ethiopian jazz is and your show. Yeah, so Ethiopian jazz is a very globally-minded genre. It was music of a community in turmoil, but you don't hear that in the music. The music generally is very joyous. It has the feeling of where the music was being played, which was in the ballrooms of Addisa Baba, the capital of Ethiopia. Very jazz influence, rock and roll, James Brown, of course, affected the... globe with his music, but you can hear his influence in Ethiopian jazz especially. So it was really a deep dive into the genre and me sharing some of the context around what was happening to the musicians because I do think it makes the music sound better. And what time period is this? In the 60s and early 70s. 60s and 70s. And so there was a lot of... Rebellion throughout the continent at that time. Yes, and throughout the world, which is so interesting to me, too, because, you know, obviously that was way before the Internet. And so when you see these musical movements, artistic movements, political movements, and how they move around the globe organically, it's almost, you almost would think that people were, you know, in chat rooms on Reddit and that sort of thing back then just because of how global that sort of turmoil was. Yeah. And how did you get into this kind of music to begin with? Part of it is nature and nurture, definitely. I'm always a questioner and an explorer. And also I grew up in a household where my father always had role music around us. And so it seemed very... You know, of course we'd be listening to music from voices where I didn't understand the language. And that was part of the beauty. And you begin to really feel the emotion. And I would say like that is like one of my superpowers I like to say because, you know, being able to really hear the emotion of a song. And that's what makes being a DJ so fun because you can kind of build these emotional stories behind the decks while people are dancing or enjoying a meal or, you know, living their lives. And by telling a story, you mean telling a story musically, not necessarily verbally. Exactly. Taking folks on like an emotional journey through music. Oh, well, let's go on an emotional journey now. Let's go. Okay. So you have brought us five of your favorite summer tracks and including your pick for the song of the summer, which we'll save for the end. And... The first track you brought us is called Boombapt, and it's by the jazz drummer and producer, Makaya McCraven, featuring Theon Cross and Ben Lamar. Yay.

Okay, that's called Boombapt. And tell us more about that track and why it's called Boombapt. It's that Boombap beat that has you sway in. And, you know, I love that track too because it really does feel like a hot summer day and you're going to that street party and you have a great outfit on and you have that swagger on. And it's that feeling of trudging through these hot, humid L.A. days. Yeah, definitely. And this was also a genre of hip-hop, right? Boom-Bab? Yes, exactly, exactly. And it comes from, it's like an anatomotopia from the sound of the drums. Boom-Bap. Exactly. And I love any genre where you can kind of, you kind of get a sense of the genre just from the name. Even hip-hop as well, like you can kind of get a sense of what the genre has in store just by the name. Totally. Let's hear the second track you brought us. This is called Sending All My Love Out by Emerson.

I don't know how it makes me laugh that sound. Yeah. There's a joy to it. It's, I don't want to call it cheesy, but it's like an irreverent, just like you're not trying to be cool, you're having a good time. Yeah, so tell us more about this and the artist who is Emerson. Yeah, so this is a song that was produced by Emerson Sandage and his wife, Leora, Sandage. So it's a husband-wife duo, which we love. And it was done as a private press. They produced it at home, and then they borrowed some time in the studio to press the record. But they only made 500 copies, and it became kind of a cult. a beloved track from Georgia and it was just recently released after years and years of the label just earning their trust because they were very good friends with Curtis Mayfield. And Curtis really made sure that they knew like they should hold the rights to their music and also just protect themselves from, you know, predatory agents in the music industry. But after winning the trust of the two of them, they were able to re-release it just a few years ago. Oh, that's great. So now we can enjoy it. Yes. And it's very enjoyable. Definitely. Next up is a track by the Chicago rap trio called The Pump Girls. And we're going to hear their track, Get On It. I remember this from 1989, remixed and re-released in 2018 by The Pump Boys.

