Playlist: This calls for celebration

By Micha Frazer-Carroll

CN: race

Growing up as a mixed Caribbean and English kid at a majority-white school meant that I internalised a lot of weird feelings of guilt and shame surrounding my culture at a young age. I feel like it’s common for ethnic minority people to carry this sense of otherness, inferiority and self-consciousness all the way into adulthood – I know I’ve suffered from this in a big way.

But there’s one circumstance under which all of this goes right out the window – family parties. Dancing around barefoot in someone’s kitchen, with a pot of rice and peas on the stove, surrounded by my black extended family and friends, is the environment in which I have always felt most free. It is these celebrations that keep me stable, keep me grounded, and that inspired this playlist today.

I’ve always been a bit rubbish with new year’s resolutions, but one thing I want to do this year is celebrate more. These are the kinds of jams that will be filling the house this year.