Wade In The Water

June 30, 2019 8:22 AM

Back in 1994, NPR and Smithsonian Institution unveiled Wade In The Water, an unprecedented 26 episode, 26-hour-long exploration of African American sacred music traditions that had taken 5 years to assemble. NPR has re-released the project and all the episodes can be found here, and here's a link to use with the NPR One app.

The episode page linked above has links to individual pages for each episode, which each have a full list of all the music featured for that episode. For example, here is the page for Episode 1.

posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

Fantastic resource, thanks, hippybear.
posted by theora55 at 9:06 AM on June 30, 2019

I love many of those songs, this is more literal.
posted by Oyéah at 10:52 AM on June 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Wish there were some way to download these... (sigh)
posted by PhineasGage at 11:06 AM on June 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

This should work:

https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/wadewater/2019/06/20190617_wadewater_episode1.mp3

and change the episode # for the other episodes...
posted by gwint at 12:04 PM on June 30, 2019 [6 favorites]

This looks amazing. I can't wait to dig in. Thanks!
posted by Drab_Parts at 12:25 PM on June 30, 2019

Thanks, gwint -- that works for most of the episodes! (It fails on 6, 12, 16, 21, 24, and 25.)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:56 PM on June 30, 2019

Worked on all 26 for me
posted by timdiggerm at 2:16 PM on June 30, 2019

Wow, what an amazing resource! I do wish I could get it on my podcast app...
posted by latkes at 2:41 PM on June 30, 2019

Nice. Thanks. :-)
posted by Pouteria at 2:49 AM on July 1, 2019

timdiggerm, you are right -- it works for me on all of the segments now.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:48 AM on July 1, 2019

Smithsonian Folkways recordings released a set of four CDs as a companion to the radio series. Unfortunately, it's not the music from the show; instead, it's contemporary recordings of the classic songs. I'm sure many people prefer that, though. And if you want to listen, the set is available on Spotify: Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions.

Along the same lines, I can't recommend the weekly WFMU 91.1 FM gospel radio show Sinner's Crossroads, which is almost entirely vintage gospel 45s, highly enough. The radio station is in New Jersey but the show is based in Montgomery, Alabama. Sample show and playlist. (Bonus: Sinner's Crossroads is available as a podcast!)
posted by Mothlight at 12:49 PM on July 1, 2019