I feel like I'm playing double Dutch. Yeah, exactly. Let's get out the drum rope. I know. Oh, my God, do you don't want to see me do that? Well, tell me more about this track. Yeah, so it's a Chicago track from the mid-80s, and it's three girls. They're, you know, rapping to this beat that was produced by Des, which is a Chicago producer. And, you know, it was so funny because in the 80s, house was never really allowed to, you know, get its hands on American pop culture because it was very queer and very black. But it did grab hold of an English audience that had this burgeoning rave culture, like where the rave culture was invented in the UK. And many of these producers, and virtually not Des and the Pump Girls, but they were able to get a brand new life in London. They were relatively unknown at home and then celebrities in Europe. And so this track was, this is an editor remix by The Pump Boys, and this moniker they're adopting just for this track. This was released this a couple years ago. So it really speaks to a sort of transatlantic exchange between Chicago and London especially. I see. That's why it's up your alley. Exactly. Exactly. The world music. All right. Next up, a track you brought for us is called Lamour by new composers, a 90s electronic music duo from Russia. And then, all, it'll start.

You like saying Saint-Ais or Bless You or Gozenheit or something. I'm trying to sneeze. Yeah. You actually might not be wrong. Basically, what new composers was known for is pulling little fragments from TV and movies and then creating these beautiful tapestries of sound that was very dreamy and putting these beautiful beats under it as well. So that may have been a sneeze in a French film. That's so funny. Well, I love how. all of your picks are kind of in the past, but they sound very remixed and relevant for now. That's, I would hope so. So thank you for reinforcing this hope for myself. But yeah, I would say a lot of these musicians are like very soulful, very future thinking, but also very inspired and I feel like, and very experimental with the instruments they had as well. So I'm glad you hear that too. I do. I definitely hear that. All right. Now, drum roll please. Maybe it's an electronic drum. I don't know. Something. Last but not least, your pick for Song of the Summer, and this track came out in 1994, an electronic remix of a track called Dreaming by the British singer Ache. And let's listen.

Dreaming by Ashe. Tell us more about him. Yeah, so he generally was a soul singer. He came from like a lover's rock background. I'll be definitely doing a show on lover's rock. So that's definitely important coming in the coming months. But it was a time where basically all these genres didn't really have names. Like I think a lot of people would consider this song Street Soul. And it was this genre of music that kind of had these like beautiful balleric beats and these soulful elements. But it was very uniquely British. And that's where this song came out of that tradition of Street Soul. And Jungle, of course, which is a uniquely British genre of music that didn't get a lot of airplay, unfortunately. So a lot of this, you can really only get on pirate. Back then, you could only get on pirate radio. Oh, and now how do you get it? Luckily, we have lovely compilations, like this one here from the Numero group, that... kind of helped explore the genres. But also, the Pyrido did a good job. Like, there was definitely people knew how to tune in and got the music out there, but it was definitely a hard journey in the same way that the Pump Girls had in Chicago with the American music industry. It was the same for an artist like Ashae in London, getting any sort of acclaim in the popular culture. Was there more experimentation and more open-mindedness in London at that time for music? Kind of, it was, I would say a mirrors like in New York where there's this, you know, it's a big city with a long history and there's all these different groups and people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. And also, this is like during the Fatcher administration, or I guess this is a little bit after the Fatcher administration. So there was a lot of tumult like in culture at that point. And their economy was pretty bad. And so people had a lot of free time and they were making some amazing music. So I think it just, that's generally what happens when you have so many different people. from different walks of life together in a city together and in close quarters. Well, happy summer, Tana. Thank you so much for making it come alive for us. Thank you, Madeline. For carrying it on. Yes. Summer's not over. Yes. It's definitely a group effort to make that happen. I know. Okay. We're all doing it together. Yes. That's KSW DJ Tanya Jonas. And you can catch her global music show on the first Sunday of each month from 8 to 10 p.m. And you can find all her summer music picks on our website, KSatW.com slash press play.

And that'll do it for us today on Press Play. I'm Madeline Brand. Thanks for being here. I'll be back with you again tomorrow.