Julian Green on Carbon Sound

CATHY WURZER: There are a lot of great summer music shows happening around the state, and it's a good time to talk about music. Today, we're talking with Julian Green who has made it his mission to celebrate and explore Black musical expression across musical genres. He's the content director for Carbon Sound, a Minnesota-based streaming service that launched almost a month ago today. Julian's on the line. Hey, Julian, how are you?

JULIAN GREEN: Hey, Cathy. I'm doing well. How are you?

CATHY WURZER: Good. So far so good this afternoon. Thank you. For folks who have not yet come across Carbon Sound, tell us about it.

JULIAN GREEN: So Carbon Sound is a new stream built in collaboration between the Current and KMOJ the Ice. It's dedicated to the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression across the world and across time. It's basically just a long way of saying we play really good music, stuff like hip hop, R&B, but also going into afrobeats, electronic music, and more, just showing how this Black musical expression is foundational to the canon of all-American music and how music from across the world is influencing each other today.

CATHY WURZER: Who's the host?

JULIAN GREEN: So our host is Sannie Brown.

CATHY WURZER: Ah--

JULIAN GREEN: You can catch her on--

CATHY WURZER: --yes.

JULIAN GREEN: --from Monday through Thursday from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. A wonderful voice, so much perspective in the music, and we're just happy to have her.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, Sannie's a great-- she's amazing. By the way, were did Carbon Sound the name come from?

JULIAN GREEN: So as an element, carbon is found in everything. There's the carbon cycle. You find carbon and stars, carbons and us. It's CO2. Carbon is foundational to life across the universe and it's kind of the common thread to all life on Earth.

And that's how we approached the music that we're playing, like what I was just saying about how it's foundational to all music. There's also some other kind of meanings to that you could dig into if you feel like it. But I like keeping it a little mysterious.

CATHY WURZER: OK, we'll do that. I think we should listen to some music right now. I know there is a track that you like by artist Ravyn Lenae. It's called M-I-A.

[MUSIC - RAVYN LENAE, "M.I.A"]

- (SINGING) Yeah. I'm going to run the town, ain't nothing in my way, way. If I miss the sun go down, might got to M-I-A, M-I-A. I want to make my debut but just for the night. Doing me is all I can do. You recognize it.

CATHY WURZER: Nice. I like that a lot. Julian, why do you like this?

JULIAN GREEN: I just think it's a really good track. I've been following up with her music for a couple of years now. She went quiet for a bit. She had an EP back in around 2018, 2019 and then didn't release anything for a while. But she just released an album about two months ago.

I think it's one of the best of this year. I think in this track, too, you can also hear-- what I was trying to get out earlier-- just that kind of global influence, because it's very much kind of R&B vocals in my opinion, but she also have that like kind of afrobeats rhythm and keys in there, too. So I just like it a lot. It's just a good song to me.

CATHY WURZER: And is she local?

JULIAN GREEN: She's actually from Chicago, so not too far.

CATHY WURZER: That's all right. That's all right. I like the song and I like her. By the way, how did you get so involved in music? Do you play? Do you sing?

JULIAN GREEN: It's actually a funny story. I used to play a lot of those Rock Band Guitar Hero games as a kid. I feel like that's what just got me hooked on music and actually taught me about production, song structure and stuff.

I was like 10 years old listening to Iron Maiden and Metallica, Sonic Youth and stuff just because that's what was in the game, and then also listening to a lot of music like hip hop and R&B as a kid, too. So all of that kind of just coalesced as I got older and applied just the music nerd side of me that grew as a result of playing that game to like hip hop and R&B and all these other genres that I really enjoy. So I'm just a fan before anything else.

And in college, I realized that you can actually work in music, because--

CATHY WURZER: Yes.

JULIAN GREEN: --they don't teach you that in school.

CATHY WURZER: [LAUGHS].

JULIAN GREEN: They tell you learn how to make the robots that are going to be taking the jobs at the factories. They don't teach you about the arts. But anyways, when I got to college, I realized that you can write about music for a living. And then you can also DJ, too.

I've been DJing for a couple of years now. It's something that I enjoy doing. But mostly I just enjoy the radio side of it. I did Radio K all four years of college--

CATHY WURZER: Oh, good.

