Transcript
Derek Barris (0:03)
Zoran Mamdani's win in the Democratic primary is making me miss living in New York City. I lived under the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, and look, New York is New York. There are so, so many communities living under this umbrella. My 12 years in the city, after growing up 30 miles outside of it, predominantly involved being part of the world music scene and the yoga community. As I said on Thursday's episode, New York is distinct in terms of its communities, meaning it's not like one big Kumbaya party yet. It also forces you to grapple with tons of people from everywhere in the world, all the time. That's what I miss most about living there. This is Derek Barris and you're listening to a conspirituality bonus episode and I've been thinking about Mamdani's victory for a lot of reasons. I love how he's approaching this campaign. I do agree with the majority of his politics, and I think he's the right person at the right time for a party that really needs some fresh energy. I'm also aware of how easy it is to get charmed by charisma, given that's what we cover on this podcast in the wellness world. I'm not fanatical and I do have some critiques, but more importantly, I just think it's about time because Democratic leadership is not cutting it right now. I'm going to get personal before I spend most of this episode looking at the political after moving to New York, I ended up deep in the world music scene. I worked as managing editor of a world music magazine and produced three albums and four EPs as one half of Earthrise Sound System. But the most New York memory I have is from my decade plus as part of the DJ collective Globe Sonic. Every summer for 10 years we held monthly Globesonic on the Hudson parties on Pier Eye in the Upper west side. Up to 7,000 people showed up to these events where we spun African, Middle Eastern, dub, Latin, basically every genre on the planet that moves people. I love the diversity of the crowd. New York embraces people from everywhere and people from everywhere showed up to these parties. I've included a few videos in the show notes if you want to check out the vibe from back then. I'm also always hesitant to overly romanticize the city or really anywhere because every neighborhood is its own culture. It's not like you're immersed in everything all the time, but the fact that all exist in close proximity and that you're inevitably going to be exposed to a dozen languages on every Subway Ride is a wonderful thing. I'll also admit I was a little too enthusiastic. In my 20s, I was steeped in world music, interviewing hundreds of artists from around the world, reviewing and photographing multiple shows a week, touring as a dj embedded in many cultures through the shared language of music. I did, and I still do believe in the transformative power of music. As globesonic, we put together an electronic press kit during our eighth summer on this on the Hudson and you can hear my optimism. I truly believe the country was moving in the right direction when it came to acceptance of people from elsewhere. The audio mix isn't great, but you'll catch the gist here.