New podcast explores history of black communities in European cities

Author Johny Pitts is launching a podcast exploring the art, politics and history of black communities in major European cities.

Known for his multiple award-winning travel memoir, Afropean: Notes From Black Europe, Johny is teaming up with production company Reduced Listening for the six-part series.

Afropean Podcast sheds light on a Europe often missing from tourist guides and official national narratives.

Each episode looks at a different European capital, including Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon and Paris.

With on-the-ground recordings it’s 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.

To coincide with the release of the podcast, a new high quality 300-page analogue photobook; Afropean Journal, published by Mörel, will be launched at Paris Photo 2024, bringing together twenty years of Pitts’ photographs, notebooks and ephemera for the first time.

Reduced Listening Managing Director Joby Waldman says: “we are super excited about teaming up with Johny Pitts to facilitate the Afropean podcast. A long time in the making, this revisionist history series sheds light on the cultural richness, and social inequities stemming from Africa’s long and complex relationship with Europe.”

Afropean Podcast from Reduced Listening launches weekly from 5 November on all major podcast platforms.

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