JULIAN GREEN: --and started there. Hip hop and R&B streamed the Vanguard my senior year and a bunch of other things too.

CATHY WURZER: I'm glad you mentioned writing, by the way, because on carbonsound.fm, you wrote about a recent event called the High Cotton Ball in Minneapolis. And it featured an artist called Blue Bone. Tell me about what drew your attention to this.

JULIAN GREEN: Well, I first came into contact with the Blue Bone actually at an event that I was DJing last summer. I was just really struck by his artistry. It's really the only word for it. I mean, he is just like an artist in every sense of the word. And he has so much intention and creativity behind everything that he's doing.

The High Cotton Ball was created actually in response to organizations like Afropunk that came to Minneapolis on Juneteenth. Afropunk actually contacted performers like Blue Bone and other artists that became part of the High Cotton Ball. And in those artists' opinions, they just weren't offering enough or showing enough respect to the city.

So they just said, you know what, we're going to have our own event, and that event was the High Cotton Ball. There were about four or five performers all with like dancers, incredible production. There was also the ball event at the end, which was incredible. I watched a lot of pose. And just to see that in real.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, no, we didn't miss-- we didn't lose--

JULIAN GREEN: Really cool. It was really cool.

CATHY WURZER: Was it? Good. Excellent.

JULIAN GREEN: Awesome. Yeah, so, there was just so much artistry intent. And just, I don't know, it's kind of that entrepreneurial spirit that I see in a lot of local artists which just really exemplified on that night. And I just thought more people needed to know about it, because he's one of the best artists in the city in my opinion.

CATHY WURZER: Now, we heard a little bit of music here at the beginning of our conversation. I know in addition to listening to some new local music, you like some old school stuff.

JULIAN GREEN: Oh, yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to play a little bit of that right now.

[MUSIC - PATRICE RUSHEN, "FORGET ME NOTS"]

- (SINGING) Sending you forget-me-nots to help you to remember. Baby please forget-me-not. I want you to remember. Those were the times we had sharing the joy that we thought would last.

CATHY WURZER: Now, I remember this song, Forget Me Nots, Patrice Rushen? Remember her? What do you think, Julian?

JULIAN GREEN: Yeah.

CATHY WURZER: You're laughing at me right now.

JULIAN GREEN: So this is actually one of the song-- no, no, no, it's actually a funny story. Sannie, the voice of the stream, she helps out a ton with giving recommendations for older tracks that we want, and then also like tracks that are newer, but just weren't necessarily on my radar.

So this is one of the tracks that Sannie recommended that she's played on her show, The Message. Every week on The Message, there's a different theme. And then every day of the week, we take a deep dive into a specific aspect of the theme.

So this was actually for karaoke songs last week. I believe it was on the either R&B or Funk day. So yeah, her taste and my taste, they kind of come together so that we can cover the older stuff and the newer stuff and just really get into that depth, breadth, and influence that I was talking about earlier.

CATHY WURZER: Right, I love this. OK, now before you go, what's coming up in the next week that we should listen to?

JULIAN GREEN: In the next week-- well, last week actually, Steve Lacy, who works a lot with Ravyn Lenae as a producer, released his album. I like it a lot. It's almost kind of Prince-like in my opinion.

I'm afraid to say that because people care a lot about Prince, but I kind of hear the influence. A local artist, Ruby Mitchell, she's a rapper. She just dropped her latest project, first one in a while, last Friday, too, which was cool. Beyonce is dropping her album later this month.

CATHY WURZER: Lots going on.

JULIAN GREEN: There's also the Kendrick Lamar concert coming here later this month and a ton of great shows coming up this week and next week. So it's a lot of things to be excited about, and Carbon Sound is where you're going to hear it--

CATHY WURZER: Excellent.

JULIAN GREEN: --hear it on air and then hear about it on the internet, too.

CATHY WURZER: All right, Julian, thank you. Julian Green is the content director for Carbon Sound. It's a website streaming service celebrating the Black musical expression. It's supported by Minnesota Public Radio and The Current in partnership with community radio station KMOJ. And thanks for listening to Minnesota Now.